He seems to have started noticing recently when astrology was touted at the Guardian and the Globe and Mail:
In the past couple of days we’ve seen the Guardian tout astrology twice, and now the Globe and Mail. What I’d forgotten is that the New York Times has also been doing it occasionally—certainly more often than the Paper of Record should. For evidence, see Greg Mayer’s survey last year of the NYT’s treatment of astrology. As Greg said:
I did a search at the Times’ website for “astrology”, and the results were intriguing, verging on appalling. The first 9 results were all supportive of astrology; and all had appeared since since July 2017. Many treated astrology as a “he said, she said” affair, which is bad enough, but often the astrology critic was a token. If a respected news outlet treated climate change, evolution, or gravity this way, we’d all be rightly outraged. (This search did not catch the latest astrology article on which Jerry posted; I’m not sure why.) The 10th astrology result was from 2011, an article about a race horse named Astrology.
I haven’t updated his search, but today’s podcast/article will add at least another tick on the “supportive” side. It’s a 33 minute podcast discussion between NYT columnist and writer Kara Swisher and “famed” astrologer Chani Nicholas, who’s just developed a $15/month horoscope app that’s going to make her wealthy.
Jerry Coyne, “Astrology at the New York Times” at Why Evolution Is True
What Coyne doesn’t seem to understand is that Darwinism helped this process along. By making science a subset of naturalist atheism, Darwinians also enabled capture by other causes, maybe more popular ones. Just a thought.
See also: (earlier) Darwinian biologist worries that the Guardian now touts astrology. Darwinism is pretty much as silly as astrology but it basks in the golden glow of “science.” It must be true if it is endorsed by science institutions and all that. Okay, whatever.