DEVOTEES OF MELODRAMA SUFFERING WITHDRAWL PANGS awaiting the next season of Desperate Housewives, relief is at hand! Simply tune in to the magnificent soap opera generously offered by Evolution News and Views, one of the blogging arms of the Discovery Institute, for a thrilling pot-boiler of bizarre antics and improbable plot twists worthy of Wisteria Lane itself!

But be warned: it’s fast-paced stuff. It would be a full-time task to run down every quotation quarried out of context or factoid spun right out of orbit abounding in the sheer volume of episodes.

Which is why we hadn’t previously spotted a DI blog piece a month ago, “A Stealth Creationist Theory” Which Is Neither Stealth Nor Creationist: Discuss! (9 August 2007) by one Logan Gage, who was incensed by a less-than-reverential item in the press:

Richard Brookhiser’s recent TIME magazine article ”Matters of Morality” is just lovely in its description of intelligent design:

In 2005 Bush said that both intelligent design (a stealth creationist theory) and evolution ought to be taught in schools.

Wow. First of all, ID is not creationism—and no one is more vociferously insistent about this than the major creationist organizations like Answers In Genesis. We’ve heard this charge before. But stealth?…

…I guess Brookhiser didn’t get the memo about Discovery Institute becoming one of the most cited think tanks in the country, either. How does a respectable magazine get away with such a description—which is as biased as it is false?

Indeed, let us, as Gage enjoins, “Discuss!”

The “memo” Gage refers to is a link he provides to a previous DI blog, published over a year ago: Discovery Institute Becoming One of the Most Cited Think Tanks In The Country (16 June 2006 – Robert Crowther):

According to a report issued by a liberal media resource, FAIR, the Discovery Institute has become one of the most sought after think-tanks in the country, with greater percentage growth in news notice than any other think tank.

The FAIR “report” cited is a link to Study Finds First Drop in Think Tank Cites (May/June 2006), wherein the Discovery Institute ranked at position 20 in the League Table of the top 25. The FAIR report covers the period of 2005 (during which the Kitzmiller v. Dover case was international news); the Discovery Institute had not previously appeared in the Top 25 League Table.

But oddly, Gage appears not to have consulted the more recent annual report compiled by FAIR and covering 2006, which was published months before Gage’s piece: Think Tank Sources Fall, but Left Gains Slightly (March/April 2007: FAIR).

Reporting a continuation of the trend from 2005 of declining citations of think tanks generally, this time the Discovery Institute has completely vanished from the Top 25 League Table.

In other words, in August 2007, when a report on 2006 had been available since April, Gage instead exhumed the FAIR report for 2005.

Discuss!

To paraphrase the man himself: I guess Gage didn’t get the more recent memo about Discovery Institute dropping off the list of the most cited think tanks in the country. How does a ‘respectable’ think tank get away with Gages’ description—which is as biased as it is false?