Discovery Institute Lies Promoted by Fox News

From Little Green Footballs   Here’s one of the very worst, most deceptive dog-and-pony shows I’ve ever seen about evolution, from ... who else? ... Fox News. Steve Doocy interviews the anti-evolution Discovery Institute’s main parrot Casey Luskin, who proceeds to spew a complete load of crap, without any context or any rebuttal whatsoever.   The really galling thing about Luskin’s appearance here is that he’s cast as a defender of honesty in textbooks — after he and his organization fought like crazy to get the Texas State Board of Education to accept their absurd anti-scientific standards for schoolchildren, in a blatant attempt to influence the textbooks used in Texas schools, and promote their anti-evolution tract titled Explore Evolution. (Since Texas is such a huge market for textbooks, the books accepted in Texas influence the entire country.)   And now here’s Luskin, pretending to be the hero who wants accuracy in textbooks. It’s enough to induce projectile vomiting.   Luskin is absolutely shameless in his deceptions. He hauls out the decades old, long-debunked and extremely silly talking point about Haeckel’s embryo drawings — which are simply not used in textbooks any more — to smear all science textbooks that educate children in the facts about evolution.   Shame on Fox News for lending credence to this appalling display of mendacity and ignorance, without giving equal time to a credible scientist who could answer Luskin’s lies.   (See Little Green Footballs for the video.)   UPDATE at 5/7/09 8:58:24 pm: In 2007, PZ Myers destroyed the Discovery Institute’s nonsense about the embryo drawings in this excellent post: Wells and Haeckel’s Embryos.

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