Science Reporting

If you weren’t able to join us for the official Signature in the Cell book release party at the Seattle Art Museum, you can still watch author Stephen Meyer’s presentation this weekend on C-SPAN2’s BookTV: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent DesignAbout the ProgramStephen Meyer argues that our DNA provides evidence of an intelligent designer and helps explain how life began. He spoke at the Seattle Art Museum during an event hosted by the Discovery Institute.Future Airings* Saturday, September 5th at 7pm (ET)* Sunday, September 6th at 7am (ET)* Monday, September 7th at 12pm (ET)* Tuesday, September 8th at 12am (ET)

The new issue of American Spectator is out with a rave review of Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell. Writer Dan Peterson opens with the revelation that this book wasn’t just good — it was a game-changer:

When I learned that Dr. Stephen Meyer had written a new book on the evidence of design displayed in living cells, I expected to be impressed by it. I wasn’t prepared to have my mind blown — which is what happened.

We’ve heard before that Dr. Meyer’s book is more than dangerous to the Darwinist case; it’s comprehensive and devastating:

Meyer’s argument is a comprehensive one, rooted in multiple scientific and philosophical disciplines, and he is perhaps uniquely qualified to make it. His background is in physics and earth science, and he earned his PhD from Cambridge University in philosophy of science, with a thesis on origin of life research. Although not himself a biologist, the detailed facts of molecular biology Meyer presents in the book, on which he bases his principal arguments, are sound and accurate scientifically…

Signature in the Cell takes readers on a tour of scientific history from Darwin to Watson and Crick…

Sean Carroll is one of those open-minded science types who are always generously offering the rest of us lectures on the importance of intellectual freedom and open inquiry–at least when the subject of discussion is buried in the annals of history. When it comes to people debating issues today, however, there are other things which must be taken into consideration.

Like whether Carroll agrees with them.
He is particularly upset about Bloggingheads.tv running a dialogue between John McWhorter and Intelligent Design advocate Michael Behe, a professional scientist. “Unfortunately,” he says, “I won’t be appearing on Bloggingheads.tv any more.”
So there.

Bloggingheads.tv is a site that bills itself as “a place where great minds don’t think alike,” a slogan that sounds suspiciously like a description of a place where great minds don’t actually think alike. Carroll’s problem with the site is that it included a dialogue with someone he doesn’t think like–namely, Michael Behe–and he doesn’t think this is something that a site designed for discussion between people who don’t agree should do.

Historian Richard Weikart’s provocative new book, Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress, comes out today, illuminating the mercilessly coherent worldview driving Nazi policy in 20th century Germany. Weikart persuasively mounts his case that Hitler was not a madman; rather, he sought to improve the human race via “evolutionary progress,” an ethic that influenced almost every major feature of Nazi policy: eugenics (i.e., measures to improved human heredity, including compulsory sterilization), euthanasia, racism, population expansion, offensive warfare, and racial extermination. By embracing this particular brand of ethics, Hitler managed to perpetrate much greater evil than he would have had he been merely opportunistic or amoral. It’s an intriguing argument, which Weikart defended on yesterday’s ID the Future podcast. Take Read More ›

The editor-in-chief of Bloggingheads TV, Robert Wright, has re-instated my interview with linguist John McWhorter on that website. Wright was away last week when the brouhaha occurred. It’s good to see that a steady editorial hand is back in charge.

I’ve just been through the weirdest book-related experience I’ve had since a Canadian university professor with a loaded rat trap chased me around after a talk I gave a dozen years ago, threatening to spring it on me. Last week I got the following email bearing the title “Invitation to Appear on Bloggingheads TV” from a senior editor at that site: Hi, Michael– I’d like to invite you to appear on Bloggingheads.tv, a web site that hosts video dialogues between journalists, bloggers, and scholars. We have a partnership with the New York Times by which they feature excerpts from some of our shows on their site. Past guests include prominent thinkers such as Paul Krugman, Paul Ehrlich, Frans de Waal, Read More ›

To: Ben Stein
From: Walter Duranty
New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist (deceased, but never fired).
936,287,434 Seventh Circle
Moloch Township, Gehenna.

Dearest Ben,
My condolences on your involuntary departure from the New York Times. Down Here, we all find it very amusing.
Yea, we all know that you got canned by the Grey Lady- by e-mail, no less. The pretense: your ‘crime’ was to hawk the services of an on-line credit report company that the Times management thought unethical.
Of course, causing people who trusted you to lose money would have been your quickest ticket to promotion at the ‘Newspaper with a of Record.’

Pinch Sulzberger reduced the value of the stock of the world’s ‘Newspaper of Record’ by 6 billion dollars (1999 50 bucks /share; 2009 8 bucks/share; current market cap $1.1 billion) in substantial part by using the newspaper as his ideological cudgel. And he fired you for risking other people’s money? Remember the above the fold coverage of McCain’s faux ‘sex scandal’ that coincided with the Grey Lady’s ‘writer’s block’ about John Edwards’ real sex scandal? How about the brutal dissection of Sara Palin’s family that coincided with the omerta about Barack Obama’s dubious Chicago associates? Which ‘significant other’ was more important for voters to know about–Levi Johnston or Tony Rezko? Which relationship got the most press at the ‘Newspaper of Record’?

So the public figured: why pay two bucks for the Times, when you can get the content for free from the Democratic National Committee?

You were fired for ideological reasons — your criticism of Goldman Sachs, your skepticism of President Obama’s policies, sure, but most of all, because you didn’t fit.
‘Didn’t fit,’ you ask? Let me explain.

Much of the debate about evolution turns on language, and there is much misrepresentation, mostly on one side of the debate. Darwinists assert that “evolution is a fact,” when what they really mean is that “Darwinism is a fact,” but they don’t want to assert that explicitly. They misrepresent their narrow theory of evolutionary change as synonymous with evolutionary change understood more broadly. They do so for several reasons, including the unfavorable connotations of Darwinism and the paucity of evidence and logic to support Darwin’s radical assertion.

In two recent posts (here and here), I discussed the continuing misrepresentations of intelligent design by Francis Collins, whose confirmation as head of the National Institutes of Health in the Obama administration was announced on August 7. Today I would like to shift the focus to Dr. Collins’ misrepresentation of evolutionary biology–or more precisely, to his misrepresentation of the scientific usefulness of evolution to biology. Collins has every right to endorse neo-Darwinian evolution if he wishes, but his view of evolution’s value to scientific research is pretty much over-the-top. In a recent interview, he claimed: Trying to do biology without evolution would be like trying to do physics without mathematics. There is no doubt that modern neo-Darwinian theory has had Read More ›

Last week I discussed an interview with Francis Collins in Books and Culture where Dr. Collins wrongly called intelligent design (ID) unfalsifiable. Before offering more critiques of the interview, I want to say that in some respects, I have found Francis Collins’ voice to be a welcome addition to the debate over evolution and ID. I am very much in agreement with Dr. Collins on certain issues, such as the evidence for design from the fine-tuning of physics and the frailties of Darwinian explanations for many higher aspects of the human psyche and behavior (i.e. our moral and religious urges). Collins is of course entitled to disagree with ID in biology, but I’m becoming saddened by the charged and inaccurate Read More ›