The spin just keeps getting better and better… Where to start?
The big news on the production side of the house this week was a “canceled” screening in Tempe that was actually rescheduled. As documented in detail by John Lynch, a screening was originally scheduled for 7 PM; Lynch and at least a handful of other registered attendees received an email notification that the screening had been canceled. Being naturally suspicious, they checked with the theater and found out that a screening was indeed scheduled for 6 PM. A couple of the folks in question made their way there and managed to get in despite “not being on the list.”
So what’s up with that? In Lynch’s assessment, “There you go. Lying. Plain and simple and there is no way they can spin that.” It turns out that no one’s even trying to spin it. Complete silence from the Expelled camp.
But is it lying? Possibly. But here are some questions that would need to be answered before legitimately drawing that conclusion. Had the 6 PM screening already been scheduled before the 7 PM had been canceled? Were Lynch, et al singled out, or did friendlies get bounced, too? Did the 7 PM merely have to get rescheduled, and the invite list trimmed to accommodate a smaller auditorium? Did some staffer merely misunderstand that the screening had been canceled rather than rescheduled?
Any way you cut it, the incident was badly managed; but as yet no one’s come across any hard evidence of intent to deceive; and as I pointed out over at Arts & Faith, if mere appearance of intent were sufficient evidence, then the I.D. camp has a pretty strong case for their theory.
But wait… There are some new developments on the “misrepresentation” front, too.
Felix Salmon, over at Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com, saw the film and was startled by its portrayal of Pamela Winnick: “Winnick is presented in the film for all the world as a diligent journalist - a Jewish journalist, no less - who just happened to mention Intelligent Design, en passant, in one of her columns, and ended up getting fired.” But he points out:
Winnick is the author of “A Jealous God: Science’s Crusade Against Religion,” published in 2005 by Thomas Nelson. … In her journalism for the newspaper from which she was fired she talked of Darwin’s influence on eugenics and Hitler, and “the serious people –scientists included — who continue to challenge his theories”.
Salmon’s point, which seems pretty fair, is that Winnick is hardly an objective voice in the whole thing, and might be more rightly styled a partisan. The remainder of Salmon’s review of the film is pretty balanced and accurate.
Along those same lines, Allen MacNeill recently left these comments on a thread at Panda’s Thumb:
As an interesting addition to this debate, Will Provine and I were interviewed by Mark Mathis and his crew last year. … However, unlike PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, the interviews with Will and I were not included in the film. Why not? Because (as many posters at this site are well aware), we regularly invite ID proponents (such as Michael Behe, John Sanford, Hannah Maxson, and Phillip Johnson, among many others) to make presentations in our evolution courses at Cornell. But this fact would clash in an unfortunate way with the premise of the film, which is that “Darwinists” unfairly discriminate against ID supporters and creationists.
So there’s definitely a charge of selective bias that audiences should be aware of; as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, don’t expect Expelled (or any movie) to tell you the whole truth.
But there’s more.
When I went to MacNeill’s blog to research his story, I came across a post in which he demurred elaborating on the above comments: “that’s not what I want to talk about in this blog,” he wrote.
Instead, this is what he wanted to talk about:
Ben Stein has been quoted repeatedly as saying that the underlying message in “Expelled” is “No Darwin, no Hitler”.
Problem: Stein hasn’t said that.
What has been quoted repeatedly is the statement that “Stein has been quoted repeatedly” as saying that. But Stein has not, in fact, said that, nor has the film.
So who did say that? D. James Kennedy in anti-evolution documentary of his own.
So caveat emptor. Discredit is a two-way street; and who can you trust?
To wrap up, a couple of quotes from documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, whose Thin Blue Line arguably ushered in a new age of documentary filmmaking.
There is no mode of expression, no technique of production that will instantly produce truth or falsehood. There is no veritas lens – no lens that provides a “truthful” picture of events. There is cinéma vérité and kino pravda but no cinematic truth. The engine of uncovering truth is not some special lens or even the unadorned human eye; it is unadorned human reason.
