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In 2006, Nature covered PZ Myers’s Pharyngula as one of the “top five science blogs.” What were they thinking?

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Casey Luskin

Perhaps they weren’t thinking how other evolutionists might react. The fact that the Sage of Morris, Minnesota scored in Technorati’s top 3500 doesn’t tell us much about who reads his blog or why, and that’s now Nature made the decision. And you have to pay to read about it.

Over at Evolution News & Views (June 28, 2011), Casey Luskin advises that many fellow Darwinists are not amused by P. Z. Myers’ antics. (The one that comes immediately to some minds just now is the circus around producer Mark Mathis booting him from a screening of Expelled, but that’s probably an accident of timing.) Anyway,

In fact, the rhetorical strategies of Professor Myers and his colleagues are so uncivil that they have earned criticism from mainstream academics and writers who are otherwise pro-evolution.
In 2009, an article titled “Blogging Evolution” was published in the pro-evolution journal Evolution Education and Outreach by Adam M. Goldstein, a scholar in the Department of Philosophy at Iona College. Goldstein reviews Myers’ popular blog Pharyngula, noting that “Myers’ antipathy for creationists often takes a personal turn,” commonly resulting in PZ “insulting” his opponents. Goldstein continues:

I do not mean to claim or imply that Myers provides no useful information about evolutionary science. Having said this, I do want to claim that the blogs listed in the “Amateurs” category above are a better source for information about science.
(Adam M. Goldstein, “Blogging Evolution,” Evolution Education and Outreach, DOI 10.1007/s12052-009-0149-9, July 2009.)

What’s that? A credible academic reviewing evolution blogs in a leading evolution-educational journal just said that “amateur” blogs are a “better source of information about science” than P.Z. Myers’ renowned Pharyngula.
– from “How P.Z. Myers’ “Incendiary Rhetoric” and “Class-War Claptrap” Shocks His Fellow Evolutionists (Prelude to a Rebuttal)”

And Chris Mooney doesn’t “Like” PZ’s style either … .

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