Science News Review

Expelled!!!

Mar 29 at 2:02am by Aileen

The Nonprophets radio show comment on what happened.

The science blogosphere erupted this week after biology professor Paul Myers [a.k.a. PZ Myers] was summarily expelled from a pre-release screening of the Ben Stein movie Expelled, even while his wife, daughter and guest Richard Dawkins were allowed in to see the film.

Myers blogged about the incident in several posts to his #1 rated science blog for Seed Media Group, Pharyngula. Other science bloggers for the same outlet also blogged about it - Greg Laden bestowed sainthood on PZ and compiles the buzz from Dawkins, other bloggers, national and international media… it’s an exhaustive (but dated) list.

And the whole affair is really quite humorous, in my humble opinion. I am still holding out the suspicion that Myers - who appears in the film for about five minutes, according to reports - is getting a cut of the net for all his promotional efforts. This suspicion is further enhanced by Myers’ crashing an ‘invitation only’ media conference call on Friday. He has an explanation for how he managed that on his blog, but I’m taking the whole thing with a large grain of salt.

The buzz and massive publicity being stirred by irate science bloggers is guaranteeing the film’s commercial success, even if it’s as bad as Myers claims. That seems highly suspicious to me, given the sheer antiquity of the Creationism versus Evolution debates, the generations of religious believers and biologists who have come and gone without changing a thing, and the actual legal situation in the U.S., where it is unconstitutional to teach Creationism or Intelligent Design in public school classrooms.

If PZ is not getting paid to promote this film, he’s a bigger idiot than the IDiots he rails against so frequently on a science blog that is mostly NOT about science. Amazing.