By Barbara Forrest

Let’s begin 2012 by looking back three years to January 13, 2009. That is when the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) persuaded the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) to gut its policy for implementing the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). The gutted policy was inserted as §2304, “Science Education,” into Bulletin 741 [doc], the Louisiana Handbook for School Administrators, which instructs local school administrators and school boards concerning laws passed by the legislature. How did the LFF accomplish this? Long story short: the LFF showed up at BESE’s January 13, 2009, meeting loaded for bear, bringing their Louisiana College creationist professors — and their attorneys — with them. As a result, BESE stripped from the policy an explicit prohibition against teaching creationism: “Materials that teach creationism or intelligent design or that advance the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind shall be prohibited for use in science classes.” The very next day, LFF executive director, Rev. Gene Mills, announced, “Louisiana is open for business.” But there is more to this story that has not yet been told.

The untold part of the story concerns the involvement of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) — a national Religious Right litigation group headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. The ADF describes itself as (1) “a servant organization that provides the resources that will keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel through the legal defense of religious freedom, the sanctity of life, marriage  and the family” and (2) “a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.” (That’s a reference to religious Truth in case you’re wondering.) In short, when people such as creationists (in Louisiana, that would be the Louisiana Family Forum) can’t get their religious views incorporated into our public institutions, the ADF sues those institutions on their behalf. In the ADF’s view, keeping public institutions secular and free from sectarian advocacy is actually hostility rather than neutrality. The omission of religion from the functions of public entities — such as public school science classrooms, for example — is considered discrimination.

Based on the information below, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the ADF was threatening the state of Louisiana with a lawsuit if the LFF didn’t get what it wanted: the removal of the prohibition against teaching creationism from BESE’s policy for implementing the LSEA. Please keep reading. We will explain and provide documentation after some brief background and recapping.

Background on the Alliance Defense Fund

People for the American Way (PFAW) offers a useful profile of the ADF. In addition, in the June 2004 issue of Church & State, Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State points out that ADF “was formed [in 1994] by a band of television preachers [including James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association] and radio broadcasters to advance the Religious Right’s perspective in the courts.” ADF “has raised millions of dollars for Religious Right legal cases and been active in federal and state lawsuits that seek to blast holes in the wall of separation between church and state.” Boston also points out a more ominous aspect of ADF (hyperlinks added):

At least one ADF project, the Blackstone Fellowship for law students, has ties to the Christian Recon­structionist movement. Reconstruc­tionists are the most extreme manifestation of the Religious Right in America. They advocate a society anchored in ‘biblical law’ and would literally base U.S. law on the legal code of the Old Testament. In their ideal society, offenses like blasphemy, fornication, ‘witchcraft,’ homosexuality, worshipping ‘false gods’ and incorrigible juvenile delinquency would merit the death penalty. In other words, Reconstructionists long to replace America’s secular democracy with a harsh fundamentalist Christian theocracy.

(NOTE: One interesting little factoid is that some Reconstructionists favor stoning as a form of capital punishment.)

In his April 3, 2007, Wall of Separation post, Boston reveals that ADF is funded by “far-right fat cats writing big checks,” having received $21 million in donations in 2006 alone. Among its major donors are “the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, whose vice president, Erik Prince . . . founded the Blackwater USA military-security firm” (hyperlink added). And ADF wants to keep that money rolling in: “The ADF plays hardball. Its lawyers are not above engaging in wild distortions to raise money and whip fundamentalists into a frenzy.”

The organization has increased its annual total revenue despite the most severe recession since the Great Depression. Its 2008 IRS 990 form [pdf] shows a total revenue of more than $31 million, which increased to $34,702,917 million by 2010. (See the 2009 and 2010 990s [pdfs].) And get this:  ADF president and CEO Alan Sears is a one-percenter. His base pay — without benefits — ballooned from $300,271 in 2008, to $311,864 in 2009, to a whopping $354,016 in 2010. (His subordinates aren’t doing too badly either, according to the 990s.) Trying to turn the United States into a theocracy is clearly more lucrative than defending science education.

Closer to home, PFAW reports that ADF is behind Louisiana College’s planned establishment of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law in Shreveport:

The right-wing Alliance Defense Fund is helping Louisiana College, a Southern Baptist institution, start the Paul Pressler School of Law, which will join Liberty University [established by Jerry Falwell], Regent University [established by Pat Robertson] and others in providing politicized training to the next generation of Religious Right lawyers.

We’ll get to the ADF’s involvement in the BESE policy in a moment. First, let’s recall a little more of the January 13, 2009, BESE meeting.

A Brief Recap

Between December 2008 and January 13, 2009, the LFF had already succeeded in getting one statement eliminated from the December 2008 initial draft of BESE’s LSEA policy [pdf, p. 7]: “Religious beliefs shall not be advanced under the guise of encouraging critical thinking.” That statement, which the Louisiana Department of Education (LDoE) staff had included on the advice of the LSEA Advisory Committee [pdf, p. 14] was deleted after Rev. Mills paid the staff a visit. He told the Lafayette Daily Advertiser (1/8/09) that he had discussed the draft with them: “Mills said he’s been discussing the policy language with state education officials and the bill’s legislative sponsors to come up with possible changes.” He expressed to the Advocate (1/9/09) his optimism about getting the draft changed: “Mills said he is cautiously optimistic that talks among department officials, the state board and lawmakers involved in the issue will be productive.”

But getting one statement deleted wasn’t enough for Rev. Mills. He wanted a second statement stripped from the policy —  the first sentence in section D.4.d in the January 2009 revised draft [pdf, p. 3]: “Materials that teach creationism or intelligent design or that advance the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind shall be prohibited for use in science classes.” To get that second statement deleted, Mills had to go to BESE directly. (The LFF wanted BESE to retain the following sentence in D.4.d, which followed the one that Mills wanted deleted: “Evaluations of supplementary materials shall be made without regard to the religious or non-religious beliefs and affiliations of the authors of supplementary materials.” This sentence would have benefited the LFF by allowing the adoption of supplementary materials written by creationist authors. BESE ultimately decided to delete D.4.d in its entirety. The LFF understandably didn’t quibble about this.)

Mills’ getting legislators and BESE members involved in the discussions with LDoE strongly suggests that the LDoE staff were subjected to political pressure. Moreover, the fact that the LFF lawyered up for the January 13, 2009, BESE meeting in order to get the second statement deleted suggests further that the LDoE staff refused to do this, reflecting the professionalism for which the Louisiana Coalition for Science (LCFS) has applauded them.

Geologist Al Melillo, LCFS member Patsye Peebles, and LSU biologist Eric Achberger — all members of the LSEA Advisory Committee that had provided LDoE with guidelines [pdf, pp. 8-13] for the December 2008 draft — testified at the January 13 meeting that D.4.d should remain in the January 2009 revised draft, as did Kevin Carman, Dean of the College of Science at LSU. But their testimony didn’t faze the board. The only people whom BESE members heeded were the creationists, and their heeding took the form of stripping the prohibition against teaching creationism out of the policy, just as Rev. Mills wanted.

The LFF’s lawyering up consisted partly of having attorney John B. Wells and Southern University law professor Michelle R. Ghetti testify at the meeting. Both wanted the D.4.d prohibition removed from the policy. Both are also affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). This is the part of the story that has not been told. The January 13, 2009, BESE meeting showed just how far the LFF would go to get what it wanted.

The ADF Connection

Both Wells and Ghetti proudly advertise their ADF affiliation. Wells, whose background is military law, not constitutional law, describes on his website the part of his practice relevant to the ADF:

Dedicated to reversing the persecution of Christians by the ACLU and other anti-American organizations, Mr. Wells has allied himself with the Alliance Defense Fund. He has pledged to dedicate hundreds of hours per year to defending religious freedom at no cost to the client. . . . He is prepared to assist in the following:
• Legal attacks on the rights of students and school employees . . . • Violations of the First Amendment rights by the ACLU and other organizations dedicated to religious persecution

(An aside: In a matter unrelated to the LSEA, John Oller, who has been the subject of LCFS posts here, here, and here, is being represented by the ADF, with Wells as his attorney, in Oller’s lawsuit against his employer, the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. The lawsuit concerns personnel issues and has no bearing on the merits [or lack thereof] of creationism, including intelligent design.)

Ghetti, who lists “Legislative Consultant, Louisiana Family Forum” and includes the ADF as a “Professional Membership”on her professional resumé, also includes her ADF affiliation on her (public) university faculty page:

Professor Ghetti is an avid advocate for freedom to practice one’s religion and wrote Louisiana’s Preservation of Religious Freedom Act in 2010. She is an active ally of the Alliance Defense Fund. . . .

Ghetti’s faculty page at the Southern University Law Center lists “Law and Religion” as one of her teaching areas. Her biography page on her personal website says that she “specialize[s] in constitutional law, particularly in the criminal and religion areas.” However, on her resumé she lists no publications — either professional or otherwise — in constitutional law as it pertains to religion (she lists only an unpublished article about the Louisiana Preservation of Religious Freedom Act that is “About to Be Circulated for Publication”), nor do any show up in Lexis-Nexis (an academic database for legal publications). Yet both Ghetti and Wells inserted themselves into the BESE policy issue as experts.

In his testimony before BESE on January 13, 2009, Wells stressed not only his own ADF affiliation, but the ADF’s interest in the content of the draft policy (transcript from audiotape by Barbara Forrest; “uh” deleted; bold added). It’s not hard to figure out what he was getting at:

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is John Wells. I’m an attorney here in Louisiana. I’m also an allied attorney with Alliance Defense Fund. The Alliance Defense Fund is an organization of constitutional lawyers who do a lot of the type of litigation cases that are potentially being talked about here today. I should tell you that the Alliance Defense Fund is monitoring the situation. We are of the belief that paragraph 4.d, as it is written, actually probably would not pass constitutional muster because the situation’s actually dampening free expression. That the regulations without paragraph 4.d would be fine. . . .

