Greg Laden's Blog

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When did Wells become a Biologist? It is hard to believe that anyone who wrote or Edited "Icons of Evolution", is a Biologist? Smithsonian Institution has also done this before, hasn't it. A political reason, not an Educational one.

Posted by: Clifford M Dubery | October 6, 2009 3:35 PM

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How did the Smithsonian Institute get involved in the sham?

The Smithsonian is only indirectly involved, apparently the California Science Center has some link with them. I assume that the CSC rents out its facilities in the same manner as the Smithsonian did several years ago when an ID film got show at its DC facility, and same manner as the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History last month. I.e. they are renting space for cash, and do not sponsor or approve the content.

Posted by: Virgil Samms | October 6, 2009 3:51 PM

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The Smithsonian is not sponsoring the event, but the Cal Science Center is its designated affiliate - and there aren't hundreds of those.

The film is Darwin's Dilemma and I trust that people will see it before they make unsubstantiated claims about it, or the people in it. There are clips, and an FAQ and other information at www.darwinsdilemma.org.

Posted by: Robert | October 6, 2009 6:20 PM

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As far a the claim of wrongful censorship goes, even if it could be shown that the reason the film screening was canceled had to do with the government and private partnership of the CSC finding something objectionable in the film, the courts have said that contemporary community standards can be used to determine the value of a work thereby leaving the option of censorship open. Meaning, I think that if the prevailing community standards find a work to be without serious scientific value, it can be censored. This means that in this case, they will have a lot of proving to do to get this claim through the courts. They would have to prove not only that it was indeed censorship and wrongful censorship at that, but that ID has scientific value, that its science has widespread community support. They would in other words need to show that ID has a redeeming social value. That's a tough one to take to court, to say the least. Right now, prevailing scientific and social communities still see ID as having "utterly" no value.

Not that you can't find scientists and some kind of community who support ID, it's just that the prevailing attitudes toward ID aren't all that positive.

Claiming wrongful censorship is a slippery slope, somehow I don't think the claim in this case will have legs in the courts. Maybe a claim of attempted censorship would work, still I don't know that there's a legal precedent for something like that. Anyone know?

Also, "The California Science Center is a public-private partnership between the State of California and the not-for-profit California Science Center Foundation" (quote from the CSC website), so there is no Smithsonian component to the partnership.

Here's a pretty good legal definition of censorship:

"Censorship: the cyclical suppression, banning, expurgation, or editing by an individual, institution, group or government that enforce or influence its decision against members of the public -- of any written or pictorial materials which that individual, institution, group or government deems obscene and "utterly" without redeeming social value," as determined by "contemporary community standards."
--Chuck Stone, Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina

Posted by: Alan Kelley | October 15, 2009 2:52 AM