The Darwinist inquisition is spreading -- as if by design. Inquisitors at George Mason University, Ohio State University, and the Smithsonian have recently hunted down and tried to disgrace scientists and educators for daring to defy the Darwinian orthodoxy. Now we see that the witch hunt has turned to Iowa State University and CSC senior fellow, astronomer, Guillermo Gonzalez.

A story in today’s Des Moines Register asks and answers this question:

"Why would the world care about a little-known astronomy professor at a public university in Iowa? It's because of the 2004 book he co-authored with theologian Jay W. Richards called "The Privileged Planet."

And what exactly is his unpardonable sin? He’s a scientist who is also a leading proponent of the theory of intelligent design. So, a group of narrow-minded and intolerant faculty members have started a petition to rule intelligent design as inherently unscientific; and are seeking to essentially ban it from being researched, taught, even discussed, at ISU. In so doing they have targeted the only person on the campus who publicly is known to advocate for the theory in his work.

The Register reports that:

One Iowa State professor, Hector Avalos, accused Gonzalez of having a hidden religious agenda. A former student and close friend stopped returning his e-mails and calls. Opponents have charged him with forcing his scientific evidence into a religious prism, fingering him as an academic fraud.

"I didn't expect this level of vitriol," he says after hanging up. "This level of intense hostility, just knee-jerk emotional response from people. People have strong convictions that you can't bring God into science. But I don't bring God into science. I've looked out at nature and discovered this pattern, based on empirical evidence. . . . It obviously calls for a different explanation."

According to the Register:

The book claims that Earth is so unique, it must have been created by an "intelligent designer." Most scientists say there's no way to test that theory — as opposed to Darwin's theory of natural selection — so it belongs in religion or philosophy courses, not in science classes.

Our claim is that Earth’s conditions allow for a stunning diversity of measurements, from cosmology and galactic astronomy to stellar astrophysics and geophysics; they allow for this rich diversity of measurement much more so than if Earth were ideally suited for, say, just one of these sorts of measurement. … In a very real sense the cosmos, our Solar System, and our exceptional planet are themselves a laboratory, and Earth is the best bench in the lab.

According to a letter in today's Register, Gonzalez writes:

The Privileged Planet presents an original argument for design based on evidence drawn from the physical sciences. We do not discuss biological evolution in the book or in the documentary video based on it. Our argument is testable and should be challenged on the evidence.

"It occurred to me - the best place in the solar system to view a solar eclipse is also the best place in the solar system to support complex life," Gonzalez says. "Is that just a coincidence?"

It's the first connection Gonzalez had made between the ability of a planet to sustain life and the ability of a planet to have optimal conditions for scientific discovery.

He noticed more connections between measurability and habitability. Our location in the Milky Way. A clear atmosphere rich in oxygen. The relatively thin crust of this planet that functions as a vast scientific archive.

Years of research followed and became the hypothesis of his book: "The same narrow circumstances that allow us to exist also provide us with the best overall setting for making scientific discovery."

And that hypothesis threw him into this intellectual firestorm.

Care to help stem the tide of such intolerance? Click here.

Read Gonzalez's excellent letter recently published by The Daily, the ISU newspaper.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 3:28 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Discovery's resident sports fanatic Marshall Sana provided these thoughts on today's Washgington Post column by Sally Jenkins.

Kudos to Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins for her thoughtful piece on intelligent design and athletics.

Jenkins, a well-regarded Post sportswriter, starts off her August 29th column (“Just Check the ID”) saying:

“the sports section would not seem to be a place to discuss intelligent design, the notion that nature shows signs of an intrinsic intelligence too highly organized to be solely the product of evolution.”

For example, Jenkins writes:

“First, let's get rid of the idea that ID (intelligent design) is a form of sly creationism. It isn't. ID is unfairly confused with the movement to teach creationism in public schools. The most serious ID proponents are complexity theorists, legitimate scientists among them, who believe that strict Darwinism and especially neo-Darwinism (the notion that all of our qualities are the product of random mutation) is inadequate to explain the high level of organization at work in the world.”

“. . the more important for the layman to distinguish the various gradations between evolutionists, serious scientists who are interested in ID, "neo-Creos," and Biblical literalists. One of the things we learn in a grade school science class is a concrete way of thinking, a sound, systematic way of exploring the natural world. .. But science class also teaches us how crucial it is to maintain adventurousness, and surely it's worthwhile to suggest that an athlete in motion conveys an inkling of something marvelous in nature that perhaps isn't explained by mere molecules.”

“And try telling a baseball fan that pure Darwinism explains Joe DiMaggio. As Tommy Lasorda once said, "If you said to God, 'Create someone who was what a baseball player should be,' God would have created Joe DiMaggio -- and he did."

A 56 game hitting streak is very impressive. Joe D. was surely one of the greats, but not the best. Whatever he lacked off the field, Ted Williams was almost perfect between the lines. He was the best baseball player of all.

And that is a scientific argument, based on the numbers. (Sorry, Sally, this Red Sox fan had to get that in.)
--Marshall J. Sana

Marshall we're happy to indulge your Red Sox fanaticism once in a while. If you want to bloviate about them all the time quit teasing us and just launch that sports and politics blog already.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 4:14 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Update: In my hurry to get this posted I inadvertently left out the fact that it is not from me, but rather are thoughts from a CSC Fellow.

Some Darwinists are upset with Ken Chang for his recent New York Timesreport on the controversy over evolution and intelligent design. It seems that the Darwinists would have preferred a propaganda piece advertising only their side in the debate. Oh, well; they should take comfort in the fact that they managed to slip at least one piece of pro-Darwin propaganda into the article.

Chang wrote:

"Nowhere has evolution been more powerful than in its prediction that there must be a means to pass on information from one generation to another. Darwin did not know the biological mechanism of inheritance, but the
theory of evolution required one."

Genetics is not the only biological discipline that owes nothing to Darwin. Most modern disciplines in biology -- including anatomy and physiology, zoology and botany, systematics and paleontology -- were founded by scientists who were either pre-Darwinian or anti-Darwinian. The suggestion that evolutionary theory deserves credit for any of them is akin to old Soviet claims that Russians invented the radio and the airplane.

Chang continued:

"The discovery of DNA, the sequencing of the human genome, the pinpointing of genetic diseases and the discovery that a continuum of life from a single cell to a human brain can be detected in DNA are all a result of
evolutionary theory."

Even James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 owed more to Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction data than to evolutionary theory. Nevertheless, Watson and Crick seem to have been at least partly motivated by their desire to fill in the gaps in neo-Darwinism. After Darwinists finally embraced Mendelian genetics in the 1930s, they supposed that genes mutated randomly to produce new variations and natural selection preserved the useful ones. But how, exactly? By discovering a molecular mechanism to explain both stability (heredity) and change (mutation), Watson and Crick appeared to provide the missing element in evolutionary theory. Indeed, Crick announced in 1953 that they had "discovered the secret of life." In 1970, molecular biologist Jacques Monod repeated Crick's claim and added that "the mechanism of Darwinism is at last securely founded" so "man has to understand that he is a mere accident."