The rules as they appear without 4.d , this first sentence before 4.d appear to give adequate guidance and pass constitutional muster. Now, the Alliance Defense Fund, of course, you know, does provide pro bono services in the event of litigation. So, for example, in some cases, where entities are sued over religious issues, we would provide a defense. . . .

[W]e feel that . . . the first sentence of 4.d would not pass constitutional muster. We would urge you to delete it. . . .

The second issue, probably just as important, is that, as I think the chairman mentioned, Senator Nevers here passed an, an act [the LSEA] that grants certain powers to this organization. [A]s an attorney, I’m familiar with what’s called the ‘delegation doctrine.’ The legislature passes the laws, OK? And an administrative body such as yourself enforce and implement those laws. And if you have a situation where you are putting in a regulation that is not authorized by the law, that in itself could lead to litigation. And that in itself could make the regulations illegal, as well as potentially unconstitutional. . . .

Did you get that, folks? Wells told BESE members that if they left the prohibition against teaching creationism in the draft, they could be sued. Now, let’s stop and think for a moment about what Wells’ comments imply. Who would be interested in suing a state board of education for issuing a prohibition against teaching creationism — a completely legitimate prohibition that is mandated by a host of federal court decisions, including two U.S. Supreme Court rulings? (See here and here.)  You got it — the Alliance Defense Fund.

Wells was telling board members, in his oh-so-deferential-to-BESE way, two things: (1) If they left D.4.d in, the policy could be considered unconstitutional and they could be sued for “dampening” someone’s free expression. Whose free expression would supposedly be “dampened” if the prohibition against teaching creationism stayed in the draft? That’s right — teachers who want to express themselves by teaching creationism in public schools. So, by leaving D.4.d in the policy draft, not only could (make that would) BESE be sued, but the ADF would do the suing. (2) If, on the other hand, BESE took D.4.d. out as the LFF wanted and someone else sued BESE (apparently under the assumption that pro-science people would sue), the ADF would then consider providing pro bono legal defense to BESE. Wells’ comments were not made off-the-cuff. He had clearly entered the meeting prepared with what can reasonably be considered the threat of a lawsuit against the state of Louisiana.

Ghetti also testified at the January 13 meeting, citing to BESE members her supposed expertise in constitutional law concerning religion. She, too, brought up the ADF, as well as a new name: Mike Johnson (J. Michael Johnson), the Shreveport attorney who has been named founding dean of the Pressler Law School (if Louisiana College can ever get it off the ground). (Aside: Among members of Pressler’s “National Board of Reference” are . . . wait for it . . . ADF CEO Alan Sears, faux historian David Barton, Left Behind co-author Tim LaHaye, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, LFF operative Darrell White, and other such luminaries.) Prior to accepting this position, Johnson was “Senior Legal Counsel and a national media spokesman” for the ADF (see Johnson’s Pressler Law School bio [pdf]). Here is the relevant excerpt of Ghetti’s BESE testimony (Forrest transcript; “uh” deleted; bold added; probable wording in red):

My name is Michelle Ghetti, and I am a law professor at Southern University, where I’ve been now for, for nineteen years. . . . I am also an attorney, a litigator. I’m also a member of the Louisiana Law Institute and an expert on both ethics and constitutional law and religion. I’ve taught constitutional law courses now for nineteen years and have recently in the last few years taught the law and religion course. I think, to my knowledge, I was the only legal expert that testified before the legislature on this particular act. . . .

One thing I wanted to mention [indecipherable] so I don’t forget . . . Mike Johnson, who is an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund and has represented governmental committees as well as individuals throughout this state and the Fifth Circuit [Court of Appeals] on issues such as this, has given a legal [opinion] on this particular bill, and he asked that I and . . . Mr. Wells, who’s with the ADF, to give you a copy of that to [make part of the record].

If you’ve hung in this far, persistent readers, you will now be rewarded with a copy of Johnson’s legal opinion, which was communicated in a letter [pdf] that Wells handed out to state board members — written on ADF letterhead and signed “ALLIANCE DEFENSE FUND, J. Michael Johnson, Senior Legal Counsel.” Note that Johnson refers to possible litigation in the very first paragraph:

This correspondence is being submitted to you by the Alliance Defense Fund (‘ADF’) to express our concerns over the legality of the proposed regulations that have been promulgated in accordance with  . . . the ‘Louisiana Science Education Act.’ The proposed regulations, ‘Science Education, §2304,’ contain some problematic language that could subject the state to unnecessary First Amendment litigation.

So there we have it: in the opening paragraph, Johnson hits BESE with the prospect of litigation that only the ADF, representing creationists, would have any interest in initiating. ADF’s message is that BESE could be sued for prohibiting something that the federal courts have already — unambiguously — declared unconstitutional, i.e., the teaching of creationism. By this time, you are surely curious as to what kind of contorted, Alice-through-the-looking-glass reasoning that Johnson and the ADF are using here. So here it is:

ADF’s “chief concern” with D.4.d is “the undue emphasis” that the prohibition against teaching creationism “places upon particular viewpoints that may be regarded as ‘religious’.” (Note the scare quotes around “religious.” Sounds like an attempt to deny that creationism is a religious viewpoint, doesn’t it?) Their rationale is that by explicitly prohibiting the teaching of creationism, BESE would be “improperly expand[ing] the lawful intent” of the LSEA. (Sounds like an attempt to deny that the LSEA is a creationist law, doesn’t it?) Leaving D.4.d in the policy would “likely subject the Board to a costly legal challenge” (read: a costly challenge if ADF sues BESE). Here is a clarification of what Johnson and the ADF were saying: “We don’t want a statement about creationism in this policy because the LSEA is not a creationist law!”

Someone should have sent that memo to LSEA sponsor Senator Ben Nevers before he explained the reason for the LSEA to a reporter when he introduced it in 2008 (emphasis added): “They [the Louisiana Family Forum] believe that scientific data related to creationism should be discussed when dealing with Darwin’s theory. This [bill] would allow the discussion of scientific facts.” Nevers also testified at the January 13 meeting — staying on script this time (Forrest transcript):

I think that by inserting this language [into the policy], I think you circumvent the intent of the legislation, and I think it should be removed. If you notice, the legislation never mentions creationism or intelligent design, that it simply states that we want science taught in our classrooms and that we want our students to be able to critically think, observe, and ask questions about science-related items.

But let’s get back to the Johnson/ADF letter. Immediately after trying to deny the religious intent of the LSEA, Johnson, citing several U.S. Supreme Court rulings, warns board members about hostility towards religion (who said this was about religion?):

Establishment Clause jurisprudence requires neutrality and forbids hostility towards religion, even in the public school context. As the Supreme Court has often explained, the Establishment Clause ‘requires the state to be neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and non-believers; it does not require the state to be their adversary.’ . . . (Establishment Clause forbids government action with an effect that ‘inhibits religion’). . . . (government is not permitted to show ‘hostility toward religion’). . . .

So, to clarify: ADF was telling BESE (when you threaten litigation, you’re telling, not asking) to remove the prohibition against teaching creationism from its LSEA implementation policy because (1) the LSEA is not about religion and (2) if it stayed in, the LSEA policy prohibiting the teaching of creationism would be hostile to religion. (In Logic 101 — which usually includes critical thinking skills — that is known as a contradiction.)

Having begun with a stick, Johnson closed with a carrot. Note the finely nuanced understatement in the first sentence (emphasis added):

ADF is keenly interested in the Louisiana Science Education Act and its goal of promoting critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories. If regulations are adopted that are more consistent with the intent of the Legislature as set forth in [the] Act, and as articulated in the testimony of its authors and supporters during the debates on the House and Senate floors [NOTE: there were no debates on the House and Senate floors], ADF would consider offering its pro bono assistance in defense of the law should it face any legal challenge.

The game plan here is pretty clear:  having sanitized the language of the LSEA itself — thereby implementing the Discovery Institute’s post-Kitzmiller strategy, the LFF — and, needless to say, the Discovery Institute — did not want BESE screwing things up by adopting a policy that bluntly exposed the LSEA as the creationist law that it is. If the LSEA implementation policy contained a prohibition against creationism, the policy would indict the law. Couldn’t let that happen, now could they? So the best way to prevent that was to let BESE know that the ADF was ready to sue if the LFF didn’t get what it wanted. And if board members cooperated by removing D.4.d, — which, as it turned out, they unanimously did — ADF might, just might, represent the state in court for free if it got sued by angry science defenders. Or, if ADF just didn’t feel like showing up in court, the taxpayers could pick up the tab.

Having hung in this far, persistent readers, here again — for your information and edification — is the link to the Johnson/ADF letter. You can savor it at your leisure, now knowing— as the late Paul Harvey used to say — “the rest of the story” of how the LFF managed to get the LSEA policy gutted. Happy New Year.

 By Barbara Forrest

It’s almost Kitzmas time again, which means that it’s almost the sixth anniversary of the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover [pdf] that was handed down on December 20, 2005. Although the Kitzmiller ruling applies only in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, it has served as a powerful legal statement that intelligent design (ID) is merely warmed-over creationism, the teaching of which is unconstitutional in public school science classes. But in Louisiana we have something else to celebrate:  December 7, 2011, marked the first anniversary of the Louisiana Coalition for Science’s successful effort to persuade the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) to approve new biology textbooks for public school biology classes.

It is important to recall this event because it marked the first — and so far only — victory that defenders of science have had in Louisiana, a state in which — where public officials are concerned — standing up for science is a liability rather than a cause for commendation. (UPDATE: An alert LCFS member noted my omission of the fact that LCFS successfully fended off HB 580 during the 2011 legislative session. This stealth creationist bill would have undercut the oversight of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education over school districts’ purchase of supplementary materials and would have written the professional staff of the Department of Education out of its role in reviewing textbooks, etc. That victory came in spring of this year, so we will have another anniversary to celebrate next June!)

