#37175: — 08/23  at  03:52 PM
davidm: "Burying the lede" is a journalists' term. The whole point of newspaper writing is that you get your article's conclusion right there at the beginning of the article. Why? Because journalists know that most people don't read more than the first paragraphs of a given story, don't read past the first story break, etc. How is it "elitist" to expect someone to follow the conventions of their profession?

If Mr. Chang really wanted to drive home the point that there's no real scientific controversy here, then why start the story the way he did? Why not start with what he leaves until the fifth paragraph? Why does he treat science's materialism as some sort of ideological quirk rather than the fundamental aspect that allows science to function?

I understand that this is a thankless sort of assignment and someone's gonna be upset with what he writes regardless, but this is just not a good article.

#37180: Dan S. — 08/23  at  04:20 PM
One story that could have been written was, as mentioned above, a tale of a handful of folks, well-funded by money from right-wing/religious donors, try to pull off an astonishing scam (perhaps even convincing themselves!) pushing complete pseudoscience designed to salve religious anxiety into our public school classrooms as part of a plan to overthrow materialistic science. In school boards from Pennsylvania to Kansas, low-level battles rage, while the President of the most powerful country in the world seems to cautiously endorse their scheme.

After all, all the facts *are* in those first two articles.. What they aren't is strung together in a coherent storyline. That's how most people *work,* after all - stories. That's how newspapers work. And what a story!

And isn't there some vague responsibility to our best version of the truth?

#37183: — 08/23  at  04:35 PM
davidm

"Nothing that the Times wrote on this subject would have made the slightest difference to people's beliefs."

Thus sayeth the great reader of minds, davidm!

But perhaps we should acknowledge that davidm is the world's leading expert on the subject of drivel that doesn't change people's minds.

#37187: decrepitoldfool — 08/23  at  04:47 PM

Not contemptuous of the public much, are we?

When speaking of "elitism," the charge of elitism ... lies in stuff like this: a total contempt for the intelligence of ordinary people. What you don't get is that The Times (ironically so often accused of elitism) does not share the contempt for the intelligence of the public that oozes up through this blog, and believes instead that most readers will be able to sort through the competing claims in the ID/evolution article in a reasonable manner.

Horsefeathers. It isn't contempt to recognize the way things are. Ask 100 people on the street to define "science." Be prepared for a depressing experience.

#37189: Buridan — 08/23  at  05:04 PM
Mr. Chang,

Do you think that maybe the Press has an obligation to be thorough in its coverage of this or any other "newsworthy" religious movement? I guess I'm a little bewildered with how selective the news media chooses to be given the topic at hand. Yes, someone certainly has a "...mistaken idea of what the news media should be doing."

When it comes to politicians, for instance, the news media appears quite capable of drudging up all sorts of background info, context, history, personal tidbits, hidden agendas, to name just a few newsworthy points of departure. Irresponsible corporations as well regularly come under fire and are given full treatment by the news media – newsworthy in these cases has a pretty narrow threshold. This also is true of certain "stealth" groups and individuals who attempt to hide unseemly affiliations with such things as white supremacy, cults, criminal organizations, terrorism, and so on – the rub here is that they often try to pass as something they are not and the news media is always vigilant in revealing such deceptions.

I think in the business you call it "investigative reporting." And with this type of reporting, the news media seems to do extremely well with exposing all sorts of relevant facts hidden from the average Joe – you know, those people to which your article was apparently targeted.

So my question to you is why do religious groups like the Discovery Institute and other ID/Creationist entities consistently receive a free pass when it comes to investigative reporting? Or did you simply forget to investigate?

The religious agendas and affiliations behind this movement have been well known for quite some time, but you and other journalists seem to have an uncanny knack for soft-peddling this information. Why is that? Where's the hard hitting journalism when it comes to touchy subjects like religious belief? Or perhaps you just find such details irrelevant because the Discovery Institute and other ID proponents wouldn’t like that angle of their movement to be widely known… among your target audience, that is.

