Noted without comment

I spent years working at newspapers. The final nail...one day at a staff meeting, the subject of John Edward (the spook guy)somehow came up. One of my fellow editors remarked, "He's remarkable...scientists can't figure out how he does it."
And NO ONE objected.
NO ONE.
...Except for yours truly, who stood up, dissected Mr. Edward for ten, going on thirty minutes, and resigned.
The credulous editor, by the way, was later promoted, and is now a big shot at one of the country's largest papers.

Oh, Lord...

She doesn't have to be a credulous tool to be a serious threat to the discourse; all you have to do is read the coverage of Kerry and Gore.

Her personal views are irrelevant, she did not bother to research her subject. It Fits right in with the NYT - the perfect "he said, She said" journalist with no regard for depth or truth.

http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/07/12/why-the-discussion-to…

Allen McNeill's little creationist friend Hannah wants to talk about Behe's "ideas" but her dumb little classmates want to talk about Behe's dissembling instead.

Boo hoo hoo hoo!!!!!

if you want to decide someone lied and attack their supposed views you have a clear playing field in which to do it in- but none of what you say will have any relevance to the argument they actually made. The only way to deal with ideas is to give the benefit of the doubt on motives and address the arguments that were made- not their supposed intended implications.

Boo hoo hoo hoo!! Hannah "accidentally" forgot that Behe's ideas are half-boiled, barely comprehensible, and have been discredited by every honest scientist who's wasted his/her time attempting to decipher them.

She wants her classmates -- none of whom have Ph.D.s in biochemistry -- to rebut the great Behe's "arguments" or shut their mouths. Poor deluded Hannah.

Deputy Metro Editor, eh? I wonder if she'll be too busy "understanding and explaining my subjects' views fairly and thoroughly" to ponder her own views on how the subway system was formed. Gosh, it's hard work, thinking and stuff, whereas we secretaries/writers have ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD to blog and comment on creationism and evolution. Yeah.

It's yet another example of failing upwards for the ruling class in America. As if we needed ANOTHER example of that. Can we just declare meritocracy to be dead so I can move to Canada?

I wasn't sure what to make of the quoted text at first. It's actually good that she would not burden her readers with her "personal views" on geological formations, and that she is aware that she has not given sufficient thought to the matter to have any view worth the effort of expressing. The problem is that she sees her entire job as reporting other people's ignorance as faithfully as possible. If this takes up all her energy, leaving her none left for actual fact checking, then that's a problem.

She appears to be unaware that the explanation of why some canyons look a certain way is not a "personal view" but the focus of disciplined empirical study. Merely citing all possible views equally is not an act of responsible journalism unless the headline is something like "Ignorance of basic geology abounds among non-geologists" in which case her approach might suffice.

Correct. It's not a problem that she consciously excludes her personal views from her reporting -- that's a good thing, if I believed it. The problem is that she doesn't see any part for herself in actually investigating claims to see if they are valid. It's sufficient to report everyone's opinions all around, and she's done.

That was my complaint with the Grand Canyon article that I criticized, and that prompted her response: there was no consideration of the evidence for, for instance, the age of the canyon. One group believes it is young, the other that it is old, (shrug), that's the story.

Or more succinctly, she seems unable to distinguish between "personal views" and reality. One would have thought this would be considered a severe deficiency in a journalist- fact checking USED to be considered an important element of that profession.

That was my complaint with the Grand Canyon article that I criticized, and that prompted her response: there was no consideration of the evidence for, for instance, the age of the canyon. One group believes it is young, the other that it is old, (shrug), that's the story.

The real story is that the folks who think the canyon is 6000 years old and who recites lies to promote their bogus beliefs have the scrotums of many Congressional Republicans clenched in their fists.

And that's why science literacy is in the garbage dump in this country and why our government treats scientists and their work like crap.

I would argue that this sort of relativism is at the heart of most of the issues that piss off the readers of this blog. Not only is it the bullshit that creationists and like scum fall back on, but it's taught in our colleges as well. People arn't learning the difference between respect-people relativism, and there-are-simply-things-that-are-facts relativism. Talking about "understanding and explaining peoples' views" makes everyone feel mushy and nod in agreement. Before science can triumph over supersition, this mode of thinking needs to be fixed.

jeffk:

Not only is it the bullshit that creationists and like scum fall back on, but it's taught in our colleges as well.

Traditionally, it's been conservatives accusing liberals of this kind of feel-good subjectivism. I'm not sure what happened, but lately most of the magical thinking seems to be on the right: "I want to pay less tax: therefore I believe we're on the wrong side of the Laffer curve." "I want to use as much fossil fuel as I like: therefore I believe that atmospheric carbon has no effect on climate." "I don't want to be related to a chimp: therefore I believe that evolution is a big hoax."

This is of course wishful thinking on my part, but I'd like it is high time for liberals to take back the mantle of empiricism--a hallmark of Enlightenment thinking--and leave self-serving subjectivism to the rightwing.

