2014

University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne twice emailed the academic who invited Dr. William Dembski to speak at a UC seminar on August 13, comparing Dr. Dembski to a Holocaust denier: “Would you invite a Holocaust denier to speak to a history department? For this is exactly what you are doing by inviting Dembski… And yes, seeing lies purveyed as truth, and creationists paraded out as if they were academically respectable researchers, is painful to me, and in similar ways that Holocaust denialists are painful to Jews like me.” The quotation above is a conflation of Jerry Coyne’s remarks in two separate emails, but as readers of Coyne’s latest post on the seminar can readily verify for themselves, it accurately Read More ›

A few days ago, The Week published a pro-evolution article with the paradoxical title, “Why you should stop believing in evolution” by Keith Blanchard, a former editor-in-chief of Maxim magazine who is now the chief digital officer of the World Science Festival. Evolution, argued Blanchard, isn’t something we believe in, but something we simply grasp: “You either understand it or you don’t.” Blanchard then proceeded to demonstrate that he doesn’t understand the very theory he advocates: his article is riddled with scientific errors and non sequiturs. I’m not the first person to criticize Blanchard’s article on scientific grounds. That honor belongs to Glenn Branch, Deputy Director of the National Center for Science Education, whose article, Five Quibbles for Blanchard was Read More ›