Good Argument, Bad Writing

Over at Law Evolution Science and Junk Science, Joe McFaul takes on the Discovery Institute's "whine after the Dover bad beat" and says "

Entitled "Traipsing Into Evolution," it appeals to the court of public opinion. Appeal denied. This is a wretched book."

Now the absolute first thing I want to say is that this is a good article which makes excellent points. Please go read it after (or before) you read this. In fact, read many, or all, of Joe's articles on the law involved with scientific claims (being kind, here, to ID).

What follows is just a light stylistic criticism.

Further down in the article, he has this:

That means witnesses must answer questions from an attorney who is not sympathetic to the witness's own position. The witness cannot decline to answer and the witness must tell the truth. In the Dover trial, the Intelligent Design side offered: (1) out of court press releases; (2) proffered witnesses who waffled, equivocated, and finally admitted the lack of factual support for ID when cross examined; and (3) some of the Intelligent Design witnesses got caught lying under oath.

Factually, this is true. Stylistically, it's very awkward. His three points should all be the same thing, as they're all part of the same sentence. And they should all be direct objects (complements) of the verb "offer", since that's the controlling element of the list.

The ID side offered out of court press releases; [the ID side offered] proffered witnesses who.... and [the ID side offered] some of the ID witnesses got caught lying.

Now you could argue that 'proffered' in (2) isn't a main verb, but is a participle used as an adjective (What kind of witnessess who waffled did they offer? They offered proffered witnesses who waffled.), but I don't think you could make a strong case for it. I think McFaul was making "offered" and "proffered" parallels, saying the ID side "offered press releases" and "proffered witnesses". In which case, his colon should have come after "the ID side", and "proffered" should have led point (2):

In the Dover trial, the Intelligent Design side: (1) offered out of court press releases; (2) proffered witnesses who waffled, equivocated, and finally admitted the lack of factual support for ID when cross examined

But then there's point (3). There is no way to make point (3) line up with (1) and (2). Because (3) has a totally different subject - not "the ID side" at all. The sentence "The ID side offered some of the Intelligent Design witnesses got caught lying under oath" is not a coherent, grammatically sound, utterance. Nor is "The ID side some of the Intelligent Design witnesses got caught lying under oath", if you have altered the wording to make (1) and (2) coherent.

His three sentences are, as he has them written:

In the Dover trial, the Intelligent Design side offered out of court press releases. The Intelligent Design side offered proffered witnesses who waffled, equivocated, and finally admitted the lack of factual support for ID when cross examined. The Intelligent Design side offered some of the Intelligent Design witnesses got caught lying under oath.

What he wanted, and probably had before he started playing around with ()'s, was:

In the Dover trial, the Intelligent Design side offered out of court press releases; they proffered witnesses who waffled, equivocated, and finally admitted the lack of factual support for ID when cross examined; and some of the Intelligent Design witnesses got caught lying under oath.

Putting that into the format he ended up with would take only minimal rewriting:

In the Dover trial, the Intelligent Design side offered (1) out of court press releases; (2) witnesses who waffled, equivocated, and finally admitted the lack of factual support for ID when cross examined; and (3) some witnesses who got caught lying under oath.

See? That's not so hard, now.