Science and Culture Today | Page 1474 | Discovering Design in Nature

Saturday, the Albuquerque Journal ran a staff editorial chastising PBS affiliate KNME for its decision to ban UMOL. The Journal correctly pointed out that KNME’s censorship is nothing more than viewpoint discrimination writing, “refusing to air a program supporting the less popular point of view looks like a close cousin to censorship.” The Journal notes that KNME should have taken the high road and aired the film as an educational service to viewers. “Consumers are best served when given a full range of viewpoints and allowed to decide for themselves what is fact and what is fiction.” It’s obvious now that had KNME just aired the program the whole issue would be over and done with now and they wouldn’t Read More ›

The Oakland-based NCSE has a recent online article about the Grantsburg, Wisconsin, School Board’s revised policy on the teaching of evolution. CSC’s press release on the Grantsburg policy is located here.)

The policy states:

Students are expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information. Students shall be able to explain the scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory. This policy does not call for the teaching of creationism or intelligent design.

The Grantsburg Board acted wisely in adopting a policy based in part on language from an existing Texas education standard. The policy is carefully crafted so as to keep the focus upon the scientific arguments for and against evolutionary theory, rather than any alternative scientific theory such as intelligent design (or creationism, for that matter). The Grantsburg Board’s approach thus mirrors the “teach the controversy” approach to chemical and biological evolution that has been adopted at the state level in Ohio, Minnesota and New Mexico.

Oddly enough, the nay-saying NCSE went to great lengths to promote an effort by a group of pastors in Wisconsin who opposed the sound policy. The pastors wrote a two-paragraph public letter opposing the Grantsburg Board’s decision (available here). After a sermon-esque first paragraph, the pastors go on to declare that a person’s rejection of evolutionary theory amounts to “a rejection of the will of our Creator.” Apparently, raising scientific criticisms of chemical or biological evolutionary theories places people’s souls in mortal peril! Fortunately, for the citizens of Grantsburg, the will of their popularly-elected school board prevailed over such sectarian, theological objections.

PBS station KNME is lying today in an effort to shrug off claims of censorship because of their banning of Unlocking the Mystery of Life. Today the station manager, Chad Davis, is claiming that it is a lie that PBS.org sells the video. It isn’t a lie that the video was available on the PBS.org and ShopPBS.org websites up until yesterday. Suddenly, PBS is joining their affiliate in an effort to censor science. (Calls to PBS for comment have been ignored.) Here’s the proof. Here is a PDF that shows a scan of a page we printed out on Tuesday of this week that clearly shows UMOL was available for purchase on the PBS web site. Even better is this Read More ›

The ACLU has embarrassed itself (again) concerning the scientific controversy over chemical and biological evolutionary theories, as Pennsylvania ACLU lawyer Witold Walczak has now compared skeptics of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory to Holocuast deniers. (See my earlier blog on this here.)

In an Associated Press story from January 5 (found here), Walczak stated:

The parallel I would draw would be, if a social-studies teacher teaching World War II would talk about the Holocaust and make a statement – just a couple paragraphs – that there are gaps in the historical records of the Holocaust, and you should know an alternative theory that the Holocaust never happened.

That the ACLU now finds itself trivializing the horrors of the Holocaust for some sort of rhetorical advantage or cheap public debating points is not only sad, but a sign of desperation. Clearly, the Walczak puts very little stock in his own outlandish claim, or else he might have bothered to insert that claim in the complaint he filed with the federal court in Pennsylvania. Nowhere does his laughable charge appear in his complaint to the court.

It now appears to be ACLU policy to compare people who disagree with them to Holocaust deniers. Apparently, academic freedom is something they support, so long as academics agree with them.

Kudos are in order for the media covering PBS station KNME’s ill-advised decision this week to ban Unlocking the Mystery of Life from their airwaves.

First on Wednesday, Albuquerque’s ABC affiliate KOB aired a story that correctly reported this censorship of science. Their coverage was very good, although they did mistakenly identify Discovery’s Center for Science & Culture as the funder of the film, which is not true. The film was produced by Illustra Media and funded by a group of foundations and organizations. CSC Fellows were prominently featured in the film and CSC Director Steve Meyer worked closely with Illustra in the scripting of the film, but CSC did not fund the film. Still KOB’s coverage was balanced, and otherwise accurate.

