{"id":958,"date":"2009-03-18T22:04:30","date_gmt":"2009-03-19T02:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=958"},"modified":"2009-04-30T19:40:18","modified_gmt":"2009-04-30T23:40:18","slug":"just-a-few-gentle-corrections-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=958","title":{"rendered":"Just a few gentle corrections here"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is a story about a Florida man heading to the Galapagos<\/a> to volunteer his services working on record keeping and such for the Charles Darwin Foundation. Great! Wish I was going. I definitely can’t knock what this guy is doing. On the other hand, there are some inaccuracies that cropped up in the article. Mr. Foster is not a scientist, and apparently has had no real dealings with science before. He admits that, and that’s fine. Unfortunately, his comments combined with the reporter’s equal lack of science understanding force this story to take a sharp turn into error-land. And when these errors crop up in a newspaper — a place were people get their facts from — the distorted information gets passed off as accurate with most readers not knowing the difference.<\/p>\n

Foster is not an evolutionist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is that supposed to mean? Seriously. What is an evolutionist? Those five words carry a lot of meaning, none of which is based on reality. This simple sentence gives the impression that evolution is a profession or a religion or an occupation or … something. There is no such thing as an evolutionist. There are scientists who study and use knowledge of evolution, but that is clearly not what the reporter was going for here. I think that Mr. Foster was fuzzy about this whole evolution thing, and that fuzziness passed right along to the reporter who didn’t bother to do anything other than interview Mr. Foster and then write the story.<\/p>\n

However, he does believe it’s an important time to re-assess the validity of Darwin’s theory in the rapidly changing world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First of all, Darwin’s theory is a century and half old, and science and evolution have advanced quite a bit in the intervening time. Darwin was a “father” of this particular branch of science just like the other great minds of science were “fathers” of their branches of science. But science has come a long way. Science has been “re-assessing” Darwin’s theory for decades and has discarded that which was wrong about it and built upon the foundation of what was right about it. We’re not stuck in Darwin’s time.<\/p>\n

“Evolution is a theory,” he said. “Both sides, creationism and evolution, are not exclusive.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Evolution is a scientific theory, yes. But that meaning of the word denotes strength, not doubt. And there are no “two sides.” Creationism is not science. Period.<\/p>\n

I don’t want to demean Mr. Foster’s volunteer effort. But he isn’t a good information source on this stuff, and the reporter should have known better. The reporter’s writing gave the interview subject the air of authority on the matter of evolution, when Mr. Foster clearly isn’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a story about a Florida man heading to the Galapagos to volunteer his services working on record keeping and such for the Charles Darwin Foundation. Great! Wish I was going. I definitely can’t knock what this guy is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-fs","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1120,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1120","url_meta":{"origin":958,"position":0},"title":"Creationism back in Florida headlines","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"September 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"We've heard from St. Petersburg politician Bill Foster before. When the new Florida science standards were being written and reviewed, Foster wrote a letter to his local school board warning about the evils of evolution. Now Foster is running for mayor and his creationist beliefs are under the microscope. Will\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 18 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 18 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1120#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1292,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1292","url_meta":{"origin":958,"position":1},"title":"Evolution newspaper story a confusing mess","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"April 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm feeling mighty confused by an article that recently appeared in Hernando Today (a Tampa Tribune paper): Educators: Bill that criticizes evolution won't hurt students. Read the following excerpt and ponder what is being stated for a moment: Dr. Stacey Thomson, chairwoman of the science department at Pasco-Hernando Community College,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11"","block_context":{"text":"\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=29"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":169,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=169","url_meta":{"origin":958,"position":2},"title":"Great teacher resources","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 27, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are a couple of outstanding science teacher resources ... My Science Box: \"The My Science Box website is a closte full of lessons, hands-on activities, assessments and field trip ideas for science teachers. Each box contains a complete set of scaffolded lesson plans to teach a\u00c2\u00a0four to\u00c2\u00a0six week middle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the Classroom"","block_context":{"text":"In the Classroom","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":358,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=358","url_meta":{"origin":958,"position":3},"title":"Here’s why you need to get involved","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Recap: Florida's public school science standards from 1996 are being completely revamped. The current standards don't mention evolution, but the new draft standards do so prominently. This has stirred up the anti-evolution crowd, including several education system decision-makers. The real story here is that the science standards overall have been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Alert"","block_context":{"text":"Alert","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=6"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":45,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=45","url_meta":{"origin":958,"position":4},"title":"Darwin and the Racing Asparagus","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"September 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a great NPR story on Charles Darwin. FlCfS president Joe Wolf told me when he brought this story to my attention that, \"It is told as a story but it is really teaching about science and evolution. To me it is a good example of how we can use\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Science in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Science in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=5"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2349,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2349","url_meta":{"origin":958,"position":5},"title":"Problem with Florida textbook over climate change?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"September 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Steven Newton from the National Center for Science Education reports that there is a problem with a science textbook here in the Sunshine State. The issue? Climate change. Here's the opening paragraphs from his story: Epic Climate Change Textbook Fail. Are our children learning science? If those children are being\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}