Expelled is a new American documentary championing the cause of the Intelligent Design movement. It is already making waves in the blogosphere and could repeat the success of the What the bleep series of inspirational newage science docs.
With a presumptious arrogance that might be misread either as stupidity or (more probably given the amount of space the magazine has subsequently dedicated to it) canny marketing nous, the film’s producers held a special screening for Scientific American, who here do a fine job of pulling its wings off, and then drive a stake through its heart for good measure.
While Sci-Am‘s points are valid and revealing, I would suggest that the set-ups, misdirections and highly selective deployments of facts are accusations that could be levelled at any number of documentaries. This is not to diminish the importance of Sci-Am‘s criticisms, only to point out that the deceptions they reveal are merely business as usual for the format and the medium.
From Six Things Expelled‘s producers don’t want you to know about their film.
1) Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust.
2) Ben Stein’s speech to a crowded auditorium in the film was a setup.
3) Scientists in the film thought they were being interviewed for a different movie.
4) The ID-sympathetic researcher whom the film paints as having lost his job at the Smithsonian Institution was never an employee there.
5) Science does not reject religious or “design-based” explanations because of dogmatic atheism.
6) Many evolutionary biologists are religious and many religious people accept evolution.
Full story at Scientific American.
Via Daily Grail