The people who have attacked the teaching of science in Louisiana are still around. One of them is young-earth creationist (YEC) Charles Voss, who for years has partnered with the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) in its effort to undermine the teaching of evolution. Voss is vice-president of the YEC Origins Resource Association (see the ORA Facebook page). ORA’s president is YEC chemist Edward Boudreaux (do follow this link), who was involved in the passage of the 1981 “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act,” which was declared unconstitutional in 1987 by the United States Supreme Court. (See Boudreaux’s Facebook page.) Note that the ORA was founded in 1980 as “Louisiana Citizens for Academic Freedom in Origins.” (Ring any bells?) Let’s take a look at what Voss has been doing since the approval of the textbooks last year.

In 2002, the LFF had tried to block the approval of new biology textbooks, as they attempted to do again in 2010. They failed then, as they failed last year. But in 2003, after that first failure, Voss created his “Textaddons.com” website, on which he posted creationist addenda for almost a dozen well-known biology textbooks. To say that the addenda — all of which were variations on the same basic document — were incompetently done would be an understatement. They were heavily dependent on young-earth creationist sources, which were referenced throughout the addenda. When ID creationism edged out young-earth creationism as the chief threat to the teaching of evolution, Voss duly added ID references to the addenda.

In the wake of the LFF’s failure to block the approval of biology textbooks in 2010, Voss has now continued his earlier precedent by “updating” his Textaddons.com website. Given the attacks on the teaching of evolution in Louisiana which Voss has been involved, dating all the way back to 1994, a renewed warning to teachers against using his materials is in order. But Voss’s stuff is so pathetic that it’s just not worth a three-bell alarm (or a two-bell alarm, or even a one-bell alarm). Maybe a slight ting-a-ling, but nothing more. Only the most incompetent (or unprofessional) teacher would use this stuff.

Let’s just take a short tour through the site. A few representative samples will do. But pay attention, alert readers, because the Louisiana Coalition for Science will soon sponsor a contest for the first person to correctly identify the dumbest, most incompetent statement in a section of the website that will be identified later. Those of you who have read this far may want to compete!

Main Page of “Textaddons.com”

On the main page, Voss announces, “It is generally known that today’s Biology Textbooks mislead the reader into believing that evolution has no negative aspects.” In addition to the capitalization error, there is a substantive error here: Voss’s statement is based on the false premise that there are “negative aspects” of evolution. He probably means that that the textbooks do not include what creationists call — in their shopworn code language — “evidence against evolution.” While some aspects of evolution are not as well understood as others, there is no evidence against evolution. All available scientific evidence — all 152 years of it — supports evolution.

He also includes a weird, unclear disclaimer: “It should be noted that additional information is not presented for the subjects of Fossil Formation, the Fossil Record, Geological Column, Relative Dating, Radio-metric Dating and Intelligent Design. These exclusions are deliberate because of a possible interpretation that reflects on the age of the earth and therefore might be classified as an attempt to advance a particular religion and cause litigation.” Whatever he means concerning “a possible interpretation that reflects on the age of the earth” (Voss is a YEC, and ID is a form of old-earth creationism), he claims to have excluded information about ID. As an inspection of the addenda shows, that is false. Although Voss has sanitized the current versions under the pretense of trying to avoid legal issues, he has relied on ID sources.

Let’s look at just one addendum [pdf]: Biology: The Dynamics of Life (Biggs et al., Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2004). (Note that all of the books for which Voss provides addenda are outdated; there are no updated addenda for the new textbooks approved last year.) This addendum is copyrighted for both 2006 and 2007, although an earlier version dates back to July 2004. One of Voss’s sources in this addendum (on p. 11 and elsewhere) is “Thaxton, Bradley, & Olsen, The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, New York: Philosophical Library, (1984).” This is the first college-level ID creationist textbook and one of the founding books of the ID movement. (See the website, where the entire book can be downloaded in pdf for free.)

Another source in this addendum (p. 14) is “Wells, Jonathan, Icons of Evolution. 2000, pp. 146,149.” Wells is a founding fellow of the Discovery Institute’s creationist wing, the Center for Science and Culture (formerly the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture). Icons is an ID creationist book in which Wells accuses scientists of fraud (pp. 234-235). (See this critique of Icons at Talkorigins.org.)

Yet another source is “Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1986″ (p. 15), which is also a founding ID text. (See a review by Mark Vuletic at Talkorigins.org.) Denton still hangs out with ID people from the Discovery Institute and is an apologist for ID creationism (see this video interview).

The original 2004 version [pdf] of Voss’s addendum for Biology: The Dynamics of Life contained both young-earth and ID creationist sources in the footnotes (see p. 10, for example). Here is the list of sources for just one section, “Life in the Mesozoic” (with relevant hyperlinks added here).

1. Sarfati, J. D., Refuting Evolution. Master Books, 1999, <www.masterbooks.net>, pp.57-68 and
Refuting Evolution 2, 2002, pp.130-132.
2. Wells, Jonathan, Icons of Evolution. Regency Publishing, 2000, pp. 111-135.
3. Davis, Kenyon & Thaxton, Of Pandas and People. Haughton Publishing Co., 1993, pp. 104-107.  [Note: This is the ID creationist book that I debunked in court in Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (2005).]
4.Wieland, Carl, Bird Evolution Flies Out the Window. Creation Ex Nilo, Vol. 16, No. 4, (Sept. 1994), pp. 16-19.
5. Sarfati, Jonathan, Dino-Bird Evolution Falls Flat. Creation Ex Nilo, Vol. 20, No. 2 (March 1998), p 41.

In the current version of the addendum for Biology: The Dynamics of Life, Voss has left the content of “Life in the Mesozoic” exactly as in the 2004 version — except that he has deleted all of his blatantly creationist footnotes (p. 6).

Voss’s “Addendum Reviewers”

One important item on Voss’s main page is his list of addendum reviewers, which is most enlightening. The list is included along with Voss’s own bio here [Word doc]. His reviewers include Edward Boudreaux (see Boudreaux’s creationist credentials here) and — surprise! — John Oller, who should be well known to our readers. Twenty-four years after the Edwards decision, Boudreaux continues to mislead people by preaching creationism. In this video posted less than a year ago by the Rocky Mountain Creation Fellowship, Boudreaux boasts (2:47) of having once challenged the (unnamed) chair of the Tulane University biology department during a joint interview in which the chair was “talking all this biology, and you know, I’m not a biologist, OK?” But he asserts that he is comfortable debating such people “because I know the truth.”

He advises his audience (3:16) to “never hesitate” to confront such people: “Any opportunity you get, if you know the truth, you don’t have to be an expert in science or in a certain area. If you know enough about it, just get right on in and let the Holy Spirit do the work with you, OK?” Well, OK! That’ll save creationists a lot of work!

Another of Voss’s reviewers is “Dr.” Don Patton, whose organization, the “Metroplex Institute of Origin Science” (MIOS), makes the following declaration:

Evidences supporting Intelligent Design often go hand in hand with the discoveries made within Creation Science. It must be formally noted, Creation Science involves scientific evidences and should in no wise be conveyed by the media as only a Biblical explanation of creation or any other religious belief. Creation Science is scientific evidences, not religious doctrine.

There is a reason that Patton’s doctoral status is highlighted in quotes here. Voss lists Patton’s qualifying credential as a Ph.D. in “Education (Geology).” If Voss had done just a little bit of googling, he would have found out that information on Patton’s purported degrees had been published in 1989 in the Reports of the National Center for Science Education. Here is the relevant information as compiled by Glenn Kuban, who wrote the RNCSE article (emphasis and editorial clarifications added):

[T]he printed abstracts of the 1989 Bible-Science conference in Dayton, Tennessee (where Patton gave two talks) stated that he was a Ph.D. candidacy in geology, and implied that he has at least four degrees from three separate schools. When I asked Patton for clarification on this during the conference, he stated that he had no degrees, but was about to receive a Ph.D. degree in geology, pending accreditation of QCU [Queensland Christian University, Australia], which he assured me was ‘three days away.’ Many days have since passed, and Patton still has no valid degree in geology. Nor is the accreditation of QCU imminent. Australian researcher Ian Plimer reported, ‘PCI [Pacific College Incorporated], QPU, PCT, and PCGS [other purported 'educational' institutions] have no formal curriculum, no classes, no research facilities, no calendar, no campus, and no academic staff. . . . Any Ph.D. or Ph.D. candidacy at QPU by Patton is fraudulent.’

Isn’t that interesting? Patton’s website now says that he received a Ph.D. in education in 1993, but it does not include the school that granted the degree. Wonder why?

“Added Info” Page

On a page entitled “Additional Information from Other Sources,” Voss has posted links to various YEC and ID websites. He also offers to provide free copies of “The Icons of Evolution Curriculum Modules,” consisting of DVDs based on Wells’ book, Icons of Evolution. (He cautions readers: “I want to know the school you are associated with and your home address. I will mail only to a home address.”) These curriculum modules, according to which “most of the traditional evidence presented for evolution in high school textbooks is wrong,” are distributed through Access Research Network, a clearinghouse for ID “educational” materials and de facto arm of the Discovery Institute.

There is much more that could be said about Voss’s newly revised website, but these samples suffice to make the point that no self-respecting teacher should use any of this stuff in her classroom. It’s the same old junk as Voss offered in 2003, when he first posted the site — except that it has only gotten more pathetic.

But stay tuned, readers — LCFS will soon sponsor a contest in which readers will be asked to identify the stupidest thing that we can find on Voss’s website. We will announce the details soon. The winner will receive a gift card for books — a prize that we think the LCFS audience will appreciate. 

