Sunday, July 22, 2018

#2045: Ned Myers

Not really sure who Ned Myers is, but he is definitely a creationist, and at one point got the opportunity to lay out his delusions about science in a column in the (now defunct?) Daily News Journal. In the column, Myers was concerned that in 2011 “American public school students place 23rd in scientific literacy when compared to 34 other developed nations”. And you know why they did poorly? “A strong case can be made that one reason for this poor showing is that we teach evolution as science” (that they also teach evolution as science in the other countries on the list notwithstanding). You see, according to Myers “Webster’s dictionary defines science as, ‘Knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws, especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.’ Macro evolution, whereby one species evolves into another, falls short of this definition. Evolution cannot be considered a general truth because it cannot be experimentally tested or proven by using scientific methods.” This is false, and evolution is easily testable by standard scientific methods. At the very least Myers himself provides a good indication of some of the reasons for the US’s poor science showing.

Diagnosis: Ignorant dimwit. Probably a very minor figure, though.

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