Seattle's Anti-Intellectual Think Tank

Occasionally, Seattle likes to put its wrong foot forward. This time it's the Discovery Institute, which normally spends its time wonking about land use and transportation issues. Now they're encouraging high school science teachers to "teach the controversy" surrounding evolutionary theory, a controversy that they're busy creating. The Discovery Institute claims that it has no Creationist aims up its sleeve, and is only advocating scientific criticism of a too-venerated theory.

But its senior fellow Dr. Jonathan Wells, who's responsible for the Geraldo-Rivera-like "10 Questions To Ask Your Biology Teacher" (answered by the NCSE here), has written in favor of the theory of Intelligent Design, which argues that life is just too darn complex to have evolved on its own. As theories go, this one is super applicable. Can't get your head around something? Probably God did it. It's hard to see how *poof* fits into scientific theory.

At Seattlest, we wonder if maybe it's time for think tanks to get some more rigorous certification before they can call themselves think tanks. For the Discovery Institute, we like "crank tank" instead.