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.
Yes. It's time we stopped making ad hominem attacks on creationists by pointing out that what they say is false and/or stupid. We should let them control the science curriculum, not because they know any science (they don't), but because it's their turn! Yes!
It would be bad for their self-esteem not to.
And while you're at it, teach this stuff too:
Flat Earth Society
The Young Earth
The Earth is Not Moving!
NASA Fakes Moon Landing!
Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud!
Affirmative Action for peer review juries.
Absolutely right, and why I killed my subscription to SA years ago. To equate as settled and well-defined a question as evolution with as amorphous and controversial an issue as human caused global climate change, or with an entirely political public policy question like national missile defense shows the poor quality of what passes for "science" at "Scientific American," and what passes for analysis on their editorial page.
The Church of Zarguna, Scientist.
We believe God created the universe to impress Jodie Foster. We have some metaphysical and teleological problems, but we're working through them (kind of like the Episcopalians, except we're serious).
Hoping to recruit at least one new member before April 15.
To equate as settled and well-defined a question as evolution with as amorphous and controversial an issue as human caused global climate change, or with an entirely political public policy question like national missile defense
Note that they also were too cowardly to attempt to link those issues together in a serious defense of the charges of politicization of their magazine.
They took the vilely disingenous route of wrapping up that slander in an “April Fool’s” joke, so nobody can legitimately call them on it without looking like they “didn’t get it.”
I “got it” just fine. I would bet that a lot of their other conservative readers did as well.
Because conservatism is all too often linked with creationist biblical-literalist nonsense that most rational people cant run away from fast enough.
:)
agree..why MUST evolution mean that God didnt create everything ? Evolution was the tool and method of God's creation.
The leftist political dinosaurs at Scientific American have far too much ideological bias to be allowed to write much more than April Fool's jokes.
"Evolution was the tool and method of God's creation."
Yep. It's not like He didn't create the laws of nature or anything.
The Ward Churchills and the Answers in Genesis crowd have fallen off opposite sides of the reality cliff.
So doesn't that work against your theory?
"It's the baseless and unobserved extrapolatian to speciation that's debated."
"Speciation" is not debated by anyone serious. I am a petroleum geologist and engineer. There are core samples all up and downt he Permian Basin. I can spot the time period of a sample just from the type of simple snail fossils --- slowly changing from tube worms, to sprials, to conical (and spirals), to different sizes, etc.
Each incremental change is minute --- but if you compare the last with the first (with a couple million years in between), one would never guess they were related.
It's cummulative changes of finches' beaks, so to speak, slowly drawing branches apart until they no longer are the same "species."
On the topic of "species," a species is largely defined simply by whether a typical male and female of the (purported) species can mate and have viable offspring without artificial help. (For example, a quarterhorse and a American Standard can have colts that can have their own offspring. In contrast, to give a close example, a horse and a donkey can mate and have offspring, but it's (generally) not viable.)
Arguably, there has been speciation (or something very close) even among normal dogs --- take a chihuaa and a great dane. Ain't gonna happen --- barring artificial help such as in-vitro or some similar method --- by which one could cross a human and a chimp, if one was inclined (Yes, it has been tried in China --- Google "human chimera" or "human chimp hybrid -- truly distribing. In fact, humans are actually closer genetically than lions and tigers --- Google "Liger.")
Anyway, back to the Chiuaua and the Great Dane. Same wild dog ancestors. Now they barely resemble each other. That happened in 200-300 years of selective breeding --- essentially artificial evolution to please man.
Given a couple MILLION years and repeated episodes of pressure (changing climate conditions, geographic isolation, new preditors, disease, whatever) the change would be much more dramatic --- distinct speciation.
Sure, each step would be mere "intraspecies variation and adaption") but add a couple million steps together and you have something completely different when the branches of the family tree are compared.
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