By Barbara Forrest

Many teachers and administrators in Louisiana public schools — and probably some students and parents, too — may be wondering what science teachers are required to do under the terms of the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), which became law with Bobby Jindal’s signature in June 2008.  The law and the implementation policy adopted by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) allow teachers to bring creationist materials into their classrooms and use them until they get caught doing it. We know that the law permits this because (a) Sen. Ben Nevers, the bill’s sponsor, said so, and (b) the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) successfully lobbied BESE to delete the prohibitions against teaching creationism from the policy that implements the law. So evolution, the “origins of life,” global warming, and human cloning are all fair game in science classrooms. So now, with the law on the books, what do teachers have to do as a result? Here, after three years, is the definitive answer:

NOTHING.

NOT A SINGLE, ITTY BITTY THING.

The bill permits using creationist supplements, but it does not require teachers to do anything. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Zip.

Teachers do not have to do a single thing differently than they were doing before this ridiculous law was passed. Before the LSEA was passed, teachers were required to teach science according to the Louisiana Content Standards (pdf) and Grade Level Expectations. That’s what they are required to do today. Just teach science properly, and let the creationists stew in their own juices. And please contact the Louisiana Science Coalition if there are any problems. We’re here to help.

Please pass it on.

A new school year is now well under way, and public schools in Louisiana fortunately have a nice selection of new biology textbooks from which to choose for classroom use. In December 2010, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) heeded the voice of reason from concerned citizens and did the right thing by approving the books, despite the fact that the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) and its supporters did their best to cloud the issue with misinformation.

One of the most frequent charges that LFF creationists made in their attack on the process of selecting biology textbooks last fall was that the books had not actually been updated since 2002. Those of us who testified at the December 7 BESE meeting heard creationists say this repeatedly. John Oller, for example, made this charge:

John Oller, a professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who appeared with [Rev. Gene] Mills [of the Louisiana Family Forum], said the books are 30 to 60 years out of date. ‘They have been dumbed down, they are really weak books,’ Oller told the state panel. — Baton Rouge Advocate, December 7, 2010 (emphasis added)

Having personally inspected all of the proposed new books myself (see update below), I decided to check with one of the authors who also happens to be a good friend, Kenneth Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University. The high school textbook, Biology, which Ken co-authored with scientist Joe Levine, is one of the most widely used textbooks in the United States. (See “Meet the Authors” at Pearson Publishing.) Ken gave me permission to share with readers a document that he has made available to teachers in several states, explaining all the changes from the 2002 “Dragonfly” version of the textbook to the 2010 “Macaw” version. Needless to say, Oller’s charge does not hold up.

Oller made the charge again in the January 3, 2011, puff piece that the Acadiana Gazette wrote about him: “The last textbook review was 10 years ago and [Oller] claims the science in the textbooks hasn’t been updated, merely copied, and that the textbook critique he wrote was exclusively about scientific data.” Rev. Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum also slammed the books in an interview with OneNewsNow (American Family News Network):

‘It presents the material as though it were factual and doctrinaire; it presents errors that have been known to be disproven; and [it] continues to repeat things that have been pointed out in other states to the same publishers,’ he explains. In addition, according to Mills, it ‘dumbs down’ the material for the state of Louisiana.

Curious about what one of the textbook authors would have to say about the charges that Oller and Mills were making, I decided to ask Ken directly. Here is his response in an e-mail to me:

You’ve got to be kidding. Joe and I worked for more than a year revising and rewriting, and the suggestion that our new book is unchanged is laughable. We rewrote everything, included a slew of new scientific developments, and completely changed our classification scheme. The new book blows the old one out of the water, and school districts around the country are adopting it with great enthusiasm (and with excellent test results, as well).

Ken also provided me with a pdf document of the information that  he has made available to teachers in several states about the 2010 edition, nicknamed “the Macaw book” because of its beautiful cover illustration (the 2002 version is called “Dragonfly”). Here is the Pearson website for the book, Biology.com, which includes a preview, support materials for teachers, and information (including video clips) about the authors. (See this page for all video clips of Ken.) Here is the clip in which Ken explains how the new book has been updated:

Miller on New Biology Book (opens in new browser window)

In the video below, Ken explains that evolution is not scientifically controversial and that personal religious faith is compatible with understanding evolution. Ken includes a comment about the authors’ position: “The authors of Biology fully respect the religious beliefs of our students and of our students’ parents. We have our own religious understandings.”

Miller on Evolution in Biology (opens in new browser window)

Now, compare this to the drivel that young-earth creationist Charles Voss, who also testified at the December 7 BESE meeting, wrote in an addendum to Miller and Levine’s 2002 book.  The addendum to Ken’s book is available (pdf) on Voss’s “Textaddons” website, where Voss (who, like Oller, has no credentials in biology) has posted creationist addendums for a host of biology textbooks. On pp. 12-13 of the addendum for Miller’s 2002 book, Voss cites as a source the first intelligent design book written for college students, which just happens also to be the book that began the intelligent design creationism movement: Thaxton, Bradley, & Olsen, The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, New York: Philosophical Library, (1984). You can download the entire book here (direct link to pdf). (On page 7 of the addendum, Voss also cites Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), another of ID’s founding texts. See a review of the book here.)

Now, almost a year after the selection process, a review of the Macaw book by a teacher who is actually using the book has been published in Evolution: Education and Outreach, a leading science education journal (subscription required). Celeste Cookie Barker, who was the National Association of Biology Teachers’ 1999 Outstanding Biology Teacher, teaches biology and chemistry at Schroon Lake Central School in Schroon Lake, New York.

Her review, “The Macaw Biology Program: Outstanding Content, Inspired Students” — about which Ken knew nothing until I told him — confirms Ken’s comments. And it directly refutes Oller’s ridiculous charge that the science is out of date (a charge that he applied to all of the books, not just Ken’s). Here is a relevant excerpt from Ms. Barker’s review (with emphasis added in bold italics):

It has been one and a half years since our students have been interacting with the revised Miller and Levine Biology program, and we are reaping the benefits. In our science classroom, the students are taking more responsibility for their own learning. The number of students using technology outside the classroom to study biology has increased. And 100% of our students passed the required state exam in biology.

The quality of the biology content is outstanding. It is current and well researched. Their treatment of gene regulation is such an example. . . . Using the online resources, rich with interactive study tools, videos, lesson overviews, and assessments, differentiated instruction is only a mouse click away. . . .

Ultimately, I chose this textbook because I felt the science was sound and the presentation was student friendly. . . . Thank you Ken Miller and Joe Levine for putting your time and effort into creating such a high-quality biology program. . . .

What else is there to say? Please get this information out to your teacher friends and school administrators around Louisiana.

UPDATE: I looked at all of the biology books that the Louisiana Department of Education put out for review. The Holt McDougal and McGraw-Hill books are also quite good. Louisiana students would be well served by these books.

 By Barbara Forrest

Readers may remember this quote in which Rev. Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) described the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA).

This bill is not about teaching creationism or religion. If one reads the language of his bill, it is clear that it simply permits teachers ‘to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught.’   [emphasis added]

Mills wrote this in an April 11, 2008, letter to the Hammond Daily Star, in which he had to do some very quick damage control after Senator Ben Nevers, who sponsored the bill for him, forgot to follow the script in his remarks in the April 6, 2008, Daily Star, in which he explained why he was sponsoring the LSEA on behalf of the LFF:

‘They [the LFF]  believe that scientific data related to creationism should be discussed when dealing with Darwin’s theory. This would allow the discussion of scientific facts,’ Nevers said. ‘I feel the students should know there are weaknesses and strengths in both scientific arguments.’  [emphasis added]

You could just about hear the kittens over at the LFF headquarters in Baton Rouge.

And that was just the first screw-up. In December 2009, Mills attributed the LFF’s success in getting the LSEA enacted into law to Jesus Christ:

Because of Him, LFF’s accomplishments are many in 2009:

. . . Advanced classroom-ready Louisiana Science Education Rules through the perilous State Board of Education process!

And then there was the LFF’s concerted — and successful — effort to have the prohibition against teaching creationism deleted from the Board of Elementary and Secondary’s LSEA implementation policy. The LFF must have forgotten their talking point that the LSEA is really about teaching good science. Since the LFF has repeatedly affirmed that the LSEA is not about teaching creationism, they should have had no objection to the policy’s inclusion of that prohibition. But it seems they just keep forgetting to follow the script.

The most recent slip-up was in Gene Mills’s April 29 End of Week newsletter, in which he addressed the filing of SB 70, Senator Karen Carter Peterson’s bill to repeal the LSEA. See if you can spot it in this clip:

Rev. Gene Mills' End of Week Newsletter, April 29, 2011

Did you find it? If not, here’s your hint:  everyone knows that when you’re looking on the Internet for a picture related to a law that was passed strictly and solely in order to enhance the teaching of science by promoting “critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories,” you want it to include certain things. Microscope? Check. Bible? Check. Oh, wait a second. A Bible? If Rev. Mills is not preparing this newsletter himself, perhaps he should speak to whoever is doing it. The newsletter writer surely must not have realized that the LSEA is only about teaching good science and protecting “academic freedom.”

Actually, there is a perfectly rational explanation for these recurring slips of the tongue — or, in the above case, slips of the webmaster. The “mistakes” are completely intentional. The LFF’s support base comprises people who actually want their religious views taught in public schools. If LFF were to scrub the script too clean — that is, if they were to sound like they really support teaching evolution — they might lose the donors to whom Mills sends out his frantic appeals for money. (See Lamar White’s excellent piece on the LFF’s financial dealings.)

They have to keep the dollars coming in, so they have to signal their donors that they are still keeping the faith. They periodically have to actually tell the truth about the true purpose of the LSEA. It’s as simple as that.

