Science and Sophistry

On December 20, a federal judge ruled that the school board of Dover, Pennsylvania, violated the Constitution by requiring that its biology curriculum mention the concept of “Intelligent Design” as an alternative to the theory of evolution. (See this Associated Press report http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051220.)

Sound science cuts close to the heart of Green Goddess Gazette. You can’t discuss environmental or gender issues without bumping up against the natural and social sciences. And for the analysis to be meaningful, one has to be able to discriminate between science and sophistry – junk science, if you will.

That ability is especially important for members of the news media, on whom we rely to understand current events. So it was that last spring, a media magazine assigned me to examine mainstream press coverage of the controversy over teaching evolution in public schools. Unfortunately, before we went to press, another magazine came out with its own story on the topic, with similar findings. Being scooped is an unfortunate fact of life in journalism, but since my piece has its own distinctions, I’m publishing it here for those who don’t read media trade magazines, and anyone interested in education and the role of science in society.

“Evolution vs. Creationism”: Leading Press Ape a Specious Debate

In the November/December 2004 issue of Extra!, the journal of the media watchdog group FAIR, Jules and Maxwell Boykoff described how mainstream press coverage of the political controversy over global climate change generally failed to make clear that the vast majority of scientific opinion holds that global warming is “a serious problem that must be addressed immediately.” A major reason for the omission was the journalistic tenet of balance, which “allowed a small group of global warming skeptics to have their views greatly amplified.”

Over the past year, major media reports on local debates over whether and how schools teach the theory of evolution also showed this tendency.

Here, the overwhelming scientific consensus on evolution, the process of genetic changes within populations over time, was pitted against the views of a microscopic cluster of academics who advance Intelligent Design (ID), the belief that life is so complex a creator must have guided its development. This journalistic even-handedness served to do what advocates of creationism want schools to do: treat evolution and ID as two equally valid explanations for life’s origins.

Moreover, it helped support the notion that Darwin’s theory is controversial, if not downright shaky. It isn’t. According to the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences, evolution “is one of the strongest and most useful scientific theories we have.” Indeed, much of modern science, including genetics, would be impossible without it. “What is occurring in the science community are discussions and debates about the mechanisms of evolution. Not if it’s occurred, but how it’s occurred,” said Dr. Jay Labov, NAS’s senior advisor for education and communication. Though large percentages of Americans tell pollsters they believe in ID or other creationist explanations for life, no scientific proof of its validity has yet been discovered or published in peer-reviewed journals.

Finally, the zero-sum format compared the proverbial apples and oranges. With global warming, both “sides” at least argue empirical evidence. Here, religion and/or community sentiment was placed on par with science.

An Evolving Story
This study focused on news stories about teaching evolution in schools that appeared between November 2004 and May 2005 in the same “elite media” examined by the Boykoffs (the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, and Wall Street Journal), plus the evening news shows of the three major networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS). Editorials, op-eds, and other commentary were excluded. During this period, three pivotal events provided news hooks:

*In November 2004, six parents and the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in U.S. District Court against the Cobb County (Georgia) School District, seeking to remove stickers placed on biology textbooks in 2002 that stated evolution was “a theory, not a fact.” The case sought to determine whether the stickers violated the constitutional separation of church and state. (The teaching of Biblical “creationism” has been outlawed since the Supreme Court’s 1987 Edwards v. Aguilard ruling.) On January 13, 2005, the judge order the stickers removed.

* In October 2004, the school board of rural Dover, Pennsylvania (where state standards require the teaching of evolution) took the unprecedented step of requiring teachers to read a statement saying evolution “is not a fact” and encouraging students to consider ID. In mid-December, the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, on behalf of a dozen parents, filed suit to revoke the rule. (It will go to trial later this year.)

* During the first week of May 2005, the Kansas State Board of Education literally put evolution on trial, holding several days of hearings on proposal to change state science standards to allow discussion of supernatural explanations such as ID in biology class. Mainstream scientists boycotted the event.

I revisited coverage of the evolution/ID debate in the same media during August 2005, after President Bush told inquiring reporters that “both sides should be properly taught…so people can understand what the debate is about.” Also around this time, the State of Kansas Board of Education voted to revise its science standards to allow for more criticism of evolution.

