Wednesday, August 08, 2007

While I am in the snarky mood

Let me answer Bruce Chapman's question "Who Picks Reviewers at the New York Times?"

He is of course complaining about Dawkins' review of Behe's latest work, in which Dawkins (like all other reviewers with a minimum background in science) demolishes the book.

While I don't know exactly who picked Dawkins, it was someone with better sense than whomever at Seattle Times who thought Bruce Chapman would be qualified to write a column about Iraq, or whatever idiot at Time Magazine, who thought that Michael Behe would be the right person to write Dawkins' profile in the Time 100 list [Funny that Chapman didn't complain about that, given he has so many problems with Dawkins reviewing Behe].

As a note to Chapman I think we should point out that getting a renowned expert, with quite a few science books under his name, to review a book claiming to be about the field of science the reviewer is an expert in, is generally considered objective and balanced. Much like a review by a medical expert on a book about medicine would be, or a review by a law professor (or other legal expert) of a book about law would be. If Behe had rightfully declared his book to be fiction or some other relevant genre, then a review by Dawkins would have been uncalled for.

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1 Comments:

Blogger The Ridger, FCD said...

But ... Dawkins understands this stuff! That's not fair!

Seriously, he's not the target audience. But then again, they won't believe anything he has to say, so I doubt Behe is all that upset. Unlike some of his fans.

August 09, 2007 2:20 AM  

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