So this is not a memory problem. It’s an honesty problem.

By Barbara Forrest

The Louisiana Coalition for Science (LCFS) is pleased to announce the demise of HB 580, which is official with the adjournment of the Louisiana legislature today, June 23, 2011, at 6:00 p.m. This legislation was, by every indication, nothing more than an attempt to reverse the Louisiana Family Forum’s defeat in its effort to block the approval of new biology textbooks for Louisiana public schools in fall 2010. However, even though HB 580 was another stealth creationism bill, no subject of instruction in public schools would have been safe from its effects.

HB 580, sponsored by Rep. Frank Hoffmann (West Monroe) was moving along under the radar, eclipsed by the publicity surrounding the effort to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), until Dr. Ian Binns, our LCFS colleague, alerted us to it. If the bill had passed, the purview of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) would have been diluted from being able to “prescribe and adopt” a list of state-approved textbooks to being able merely to “recommend” them. Local school boards would have been given carte blanche to purchase textbooks and other materials that were not even on the list of “recommended” textbooks, and they could have used an unlimited amount of taxpayer dollars to buy them. Moreover, the professional staff of the Department of Education (DoE) would have been written out of their role under current law as participants in the process of reviewing textbooks, overseeing textbook adoption committees, etc. (See the LCFS press release [pdf] and analysis of HB 580 [pdf].)

That prospect has fortunately been averted — for now.

LCFS would like to thank the people who played a role in this outcome. Our greatest gratitude must go to Senator Karen Carter Peterson (New Orleans) and her staff. Working with Zack Kopplin, she sponsored the unsuccessful SB 70, which would have repealed the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act. But she then went above and beyond the call of duty by spearheading the opposition to HB 580 — marshaling “nay” votes from other senators through not one but two Senate votes. So, Senator Peterson, please accept our most sincere thanks. You were wonderful.

The other senators who joined Senator Peterson in voting to protect public school science education by opposing HB 580 also deserve our thanks (in alphabetical order):

• Sen. Norby Chabert, Houma
• Sen. Joel T. Chaisson, Destrehan
• Sen. Dan Claitor, Baton Rouge
• Sen. Yvonne Dorsey, Baton Rouge
• Sen. D. A. “Butch” Gautreaux, Morgan City
• Sen. David Heitmeier, New Orleans
• Sen. Lydia Jackson, Shreveport
• Sen. Joe McPherson, Woodworth
• Sen. Edwin R. Murray, New Orleans
• Sen. Cynthia Willard-Lewis, New Orleans

In addition, LCFS owes much to one of our own members, Dr. Ian Binns, who not only alerted us to the HB 580 but testified against it — twice — on behalf of LCFS before both the House and Senate Education Committees. Dr. Binns has offered a statement about the successful defeat of the bill:

This is a great moment for science education and education in general for the state of Louisiana. Rep. Hoffmann’s bill would have been another step in the wrong direction for science education in Louisiana. I am thankful for the work of Senator Peterson and the other senators who were brave enough to stand up to Rep. Hoffmann and the Louisiana Family Forum. These senators did the right thing in protecting science education. I hope that this is also the beginning of the end for the Louisiana Science Education Act. I am happy to have played a part in the defeat of HB 580.

We also thank Zack Kopplin — yet again — for being at the Capitol and helping Sen. Peterson and her staff. After doing yeoman’s work, working with Sen. Peterson, to repeal the LSEA, Zack also stepped up to the plate to help defeat HB 580. We offer a statement from Zack as well:

Special thanks to all the legislators who prevented this bill from passing not once, but twice. This has been a good year for our state. We’ve gotten new biology books approved, despite creationists attempts to block them. We’ve stopped an attempt to pass another stealth creationism law. Lastly, we made substantial progress in our attempt to repeal Louisiana’s ‘job-killing’ creationism law and we’ll come back with an even stronger repeal next session.

Last, we thank the local media for paying attention to this bill and informing the public. The Baton Rouge Advocate provided thorough coverage and a powerful editorial in opposition to HB 580. James Gill at the Times-Picayune outdid himself yet again, awarding the legislature an “F in science.” The Daily Comet and Houma Today ran articles, as did Gambit. Walter Pierce at the Independent Weekly in Lafayette also provided coverage, helpfully getting the word out by linking to the LCFS analysis of the bill.

We conclude by pointing out that the Louisiana Coalition for Science has gone 2 for 3 against the LFF’s creationist agenda in the last 6 months. Although we failed to repeal the LSEA (don’t worry — Zack vows to try again next year), we successfully persuaded BESE to do the right thing and approve new biology textbooks for our public school students. And now we have prevented Hoffmann’s and the LFF’s end run around that decision. And we did it without paid lobbyists and deep-pocketed donors.

Just knowing that we helped to protect the education of Louisiana children is reward enough for us.

By Barbara Forrest

Friends, we at the Louisiana Coalition for Science would like to be able to say that we are pulling your leg. But we’re not. Louisiana is about to enact into law yet another stealth creationism bill in the form of HB 580 — unless the Senate finally decides to put a stop to this foolishness within the next 13 days when the current legislative session (mercifully) comes to an end. HB 580 passed in the House of Representatives on June 8 with a vote [pdf] of 87 yays, 5 nays, and 13 abstentions. (Thank you, Rep. Walt Leger, Rep. Patricia Haynes-Smith, Rep. Regina Barrow, Rep. Barbara Norton, and Rep. Charmaine Marchand Stiaes.) Louisiana is the embodiment of one of the cardinal rules that every pro-science citizen has to learn:  CREATIONISTS NEVER GIVE UP. To which we now add a corollary:  CREATIONISTS WANT IT ALL. Louisiana creationists were given the proverbial inch in the form of the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), and since 2008 they have been industriously grabbing their mile.

Not content with (1) persuading the legislature to pass the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) — as if that would have taken any effort at all, (2) convincing the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) to gut its LSEA implementation policy of prohibitions against using creationist materials in science classes, and (3) then convincing BESE that the review procedure for handling parental complaints about such materials should be stacked in favor of creationists, our creationist friends now want even more.

Despite BESE’s being so accommodating, the backers of HB 580 now want to repay BESE by depriving the board of any real control over the kinds of materials that parish and local school boards can adopt — and let the school boards have a blank check to do it. BESE very admirably resisted the Louisiana Family Forum’s attack on the selection of biology textbooks in 2010. They deserve much credit — and have our sincere thanks — for that. But the creationists who have used the board for their own ends for the last three years now want to tie board members’ hands when it comes to any real purview over textbooks. How’s that for gratitude?

HB 580 has been below the radar because of all the publicity surrounding Sen. Karen Carter Peterson’s unsuccessful SB 70 to repeal the LSEA for which Zack Kopplin and the LA Coalition for Science worked so hard. (Thank you, Sen. Peterson and Zack.) But HB 580 has been quietly moving along and could well end up joining the LSEA in the annals of Louisiana creationist history. We’ll stop talking now and let you read about it for yourself in the press release below (download pdf here). In addition, we provide a separate analysis of the bill here [pdf].

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TEXTBOOK SELECTION PROCESS ATTACKED BY YET ANOTHER STEALTH CREATIONISM BILL

HB 580 guts oversight of textbook adoption & use of taxpayer funds

Baton Rouge, LA, June 13, 2011

After failing last year to block approval of new biology textbooks by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), supporters of the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) are now backing HB 580, a stealth creationism bill that amounts to an end run around BESE. It also expands the reach of the LSEA by removing from current law crucial protections that ensure quality science education materials. The Louisiana Coalition for Science (LCFS) urges the Senate to reject this bill. (See HB 580 at www.legis.state.la.us/billdata/byinst.asp?sessionid=11RS&billid=HB580&doctype=ALL.)

HB 580 contains the following provisions:

(1) Replaces BESE’s power to “prescribe and adopt” textbooks and instructional materials with the power merely to “recommend.” This will gut the board’s power to protect the quality of science textbooks and learning materials. Students could end up using substandard materials that teach pseudoscience.

(2) Allows local school boards to adopt and purchase — at taxpayer expense — textbooks and other materials that are not on the state list, without proper screening by scientists, educators, and curriculum experts, and with no spending limits. This blank check for bogus materials comes during a severe recession when schools face stiff budget cuts and teacher layoffs.

(3) Eliminates the Department of Education’s crucial role in (a) screening and reviewing textbooks and instructional materials to ensure their quality and (b) assuring that textbook adoption committees are composed of properly qualified members, as currently provided for under current law.

An analysis of the bill is available at:

http://lasciencecoalition.org/docs/LCFS_Analysis_HB_580_6.13.11.pdf.

Factors surrounding the introduction of this unnecessary bill raise additional red flags:

• HB 580 is among “Bills of Interest” that the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) is backing through its lobbying arm, Louisiana Family Forum Action. The LFF wrote and promoted the LSEA in 2008. The LFF also tried aggressively but unsuccessfully to block approval of new biology textbooks in 2010.
• The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Frank Hoffmann (District 15, West Monroe), promoted a creationist “academic freedom” policy as Asst. Supt. of Education in Ouachita Parish in 2006. In 2008, he introduced a companion bill to the LSEA, which he shepherded through the House of Representatives. As a member of the Textbook/Media/Library Advisory council last year, he voted against the new biology textbooks after the state textbook adoption committee had already approved them.

Having passed in the House, HB 580 has been assigned to the Senate Education Committee. Since the legislature will adjourn in less than two weeks, a committee meeting must be held soon. The next scheduled meeting is Thursday, June 16. The LCFS will send a representative to testify against the bill.

HB 580 is a bad law that threatens the quality of learning materials on which Louisiana students depend at a time when they need the highest quality science education possible. It is also a disaster for school budgets.

The LCFS urges the Senate to vote against the bill. Concerned citizens should call their Senate representatives and ask them to oppose it.

