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      

OK, readers, who knows what these two pictures have in common?

Give up? OK, here’s the answer:  Both of these pictures are symbols of the screwed-up priorities of the state of Louisiana. On the left, we have a frame from the July 10, 2011, Doonesbury comic strip, which quite rightly ridicules the fact that (a) the state of Louisiana passed the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act in 2008 and (b) the state of Louisiana refused to repeal this law in 2011. In fact, the Senate Education Committee refused to allow SB 70, Sen. Karen Carter Peterson’s repeal bill, out of committee. Rather than voting against it outright, they just voted 5-1 to defer action on the bill, effectively killing it. Only Senator Yvonne Dorsey voted to send the bill to the Senate floor (thank you, Sen. Dorsey).

Now, to the picture on the right. This is the widely respected Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, LA. World-class scientists at PBRC are doing world-class research, especially on diabetes and obesity. Any scientists in the world could be proud to work here, especially in the new, four-story clinical research building that was just completed, that is, if they could be proud to work here if they could count on having some important stuff — like, say, furniture. On the same day that the Doonesbury cartoon appeared in the Baton Rouge Advocate, the paper also ran this story, “Cuts Hit Pennington,” on the front page.

Construction is ongoing for Pennington’s state-funded, $12 million imaging center building, but there is no timetable to equip or utilize the facility once it is finished in February.

The nutrition and chronic disease center currently finds itself in a state of limbo after going through a decade of growth and improving state support, only to be undercut by two years of state budget cuts that sliced its operating budget dollars by nearly 20 percent.

Only the first two of the four floors of this new facility are currently occupied, with the top two floors sitting empty for the foreseeable future. And PBRC scientists are now viewed outside the state as poachable. In fact, one scientist, Steven Smith, left last year because of the uncertainty surrounding PBRC’s future. And where do you think he went?

One of those top ‘poached’ scientists, Steven Smith left Pennington last year as the clinical research building was being completed to take over as the scientific director of the Burnham Medical Research Institute’s Translational Research Institute for Metabolism and Diabetes in Florida. He said the financial uncertainty and ‘state of limbo; were key factors in his decision to leave.

[See this article about Dr. Smith's hiring. See his Burnham web page.]

Florida, you say? Yes, Florida. Think about it this way. If you are going to be worried about hurricanes, you can just as well worry in a state that has invested $600 million to support your cutting-edge research. And if you’re a scientist at Pennington, you won’t even have to spend any time actually looking for another job. The poachers will come to you! That sounds like a terrific economic development strategy — for Florida.

Timothy Church, director of Pennington’s Preventive Medicine Laboratory, is understandably worried. He said that Pennington’s competitors don’t even have to hire “headhunters,” which can get expensive. If other scientific research centers need top talent, says Church, “You just go to the Pennington directory.” Hey, what a deal! That leaves the poacher-states with even more money to invest in scientific research! Church adds, in what surely has to be a competitor for understatement of the year, “When you’re not opening up new buildings, it’s not optimal.” (Sigh. Repeat sigh.)

So this is where we are in Louisiana, friends. We can’t furnish and staff the top two floors of the new Pennington clinical research building, but we still have a creationist law on the books. And we would have had yet another one if Senator Karen Carter Peterson had not stepped up to the plate to help us stop HB 580, which would have allowed local school boards to spend taxpayer dollars to buy as much supplemental creationist “educational” material as they wanted with little state oversight.

But look on the bright side. The Louisiana legislature passed another bill, which Gov. Jindal signed into law as Act 174, that lets us put television screens in the front seats of our cars. (Don’t worry — we can’t watch while the car is moving.)

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

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

On December 7, the day that the Student/School Performance and Support Committee (SSPS) of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) voted to approve new biology textbooks, Zachary Kopplin’s letter to the Shreveport Times was published: “La. students need proper scientific textbooks without creationism.” Zack is a senior at Baton Rouge Magnet High School who assisted the Louisiana Coalition for Science in making the case to the SSPS Committee for approving the textbooks. (He also testified at the November 12, 2010, meeting of the Textbook/Media/Library Advisory Council. See his picture here.) As his senior project at school, he has chosen to mount an effort to have the Louisiana Science Education Act repealed. Readers of this website will be hearing much more about this effort in the near future. (See Repealcreationism.com.)

