Can scientific publishing’s evolution aid defense of evolution science?
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0175
A recent headline in this venue asked, “ Can postpublication commentary online revolutionize the scientific literature? ” Now an opinion piece in Nature, advocating aggressive opposition to creationists’ distortions, in effect also suggests a special role for some postpublication commentary: combating antiscience by preempting it.
The opinion piece, “Reach out to defend evolution,” begins by observing that the way scientists and journals present research “can help to feed anti-evolution disinformation.” The author, Russell Garwood, a University of Manchester paleontologist, offers the example of “the influential creationist organization Answers in Genesis” exploiting a paper that engaged an intriguing paleontological disagreement about dinosaurs’ avian origins. Garwood charges that the distorters “presented an exciting discovery and a genuine scientific debate ... as evidence against evolution, rather than as attempts to refine knowledge.” Garwood also charges that a recent paper of his own was “twisted in the creationist media,” and he condemns the practice of presenting “perceived gaps in scientific knowledge (genuine or spurious) as evidence in support of theistic world views.”
Having illustrated the problem, Garwood declares, “I believe that science would benefit greatly if we did more outreach when we publish and publicize our research.” He cites “a proliferation of online tools” for disseminating accurate information. Then he offers the paragraph that makes his opinion piece not only a call for opposing antiscience, but a call for doing so by capitalizing on the internet-age evolution of scientific publishing:
If research is to appear that will attract an obvious creationist interpretation, an accompanying blog post could explain the work and highlight flaws in any anti-evolution attacks. Sites such as the Natural Environment Research Council’s Planet Earth Online and the Palaeontological Association-sponsored palaeontologyonline.com provide researchers with vehicles for one-off posts. Publishers can do more, and could offer online summaries in non-technical language, written by the researchers. The open-access journal Palaeontologia Electronica already does this.
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.