By Barbara Forrest

For the three years since the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) was enacted, the Louisiana Coalition for Science has hammered constantly on the fact that the LSEA is a creationist law. The Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) has consistently denied this. But other people who share the same political and religious views as the LFF seem to have their own ideas concerning what this law is all about. Maybe the LFF’s memo didn’t get sent out widely enough through the prayer network . . . or the divine communication channels broke down . . . or something.

A national prayer networking group, Intercessors for America, has revealed to the entire national prayer network via its website that the Louisiana Science Education Act, which the LFF wrote and promoted with the close assistance of the Discovery Institute, is . . . gasp . . a creationist law! Their March 2, 2011, prayer alert includes a notice about Zack Kopplin’s effort to repeal the LSEA: “Louisiana Student Battles Creationists.” Uh . . . oh.

The IFA is a “501(c)3 ministry organization” that recognizes “the need for God to intervene in U.S. governmental and cultural issues.” In keeping with that recognition, the group “informs, connects, and mobilizes intercessors to pray for our nation and its leaders.”

There is a similar group in Louisiana, Intercessors for Louisiana, founded in 1999 by Louisiana native Tony Perkins, who also co-founded the LFF and now runs the Family Research Council in Washington, DC. Rev. Gene Mills, LFF executive director, serves on the board of directors of the Louisiana group, along with a couple of well-known politicians.

The Louisiana group is a “network of informed intercessors who are called by God to pray for government so that His purposes will be accomplished in Louisana” and so that “the actions of our elected authorities would be in accordance with the Scripture.” Their February 2011 “Prayer Points” Prayer Report [pdf] reveals that they are currently requesting divine instructions for legislative redistricting, urging their readers (“Intercessors — To Arms!”) to “Pray for God’s lines to be drawn in the redistricting of our state.” They must send letters to legislators to “inform them of what God is saying at this time.”

The Louisiana group is no doubt in touch with the IFA given their common focus, especially since one of the IFA’s goals is “To connect Christians moved to intercessory prayer with like-minded intercessors.” The IFA is asking its followers to pray both for Zack Kopplin and the LFF concerning the current repeal effort. But something seems to have gone awry in the prayer network. Maybe it was sunspots.

Pray for the Holy Spirit to work in Zachary Kopplin’s heart, granting him understanding that ‘the universe was formed at God’s command.’ Intercede for the Louisiana Family Forum to be given the words to speak in defense of legislation that promotes open and objective discussion regarding Intelligent Design and creation. Intercede that Louisiana classrooms would truly be a place of learning and a place where students can exercise critical thinking skills.

Say what? “Legislation that promotes open and objection discussion regarding Intelligent Design and creation”?????? The IFA alert — which, you will recall, is entitled, “Louisiana Student Battles Creationists” — announces that Zack “plans to team with Sen. Karen Carter Peterson in April to influence the Louisiana state legislature to reverse the Act and endorse life science textbooks that teach ‘real science’ as opposed to Intelligent Design.” Oops! The network clearly broke down somewhere. First, we already won the textbook fight. That part should have gone out in the IFA’s November 2010 prayer alert. Second, what’s that about intelligent design again?

But wait! Concerned supplicants can “READ MORE” in the IFA’s March 1 blog post, “Louisiana Student Battles Intelligent Design.” The IFA announces to their readers that “Zachary Kopplin, a senior at Baton Rouge Magnet High School, is working with state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson (D-New Orleans) to gain support to repeal the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) signed by Governor Bobby Jindal.” Here is the most delicious part (emphasis added):

Kopplin’s supporters and church-state separation proponents are praising his battle with the Louisiana Family Forum, (an affiliate of Focus on the Family and an advocate of Intelligent Design), comparing him to David in a fight against the ‘Goliath’ of the Religious Right.

Conscientious archivers may wish to download the IFA’s “Full Printable Version” [pdf] of the Prayer Alert, which includes the notice about Zack’s repeal campaign and a scriptural reference for the IFA’s prayer campaign to smite Zack’s repeal campaign (Hebrews 11:2). An additional bonus is the “Printable Bookmark Version” [pdf], which, like the full version, is direct and to the point although more concise.

STUDENT BATTLES CREATIONISTS

Zachary Kopplin, a Louisiana senior, is working with state Sen. Peterson to repeal an act that promotes classroom debate.

Pray for open discussions in class. Heb. 11:2

Just don’t rely on that scriptural reference. Alert readers will have noticed that it’s wrong. It should be Hebrews 11:3 rather than 11:2. Another slight network malfunction, perhaps?

By Barbara Forrest

New Mexico’s stealth creationist bill, HB 302, which in many respects closely tracked the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), has been tabled, meaning that it is dead for the current legislative session. The bill’s obituary was posted by the National Center for Science Education , and its demise was confirmed by a dedicated pro-science citizen in New Mexico who helped put it to sleep. This development should serve as an example to Louisiana legislators, who will have an opportunity in the upcoming regular session of the Louisiana legislature to send the LSEA to a similar fate by repealing it outright.

NCSE’s announcement of the tabling of HB 302 notes that it was a version of the “currently popular ‘academic freedom’ antievolution strategy,” which means that it was, like the LSEA, an offspring of the Discovery Institute’s deceptively named “Model Academic Freedom Statute on Evolution.” And of course, just as the LSEA was supported by a creationist group, the Louisiana Family Forum, the New Mexico bill was promoted by a similar group, the Intelligent Design Network of New Mexico. New Mexicans for Science and Reason has information about HB 302 here.

Of the various “academic freedom” bills introduced so far this year, the New Mexico bill is the first to fall. That leaves bills pending in Oklahoma (two bills there), Kentucky, Tennessee (two bills), and Missouri. So far, Louisiana is still the only state foolish enough to give such legislation the status of law. Let’s hope our legislature decides to restore some respect to the state when they get Zack Kopplin’s repeal bill, which will be introduced in the coming weeks.

Louisiana citizens should begin contacting their legislators now and ask them to support the bill. As soon as it is filed, specific information about it will be posted here.

By Barbara Forrest

Readers who saw the December 2, 2010, post here about Louisiana creationist John Oller no doubt recall the abundant evidence that Oller is a young-earth creationist — or “YEC” in creationist-watching parlance. Serving on the Technical Advisory Board of the Institute for Creation Research and writing creationist articles over a period of thirty years, writing an article for Answers in Genesis (AIG) in which he invokes the biblical Tower of Babel story to explain the diversity of human languages, and attending an AIG conference as a “creation scientist” at the infamous “Creation Museum” (see Ken Ham, “The Definition of ‘Information,’”) — somehow that all just seems to point in the YEC direction. Our December 2 post was the first analysis of Oller’s identity as a creationist. Although he is an integral player in the Louisiana Family Forum’s creationist game plan, Oller has flown under the radar, having been overshadowed in the media coverage by LFF executive director, Rev. Gene Mills, and LFF operative Darrell White.

After the December 2 post was published, Oller did not respond to attempts by Independent Weekly journalist Walter Pierce to contact him for Pierce’s own December 8 article. (See “Devolve,” Independent Weekly, Lafayette, LA, December 8, 2010.) The IW is published in Lafayette, LA, where Oller lives and works. According to Pierce, “The Ind reached out to Professor Oller for comment on his views on these topics via phone and email. He didn’t respond to our overtures.” According to a January 3, 2011, article in the Acadiana Gazette (about which there is more below), Oller “didn’t return their calls because it was finals week and he felt that his students had to come first.” It is interesting that final exams [pdf] at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette did not keep him from spending the entire day of December 7 (the second day of ULL exams) in Baton Rouge at the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) meeting, where he testified against the adoption of new biology textbooks for other teachers’ students.

Oller’s pre-BESE-meeting unresponsiveness to the Independent Weekly was understandable. He had to try to preserve his façade of scientific authenticity for his testimony against the textbooks; no other “scientists” showed up on the Louisiana Family Forum’s behalf at that meeting. And after getting the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) passed in 2008 and then getting control of BESE policies implementing the LSEA in 2009, the LFF’s winning streak was at stake. But, as they say, that was then, and this is now. After the LFF lost its December 7 battle against the textbooks, Oller fessed up only three days later.

Oller’s Involvement in the Textbook Attack

Prior to the BESE meeting, Oller had submitted an e-mail with an attachment of his public comment form [pdf] on September 13, 2010, to the Louisiana Department of Education requesting inclusion in the public testimony concerning the textbooks. He wrote that he would comment on “all of the books in the key areas of my expertise language (linguistics) and genetics as they relate to the orthodox biological theory, much of which is now known to be factually incorrect or incomplete.” In his comment form (above link), his written objections to the textbooks include recognizable, shopworn creationist complaints about the fossil record (“inadequately represented, e.g., Archaeopteryx – is a bird not transition from reptile”) and vestigial organs (“not vestiges but functional organs”). He also refers to charts that were submitted to the department by YEC Charles Voss, who wrote the creationist textbook addenda that the LFF has been hawking for use in public schools since passage of the LSEA.

Oller had also submitted a letter dated November 8, 2010 [pdf], to the Textbook/Media/Library Advisory Council in lieu of his public testimony at its November 12 meeting. In this letter, he asserted that the textbooks take “a doctrinaire, everything-is-solved attitude” and “are extremely out of date.” Referring to the “death knell of evolutionary dogma,” he blamed the “nonsense” associated with evolutionary theory for “the rampant crime and deterioration of our social and economic systems.” Anyone with even a cursory acquaintance with creationist nonsense could have recognized Oller as a creationist merely from these two documents.

On-Air Admission to Being a Creationist: “That’s a fair label.”

