Via Kevin Drum, here’s an excellent post from my friend Chris Mooney on the way USA Today has taken the awful “he said”/”she said” approach to journalism (which we denounce in ATPS) and applied it to op-eds:

Just because your editorial page takes a stance in favor of evolution, that doesn’t mean you have to publish nonsense as a rejoinder. But USA Today just did that today with this op-ed, from a Utah Republican (not a scientist), which has the gall to claim: “There is zero scientific fossil evidence that demonstrates organic evolutionary linkage between primates and man.” Absolutely outrageous…

[W]hile the op-ed page may be the place for airing a range of opinions, it is emphatically not the place for the airing of falsehoods and misinformation. This is a classic example of “balance” run amuck.

Indeed. Drum notes the ugly implications of this kind of pseudo-journalism:

When USA Today runs an article on September 26th about the 100th anniversary of the Theory of Relativity, as I hope they do, will they feel obligated to print a rebuttal from one of the many crackpots on the web who say that Einstein was wrong? I suspect not. Why then, do they feel the same need with evolution, which, if anything, rests on a more solid evidentiary foundation than relativity?

It’s a mystery. Perhaps in the future, instead of reporting on actual science, USA Today will simply take a poll and publish one of its cute graphics telling us what the majority of the citizenry believes. Then we can teach that in our public schools instead of just parroting the politically correct line from the liberal elites in our scientific establishment. Happy days!