Today, the Albuquerque Journal published a front page story (paid subscription required) by Rick Nathanson that was more accurate than many articles on intelligent design have been.
The paper reports KNME’s Joan Rebecchi as saying:

“The funders of this program have a clear and specific agenda they openly promote. …
KNME has no position regarding this agenda, but we must guard against the public perception that editorial control might have been exercised by the program funders.”

Lad Allen of Illustra Media spoke with KNME program manager Chad Davis and told him point blank that none of the funders had any input into the film, or any control over the content.

Rebecchi is later quoted as saying:

“‘KNME follows PBS production funding standards and practices,’ which are design to promote fairness, balance and impartiality, …”

How fair and balance has KNME, or PBS really been?

Indeed, PBS stations, including KNME, ran the Evolution series in 2001, which was solely funded and produced by billionaire Paul Allen’s Clear Blue Sky Productions. Now there is a clear instance of a funder controlling editorial content, and yet KNME didn’t squelch that film

Josh Gilder wrote in his critique of the Evolution series:

Channel 4 Eyewitness News in Albuquerque, New Mexico is the latest media outlet to pick up on KNME’s decision to ban Unlocking the Mystery of Life that we first reported earlier this week. They have a video clip of their live coverage of the story on Wed. night’s 10pm news on their website www.kobtv.com. It is refreshing to see a major, if local, media outlet actually getting the story right, and focusing on the irrational decision to try and censor a science debate. The even give intelligent design its due as a scientific theory. There is likely to be a media storm tomorrow when the story breaks in Albuquerque’s print world. It will be interesting to see if reporters at Read More ›

When a news reporter doesn’t bother to accurately and fairly report the small issues, is it any wonder when they fail to accurately and fairly report the big issues? Take the recent, un-credited article by an AP reporter entitled “Lawmakers draft bills to address debate over evolution,” concerning two legislative proposals in the state of Montana concerning the teaching of evolutionary theory in their public schools.

AP REPORTER’S PROBLEMS WITH THE FACTS ON DARBY

The AP reporter discusses two legislators from Big Sky Country who are considering two very different legislative approaches to the issue. According to the AP reporter, these respective proposals were

“driven by curriculum changes in Darby schools earlier this year that mandates the discussion of ‘intelligent design’ theory in science classes.”

Seeing as the AP reporter identifies the actions of the Darby school board in 2004 as the impetus for such legislation, one would think the AP reporter would be sure to get the facts right about what happened in Darby. But the AP reporter got the facts wrong.

World Net Daily has published the first article that has appeared in response to Discovery’s press release yesterday about PBS station KNME banning Unlocking the Mystery of Life (UMOL). The station now claims in a World Net Daily article that this was all just a scheduling mistake, which is laughable whenyou realize that they’ve been considering running this film since last spring. You can see for yourself the ad that KNME itself designed and arranged to put in newspapers — then cancelled on Monday. You can also see the TV guide listings. Obviously, this program had been in process for some time (and they were well down the road of advertising and publicizing the show. While we’ve yet to speak Read More ›

Casey Luskin, the Co-President of Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA), has posted an article entitled, “A Holiday Truce: A Holocaust Survivor Speaks Out.” This important and carefully written article contains an interview with a Holocaust survivor and discusses the abuse of human atrocities in the current controversy surrounding neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. As Luskin points out in his commentary, some of the more extreme hyper-Darwinists have resorted to equating skepticism of some of the more far-reaching claims of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory with denial of the Holocaust. The low-ball tactic of using genocide to score debating points was brought home to me late last month, when Washington State ACLU staff attorney Aaron Caplan responded to my presentation on the teaching of Read More ›

The Darwin versus design debate has taken center stage on the blogosphere these past couple weeks. Old Media’s dissemination of disinformation has been particularly brutal to intelligent design theory and its proponents, but the facts are now coming to light through the diligent work of bloggers. One lucid and cogent contribution to the discussion is provided by David Limbaugh. “Slamming Intelligent Design” is his recent blog post supporting intelligent design, as he takes Old Media to task for its coverage the current controversy surrounding neo-Darwinian evolution. Limbaugh has the intellectual honesty and discipline to recognize the clear distinctions between intelligent design theory and creationism. (See John West’s Research News article for more on this.) Limbaugh rightly acknowledges the strong objections Read More ›