Scientific Freedom

David Limbaugh has a stellar column out today, discussing the Darwin vs. design debate.

Simply put, Limbaugh’s column gets the facts straight.

Ever think that certain reporters at the so-called “mainstream” media have already determined their story before they have even interviewed anyone? In my many conversations with reporters, I sometimes get the feeling that no matter what I say, the reporter at hand will only hear what he or she wants to hear, even if it’s the exact opposite of what I’m actually saying. Some amusing evidence of this sort of bias in action is apparently on display in today’s print edition of The New York Times. In an article about President Bush’s endorsement on Monday of students learning about different views on evolution, reporter Elisabeth Bumiller completely mangles a quote by Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer. Here is what Steve Meyer Read More ›

American Spectator editor George Neumayr has an insightful op-ed titled “The Monkey Wrench” on the efforts by dogmatic Darwinists to stifle any criticism of Darwin’s holy writ.

Treat critics of evolution no more seriously than segregationists, Darwinists urge the media and school boards. Just as segregationists, whose views are manifestly irrational, don’t deserve “equal time” in discussions, the critics of evolution don’t deserve equal time either, Darwinists plead.

In a media forum aired on C-SPAN a while back, Slate ‘s Jacob Weisberg in effect said this to New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, upbraiding him for running stories about a school board controversy in Kansas that had quoted critics of evolution. Why did you give them equal time? Weisberg asked Keller. Would you give segregationists their say? Keller found Weisberg’s criticism too radical and unfair, but assured him that anybody who read the Times ‘s Science section would know that the paper was in the tank for Darwin.

A Darwinist blog is trumpeting a quote by George Gilder in yesterday’s Boston Globe which they have taken out of context in an attempt to make him look bad.

“Intelligent design itself does not have any content.”

First, it would be helpful to see the quote in context of what was being discussed, namely Discovery Institute’s position on education policy.

“I’m not pushing to have [ID] taught as an ‘alternative’ to Darwin, and neither are they,” he says in response to one question about Discovery’s agenda. “What’s being pushed is to have Darwinism critiqued, to teach there’s a controversy. Intelligent design itself does not have any content.”

If you listen hard enough you can hear the “I told you sos!” already. “Wedge II” Discovery at Discovery Dumpster Reveals Theocracy Plan

A couple of letters to the editor caught my attention this last weekend, one in the Salt Lake Tribune and another in The Advocate in Baton Rouge, LA.

The Salt Lake Tribune letter is interesting because the writer takes the Tribune to task for the editor’s unwillingness to have the paper’s editorial pages engage in a dialogue.

In the wake of a libel lawsuit, NCSE, Inc. Director Eugenie Scott has a published a letter retracting her prior false statements concerning California parent Larry Caldwell. The letter is published in California Wild, the magazine of the California Academy of Sciences — and the same magazine that published her earlier article containing her false assertions about Caldwell. (Available online, here.) Caldwell’s letter in response to Scott was also published in California Wild.

John West has previously blogged about Scott’s defamatory article and attacks on Caldwell (here, here, and here). As Caldwell noted in a press release from last month:

It’s a shame it took a lawsuit to get Scott, the author of the article, to retract some of the more outrageous factual misstatements in her article.

Just in time for the anniversary of the Scopes trial, the folks over at Panda’s Thumb are continuing their unseemly crusade against Ohio State doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard. Even though these Darwinian fundamentalists don’t support academic freedom for teachers and scientists who are skeptical of Darwin, you’d think they might draw the line at going after students. Apparently, however, their bigotry and intolerance knows no bounds. Unhappy that Leonard’s dissertation committee has effectively refuted the misinformation spread by Panda’s Thumb and others, blogger Richard Hoppe has responded with even more smears. Here are replies to some of the new disinformation put out by Hoppe:

My letter responding to George Will’s “A Debate That Does Not End” appears in the July 18 print edition of Newsweek. George Will says the theory of intelligent design isn’t falsifiable—isn’t “a testable hypothesis.” Actually, particular design arguments are falsifiable. Design theorist Michael Behe, for instance, argues that we can detect design in the bacterial flagellum because the tiny motor needs all of its parts to function at all. That’s a problem for Darwinian evolution, which builds novel form one tiny functional mutation at a time. How to falsify Behe’s argument? Provide a detailed evolutionary pathway from simple ancestor to present motor. The flagellum might still be designed, but Behe’s argument that such design is detectable would have been falsified. Read More ›