Who Is Anti-Science?

There is a long record of conflict and persecution in the history of science, as in any area of endeavor. Scientists are given to the same failings as other human beings: greed, status anxiety, envy, and fear. To believe the pious statements by professional organizations about the enlightened way “science works” is comparable to accepting the civics textbook renderings of “how a law is made.” There is a way, all right, that science is supposed to work (and laws supposedly are made), and then there is reality. One can be grateful that there are so many cases where science does proceed along the ideal path, but there is no excuse for trying to fool the public into thinking that great Read More ›

Even Cornelia Dean’s Friends Are Concerned

As Rob Crowther noted earlier, NYT’s Cornelia Dean has been doing a shoddy job reporting on intelligent design and evolution. In fact, even her allies are beginning to take notice. On Thursday the local (and vehemently anti-ID) weekly had a note on its blog to Cornelia Dean. While they agreed with her biased reporting, even they are getting tired of her knee-jerk parroting: Cornelia Dean! It’s good to be emphatic, but you start to sound like a robot–one of those Darwin-believin’ automatons whom the Discovery Institute takes great pleasure in deriding.

The Story the New York Times found was Unfit to Print

Yesterday Rob Crowther recognized that Cornelia Dean and the New York Times are puffing Darwinism in an article about Expelled titled, “Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life’s Origin.” This front page New York Times news-article blatantly editorializes that, “[t]here is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on earth.” But that isn’t the real story here. If Cornelia Dean and the New York Times were to report the real story, they would have instead reported: “There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on earth that goes unpunished.”

A Response to Dr. Dawkins’ “Information Challenge” (Part 2): Does Gene Duplication Increase Information Content? (Updated)

[Editor’s note: This was the second installment of a three-part series. The full article, A Response to Dr. Dawkins’ “The Information Challenge”, can be read here.] In Part I, I demonstrated that specified complexity is the appropriate measure of biological complexity. In this section, I will show why merely citing gene duplication does not help one understand how Darwinian evolution can produce new genetic information. Dawkins’ main point in his “The Information Challenge” article is that “[n]ew genes arise through various kinds of duplication.” So his answer to the creationist question that so upset him is gene duplication. Yet during the actual gene-duplication process, a pre-existing gene is merely copied, and nothing truly new is generated. As Michael Egnor said Read More ›

New York Times’ Cornelia Dean: Wrong on Evolution, Intelligent Design and Expelled

The New York Times periodically exhibits a questionable nose for news. What rises to the level of news for the science writers at the Times aren’t instances of scientific censorship or persecution of scientists. Today, complaints by Darwinists allegedly featured in a forthcoming (and as of yet unfinished, according to the filmmakers themselves) film, Expelled, that documents the persecution of scientists who question Darwin, is considered news by the Times’ science staff. What about real news related to the debate over evolution and intelligent design? The Times has a snobbishly selective olfactory sense, it seems.