In his Shreveport Times letter, Zack urged BESE to do the right thing and approve the textbooks: “As a senior at Baton Rouge Magnet High School, I feel strongly that BESE should immediately adopt proper science textbooks that teach evolution without any disclaimers, revisions or supplementary materials.” He also addressed creationists’ misunderstanding of evolution: “[C]reationists also pretend there are ‘flaws’ in the theory of evolution. There are no flaws. In fact the National Academy of Sciences states on their website that because evidence supporting evolution is so strong, ‘scientists no longer question whether biological evolution has occurred, and is continuing to occur. Instead, they investigate the mechanisms of evolution, how rapidly evolution has taken place…’” His letter prompted a December 10 response by Bossier City attorney Ryan E. Gatti.

In addition to making the well-known creationist charge that evolution is religion (“The real issue is that Zack’s religion of evolution also is based on faith”),  Mr. Gatti raised a challenge to Zack concerning the science: “I would challenge Zack to a few questions he must prove not on his faith in evolution but on ‘scientific theories (that) are observable, naturalistic, testable, repeatable and falsifiable.’” Here is an example of Mr. Gatti’s challenge:

1) What evolved first, mammalian bone marrow or bones? Were hollowed-out femur bones simply sitting around and bone marrow crawled into them, or was bone marrow sitting on the ground making red blood cells and the femur formed around it? Is there some observable, testable, repeatable and falsifiable science we can all watch in the lab that will help us on this one?

In response to the questions that Gatti raised, Zack did what any sensible young person who wants to learn real science would do: he consulted a real scientist. He wrote to Kenneth Miller, a cell biologist and one of the expert witnesses for the plaintiffs in the case of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (2005), and presented Gatti’s questions. Miller kindly obliged by answering him, and Zack posted Miller’s answers on his website.

Believing that Gatti’s letter required a response, Zack has written one, which we present below. Please keep in mind as you read it that he is a product of the Louisiana public education system. Zack represents all the young people in whose interest we must keep working to protect the teaching of science in our public schools.

I am glad that Ryan Gatti took the time to respond to my column in the Shreveport Times last week.

I would also like to thank the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) for voting last week to approve new biology textbooks.  Louisiana students need accurate textbooks that teach the theory of evolution, the fundamental unifying principle of biology, and I am grateful BESE didn’t bow to creationist efforts to undermine it.

In his column, Mr. Gatti asked me to answer some “which happened first” type questions–obviously part of his effort to refute the theory of evolution.  I sent them off to an eminent scientist, Ken Miller, who authored the Pearson textbook that BESE just approved.  Dr. Miller’s answers are available at www.repealcreationism.com.

Mr. Gatti believes his questions poke holes in evolution.  He listed paired organs, molecules, and systems which perform a single function in modern organisms and asked, which came first.  He seems to think that the existence of such entities undermine the theory of evolution, believing both elements must appear simultaneously.  But he is wrong.  As Dr. Miller explains, these interlocking systems arise from simpler systems with a smaller number of components, and evolution, driven by natural selection, gradually improves the efficiency of these systems by adding additional components.

The real purpose behind Mr. Gatti’s letter is to claim that evolution is a faith-based belief system, in an attempt to place his creationist beliefs on an equal footing with evolution so that they may be taught in public school science class.  Mr. Gatti’s fundamental mistake lies with the fact that evolution is not a belief system.  It is science, whose goal is to identify natural explanations for events and processes in the natural world based on what can be observed.

For Louisiana students, Mr. Gatti’s mistake is a costly one.  Our future and ability to secure competitive jobs is at stake.  As I told BESE officials, when you look up biologist on Monster Jobs, there are well over a thousand jobs to choose from.  When you look up “creationism,” “creationist,” or “creation science,” you find, “sorry there are 0 creationist jobs.”  Zero jobs.