…
Is the problem that we have an unfettered capacity for credulity, for false belief, and hence, we feel the need to protect ourselves from ourselves? If seeing is believing, then we better be damn careful about what we show people, including ourselves – because, regardless of what it is – we are likely to uncritically believe it.
So there it is, folks on all sides: engage your brains; don’t jump to conclusions; don’t swallow entertainment like medicine, swallow it like twinkies.
And I really recommend a good read through all of Morris’ column and the attached comments. You might learn a thing or two about the state of documentary filmmaking; and you might realize that Expelled is not nearly as manipulative as it might be.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Problem: Stein hasn’t said that.
Maybe he didn’t use exactly those words. Perhaps Allen should have said “No Darwin, No Holocaust”. Either way, I think you are picking at nits. Maybe he hasn’t said the exact words “No Darwinism, No Holocaust” either, but Mark Mathis, Kevin Miller who are also involved in the film seem to agree with Berlinksi that “[evolutionary theory is] not a sufficient cause [of the Holocaust], but a necessary cause.” which you reported here.
I believe “No Darwin, no Hitler/Holocause” would be also a pretty good summary of what he said in interview with Pat Robertson:
http://tinyurl.com/3ktqms
[3:55]
April 7th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Picking nits, eh?
Look, the whole reason we’re even talking about any of this before Expelled is released is because the whole anti-ID world is accusing Mathis, Stein, Miller & Co. of lying and misrepresenting the truth. Right?
Now, either they are, or they aren’t — but you don’t get to “are” by doing the same things you’re accusing the other guys of doing: lying and misrepresenting. You get there by telling the truth.
The fact is, the quote in question belongs to Kennedy, and not to Stein. And the minute you put words within quotation marks (as opposed to leaving them out) you’re offering them up as evidence; and when you further add “…has been widely quoted as saying…”, you’re further asserting that the quote is so well-known as to no longer need citation.
Further yet, when the very words “has been widely quoted as saying” aren’t even your own, but are cut-and-pasted from some other guy’s blog, what you’re telling the world is, in fact, that you don’t know what you’re talking about, and you’re entirely willing to swallow whole what somebody else tells you just because it sounds plausible.
Yeah, that’s a good defense of your own position. Uh huh.
It’s ethically indefensible.
And please don’t make the charge that I’m speaking as a partisan. I’m holding the other guys up to the same standard. I mean, geez… just read the other 90% of the article above.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
i haven’t seen Expelled, but I have seen Ben Stein speaking on camera here and read a few remarks. I don’t see how what he said can not be summed up as Allen MacNeil chose to do. Maybe Allen didn’t use quotation marks correctly - that seems to me to be more of a grammatical error than an ethical one. As I see it, he is basically correct; Stein (among others) is trying to pin the Holocaust directly on Darwin; “Darwin caused Hitler” is not a misrepresentation of Stein’s comments. As you might put it, “Hitler is not Hitler without salt/biscuits/Darwin” (quarter smiley).
April 7th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Yes; but MacNeill didn’t sum up. He offered an actual quote, and parroted someone else’s jargon — not as an incidental toss-off reference, but as the foundation for his entire post. The irony is, of course, that he could have dug up any number of real quotes that would have served just as well. We all know that Stein says tons of provocative things.
I’m not damning MacNeill for what he wrote, by the way. He seems like a very honest, well-meaning man.
I bring up the point merely to call attention to the fact that if pots want to criticize the kettles… Well, you know that aphorism!
April 8th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Just to set one part of the record straight, Greg, Allen MacNeill is correct that both he and Will Provine were interviewed for Expelled. However, he incorrectly states that neither interview is featured in the film. In fact, Will Provine has a very significant role in Expelled. As I’ve explained to Allen, his interview was not used because during the extensive culling process (we probably waded through 200 hours of footage) it just wasn’t compelling enough to make the cut. We cut several other people out of the film, both friend and foe, for the same reason. And that list includes some very significant names in the debate. So our decision had nothing to do with the ideological reasons Allen implies.
