Science and Culture Today | Page 1412 | Discovering Design in Nature

This is an update to my earlier post about the “undercover” activities of New Scientist writer Celeste Biever. According to the blogsite of the Cornell University IDEA Club, The New Scientist has responded to our letter, characterizing the event as unique in Biever’s history and unrepresentative of New Scientist reporting. Notably, unlike some internet Darwinists, the New Scientist did not try to defend its writer’s actions.

This week, seismologists were met with the unfortunate news that North Korea probably tested a nuclear weapon. (For more technical details on the detonation, see here.) The task of seismologists in the free world has been to confirm whether the North Korean government was truthful when they claimed they tested a nuke. Whether they realize it or not, scientists currently working to verify if North Korea has conducted a nuclear test are actually engaging in an exercise in intelligent design. They are trying to distinguish between naturally caused seismic energy and seismic energy which was artificially produced by an explosion caused by intelligence. Such studies are possible because explosions, particularly large ones like nuclear blasts, produce a distinctly different seismic Read More ›

Kudos to Richard Gallagher & Alison McCook from The Scientist for being gutsy enough to do an even-handed piece on President Bush’s record on science, and for asking the question in Gallagher’s editorial, “Is Bush Science’s Nemesis?” in more than the conventional rhetorical fashion. McCook’s piece “Sizing Up Bush on Science” answers with a resounding “no,” or at least no more than past presidents, including Bill Clinton.

This week the Ohio State Board of Education may consider the adoption of a proposed “Framework for Teaching Controversial Issues.” Darwinists are complaining — predictably — that the framework represents another nefarious plot “to orchestrate a religiously motivated attack on the theory of evolution.”

But the Darwinists’ shrill rhetoric has a lot more to do with their own hypocrisy and paranoia than it does with any legitimate fears.

[Editor’s Note: A single article combining all ten installments of this response to Barbara Forrest can be found here, at “Response to Barbara Forrest’s Kitzmiller Account.” The individual installments may be seen here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10.] In her Kitzmiller account, Barbara Forrest leaves out information about the scientific research supporting ID, claiming “creationists are executing every phase except producing scientific data to support ID.” Ignoring her usage of the “creationist” label, Dr. Forrest’s argument mimics that of Judge Jones. Both Dr. Forrest and Judge Jones ignored the testimony provided in the courtroom during the Kitzmiller trial by Scott Minnich about his own experiments Read More ›

Friday’s Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal had a great piece: “Under the Microscope: When science and politics become worlds in collision.” Among other things, this piece noted that “This was a banner week for American science.”

Yesterday we reported how New Scientist writer Celeste Biever has used a fake identity to contact people for a story on intelligent design (ID). (As documented here, Biever falsely identified herself as “a student at Cornell” named “Maria” to the Cornell IDEA Club.) Apart from her latest tactics, Biever has a history of extremely inaccurate and biased reporting when it comes to the issues of evolution and intelligent design: (1) Kansas Science Standards. In an article that reads like a Kansas Citizens for Science press release, Biever falsely claimed that the 2006 Kansas State Primary elections “ousted two radical conservative school board members” and reported that the current board “opposes the teaching of evolution.” Ignoring the “radical conservative” invective, there Read More ›

It turns out that Celeste Biever isn’t the only writer from New Scientist magazine to engage in impersonation. Last year, Bill Dembski reported on how he was contacted by the New Scientist’s Bob Holmes, who assured him: It seems to me the media coverage of intelligent design has mostly failed to present your case on scientific grounds, and I’d like to remedy that. Of course, Mr. Holmes had no intention of covering the scientific case for design, and his resultant article was little more than your standard anti-ID hack job. So it appears that New Scientist’s reporters are quite used to misrepresenting themselves with the people they interview, especially if the interviewees happen to be proponents of ID.

Celeste Biever, a reporter for the viscerally anti-ID New Scientist magazine, seems to have been caught trying to impersonate a Cornell University student in order to ingratiate herself with pro-ID students there. The fascinating story is recounted here on the blog of Cornell’s IDEA Club. Evolutionist Allen MacNeill, who teaches biology at Cornell, calls Biever’s tactic “Pretty sleazy.”