During the first period studied, there were about 30 stories or segments on the state-specific events or the larger controversy they embody in the media mentioned above. These varied from short (e.g., two one-sentence blurbs on Cobb County in the Wall Street Journal) to lengthy and/or prominent features of well over 1,000 words, including two out of three page-one stories in the Washington Post, and two editions of Nightline). Coverage was immediate in the case of the Georgia and Kansas events; the Pennsylvania controversy was not picked up by these media until a lawsuit was filed.

During the second period, I examined 13 stories and segments, culminating in a front-page investigative series in the New York Times that devoted nearly 9,000 words to the bogus battle, not including captions and charts (8/21/05-8/23/05). Of the outlets studied, all but the Wall Street Journal and CBS evening news produced news stories on or hooked to Bush’s “teach both sides” comment and/or the Kansas update.

Dueling Over Darwin
Several patterns emerged. Reporting on the schools situation and related events emphasized conflict, framing the issue as a battle in the larger red state/blue state “culture war” and/or as part of a great modern debate. Thus, “he said/she said” was the predominant format, alternating arguments about whether or not to open science classrooms to criticism of evolution— with plenty of room allotted to badmouthing on both sides. In Georgia, announced NBC’s Don Teague (11/12/04), it was “evolutionism vs. creationism, biology vs. the Bible, and what students in the public schools should be studying.” There one could “watch the forces of fundamentalism and modern science square off” (L.A. Times, 11/9/04) as “red parents versus blue parents” engaged in “the final death struggle between two basic human philosophies, fundamentalism vs. modernism” (CBS, 11/22/04). Journeying to Dover, Pennsylvania, ABC’s Nightline (1/13/05) gave equal time to those who do and don’t believe in creationism, portraying both as overheated ideologues. Ted Koppel declared, “Evolution, creationism, intelligent design, these are not… issues that lend themselves easily to reasoned debate,” after which correspondent John Donvan observed that “Depending on which side they're on, [residents] come to believe that anyone who disagrees with their views is either ignorant or quite possibly evil.” Neela Banerjee’s 1/16/05 New York Times article, “An Alternative to Evolution Splits a Pennsylvania Town” had a similar focus.

Language bolstered the adversarial framework used. The sides were described as ”critics” and “advocates”; “opponents” and proponents” or “pro-” or “anti-evolution” as if evolution were a policy.

The idea that the theory of evolution is debatable was portrayed almost as a given: For example, many stories quoted the false charge that evolutionary theory is itself “an act of faith” (Washington Post 5/6/04), a “disputed science,” (New York Times 11/9/04) filled with holes. Stories often mistakenly described ID as an “alternative” to evolution and/or referred to it as a “theory.” (Rather than a hypothesis, a theory is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world,” according to the NAS’s 1999 “Science and Creationism” report.). A 110-word L.A. Times dispatch on 11/11/04 was devoted solely to a group of about 30 unidentified scientists who “filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Atlanta declaring that there was a ‘growing scientific controversy’ regarding the modern theory of evolution.” Such complaints corrected by the reporter only in passing.

Seeming to bolster doubts about evolution, and perhaps give a patina of scientific method to the reporting itself, many stories cited surveys showing Americans’ views about life’s origins, as if their validity could be decided by consensus. CBS’s report, for example, presented the results of a CBS/New York Times poll: “God created humans, 55 percent; Humans evolved, 40 percent.” It also noted that 65 percent agreed that “schools should teach both creationism and evolution.”

The Missing Link
While science education is being used as a culture-war cudgel, granting equal time to two supposed adversaries made it difficult to sift fact from opinion (or opinion research). In fact, evolution’s naysayers were, for the most part, never truly balanced by its supporters because the actual scientific consensus around evolution and its vital role in modern biology, geology, and physics rarely got a fair hearing.

That may be because the very experts one would expect to be quoted on the “pro-Darwin side” of the alleged debate— mainstream scientists — were rarely cited. Instead, the primary participants were lay people and the same few marginal scholars of ID (most affiliated with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, a think tank that “supports research…challenging various aspects of neo-Darwinian theory”). School board members, lawyers, teachers, parents, and civil-rights advocates duked it out with students, pastors, judges, persons-on-the-street, and the executive director the National Center for Science Education (whose website states its goal as “… [keeping] evolution in the science classroom and ‘scientific creationisms’ out”)

Where were the “21st-century scientists” who, “while school boards are revisiting the 19th-century debate over whether evolution even happens… are beginning to show exactly how the natural phenomenon works” ? (US News, 3/28/05). Such sources were interviewed by these same news outlets for unrelated stories about scientific breakthroughs that bolstered evolutionary theory. (As when researchers announced they had unlocked human genetic secrets from chimp DNA –New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post, 9/1/05.) At the least, reporters could have consulted readily available information from scientific organizations. For example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has an online library of “evolution resources” that address creationism and ID.