April 8th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Let’s review the facts:
1) Hitler explicitly denied common descent in Mein Kampf.
2) Most ID proponents and all literalist creationists deny common descent.
3) Darwin hypothesized common descent, there is massive evidence to support common descent, and virtually all practicing biologists agree that common descent is correct.
4) Virtually everyone in all of these camps agrees that evolution occurs within a species, which was the point behind Hitler’s claims that he was improving the human species.
So, given the disagreement described in 1,2, and 3, can someone explain to me why this movie is claiming that Darwin was somehow necessary for the Holocaust?
The facts show that Hitler’s views on evolution were no different than those of most people in the ID movement today but very different from those of Darwin or those of modern biologists?
It seems that the central misdirection of the movie is that any statement about evolution or selection by Hitler or the Nazis is being attributed to Darwin, even when it doesn’t disagree with the acceptance of evolution within a species (”microevolution”) by today’s IDers and creationists, or even with the views of people who lived hundreds of years before Darwin.
April 8th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
John, that whole line of discussion has been thrashed out thoroughly at this post. Of course, you know that, because you were a big part of that discussion… and thank you for your part in that.
But we won’t be rehashing that here.
Got anything to add to the topic of discussion on this post?
April 8th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Hmmm… Maybe the reason MacNeill didn’t want to comment was that he’d found out he was wrong about Provine?
Thanks for the tip, Kevin. I dug this up at World on the Web. It’s a response from Mathis about which interview in the film he found most interesting:
“The one with (Dr.) Will Provine of Cornell University. What I can’t say about most of the people I interviewed is that Will Provine is something of a model of what we should be seeing in most of the universities today. He believes that Neo-Darwinism is a fact and there is no God, but he allows people who disagree with him to speak in his classes. It’s very healthy for science, and it forces his students, who think like he does, to sharpen their arguments. That’s what science should do.”
April 8th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Greg wrote:
“But we won’t be rehashing that here.”
But we were, as Winnick used the same deception. She also used the lie of portraying natural selection as random, which is either spectacularly ignorant, spectacularly dishonest, or both.
“Got anything to add to the topic of discussion on this post?”
What I added was relevant to honesty, the topic of this post. It’s clearly not a matter of opinion, as Kevin is afraid to address it on his own blog.
You wrote wrt MacNeill:
“So there’s definitely a charge of selective bias that audiences should be aware of; as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, don’t expect Expelled (or any movie) to tell you the whole truth.”
MacNeill’s point isn’t about “selective bias,” it’s about LYING. MacNeill’s interview (and his record as an educator) directly and unequivocally contradicts the primary thesis of the film. Therefore, the filmmakers are unequivocally and intentionally deceiving their audience, because they unequivocally know that their thesis is false.
Your attempt at claiming equivalence of the “sides” just isn’t tenable. The utterly un-Christian intent of the filmmakers to deceive is perfectly clear.
Here’s another example: you claimed, “But Stein has not, in fact, said that, nor has the film.”
Greg, have you really recorded and reviewed EVERYTHING that Stein has said? Your thumb is firmly on the scale here.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Thanks for adding to the slant, John.
This is not the only post about honesty that I’ve made here. The discussion about the Darwin-Nazi charge/response is covered elswhere — and you know where.
My gosh; don’t you know that people are capable of reading and thinking for themselves, and drawing their own conclusions? And I imagine readers here are drawing some pretty interesting ones.
Given that MacNeill’s charges themselves contain at least one untruth and one unsupported allegation — see above, in case you haven’t been tracking what’s actually been said here — I’d say that, at best, MacNeill’s point can be called about “selective bias”… because it demonstrates bias itself. And I won’t say “lying” because I don’t know if MacNeill intended to deceive people, or whether he was just lazy and misinformed.
That’s what generous, rationale thinking looks like, as I understand it.
Trying to bury uncomfortable facts beneath tons of rhetoric can’t make facts go away.
