Science Reporting

The York Daily Record on Sunday published a brief opinion piece from a York resident challenging the paper’s definition of intelligent design. What is intelligent design? Are our kids being taught to think? Do schools want to give a good education? The York Daily Record definition says, “ID holds that all living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by an unspecified divine being.” The YDR is not alone in using this description which is actually how critics of design define the theory. Hopefully the YDR will begin using a more accurate description, or at least attribute this one to critics rather than leaving it as if it were the proper, working definition. Once more, with feeling: Read More ›

Last Sunday’s episode of Boston Legal (“From Whence We Came”) was ripped straight from the headlines in typical David Kelley style. Hotshot young attorney Lori (Monica Potter), with help from Denny Crane (played by William Shatner, and for which he won a Golden Globe the same Sunday night) and Shirley Schmidt (the newest addition to the show, played by Candace Bergen), defends a school superintendent being sued by two science teachers who were fired for refusing to teach creationism.

Kelley’s writing is always sharp and his dialogue is witty, but his take on the evolution issue merely regurgitates the old Inherit The Wind trope of religion vs. science. He never even bothers to really define evolution or intelligent design, which is used interchangeably with creationism.

Leave it to the capitalists at Amazon.com and the free market system to captialize on the censorship of UMOL by the Darwinists. Several months ago UMOL sales were languishing well below 7,000 on Amazon.com’s sales ranking system. However, thanks to KNME censorship , the film actually peaked at 2,500 over the weekend. Currently it has slipped a bit to 4,540. Still this shows a serious spike in sales. We’ve received dozens of requests for the film ourselves. Nothing spurs sales quite like a good controversy. Had KNME just let well enough alone this whole thing would have blown over by now. But, thanks to their protectionism more and more people are seeing UMOL than otherwise would have been the case. Read More ›

Scrappleface.com has skewered last week’s federal court ruling on Cobb Co.’s textbook disclaimers with a clever bit of satire. “U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper ruled that the old labels could “confuse” public school students, who are not accustomed to thinking critically.” Indeed! The Scrapplers report that the newly evolved stickers now in textbooks read: “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a fact, not a theory, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with childlike trust, accepted obediently and defended vigorously against the attacks of ignorant monotheists.” Read the entire ScrappleFace satire here (and yes, the Cooper quotations are pure fiction).

CSC writer in residence, Jonathan Witt had an op-ed published in the Albuquerque Journal Sunday commenting on PBS affiliate KNME’s censorship troubles. The thing that Witt’s op-ed nicely brings to light is the double standard about funding and editorial control that exists at PBS from the top down. He gives specific examples suggesting that KNME normally follows a very different (and much more sane) test for private funders, one that allows foundations who fund documentaries to have points of view and even worldviews. KNME proclaims that they must not let public get the “perception” that funders of a program “might” have had control over the content. “Indeed, no PBS affiliate consistently follows the smell test laid out by KNME. If Read More ›

The censorship issue has obviously struck a nerve in New Mexico, as evidenced by this cartoon from Friday’s Albuquerque Journal. Creationism evolves. How original. I think this is only about the 499th time that this has been in a cartoon or headline.

Sadness is the emotion that ABC’s Nightline tried to inculcate last night with its “War in Dover” episode and, if my reactions are any judge, they succeeded.

First is the sadness one feels for all the good people of Dover who have behaved badly toward one another. John Donvan showed that people in that little town really are afraid to talk to one another, and that everything anyone says has to be filtered through a legal screen (perhaps we need a set of Miranda Rights from now on that will be read to citizens who presume to express themselves on public policy).

Worst of all, Donvan demonstrated that any personal moral suspicion one has of his neighbor in Dover these days is fair game to bring into the combat over evolution. All of this is because of a rather tame and otherwise irrelevant statement about intelligent design. The culture wars have come to this.

So, I congratulate John Donvan and his producers for producing the insight that these evolution fights in localities are enormously divisive, leaving very hurt feelings all around.

The newest Accuracy in Media report takes PBS to task for liberal bias and viewpoint discrimination. The piece is particularly good on PBS’s deeply flawed treatment of the controversy over evolution in the public schools: Then, Moyers turned to another current topic, the ACLU’s lawsuits against school districts that want to “teach an alternative to evolution.” Romero insisted that, “teaching alternatives to evolution is about teaching religion in our public schools. And in a country as diverse as this one, and in a country where religious belief is such a core belief for so many Americans, you want to keep the government as far away as we can from involving itself in our most important and private institutions.” Romero’s statement Read More ›

Beware Evolution Treatment Tonight from ABC News

This is being written before Nightline airs its program tonight (“The Origin of Life: A Battle Between Faith and Science”). I talked last month with the senior producer Jay LaMonica, producer Eliza Rubin and finally, in person, with the reporter, John Donvan, in Washington.

They expressed frustration that none of the scientists affiliated with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture would go on camera for Nightline unless they were presented live. Queried hard, I gave my own explanation: We don’t trust you. Put people on live and they will have a chance to correct reporting errors, but they will be defenseless if taped and merely left to the tender mercies of editors and commentators. It’s that simple. Unfortunately, the major media have earned this skepticism.

I pointed out, further, that Nightline often presents people of different views on their program live, and that the juxtaposition of differing live viewpoints is what makes the program worthwhile, in my opinion as a viewer. There is far too little of that in the media.

Go to Google and type in “Unlocking the Mystery of Life,” and see what pops up on the right hand side of the listing that comes up. It has a “Shop PBS Online” link. So apparently PBS pays Google to have this sponsored link. But when you click on the sponsored link, it goes to a page at PBS that says: “This product is temporarily out of stock.” Funny.