So Watson and Crick's discovery -- unlike the discovery of DNA itself -- may have been partly inspired by evolutionary theory.

A similar desire may have contributed to the current emphasis on genome sequencing, though the sequencing itself does not depend on evolutionary theory. Yet how much has genome sequencing actually accomplished? According to Chang's article, one accomplishment has been "the pinpointing of genetic diseases." Although this is true, the medical benefits have been surprisingly thin. Diseases caused by specific genetic defects constitute only about 2% of human ailments. The genetic basis of the remaining 98% remains a matter for speculation.

Even among the 2% of diseases that are frankly genetic, genome sequencing has contributed surprisingly little to medicine Take one famous example: Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a heredity disease that afflicts about one in 25,000 newborns. Left untreated, the disease often leads to mental retardation. In the 1950s, German pediatrician Horst Bickel discovered that temporarily modifying the early diet of afflicted newborns would largely prevent retardation; and in the 1960s, American microbiologist Robert Guthrie (motivated by having a child afflicted with PKU) invented a simple screening test to detect the disorder. Nowadays, most of the 4 million babies born in the U. S. every year are tested for the disease, and affected babies are fed a preventive diet.

So the diagnosis of PKU preceded Watson and Crick, and its treatment preceded genome sequencing. The PKU success story owes a lot to pediatrics and microbiology, but nothing whatsoever to evolutionary theory.

What about the claim in Chang's article that "the discovery that a continuum of life from a single cell to a human brain can be detected in DNA?" The "continuum of life" through descent with modification from a common ancestor is Darwin's core hypothesis. He sought to support it with evidence from comparative anatomy, fossils, and embryos; but all three of these categories provide as much evidence against the hypothesis as for it. With the advent of genome sequencing, Darwinists hoped to find more reliable support.

This hope has not been realized, though you'd never know it from reading Darwinian propaganda. It takes a review of the scientific literature to learn that even Darwinian biologists no longer think that humans and bacteria are descended from a single ancestral cell. There are just too many inconsistencies in the molecular data.

Even among the major groups of animals, the evidence from genome sequencing has failed to produce a consistent "tree of life." Different results are produced by comparing different molecules, or even by submitting the same molecule to different laboratories. The April 28, 2005 issue of Nature reported that DNA sequence data have failed even to establish whether insects are more closely related to us than they are to roundworms.

So except perhaps for giving Watson and Crick more motivation than mere curiosity to unravel the structure of DNA, the predictions of evolutionary theory have not contributed to our modern ideas about heredity or to the diagnosis and treatment of hereditary diseases. And despite the Darwinist's claims, the descent of all forms of life from a single ancestor has not been confirmed by DNA studies.

Ken Chang -- a physicist, not a biologist -- could not be expected to see through the Darwinists' inflated claims, so he should not be faulted for repeating those claims in what was, after all, a necessarily abbreviated report on a complex controversy. Yet the Darwinists fault him for giving too much column space to the other side of the controversy. Perhaps they should be grateful instead that Chang included so many of their bogus talking-points.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 8:54 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times has another front page story about the origins debate, "Scientists Speak Up on Mix of God and Science." The reporter, Cornelia Dean, does a good job of interviewing both theists and atheists, but she leaves out of the picture scientists like Michael Behe, who has made it clear that his religious background left him perfectly open to the possibility that God had front-loaded design into the fine-tuned laws of nature at the instant of the Big Bang, allowing it to evolve from there all the way to our living earth.

Behe and other Darwin-doubters, like quantum chemist Henry F. Schaefer III and evolutionary biologist and textbook author Dr. Stanley Salthe, reject the Darwinian story simply because they find the evidence for it unconvincing.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 6:49 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times editorial page aside, the coverage of the debate over evolution and intelligent design is improving (see (Sunday's and Monday's front page stories). Discovery president Bruce Chapman has an insightful analysis of the weekend's major coverage by the nation's paper of record.

Writes Chapman:

"But I think journalistic professionalism trumped bias in both these individuals to some extent as they got to know us. To Jodi Wilgoren’s credit, she made clear, as most reporters will not, that Discovery’s ID program is a research project and that our education program is to teach the evidence for and against Darwin’s theory, not to impose instruction of ID. (We wish the editorial page writers would note this reality the next time they write on the subject.) She even illustrated my frustration with ignorant, if enthusiastic, folk at some local districts, such as Dover, PA, who want to require intelligent design to be announced, at least, in classrooms."

"But the most regrettable offense was describing “most” of our fellows, excepting David Berlinski, as “fundamentalist Christians.” It just isn’t true. Surely, Jodi Wilgoren and her editors know better. “Fundamentalist” refers to someone who is a biblical literalist. We have nothing against such people, but to describe the Discovery fellows that way is ludicrous. ... None of the leading lights of the ID movement affiliated with Discovery—among them Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc.-- is a fundamentalist."

In addition to improved coverage at the Times, last week saw an excellent bit of reporting from Michael Powell at the Washington Post on the attacks on Dr. Richard Sternberg's academic freedoms at the Smithsonian. And, USA Today last week ran an op-ed by Dr. Stephen Meyer and Dr. John Angus Campbell making the case for why it is good for science education to make sure students learn about both the evidence that supports Darwin's theory as well as that which challenges it. Indeed, inroads are being made with the mainstream media, and slowly they are beginning to improve and balance their reporting.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 3:06 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

(Updated) Despite getting plenty of ink, the Darwinists don't come off looking so well in Kenneth Chang's story about intelligent design in the Science section of today's New York Times.

Imagine intelligent design is an elephant in the next room. A cat lies crushed on the floor before us, with the clear mark of an elephant's toe imprinted on his poor, flat, fuzzy body.

You say, "I hear and smell an elephant in the next room. I say the most likely culprit is the elephant."

But then some guy who hates cats almost as much as he hates elephants--and therefore doesn't want to give the elephant credit for killing the cat--insists there is no elephant. When it's finally clear that the empirical evidence for the elephant can no longer be ignored or denied, the elephant denier disappears and comes back with a large stuffed elephant and begins literally beating the straw out of it. He's trying to tell you the elephant isn't worth bothering with, isn't up to snuff.

If you desperately want to ignore the real elephant, then you'll find this ridiculous display quite convincing. Everyone else will know immediately that the man hasn't torn the real elephant to shreds but only a straw mock-up of the creature. This is what we find the Darwinists doing in the Kenneth Chang article. They set up strawmen of several intelligent design arguments, then dismember them most effectively.

I'll offer just two of several instances here. A brief summary of Stephen Meyer's argument for design as the best explanation for the Cambrian explosion of animal forms some 530 million years ago is rebutted by this passage:

But molecular biologists have found genes that control the function of other genes, switching them on and off. Small mutations in these controller genes could produce new species. In addition, new fossils are being found and scientists now know that many changes occurred in the era before the Cambrian - a period that may have lasted 100 million years - providing more time for change.

