On Tuesday night Chris Matthews had Mike Pence (R - IN) on the ropes on science vs the Republican party, sputtering and reeling, eyes darting to and fro in full panic attack as the conservative congressman tried desperately to please his ignorant base and still avoid sounding ridiculous. So hopes were high when the host of Hardball promoted a segment with Republican Tom Tancredo Wednesday evening to discuss conservative contempt for science in the context of evolutionary biology and climate change. But this time things go terribly awry and if you listen closely, you can almost hear Darwin shrieking from his grave:
Who's bright idea was it to have a known antiscience icon from the party accused of scientific illiteracy and duplicity on unopposed to explain science? I can think of fifty science writers, bloggers, educators, and practicing scientists off the top of my head who would have happily appeared or helped Matthews prepare for this subject. In just a few minutes he and his producers could have learned that, yes indeed, speciation has been observed in nature and can be produced at will in the lab, that a republican judge appointed by George W. Bush heard evidence for both Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC) and evolution, and legally ruled that IDC was an overtly non-scientific, narrow religious belief in no uncertain terms. That literally thousands of transitional fossils have been found, including transitional sequences of whales, horses, fish to amphibians, dinos to birds, small brained hominids to anatomically modern humans, and virtually every other major transition in the animal kingdom.
Instead we were treated to tired creationist nonsense, while the host mostly nods and grunts. Matthews' intentions may have been sincere, but that segment is a scientific train-wreck for everyone involved.