Mr. Chang, I don't think anyone here is really asking you to advocate for science or any other set of ideas in contrast to religion, but what I think we are asking is that you and some of your colleagues just do your job and pay closer – critical – attention to what you're investigating, which doesn't seem to be much of a problem in virtually every other newsworthy arena.

I don't know, have I misunderstood what the news media should be doing?

#37199: — 08/23  at  07:08 PM
With this article DI achieved its purpose, for now. Which is to be taken seriously, politically and pseudo-scientifically. The NYT article unfortunately treated them with a seriousness they do not deserve. The British press handles all such issues much better than the US press, no matter the subject. The US press is terrified of calling black black if there's somebody out there who thinks black is white.

ID is garbage. Don't hold your breath waiting for the NYT ever to admit that truth in its "hard" news pages.

#37201: Bill Tozier — 08/23  at  07:17 PM
There is a substantial but absolutely vital cultural difference between the "sides" in this debate (ID, science) has not been clarified: Scientists want people to know how the world actually works; ID people want to be in the New York Times.

#37205: Bryson Brown — 08/23  at  07:29 PM
Kenneth: Though I hesitate to blame you personally for the approach you've taken to these articles, I have to say that I have a real problem with it. Evolution, like some other poltical hot potatoes, is a topic about which a substantial number of people are prepared to declare that black is white.

This is something your article could have made quite clear. On one hand, ID is an entirely empty hypothesis. To illustrate this, you could easily have cited a number of ID 'theorists' who explicitly declare that they propose no particular account of the supposed designer, his/her purposes or methods. Without such hypotheses, there is nothing to investigate, since ID implies nothing whatsoever about life. On the other hand, the supposed 'gaps' ID supporters ascribe to evolutionary theory are often based on distortions and outright lies. They have been replied to, in detail (see Talkorigins.org and Pandasthumb.org for a start). And these replies have not been addressed by ID proponents, who seem to be far too busy pressing their political program to actually defend their views. The only scientific point of view that continues to successfully investigate the origins and development of life is evolutionary biology.

I agree that the political successes of ID make it news. But a more perceptive approach to the task of reporting on it would ask questions like, 'Why is a so-called 'theory' that has no implications we could investigate, that is uniformly rejected by scientists working in the field, that has given rise to no actual research and has at best one or two refereed scientific papers of very dubious merit to its credit, being made part of the school science curriculum in many places in the United States?' Your 'he said-she said' approach does nothing to indicate ID's complete lack of scientific credibility. As a result, it leaves it far too easy for your audience to come away with just the impression the ID movement wishes: Some scientists don't like ID, but ID 'theorists' sound like intellectually respectable people. Why should I believe those elitist scientists, when I'd rather believe what the ID types are telling us: The designer's fingerprints (God's, that is) are plain for all but the arrogant and narrow minded to see?

I don't think you or your editors would consider treating holocaust denial this gently. But it wouldn't be any less intellectually defensible to do so. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but I think it's a very serious matter. It's a dangerous thing for a democracy, when things some people would like to believe get 'kid-glove' treatment in the press even when the evidence is entirely against them.

#37207: Pinko Punko — 08/23  at  07:35 PM
Here the prob, Ken, you say "But mainstream scientists say that the claims of intelligent design run counter to a century of research supporting the explanatory and predictive power of Darwinian evolution, and that the design approach suffers from fundamental problems that place it outside the realm of science."

They don't just say it- it is TRUE, but you make the entire argument merely words in scientists mouths, making the whole thing sound "he said-she said"- that is the whole problem. When you write about gravity, you don't need to cover yourself with "scientists say this or that about gravity" you can say "this is a fact about gravity". That is my main problem with your discussion, but I thank you very much for posting to this discussion.

#37208: Pinko Punko — 08/23  at  07:47 PM
Oh, one more thing, Bryson (just above) has it spot on- the kid's gloves were clearly on in this article and ID is no more defensible than Holocaust Denial- and we saw earlier this year CSPAN attempt to have a "he said-she said" (although I think we need a gender neutral term to describe a difference of opinion)- oh yeah a "difference of opinion" style presentation of a book on Holocaust Denial. We do seem to have the media deteriorating in Crossfire, and as such, intellectual bankruptcy.