Similarly, biologist Kenneth Miller knocks down a straw man of Doug Axe, a long-time Cambridge University researcher with a Ph.D. from Cal-Tech who is now doing cutting edge research in protein mutations. The passage begins:

Penicillinase is made up of a strand of chemicals called amino acids folded into a shape that binds to penicillin and thus disables it. Whether the protein folds up in the right way determines whether it works or not.

Dr. Axe calculated that of the plausible amino acid sequences, only one in 100,000 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion - a number written as 1 followed by 77 zeroes - would provide resistance to penicillin.

In other words, the probability was essentially zero.

Dr. Axe's research appeared last year in The Journal of Molecular Biology, a peer-reviewed scientific publication.

Dr. Kenneth R. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University and a frequent sparring partner of design proponents, said that in his study, Dr. Axe did not look at penicillinase "the way evolution looks at the protein."

Natural selection, he said, is not random. A small number of mutations, sometimes just one, can change the function of a protein, allowing it to diverge along new evolutionary paths and eventually form a new shape or fold.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 12:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In the Monday New York Times, William Safire discusses the history of the term "intelligent design" and the growing controversy over the theory. Safire concludes with the advice of neuroscientist Leon Cooper, a Nobel laureate at Brown University:

If we could all lighten up a bit perhaps, we could have some fun in the classroom discussing the evidence and the proposed explanations--just as we do at scientific conferences.

In addition to more than 400 Ph.D. scientists openly skeptical of Darwin's theory, Q. 7 of a recent poll found that some 60 percent of medical doctors doubt the Darwinian account of human origins and, instead, consider some form of design as the preferred explanation.

Do these doctors moonlight as flat-earthers? Perhaps in the Flatland of philosophical materialism they do, but in the real world, where design is a settled or potential explanation for things like computer software and the software we find in living cells, these medical doctors actually know a thing or two about science, and more than a thing or two about the sophisticated machinery of the human body.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 12:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Washington Post today breaks a major story about the federal probe into the persecution and harassment suffered by evolutionary biologist (twice over no less), Dr. Richard Sternberg. What, you might ask, could get scientists so riled up? Well, Sternberg is suffering the equivalent of a 21st century inquisition for having had the courage to buck the Darwinian establishment and publish a pro-intelligent design paper by CSC Director Dr. Stephen Meyer, himself a Cambridge University educated philosopher of science. The firestorm of a pro-ID paper appearing in a peer-reviewed biology journal has been reported elsewhere but I'll try to recap the situation briefly here to put this in context.

In August of 2004, The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, then edited by Sternberg, published an article, entitled “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories" by Dr. Meyer. In that piece Meyer argues that the theory of intelligent design explains the origin of the genetic information in new life forms better than current materialistic theories of evolution, and provides a thorough critique of the current theories. (More on Meyer's article here.)

Immediately, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) and others began whining about how such a thing could have been allowed to happen. At the same time they began to falsely claim the article wasn't peer-reviewed. They attacked Sternberg's qualifications and questioned his expertise. All Sternberg also suffered behind the scenes at his places of employment at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and the National Institutes of Health.

In January of this year, David Klinghoffer broke the story in the mainstream media about the persecution of Sternberg with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (The Branding of a Heretic). It also announced that the US Office of Special Counsel (OSC) would begin investigating Sternberg's charges against some colleagues at the Smithsonian.

As the Washington Post reported today (and Klinghoffer broke this story earlier this week, as well), the OSC has finished its investigation. Due to a jurisdictional technicality that office cannot pursue the matter further, but they have written a detailed letter to Sternberg that corroborates his charges and presents startling information about the scope of harassment he has been forced to endure. In short the OSC letter states that “retaliation came in many forms,” and says that the OSC was able to find support for many of Dr. Sternberg’s allegations, including:

• A hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing him out of the Smithsonian.


• Sternberg’s religious and political affiliations were investigated.


• Sternberg’s scientific education, background and writings were investigated.


• Attempts were made to deny Sternberg workspace within the Smithsonian.


• Misinformation was disseminated through the Smithsonian and to outside sources.

Astonishingly, it appears that the whole effort to attack Sternberg was, if not concocted by the NCSE then certainly undertaken with their direct involvement. The OSC investigation found that:

• Members of NCSE worked closely with the Smithsonian and National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) members in outlining a strategy to have Sternberg investigated and discredited within the Smithsonian.


• Members of NCSE e-mailed detailed statements of repudiation of the Meyer article to high level NMNH officials.


• NCSE recommendations were circulated within the Smithsonian and eventually became part of the official public response of the Smithsonian to the Meyer article.

Scott, of the NCSE, insisted that Smithsonian scientists had no choice but to explore Sternberg's religious beliefs. "They don't care if you are religious, but they do care a lot if you are a creationist," Scott said. "Sternberg denies it, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it argues for zealotry."

Meanwhile, e-mails obtained by the OSC reveal a mentality among top Smithsonian managers that literally despises the perceived religious and political positions of other Americans. The report posted on Sternberges website --www.rsternberg.net-- is revealing. Let's see where all the libertarians come out on this.

Early on in this scandal there were those who claimed that Sternberg had lied about the paper being peer-reviewed. Sternberg's comments last year should have set this to rest. In an interview with The Scientist Sternberg confirmed that Meyer’s article went through the standard peer-review process and the three peer reviewers of the paper "all hold faculty positions in biological disciplines at prominent universities and research institutions, one at an Ivy League university, one at a major U.S. public university, and another at a major overseas research institute."

Now, the Office of Special Counsel has investigated and corroborates this, stating that Sternberg:

“complied with all editorial requirements of the proceedings and the Meyer article was properly peer-reviewed by renowned scientists.”

The Darwinian hierarchy must be frightened of something to resort to the sorts of tactics that Sternberg has had to face. And, unfortunately, I bet that we are just seeing the beginnings of the backlash against ID proponents and Darwin skeptics.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 3:32 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Rosenblog has an interesting post on the outrageous response to Ashland, OR's Daily Tidings published a web-only piece by its editor endorsing the teaching of intelligent design. From the responses you'd think the writer had violated all the rules of human decorum. The reaction is all too typical of the recent rise in attacks on anyone who speaks out against Darwinism.

It is exactly these types of public reactions that are fueling the increasing number of attacks on scientists and scholars who critically analyse evolution, or advocate the theory of intelligent design. Academic freedom seems to be okay for those who want to opine on the problems with America, but not for scientists who want to research and discuss the problems with Darwinism. This is the reason we launched the Evolution Free Speech Campaign.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 9:22 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

David Klinghoffer has a breaking story in the National Review about an investigation by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. The independent federal agency has now released a report about the discrimination that biology journal editor Richard Sternberg faced at the Smithsonian Institution for publishing an article arguing for intelligent design:

The Smithsonian Institution is a national treasure of which every American can legitimately feel a sense of personal ownership. Considering this, I'd imagine widespread displeasure as more Americans become aware that senior scientists at the publicly funded Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have reportedly been creating a "hostile work environment" for one of their colleagues merely because he published a controversial idea in a biology journal.

