New Scientist pulls story on creationist code

The New Scientist had a story by their book editor Amanda Gefter called "How to Spot a Hidden Religious Agenda". Today, it was pulled from their web site; the explanation being that they "received a complaint about the contents of the story."

You can still find a copy here, and we've copied the text until we find out what caused them to pull the story. Here's the opening:

As a book reviews editor at New Scientist, I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to recognise clues that the author is pushing a religious agenda. As creationists in the US continue to lose court battles over attempts to have intelligent design taught as science in federally funded schools, their strategy has been forced to... well, evolve. That means ensuring that references to pseudoscientific concepts like ID are more heavily veiled. So I thought I'd share a few tips for spotting what may be religion in science's clothing.

Here's some of the code words Gefter says give away a book's closeted ID agenda.

1. Scientific Materialism 2. The invocation of Cartesian dualism 3. Misguided interpretations of quantum physics (also a "New Age" giveaway) 4. The terms "Darwinism" or "Darwinist" (scientists refer to "evolution" and "biologists") 5. Referring to natural selection as "blind", "random" or an "undirected process"

Gafter concludes by saying, "It is crucial to the public's intellectual health to know when science really is science. Those with a religious agenda will continue to disguise their true views in their effort to win supporters, so please read between the lines."

We have no idea what caused this story to be pulled, and we can provide the full text if it becomes newsworthy.

Here’s another link related to the above story :

http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2009/03/whats-going-on-at-new-scientist.html

Monday, 16 March 2009
What’s going on at the New Scientist?

Last week we had Turkey’s leading science magazine being forced to spike a story on Darwin, but could we now have a similar story somewhat closer to home? The blogosphere is awash with news that the New Scientist have pulled a piece from their website entitled “How to Spot a Hidden Religious Agenda”, in which their book reviews editor Amanda Gefter explains the key signs she looks out for when deciding if a “science” book is in fact a creationist tract. At the URL where the article was, all that remains is the message, “New Scientist has received a complaint about the contents of this story. It has temporarily been removed while we investigate. Apologies for any inconvenience”, along with the 643 comments the article must have received before it was pulled.

The Skepticism Examiner give details of what was in the article, including what must have been the opening paragraph:

“As a book reviews editor at New Scientist, I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to recognise clues that the author is pushing a religious agenda. As creationists in the US continue to lose court battles over attempts to have intelligent design taught as science in federally funded schools, their strategy has been forced to... well, evolve. That means ensuring that references to pseudoscientific concepts like ID are more heavily veiled. So I thought I’d share a few tips for spotting what may be religion in science’s clothing.”

So what’s the story behind this? PZ Myers is unimpressed, calling it “ridiculous”:

“I am troubled by the apparent knee-jerk retraction of a legitimate article that is critical of creationism simply because there was a ‘complaint’ (I’d also be concerned if a creationist article was yanked with such ease—more speech, not less speech, is the answer to the idiocy of these yahoos). I hope New Scientist isn’t going to be catering to the whims of popular, uninformed nervous nellies. That kind of timidity is not appropriate to a journal that has ‘Scientist’ in its title.”

Could the New Scientist really be catering to creationist whims? Could it really have reacted to a few creationist complaints by pulling an article? Let’s be honest, this has to be seen as pretty unlikely. Anyone out there accusing them of cowardice or suggesting that the creationist hordes now hold sway over one of the world’s most respected science magazines (and people are suggesting this – just Google blog search “New Scientist creationism”, and look at posts like this) should probably stop and think for a moment. Perhaps the complaint was of a legal nature, in which case the magazine will have a policy of removing the piece while it is investigated. By a “complaint about the contents of this story”, the New Scientist won’t just mean that someone wrote in and said they disagree because creationism is actually right. In all likelihood the “complaint” will have had legal implications that will have had to have been addressed by removing the article, at least temporarily. It’s what any publication would have to do.

Anyhow, if the New Scientist is so scared of creationists, why is it currently carrying this article on the Turkish magazine controversy?

Update: The message at the article’s URL has actually changed now to:

“New Scientist has received a legal complaint about the contents of this story. At the advice of our lawyer it has temporarily been removed while we investigate. Apologies for any inconvenience.”

As I said earlier - less a case of caving in to creationism, more a case of sensibly heeding legal advice.

