Controversial New Scientist article is back up
The New Humanist blog notices that Amanda Gefter’s article “How to Spot a Hidden Religious Agenda” has been reinstated on the New Scientist website.
It carries the explanation that it was originally removed on legal advice, the reason being one of the people mentioned in the article, the British GP and writer James Le Fanu, had taken the article personally and believed it harmed his reputation.
Le Fanu’s book Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves had earlier received scathing reviews at the hands of both Gefter and the editor of the New Scientist, Roger Highfield. Not that this had anything to do with the legal threat, of course.
The article is now appended with a few paragraphs from Le Fanu, wherein he insists that he has no hidden religious agenda. On the contrary, his mission is merely to
draw attention to the limits of science and its exclusively materialist explanations and theories.
A pity he decided to call his lawyer, rather than simply write a letter to the editor.
The title of this item does not appear to make sense to me – are words the reversed?
@barriejohn, Fixed, thanks.
No problem! When I was a boy my dad had a work colleague with two sons, and they used to communicate all the time “in reverse” – every sentence had its words in reverse order. They were so proficient at this that they didn`t even have to think about it, but the odd thing was that his wife – who was subjected to their private “language” on a continuous basis – could never make any sense of it! How strange!!