Science and Culture Today | Page 1464 | Discovering Design in Nature

Last year the producers of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer were seeking out the people hunkered down at ground zero in the debate over evolution: the National Center for Science Education.
As soon as the call to the Darwin defenders at the NCSE was placed and the interviews booked the Newshour turned their sites on the NCSE’s counterparts, the anti-Darwin scientists at the Center for Science Culture. But not without scheduling a lot of interviews and camera time with biblical creationists — and their dinosaur theme parks — in between.

After months of discussion with the producers of the Newshour about whether or not they would fairly represent the theory of intelligent design, and the larger debate over how to teach Darwin’s theory of evolution, Dr. Stephen Meyer agreed to an interview . He spent several hours with Jeffrey Brown as PBS rolled up nearly two hours worth of tape. The Newshour with Jim Lehrer said they were going to do a story on intelligent design and we tried to help make it accurate. Needless to say our legs are tired from pushing uphill.

(ASIDE: The upshot of all this is a lesson to anyone who deals with the media. Meyer got not quite 30 seconds of airtime in a report that lasted 14:32 seconds, or about 13 minutes longer than your average network news segment. To get that thirty seconds he traveled several thousand miles and spent hours preparing and then conducting the interview. Enter into media relations at your own risk.)

Why did Dr. Stephen Meyer, arguably one of the central figures in the national debate over origin of life issues and what we teach in high school biology classes, get only a handful of seconds and a few measly sound bites?

The answer isn’t all that hard to fathom — it is as simple as alt-ctrl-scopes. That’s the universal macro for journalists reporting on the debate over evolution. Alt-ctrl-scopes brings up the old trope about evolution, that this is just religion vs. science.

If you’re a journalist writing about this issue what more needs to be said than was said at the Scopes Monkey Trial almost a hundred years past? Alt-ctrl-scopes, fill in the names and you’re done.

Apparently, for many modern journalists, nothing in the debate over evolution makes sense except in the light of the Scopes Trial. What was the case then in 1925, must be the case now. Too many reporters stick to this tried and true trope, and unfortunately The Newshour’s Jeffrey Brown did as well.

That’s not to say that Brown didn’t try to do a good story. I don’t think he set out with a nefarious agenda to undermine the theory of intelligent design, or to criticize the Center for Science & Culture. I think he was just incapable of getting past the inordinate amount of misinformation and propaganda that is being thrown at members of the media such as himself each and every day they deal with this story.

Early on in the story he says: “Students learn that natural selection is the key mechanism by which evolution takes place.” What he didn’t do was to define his terms so that viewers knew exactly what he was talking about when he says “evolution” or even natural selection.

The story moves quickly to the typical stereotype of religion vs. science saying that is an issue mostly focused on religion and faith. To bolster that they have lots of high school students who express their doubts about Darwinism in overtly religious terms. The story leaves no doubt that evolution is under an attack led “mostly by religious conservatives.” Interesting. David Berlinski would be surprised to hear that. So would Stanley Salthe. Or, Giuseppe Sermonti. Or any number of other non-religious scientists skeptical of the claims of Darwinism. Contrary to the Newshour’s premise at the outset, doubting Darwinism is not solely a consequence of religious belief.

The next step — after making sure the viewer is aware it’s purely a religious issue — is to use the political environment to keep the focus off of the scientific evidence and instead on peripheral things like the “red state rampage.” Or in this case where historian Ed Larson explains this is all just a part of the typical pattern of evolutionary discontent that arises with the election of a republican presidents.

The Newshour with Jim Lehrer will have Stephen Meyer as one of several taped guests during their story on the evolution debate tonight on PBS. In most markets The Newshour is aired at 6pm on the local PBS affiliate. You can check stations and schedules at www.pbs.org/newshour/. Already the Newshour is off to a rock start focusing on the media’s threadbare creation vs. evolution storyline. It will be interesting to see if reporter Jeffrey Brown is as “straightforward” with the viewers as he presented himself to us more than a month ago when he taped his interview with Dr. Meyer. Creation ConflictCorrespondent Jeffrey Brown investigates how some biology teachers are handling the hot button debate over the theory of evolution, Read More ›

CSC senior fellow Jonathan Wells e-mailed me to point out that in the March issue of BioScience (the magazine of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, not available without subscription), a pro-Darwin/anti-ID article by Oksana Hlodan has provided us with the silliest item of the month.

