AP Story on Myers is Just Right
There’s an Associated Press story hitting the papers about the “Expelled” producers excluding PZ Myers from a screening of a film he appears in and is thanked in the credits for.
It’s a filler-size article, just right for one of those human-interest columns many newspapers put together. It is written at about an sixth-grade reading level. It doesn’t have room for details and doesn’t give those. The first sentence is the capsule summary:
P.Z. Myers was interviewed in a movie. He’s even thanked in the credits. He just wasn’t allowed to actually watch it.
The word “hypocrisy” does not appear in it, but anybody reading the article can reach that conclusion pretty readily.
This is exactly the message that should be getting out. Did you hear what those producers of “Expelled” did? That was unfair.
Damn, this is horrible! According to Chris Mooney, this is playing into their hands, and helping Ben Stein. You know that the majority of Americans lack “critical thinking faculties” and will be unable to tell that they were being unfair to PZ, and so drive up attendance at the Churches that end up showing this movie.
Yes, that was sarcasm, except for the Mooney part, which is just sad.
There was a fellow on Mooney’s blog who commented on something I wrote that this wasn’t about what I was comfortable with, but with what works.
The amusing thing is that I think I’m pretty well acquainted with the names of most people who have had any significant thing to say in relation to evolution versus creation issues, and I’d never seen this fellow’s name before. If completely doing nothing is so great, I’ve been going at this in entirely the wrong fashion.
Chris Mooney said that Myers should not be reporting what happened? Link please, or reference: I’d like to read that.
Mooney’s blog post has the stuff you want.
JuliaL – Here’s the URL.
http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2008/03/this_controversy_helps_ben_ste.php
The thing about controversy is that if someone wants it, they can have it. If you keep quiet as church mice, the’ll just say look at how scared the Darwinists are, they have nothing to say. There’s little danger of that happening though. They (‘Darwinists’) are very easy to get a rise out of. Look at how even the most inane creo-troll gets a massive response over on Panda’s Thumb. Whether it sells more tickets than it turns potential viewers off remains to be seen.
Of course there’s going to be a built in group who’ll want to see it for reasons having nothing to do with science. And there’s a reason they have kept people like Dawkins and Myers in the film, because they’re the scary atheist types who helpfully confirm to the propogandists that accepting science (evolution) leads to loss, or at least the marginalization, of faith.
“There was a fellow on Mooney’s blog who commented on something I wrote that this wasn’t about what I was comfortable with, but with what works.”
*cringes*
That would be me. Sorry.
Oddly enough, I ended up saying something similar to Chris Mooney:
“Just because you feel like you’ve said it all doesn’t mean that you really have. Talking about ‘feelings’ and ‘comfort’ is a red flag to me, (which is why I put my foot in my mouth before Dr. Elsberry, which didn’t work out too well.). Now, Nisbet has been uncomfortably light on data. Show us the figures. Show us the studies. Cite the journal articles, especially for the sake of those of us at universities who can actually access them.”
I had thought Mooney’s idea about not calling attention to denialists was one of those uncomfortable, counterintuitive ideas that sometimes actually works, and I got a bit carried away.