A Never-ending Battle

I just got a message on the 'defend science' e-mail list. It mentions a new movie of which I hadn't previously heard that seemingly has the potential to do a lot of damage. I'm not going to write any of my own commentary in part because this is the first that I've heard of it and I don't have any information besides what's in this e-mail, though of course my gut feeling is unsurprisingly going in the usual directions. There was some font substitution in this e-mail and I'm just doing a copy and paste, so I apologize for that in advance. (It should not hurt the readability of the text, and I really don't feel like copy-editing the whole thing.) Anyway, here is the text of the letter:


Defend Science Letter to Signatories

The Movie \"Expelled: No Intelligence
Allowed\" - a big attack on science

The Ben Stein movie/documentary \"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed\" is
scheduled for release on April 18th. The movie casts Stein (former Nixon
speech-writer with a minor acting career) as an ~Santi-establishment rebel~T
facing off against ~SBig Science~T. It is a crude attack on evolution,
insidiously framed as defending the ~SFreedom of Speech~T of scientists who
dare to go up against the scientific establishment. P.Z. Myers, evolutionary
biologist and author of the science blog Pharyngula, was recently expelled
from a screening of the film (although his guest, Richard Dawkins, was not!)
Myers, who was interviewed by the producers under false pretenses and appears
in the film, immediately exposed the hypocrisy of the films producers who
ejected a critical voice from the screening of a film purporting to be about
freedom of speech. (See his blog
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php). This, and other
exposures of the film~Rs attack on evolution, created a firest
orm in the blogosphere and brought the film some much needed criticism
(check out the links below which give a general idea of the discussion). Here
we aren~Rt going to repeat material well-covered elsewhere. In this email we
want to address some of the specific strategies of the film.

The film is not aimed at winning over scientists or friends of science. It
doesn~Rt attempt to make a rational case for the truth of intelligent design
(which can~Rt be made in any case, but it doesn~Rt really try). The movie
instead openly poses religion in opposition to evolution, and panders to the
prejudices of its intended Christian fundamentalist audience. It poses the
little guy vs. ~SBig Science~T; ~Sfaith-based common sense~T vs. the
complexities of reality; and Americanism and freedom of speech vs. the way
science has really developed and what science has learned about the world. If
you apply the logic Stein applies to evolution to another field, for example
astronomy, what is really going on becomes clear to anyone. The logic is
equivalent to saying that if the field of astronomy insists on professional
standards and demands that astronomers all acknowledge that the earth goes
around the sun, then this is an assault on freedom of speech ~V what about
those who want to be a
stronomers and insist that the earth is the center of the universe?

In this framework, it also makes an insidious political linkage. Stein wrote
a piece on the Expelled blog in October: \"Darwinism, perhaps mixed with
Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it
countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other
groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.\" Using
innuendo, images of Nazi death camps, and even filming at the memorial to the
victims at the Dachau concentration camp, the film ~Sestablishes~T the horror
of ~SDarwinism~T.

As for ~SBig Science~T, the film utilizes what everyone knows - that
corporate interests and governments often subvert science to serve immediate
narrow objectives - and twists this to unfold a slander campaign against
~SBig Science~T, in a way that equates science itself with ~Sbig
government~T, ~Sbig brother~T, etc. The claim is made that ~Smany
scientists~T face persecution for suggesting that intelligent design is
evident in such things as DNA and the genetic code. Isolated examples
(already thoroughly discredited, as the film-makers must have known) are
seized and twisted to paint a picture of the horrible dictatorship of ~SBig
Science~T. The battle is framed as a struggle of the little scientists who
question orthodoxy against ~SBig Science~T. In this way, such things as peer
review, professional standards, and - most fundamentally - the process by
which science, and scientists, sort through data to reach new understanding
of the world, and then test that understanding, are all put in the camp of oppressive ~SBig Science~T.

The same company that did the campaign for Mel Gibson~Rs ~SThe Passion of the
Christ~T promotes \"Expelled\". They have used the tactic of screening the
film for creationist-minded people (tapping into church networks, getting
favorable reviews from people like James Dobson of ~SFocus on the Family~T)
to try to create a big audience for the film when it is initially released.
To some degree this tactic appears to have backfired (negative publicity,
exposure of lying and deceit in production methods, and hypocrisy on the
freedom of speech issue raised by expelling P.Z. Myers), and it is not clear
exactly how the producers will respond (so far they have lied about the P.Z.
Myers expulsion and cancelled scheduled preview showings throughout the
country).

There is great duplicity here that needs to be highlighted. The promoters
cast the film in terms of opposing fascism and ~SBig Science~T, yet the
endorsement of people like Dobson, who advocates the theocratic
transformation of American life and political institutions and who sees
science and scientific understanding as a real obstacle to that plan, is
central to their strategy. \"Expelled\" is a well-funded attempt to
consolidate and expand creationist forces as the Bush Administration enters
its final year.

It~Rs great that the plans of the producers to quietly build an audience
among creationists to launch \"Expelled\" were spoiled by the excellent work
of P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins and others. But this film highlights the
fact that the creationist forces are still at it, and also that the attacks
on evolution lie at the heart of the attacks on science. Defend Science does
not call for opposing religion per se, but for defending science from a
specific right-wing political agenda, still in power, which is coupled with a
particular brand of fundamentalist, religious ideology. All this calls for
stepped-up efforts to broadly defend science!

--Defend Science
www.defendscience.org
email: mail@defendscience.org

Sources of further information:

\"Expelled\" trailer; http://www.expelledthemovie.com/playground.php

National Center for Science Education list of links:
http://expelledexposed.com/

Greg Laden~Rs list of blog entries regarding P.Z. Myer~Rs expulsion:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/03/pz_myers_expelled_gains_sainth.php

Expelled~Rs backers exposed: Scott Hatfield on MonkeyTrials blog:
http://monkeytrials.blogspot.com/2008/03/quacks-like-duck-conclusion.html



OK, maybe I should make one quick remark: Where is Ferris Bueller when we need him?