Thanks to the indefatigable Nick Matzke for catching a wild misattribution in Karen Armstrong's Guardian opinion piece of 31 July 2006. I just sent the following letter to the newspaper:
To the editors,In her opinion piece of 31 July, Karen Armstrong attributed remarks to me (as a direct quote) which I did not make:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1833810,00.html
The erroneous attribution can be found near my name, Paul Nelson.
This was first brought to my attention by the widely-read science blog, The Panda’s Thumb:
www.pandasthumb.org
in a post on 31 July by Nicholas Matzke about a “spurious Paul Nelson quote” published in the Guardian.
Please publish a retraction or correction. I never said the remarks attributed to me by Ms Armstrong. If you contact Armstrong about this and ask her about the source for the error, she will agree with me. This is inexcusably slovenly writing.
I urge you to do this immediately to prevent the error from circulating further.
Thank you kindly for your help. I can be reached by telephone if necessary at the following numbers:
[snip]
Paul A. Nelson
Fellow
Discovery Institute
www.discovery.org/cscAdjunct Professor
MA Program in Science & Religion
Biola University
www.biola.edu/scienceandreligion
I should note that Karen Armstrong and I have never communicated with each other. She certainly did not interview me for her article.