And I’m not masquerading under the pretense that I am free of bias… only that I’m trying to demonstrate some measure of objectivity.
Where is your objectivity, John? Where is your attempt? Don’t you want people to take what you say seriously?
Did those thoughts from Morris, a documentary filmmaker himself, connect with you at all?
April 9th, 2008 at 3:52 am
Greg, while I’m inclined to agree that there cannot be such a thing as complete objectivity in filming a documentary, I don’t believe that warrants not striving for it. I’m just going by the trailers and interviews with Ben Stein, but there are already so many distortions in those few minutes of footage. steve_h has already paraphrased Stein’s interview with Pat Robertson in which he thoroughly distorts what evolutionary theory is about. Now if he’s meant to be the principal figure in film, and yet he hasn’t a clue about Darwinian evolution, then that is a pretty strong indication of how objective this film is going to be. Unfortunately, Stein is probably amongst the majority of the American population that has serious misconceptions about evolution. If the film truly sought to improve the state of scientific inquiry in America, then it should have at least maintained some objectivity about the actual science of evolution instead of fueling creationist paranoia and anti-intellectualism. I believe it’s a case where targetting a specific audience skews the objectivity of the film. Many creationists have a paranoia whereby Evolution is a big hoax perpetrated by conspiring atheists masquerading as scientists. Expelled will basically tell them what they want to hear. The question is not whether the film should be completely objective, but rather whether it sacrifices objectivity for the sake of not only entertainment, but to pander to the mindset of its market.
April 9th, 2008 at 8:01 am
I absolutely agree, NP, that documentaries should strive for objectivity; but as the Morris editorial clearly demonstrates, the most highly-regarded documentary filmmakers themselves don’t agree.
Further, Expelled is not even that sort of documentary to begin with, so it most certainly is a case “where targetting a specific audience skews the objectivity of the film” — by design.
But that being the case, the film doesn’t slant the truth as much as it might, and doesn’t “pander to the mindset of its market” as much as you might expect.
It doesn’t, for instance, utilize the kind of time-line skewing, faux-”real” splicing of footage, or outright falsification in the name of entertainment that Michael Moore is famous for; nor does it employ the re-enactment techniques Morris is famous for. So it takes a lot less intelligence to process and filter — and detect the bias that is there — than do many documentaries these days (if, that is, one chooses to actually engage one’s brain while watching it).
Still, as Barber’s review indicates (as you note in comments on the other post), people who want to see certain messages are going to have no trouble finding them there.
But it’s a big, big ongoing debate amongst critics and theorists how much we blame the films themselves for that, and how much we blame audiences.
With Dawkins and Myers, though, their anti-religious rhetoric (which in reality has nothing to do with science whatsoever) speaks for itself, and pretty much justifies the “paranoia whereby Evolution is a big hoax perpetrated by conspiring atheists masquerading as scientists.”
Folks like Dawkins and Myers, as entertaining as they are in their own right, are (in my opinion) worse enemies of science than preachers.
Thanks for your contribution to the conversation! Thanks for reading.
April 9th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Greg, you wrote:
“My gosh; don’t you know that people are capable of reading and thinking for themselves, and drawing their own conclusions?”
They are, but they are also easily fooled, especially by a medium like film.
“Given that MacNeill’s charges themselves contain at least one untruth and one unsupported allegation — see above, in case you haven’t been tracking what’s actually been said here — I’d say that, at best, MacNeill’s point can be called about “selective bias”… because it demonstrates bias itself.”
No, it directly contradicts the central thesis of the film. That’s not merely “selective bias.”
“And I won’t say “lying” because I don’t know if MacNeill intended to deceive people, or whether he was just lazy and misinformed.”
And I didn’t claim that YOU were lying when you made the following false and misleading statement: “Panda’s Thumb very naturally disseminated that invitation to others, including Myers.”
