Inside Higher Ed has a “Quick Take” today on PZ Myers jumping in uninvited on a conference call last week. Scroll down the page for the paragraph beginning:
A tightly managed conference call with Ben Stein and producers of the upcoming documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” became the scene of yet another clash between proponents of intelligent design and defenders of evolutionary theory….
It’s a well balanced summary of the event. “Tightly managed” could have all kinds of connotations. The call was set up so that all participants would be muted except the interviewees and the moderator. Questions were taken by email. As one of very many participants on the call, I took it to mean that the interviewees would be permitted to speak without dozens of interruptions coming after each sentence. It would have been nothing but noise were it not “tightly managed.”
The report closes by calling Ben Stein’s academic qualifications into question. No surprise there–he’s calling academia into question.
The \”confrontations\” between Expelled and P.Z. Myers is enough to make ones eyes roll 360 degrees. However, I got to thinking a little more on this and I think Mark Mathis and the Expelled staff are baiting Dr. Myers and P-Zed has shown he is more than willing to take the bait.
Consider the movie preview incident. Mark Mathis is on record as saying he wants P-Zed to pay to see Expelled. The confusion over the RSVP system was the perfect bait to get Dr. Myers \”kick-out\”.
The conference call \”crashing\” also sound like bait to encourage P-Zed to \”misbehave\”.
I\’ve come awy from this learning two things:
1. Mark Mathis is a brilliant marketer, and
2. P.Z. Myers has played the \”unwitting accomplice\” to perfection – so perfect that he probably still doesn\’t realise that he has helped to sell Expelled to the general populace instead of \”opening eyes to Expelled\’s \’lies\’ \”.