Logical Fallacies 17: The Quote Mine

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnPZTOhjE3Y&feature=watch_response

            In the mid-‘90’s, tales of alien abduction were very popular and widespread in the United States.  The publically-renowned scientist, Dr. Carl Sagan, examined the overall number of such reports which had come in and the period of time involved and declared publically (pardon me for paraphrasing), “If we accept these figures, we are lead to conclude that there is an alien abduction in this country every few seconds.”

            Let’s just take a moment here to emphasize a few clarifying details.  He’s saying, “If we accept these figures...”  He’s speaking hypothetically.

            If we accept that there is life on other planets, and if we accept that some of that life is not only sentient but scientifically and technologically advanced enough to have a practical means to travel across light years, and if we accept that this life elects not only to do so but to make earth its destination, and if we accept that such has occurred the specified number of times in the specified period of time, then and only then are we lead to conclude that, every few seconds in this country, some group of extra-terrestrials somewhere are demonstrating to us a ceremonial greeting consistent of an anal probe instead of a handshake.  No doubt they do this in anticipation that we will return the favor and when we don’t, they give up on potential communication and go on their way.  If we accept all these premises, then we are lead to this conclusion.

            It was at this time that Geraldo Rivera had a talk show.  Shortly after this declaration by Dr. Sagan, Geraldo declared on his show to a national audience, “According to NASA scientist Carl Sagan, there is an alien abduction in this country every few seconds.”

            Here we have the quote mine.  Was there truth to this quote?  Some.  Was it, nonetheless, misleading?  Profoundly.  It creates the impression that every last one of these claims has held up to scientific scrutiny.  Have they?  No.  In fact, not a single one of these claims has.

            Now consider another creationist favorite.

            (Taken from The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin)

            “To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”

            On its own, this creates the impression that Darwin himself had doubts about his theory.  But look at the very next sentence.

            “Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.”

            The next few pages explore this in depth.  This very sentence makes it abundantly evident that Darwin was acknowledging the doubts of others; not expressing them himself which is the impression created when the first sentence in this example is cited alone.

            Now modern evolutionary theory itself is very different from what Darwin first formulated.  For one thing, Darwin’s theory did not originally contain anything about mutation.  Mutation is a genetic concept and no one in Darwin’s day had any knowledge about genetics.  Modern evolutionary theory also draws quite heavily on paleontology which was an entire field of science only beginning to form, and therefore hardly in a position to contribute anything to this school of thought.  That would have to wait.  So it happens once in a while that some biologist, paleontologist, or team of one or the other will uncover new evidence which necessitates the slight modification of a small part of something Darwin held to be true.  In other words, their discovery will require evolutionary theory, ironically enough, to evolve.

            Given the fact that human understanding is never complete, nor perfect, but is always subject to expansion and improvement, to our own benefit, this is appropriate.  Whenever this happens, though, it never fails that creationist sources of “news” will seize on this and emblazon themselves with headlines to the effect of “SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY PROVES THAT DARWIN WAS WRONG!”

            Let’s apply this to other contexts.

            Eratosthenes was the first person to figure out that, contrary to first appearance and popular opinion, the Earth is round.  But he honestly believed that it was the center of the Universe.  It wasn’t until Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo came along that this perception would be corrected.

            “SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY PROVES THAT ERATOSTHENES WAS WRONG!”

            “Wrong” as in “mistaken.”  But mistaken about what?  About the notion that the Earth is round?  Of course not.  Mistaken?  Yes.  But not about that.

            By the same token, Isaac Newton, the father of geospatial and differential calculus, also first formulated the concept of gravity and pioneered the first work with it.  But nonetheless, there were errors in his work which were not discovered or corrected until Einstein came along.

            “SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY PROVES THAT NEWTON WAS WRONG!”

            Observe how this headline creates the impression that Newton was mistaken, specifically about gravity.  It doesn’t actually lie.  None of these examples is an outright fabrication, but each is no less misleading.  In each case, proving someone mistaken about something at some point is a far cry from proving them dead wrong about their most famous tenets.  Eratosthenes made mistakes, but the world really is round instead of flat as it first appears.  Isaac Newton made mistakes, but there really is a naturalistic attraction of predictable force relative to distance between every pair of atoms in the Universe.  Charles Darwin also made mistakes, but life really does change over time by way of descent with modification.  It’s an incredible pity that one can be so dishonest and so misleading without actually lying.

addendum:  Oh, dear.  I don't know what it was I had read, but I could swear I remember reading about Geraldo Rivera quote mining Carl Sagan in Sagan's book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, but I recently read this book again, and it's not there.  Additionally, I have gone on the web and run a search on Carl Sagan and Geraldo Rivera, both names in the same search, and the only link I have been able to find to support this is this very entry on my blog that you just finished reading.  So take that part as an illustration of the concept, not a documentation of something that actually happened.