This was false and misleading because Myers is an integral part of the Panda’s Thumb. I’d say that you were intellectually lazy in making that allegation, as I’d say that you are journalistically lazy in constructing your false equivalencies between people who
1) Do no science at all (wrt testing the hypothesis they dishonestly represent as a theory), and
2) claim that they are being fired (falsely, as no one was fired) for their “views” and for “criticizing” instead of being properly mocked for their cowardly refusal to test their hypotheses and their dishonest attempts to portray science as something resembling lit crit.
…versus people (NOT Myers and Dawkins) who test their hypotheses rigorously, admit when their hypotheses are wrong, and judge their peers by the quantity and impact of the new evidence they produce.
“That’s what generous, rationale thinking looks like, as I understand it.”
Generous, rational thinking in scientific matters involves the evidence. There’s no indication you’ve even made the slightest attempt to examine it, Greg. If you’d like, I’ll be happy to, either privately by email or in a dedicated thread, walk you through some of the freely available molecular evidence that is discounted by the ID movement as nothing more than “similarity,” a bald-faced lie.
“Trying to bury uncomfortable facts beneath tons of rhetoric can’t make facts go away.”
I agree completely! What you refuse to see is that ID is NOTHING BUT RHETORIC. Science is about evidence–particularly predicting and producing new evidence. You are actively misrepresenting the ID movement as science.
“And I’m not masquerading under the pretense that I am free of bias… only that I’m trying to demonstrate some measure of objectivity.”
If you’re ignoring evidence to concentrate on rhetoric, you can’t possibly be objective in any scientific matter.
“Where is your objectivity, John?”
For starters, in my examination and analysis of the evidence I produce with my own brain and hands. I’ve directly tested Darwin’s hypothesis of common descent in nested hierarchies, both wrt species and protein families, with my own hands. This is how I can be utterly certain, as a Christian (Congregationalist UCC), that the makers of Expelled are lying. Not merely mistaken, not just misguided, not just lazy (although these excuses may have been valid before they started the movie), but lying. Can you say the same, Greg?
And if you’re tempted to discount this, please don’t dishonestly or ignorantly try to portray me as an evolutionary biologist. I’m not, but evolution permeates most of what I do. I can even point you to disagreements with colleagues in which they, because of human nature, errantly make telic assumptions.
“Where is your attempt?”
In my whole life. I am devoted to doing research to help people who are suffering, and contributing to mankind’s knowledge is an awfully cool part of that–especially when I can learn something about life that no human has learned before and communicate it to other people.
Where’s your attempt, Greg?
“Don’t you want people to take what you say seriously?”
Absolutely. That’s why I am conservative in my conclusions and admit my errors. When you were informed that your claim about the Panda’s Thumb disseminating information to Myers was false, did you retract and apologize for misleading your readers, or did you hope that no one would notice it down in the comments?
NP’s right. There is absolutely NO evidence to support a claim that the makers of Expelled were striving for objectivity. The film is a series of lies supported by misrepresentations, starting with its title.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:28 am
As I noted on another post, John, I am seriously sorry about a line of questioning that implied that I question your integrity as a person and a professional. That was not my intent; I was trying to make a point about your mode of discussion here on this site, and nothing else.
Your approach doesn’t not promote discussion primarily because you tend to insist that the discussion be conducted solely with your definitions of words, and within frames that you find acceptable. That’s very difficult for people to track. I, for one, can’t conduct conversations with you on that level because I’m not at all familiar with your professional world; so if I attempt to use terms as you’re used to them, I’m bound to misuse them — and then be criticized for implicitly buying into someone else’s framing… when, in fact, I may be expressing things in terms from an entirely different frame that you’re equally unfamiliar with.
As I’ve stated elsewhere, I’m entirely comfortable letting the scientists speak for themselves about I.D. and what it is — because I can’t address that, other than to say, as far as I can tell (which isn’t very far) the film itself makes no case (or much attempt at one) regarding the science itself.
You ask, “When you were informed that your claim about the Panda’s Thumb disseminating information to Myers was false, did you retract and apologize for misleading your readers, or did you hope that no one would notice it down in the comments?”
