Discovery Institute: High Risk Quote Mining

THE typical example of quote-mining (see Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines, edited by John Pieret) involves plundering, distorting, and perverting the writing of someone who is already dead. It’s silly work, but safe, because the mined author can’t speak out to criticize the propagandist.

It’s far more risky for a quote-miner to practice his wretched craft on the living. Doing so indicates either supreme confidence that no one will notice, or absolute oblivion on the part of the quote-miner. You can decide which it is in this case, dear reader.

We found a fine example of high-risk, live-source quote mining at the blog of the neo-theocrats at the Discovery Institute‘s creationist public relations and lobbying operation, the Center for Science and Culture (a/k/a the Discoveroids, a/k/a the cdesign proponentsists).

We present to you, dear reader, some excerpts from Back to School With the NSF: Targeting “Young Children” to “Believe in” Evolution. It’s by Casey Luskin, everyone’s favorite creationist.

At the outset, we must confess that we feel some trepidation. When starting out to examine one of these things, we imagine that our task is like that of a policeman who is sent to investigate a report that someone’s reclusive neighbor hasn’t been seen for weeks and there’s a strange odor coming from the missing man’s house. Such work is never pleasant, but it has to be done. Therefore — donning a metaphorical gas mask — we proceed to the door of the missing man’s house. In this case, the “house” is the Discoveroid blog article. Casey says, with bold font added by us:

On September 2nd, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released an announcement regarding its new “Evolution Readiness Project,” whose self-stated goal is:

[Warning! A creationist is quoting something:] to teach young children how Darwin’s model of natural selection explains the observation that organisms are adapted to their environment

Casey then, using language that subtly suggests child abuse and cultish mind-control, launches into his own interpretation of what he just quoted:

When they say “young children,” they mean fourth-graders. And when the project says “teach,” it really means to get students to “believe in” evolution.

That’s how Casey begins. Continuing our police investigation analogy, we have crossed the threshold of this foul residence. Now we proceed further. Casey gave a link to the NSF announcement from which he quoted, which is this: Students Explore Evolution Through Evolution Readiness Project.

We checked, and he correctly quoted the small excerpt that appeared in his article, but somehow he left out something that immediately follows it, which has some additional things said by the same person Casey quoted, Paul Horwitz :

“Science is rarely described as an attempt to explain observations in terms of models,” Horwitz said.

In other words, Horwitz sees a lack of connection between the facts that are taught to students and how they fit together to describe a broader concept, such as evolution, and he explains this dilemma metaphorically. According to Horwitz, “The term ‘natural selection’ appears in the elementary science curriculum as a ‘noun,’ a thing to be remembered and repeated back, rather than a ‘verb,’ a process that underlies and explains data and experiments. Evolution is a wonderful — maybe the best — example of that deeper aspect of science.”

After reading the entire Horwitz statement, it seems — let us say — a wee bit less like cultish brain washing than the small portion that Casey selected and re-interpreted. Let’s return now to the Discoveroid article, which is analogous to going into another room of the recluse’s clutter-filled house:

The project’s website explains that “it is unacceptable that 150 years after the birth of the theory of evolution only four out of ten Americans believe in it!”

Ohhhhhh! “Believe in it!” That’s a powerful quote Casey selected. It certainly reeks of cultishness. Conveniently, he gives a link to the website from which he mined that quote: About Evolution Readiness. Searching for what Casey quoted, we find this paragraph, which we present in full. We put Casey’s mined snippet in red for easy identification, and we also put some wording that contradicts Casey’s spin in blue:

In a global economy that is increasingly dependent on advances in science, it is unacceptable that 150 years after the birth of the theory of evolution only four out of ten Americans believe in it! (See Gallup Poll results.) Nor can this widespread skepticism be attributed solely to the opposition of religious groups. Evolution is a particularly daunting subject to teach and to understand: the evidence for it is indirect and the model rests largely on phenomena that cannot be directly observed, including some that are poorly understood to this day. By combining advances in educational technology with improved understanding of young children’s cognitive development, this project will produce an empirically validated curriculum for introducing evolution in the early elementary grades.

Once again, the impression of cultish mind-control over children seems to vanish when Casey’s little quote is seen in context.

As we continue to explore the reeking residence for the source of the stench which permeates the neighborhood, and fearing that at the next turn we’ll find a corpse with flies buzzing around it, we enter another room — that is, we read another Discoveroid paragraph — and thus continue our ghastly investigation. Casey says:

Given this express admission that they seek to get students to “believe in” evolution …

The needle on our gas mask’s warning indicator is pointing into the “Danger” zone. We can’t take much more of this. As we grope our way past a pile of decaying debris (creationist literature) we find — not a corpse — but a nest of creationists — alive and seated at their keyboards. They’re not dead — at least not physically. They’re merely doing their work, oblivious to their surroundings and the risks involved in quote-mining current sources.

We hastily excuse ourselves and make as graceful an exit as we can. It was a false alarm — just another day in the Discoveroid quote mine.

Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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