#37209: — 08/23  at  07:48 PM
Kenneth said: "Rather, the intended audience is the many, many people who have passingly heard of Kansas, intelligent design, Christian, something or other, but don't know what I.D. is or even care much about science in general."

I'm not sure who this audience is, especially since the president made his comments on teaching ID. I would think that regular readers of the NYT would be familiar with the controversy (assuming they don't just check scores and stock prices). I would also think that regular internet news surfers would be familiar with the controversy. I would also think that people who regularly send each other news by email have seen stories on ID before.

So it seems that this article was intended for people who do not know/care much about the ID controversy and who don't regularly read the NYT, surf the internet or receive news emails, but who happened to be doing so this week. Or maybe the article is intended for people who regularly do these things, but who usually ignore science articles and didn't this week.

Maybe I'm totally off base here, but that seems like a very specific audience to write for. Is my first paragraph wrong?

#37210: coturnix — 08/23  at  07:51 PM
A friend today suggested this:

As there are about 250 IDC "scientists" and about 250,000 (evolutionary) biologists, the true 'balance' of the article would be to have one sentence about ID and 1000 sentences about evolution in every article discussing this topic.

#37211: — 08/23  at  07:52 PM
"To illustrate this, you could easily have cited a number of ID 'theorists' who explicitly declare that they propose no particular account of the supposed designer, his/her purposes or methods. Without such hypotheses, there is nothing to investigate, since ID implies nothing whatsoever about life."

I'm afraid that I don't agree with this. It's part of the cleverness of ID that they don't say anything about the nature of the "designer". They just allege that there's something about the product - life - that suggests that it was intelligently designed. They are proposing a starting point, not a conclusion.

I've been mentioning ID to people I know, people who are intelligent and educated, and they have a real problem with ID. Since they can't disprove the Math themselves, and since it's not overtly a religious proposal, they are left with the nagging feeling that perhaps there "is something there".

People are being presented with what seems like a new choice. Back when it was Creation versus Evolution, they had no trouble dismissing Creationism as a religious claim. But when someone claims to extract a particular kind of unlikeliness by apparently objective study of probabilities, it sounds to a lay-person like one secular position versus another.

And yes, I am aware that it's mostly a false front of Math hiding a religious agenda, but claiming to say nothing about a Creator is about the smartest thing these folks could have done.

#37215: — 08/23  at  08:06 PM
You may note, Mr. Chang, that there some irritated folks around here. But we're not playing games with facts. We're not spinning you. We are not avoiding the issue and accusing you of "ad hominems" and making "a priori assumptions".

But try writing an article which focuses solely on the incontrovertible failings of "intelligent design" as a scientific theory and the complete lack of positive scientific contributions after 150 years of creationist whining. Emphasize the Discovery Institutes' procedures and their misrepresentations.

Then go visit a creationist website and tally up the number of debunked lies and myths that are recited in response. And tally up the number of times the term "liberal media" is chucked in your face.

Here we know enough to laugh at such pathetic claims. In the land of creationist nutcases, such claims are an essential part of their script.

If you don't believe me, please investigate the situation and tell me what you find out.

If you do believe me, then get off your lazy ass and start writing about these creationist assholes.

#37217: — 08/23  at  08:19 PM
Jon

"It's part of the cleverness of ID that they don't say anything about the nature of the "designer". They just allege that there's something about the product - life - that suggests that it was intelligently designed. They are proposing a starting point, not a conclusion."

Except that it's a smoke screen that is cleared in about two seconds when you point out that the designers were either incredibly advanced space aliens who were capable of manipulating chemicals (and travel through space) in a way that human beings haven't yet been able to figure out, or the designers were "Gods".

The first possibility is 100% pure bullshit subscribed to by ZERO sincere biologists that I am aware of. The second possibility is religious and falls outside the realm of testability.