Both Sides Now
The articles and TV segments appearing in the second part of the study continued to emphasize controversy and culture wars and give scientific consensus short shrift. If anything, they sometimes devoted proportionately more inches and airtime to ID and its supporters. Information about evolution’s validity was still presented as opinion, couched in quotes from (usually nonscientist) supporters.

Stories on Bush’s comments and its response in the New York Times, L.A. Times, and Washington Post (8/3/05) exemplified these traits. All repeatedly (and inaccurately) referred to ID as a “theory” and an “alternative” to evolution. All renewed the “great debate” concept: “Bush Remarks Roil Debate Over Teaching of Evolution” (New York Times), “Inspiration for Doubters of Darwin” (L.A. Times), “Bush Remarks On 'Intelligent Design' Theory Fuel Debate” (Washington Post). None quoted scientists nor noted that evolutionary theory has overwhelming support of the scientific community. Each did include a statement that ID is not actually science, but the comment came in the form of spin control from Bush science advisor John H. Marburger III. (Exception: the Post, which cited “much of the scientific establishment.”)

The L.A. Times’ article on the Bush comments actually gave more room to describing creationist views and their arguments in favor of teaching ID. The New York Times’ and Washington Post’s pieces were perfectly evenhanded, as summarized by the Times: “The president's conservative Christian supporters and the leading institute advancing intelligent design embraced Mr. Bush's comments, while scientists and advocates of the separation of church and state disparaged them.” However, that story included no rebuttal to a comment by the Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer that “so many scientists are experiencing recriminations for breaking with Darwinist orthodoxy.''

Similar omissions were found in short items updating the Kansas situation. Both the L.A. Times and NBC evening news defined ID but not evolution, and focused only on the culture-war angle. As NBC’s Brian Williams stated, “The 6-to-4 vote last night was a victory for conservative Christian forces promoting something called ‘Intelligent Design.’ It's a movement that contends that some elements of our natural world can best be explained by an intelligent creator.”
ABC devoted an evening news segment (8/11/05) and another edition of Nightline (8/10/05) to the teaching of evolution, hooked to Kansas and the Bush remarks. The 8/11 broadcast was almost ludicrous. It opened with “A recent poll found 45 percent of Americans believe human beings were created by God about 10,000 years ago. So, what about the animals that long ago became extinct?” It then took viewers to Minnesota’s creationist Museum of Earth History, whose goal was described as “put[ting] dinosaurs and other scientific discoveries in the context of Noah and the great flood...” ABC included a brief rebuttal by Alan Leshner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, but the voiceover emphasized creationism’s ascendancy: “This notion that religious views of creation are as valid as scientific ones [is] gaining popularity. President Bush recently endorsed intelligent design…” concluding, “increasingly, science is on the defensive.”

The night before, Nightline, in an admirable departure, addressed the issue by surveying ten scientists nationwide about evolution and ID. Chris Bury reported, “…the verdict was unanimous. All ten department chairs insisted that no scientific evidence supports the concept of intelligent design.” Nevertheless, the program gave ID equal time, albeit in the form of a semi-expose of the Discovery Institute, followed by an evolution vs. ID debate between two nonscientists: conservative commentators George F. Will and Cal Thomas. (Host Ted Koppel led off noting he’d “promised…we wouldn't be debating the science and we won't.”)

The New York Times’ series, misleadingly titled “A Debate Over Darwin,” merits special attention. Nothing if not thorough, the series overall helped expose the religious agenda and funding of ID advocates, distinguish between science and religion, and explain and bolster the scientific validity of evolution. However, giving such a large platform to fringe scientific positions and an “apples and oranges” debate granted them unwarranted legitimacy.

In Part I (8/21), for example, writer Jodi Wilgoren stated briefly that evolution is not controversial. The story proceeded to unmask the Discovery Institute and its fellows, whose “successes follow a path laid in a 1999…manifesto known as the Wedge Document, which sought 'nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies’ in favor of a 'broadly theistic understanding of nature.’” It then elaborated on ID’s “politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive.” In so doing, the article offered plenty of free publicity for ID but little scientific rebuttal (oddly, it called the National Center for Science Education “the leading defender of evolution”).