The controversial idea is Intelligent Design, the scientific critique of neo-Darwinism. The persecuted Smithsonian scientist is Richard von Sternberg, the holder of two PhDs in biology (one in theoretical biology, the other in molecular evolution). While the Smithsonian disputes the case, Sternberg's version has so far been substantiated in an investigation by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an independent federal agency.

A lengthy and detailed letter from OSC attorney James McVay, dated August 5, 2005, and addressed to Sternberg, summarizes the government's findings, based largely on e-mail traffic among top Smithsonian scientists. A particularly damning passage in the OSC letter reads:

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 10:13 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) this weekend ran three pieces about the evolution debate, one by CSC senior fellow Jonathan Witt contesting the idea that evolution is incontestable on any grounds, and two pieces of shrill polemics:
one by UW biologist Peter Ward stating that Darwinian evolution is a fact (and resorts to name calling to prove it), and an opinion piece by Peter Slevin from the Washington Post that has been masquerading in papers around the country as an objective news story for several months now (nothing like new news to keep your publication fresh and your readers up to date).

In his op-ed Witt asks:

"if the case for Darwinism is so powerful, why the repeated attempts to duck both competition and critical inquiry?"

Instead of civil discourse or reasoned debate what we get are angry diatribes full of ad hominem attacks and little else. What is the response of Ward to the argument that the evidence for Darwinism is lacking? Does he address the merits of their arguments? No he responds thusly:

... the unintelligent approach of the so-called intelligent design movement. I say “so-called” because Stephen Meyer, Jonathan Witt and their cohorts at Seattle’s Discovery Institute who make their living peddling this snake oil would have you believe there is a massive groundswell of scientists who have been won over to their cause.

I can only imagine Bruce Chapman and his Discovery Institute friends must admire a place like Iran, where dissent is at best limited and where pesky scientific studies that would get in the way of the religious state never receive a public forum.

Teaching intelligent design at the middle school or high school level will rob our young students of a proper grounding in science, because it bears no relationship to science. Those who say it does are toying with the future of our nation. And I believe they are doing so deliberately, even maliciously.

So, how malicious does Witt make us out to be?

Consider the cell, something Darwin believed was little more than a blob of Jell-O. We now know that it’s a world of intricate circuits, miniaturized motors and enough digital code to fill an encyclopedia. These are to Stonehenge what a gothic cathedral is to a Lego house. Design theorists study the explanations for these marvels of nanotechnology and choose the one that best accounts for the data – intelligent design.

Leading design theorists haven’t tried to force intelligent design into public schools. They’ve merely urged schools to teach the strengths and weaknesses in Darwin’s theory and to protect teachers from being penalized who choose to discuss the controversy over intelligent design.

Rather than argue the science Ward conclusively states that Darwinian evolution is a fact, uncontestable on any grounds. I suggest he read CSC Fellow David Berlinski's (who is not an ID proponent by any means)superb article "The Deniable Darwin." Berlinski argues:

The fundamental core of Darwinian doctrine, the philosopher Daniel Dennett has buoyantly affirmed, "is no longer in dispute among scientists." Such is the party line, useful on those occasions when biologists must present a single face to their public. But it was to the dead that Darwin pointed for confirmation of his theory; the fact that paleontology does not entirely support his doctrine has been a secret of long standing among paleontologists. "The known fossil record," Steven Stanley observes, "fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid."

That the News Tribune felt compelled to "balance" Witt's op-ed with two pieces instead of one is interesting. When accepting the piece we understood it would be in the context of a point-counterpoint presentation. We didn't know it would be point-counterpoint, counterpoint. Even more interesting is the News Tribune's inclusion of Slevin's Post piece in their Insight opinion section. The piece is so biased, so obviously unobjective that editors are compelled to run it on their opinion pages, where points of view rightfully belong.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:40 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, I blogged about Reuters' inaccurate news report earlier this week, which wrongly claimed that the new Kansas science standards would remove evolution as part of the standard core curriculum in Kansas. That was before I read the revised and expanded version of Reuters' report. Someone has now rewritten the original story. But instead of making it better, the writer has veered off into the realm of fabrication. Reuters' revised report claims that Kansas is actually trying to include intelligent design in its science standards, as well as asserting as fact that intelligent design is "a form of creationism":

Kansas approves creationist theories for schools WICHITA - Kansas has approved moves to allow the teaching of "intelligent design" alongside evolution...

The belief - a form of creationism - disputes the scientific theory that natural selection can explain the complexity of life.

I've dashed off another e-mail to the original Reuters' reporter, but I'm not hopeful, given that she ignored my previous e-mail and phone call.

As an aside, I've learned that many reporters are used to not playing by the standards they insist on applying to others. When they are working on a story, for example, they expect someone they want to interview to drop everything and be available to them at all hours for immediate comment. They expect their phone calls to be returned ASAP. But when reporters are contacted by a former source about a problem in their articles, they rarely if ever return phone calls or e-mails. Once they have used someone to get what they want, they couldn't care less about trying to correct any errors in their stories. And for all the newsmedia's interest in holding other people "accountable", news organizations (especially the big ones) are some of the least accountable groups I've ever encountered. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and I have come across some reporters and media outlets that are concerned about making corrections. But many news organizations have nothing to boast about in the area of accountability.

Posted by John G. West at 12:18 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Last night's Nightline segment on intelligent design fulfilled the promise of its inane preview article. Rather than cover the substance of the intellectual debate over design, all Nightline could do was act as the mouthpiece for ID-bashers like Barbara Forrest. Nightline asserted that the debate over intelligent design is about politics and PR, but that is only because Nightline didn't want to cover anything else. Nightline's producers clearly had a predetermined agenda going into their story, and they stuck to it.

We audiotaped Nightline's interview with Dr. Stephen Meyer at Discovery Institute's office, and we've prepared a verbatim transcript, available here. If you want learn what Nightline refused to show its viewers, I encourage you to read it. I think you'll find the transcript illuminating--not only because of Dr. Meyer's answers, but because of the predictable tone of some of the questions by Nightline's staff. Here's your chance to go behind-the-scenes with the gatekeepers of the national media to see how they screen out viewpoints and information that don't fit their stereotypes.

Posted by John G. West at 5:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Just when I think the major media are beginning to become a little more accurate in reporting on the evolution issue, something happens to bring me back to reality. Yesterday the international newswire Reuters sent out a story making the following preposterous claim:

The new science standards would... eliminate core evolution theory as required curriculum.

This claim is absolutely false. The draft science standards endorsed by the Kansas Board of Education continue to include evolution as part of the standard required curriculum. Indeed, the proposed benchmark on evolution is all but identical to the one in the current Kansas Science Standards. See for yourself:

PROPOSED DRAFT OF KANSAS SCIENCE STANDARDS (2005):

STANDARD 3: LIFE SCIENCE
The student will develop an understanding of the cell, molecular basis of heredity, biological evolution, interdependence of organisms, matter, energy, and organization in living systems, and the behavior of organisms.

Benchmark 3: The student will understand the major concepts of the theory of biological evolution.

