So I was catching up on GSA Today's from a couple of months ago and I came across this article on the Inaugural Young Earth-Scientists Congress being held in Beijing. I was interested because I had never seen anything for young-earth creationists in GSA Today before so I took a read at it. I noticed a lot of topics similar to normal geology meetings and I wondered why would they would go through the effort of hosting this thing if not to address the young-earth thing. Then I got to the line "need to educate policymakers on earth-science issues that will significantly affect the younger generation."
Oh.
I assumed Young Earth-Scientists meant Young-Earth Scientists or just Young-Earth Creationists. I was wrong. It was aimed at the younger generation of earth-scientists. It matters a lot where that hyphen is. But if I read it the wrong way, how many other people would read it the same way I did?
Branding is everything. :) Unfortunate choice indeed.
ReplyDeleteI agree, bad choice -- although I can't think of a better alternative off the top of my head that isn't overly complicated.
ReplyDeleteOr you could just go the "My Cousin Vinny" route and call them Earth-Scientist Yewts
ReplyDeleteHi Dino Jim & All,
ReplyDeleteThe YES Network (as it is know known) was set up several years ago in Europe where there were was no problem with the name. The Network has now grown and as such we underwent a long consultation period which included discussions about the name but it was decided to keep YES as it now, internationally, has recognition and is well liked by the members!
We appreciate that there are other groups, mainly in N America going by the name of Young-Earth Scientists,but as we now go by the name YES and this 'issue' is pretty much restricted to this area we did not see any reason to alter the name.
Just as a FYI YES has a pretty busy year coming up, we just ran a session at EGU and there is a National Event in Africa in 2011. We also have several research and developmental projects running internationally and several more in the pipeline. Check out our Facebook/Twitter or webpages to get more info, or even join..
Jo Venus
YES President
I figured the name was chosen because of the YES acronym but it does bring up feeling in the US of the anti-scientific YEC movement. I know of several people with whom I have talked that had the same reaction I did when reading the article.
ReplyDeleteI understand your reasons for sticking with the name and I meant no disrespect. I just wanted to point out the possible assumptions people will make about it based on the name.
Someone who was present at the founding of YES tells me that the name was created over beers in Oslo by two geologists from China and two from Italy, who then translated it to English.
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