New Scientist ignores its own story.

The kerfuffle over New Scientist’s recent story – “Darwin was wrong about the tree of life” – has stirred the science blogosphere. The author of the article, Graham Lawton, has popped up on various critical blogs attempting to defend (sort of) the title and content of his article. (See John Pieret’s directory to the critical posts, and Bora’s similar directory and snark).

In that linked post Pieret points out that the New Scientist article has already apparently been cited by a creationist Texas Board of Education member in support of her proposal to weaken the Texas science standards (see here for the original story):

Barbara Cargill, a Republican who supported the weaknesses requirement, said there have been “significant challenges” to the theory of evolution and she cited a recent news article in which a European scientist disputed Darwin’s “tree of life” showing common ancestors for all living things.

What’s even more entrancing, Pieret notes that New Scientist reported on the same creationist proposal, but somehow neglected to mention Cargill’s implicit citation of Lawton’s “Darwin Was Wrong” story as support for her proposal.

Where is Graham Lawton these days? Busily showing that Galileo was wrong when he thought there were just four moons of Jupiter, or that the earth isn’t really round but is an oblate spheroid?

Added in edit: Reading Pieret’s post more carefully, I find that he borrowed the directory of critical posts from Adrian Thysse, to whose post and blog I commend your attention.