Friday, June 27, 2008

 

Genius


As you've probably heard, Gov. Bobby ("What Me Worry?") Jindal has signed the Bogalusa Bill into law. Then there was what, at first sight, appeared to be strange reaction by the Discovery Institute:

West said critics misunderstand the bill, which he said is not about creationism or intelligent design. Rather, he said, it's about clarifying that teachers are free to expose their students to the debates that Darwinian scientists have among themselves.

Instead, too many public school students get a "watered-down" discussion of evolutionary theory or nothing at all from teachers, and administrators are too concerned with not angering parents.

That sounds downright reasonable! ... Which is the cue to start searching for the rat! And John Timmer at Ars Technica may hove found just the place to start looking. Noting that the law permits use of "supplementary materials," Timmer continues:

Discovery, conveniently, has made just such a supplemental text available. As we noted in our earlier analysis, Discovery hopes to use these bills as a way to push its own textbook into the classroom. Having now read the text of the book, it is clear that our earlier analysis was correct; the book badly misrepresents the scientific community's understanding of evolution in order to suggest that the basics of the theory are questioned by biologists. In doing so, it ignores many of the specific questions about evolution that are actively debated by scientists.

So the idea appears to be that the DI will pretend to be speaking for "Darwinists" and have the ersatz version declare their own theory unworkable. In other words, if you can't beat 'em, dress up in their clothes and make believe they are being beaten.

Another great plan from the Acme Public Relations Company and School of Science.
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