EXISTING KANSAS SCIENCE STANDARDS (2001):

STANDARD 3: LIFE SCIENCE
As a result of their activities in grades 9-12, all students will develop an understanding of the cell, molecular basis of heredity, biological evolution, interdependence of organisms, matter, energy, and organization in living systems, and the behavior of organisms.

Benchmark 3: Students will understand the major concepts of the theory of biological evolution.

Under the new draft of the Kansas Science Standards, evolution remains part of the core curriculum in the life sciences. The key difference between the new science standards and the old ones is not that the new standards somehow de-emphasize evolution, but that they add additional information about evolution. That's right, the proposed new standards would have students in Kansas learn more about evolutionary theory by having the students study scientific criticisms of the theory in addition to the best scientific evidence for the theory.

Unfortunately, this phony fact from the Reuters story is being picked up by other media outlets. I called the Reuters reporter yesterday asking for a correction, but haven't gotten any response. In the meantime, I was on a radio talk show this morning in which the talk show host used the inaccurate Reuters story to frame the discussion, and my hometown paper The Seattle Times added the false Reuters info. to a story it ran on the subject of evolution.

Posted by John G. West at 1:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

CNN Reporter Ed Lavendera, who two years ago fabricated part of his story about the Texas textbook battle, has now been sent to Kansas to report on the controversy there. Not surprisingly, Ed gets the basic facts about Kansas wrong as well. He even recycles an old clip from his previous story while creating impression that it came from Kansas!

Lavendera's Kansas report was on CNN Newsnight last night with Aaron Brown. The segment was supposed to include a debate betwen Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer and Darwinist Kenneth Miller. That debate was taped but not aired. Instead they only used a brief comment from Meyer (who was misidentified as high school teacher John Courage; and Courage was mididentified as Meyer). Meyer's comment was on point, even if Lavendera's report was not. Meyer said:

We've had 150 years of one dogma ruling biology. What we're asking for is that Darwinian evolution be taught to students, but also the current scientific criticisms of the theory.

Lavendera started his report by misframing what is going on in Kansas:

It's the latest fight to bring the theory of intelligent design to a classroom near you. The Kansas State Board of Education is considering new science curriculum standards that offer a more critical view of evolution.

Actually, Kansas is not the "latest fight to bring the theory of intelligent design" into classrooms. The Kansas Board of Education has repeatedly and explicitly made clear that intelligent design is not being considered as part of the Kansas science standards. It is considering teaching criticisms of evolution as well as the evidence for evolution, but that is not the same thing as introducing intelligent design.

Lavendera next provided a butchered definition of intelligent design:

Intelligent design, or I.D., as it's often called, is the idea that the universe is so complicated that some things cannot be explained by science alone, that there must be some intelligent source behind the world's creation.

First, as I've repeatedly pointed out on this blog (and to reporters), intelligent design is not based on the idea "that the universe is so complicated... that there must be some intelligent source." It is based on the idea that a certain kind of highly-ordered complexity ("specified complexity") is best explained (not "must be" explained) as the product of an intelligent cause. Second, intelligent design theorists claim that pointing to intelligent causation is a scientific explanation. They reject the claim that to invoke intelligence means going outside of science.

Finally, although Lavendera is supposed to be reporting from Kansas, he recycles a clip originally filmed at the Texas Board of Education hearings in 2003--without identifying it as such:

LAVENDERA: ...skeptics say intelligent design simply disguises religion in a shroud of science. Critics often call it science fiction.

JOHN COURAGE, HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE TEACHER [misidentified on-screen as Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer!]: If we put intelligent design into our biology textbooks, based on the misrepresentation of real scientific fact and the conjecture that its proponents rely on, then we may as well add the study of flying saucers and aliens from outer space to our biology and physics books.

In an embarrassing slip-up, CNN misidentified Mr. Courage onscreen as Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer. If CNN had properly identified Mr. Courage, most viewers would have been left with the impression that he is a Kansas high school teacher commenting on the Kansas science standards contoversy. Not so. When he made these comments, Mr. Courage was in fact testifying at the Texas Board of Education hearings in 2003. How do I know this? Mr. Lavendera used this very same clip in his bogus July 2003 report!

Posted by John G. West at 11:15 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Nightline ran a story on intellingent design last night, and if the inane preview article is any indication, the segment was the sort of lopsided hatchet-job one used to expect from the folks at "60 Minutes"--but not nearly as intelligent. Nightline's main point appears to be that there really isn't any scientific controversy over Darwinism and intelligent design. How do they know this? They checked with several Darwinists, who told them so! That's right. According to Nightline, because Darwinists happen to believe there is no scientific controversy over evolution, there really must be no controversy.

Hmm. Nightline could apply this logic to a lot of other issues besides intelligent design: To determine whether there is any debate about embryonic stem cell research, they could interview only the scientists who support such research. To determine whether there is any debate over partial-birth abortions, they could interview only proponents of partial-birth abortions. Back in the heyday of eugenics, if journalists had wanted to determine whether there was a debate about the validity of eugenics, they could have interviewed only the scientists advocating eugenics.

Oops. Come to think of it, isn't this precisely how many members of the old-line newsmedia do determine whether there is a legitimate controversy over something? Now I don't feel so bad. Nightline is simply applying the normal formula of hack-reporters from the old-line media.

Fortunately, viewers don't need to depend on Nightline to determine whether there is a scientific controversy over Darwin. While the Nightline "journalists" simply parrot the Darwinists' party-line, the number of peer-reviewed articles and books by intelligent design scholars continue to grow, as do the number of doctoral scientists who are skeptical of the core claim of Darwin's theory on scientific grounds.

Rather than depend on Nightline, people can read for themselves about the scientific debate in academic books published by Cambridge University Press and Michigan State University Press. Or they can watch one of the "high-gloss video productions" dismissively alluded to by Nightline such as Unlocking the Mystery of Life. There they can see and hear for themselves scientists like University of Idaho microbiologist Scott Minnich and Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe who support intelligent design. These are the scientists Nightline insists don't actually exist. Hint to Nightline's staff: Maybe you should watch one of these videos. You might learn something.

Posted by John G. West at 12:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday "Hardball with Chris Matthews" featured a short debate between Discovery president Bruce Chapman and NCSE director Eugenie Scott about intelligent design and whether it should be required instruction in science classes.

More interesting than that question though was the debates diversion into the issue of whether or not intelligent design is religion --it's not-- and if it inherently invokes "God." Guest host David Gregory raised the issue in a question:

GREGORY: Mr. Chapman, let me pull back for just a minute. Isn`t this just a way to get religion to be taught in the schools?

CHAPMAN: No, it is not just a way to put religion in the schools, not from our standpoint. We have expressly said, we didn`t want religion to be brought into this at any point.

But if you want to know who is bringing religion into the -- this whole argument over evolution, it is the National Center For Science Education, because I have right here an example from a Web site that they helped put together with taxpayers` money, federal taxpayers` money, to teach teachers how to teach evolution.

And, in this, they give examples of how to bring religious people and their views into the classroom to instruct children that evolution and religion are perfectly compatible, and not only that, but evolution will help enrich your faith.

Now, I don`t have any opposition to people having those views.

GREGORY: Right.