Well’s writes:

The Pacific Justice Institute has announced that it has joined (as co-counsel) Sacramento-area parent Larry Caldwell’s federal lawsuit against the Roseville Joint Union High School District for the violation of Caldwell’s civil rights. This welcomed news is discussed further in Pacific Justice Insitute’s press release (found here).

As we have previously blogged about (here and elsewhere), Caldwell had presented to RJUHSD School Board a Quality Science Education Policy, which simply stated that teachers should “help students analyze the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories, including the theory of evolution.” The policy proposal included the supplementing of existing curricula with scientific materials that included some of the scientific criticisms that have been raised against aspects of chemical and biological evolutionary theories by members of the scientific community.

The Quality Science Education Policy, contrary to some earlier, erroneous claims, did NOT call for the removal of evolutionary theory, nor did it call for the teaching of the alternative scientific theory of intelligent design.)

But Caldwell never received a fair hearing on the merits of his proposal. As the Pacific Justice Institute’s Press release states:

The USA Today has published an article about the chicken littles at the National Academy of Sciences. Apparently, their pet theory hasn’t been faring so well of late, and they’ve decided to circle the wagons.

The article itself isn’t so bad. It’s the comments from the desperate Darwinists that provide any real entertainment.

The story opens with this not so stupendous news:

“Nearly one-third of science teachers who participated in a national survey say they feel pressured to include creationism-related ideas in the classroom.”

Never mind that they’ve mucked up the differences between creationism and other science based theories, and lumped them all together, this is hardly news.

What is interesting is the way they interpret these numbers. Typically, a newspaper leads with the majority numbers when a survey is reported. Most people tend to want to know what the prevailing opinion is. That only one-third are expressing this opinion here means that the majority, over two-thirds, don’t feel this pressure. But, of course, that isn’t news.

The article goes on (you can refer to any typical article on the subject to catch up at this point).

Somebody forgot to get the word to Paul McHugh: Respectable intellectuals don’t doubt Darwin — ever! McHugh is a university distinguished service professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and former psychiatrist in chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. In the new issue of The Weekly Standard, he provides detailed evidence that Darwin’s narrative of the origin of species is in crisis, and that civilized discourse about the growing controversy surrounding his theory is all to the good:

Those who would expel all challenges to the Darwinian narrative from the high school classroom are false to their mission of teaching the scientific method.

“Scientists as they engage in dialogue with others should abhor attempts to close off the conversation by excessive claims for any privileged access to truth. Scientists should tell what they actually know and how they know it, as distinct from what they believe and are trying to advance. If all of us, scientists and non-scientists alike, accepted that guiding principle, the 80-year history of attempts to use law to stifle the teaching of science — stretching as it does from the courtrooms of Dayton, Tennessee, to those of Cobb County, Georgia — could perhaps finally be brought to a close.

McHugh essay is not pithy. He actually takes the time to wrestle with some specific problem’s with Darwin’s theory. One example I hope will encourage your reading of the full article:

Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews is a courageous man to be sure to write an article (“Who’s Afraid of Intelligent Design?”) that goes against the crusade of his employer.

Specifically, Mathews argues that it would be good for science education to teach the scientific criticisms of Darwinian evolution. This is exactly the approach that CSC has always advocated.

Thank you for your patience as we’ve been working to upgrade software and hardware for this blog. For several days running we’ve been unable to keep the blog up and running properly, but I’m happy to say that we’ve turned a corner and should soon be running at 100%.

David Berlinski sent me the following e-mail this morning and encouraged me to share it here. The exchange below comes after the recent publication of David’s op-ed in the Wichita Eagle. Someone named PZ Myers posted an indignant response to my op-ed piece to the Panda’s Thumb. Our correspondence follows. By all means post it to the Discovery Institute’s web site. Best,D Dear Dr. Myers: I read with interest your criticisms of my little op-ed piece for the Wichita Eagle; and very indignant they were. Your references to my most recent book, “The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky”, were, however, in error, the result, no doubt, of the fact that you have not read the book, and, I am sure, Read More ›