Saturday, September 3, 2011

Krugman's Nincompoopery

One might think that an economist who writes for the New York Times and whose most recent distinction was to aver that an alien invasion from outer space would solve our economic woes would be a little more careful not to give his critics another reason to snicker, but not Paul Krugman. Mr. Krugman boldly uses his perch at the august Times to declaim upon how much of a rube Rick Perry is and the imminent danger he poses to modern science and manages, in the event, to get egg on his face yet again.

The putative proof that Mr. Perry is an utter yahoo is that a few days ago, according to Mr. Krugman, he actually:
[M]ade headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists.
When his readers are done tsking and chortling at how such a benighted man could be a serious contender for the presidency they might reflect on the fact that what Mr. Krugman seems blissfully unaware of is that Perry was correct and almost every biologist acknowledges it. Biophysicist Cornelius Hunter elaborates:
In fact, evolution does not explain how mammals arose. Nor does it explain how reptiles, birds, amphibians or fish evolved. It doesn’t explain how species evolved abruptly in many cases. It doesn’t explain how the DNA code evolved or life itself first arose. In fact, evolution cannot even explain how a single protein could have arisen. There are 27 orders of magnitude between evolution’s expectations and reality. And that is going by the evolutionist’s own reckoning (in reality it is 100+ orders of magnitude). Indeed, practically all of evolution’s major predictions have turned out false.
Hunter might have added that no one, including evolutionary biologists, can explain how sexual reproduction arose or how lepidopteran metamorphosis evolved, nor can anyone explain how material brains developed consciousness. These and dozens of examples like them are enormous explanatory gaps in evolutionary theory, and Mr. Krugman, like so many other media lefties, has no idea what he's talking about when he assays to mock Republicans like Perry for mentioning them. Instead he just seems to enjoy making a fool of himself, as he did when he wished for a space invasion to spur government spending.

At any rate, we might now wonder who'll be the first journalist to press President Obama for his views on evolution, or is the media only interested in the opinions of a potential president and not the views of the actual president?