{"id":4347,"date":"2005-06-02T09:28:41","date_gmt":"2005-06-02T13:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4347.html"},"modified":"2005-06-02T09:28:41","modified_gmt":"2005-06-02T13:28:41","slug":"the-smithsonian-slowly-backs-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-smithsonian-slowly-backs-away\/","title":{"rendered":"The Smithsonian slowly backs away"},"content":{"rendered":"

I noted<\/a> on Monday that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History had found itself in a creationist mess. Fortunately, the debacle is working towards something resembling a resolution.<\/p>\n

The Discovery Institute, which seeks to undermine modern biology by promoting “intelligent-design” creationism, produced an anti-evolution movie and paid the museum $16,000<\/a> to use its auditorium to screen the film. The Smithsonian agreed, despite the fact that it has a policy that prohibits the use of its auditorium for religious events. Just as importantly, the same policy states that “all events at the National Museum of Natural History are co-sponsored by the museum.”<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I’m pleased to report, the Smithsonian decided to cut its losses<\/a> and strike something of a compromise — the movie will still be shown, but the $16,000 will be returned and the museum will not co-sponsor the private event.<\/p>\n

“We have determined that the content of the film is not consistent with the mission of the Smithsonian Institution’s scientific research,” said a museum statement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s true, and the Smithsonian is smart to distance itself from this nonsense, but that doesn’t change the fact that the museum clearly screwed up on this one.
\n
\nThe Office of Special Events at the Museum of Natural History told the Discovery Institute that the film was “reviewed by the Associate Director for Research and Collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and approval was granted for the film to be screened.” In other words, the Smithsonian got the $16,000 check, saw the creationist movie, and lacked the sense to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”<\/p>\n

Naturally, the Discovery Institute isn’t happy.<\/p>\n

“We’re disappointed,” [Bruce Chapman, president of the Discovery Institute] said. “We met all their conditions — screening the film for them, agreeing [to list the Smithsonian] director’s name on the invitation and so forth — and then some mention of this in the media, and now they want to backtrack to some degree, and we don’t get it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chapman’s wrong when he’s undermining modern biology, but he’s right to question the Smithsonian’s actions here. The museum made a mistake when it agreed to show the junk-science film in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I noted on Monday that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History had found itself in a creationist mess. Fortunately, the debacle is working towards something resembling a resolution. The Discovery Institute, which seeks to undermine modern biology by promoting “intelligent-design” creationism, produced an anti-evolution movie and paid the museum $16,000 to use its auditorium […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}