Louisiana students need to be taught evolution, the science backed by the evidence, to get the jobs that will be available in the global economy.  I’m glad BESE agreed.

Zack Kopplin

By Barbara Forrest

UPDATE December 9, 2010, 12:45 p.m. CST — The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education just voted to accept the December 7 approval of the biology textbooks by the Student/School Performance and Support Committee. Dale Bayard remained the sole nay vote. Dale Bayard again voted against accepting the books, as did one other board member Louella Givens in an 8-2 vote. But Merry Christmas anyway, Mr. Bayard!    See the story by the National Center for Science Education here. [end update] The voice of reason carried the day in Louisiana at the meeting of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Educations’s Student/School Performance Committee meeting in Baton Rouge, LA. Seven of the board’s eleven members attended, and six of them voted in a voice vote to approve the proposed biology textbooks. The sole nay vote was committee chair Dale Bayard. Here is a quick announcement in the form of a press release that I sent out this afternoon. There will be more information as time permits.

Statement on the Student/School Performance and Support Committee Decision Concerning Biology Textbooks

Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) Louisiana Coalition for Science

December 7, 2010

The Louisiana Coalition for Science wishes to thank the Student/School Performance and Support Committee of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education for approving quality biology textbooks for the students of Louisiana. We are pleased and proud that the board has done the right thing. As a result, students in Louisiana public schools will have the most current, up-to-date information about biology, including the theory of evolution, which is the strongest explanation of the history and development of life on Earth ever constructed.

We also wish to thank the staff in the Louisiana Department of Education, the experts who served on the Textbook Adoption Committee for the Life Sciences, and the eight members of the Textbook Advisory Council who recommended approval of the textbooks. BESE’s decision today shows that the board respects the dedication and expertise of these public servants.

We also hope that today’s decision spells the end of the harmful influence of the Louisiana Family Forum over science education policy in Louisiana. The Louisiana Family Forum, which is responsible for the passage of the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act, is a religious organization that has promoted creationism throughout its history. The creationist agenda has been discredited over and over again, in state after state, and in federal court, for almost half a century. While we respect the right of all citizens to embrace the religious faith of their choice, the integrity of the public school science curriculum and the separation of church and state must be respected by our public officials. Students in our public schools deserve the best science education we can give them. Thanks to today’s decision, they won’t have to wait any longer for decent textbooks.

Finally, we wish to thank Louisiana’s public school science teachers and the parents who send their children to public schools for helping to sustain the institution that offers the best hope for a better life for everyone in Louisiana.

“The main deficiencies in the books are in taking a doctrinaire, everything-is-solved attitude, toward just about every problem addressed. . . . They should all be sent back to the publishers as unacceptable.” — John W. Oller, Jr., letter of November 8, 2010, to Louisiana Textbook/Media/Library Advisory Council urging that proposed biology textbooks be rejected

By Barbara Forrest

**Note:  Since this post is longer than usual in order to cover the topic adequately, readers may wish to print it. This post has been updated; see below.

On February 2, 2010, The Lancet, one of the world’s premier medical journals, retracted [pdf] a 1998 article [pdf] in which British physician Andrew Wakefield was lead author (with twelve co-authors).

Following the judgment of the [United Kingdom] General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel on Jan 28, 2010, it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al. are incorrect. . . . In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were ‘consecutively referred’ and that investigations were ‘approved’ by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.

Wakefield is the now-notorious physician who, by means of this 1998 article, promoted the idea that the MMR (measles/mumps/rubella) vaccine causes autism. Readers will surely wonder what this has to do with creationism in Louisiana. Please keep reading. There is a connection that highlights once again the error of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) in handing over to creationists the policies implementing the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). On Tuesday, December 7, BESE must decide whether to approve the biology textbooks that have been proposed for adoption by the state. We can only hope that, at that meeting, board members will call a halt to the influence that they have allowed the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) to have over science education policy during the last two years.