In the aftermath of the BESE meeting, I was interviewed on December 10, along with Lennie Ditoro of the LFF, on Jeff Crouere’s Ringside Politics radio program (podcast here (downloadable mp3 for iTunes); interview segment begins at 2:13:32). After Ditoro invoked Oller as a “scientist” who had testified on December 7 about the “multitude of objections” concerning “outdated elements” in the new textbooks (2:21:52), I pointed out (2:24:33) that Oller is a young-earth creationist with no scientific credentials at all. Just as I had anticipated prior to the interview, Oller phoned in.

Unlike with Walter Pierce at the Independent Weekly, Oller was quite talkative. What is notable about his comments (perhaps “confessions” is a better word) is his forthrightness about not having the credentials in the fields about which he pontificates. Readers may find this information enlightening, so below are some selected transcriptions of Oller’s on-air comments (with emphasis added in relevant places and additional information in end notes).

Jeff Crouere began the interchange by welcoming Oller’s call [2:38:16]: “This gentleman, uh, we had talked about earlier, and he has now called in from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. John Oller is with us. And, uh, Dr. Oller, thanks for calling in. . . . Your thoughts?” Oller had quite a few thoughts [2:38:38].

Oller: Well, if I may be permitted to make a few comments, I’d like to just correct one or two points and then address the issues that have been raised on both sides. . . . I’m not the head of the department [of Communicative Disorders] at my university. [1] I was at one time and came here to build a Ph.D. program in communication sciences and disorders, which also, for the record, is a field in which I don’t have a degree.

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[1] Lennie Ditoro had stated earlier in the program that Oller was chair of the Department of Communicative Disorders at UL-Lafayette. According to his curriculum vitae (http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~jxo1721/CV.html), Oller was chair from 1997-2004 but no longer holds that position.
 

 

This was the first of Oller’s two admissions that he lacks formal credentials for work on which he claims to have expertise. As he did repeatedly during his December 7 BESE testimony, Oller referred to his April 2010 article in the journal Entropy, “The Antithesis of Entropy: Biosemiotic Communication from Genetics to Human Language with Special Emphasis on the Immune Systems,” which, according to him, is relevant to the textbook issue.

Oller’s references to this article have become something of a mantra. He is apparently invoking it to divert attention from the fact that he is a creationist. His repeated references to this article might create the impression among people whom he knows are not familiar with the relevant science that he is scientifically qualified to make pronouncements on the work of the credentialed biologists who actually do real science and write the textbooks. But what is so astounding is that, in the Crouere interview, he both invoked his article and, in the next breath, admitted having no earned expertise in the areas about which he had written [2:39:52 ].

Oller: The basic point I tried to make in reference to the biology textbooks — and by the way, this is something that I been working on since uh, since I first started out as a professor at UCLA — and I have been working in the sciences for that whole time. Dr., uh, Dr. Forrest, I know, is looking at the record from the point of view of, uh, of a cursory examination of titles [BF: 'The record' I consulted is Oller's own curriculum vitae]. I would like to ask her if she had actually read, for example, the recent paper in Entropy, which is a peer-viewed science journal, which I was invited to contribute to on the subject of genetics and immunology and some of these other areas in which, it’s true, I don’t have professional, formal training.

Jeff Crouere then gave me a chance to respond to Oller’s invoking his article [2:40:39]:

Forrest: I think it’s more important to look at information about Dr. Oller’s scientific judgment. You know, it’s kind of a red herring for him to toss out a paper in a journal that he knows that very few people will ever have the opportunity to read. I think it’s more important to point out that he has written articles for creationist publications. One in particular, he’s written an article for Answers in Genesis, in which he dismisses what he calls the ‘secular’ explanation of the development of language. Well, what that means is that he’s opting for a religious explanation. He specifically invokes the biblical story of the tower of Babel. I think that that is what is really directly relevant to what Dr. Oller is bringing to this discussion — the fact that he is a creationist, that he is affiliated with creationist organizations. And I think that in itself is reason not to accept anything he says about the quality of the biology textbooks.

A couple of examples suffice to document my remarks on the Crouere show. Oller includes his creationist publications along with his professional ones in his CV under “Peer-Reviewed Monographs, Articles, Chapters, Interviews, Reviews, and Notes.” In “More than PIE: Babel Explains Distinct Language Families,” published in Answers (February 13, 2008), by the young-earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis, Oller rejects the scientific explanation of the natural evolution of language just as he rejects the scientific explanation of the natural evolution of biological species: “Secular theories fail to explain the many distinct language families throughout the world. The biblical account of Babel is the only explanation that fits the data.”

In “Words Are Us” (Answers, May 19, 2008), Oller contends that language, along with everything else, was created by God, alluding to God’s creation by spoken fiat (as in, for example, “Let there be light”).

In ‘More than PIE‘—in the previous issue of Answers—I promised to return to the question of the human language capacity and how we got it. Here, I want to show that the human language capacity is not only unique to humans, but that in its power to represent abstract and universal concepts, language is unique in the universe. In fact, the nature of language itself, it can be argued, reflects the underlying nature of the entire universe, from the galaxies and biosphere down to the level of quarks, or whatever else there may be. I am arguing that language is the most wonderful and powerful system that God put in His universe.

The statement ‘In the beginning was the Word’ (John 1:1) is more than a metaphor. The writer to the Hebrews argued that the things we can see­—throughout the whole universe—were framed by words we cannot see (Hebrews 11:1–3). The bodily persons, animals, and even the plants that we can see are all formed by the abstract strings of symbols that constitute their genetic basis.⁴ Even inanimate matter, according to the Bible, is held together by abstract words. In the final analysis, as the Bible teaches, and as the sciences agree more and more, words really do underlie genetics, mathematics, and the physical world.

Oller’s endnote 4 contains his assertion that “It has been proven logically that true representations of the narrative type, such as are found in the Bible, form the only foundation for measurement in the sciences,” an assertion for which he cites his own work: “See J. W. Oller, Jr., and L. Chen, ‘Episodic Organization in Discourse and Valid Measurement in the Sciences,’ Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 14 (2007): 127–144.” Although there is nothing discernible about the Bible in this article [pdf], such assertions are indisputable evidence that his purportedly scientific views rest on a biblical foundation.

After I pointed out on the Crouere show that Oller is a creationist, Crouere asked him point-blank, “Dr., um, are you a creationist? I mean, is that an accurate label for you?” Below is Oller’s answer in the affirmative (with emphasis added). Note his reference again to his employment at UCLA, and note the information in my footnote that comes from his own CV about the nature of his employment there. Note also that he clearly accepts Noah’s flood as geological fact and voices the usual YEC skepticism about radiometric dating. And note in particular the geological age that he accepts for the rocks in Grand Canyon.

Crouere: Dr., um, are you a creationist? I mean, is that an accurate label for you?

Oller: Yeah, that’s a fair label. I have, uh, I’ve always been a Christian. But I didn’t become a creationist until after I got to UCLA. I was invited to a series of lectures by one of the guys who was in the rocket industry. I was the only non-hard science person at the meetings.[2] And the radiometric dating concept was challenged at that series of meetings, and I thought, ‘Man, these chemists and physicists are gonna eat this guy’s lunch.’ But, as a matter of fact, at the end of the week, when they had a chance to basically challenge his argument that the geological column could have been laid down by Noah’s flood, I thought they would attack on the radiometric dating issue because, of course, I’m looking at it as an evolutionist at that time. And I’m thinking, uh, that he was gonna be demolished. But in fact, I walked across the campus the next day thinking, ‘Holy smokes, if the radiometric dating system were to collapse, as this guy argued it could be collapsed,’ the — you know, he showed that there were rocks in the Grand Canyon that were supposed to be billions of years old that we know were formed 200 years ago. Well, I’m a measurement guy. I really got into that in a big way when I went to UCLA. By the way, I was one of the youngest — I think I was the youngest associate professor in the UC system.

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[2] Oller taught English at UCLA in the 1970s, according to his CV. See http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~jxo1721/CV.html. His CV indicates that not only was he not a “non-hard science” person, but that he was not a science person of any kind. He taught English for about two years (1969-1971) and also worked as “Director of the UCLA English as a Second Language Placement Examination.” He left UCLA in 1972 and returned in summer 1979 for the “First Annual TESOL [Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages] Summer Institute.” He returned to UCLA once more in spring 1984 as a visiting professor to teach “language testing,” by which time he had begun writing articles for the Institute for Creation Research (which he lists among his professional publications). He also wrote the foreword for one of Henry Morris’s books: “Oller, J. W., Jr. (1984). Foreword to H. M. Morris, The biblical basis of modern science (pp.11-15).” Nothing in Oller’s CV indicates that he has any credentials in science. His degrees are in French, Spanish, and linguistics.
 

 

At this point in Oller’s call to the radio program, Crouere saw an opening for a most appropriate question. Oller’s answer, although a bit rambling, reveals not only that he is scientifically untrained himself, but that he rejects modern geological research about the age of the earth, a hallmark aspect of young-earth creationism.

Crouere (interrupting Oller): ‘So, Dr. Oller, the earth is about how old?’

Oller: ‘Sorry, Jeff?’

Crouere: ‘I said the earth is about how old?’

Oller: Well, I don’t think that we know — I don’t think we can put an exact figure on it, but the idea that God, who created the whole universe — if there is a God, let’s put it in a hypothetical way — if God created the whole universe, of which the earth is the tiniest little speck you can imagine, if it’s hard for him to create that speck in six days, if he could create the entire universe, what on earth makes evolutionists think that they’re in a position to judge the God of the universe? Poor silly old God. He couldn’t possibly do this stuff. Well, the point is that that’s not a scientific position. That’s a religious position taken by evolutionists. And, and, Jeff, let’s go back to my first question, if I may. Did Dr. Forrest read my article in Entropy? She’s — has essentially indicated, I think, that she did not. And here’s my point: that article is online. It’s completely available. It’s downloadable. It deals with immunology, toxicology, language, and the whole complexion of true representations that are required in order for us to be healthy, and for our biochemistry and DNA to work.