So "life must have been designed" is no more clever than "black people are dirty." It's just 100% bullshit or 100% mythology that appeals to ignorant suckers who will swallow whatever they're fed, as long as they don't have to worry about being laughed out of the office.

And articles like Mr. Chang's help to ensure that those suckers won't be laughed out of the office.

That's what has to change in this country. Not so much elsewhere in the civilized world. But in the United States.

Creationists = idiots.

Intelligent design peddlers = idiots.

Holocaust deniers = idiots.

Sasquatch hunters = idiots.

People who think that John Kerry shot himself in Vietnam = idiot.

People who think that Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet = idiot.

People who claim that Vince Foster was murdered by the Clintons = idiot.

No harm done here.

#37239: — 08/23  at  10:43 PM
I am one of those referred by Mr Kenneth Chang who apparently don´t know what a newspaper article is for. My objection to his article is that it fails to convey clearly that observed facts suggest the existence of a process we call evolution, and that we cannot explain those facts except by evolution.

The article talks about some kind of dispute and seems to suggest that one part - some powerful cabal called the scientists - is more right than the other. That, in my opinion, is not only less than enough but it may even harm the case of science in the mind of the public.

PZ´s point and mine is that if a reader finishes reading the article and still feels that there is a dispute, the case of evolution loses and the case of the confusion wins. But of course I dont know what a NYT article should be for.

#37254: — 08/24  at  04:01 AM
"Not contemptuous of the public much, are we?"

davidm, I'm a journalist and we're told to assume the reader won't get past the first paragraph, let alone the ninth. It's nothing to do with contempt, but rather humility. You can't take your reader's continued interest for granted.

#37277: Roger — 08/24  at  10:10 AM
Personally, I think the article in the NYT showed imbalance in a curious way: it discussed evolutionary theory in terms of the how, when and what of biology; but it refraimed from even asking those questions of ID. How, for instance, is it possible to intelligently design Behe's exemplary blood clotting -- was it inserted in some simian body? How -- with what tools? When -- at what point? Where -- did it happen in a space station in Africa? The problem, here, is simple: if you are going to treat intelligent design as a scientific theory, then you need a mechanism. None was even mentioned in the article -- and I don't believe the reporter even asked for any.

Parallel to this is the hands off treatment to examples we know of intelligent design. As a matter of fact, the parts of a mousetrap were not developed whole -- the spring was borrowed from somewhere else, the arms developed out of the way in which iron filaments were forged for other purposes, etc. In fact, it is hard to think of any design that doesn't, in some ways, evolve. Which of course links to mechanism -- was the designer getting better on blood clotting? In the end, the more you press on the scientific questions that ID claims to answer, the more it collapses -- even its metaphors are incoherent. But the reporter failed to do even elementary diligence on these questions, making it seem, once again, as though the concept of intelligent design is self evident.

#37292: donna — 08/24  at  11:32 AM
I would rather read a PZ Meyers article in the Times than yet another explanation of where Kansas is and what ID is. Maybe a newspaper's job should be to educate and inform, as well as covering controversy?

People who haven't heard of Kansas? Geez.

Just a thought.

#37337: — 08/24  at  02:41 PM
"Except that it's a smoke screen that is cleared in about two seconds when you point out that the designers were either incredibly advanced space aliens who were capable of manipulating chemicals (and travel through space) in a way that human beings haven't yet been able to figure out, or the designers were 'Gods'."

Again, I disagree. You can propose that a designer is required while remaining agnostic on the designer's nature. You can claim that you do have evidence for design, but no information about the putative designer.

It's like a nineteenth century physicist saying that he does not know what gravity "is", but the orbits of the planets argue for the existence of such a force.

What I'm trying to get at here is that ID is attacking science at a real weak point. Creationism was easy to argue against because it was overtly religious, and most lay people saw it as an extension of aggressive right-wing fundamentalism, so those who were not themselves fundamentalists found it easy to dismiss.

The catch is that - mostly - they dismissed it as religion, not because they had carefully analysed its invalidity. So they ended up as supporters of evolution, not because they understand evolution, but because they had dismissed the religious alternative.