CHAPMAN: But I do have an opposition to somebody criticizing anybody who says that evolution is flawed as being implicitly religious, ...

Not surprisingly then, Scott's reaction was to defend the Understanding Evolution website's approach to religion as merely "descriptive" not "proscriptive." The Understanding Evolution site is quite obviously geared to instruct teachers how to defend and teach solely Darwinian evolution. Especially in regards to religion where it attempts to use religion to bolster credibility of evolution.

SCOTT: OK.

I -- I welcome anybody to go to the Understanding Evolution Web site and see if that is true. What you will find is descriptive statements, not proscriptive statements. There is nothing that says, you should do it this way. It just describes a variety of religious views, most of which the intelligent design people do not accept.

So, Scott's position seems to be that religion shouldn't be mandated in science classes, but it should be permissable -- granted the religion is supportive or and defending the teaching of Darwinism.

Sound Familair? Our position on ID in the classroom has always been that it should not be mandated, but teachers certainly should be allowed to discuss it without fear of reprisal if it comes up. Discussion of ID in classes would then be descriptive, not proscriptive. Somebody at the NCSE has some 'splainin to do.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 5:48 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Science standards that allow for scientific challenges to Darwinism to be discussed in the classroom moved forward in Kansas today according to AP reports.

The story points out that the Kansas board is not including ID in the curriculum, which they've repeatedly made very clear:

The draft says the board is not advocating the teaching of "intelligent design," which contends that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent creator, not evolution.

... intelligent design, which says some features of the natural world are so well-ordered and complex that they are best explained by an intelligent cause.

In a debate on Tuesday, board members opposed to the draft said religion had no place in the science classroom.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 11:31 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It fascinates me that people often assume that if you are an advocate of intelligent design --or even if you merely question Darwinism-- you must be a religious zealot of one stripe or another.

Today the Seattle Times published my letter responding to their editorial and recent coverage of the ID debate. I may be prejudiced but I don't think my letter makes me look like a "religious zealot." Right below it they published a letter asking:

Why is it that religious zealots who promote intelligent design as science imagine a God almighty so small that the mystery of his creation cannot encompass a mechanism as simple and elegant as Darwin's natural selection?

I am hardly a religious zealot. Much to my Mother's dismay I'm not religious at all. I pretty much agnostic, as are quite a few ID proponents and probably a greater number of people simply skeptical of Darwinism. I'm not anti-religious certainly, but rather I'd say I'm unreligious. Yet, I recognize the serious problems with Darwinian evolution and I think that the subject must be addressed and that science needs to be open to that kind of critical analysis. And I see ID as a serious scientific research program that should be further developed, further explored, and seriously discussed within the framework of scientific inquiry. Does that make me a "religious zealot"? Hardly.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATED, 10:48am, 8.10: Gilder vs. Dawkins is no contest. Literally. Dawkins chickened out and refused to debate, instead preferring to go it alone. So, each of them appeared separately on the program which is now available at "On Point's" website.

Today NPR's "On Point" will feature Discovery senior fellow George Gilder debating Darwin defender Richard Dawkins. The program airs on WBUR live from 10-11am, and on NPR stations across the country at different times today and throughout the week.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

CSC associate director John West has a nice op-ed in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

In "Intelligent design is sorely misunderstood" West makes the point that the ID scientific research program is sometimes highjacked by people who have little or no understanding of what the theory is about.

If foes are guilty of misappropriating intelligent design, however, so are some of its newfound friends.

As intelligent design has become a household term, a few well-meaning but misguided public officials have conflated the theory of design with creationism or tried to impose it by legislation.

Discovery Institute, the main research organization supporting ID scholars, opposes efforts to mandate intelligent design.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:37 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Intelligent Design (ID) has made it to the cover of Time magazine this week, and I'm delighted to say that the cover story is for the most part respecftul and fair. It's certainly a far-cry from Time's inaccurate and conspiracy-mongering tirade a few months ago. The cover story even gives a mostly correct definition of ID (adapted from the definition on Discovery Institute's website). Time says that intelligent design is "the proposition that some aspects of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause or agent, as opposed to natural selection." A number of ID scientists were interviewed for the article, and Time assigned at least a dozen reporters to work on the story.

Still, there are some misleading or erroneous statements in the Time story that ought to be corrected. Here are three of the most important:

1. Discovery Institute's Position on Teaching ID. Time correctly notes that many supporters of ID are not asking for the theory to be taught in classrooms. Instead, they are merely proposing that scientific criticisms of Darwin's theory be taught. Unfortunately, Time doesn't make clear that this is in fact Discovery Institute's own position, a position we've articulated time and again. (For an example, see here.) I emphasized Discovery's position to the Time reporters I spoke with, but all that got quoted was this partial comment removed from its context:

"All we're advocating for is that if a teacher wants to bring up the scientific debate over design, they should be allowed to do that," says institute spokesman John West.

This partial quote is misleading because it fails to describe Discovery Institute's general policy on the teaching of ID. As I told Time, Discovery Institute opposes any effort to mandate the teaching of design. All it is asking for is the teaching of scientific criticisms of modern Darwinian theory as well as the best evidence for the theory. At the same time, we don't think teachers should be fired or persecuted if they voluntarily want to discuss the scientific debate over design in a fair and neutral manner.

2. ID Scholars, Peer-Reviewed Journals, and Testability. Time recycles--without rebuttal--the Darwinists' bogus claims that pro-ID scholars don't publish peer-reviewed scholarship and that ID can't be tested:

[Dawkins] and other scientists say advocates of intelligent design do not play by the rules of science. They do not publish papers in peer-reviewed journals, and their hypothesis cannot be tested by research and the study of evidence.

Where are Time's fact-checkers? These claims are absolutely false. For an annotated bibliography of peer-reviewed scholarship by pro-ID scientists (including articles in peer-reviewed science journals), check here. As for the bogus claim that the ID hypothesis isn't testable, read Jonathan Witt's brief response to this charge or Stephen Meyer's detailed response.

3. The Santorum Language in the No Child Left Behind Act Conference Report. Time mentions that U.S. Senator Rick Santorum "tried to get a teach-the-controversy addendum into the 2001 No Child Left Behind bill of the Senate" without ever informing readers that revised language was ultimately adopted by Congress as "report language" in the No Child Left Behind Act Conference Report.

Posted by John G. West at 12:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It's been interesting to watch this past week as media pundits have weighed-in on the debate over intelligent design in the wake of President Bush's pro-ID comments. Most of the pundits denouncing intelligent design have simply demonstrated how little they actually know about ID and what it proposes. A good example is Jonathan Alter's snooty anti-ID column in this week's Newsweek. Alter says a lot of ignorant and inaccurate things, but I will focus on just one:

The scholarly articles [by ID proponents] are often well written and provocative. But the science within these papers has been demolished over and over by other scientists.

After paying a back-handed compliment to ID scholars, Alter claims that their scientific arguments have been "demolished" by other scientists. How the heck would Alter know? Has he read ANY of the publications written by pro-ID scientists, including their responses to critics? In fact, "the science within these papers" has NOT been demolished. Rather than trust Alter's unsubstantiated assertion, you can read for yourself some of the responses to the so-called critiques of ID. If you do, you'll be better informed than 99% of the pundits who are pontificating on the subject right now.

