Following up on a couple of posts back in which I trumpeted Gary Trudeau's inclusion in Doonesbury strip an apocryphal story about Grand Canyon park rangers and the age of the geological wonder they are entrusted with explaining to the public: We were duped. Skeptic magazine's Michael Shermer offers an apology, which I will borrow.
Unfortunately, in our eagerness to find additional examples of the inappropriate intrusion of religion in American public life (as if we actually needed more), we accepted this claim by PEER without calling the National Park Service (NPS) or the Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) to check it. As a testimony to the quality of our readers, however, dozens immediately phoned both NPS and GCNP, only to discover that the claim is absolutely false. Callers were told that the Grand Canyon is millions of years old, that no one is being pressured from Bush administration appointees -- or by anyone else -- to withhold scientific information...
The part about the creationist book on the shelves of the park gift store is true, and annoying. But I will endeavor not to propagate such easily discernible falsehood in the future.
The next day's Doonesbury strip, in which we are treated to a parody of the "teach the controversy" silliness, is much better.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Gary Trudeau sticks it to the creationists in today's Doonesbury. The topic of the day is the sad fact that the U.S. National Parks Service sells in its Grand Canyon gift shop a book that offers a Biblical chronology for the world's creation, a fact that makes it very hard to explain how the canyon…
You might not know this, but, due to pressure from Republicans beholden to batshit lunatic creationists theological conservatives, park rangers at the Grand Canyon are not allowed to discuss how old the Grand Canyon is. Really. I'm not making this up. From PEER:
Grand Canyon National Park is…
Few would dispute that the internet is a communication medium of awesome (in the old sense of the word) proportions. Many would recognize the internet's tendency to function as a massive echo chamber. Interesting stories are picked up and relayed from point to point, and blog to blog, at breakneck…
After Garry Trudeau swallowed the apocryphal story about Grand Canyon park rangers' inability to tell the truth about the age of their charge, one would do well to be skeptical about any future strips based on alleged true stories. Fortunately, yesterday's color Doonesbury is on safer ground. It…
PEER has issued another press release, but it doesn't seem to address their earlier allegations.
http://parkrangerx.blogspot.com/2007/01/tell-peer-enough-is-enough.html
This is not the first time that Gary Trudeau has been duped by a false claim and repeated the claim in his strip, which is then widely cited as fact. In 2001 Doonesbury featured a report about an institute that ranked presidential IQs. Bush was ranked lowest at 91, half of Clinton's IQ of 182. But the report by the 'Lovenstein Institute' was a hoax.
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/lovenstein.html
http://www.actuabd.com/article.php3?id_article=24