First, the comments are part of the publication; they are part of the record. So what I say in the comments is a part of what’s published.
The Panda’s Thumb account itself says that Myers did not receive that email directly from the publicist, unless I’m misinterpreting it. My only point of confusion was whether Myers himself was a member. A reader quickly pointed out that my assumption was wrong on that score, and I thanked the reader for the clarification.
I’m glad we at least agree on the nature of film. I think I’ve been clear enough on that score, at least!
April 10th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Greg, you wrote:
“As I noted on another post, John, I am seriously sorry about a line of questioning that implied that I question your integrity as a person and a professional. That was not my intent; I was trying to make a point about your mode of discussion here on this site, and nothing else.”
Understood and accepted.
“Your approach doesn’t not promote discussion primarily because you tend to insist that the discussion be conducted solely with your definitions of words, and within frames that you find acceptable.”
You’re mistaken there. I have no problem discussing anything if we agree on the definitions of critical terms beforehand and agree that changing them in mid-discussion is unethical. The labels “Darwinist” and “Darwinism” serve the ID movement in avoiding the central fraud: ID proponents refuse to do science, so they try to falsely portray those of us who do science as followers of a man instead of followers of evidence.
“That’s very difficult for people to track. I, for one, can’t conduct conversations with you on that level because I’m not at all familiar with your professional world; so if I attempt to use terms as you’re used to them, I’m bound to misuse them — and then be criticized for implicitly buying into someone else’s framing… when, in fact, I may be expressing things in terms from an entirely different frame that you’re equally unfamiliar with.”
I don’t think so; I’m very familiar with the frames employed by the ID and creationist movements and how they are used to fool people. That’s why I’m calling you on it when you use them, knowingly or unknowingly.
“As I’ve stated elsewhere, I’m entirely comfortable letting the scientists speak for themselves about I.D. and what it is —”
But you really should make an attempt to determine who is a scientist and who is not. You’ve labeled a picture of PZ Myers something like ‘evolutionary developmental biologist’ when the guy hasn’t published in ten years! He’s a teacher and a blogger, no longer a scientist. IMO, you’ve chosen him because his aggressiveness makes it easy to construct the illusion of equivalency with the Expelled crowd (not necessarily knowingly).
“… because I can’t address that, other than to say, as far as I can tell (which isn’t very far) the film itself makes no case (or much attempt at one) regarding the science itself.”
Then it’s pretty damn fraudulent on that basis alone, wouldn’t you say?
“First, the comments are part of the publication; they are part of the record. So what I say in the comments is a part of what’s published.”
I know that, but for many bloggers, the convention is to prominently amend and annotate the initial post if the blogger learns that he/she made a major error.
“I’m glad we at least agree on the nature of film. I think I’ve been clear enough on that score, at least!”
Not quite from my perspective, but you definitely have made some progress in seeing through the film’s deceptiveness, and for that I am grateful.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Thanks for your reply, John. I can live with that.
But I would appreciate it if you made more of a distinction between the use of loaded, frame-tainted terms and the charge that I’ve “bought into” those frames simply because I use those terms in a very shallow, pop-culture sort of way.
As to publishing conventions… We’ve got a long history here at HJ of treating what we publish in the same fashion as newspapers, magazines, or books — that is, a published thing is a “fixed text” that is not subsequently altered. That way, when some body says “go check out what this idiot said…” visitors show up and actually find the idiotic material referenced. When notation of an error is appropriate, that’s appended to the article — in comments or an addendum, or via a link to a separate page with notes. So, fwiw, that’s been our practice for years.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Greg wrote:
“But I would appreciate it if you made more of a distinction between the use of loaded, frame-tainted terms and the charge that I’ve “bought into” those frames simply because I use those terms in a very shallow, pop-culture sort of way.”
That’s a fair criticism. I should have been more Socratic about it and asked if you realized that you were using the deceptive frames before accusing you of buying into them.