Thoughts in a Haystack

Here is Don McLeroy on "stasis" and "sudden appearance" in the fossil record during his "impassioned plea" to keep his amendment to the Texas science standards, which read: "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record":

It's so scientific. It's not complicated. It doesn't take mathematics. I disagree with these experts. Someone has to stand up to experts ...

Of course, what McLeroy is doing -- tearing a factoid out of context and ignoring the explanations of the very expert he caged it from -- is the very opposite of science or of good scholarship. It is called "cherry-picking" (not to mention "quote mining") and is a quick path to failure in any rigorous course of study.

Unfortunately, that doesn't include politics.
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