My sentiments exactly, PaulC. But that also means jettisoning some woo-woo lefties ("You belive in DNA?") as well--and high time. We have to be prepared not to strive for the biggest tent, as Dembski and his Disco Boys are doing on their side.

Correct. It's not a problem that she consciously excludes her personal views from her reporting -- that's a good thing, if I believed it.

If she doesn't know what her personal views are, she can't possibly consciously exclude them.

Bias isn't necessarily bad, unless you deny that you have one and it leaks out for everyone else to see. If it's obvious that you can't be objective about your own attitudes -- that is, recognize that you have them, analyze them, decide whether they work or they need to change in view of reality -- then how can you (she, actually) claim to be an "objective reporter" of others' situations?

That's a pretty good promotion. Straight from Stenographer to Deputy Editor!

My two cents on the last few comments: all of this "Talking about "understanding and explaining peoples' views" makes everyone feel mushy and nod in agreement." as jeffk put it smells more of laziness than relativism. How much easier to not have to do any research, or even come up with an original thought, when you can get the same number of column inches by just writing down what people tell you ... As I said stenographer to editor skipping right through the journalist part.

For the love of Jeebus will someone here please help Sal Cordova to the toilet?

Except for pros like Pim and Nick Matske, the creationist bashers appear to have been banned from the site:

http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/07/11/tonight-continued/

Sal writes

In fact there are examples in biology where complexity exists to such a level that makes the organism slightly less fit than simpler creatures (i.e. compare the extinction rate of birds to bacteria in the last 100 years).

and also

Question: What sort of scientific discovery will win the war for ID?

In explaining to a friend of mine about the theory of
evolution (I live in an exurb of Atlanta, Georgia) I was
explaining to him the difference between a "theory" and a
"hypothesis" and their usages in science. A hypothesis is the
term used when a scientific explanation is still laced with
uncertainty whereas a theory is the term used when a
comprehensive explanation is developed that explains the
observations and facts to reasonable certainty. This need for
distinguishing was apparent when Cobb County, Georgia (a
suburban county of Atlanta)was placing stickers in textbooks
stating that "evolution is only a theory" (later thrown out
by the federal courts). I think that it is also vitally
important to realize that there is a process known as the
Scientific Method, initiated by Galileo (and who was
sentenced to life imprisonment during the inquisition when
he proposed that the earth was not the center of the
universe) and to which evolution has been proven beyond
reasonable doubt (to use legalese) by the Scientific Method.

Any genuinely responsible journalist who deals anything
with scientific issues must be aware of this, but especially
journalists who work for the New York Times.

Wilgoren, balanced, not thinking, reporting the story in just the perfect he-said-she-said manner:

Two groups examining the same evidence.

OK, let me try:

One group examining the evidence, the other group ignoring it.

There, that was easy. Can I run the metro desk now?

So, Wilgoren was too busy doing what? Pretending to be unbiased?

On the same day that the piece in question appeared -- a sociological, feature piece, not a science article -- the following article was the lead story on Page One of the Times:

Experts Unlock Clues to Spread of 1918 Flu Virus

Oh, well, you won't mention that. But I will.

I realize it's tough to understand that journalism articles have different goals and purposes. As someone mentioned in the linked discussion, if people who read the Grand Canyon article were unwilling to listen to the scientists quoted therein, why would they bother to listen to a reporter telling them what to think?

Sorry, davidm, that's plain crap. There simply are not two sides- geology and divine creation- to the question of how the Grand Canyon was formed. To write ANY story, not just a science story, as though that were simply a good-faith disagreement is plain bad journalism. And not even bad in a sophisticated way; bad in the kind of basic fact checking that you get hired to do as an intern before you even become a reporter.

Kristine: I've long said that the only way to beat reactionaries is to be proscience, and pro-ethically respectable technology. (And pro the adjoining philosophy, of course.)

William O. Romine Jr. : There's also another, more rigorous use of "theory", which means a set of propositions closed under entailment. This is the use in mathematics, logic and many more advanced sciences.

Funds from Kiwanis International were supplied to Ukraine via UNICEF for iodization of salt (to prevent goiter and improve mental ability of youth). We analyzed samples of "iodized" salt from Uzhgorod at OSU and found to iodine. What happed to the money? Why do iodine?

There simply are not two sides- geology and divine creation- to the question of how the Grand Canyon was formed. To write ANY story, not just a science story, as though that were simply a good-faith disagreement is plain bad journalism.

People arn't learning the difference between respect-people relativism, and there-are-simply-things-that-are-facts relativism. Talking about "understanding and explaining peoples' views" makes everyone feel mushy and nod in agreement.

re-read everything from a report on this topic and koe that able to find on slezhuyuschikh sites:
opel
volvo
volkswagen
audi
BMW
sites a bit not on this subject but information is there. from the same sites got on this Blog