Talk:Explore Evolution

Initial comments

Looks good. A couple of rough edges that might do with smoothing off:

• "trumpets" will probably get into trouble over NPOV, a less colourful word might be better.
• "consistent with the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns, "Stand up for science" and "Critical Analysis of Evolution"." lacks a start to its sentence (and is not a continuation of a sentence either in the earlier quote, or introducing the quote).

Hrafn42 13:17, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

This article seems heavy-handed and anti-intelligent design in it's form and function. It's neutrality is in dispute. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.95.237.98 (talk) 18:05, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Starts well, critical, but open, then fails quickly: " it aims to provide a "lawsuit-proof" way of attacking evolution and promoting pseudoscientific creationism without being explicit" is an assertion of motive, not at all commentary on content. This is very poor; it's not just NPOV, it's not on topic.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.157.110.195 (talk • contribs) 18:38, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Since the aims are rather obvious, have changed "it aims" to "its evident purpose is". . . dave souza, talk 19:23, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Needs some serious work . . .

As explained in the Comments section, I would barely rate it a good "Start." —Brightflash 12:06, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Direct quotations

The article is a bit heavy-handed with the templated direct quotations, which breaks up the article alot. I'm going to turn some of them into inline quotes and/or paraphrases. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 15:27, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Timmer article on 'Explore Evolution'

Natural Selection: Explore Evolution seems to think a reply can be made to the arguments in favor of natural selection. Based on the symposium, the scientific community clearly doesn't. Selective pressure made appearances in nearly every session. Selection for self-replicating RNAs and for enclosing biochemical precursors within membranes were central to the origin of life work of Gerald Joyce and Jack Szostack, respectively. At the other end of the spectrum, the researchers exploring human evolution (Katherin Pollard, Bruce Lahn, and Svante Pääbo) spoke of the challenges of identifying signs of selection amidst the genetic drift that's occurred within the genomes of mammals in general and primates in particular.

Here, it was clear that there simply is no controversy. In contrast to the arguments over bacterial trees and the origin of eukaryotes, none of the researchers felt compelled to explain or justify their focus on the role of mutation and selective pressure. Concerns, when they arose, were simply focused on identifying the consequences of selection. As such, Discovery's focus on presenting a controversy here seems hallucinatory.

[1] Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 05:09, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

World Magazine

Is World Magazine, which is extensively cited & quoted in the article a RS? It would appear to fall under WP:RS#Extremist and fringe sources, and so should not be cited except for information about themselves. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 10:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Need section on contents

One thing that is glaringly missing is any presentation of the book's actual contents. Without this the whole article is pretty much pointless. Lehasa (talk) 12:34, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Explore Evolution/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Comment(s)

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At best I'd rate the article a "Start" Whether it has any importance, I'm afraid, I'll have to leave to others with more experience to decide! Biggest problem: It says extremely little about the book itself, focusing instead on critics' negative comments about the book and the tactical and strategic reasons why the authors say they wrote it in the first place. --So there is background about where the volume fits in an historical stream of at least semi-similar works, but virtually nothing about the work itself. Additional concerns: I doubt the article would pass any NPOV evaluation. Most egregious from the perspective of any kind of encyclopedic perspective, the article includes no summary of the book's content. For someone with a bit more experience, may I suggest, minimally, the table of contents at the Explore Evolution website? (Thanks to previous author/editors for providing the link to the home page.) As for NPOV, however, let me note that, When the article quotes comments about the work, it provides no factual grounds for why the critics make their comments. (For example, on what grounds does Sally Lehrman claim that the book "uses pseudoscience to attack Darwin's theories"?) In the one case where an ostensible proponent (author Meyer) is referenced as making what one might figure was a counter-balancing positive comment about the work, the reader is offered no explanation of the grounds on which Meyer "objected" to Lehrman's claims. Merely the statement that he did, in fact, object. (Strange!) The (misspelled) comment about Biola University's pedigree seems rather gratuitous and pretty obviously intended as a slap at the institution. (When does a university outgrow its roots? According to the Wikipedia article on the school, it has been a university for some 26 years!) Brightflash 00:43, 6 September 2007 (UTC) "Start class" sounds about right for this. Feel free to add to the article. Some of the problems you identify relate to sourcing - we are limited by what has been written about the book in reliable sources. Guettarda 19:45, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Substituted at 21:41, 26 June 2016 (UTC)