Positive Discrimination
Pharyngula has been hosting a discussion (also here) on the New York Times series on intelligent design creationism (ID). Many of the arguments have already been aired. Let me just say that I maintain my opinion that Kenneth Chang's piece was terrible, even though I understand his arguments. Just because the piece wasn't written for me, doesn't mean I can't criticize it for its unfair balancing of positions. As poke commented in that discussion, the problem is that the piece treats the "debate" as if it was occurring within science.
To illustrate this, let's analyse the list of scientists featured in the article on each side. How influential are they really? One way to judge is to look at how many papers they've written and how many times these papers have been cited. Here's the data from ISI Web of Science since 1988. Note that this includes all kinds of papers, not just ones on evolution.
In the case of the IDers we have:
On the evolution corner, we have:
I believe the NYT should do better when they report on a disagreement between Behe and Doolittle or Lenski, or between Meyer and Erwin or Bottjer. Equal time just doesn't cut it.
To illustrate this, let's analyse the list of scientists featured in the article on each side. How influential are they really? One way to judge is to look at how many papers they've written and how many times these papers have been cited. Here's the data from ISI Web of Science since 1988. Note that this includes all kinds of papers, not just ones on evolution.
In the case of the IDers we have:
- Axe: 8 papers, 169 citations
- Behe: 33 papers, 317 citations
- Dembski: 5 papers, 4 citations
- Meyer: 3 papers, 4 citations
On the evolution corner, we have:
- Bottjer: 62 papers, 791 citations
- Doolittle: 110 papers, 4719 citations
- Erwin: 58 papers, 989 citations
- Lenski: 115 papers, 4314 citations
- Miller: 18 papers, 388 citations
I believe the NYT should do better when they report on a disagreement between Behe and Doolittle or Lenski, or between Meyer and Erwin or Bottjer. Equal time just doesn't cut it.
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