I have often found in a person professing atheism or militant secularism actually a burning desire in the person to deny, for lack of a better term, a judge. To deny the judge, to not be deemed as “wrong” or “evil” for something the person almost certainly did as a young man or woman. Margaret Hoover, delightful looking RINO that she is, said that women don’t want their actions of driving a fork in the fetus’ developing skull to be seen as wrong, sarcastically, I would add “What kind of self-righteous person would think sticking a fork in a baby’s head is wrong? Can’t we all just get along without the whole “judging” thing” but I digress.

In short, a non-believer is usually someone who has done great harm to someone else and is simply trying to avoid the judge.

In fairness, approx. 1-2 % of non-believers are actually just that, they don’t believe.

The problem with most of the attacks on creationism by science magazines is that they are often just ad hominem attacks against religious people and attacks on religion. Stick to science, not politics. That meanst that if you want to explain the science of evolution or what's scientifically wrong with a creationist argument, that's fine. If you want to attack creationists or religion, please publish your article in a political magazine. Need I point out that ad hominmen attacks are listed in the late Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit. And these articles always miss the whole point of intelligent design when they ask if it can be falsified. Intelligent design is, itself, an attempt to falsify natural evolution by looking for evidence that life isn't natural.

Let me put it this way, how would one falsify evolution and, if you can't, then is it really science any more than Intelligent design is?

The original post painted far too broad a brush and attempted to immunize science fans against philosophy and rational thought, not just eccentric and dubious interpretations of the natural world.

Not sure what to make of New Scientist. They run really sloppy articles whenever sexual morality is involved. And sexual liberationists always win.

They even botched an article on incest, in which they pushed for repeal of anti-cousin incest laws. They claimed all scientific evidence was on their side, but only argued based on genetic evidence, not mentioning the sociological findings about the destructive clannishness of cousin-marrying peoples.

And of course they are deaf to appeals to non-utilitarian ethics, such as the claim one should try to extend affinity to others through marriage.

New Scientist writers generally don't realize their philosophical commitments have nothing to do with science.

The reason the book was pulled is that it has a hidden religious agenda ~ look carefully at the statement: ".....5. Referring to natural selection as "blind", "random" or an "undirected process" ..."

Now that you've had a good look imagine the pro-evolution biologist up in front of his class arguing that "evolution is not a directed process ~ it's not like natural selection is going to go one way or another ~ it's simply going to select for characteristics that best fit the needs of the species in that environment at that time".

Voila, you'd had New Scientist deluged with protests from everyone in the world who has to teach evolution.

Ergo, the hidden religious motive of the writer of the book ~ to destroy New Scientist for publishing articles favorable to evolution.

Boy oh boy is that ol'gal gonna' get it!

If a perfect replicator was found, one that with perfect fidelity copied and corrected its genome, such that there was no increase in genetic variation as time and population increased; then evolution would be falsified.

So far all living systems are imperfect replicators, and new genetic variations arise as a result.

If selective pressure had no ability to shape the allelic frequency of a population, then evolution through natural selection would be falsified.

So far all populations subjected to selective pressure have changed in allelic frequency in response to this pressure such that heat stress selects for heat resistance, cold stress selects for cold resistance, antibiotics select for antibiotic resistance, etc, etc.

Evolution is a highly falsifiable theory.

So far all data collected has supported the theory.

To most people that is pretty good evidence; one reason why both the current and previous Popes have signed on to this theory being the most likely explanation for human origins.

Maybe. For the most part final proof of the core theorems in evolution awaits viable experiments such as those done to prove that Einstein's theory of gravity (that it was a property of space/time) more correctly described the universe than did Newton's theory that it was just another ordinary force.

It's like the best that can be done at this time is to create more thought experiments (which are not formal proofs), and chip around the edges of the exceedingly complex cellular systems.

One thing that could be done to resolve the conflicts is to do what was done with the poor old atom ~ just give up on the idea that there's a single overriding principle involved and accept that there are multiple forces and particles at play, many that we can't see or sense, and take it from there.

Did you realize we just the other day had reported to us that the TOP QUARK had been found! Took about 200+ years to get around to that one.

There are scientists who continued to "do science" without ever having seen the proof of the conjecture. At the same time I don't believe anyone has found a "magnetic monopole" ~ and proof of that item used to be considered "crucile to a full understanding of physics". Guess it isn't.

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