Dave Roberts at Gristmill gives us the heads-up on this delightful editorial from the latest issue of Scientific American. The SciAm website only has the first couple of paragraphs for free, but a helpful LiveJournal user has retyped the whole thing. Go read it.
Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody’s ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.
(I've been waiting for a chance to use this graphic, btw -- click it for a link to bookmarks with that design. Bigger version in the extended entry.)
