You know, I'm all for letting the world know about science and how awesome it is, but sometimes those science journalist people really take things a little far. I get it, science magazines, like all other magazines, exist to be sold. But they represent a front, a face of Science itself. Sort of like how the Mouth of Sauron speaks for Big Eyeball Dude, except less evil.
I'm complaining in particular about a recent article, which was printed in the New Scientist publication. The article itself is informative and interesting, but the front cover of the magazine is gut-wrenchingly deceptive. It shows a kind of leafy tree- representing Darwin's idea of how all organisms were linked in a kind of "tree of life". On top of this tree, there are three huge words saying "Darwin was wrong".
Any discerning individual would probably read the article to figure out what exactly Darwin was wrong about. It turns out that it is simply that instead of pure, clean evolutionary trees as people used to think about, there is in fact an un-unravel-able web of genetic changes at the unicellular level. This is mainly due to many prokaryotes' ability to undergo horizontal gene transfers.
So that's what Darwin was wrong about. Because, you know, the concept of genes, let alone gene transfer between bacteria, was practically non-existent during his time.
But that's not what majority of the world is going to think. The laymen will look at the cover and think, oh, so I didn't actually evolve. The creationists would then tell the laymen, "Yeah, that's right. Science disproved itself." And suddenly we have a lot more people joining the Intelligent Design movement.
I guess it's a good thing that not everyone is that concerned about the debate. Most people wouldn't care whether they were told that they evolved from rats, or that a magical being made them from dirt.
-Joe