Tag: Washington Post
Don’t Bash it ‘Til You’ve Tried It: A response to Krauthammer and Kriegel
In the last week, two anti-ID editorials have been posted on various major media sites. This includes an article by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post entitled, Phony Theory, False Conflict and an article at Tech Central Station by Uriah Kriegel entitled, Is Intelligent Design a Bad Scientific Theory or a Non-Scientific Theory?. Both articles critique intelligent design, but Krauthammer’s misrepresents the theory quite badly. Kriegel makes some interesting arguments about ID and falsification–if only he would understand that ID theory is structured to disallow explanation by natural selection because natural selection is a fundamentally non-intelligent cause, and then apply his Popperian demarcation criteria to evolution as well. Citing to Unfriendly Authorities Krauthammer’s line of attack is to imply that Read More ›
He Said, She Said: Washington Post vs. Associated Press
Coverage of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial has been about as could be expected, all over the board. There’s been good, bad, and downright ugly. Here then is a snapshot of how reporters can shape the public’s perception in the way they report a single statement. This example comes from the coverage of Michael Behe’s testimony in the courtroom yesterday.
Sports Writer Hits an ID Homerun
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.”
Federal Probe Confirms that Viewpoint Discrimination is Alive and Well at the Smithsonian
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.
Alas, More Shrill Polemics
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).