As a regular reader of ScienceBlogs, I know all about Expelled, Ben Stein’s new film about how educators and scientists are being persecuted for their belief in intelligent design. Expelled contains misinformation about science education and evolutionary science, and clearly promotes the teaching of intelligent design in the science classroom. Since its release on April 18th, the film has received poor reviews, and rebuttals from the online science communities. Overall, the film has received much negative attention.
So far, I’ve stayed away from this bit of media news. I’m no fan of intelligent design—since it is just another form of creationism and the subject should be left for philosophy or theology, not science—but I was hoping (and I should know better) that the film will open and pass without much of a blip on the media radar.
Obviously, I was wrong. The film opened as one of the top ten at the box office, and reviews have appeared all over the Internet. What really caught my attention, however, was that an NPR podcast had advertised for the movie.
Yes, you read that correctly. NPR published a podcast—specifically the April 7th show of On Health—that advertised for the production company that created Expelled. I couldn’t believe it. All is far in love and media, but give some thought to what you are saying when you link yourself to creationist propaganda.
Don’t only link heavily to the rebuttals. Write e-mails to websites, radio stations, any media outlet that promotes this film. Tell them what they are inadvertently (or not) supporting. The purpose of media is to elucidate, and when media advertise films that purposely obscure information, one can only wonder what else they can be hiding.
