Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Here’s an eight-minute Real Time bit in which Bill Maher goes after the media for blowing up the campus protests out of proportion. To counteract this trend, Maher proposes five rules for proper journalistic coverage of the news.
One such rule is that the media should stay away from quoting the “angriest people on social media with too much time on their hands.” Tell me about it!
At the end of the bit, Maher answers the question, “What do we do if he wins?” (The “he” is obvious.)
I’m on the road today (or rather, on the rail), so enjoy this video of John Oliver on the latest issue of “Last Week Tonight.” Oliver, the true heir of Jon Stewart, demonstrates with his characteristic excitability why real journalism is dying.
And we know that’s true—at least in the United States, for many journalistic “aggregator” outlets don’t charge for access, relying either (like PuffHo), on writing slaves who get nothing but publicity for their contributions (or so I was told when HuffPo tried to exploit me), or on ad revenue. Either way, the market for serious, decently-paid journalists is dying, and when it’s gone, we’ll have clickbait and endless Kardashiana as our daily fare. The New York Times will be the last credible paper in America.
But I fulminate; let John Oliver say it in a much funnier (and more informative) way:
Curiously, this video was highlighted at PuffHo, which apparently didn’t even look at the first minute of Oliver’s rant, which includes this bit made into a screenshot:
h/t: Barry
by Greg Mayer
Update: The Tribeca Film Festival has pulled the film, apparently in response to widespread criticism. Details at Jezebel. Thanks to reader horrabin for the alert.
Jerry has taken note of the upcoming showing at the Tribeca Film Festival of a ‘documentary’ by the disgraced and de-licensed British physician Andrew Wakefield.(And Orac has rather full coverage of the matter at Respectful Insolence.) Though the prominent woo-coddling is disheartening, there is a bright point amidst the darkness: the refreshingly straightforward coverage by the New York Times. Reporters Melena Ryzik and Pam Belluck do not engage in the wishy-washy journalism of ‘controversy’, but tell it like it is.
They open their piece by calling the film’s anti-vaccination thesis “widely debunked”, describe Wakefield as a “discredited former doctor”, note that his 1988 study on the subject was retracted, which led to the revocation of his license for “ethical violations and failure to disclose financial conflicts of interest”, and further note that the festival website takes no notice of this essential context.
They also quote critics of the decision to screen the film. Some highlights:
“Unless the Tribeca Film Festival plans to definitively unmask Andrew Wakefield, it will be yet another disheartening chapter where a scientific fraud continues to occupy a spotlight and overshadows the damage he has left behind in the important story of vaccine safety and success,” Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said in an email. …
[Documentarian Penny Lane said] including “Vaxxed” in the documentary section “threatens the credibility of not just the other filmmakers in your doc slate, but the field in general…. this film is not some sort of disinterested investigation into the ‘vaccines cause autism’ hoax; this film is directed by the person who perpetuated the hoax.” …
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical School, called the decision to show the film “particularly sad” because the Tribeca festival receives attention far beyond New York.
I am delighted to see a major news source write the plain truth, and not resort to the ‘he said-she said’ format, which leaves readers at best confused, and often misinformed. As we’ve noted before here at WEIT, too often journalists, in a misguided search for ‘balance’, give voice to thoroughly discredited ideas. But sometimes, there is only one side to the story– vaccines don’t cause autism; the global climate is warming; and evolution is true.
This news had now become public courtesy of the Guardian, so I guess I can announce it here. On the day I arrived in Oxford (Saturday), Richard suffered a minor stroke at his home, which caused some temporary paralysis on one side but left his cognitive functions and speech intact. It was mild and caught early, so he’s expected to make a full recovery. Several of us have heard from him via an audio message, and although he sounds a bit tired, you wouldn’t know from his voice that anything was amiss. He’s at home and being well taken care of by Lalla.
Needless to say, he’ll have to cancel his appearance as moderator of my Darwin Day talk tonight (my old friend Steve Jones will be filling in), as well as the other Darwin Day talk in Nottingham and his upcoming tours of Australia and New Zealand. Join me in wishing him well. If you’re going to have a stroke, this is about the mildest form you can have, and I’m delighted that the prognosis is for a full recovery.
by Grania
This is an accidental Master Class in how to win at Twitter. As Dire Straits said “That’s the way you do it“.
This is a real news story from Germany that Boing Boing decided to be funny about and swap around the words in the headline, for reasons of extra clickitude. (That’s a word. Now.)
So then this happened.
If you are still staring at this post with a furrowed brow and blank expression, or maybe an frustrated expression, it’s all full of Terminator references. Hasta la vista, baby.
Here’s a video in which Fox newsman Shephard Smith beefs about attending a White House lunch and getting an insulting placecard:
As Reverb Press notes after reporting the outrage of conservative news outlets:
The question isn’t whether dropping ‘news’ from the placecards of Fox anchors is ‘childish’ or ‘petty’. The question is: Why are bozos like Shepard Smith and Bret Baier even invited to a White House press luncheon?
And you remember this from Obama’s State of the Union address?
The gloves are clear off for Obama—or so I hope. Not that this will eliminate the Congressional gridlock during the next two years: given the majority of Republicans in both houses of Congress, there’s little hope of that. Republicans will continue to produce untenable legislation against civil rights, abortion, and national health care, and Obama will continue to veto it.
I’m all for democracy, but it isn’t getting much done in the U.S. Blame the Republicans and their hatred of the President, a hatred so deep that they can’t even compromise with Democrats.
Reader Amy sent me the list of this newspaper’s top stories of the year. As you may remember, Muncie, Indiana was where Ball State University (BSU) canned Eric Hedin’s “science” course on Intelligent Design (ID), a victory in the battle against creationism. That story was covered extensively by the Muncie Star-Press and got national attention, not to mention riling up the Discovery Institute when President Gora of BSU unequivocally declared that ID would not be taught at BSU.
Here, then, are the paper’s top stories:
What kind of paper would judge the opening of a Panda Express more important than a serious clash over science right next door?
A lame paper, that’s what.
The Discovery Institute, on the other hand, has ranked the Ball State affair as #4 in their “top 10 evolution stories of 2010”. I’m not going to give the link, since I’m tired of giving them traffic, but you can find them at The Sensuous Curmudgeon‘s post. The Curmudgeon is covering the DI’s entire “top 10” list, which is largely a tale of how they’ve failed push their agenda. Combining that with the failure of Texas creationists to get their views represented in public-school biology textbooks, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History’s removal of a donor’s plaque calling animals “God’s creatures,” I’d say it’s been a good year for evolutionary biology.
If you want a lift, reread President Gora’s short statement on the intellectual worthlessness of Intelligent Design, which contains this statement:
Teaching intelligent design as a scientific theory is not a matter of academic freedom – it is an issue of academic integrity. As I noted, the scientific community has overwhelmingly rejected intelligent design as a scientific theory. Therefore, it does not represent the best standards of the discipline as determined by the scholars of those disciplines. Said simply, to allow intelligent design to be presented to science students as a valid scientific theory would violate the academic integrity of the course as it would fail to accurately represent the consensus of science scholars.