I do believe that some of the criticism leveled against Expelled is legitimate -- or might be, if we overlooked the behavior of those proposing to care about such standards. For example, I am indeed convinced that a small number of people interviewed were unaware that the final production would be rather in favor of Intelligent Design. Perhaps, in a perfect world, people should always be up-front about their own intentions when interviewing people.

However, I have trouble taking such protests seriously given the apparent hypocrisy. For one, almost all investigative journalism is based on this same technique. You'd never be able to infiltrate a dictatorship or corrupt business if everyone had to announce their ultimate intentions and actions.

"Dear China: I will be visiting your nation soon, carrying a video camera and lots of media. But I am not a tourist, but am actually a journalist looking to document human rights abuses. I agree it would be wrong to mislead you about my intentions..."

Further, some of the people screaming the loudest are those who have used the exact same technique. Dawkins, for example, is protesting -- trusting naif that he is -- that he was "tricked" into appearing in the film. Yet it's seems abundantly clear that he was prepared for the interview, knew who he was talking to, had known in advance to bring along materials which reflected his point of view.

Even more humorously, it seems he has misled others regarding his true intentions, when making some of his own (extremely hate-filled, by the way) film productions:

Soon before Enemies of Reason was filmed, the production company, IWC Media, told me that Richard Dawkins wanted to visit me to discuss my research on unexplained abilities of people and animals. I was reluctant to take part, but the company’s representative assured me that “this documentary, at Channel 4’s insistence, will be an entirely more balanced affair than The Root of All Evil was.” She added, “We are very keen for it to be a discussion between two scientists, about scientific modes of enquiry”. So I agreed and we fixed a date....

The previous week I had sent Richard copies of some of my papers, published in peer-reviewed journals, so that he could look at the data.

Richard seemed uneasy and said, “I’m don’t want to discuss evidence”. “Why not?” I asked. “There isn’t time. It’s too complicated. And that’s not what this programme is about.” The camera stopped.

The Director, Russell Barnes, confirmed that he too was not interested in evidence. The film he was making was another Dawkins polemic.

I said to Russell, “If you’re treating telepathy as an irrational belief, surely evidence about whether it exists or not is essential for the discussion. If telepathy occurs, it’s not irrational to believe in it. I thought that’s what we were going to talk about. I made it clear from the outset that I wasn’t interested in taking part in another low grade debunking exercise.”

Richard said, “It’s not a low grade debunking exercise; it’s a high grade debunking exercise.”

In that case, I replied, there had been a serious misunderstanding, because I had been led to believe that this was to be a balanced scientific discussion about evidence. Russell Barnes asked to see the emails I had received from his assistant. He read them with obvious dismay, and said the assurances she had given me were wrong. The team packed up and left.

Hey, but it got him into the interview.