"Why is it, Master, that such a highly scientific journal as 'Nature' often find acceptable, the scribblings about creationism? Nature.
"They must be practical jokes Mei Ling. It is easy to see this from a letter from, ... a Mr.Rather, a pseudonym of some member of the staff, no doubt Nature."
"But some people might take it seriously! They would not see the joke in it, especially since the days of Mr. Bryan, the courtcase of Tennessee. These were real."
"Indeed they were. But suppose you are a producer of some milk-chocolate. You have a subscribtion to a specialists magazine for milk-chocolate producers. How would it be if there was an article in it about steel-concrete? Naturally you would recognise it as something out of your sphere and outside the taste of the journal itself. In the same way, it is the Way with serious scientists who read in their journal, about an untestable-, unlikely-, belief in 'sperrits', superstition, a gaint undetectable force or influence. All science, and in fact all ideation, always, starts off with a belief, a hunch first. Then, science will test it against Reality. When there is a confirmation through variation, prediction etc. the scientist will NOT say that it is a True Word, but that the likelihood has improved the belief into a theory. It explains more than former theories. There is Darwin for you, Ling, it is what he said; only a theory, not (necessarily) truth. He followed it up by stating that he would give it up when a better one appeared. All this, is science, and is not possible with unprovable beliefs, ergo, not to be found in a specialised scientific journal. When it does appear, like the correlation between stork numbers and birth-rate Nature it is meant as a joke, just to make a scientist grin. Don't tire yourself out with it Ling, there is plenty of real science in Nature, as well as in 'Nature'."