Part III, by Cornelia Dean (8/23), perpetuated the idea that evolution needs a defense. (The lead paragraph asks, “Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?”) The article then quoted scientists about their religious views, addressing creationists’ contention that evolution is atheistic. While the article did clarify that (whew!) belief in God and evolution are not incompatible, that reality is beside the point when it comes to what to teach in science class.

Part II (8/22) was the strongest of the three. The even-handed 3,000-plus-word story, by Kenneth Chang, engaged all of the arguments put forth by ID advocates, point by point. But to its credit, it made “mainstream scientists’” position clear by quoting them and their work. And unlike so much of the other coverage, it pointed out that “Darwin's theory “has over the last century yielded so many solid findings that no mainstream biologist today doubts its basic tenets, though they may argue about particulars,” noting that “The discovery of DNA, the sequencing of the human genome, the pinpointing of genetic diseases and the discovery that a continuum of life from a single cell to a human brain can be detected in DNA are all a result of evolutionary theory.”

A Better Approach
Well-articulated scientific arguments like these were marshaled in these outlets during the period studied – in sometimes blistering editorials and op-eds (of which there were often a greater number than news stories about the same topics).

One exception was an enterprising page F-1 news story by Cornelia Dean (“Evolution Takes a Back Seat In U.S. Classes,” New York Times, 2/1/05). Reporting that “even when evolution is in the curriculum it may not be in the classroom” because teachers fear the disapproval of principals or “protests from fundamentalists,” she made evolution’s rigor and importance clear: “There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that all living things evolved from common ancestors, that evolution on earth has been going on for billions of years and that evolution can be and has been tested and confirmed by the methods of science.” Dean also cited relevant polls, such as those showing that American’s ambivalence about evolution is not shared by those in other industrialized countries. A Time magazine cover story (“The Evolution Wars,” 8/15/05) and feature (“Stealth Attack on Evolution,” 1/31/05) also came closer to the mark, making clear the weight of evidence for evolution –and revealing the ideology behind ID.

Framing…or Frame-Up?
A balanced framework may seem logical or fair when news hooks involve lawsuits and, in the case of Kansas, public hearings. Indeed, outlets in this study frequently alluded to the 1925 Scopes “monkey” trial, in which a Tennessee teacher was convicted for teaching evolution. Similarly, the President’s diplomatic comments to “properly teach” “both sides” might logically lead to reporters doing just that in their stories.

But contrasting testimony by sources from two incongruous realms lets the creationist tail wag the news-media dog, according to former AAAS president Dr. Francisco Ayala “The proponents of ID want to play by the rules of politics or of the courts. Then the fairness of the media tries to follow those rules,” said Ayala, a professor of biological sciences who specializes in genetics and evolution at the University of California - Irvine. Indeed, bringing religion in to the classroom was presented by both its advocates and the press as a matter of fairness and support for diversity. NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell, for example, asked “Is there room for more than evolution in the classroom?” ((2/18/05).

Also, because the issue involves constitutional separation of church and state, the he said/she said battle frame advances the idea that evolutionary theory and religious faith are mutually exclusive— especially when placed in a headline (“Science vs. Religion,” ABC 5/9/05). To its credit, the New York Times 8/23 story finally helped debunk that misapprehension.

Dissecting Coverage
Why were evolution’s nonscientist naysayers allotted so much ink and airtime? Considering what polls show, it may reflect a desire to cater to “red state” readers and viewers whose political power is formidable – as these stories often acknowledged. (Indeed, an 8/31/05 article in the New York Times trumpeted the fact that 64 percent of Americans surveyed now say they are “open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution.”) Also, the scientific consensus on evolution and ID may have been glossed over to avoid the perception of liberal bias (though as far as we know, cells are apolitical).

The details of evolutionary science and its history are difficult to explain in a paragraph or sound bite. And, as noted in the Washington Post (5/5/05) “science organizations concede that the anti-evolution forces have a catchier message.” It’s likely that because these news stories were most often assigned to staff writers, political correspondents, or generalists rather than science reporters, they hewed more to the classic style of reportage.

Whatever the reason, news coverage of evolution has and continues to confuse rather than enlighten. When the subject is treated with so much respect in the daily press, it's no wonder so many people believe in supernatural origins.