Discovery Institute hardly knows the half of it

The New York Times has a news article with the misleading title "Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy" and a related editorial with the title "The Cons of Creationism" (which should be titled "The Cons of Darwinism" -- the Darwinists are the ones who are conning us).

Robert Crowther said in Evolution News & Views,

Let's review. In 1998, the Texas Board of Education adopted the current set of science standards calling on students "to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information . . . .This is the language that the New York Times now insists is a new development!

John West said in Evolution News & Views,

As previously pointed out, the New York Times botched its recent story about the science standards debate in Texas, implying that support for covering the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution is supposedly a new strategy on the part of Darwin critics. The only problem is that the “strengths and weaknesses” language in the Texas Science Standards was adopted some 10 years ago in 1998, and so there is nothing new about it.

Then John West said in another article, titled "Message to New York Times Editorial Page: Hire a Fact-Checker,"

The Times apparently hasn’t been paying attention to Texas during the past decade, because (as we pointed out last week) the “strengths and weaknesses” language the Times’ editorialists so fear has been part of the Texas science standards since at least 1998! In short, the Texas State Board of Education isn’t considering whether to add “strengths and weaknesses” language; it’s the Darwinists who are trying to remove the language that has been in the Texas science standards for a decade.

You dummies, the New York Times news article itself says that the "strengths and weaknesses" language was added to the Texas science standards "in the late 1980's":

The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s.

Steven Schafersman of the Texas Citizens for Science says that the "weaknesses" language in the Texas science standards may have been first adopted as early as the mid 1980's --

I was present at the very SBOE meeting in the mid to late 1980s (I have not had time to search long-stored records to find the correct date, but the experience is still vivid in my memory) when the "weaknesses" language was first adopted for a textbook proclamation that included biology texts.

So it looks like the Discovery Institute needs a fact checker, too.

Also, John West says in one of the articles,

As for whether “other states are likely to follow” Texas’s example: the Times’ editorial writers clearly haven’t been paying attention to what has been happening in those other states over the last decade. Six states already call for the critical analysis of evolution in their science standards—Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Alabama, and Missouri. Contrary to the Chicken Littles at the Times, the sky hasn’t fallen in any of them.

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Alabama has even had evolution-disclaimer textbook stickers of the kind banned in Selman v. Cobb County.

It is disgraceful for such a prominent reference as the New York Times to spread such misinformation. Who do they think they are, Wikipedia?
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