Posted by John G. West at 12:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Following up on President Bush’s remarks about teaching evolution earlier this week, The Lehrer Newshour tackled the subject of intelligent design this evening with a debate between CSC Fellow biochemist Dr. Michael Behe, and Case Western physicist Dr. Lawrence Krauss.

The clear advantage of the Newshour over most news programs is that it can devote the time necessary to truly discuss an issue in-depth. This segment showed that it helps to have enough time to really get anywhere with the debate over evolution beyond the six second soundbites normally allowed.

I think that Jeffrey Brown did a good job of moderating the discussion. Really the Newshour’s only mistake came early on when Brown reported that:

This summer, the Kansas State Board of Education drafted a report that proposes adding intelligent design to its new teaching standards.

The debate itself went much as these debates do – the Darwinist, in this case Krauss, claimed that intelligent design was nothing more than a clever marketing scheme, and Behe defended design theory with concrete examples and evidence.

Krauss: What [Bush has] done is give credence to a concept that's really been proposed by a very small group of people that doesn't appear in the scientific literature.

It's really quite marginal to -- it's part of a very successful marketing and public relations campaign by a well-financed group, the Discovery Institute, of which Dr. Behe is a member.

Behe: In the past 50 years, the progress of science itself has discovered that the very foundation, the molecular foundation of life is enormously sophisticated and elegant. There are molecular machines, there are little trucks and buses and outboard motors that shuttle supplies around the cell. And the term "molecular machine" is used routinely in biology. Biology is just filled with terms that imply design.

Rather than address the merits of Dr. Behe’s –and other intelligent design scientists – arguments Krauss attacks Discovery Institute on absolutely false grounds.

Krauss: I have to say that if you actually look at the literature of groups like the Discovery Institute, it's very clear. … It's very clear that the attack is not on evolution, it's really an attack on science. The notion that because science doesn't explicitly mention God, it's somehow immoral, in fact, that's in the literature if you read what these people are saying.

Behe does a good job of wrapping up the interview by making the salient point that regardless of such attacks, or the implications that the ID argument may have, it will stand or fall on its scientific merits, much as the big bang theory did.

Behe: The theory of intelligent design is no more an attempt to bring God into the classroom than the Big Bang Theory was. …
Now, many physicists thought that the Big Bang Theory had philosophical and theological implications and they didn't like it. And as a matter of fact, well into the 20th Century, a number of scientists did not like the Big Bang Theory. As a matter of fact, the prominent science journal Nature ran a curious editorial in the late 1980s with the title "Down with the Big Bang." It was written by the editor of Nature, a guy named John Maddox, who called the Big Bang Theory philosophically unacceptable and said that it gave aid and comfort to creationists because it seemed to point beyond the universe.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 1:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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

Simply put, Limbaugh’s column gets the facts straight. Namely: there is a growing scientific controversy over Darwin’s theory; a growing number of scientists have voiced scientific dissent from Darwin’s theory--at great risk of intellectual and professional persecution; some scientists are now of the view that the evidence best supports the theory of intelligent design (ID); many outspoken advocates for Darwin’s theory have resorted to name-calling and motive-mongering in order to dismiss ID and deny it a fair examination on the evidence; and the nation’s premier think-tank promoting ID in research and in publication does not advocate the mandating of ID in schools—but rather insists that students should be able to hear about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwin’s theory.

In supporting academic freedom as the common sense approach to teaching about evolution in public schools, Limbaugh poses some important questions:

Don't academics purport to champion free and open inquiry? What, then, are they so afraid of regarding the innocuous introduction into the classroom of legitimate questions concerning Darwinism?

Posted by Seth Cooper at 4:05 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Something called "intelligent design" is the "number one" discussed topic on the internet today (August 4, '05), according to the web and blog watch group Technocrati.com. But what do people mean by the topic? Forget the old fashioned question -- what do the scientists propounding ID mean by the term? This is the post-modern age. What do YOU want ID to mean?

Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922) invented the famous Rorschach test that long was used to see what different meanings people would project onto a series of abstract inkblots. I see a butterfly, you see a porter carrying water, the man down the hall sees a spy plane. Supposedly, it was a key to understanding personality.

It has left several ID scientists affiliated with Discovery Institute--the people doing the real scientific research and scholarly writing--tearing their hair, shaking their fists and shouting at television sets and radios.

The worst thing is that reporters and others simply will not be satisfied with suggestions that they do some reading before they start talking. No, they want to put a mike on you or start scribbling your answers to questions they have made up on the fly.

To hear Charles Krauthammer, a fine fellow one normally respects, bloviate on this subject at FOX News, for example, is enough to wear down the bicuspids that a designer (or millions of years of evolution) developed for one's mouth.
Has he read anything the intelligent design theorists have written on this topic? It doesn't sound that way.

But isn't it up to the ID scientists rather than some rewrite man at the night desk--or some opponent of ID called by a reporter--to do it?

(Hint: "The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process like natural selection.")

Wouldn't it likewise be useful to have readers and viewers know that ID accepts the old age of the earth and therefore cannot be fairly conflated with creationism that holds that the Earth is only 6000 years old and came about in six literal days?

Next, since schooling is on almost everyone's mind, wouldn't it be useful to put it out clearly that Discovery Institute and scientists affiliated with it do NOT support requiring the teaching of intelligent design in schools, but only teaching the scientific evidence for and against Darwin's theory?

And that behind it all is documented concern that scientists who dissent from Darwin are being discriminated against in academia and government?

Is this so hard to grasp as a policy stand? Or do you insist on free associating from some inkblot provided by the Darwinists?

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 12:31 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Update, 10:02am, 8.4: Technorati now shows intelligent design as the number one search term, and the number of bloggers weighing in is growing. The issue indeed has reached a new, fevered, pitch.

It doesn't hurt to have the leader of the free world asked what he thinks of your research. The recent comments by President Bush about teaching evolution have made 'intelligent design' all but a household phrase.

Technorati.com is reporting that there are currently over 17,000 blog posts about intelligent design, making it the #7 most popular search term on their site at the moment.

Media coverage of the debate over evolution is certain to escalate in the near future.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:03 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I have spoken briefly with New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller who penned the story today that included a misquote attributed to CSC director Stephen Meyer that he welcomed Bush's statement on intelligent design as promoting "free speech on BIBLICAL origins," when he actually said "biological origins."

She apologized for the error saying it was "nothing more than a mistake madie in haste" and has assured us that the Times will run a correction in the print edition tomorrow. In explanation she indicated that she'd taken notes very quickly in shorthand and later under deadline pressure from editors inadvertently substituted "biblical" for "biological."

Whether it's a Freudian slip or not it is likely to be a comment that grows into an urban myth. So, it is with relief that we see the reporter and the paper taking steps to quickly correct the mnistake.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Update, 8:42am, 8.3: The New York Times web desk has corrected the misquote. Now we will see about a correction in the print edition of the newspaper.

