Lighter Moment: We turn the lights on the dark corners of tenure and the fever swamps of peer review, and what do we find?

We are agents of endarkenment ...

Nowadays, in thrall to constituencies of unreason, zealots of all stripes are chipping away at evolutionary science. In our own country, 'creationism' and 'intelligent design' are now considered suitable topics for instruction in science, as if these notions were as testable as the perfect gas laws of Boyle (pV = nRT) or the Hardy-Weinberg equation (p2 + 2pq + q2 = 1) of population genetics. (p. 10)

Of course, evolutionary theory may be only one of several explanations for life on our planet, but it's the only theory that has held up against disproof. And however much we think we know of evolution today, it must be a minute faction of what remains to be discovered tomorrow. Finally, I'd argue that the facts of evolution impose a kind of necessity on the chance of our imagination, they cut short many a tall tale. Experimental science is our defense - perhaps our best defense - against humbug and the Endarkenment. (p. 12)

- Gerald Weissmann from his book, Galileo's Gout (Science In An Age of Endarkenment)

Hat tip: Stephen E. Jones.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: