BAS SkepTalk - Glenn Branch: "Gems from the Quote Mine"

Bay Area Skeptics, "SkepTalk": Berkeley

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/3/a/5/0/600_443894928.jpeg

WHAT: "Gems from the Quote Mine"

Quote mining (also known as contextomy) is the tactic of taking quotes out of context in order to make them seemingly agree with the quote miner's viewpoint or to make an opponent's comments seem more extreme in order to make their positions easier to refute or demonize. This tactic is widely used among Young Earth Creationists in an attempt to discredit evolution.

WHO: Glenn Branch

Glenn Branch is the Deputy Director of NCSE, the National Center for Science Education. Formerly a graduate student in philosophy at UCLA, where he won prizes both for scholarship and teaching, he is conversant with the philosophical debates surrounding creationism and "intelligent design"; he is also a long-time student of pseudo-science. Branch is co-editor, with Eugenie Scott, of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools (http://www.baskeptics.org/nioc/), and the author or coauthor of numerous articles on creationism and evolution in such publications as Scientific American, The American Biology Teacher, and Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics.

WHEN: 7:30PM, Thursday, November 12th

WHERE: La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley.
A 6-minute walk from the Ashby BART station. [Click for Map (http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=La+Pe%C3%B1a&fb=1&gl=us&hq=La+Pe%C3%B1a&cid=0,0,12499164906316265976)]

HOW: Presented as a FREE public service by Bay Area Skeptics (http://www.baskeptics.org/).

WHY: Because we're curious creatures!

http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/1/8/5/8/600_430926232.jpeg

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/6/c/5/7/600_436047735.jpeg