Not only did Oller totally sidestep Crouere’s question about the age of the earth, which is simple enough to answer if one accepts the scientific evidence, but his subsequent “hypothetical” remarks indicate his acceptance of the literal, six-day creation story in Genesis. And then, predictably, he again tosses in the red herring of his Entropy article. Oller’s call ended with Crouere’s offer to post a link to Oller’s article if he would send it (Oller: “Absolutely”). As of now, the link has not been posted on Crouere’s website.

Oller Post-Fessing-Up: Still Peddling Creationist Nonsense — and Still Defending Andrew Wakefield

Readers might wonder what Oller has been doing since his admission on the Crouere show that he is a creationist. On the same day (December 10, 2010), he published a blog post at his The Autism Epidemic and Related Issues blog entitled “Autism, Vaccines, and the Louisiana Biology Books.” In this post, he charges that we citizens who urged BESE to approve the biology textbooks “defended the books on the basis of 19th century dogma,” i.e., the outdated theory of evolution, while he and his fellow creationists appealed to “current biological science.” (That would be news to the LSU scientists who testified and actually do science for a living.)

He also again invoked the work of the discredited Andrew Wakefield — who has achieved international notoriety for promoting the false connection between autism and vaccines — by referring readers to Wakefield’s new book, Callous Disregard. (The foreword was written by Playboy model Jenny McCarthy, who, as the mother of an autistic child, promotes the autism-vaccine link and says that she learned about the connection between autism and vaccines from “the University of Google“). (See Louisiana Coalition for Science, “Of Autism and Creationism — A Strange Louisiana Connection,” December 2, 2010).

In this December 10 post, Oller also charges, as he and his fellow creationists did at the BESE meeting, that the new biology textbooks were not actually revised, a charge that is tantamount to accusing the authors of dishonesty: “The biology books, for this year, incidentally, were near verbatim copies of the ones on display 8 years ago, but these have new copyright dates, some as recent as 2012. But that’s two years from 2010, isn’t it? And when were these books actually written?” (This website will feature a response to Oller’s charge from one of the textbook authors in an upcoming post.)

On December 21, 2010, he posted another blog piece entitled “Everything Depends on True Reports of Facts” in which, next to a picture of an Archaeopteryx fossil, he includes the creationist canard that Archaeopteryx is a hoax.

Was the lithograph shown here tampered with? A fradulent [sic] made-up fossil? . . . Whether it is a flying bird or not, it certainly is very different from reptiles and if the feathers were faked, as some have claimed in recent years, then it was not much of a bird either. No matter, there are no transitions leading to it or from it in either direction. Case closed.

[Note: For a scientific assessment of this fossil, see "Archaeopteryx: An Early Bird," by the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California-Berkeley.]

Oller also employs in this post the despicable creationist tactic of linking evolution with the Columbine killings, racism, and Nazi genocide. (As examples, see articles by other creationists at the Institute for Creation Research: here, here, and here.)

Finally, on December 31, Oller attacked physician and vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit in a post entitled “Offit’s Deadly Choices,” in which he slammed Offit for denying that vaccines cause autism. Readers of the LA Coalition for Science website will recall our December 2, 2010, post, “Of Autism and Creationism — A Strange Louisiana Connection,” pointing out Oller’s relationship with the discredited Wakefield. Oller has promoted both Wakefield and Wakefield’s autism-vaccine link; Wakefield wrote the foreword to Oller’s 2010 book on autism. But Oller had no kind words for Paul Offit in his December 31 post (the hyperlink is Oller’s).

Paul Offit (2010) has a new book out: Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All (New York: Basic Books).

He flatly denies that vaccines have anything to do with autism and he does not believe in an autism epidemic. At 1 minute and 55 seconds into the video embedded here, see Offit say why he thinks that ‘vaccines don’t cause autism.’ He says in that interview, ‘It’s been asked and answered. Vaccines don’t cause autism.’

So why is it that we see so many children having seizures, perhaps experiencing anaphylactic shock immediately upon receiving one or more injections? . . .

When Offit claims to know for a certainty that vaccines cannot cause autism because the CDC studies can’t find a link (according to published reports of searches that were carefully designed not to find anything), he reveals a level of ignorance of the positive findings of toxicology research that is astounding. . .

Oller charged that “Offit . . . is helping to erode the former confidence of the general public that medical ‘science’ on the whole is worthy of the name.” He also questioned the benefits of vaccines to human health and well-being, even with respect to smallpox:

Vaccines have been over-rated with respect to their touted benefits and they have been under-rated with respect to their often lethal and destructive short-term and long-term consequences. . .

. . . the great success of smallpox vaccine is a myth. (emphasis added)

Moreover, in the face of the well-known fact that vaccines have virtually eliminated smallpox and polio, Oller alleged that “vaccines, e.g., smallpox and polio . . . actually increased the risk of smallpox and polio along with other infectious diseases.” As humorist Dave Barry used to say in his columns, I am not making this up.

Uh-oh . . .

Oller made these claims in the first version of his December 31 post. A few days later on January 5, 2011, the British Medical Journal published an editorial, “Wakefield’s Article Linking MMR Vaccine and Autism Was Fraudulent,” accompanied by an article by journalist Brian Deer, designating as outright fraud the “research” that Andrew Wakefield presented in his now-retracted 1998 Lancet article. Like Lancet’s retraction of that article, the BMJ article made headlines around the world within hours. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wakefield’s fraud on January 7 in “The Autism Vaccine Hoax.”

Deer, who first exposed Wakefield’s misconduct, explains in his copiously and carefully documented article, “How the Case Against the MMR Vaccine Was Fixed,” exactly how Wakefield perpetrated his fraud. Wakefield — who was being paid by a lawyer but had not disclosed this fact — was using other people’s children to gather data for a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers. But he never told the parents of the children about this, as Deer points out:

Unknown to Mr 11 [father of one of the children], Wakefield was working on a lawsuit, for which he sought a bowel-brain ‘syndrome’ as its centrepiece. Claiming an undisclosed £150 (€180, $230) an hour through a Norfolk solicitor named Richard Barr, he had been confidentially put on the payroll two years before the paper was published, eventually grossing him £435,643 [$677,759], plus expenses.

Curiously, however, Wakefield had already identified such a syndrome before the project which would reputedly discover it. . .

The BMJ‘s editors weighed in with a detailed editorial:

Who perpetrated this fraud? There is no doubt that it was Wakefield. Is it possible that he was wrong, but not dishonest: that he was so incompetent that he was unable to fairly describe the project, or to report even one of the 12 children’s cases accurately? No. A great deal of thought and effort must have gone into drafting the paper to achieve the results he wanted. . .

Furthermore, Wakefield has been given ample opportunity either to replicate the paper’s findings, or to say he was mistaken. He has declined to do either. He refused to join 10 of his coauthors in retracting the paper’s interpretation in 2004, and has repeatedly denied doing anything wrong at all. Instead, although now disgraced and stripped of his clinical and academic credentials, he continues to push his views.

Meanwhile the damage to public health continues, fuelled by unbalanced media reporting and an ineffective response from government, researchers, journals, and the medical profession. . .

Deer followed up with another, painstakingly detailed BMJ article on January 11, 2011, detailing “How the Vaccine Crisis Was Meant to Make Money.”

Whoops!

This new development clearly was going to put Oller in a bind. By January 12, 2011, his December 31, 2010, post had disappeared from his blog. On January 13, the link reappeared but was password-protected. On January 14, the post re-appeared, with the same December 31 date, but having been substantially revised (without any indication to readers of the revision). For example, Oller’s claim that the success of the smallpox vaccine is a myth has been removed. But Oller continues to defend Wakefield, referring in his revised post to “the targeting of Dr. Andy Wakefield by Brian Deer and his collaborators.”

Despite the wealth of information showing Wakefield to be a charlatan, Oller still has a University of Louisiana-Lafayette web page on which he touts Wakefield as a “world-renowned gastroenterologist and medical researcher.” He continues to use his university website to post information about his 2007 conference, “Solving the Autism Puzzle” (which was held three years after Brian Deer’s exposés began in 2004), featuring glowing testimonials such as the following from attendees about Wakefield, who was actually one of the conference presenters: “The world needs to hear Dr. Wakefield speak. They need to listen and take action to save our children and our selves.” But none of the attendees’ comments compares to Oller’s own pro-Wakefield testimonial on the conference page.

Does the name Hippocrates ring any bells? What happened to the idea that doctors aren’t supposed to do harm? Thank God for recruits from the UK— the good old mother country— like Andy Wakefield. I think I have never known a more meticulous, clear-headed, and sensible approach to complex research problems than Dr. Wakefield has developed over his productive medical career.

A Creationist? . . . Moi?

Although Oller was incommunicado to the Independent Weekly, he completely overcame his reticence once he found a newspaper, the Acadiana Gazette, that would portray him as he wishes to appear in a January 3, 2011, article, “Academic Denies Practicing Textbook Terrorism.” As for criticism of his activities and affiliation with the Louisiana Family Forum, Oller isn’t bothered by it. And he has most opportunistically changed his public tune about being a creationist.

As for the excoriation he’s received in print, ‘I don’t pay it no nevermind,’ he laughed.

But because of his published articles on genetics, Darwinism and the implications, Oller, who considers himself an experimentalist, has been espoused by the Louisiana Family Forum.

‘They know about me and my writings,’ he said.

‘That’s natural in the sciences. We’re always assessing and testing. You’re always challenging some theoretical position.’

Besides, said Oller, from a purely mathematical and logistical standpoint, ‘Darwin’s too-dull tools can’t refute the existence of an intelligent God. It’s entirely presumptuous.’

Does this make him a Creationist? ‘I sense that’s a pejorative,’ he demures.

‘I’m a research scholar.’

Right.