Science Reporting

According to a recent article in the Seattle Times, “School officials unite in banning Wikipedia,” because “[t]here have been many cases of incorrect information on the Web site, some of which has been biased.” The article reports that sadly, “A teacher researching Martin Luther King Jr. found white supremacist information in his entry.” Dr. King is one of my personal heroes. His perseverance in support of a just cause, and his calls for civil, reasoned responses to false personal attacks and persecution should be seen as a model for any ID proponent on how to behave in the present political climate. Thus, it is tragically unsurprising that Wikipedia, which promotes so much incorrect and biased information against intelligent design, should Read More ›

Paula Apsell was the executive producer of PBS/NOVA’s “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design” documentary, which tries to inaccurately paint ID as a creationist idea that has been refuted by science. But in fact, a few years ago Ms. Apsell produced a different NOVA documentary entitled “Mystery of the Megaflood.” For a geologist like me, it’s a fascinating tale about how mainstream geologists took decades to accept the view that a giant post-glacial flood was responsible for much of the bizarre geological features found in eastern Washington. According to Apsell’s “Megaflood” documentary, a geologist in the early 1900s named J. Harlen Bretz proposed a catastrophic local flood theory to explain this geology. Bretz was ridiculed by his contemporary geologists because his ideas Read More ›

UPDATE: A tenth PBS blunder is now addressed, where PBS makes the false insinuation that intelligent design is no more scientific than astrology. Scroll down to read more. More than 50 years ago two playwrights penned a fictionalized account of the 1920s Scopes Trial called “Inherit the Wind” that is now universally regarded by historians as inaccurate propaganda. Last night PBS aired its “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design” documentary, which similarly promotes propaganda about the 2005 Kitzmiller trial and intelligent design (ID). Most of the misinformation in “Judgment Day” was corrected by ID proponents long ago. To help readers sift the fact from the fiction, here are links to articles rebutting some of PBS’s most blatant misrepresentations: 1. PBS falsely claims Read More ›

In a recent ID the Future podcast interview, Dr. Scott Chambers discusses the fact that the expansion rate of the universe implies an incredibly high degree of cosmic fine-tuning to allow for the existence of life. Just a few weeks ago, Newsweek columnist Sharon Begley also discussed the universe’s expansion rate. This issue has huge implications for the debate over cosmic design, but you wouldn’t know it from reading Begley’s article. Begley tries to steer the reader into believing the wildly speculative multiverse hypothesis–a pet philosophical favorite of materialists–while barely even hinting that the alternative, and much more elegant explanation, is intelligent design of the cosmos. For those who are informed on this subject, her article comes off as if Read More ›

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] As Rob Crowther discussed, Cornelia Dean and the New York Times are once-again pushing Darwinism in an article titled “Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life’s Origin.” The article is regarding the documentary film Expelled, starring Ben Stein, that exposes the distressing nationwide pattern of persecution against scientists that question Darwin. The producers apparently interviewed various pro-Darwin scientists for the film, such as Richard Dawkins. Cornelia Dean now reports that “Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed say they are surprised — and in some cases, angered — to find themselves not in ‘Crossroads’ but in a Read More ›

Yesterday Rob Crowther recognized that Cornelia Dean and the New York Times are puffing Darwinism in an article about Expelled titled, “Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life’s Origin.” This front page New York Times news-article blatantly editorializes that, “[t]here is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on earth.” But that isn’t the real story here. If Cornelia Dean and the New York Times were to report the real story, they would have instead reported: “There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on earth that goes unpunished.”

The New York Times periodically exhibits a questionable nose for news. What rises to the level of news for the science writers at the Times aren’t instances of scientific censorship or persecution of scientists. Today, complaints by Darwinists allegedly featured in a forthcoming (and as of yet unfinished, according to the filmmakers themselves) film, Expelled, that documents the persecution of scientists who question Darwin, is considered news by the Times’ science staff.

What about real news related to the debate over evolution and intelligent design? The Times has a snobbishly selective olfactory sense, it seems.

What a difference a month, and a couple likely internal memos, can make. Last month I discussed the fact that newly reported Homo erectus fossils predated fossils of “Homo” habilis, meaning that habilis could not possibly have been an evolutionary link between the Australopithecine apes and our genus Homo. When the press covered that story, Harvard biological anthropologist Daniel Lieberman was quoted in the New York Times stating that those fossils “show ‘just how interesting and complex the human genus was and how poorly we understand the transition from being something much more apelike to something more humanlike.’” It’s a fascinating admission, and I wrote at the time, “Daniel Lieberma[n] apparently did not get the memo about refraining from making Read More ›

The Baylor student newspaper continues to report on the story of the shut down of distinguished professor Robert Marks’ evolutionary informatics website due to aonymous complaints that it was pro-intelligent design. Baylor president John Lilley refused to speak with Expelled filmmakers about the suppression of intelligent design scientists and scholars. Filmmakers had to settle speaking to a public relations reprsentative and the Dean of Marks’ school. “With both of them it was really limited because they have a certain line they are holding, which the issues are all about procedures and not about the content,” Mathis said, “and all the information we have seen says that that’s not true.”Mathis said the main indication to him about the issue being about Read More ›

MSNBC loves to promote the view that humans evolved from anthropoid ancestors (see here or here for a couple examples). Now MSNBC has created an online exhibit (and accompanying article) entitled “Before and After Humans” that not only promotes standard views of humans evolution, but also supports transhumanism: the view that humans will evolve into a new, higher species. MSNBC’s “possible futur[e]” for the human species goes something like this: Within one million years, global gene mixing eliminates the races and the “Unihumans” develop a global “monoculture.” That sounds reasonable enough. Next some global catastrophe kills off large portions of humanity, and the “Survivalistians” must adapt to extreme conditions, evolving “night-vision” and “radiation-shielding skin.” If that sounds a little weird, Read More ›