Category: Free Speech
Message to New York Times Editorial Page: Hire a Fact-Checker
Over the weekend, the New York Times editorial page showed yet again how pro-Darwin ideology trumps the facts when it comes to the major media’s coverage of the evolution debate. On Saturday, the Times’ editorial page warned readers ominously: The Texas State Board of Education is again considering a science curriculum that teaches the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, setting an example that several other states are likely to follow. The Times apparently hasn’t been paying attention to Texas during the past decade, because (as we pointed out last week) the “strengths and weaknesses” language the Times’ editorialists so fear has been part of the Texas science standards since at least 1998! In short, the Texas State Board of Education Read More ›
New York Times Error about “Strengths and Weaknesses” Mutates and Spreads
As previously pointed out, the New York Times botched its recent story about the science standards debate in Texas, implying that support for covering the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution is supposedly a new strategy on the part of Darwin critics. The only problem is that the “strengths and weaknesses” language in the Texas science standards was already included some 10 years ago in 1998 when the existing science standards were adopted, and so there is nothing new about it. (Indeed, the language itself derives from the 1980s, before the current sciences standards.) More importantly, the debate over whether to teach both the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution has been going on across the nation for the past decade. Read More ›
Associated Press Suppresses Facts on Louisiana Evolution Hearing
The Associated Press has an article on Louisiana’s Academic Freedom bill which quotes a Darwinist professor at Louisiana State University asserting that “biological evolution really is not scientifically controversial.” The article did observe that biologist Caroline Crocker testified in favor of the bill, but left out the fact that multiple other scientists (including professional biologists) also testified that there are scientific problems with evolution. As I recount here, three professional biologists and one chemist, all with Ph.D.’s, testified about scientific problems with Darwinian evolution before Louisiana’s House Education Committee on Wednesday. But the Associated Press chose not to report that fact, instead deciding to serve as a checkpoint to prevent its readers from learning about scientists who doubt Darwin.
MSNBC’s Alan Boyle and Sean B. Carroll Argue Scientists Should Keep “Quiet” about Support for Intelligent Design (Part 2)
[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] In Part 1 I explained how Alan Boyle and Sean B. Carroll unashamedly agree that scientists should keep “quiet” about their support intelligent design (ID). In this final response, I will discuss how the scientific evidence cited by Boyle does little to demonstrate the power of the neo-Darwinian mechanism. In Alan Boyle’s attack upon Expelled, he uses biologist Sean B. Carroll as his big gun scientist to attack intelligent design, touting Carroll’s book Making of the Fittest. In that book, Carroll argues that “[t]he argument for design by some external intelligence is eviscerated.” Last year I wrote a response to Read More ›
MSNBC’s Alan Boyle and Sean B. Carroll Argue Scientists Should Keep “Quiet” about Support for Intelligent Design (Part 1)
[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] We’ve known for a long time that MSNBC’s “Cosmic Log” writer Alan Boyle doesn’t like intelligent design, and in his coverage of Expelled, Boyle is no exception to the “checkpoint” pattern described earlier here on ENV. This time, he’s got scientists from the academy “checkpoint” to back him up. Thus, he feels confident to attack Expelled as, “creepy … campaign ad, aimed at swiftboating science.” Enter Sean B. Carroll, a prominent biologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Boyle’s big gun who also happens to dislike intelligent design. Boyle quotes Carroll in a one-two punch that essentially states that scientists who Read More ›