Science Reporting

Over at ARN’s Literature Update, David Tyler has an excellent post titled “An Orwellian framing of the debate about evolution and ID,” reporting on an article in Science by Chris Mooney and Matthew Nisbet, who tell scientists how to discuss controversial scientific issues. This same pair wrote the cover article for the influential media journal Columbia Journalism Review just before the Dover trial in September, 2005, encouraging news media to avoid “a quest to achieve ‘balance’” when covering evolution. They even stated, “newspaper editors should think twice about assigning reporters who are fresh to the evolution issue and allowing them to default to the typical strategy frame, carefully balancing ‘both sides’ of the issue.” We have noted that this provides Read More ›

In recent years, a number of states have apologized for their role in promoting the Social Darwinist crusade known as “eugenics” through forced sterilization laws. In “It’s never too late to say you’re sorry,” writer Knute Berger of the internet newspaper Crosscut is calling on Washington state to apologize for its forced sterilization law, noting that Washington was the second state to adopt such a law. He’s right. Washington state—and other states—should apologize for their role in promoting eugenics. This is a sad and disturbing chapter in American history, and citizens need to know about it (although the new Kansas State Board of Education seems to think otherwise).

A student at Southern Methodist University (SMU) has provided more evidence for why there needs to be events like tonight’s Darwin v. Design conference on college campuses. In today’s campus newspaper, anthropology student Ben Wells offers a jeremiad against the purported evils of Discovery Institute and intelligent design. Unfortunately, his article is so incredibly off-base that all he ends up doing is displaying his complete ignorance of the topic. Not that he is alone. Last week, journalist Lee Cullum wrote a similarly ill-informed opinion piece for the Dallas Morning News. The problem for many critics of intelligent design is that they are so sure they are right, they don’t bother to read the people they are denouncing. As a result, they end up attacking a straw man rather than refuting the actual claims made by ID proponents.

As Rob Crowther noted earlier, Dr. Ronald K. Wetherington, anthropology professor at Southern Methodist University, has penned an article in the SMU Daily Campus defending himself and other faculty who object to a conference on Darwin versus Design that will be held on the SMU campus this weekend. Wetherington wants to assure readers that he and other objecting faculty are all for debate, so long as it’s in the proper time and place. In fact, he notes that the university actually sponsored an evolution debate back in 1992.

In 1992, mind you! Wow, how could we have forgotten that? Congratulations! It’s just too bad that that the SMU students of today were not even in grade school back then.

There have been a couple of stories out in recent days about the pope’s views on science and religion as revealed in a new book. Given their bias and preoccupation, it probably was inevitable that some in the media would try to discern more than is present in a 2006 paper of the Holy Father’s that runs in a new German language book. Largely missing is the context. In case you forgot, last September, as he does each fall, Pope Benedict XVI met with his former theology students and discussed a topic of mutual interest. Two years ago the topic was Islam and the West; this year it was science and religion. The meeting, held at Castel Gondolfo, was well-covered in the media and the papers that were delivered were later turned into the present German language volume. (Almost all the meeting participants, understandably, were German speakers, having studied under the pope when he was Fr. Dr. Ratzinger.)

The media, of course, wanted to know what the pontiff and others had said about intelligent design, but ID was not the topic of the meeting. Philosophy, rather, was the focus. Hence, the breathless report by Reuters now that the paper by the pope fails to back ID is, well, silly.

A helpful correspondent directed us to the following statement on the website of Southern Methodist University, the location of the upcoming Darwin v. Design conference this Friday and Saturday: Founded in 1911 by what is now The United Methodist Church, SMU opened in 1915 with support from Dallas leaders. The University is nonsectarian in its teaching and committed to freedom of inquiry. (emphasis added) SMU faculty who want the Darwin v. Design conference banned from their campus might benefit from re-reading—and heeding—this statement.

This morning’s Dallas Morning News features a bold op-ed by Bruce Chapman and John West calling for critics at SMU to employ the method of Charles Darwin himself: engage in the discussion.

The article, “Are the Darwinists afraid to debate us,” is a response to the SMU science professors who called on their university to ban the conference from campus.

Rather than “ludicrously comparing ID proponents to faith healers or even Holocaust-deniers,” as one columnist did last week, Chapman and West suggest that critics of intelligent design “engage ID scholars in a serious discussion.” They pointedly ask, “what is so frightening about allowing it [the evidence for design] to be heard at SMU?”

Late yesterday we received notice that the Anthropology department at SMU will not take us up on our invitation for a public dialogue about intelligent design and Darwinian evolution.

Robert Kemper, chair of the Anthropology department writes:

Thank you for your invitation to participate in the Friday night session of your conference. We appreciate your recognition of the value of dialogue on issues that have such opposing viewpoints. Unfortunately, previously scheduled events and prior commitments prevent our department from taking advantage of this opportunity. We nevertheless remain committed to public understanding of these issues, and to providing the public with information to make intelligent choices.

We’ve yet to hear from the other science departments at SMU that we invited.

It’s interesting that these professors are willing to air their complaints and objections in public forums where there is no way for them to be “heatedly debated and discussed.”

Logan Gage has an insightful article on the forgotten history of eugenics in World Net Daily today. He reminds us that: Eugenics was supposedly the “science” of human breeding. It was promoted by luminaries of biology at Harvard, Princeton and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It was, in short, the consensus view of the cultural and academic elite. How did things get so twisted? Click here to read more.

In an over-the-top op-ed in today’s Dallas Morning News, journalist Lee Cullum attacks the upcoming “Darwin v. Design” conference at Southern Methodist University (SMU) as “intellectually confused,” complains that ID proponents “refuse to understand who and what they are,” and asserts that Southern Methodist University “needs to rethink its policy regarded future use of its facilities” in order to prevent intelligent design proponents from expressing their views on the SMU campus in the future.

However, if anyone is “intellectually confused,” it is poor Ms. Cullum, whose article displays her own breathtaking ignorance of both intelligent design and the principles of a free society.