John G. West Political Scientist and Cultural Critic
Articles

Eugenie Scott hanging tough on smear?

Published at Evolution News
Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

WorldNetDaily has an article about the false smear of California parent Larry Caldwell by Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education. According to the article, Scott has yet to respond to Caldwell’s request for a retraction:

Caldwell asked for a response by 5 p.m. yesterday but has heard nothing from Scott…

“It just shows that even after they’ve been told in detail the specific facts, they are not willing to rely on the truth in this debate,” Caldwell said.

“It just confirms to me they have a strategy of using misinformation.”

As of this morning, the NCSE’s website is still running its link to Scott’s article about Caldwell, which falsely claims that he tried to get his district to adopt two creationist books as part of the district’s curriculum.

Of course, this isn’t the first time NCSE officials have been guilty of spreading false information about those they disagree with. In 2002, NCSE officials Kevin Padian and Alan Gishlick impugned the science credentials of biologist Jonathan Wells by claiming that after Wells obtained his Ph.D. in biology, he “followed this with a 5-year postdoctoral position…during which time he seems to have performed no experiments” and “no peer-reviewed publications resulted.” Both claims were false. Wells did perform experiments in his post-doctoral position, and those experiments did generate peer-reviewed publications. But even after being sent documentation of these facts, Padian and Gishlick refused to correct the record. For details of their outrageous defamation of Wells, you can read the pdf document posted here. Spreading false information about others appears to be part of standard practice at the NCSE.

John G. West

Senior Fellow, Managing Director, and Vice President of Discovery Institute
Dr. John G. West is Vice President of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and Managing Director of the Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Formerly the Chair of the Department of Political Science and Geography at Seattle Pacific University, West is an award-winning author and documentary filmmaker who has written or edited 12 books, including Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, and Walt Disney and Live Action: The Disney Studio’s Live-Action Features of the 1950s and 60s. His documentary films include Fire-Maker, Revolutionary, The War on Humans, and (most recently) Human Zoos. West holds a PhD in Government from Claremont Graduate University, and he has been interviewed by media outlets such as CNN, Fox News, Reuters, Time magazine, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post.
Discovery Institute