Update, 7:25am, 8.3: Contrary to promises issued last night, the web edition of The New York Times has yet to correct the misquote it printed. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to actually get this correction made.

George Keough on the Times night desk has promised that the New York Times will correct an erroneous misquote they printed and attributed to Dr. Stephen Meyer.

The Times printed that Dr. Meyer said: "We interpret this as the president using his bully pulpit to support freedom of inquiry and free speech about the issue of biblical origins.” This is inaccurate. In fact, Dr. Meyer was referring to biological origins, not “biblical origins” as mistakenly quoted by the Times.

The New York Times article about President Bush's remarks on the debate over evolution --"Bush Remarks Roil Debate Over Teaching of Evolution"-- by White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller got off to a rocky start when it turned the debate over evolution into a battle between “religious conservatives” and scientists.

Unfortunately, Bumiller reiterates a mistaken definition of intelligent design theory: “intelligent design proponents say that life is so intricate that only a powerful guiding force, or intelligent designer, could have created it.” By now most people know that the scientific theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. No matter what the New York Times or any other media outlet claims, intelligent design theory does NOT claim that science can determine the identity of the intelligent cause. Nor does it claim that the intelligent cause must be a “divine being” or a “higher power” or an “all-powerful force.” All it proposes is that science can identify whether certain features of the natural world are the products of intelligence.

Bumiller also misstates the issue in Kansas:

"Invigorated by a recent push by conservatives, the theory has been gaining support in school districts in 20 states, with Kansas in the lead.”

It should be noted that in his most recent remarks Bush was simply echoing something he said to Science magazine last year. According to the White House:

"He has said that going back to his days as governor. [H]e also said in those remarks that local school districts should make the decisions about their curriculum. But it's long been his belief that students ought to be exposed to different ideas, and so that's what he was reiterating yesterday."

Rationale of the State Board for Adopting these Science Curriculum Standards
We believe it is in the best interest of educating Kansas students that all students have a good working knowledge of science: particularly what defines good science, how science move forward, what holds science back, and how to critically analyze the conclusions that scientists make.

Regarding the scientific theory of biological evolution, the curriculum standards call for students to learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about area where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory. These curriculum standards reflect the Board’s objective of 1) to help students understand the full range of scientific views that exist on this topic, 2) to enhance critical thinking and the understanding of the scientific method by encouraging students to study different and opposing scientific evidence, and 3) to ensure that science education in our state is “secular, neutral, and non-ideological.”

From the testimony and submissions we have received, we are aware that the study and discussion of the origin and development of life may raise deep personal and philosophical questions for many people on all sides of the debate. But as interesting as these personal questions may be, the personal questions are not covered by these curriculum standards nor are they the basis for the Board’s actions in this area.

Evolution is accepted by many scientists but questioned by some. The Board has heard credible scientific testimony that indeed there are significant debates about the evidence for key aspects of chemical and biological evolutionary theory. All scientific theories should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered. We therefore think it is important and appropriate for students to know about these scientific debates and for the Science Curriculum Standards to include information about them. In choosing this approach to science curriculum standards, we are encouraged by the similar approach taken by other states, whose new science standards incorporate scientific criticisms into the science curriculum that describes the scientific case for the theory of evolution.

We also emphasize that the Science Curriculum Standards do not include the theory of Intelligent Design. While the testimony presented at the science hearings included both advocates and critics of the theory of Intelligent Design, we do not include it in these curriculum standards. The Board does not take a position on this topic.

Kansas Science Education Standards Draft 2: June 9, 2005
http://www.ksde.org/outcomes/scstdworkingdoc.pdf

Posted by Robert Crowther at 8:42 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In her story about the President's remarks concerning the teaching of evolution, Johanna Neuman of the LA Times provided one of the few pieces of reporting the MSM that attempts to differentiated between creationism and intelligent design theory: "Intelligent design, which started to gain notice about 10 years ago, holds that evolution alone does not adequately explain some complex biological mechanisms, suggesting that a plan by an intelligent force is behind changes in species.

"Creationism and intelligent design are often confused," said Jay W. Richards, vice president for research at Discovery Institute, a Seattle research and advocacy group for intelligent design. "Both have in common the idea that the universe exists for a purpose." Where intelligent design parts company with creationism, he said, is that it is neutral on Darwin's claim of common ancestry among species while challenging his theory that species change over time because of natural selection." Her definition is still lacking, but it is far from the worst we've seen.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:52 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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 actually said to Bumiller in praising President Bush's comments:

"We interpret this as the president using his bully pulpit to support freedom of inquiry and free speech about the issue of biological origins."

But here's how the The Times reported Meyer's comment:

"We interpret this as the president using his bully pulpit to support freedom of inquiry and free speech about the issue of biblical origins."

It seems as if the reporter (or her editor) already knew beforehand what they thought Steve Meyer ought to have said in order to confirm their own stereotype that intelligent design is about religion, rather than science.

As Rob Crowther has pointed out already, the Times assured us a couple of hours ago that they would correct this egregious error, but as of this post, the correction has yet to be made. So the bogus quote will no doubt still be circulating on the internet by the time you read this, although I hope the correction will have been made by then. Here's yet another cautionary tale about why you shouldn't always believe what you see in the "mainstream" media.

Posted by John G. West at 12:32 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

If you are CNN commentator Bill Schneider you think that intelligent design is just another name for creationism and that creationism is what schools are considering teaching. Now, ID is not creationism and, in any case, schools--with few exceptions--are only considering whether students will be exposed to the scientific evidence for and against Darwin's theory, not whether to teach ID. But mere reality didn't stop Schneider from warping the issue with polls that pit evolution against creationism during his Inside Politics news report on President Bush today.

The polls, incidentally, all favor creationism when posed that way--even Democrats and liberals answer in favor of teaching it as well as evolution. But it is a fake choice to pose to voters since the real public policy issue is something else. (Maybe voters even sense that and do the best they can with poor questions?)

So why does Schneider do it? Does he not know any better? Does he not know that surveys (by Zogby) pose the real choices (e.g., whether to teach the evidence for and against Darwin's theory)? is he perhaps using his analysis of polling as a way to influence public opinion rather than report it? In other words, is he engaged in what might be called "push polling", a counterpart to "push questionnaires" in political campaigns?

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATE: Stephen Meyer's O'Reilly interview has been canceled. Due to the unfortunate Air France crash, O'Reilly will not have time for the full ID discussion, so he's only going to interview the Darwinist. And William Dembski reports that his appearance on Fox has also been canceled.

Discovery Institute has now issued a statement about President Bush's comments on teaching the controversy over Darwinism. And here's what the AP and other news sources are reporting on the issue:

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about competing viewpoints, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought tobe exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

Science: Should "intelligent design" or other scientific critiques of evolutionary theory be taught in public schools?
...
BUSH: The federal government has no control over local curricula, and it is not the federal government's role to tell states and local boards of education what they should teach in the classroom. Of course, scientific critiques of any theory should be a normal part of the science curriculum.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 1:10 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)