Thursday, November 22, 2007

Coolest Science Video Ever, and the DI's misuse of it

Huge hat tip to Abbie at ERV for this one. Please pay her a visit.

If you have never seen "The Inner Life of a Cell", it is just about the coolest science video I've ever seen. From Harvard Biovisions, it is a computer animated depiction of the detailed workings of our cells, with two versions, one with a fabulous soundtrack, and another longer version with scientific narration.

Beautiful to behold, breathtaking in its detail and scope, it is a tribute to all the scientists who have worked long and hard, often in unknown obscurity, to learn all of what we know. The narrator left my head spinning from the vast about of information therein.

Imagine then, my revulsion at seeing what the Discovery Institute for Crackpots and Kooks did with it, which unfortunately you will have to go over to Abbie's blog to see it, presumably because they took it down knowing what a furor is brewing. Apparently, they took the Harvard video, replaced the scientific narration with one of their own (pushing an intelligent design agenda of course), without Harvard's permission or even their knowledge. Apparently quote mining scientists, now they want to take scientific videos and change the narration so it suits their religious sensibilities.

Stay tuned on this one, the possibility of legal action looms. Perhaps those professional dissemblers finally went far enough to incur some real penalty for dishonestly peddling their pseudoscientific nonsense.

3 comments:

ERV said...

Thanks for spreading the word!! Tell everyone. Bring it up randomly in conversations :P Creationists are not nice people!

Anonymous said...

PZ Myers thought it needed more detail, although he did say it was pretty good.
How did this happen, I mean, how could someone not know that the feces would strike the oscillator if they commited this crime (or crimes, it seems like there are several charges that could be made)?
Guess god... er, the designer would protect them?

ScienceAvenger said...

Just keep up the work Abbie, this nonsense has to stop.

STIE I don't know what they were thinking. They just seem to think they can be dishonest forever as long as they never admit it.