Note: I meant to publish this post last week, but somehow it slipped between the cracks. It should have gone up before this post for sure. Sorry about this.
Through Northstate Science comes the tip that Kurt Repanshek has posted about the PEER press release on creationism at the Grand Canyon on his blog, National Parks Traveler.
If you don’t know about this issue, you can read what I wrote here and here (though maybe in reverse order would be better).
Kurt has a rather devastating list of evidence against the PEER group, showing the press release to be pretty far off the mark. I disagree with one conclusion though:
Now, one piece of PEER’s release that comes pretty close to standing up is the group’s claim that the Park Service has failed to review the propriety of the park’s bookstores to sell “Grand Canyon: A Different View.” This book, by Tom Vail, claims that the Grand Canyon was created by the great flood that forced Noah to take to his ark. PEER would like it banned from the park.
[...]
Now, I say the claim “comes pretty close” to being true because the book has indeed been discussed within the agency but no final, official, decision has been reached by the agency’s Office of Policy.
I think that part of PEER’s release is dead on. The NPS has taken three years to review this problem, which is too long even for the government to move. This is not a difficult problem to understand or to solve. In fact, there are several solutions:
- Remove it from the store.
- Sell it, but under the "myth" section.
- Put a sticker on it saying "The contents of this book are speculative, and in fact are indeed provably wrong. The authors are not well (or, apparently, at all) versed in the scientific method, the best way through which to test the nature of reality. The authors put their personal beliefs ahead of facts. In case you are still not clear, this text should be thought of as a religious tome and therefore cannot be endorsed by any branch of the U.S. Government."
You get the idea.
However they wanna do it, they could do something. Stalling is not the answer, and in fact will bite them on their collective butts. The nibbles have already begun.
January 17th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
According to what I read this morning in the eSkeptic mailing, “the reference to the creationism book being sold in the Grand Canyon bookstore — Grand Canyon: A Different View by Tom Vail — is true. It is sold in the “inspiration†section of the bookstore, alongside other books of myth and spirituality,” the book is already shelved in the myths and spirituality section.
-Paul
January 17th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
I think it is already sold in the Myth section – Michael Shermer sent an updated eskeptic. In the note he mentions that the book is sold in the Inspiration section with the other myths..
I begin to doubt PEERs claim that the government hasn’t responded to a three year old query.
jbs
January 17th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Yep. This is an object lesson in fact checking. Dr. Shermer’s response is why I am a skeptic.
When evidence comes in to challenge a claim it is considered. In this case we found that PEER was exaggerating. It is good news that PEER was wrong.
I’m grateful for that, and hope we have learned a valuable lesson. Heehee.
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-01-17.html
January 17th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
~sigh~ It would help if you read your own commenters’ comments. This is a dead issue as far as I’m concerned, and has been so for two weeks. As the director said it has always been sold in the ‘inspiration” section and people who have gone there have said so. Now, they moved it out of the Natural History section on the web site as well.
If it doesn’t sell, great. If it sells to people who take Vail’s creation tours, they’re lost causes anyway. There are bigger fish to fry, imho.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Personally, I haven’t read the Vail book, but if it purports to be a science text, then I don’t think it should be sold in the park at all. Clearly that would be misleading.
But if (as it appears to be from the description on their webpage) it is a basically a picturebook with bible and religious quotes intermixed, then I think it could be legitimately sold in the “inspirational” section along with the native american creation myths.
January 17th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
BA opened this post on the Grand Canyon with this gem: “Note: I meant to publish this post last week, but somehow it slipped between the cracks.”
I recognize good irony when I read it, or even a bad pun, intended or not.
OK, serious science folks, carry on.
January 18th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Your sticker idea is amusing, but I would be wary of inviting a Cobb-County-style lawsuit. (See, e.g., http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/13/evolution.textbooks.ruling/)
January 18th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
‘Inspiration’?
No.
There’s already a section for this book. It’s called ‘fiction’.
Also-
Someone (and for all I know they already have) should start a campaign naming and shaming bookshops that have astrology sections larger than astronomy sections. It goes without saying that bookshops in which the reverse is true would be recommended to high heaven.
January 19th, 2007 at 5:38 am
Christian, that would be about all the major bookstores (i.e., Barnes & Borders-A-Million*). The astrology/New Age section offers much more than astronomy – at least the stores I’ve been to. The Borders I most frequent has astronomy lumped in with physics (hence Bad Astronomy is on the same bookcase as Feynman, but it’s there, math is on the other side.) But in comparison to all the offerings I see on Amazon, there are not a lot of astronomy books. The self-help section is much bigger as well. These are business decisions – it’s what the public buys. If astrology books were not sold, there’s nothing to say those people would buy astronomy books for lack of choice. Sadly many non-chain or specialty bookstores have closed.
*I stole that from Blake Stacey – don’t know if it’s his originally.
January 19th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Melusine,
Thanks.
I propose creating the nomy/logy index for the ratio of astronomy to astrology books.
Are bookshops solely intended to make money, or should they promote learning? B&N and Borders promote themselves as places where people can learn new ideas. Do they care at all about selling patently false pap to their customers?
I would love to find a bookshop which actually promoted good books and gave little space to astrology and the latest Coulter. A book-shop that actually cared about the books they sell and the public they sell to.