The genius of ID is that it deprives people of this easy religious argument. In a sense, ID has taken the most common non-religious attack on evolution - the argument from incredulity - and dressed it up in what look like respectable mathematics.

Now science has a tougher job. Instead of contrasting religion with science, it has to help lay people to distinguish between what on the surface look like two technical positions.

How to do this? I would suggest two ways not to do it. It does not help to beat up on the NYT for not uncovering the religion behind ID, since that just makes science look defensive, as well as smelling like an ad hominem. And I would suggest that trying to get everyone educated in Biology is infeasible.

As I mentioned before, Physicists can argue that relativity must be valid, otherwise your GPS would be inaccurate, so what does Biology do?

Come up with a good argument for lay people, and I'd be very surprised if the NYT doesn't print it.

#37341: — 08/24  at  02:50 PM
Jon

"You can claim that you do have evidence for design, but no information about the putative designer."

Um, no you can't claim that. At least, not honestly.

Please think about it a bit further. There are TWO options and only two options. I've listed them in my post.

Even Dumbski has admitted as much.

#37342: — 08/24  at  02:54 PM
"It does not help to beat up on the NYT for not uncovering the religion behind ID, since that just makes science look defensive, as well as smelling like an ad hominem."

Telling the truth does not make science look defensive.

It's the creationist peddlers who will CLAIM that science is arguing ad hominem. But they are liars -- remember?

Do not swallow creationist talking points. Do not accept the framing of the issue that is favored by the creationist peddlers.

This is lesson number one. Top of the list.

#37344: — 08/24  at  03:05 PM
"Telling the truth does not make science look defensive.

It's the creationist peddlers who will CLAIM that science is arguing ad hominem. But they are liars -- remember?"

Scientific debates get resolved all the time without people calling one another liars.

There are two ways to convey to the public that creationists are liars.

One is to show that what they say is invalid, and then, if they repeat it, comment that they are knowingly saying something you have shown is wrong.

The second is to say that they are creationists and therefore liars.

The first is not ad hominem, and the second is. Insisting that the NYT should uncover the religious affiliation of ID is to ask the NYT to assist us in composing an ad hominem attack.

That's weak. It's also very confusing when people start to ask if every single thing a creationist says is a lie, and if not, how do they tell the lies from the truth?

What possible objection could there be to a rebuttal to ID that does not involve throwing accusations of dishonesty around?

#37364: — 08/24  at  05:40 PM
"Scientific debates get resolved all the time without people calling one another liars."

Sure they do. But this isn't a scientific debate.

Again, you are spinning around like a top in the creationist frame, Jon.

"Insisting that the NYT should uncover the religious affiliation of ID is to ask the NYT to assist us in composing an ad hominem attack."

Nice strawman, bro'. Was that really what I suggested? No, it wasn't. Don't put words in my mouth.

What is it with some pro-science types who simply cannot say "Thank you" when someone points out how they have accepted the creationist's terms of debate?

"One is to show that what they say is invalid, and then, if they repeat it, comment that they are knowingly saying something you have shown is wrong."

Um, that first part is where you will run into trouble with the rubes, my friend.

Look, just about EVERYTHING these fuckers say about evolutionary biology and intelligent design is invalid and THEY KNOW IT.

That is the conclusion. That is the thesis statement. We live in 2005 for chrissakes. Any discussions about these assholes that concern scientific facts is a sideshow and one that only benefits the creationists and the scientifically illiterate rubes who eat their conspiracy stories up.

ATTACK THEM. That is the order of the day.

What the fuck are you waiting for?

Trackback: Scientists or Creationists - On the Correct Order of Presentation Tracked on: Abnormal Interests (64.81.36.251) at 2005 08 22 22:07:28
Much has already been said about Kenneth Chang's unfortunate article, "In Explaining Life's Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash" in today's New York Times . This free publicity for Intelligent Design creationism makes Jodi Wilgoren's piece in yesterday's Times look like...