Happy April 1st

An upcoming* Scientific American editorial:



OK, We Give Up
----------------------

"There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers
told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics
don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of
such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We
resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations
that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or
Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is
in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there's no
better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.

In retrospect, this magazine's coverage of socalled evolution has
been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every
issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True,
the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called
the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest
scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics
about it.

Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for
scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that
dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the
Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy
fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of
peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being
persuaded by mountains of evidence.

Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID)
theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe
that God designed all life, and that's a somewhat religious idea. But
ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful
entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of
the stuff in cells. That's what makes ID a superior scientific theory:
it doesn't get bogged down in details.

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our
readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or
discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible
arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of
thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S.
senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or
special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our
duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction.
To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit,
we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an
editorial page is no place for opinions.

Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how
science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to
building an anti-ICBM defense system that can't work as promised, that
will waste tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars and imperil national
security, you won't hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the
administration's antipollution measures would actually increase the
dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades,
that's not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect
science either. So what if the budget for the National Science
Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to
science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that
scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools' Day. "

Okay, We Give Up

MATT COLLINS THE EDITORS editors@sciam.com COPYRIGHT 2005 SCIENTIFIC
AMERICAN, INC."

* The _April_ issue, to be specific