New Scientist flips the bird at scientists, again

We’ve been through this before. When New Scientist ran their misleading “Darwin was wrong” cover, we hammered at them and pointed out that they were doing us no favors — they were giving ammunition to creationists who would never read the contents, but would wave that cover at school board meetings. And they did. We chastised the editor, Roger Highfield, and we had the impression that he was penitent, but it turns out we were completely wrong.

New Scientist is now using that same cover again in their promotional material to flog magazines. Yes, that is their business, to sell magazines…but this represents a declaration that they think their market is the ignorant creationist segment of wanna-be pretend scientists. That’s a real shame.

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Jerry Coyne calls for a boycott. I have to agree. If they don’t want fans of real science to read their magazine, then we won’t. I also won’t hesitate to tell young people interested in science that they shouldn’t waste their time with New Scientist — pick up Seed instead, or even Discover, if you’re a bit déclassé. But sorry, NS is joining the Weekly World News as yet another rag pandering to the gullible.

Come on, New Scientist

This is ridiculous. New Scientist abruptly yanked an article from their web site because they “received a complaint about the contents of the story.” Hmmm. Makes a fellow really want to see what horror was wreaked in the censored item: Pornography? Personal defamation? Embarrassing revelation? Alas, it’s nothing quite so juicy. You can find a copy of the pulled article (isn’t it sweet how the web makes it almost impossible to actually make history disappear?): it’s all about how to spot a religious agenda in so-called science books that the creationists like to peddle — basic stuff like code words, such as “Darwinist” or “materialism”, or the usual spacey interpretations of quantum physics, or the habit of believing that an argument from consequences has any relevance to the truth of a matter.

It mentions some specific examples, such as James Le Fanu, Denyse O’Leary, and Expelled, but these are all perfectly good and accurate instances of religiously-motivated products. Did one of them complain?

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.

Watchmen

We made the 45 mile drive to distant Alexandria to see Watchmen this afternoon. On the way there, I learned that neither Skatje nor Collin had ever even tried to read the graphic novel, so I almost slammed on the brakes and turned around to make them sit down and read it before I’d take them — but my own fanboi nature prevented me from putting off the movie any longer, so I took them anyway. The kids have been sternly instructed now that we’re home that they’re required to read it. Good thing I kept going, too — it was excellent. Where Ironman was last summer’s exhilarating carnival ride of a superhero movie, this one is the grim and intellectual anti-superhero movie of this year. Ten tentacles up!

It is true that the movie did remove the giant space squid from the ending, but — and this is rather heretical for me to say — this ending was better, and made the story even stronger. I was imp…

Wait, what’s that noise?

There’s mad-eyed bearded man pounding on my window! It’s…it’s…Alan Moore! How did he know what I was writing? I haven’t even posted it yet!

He’s broken in! He’s com…NOOOOOOOOOOO! <SQEEEEEEE> -fzzztzzzt- <crackle> *click*

[Read more…]

This might be the start of a Monty Python sketch

They even titled the announcement “And now for something completely different…”. I’m going to be doing a new monthly science column for the Guardian, so once again, I have blithely stacked another deadline on top of the groaning pile already on my desk. This should be fun, though, and one must constantly be building beachheads on other continents if one hopes to take over the world. Besides, I’ve also been promoted to “leading American evolutionary biologist”, which will surprise leading American evolutionary biologist everywhere, but which will look wonderfully pretentious on my CV.

It’s also going to be a weekly column — we’ll be cycling a stable of science writers, including Simon Singh, Chris French, and Andy Miah, to keep up some regular science content on the Guardian, and you have to applaud the effort of the paper to do that, especially when science coverage seems to be weakening everywhere else.

I’m already whipping up a little something for my inaugural column. It’s got snails in it. I hope it’s not too continental for the British.

The greatest break-up story ever told

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Long timers here may recall that I mentioned this cool video by Nina Paley called Sita Sings the Blues several years ago. At that time, all that was available were some short but very pretty clips.

Good news! Sita Sings the Blues is done, and available on the web. It’s Saturday evening — go ahead, set aside an hour and a half to watch it. How often do you run across Hindu myths animated and set to the 1920’s jazz?

