Author: John G. West
Altered Reality: Newsweek Pundit Displays Own Ignorance in Column on ID
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:
Freudian Slip at The New York Times? The Paper of Record Mangles Quote from DI’s Spokesman, Substituting “Biblical” for “Biological”
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 Read More ›
Darwinists Continue Smear Campaign against Ohio Grad Student
Just in time for the anniversary of the Scopes trial, the folks over at Panda’s Thumb are continuing their unseemly crusade against Ohio State doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard. Even though these Darwinian fundamentalists don’t support academic freedom for teachers and scientists who are skeptical of Darwin, you’d think they might draw the line at going after students. Apparently, however, their bigotry and intolerance knows no bounds. Unhappy that Leonard’s dissertation committee has effectively refuted the misinformation spread by Panda’s Thumb and others, blogger Richard Hoppe has responded with even more smears. Here are replies to some of the new disinformation put out by Hoppe:
Flunking Journalism Ethics 101: NYT Allows News Reporter to Write Op-Ed on Evolution Controversy
You’d think that after the Jayson Blair scandal, the New York Times would be exceptionally careful about questions of journalistic ethics. Why, then, is the Times allowing a reporter who regularly covers the evolution controversy on its news pages to ALSO write opinion articles on the same subject? Cornelia Dean has written a number of news stories for the Times about the the controversy over evolution, including one about the Kansas science standards and another one last weekend about the Catholic church and evolution. But the day after Dean’s news piece appeared about Catholics and evolution, a commentary by her promoting evolution appeared on the op-ed page of the York Daily Record in Pennsylvania! In this op-ed, Dean advised evolutionists Read More ›
New Info about Ohio Grad Student Persecuted by Darwinists
Over the past month, Darwinists have been waging a vicious campaign of defamation against Ohio State University science education doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard. (For more information about Leonard’s situation, see here.) Mr. Leonard’s doctoral dissertation defense has been put in limbo after certain Darwinist professors alleged that his research was “unethical” because it involved teaching students about scientific criticisms of Darwin’s theory, an approach called for in Ohio’s official science standards! Darwinists have variously claimed that members of Leonard’s doctoral committee were improperly selected, that Leonard engaged in “unethical” research, or that he taught his students intelligent design. According to members of Leonard’s dissertation committee, however, all of these charges are false. Two members of the committee have just issued Read More ›