The tactic of abusing the primary scientific literature for the purpose of misleading the general public is not new to the anti-evolutionist movement. ...The practice is so frequent among creationists (as well as other practitioners of pseudoscience) that it receives a name: quote-mining. ...
The Discovery Institute is accumulating quite a record of quote-mining of its own. Jonathan Wells's Icons of Evolution (Washington DC: Regnery, 2000) is essentially a compendium of quote-mining intended to discredit evolution in general; the reviewers for Nature, Science, and The Quarterly Review of Biology were unanimous in finding nothing of scientific or pedagogical value in it.[16] The Discovery Institute's Getting the Facts Straight: A Viewer's Guide to PBS's Evolution (Seattle WA: Discovery Institute, 2001) is another exercise in quote-mining, intended to discredit the recent critically acclaimed PBS series on evolution in particular. Jerry Coyne, one of the scientists whose views were misrepresented by the Discovery Institute in Getting the Facts Straight, commented, "The Discovery Institute is up to its old tricks. Given the complete absence of evidence for their own theory of 'intelligent design' — a theory that has produced not a single scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal — they instead seek 'confirmation' of their views in controversies about evolutionary biology. Their strategy (transparent to all thinking people) is to sow doubt about the fact of evolution simply because scientists do not know every detail about how evolution occurred."[17]
In fact, the Discovery Institute's reputation for quote-mining is apparently spreading in the scientific community. In his response to NCSE's questionnaire, for example, David P. Mindell (coauthor of [14]), wrote, "I am appalled that the Discovery Institute would find anything in any of my work to support their unscientific views. I am of course familiar with them as a source of misinformation and misunderstanding about nature and propaganda for anti-science education legislation."
-- Analysis of the Discovery Institute's Bibliography
You know, I think I'm becoming a little optimistic that the grand distraction of fabian creationism has run out of steam & is coasting towards oblivion.
The ID movement used to be at least a little challenging. But their sad descent into naked quote mining tells me they have run out of ideas and are getting desperate. From here on out they're just as relevant to conservatism as the ICR or AiG or Kent Hovind.