Speaking of Hindu myths, have you ever read any of their creation stories? Here’s one version:

Before time began there was no heaven, no earth and no space between. A vast dark ocean washed upon the shores of nothingness and licked the edges of night. A giant cobra floated on the waters. Asleep within its endless coils lay the Lord Vishnu. He was watched over by the mighty serpent. Everything was so peaceful and silent that Vishnu slept undisturbed by dreams or motion.
From the depths a humming sound began to tremble, Om. It grew and spread, filling the emptiness and throbbing with energy. The night had ended. Vishnu awoke. As the dawn began to break, from Vishnu’s navel grew a magnificent lotus flower. In the middle of the blossom sat Vishnu’s servant, Brahma. He awaited the Lord’s command.

Vishnu spoke to his servant: ‘It is time to begin.’ Brahma bowed. Vishnu commanded: ‘Create the world.’

It’s silly and magical, but it’s also beautiful. We hear that awful tinny poetry of Genesis so often that I think it’s worth looking around at other cultures just to see how petty and third-rate the Western bible is. Not that I want anyone believing in Vishnu and the lotus growing out of his navel, but at least it’s much more lovely and imaginative than the repetitive nonsense we’re used to.

Blood in the water

The blogs have talked about Bobby Jindal’s credentials as an exorcist for some time, and now, finally, after Jindal’s comical performance on national TV the other night, the mainstream media is taking notice. His dalliance with exorcism gets a write-up in the NY Times, where one of the more depressing questions I’ve run across is asked.

“That’s incredible. But is it politically problematic?”

It’s discouraging that we even need to ask this. A potential presidential candidate believes that a woman grappling with cancer and depression might have been literally possessed by a demon, and that chanting magical incantations cast the demon out. This is absolutely insane stuff. But of course, in this country it’s the people who question such ludicrous claims who are regarded as ‘close-minded’ and ‘weird’.

Discouraging as the fact that that question can even be asked might be, even worse is the answer. “Probably not”.

Check the poll results at that link. 40% of Americans in the 21st century believe that the devil sometimes possesses people. We hoped for flying cars, and all we got was voodoo and speaking in tongues. I feel a little bit cheated.

At least we can hope that maybe newspapers and television will begin to eye these claims a bit more skeptically. But don’t count on it.

Chris Mooney says something sensible

I know! It’s shocking! But then I knew all along that he was smarter than his flirtation with the abhorrent insanity of Nisbetian framing would suggest. He has an article summarizing the George Will nonsense — where Will promoted outright falsehoods in support of his global warming denialism — and Mooney states something in his summary that I agree with entirely. Well, almost entirely.

In this sense, I view the George Will affair with sadness. Sure, I share in the temporary glee of the bloggers. But at the same time, I know there are many kinds of journalism, particularly about science, that bloggers will never replace. They’re extremely well-equipped to pounce and skewer a George Will column, but hardly well equipped to deliver an investigative or narrative feature story. We’re watching the media change before our eyes, the science media in particular–and no one can say, in light of episodes like the latest one involving George Will, that much of old media doesn’t in some sense “deserve” what’s happening to it now. Yet if our only sentiment is joy over the bloggers’ latest trophy, or outrage at the Post, we’re missing something deep indeed.

While I do think that there are many bloggers who can and do deliver good narratives, I think it is fair to say that his larger point is correct: there is an ecosystem of the media, and we each have our niches; blogging is not and should not be the sine qua non of information delivery, and newspapers (and TV and radio and podcasts and magazines and …) have their role to play. The lesson of the George Will episode — and of the last dozen years of politics — is that the news has failed because it hasn’t fulfilled that role. Newspapers are supposed to have more rigor and stricter fact-checking than blogs; they are supposed to bravely dig deeper than the average citizen into the major issues of the day. They don’t. There certainly is no glee in that sad fact, but I think some joy is deserved that somehow and somewhere the failure of the news media is finally getting some exposure.

Let’s hope that someday that means clowns like George Will can get fired for incompetence, and that newspapers like the Washington Post will make changes to enforce accountability. It doesn’t now, of course, which is another reason to temper our happiness.