they've got it backwards

I know the mainstream media barely has a grasp on the real issues of the evolution vs. "intelligent design" debate.  But one thing really bugs me.  Just about every article in a magazine or newspaper trots out the tired ID example of why some complex organ or system cannot be explained by evolution because taking away any single component causes the organ or system to fail.  The writer nearly always presents this ID perspective first. 

Take a recent article in the New York Times, "In Explaining Life's Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash", for instance. By paragraph four, when the attention span of an average newspaper reader is still engaged, the above "irreducible complexity" argument and an example of blood clotting (not an eye or a watch for a change, at least) have been introduced.  The next paragraph provides the usual tidy ID claim that "if any one of the more than 20 proteins involved in blood clotting is missing or deficient, as happens in hemophilia, for instance, clots will not form properly."

It isn't until ten paragraphs later that the writer provides the scientific explanation of how blood clotting evolved.  Not only is this information buried deeper in the article, but it goes on for five paragraphs.  Of course, this rational scientific explanation is a bit more elaborate to explain than the moronic simple-minded spare explanation provided by ID, but I fear many people have stopped reading or comprehending by this point.

What if the article led with an elegant, lucid description of how blood clotting evolved, and THEN followed with the ID all-or-none position?  The ID argument would fall flat, looking obviously lame even to the average lay person.  In framing controversies where an established theory is challenged by a new idea, is it not customary for journalists to present the original premise first, followed by the new opinion?

Pharyngula, Chris Mooney, and Mike the Mad Biologist do a more thorough dissection.

P.S. And why in the hell did the Times choose a scientist named Dr. Doolittle to explain blood clotting?  No offense to Doolittle, an accomplished scientist I'm sure, but it almost seems like a conscious choice to make the science sound silly.

Comments

[Alan]

The em-es-em is trapped in the "objectivity" trance. No matter how stupid, inane and off the wall the opposing argument is (the flat-earthers, for example), the em-es-em reporter always feels he has to present "the other side." Therefore, if someone standing on a beach were to tell a reporter that she could see the sailboat dropping below the horizon, the reporter would feel it necessary to seek out comment from a flat-earther. Veteran conservationist/advocacy journalist Michael Frome has written about this falacy.

[Pamela Martin]

Excellent post Nuthatch--the point you make cannot be made too often. Clearly to argue that any particular biological system, function, whatever, needs all of its current parts to work as it currently does, therefore must have been designed, is to beg the question. A clear explanation of the evolution of the system makes this obvious.

I certainly agree with the first commenter that the compulsion to present the "other side" no matter how far off the wall you need to go to get it, is a large part of this so-called debate between the theory of evolution and ID. I think it's another symptom of the problem of the media's compulsion to oversimplify that the post describes. I have often had conversations with people who haven't had the time or inclination to think much about biology and evolution and have been persuaded that there is something fishy about the whole thing. Bad reporting and/or burying the science at the end of the article exacerbates the situation, just as phony "balanced reporting" does.