Posted on 04/05/2005 8:56:03 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there's no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.
In retrospect, this magazine's coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.
Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that's a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That's what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn't get bogged down in details.
Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.
Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to building an anti-ICBM defense system that can't work as promised, that will waste tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars and imperil national security, you won't hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration's antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that's not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect science either -- so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools' Day.
No, no. The world is a disk that sits on the back of a giant turtle. The turtle had nothing to do with making it.
lol that's a good one.
Totally Agree...first, it was the Global Cooling (70s), Acid Rain (80s)...etc. Global Warning (90s) was the last straw...stopped mine in '94.
I got a year subscription using FF points, so it was free. After getting it for many months now, I must say I paid too much. They beat on Bush like a particle accelerator target.
You mean, it wasn't true. :^)
My cancellation list is growing by the day.
For example: Out, The New Yorker. In, Atlantic Monthly.
Fortunately, I tumbled to SA a long time ago and never read it.
That is hilarious! Marvellous stuff!
Their "Was Darwin Wrong" attack on their readers caused me to cancel my subscription after 21 years as well.
I wrestle with the decision each year myself. I guess I read the leftist slanted articles on global warming to see what the "science" crowd thinks they can pass off as real science. As far as missile defense they have concluded that a few lost cities is OK with them. Strange since the leftists seem to like the cities. Oh well.
Indeed. Our conservative scientists are a treasure!
Oh man it got me good! HAHAHAHA!
(My colleagues kidded me for weeks! One even left a rope and pully on my desk. LMAO)
I kept thinking about the early Geek Greek made computer-like Astrolabe (use mechanical gearing) found in that shipwreck in the 60s-70s. :)
This is exactly the thing that gives ammunition to the creationists. The ABM system is not only workable, it's already done it's job without even being in existence. The mere threat of ABM pushed the USSR over the brink of bankruptcy. It didn't matter if it really could have defended us against a full attack from the USSR, it was workable merely because the Russians believed it might have been.
The fact that SA is so politically blinded that it doesn't see this even in retrospect, is the evidence creationists use to accuse them of blindness in scientific matters like evolution.
The blind allegiance to environmental radicalism by SA and other mainstream scientific outlets also discredits them.
It's a sad day for real science, when they're daily attacked from the outside, and shooting themselves in the foot at the same time.
They offer politically slanted science. I stopped my subscription to the Lysenko American many years ago.
..comments by Price in 1974.
That thing was pretty cool :-)
From here:
http://www.cciw.com/content/april_fools.html
"The Apraphulian computer was the subject of A. K. Dewdney's article, "Computer Recreations: An ancient rope-and-pulley computer is unearthed in the jungle of Apraphul" published in Scientific American, April 19, 1988. What begins as an April Fools' joke turns out to be an excellent explanation on the basic circuitry in a digital computer. "
:-)
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