GaryP

In the May 12 edition of the Marion Star , two Ohio State professors took a letter writer to task;

In recent weeks The Marion Star has published several columns and letters that have expressed contempt for evolutionary theory. The most detailed of these, Dale Roth's April 16 column "True science, spiritual truth can go together," contains factual errors, misquotes, faulty logic and innuendo. We offer some clarification of how science and the world really work.

http://www.marionstar.com/news/stori...on/405966.html

In today's (May 13) edition, the creationist apologized;

With the examples shown above and other "land mines" that I have found in the book "The Collapse of Evolution," I have learned the importance of tracing all quotes back to their original sources for verification and context. This publication is not as exemplary as other scholarly creationists' works such as those of Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis), Gary Parker and Jonathan Sarfati that I have been exposed to recently.

Wherever my original article goes, this article needs to be placed with it for correctional purposes. In conclusion, I hereby apologize to all persons to whom my original article has caused consternation or inconvenience.

http://www.marionstar.com/news/stori...on/415209.html


Is it a common problem that many people are taken in by Mr. Huse?

And is Mr. Ham more repected in the scientific and/or pseudo-scientific world?

As a sidelight, Marion is in Central Ohio as is Mansfield. I have noticed that in the past several months, professors from both regional campuses of Ohio State have taken their time to rebut some outlandish historical and scientific claims by certain far right letter writers.

Here in my city, we have aregional capus of Ohio University and certainly at least as many far-right letter writers. Yet I cannot recall even one letter from a teacher at Ohio U-Lancaster replying to some of the fantastic claims I see in MY local rag.

ThePhoenix

Well he published an acknowledgement of a few mistakes, which is nice, I guess. I'm still choking over Ken Ham being a good source (at least it's not Kent Hovind )

RBH

GaryP wrote Post the URLs here if they're on the Web and we'll see what we can do about generating some responses. If' they're hard copy only, then PM me with the full text, date, and address of the paper and we'll see what we can do.

RBH

RufusAtticus

Sarfati scholarship? That's a load.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/supernova/sarfati.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/scadding.html

GaryP

Thanks for the offer. I have written one letter several years ago defending evolution and notified Americans United of a local school board policy that made teachers give a "neutral" response if a student brought up a different theory.

My local paper is the Lancaster Eagle Gazette . http://www.lancastereaglegazette.com/

They have published lots of letters of mine over the years about CSS. So there is probably a good chance they would publish one RE: evolution.

When I see the next creationist letter in the paper, I'll be sure to post it here.
Thanks for all the replies.

Sven

Whenever you come across any work of a creationist with extensive quotes in it, you can be nearly 100% certain that some/many of them are misquotes. This is sad reality.

Roland98

I know. In my hometown (Findlay), I think there was perhaps one letter from a U of Findlay professor when I was living there the last time the ID debate came up. And here in Toledo, we have 2 universities, a smaller college, and a medical school within a 20 mile radius from downtown, and there doesn't seem to be much outrage from the biology people either. I think it's just something a lot of them don't take seriously; I mean, given the claims of ID (don't even get me started on YEC), a lot of scientists brush them off immediately as ridiculous, without realizing how much of the general public buy into them. Scary.

But I am impressed that this person did apologize, even though I cringe at his exalting of Ham and Sarfati. *shudder*

walt6

I think it is interesting how the people over in Talk Origins picked up on the extensive misquoting with their Quote Mining project. I was unaware of just how bad it is.

I liked the one, where one of the creatinists took parts of two sentences that were from different sections of the book, and pasted them together to make his point, which was directly opposite of what the author intended. he even had the two pages noted in his reference.

GaryP

This is from another reply to Mr. Roth's letter;

If Roth is genuinely a "person who likes to study and think issues out for himself," I strongly advise him not to confine his study to creationist authors. He should also read mainstream evolutionary science. What critic can be believed who doesn't thoroughly know what he's criticizing?

http://www.marionstar.com/news/stori...on/457001.html

This gentleman also warns about relying on the authors that Mr. Roth expressed some confidence in.

RBH

Yeah, but did the knuckleheaded author of that letter (who shall remain unnamed in present company, but whose initials might look vaguely familiar) really write " ... several of some of the errors of quotation ..."?? Gack!

RBH