John W. Oller, Jr., a professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, is a creationist who is integrally involved in the LFF’s attack on the textbook selection process in Louisiana. (See him pictured (on left) at the September 16, 2009, BESE meeting with his LFF colleagues Darrell White, Lennie Ditoro,and Rev. Gene Mills.) He also serves on the “Technical Advisory Board” of the young-earth creationist Institute for Creation Research (ICR), which is headquartered in Dallas, Texas (see below). In 2002, he assisted the LFF in its first effort to influence the selection of state-approved biology textbooks, an effort that BESE fortunately rejected (“Evolution Disclaimer Supported,” Baton Rouge Advocate, December 11, 2002, 1A). He is now assisting the LFF again in its second attempt to discredit every single biology textbook that has been submitted this year for BESE’s approval. More will be said about this below. (See “Textbook Attack in Louisiana.”) But the main point of this post is to reveal Oller’s connection to Andrew Wakefield, an association that no respectable scholar should cultivate.

First, the background: Wakefield co-authored a now-infamous 1998 article suggesting that the MMR vaccine causes autism. He capitalized professionally on this supposed connection. However, major scientific studies have shown that there is no causal connection between vaccines and autism. In 2002, a Danish study of 530,000 children found no link between vaccines and autism. A Japanese study in 2005 got the same result. In 2008, an American study published in PLoS ONE provided “strong evidence against association of autism with persistent MV [measles virus] RNA in the GI tract or MMR exposure.” In 2009 and 2010, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled against parents who had sought damages in the belief that vaccines had caused their children’s autism. (See here and here for press coverage.) However, Wakefield was publishing articles based on suspicious research as early as 1993. (See this July 2009 ruling [p. 6] [pdf] by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.)

Real harm to children resulted from Wakefield’s promotion of the autism-vaccine connection. His flawed (and dishonest) study, based on only twelve children, caused a precipitous drop in childhood vaccinations in the United Kingdom and a corresponding rise in the diseases that vaccinations have so successfully prevented. According to British journalist Brian Deer, whose reporting led to the investigation of Wakefield, “[O]fficial figures showed that 1,348 confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales were reported last year [2008], compared with 56 in 1998. Two children have died of the disease.” (See Deer’s website here.)

The retraction of a scientific article is very serious business, especially in world-class journals such as The Lancet. (See this article in Neurology Today on the subject.) Elsevier, which publishes The Lancet and is the world’s leading publisher of scientific and medical information, states its grounds for retractions:

Article Retraction: Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.

Wakefield met the last criterion for retraction in his 1998 article. As a practicing physician, he also violated important ethical standards by ordering unnecessary, invasive tests on children for the sake of his research. Speaking at a parents’ meeting in California in 1999, he joked about drawing blood from children attending his own son’s birthday party, for which he paid each child five pounds — about eight U.S. dollars:

But, and, they put their arms out and they have the blood taken. All entirely voluntary. [laughter]. And when we did this at that party, two children fainted, one threw up over his mother [laughter]. . . .

And (NAME) burst into tears. Ruined his birthday party. But people said to me, Andrew, look, you know, you can’t do this, people, children won’t come back to you. [laughter]. I said you’re wrong, I said: ‘Listen, we live in a market economy. Next year they’ll want ten pounds!

[Read the transcript and listen to the audio file.]

Wakefield compounded these violations by profiting handsomely (to the tune of about $750,000 in U.S. currency) from advising lawyers representing parents who planned to sue vaccine manufacturers — without disclosing this to The Lancet prior to publication of his article. He had also filed for a patent on his own measles vaccine, from which he planned to profit further after he discredited the MMR vaccine.

High-profile publicity about Wakefield’s transgressions began six years ago — in 2004 — with Brian Deer’s reporting in the Times in London. That same year, ten of Wakefield’s twelve co-authors themselves issued a partial retraction of the 1998 article:

We wish to make it clear that in this paper no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient. However, the possibility of such a link was raised and consequent events have had major implications for public health. In view of this, we consider now is the appropriate time that we should together formally retract the interpretation placed upon these findings in the paper. . . . [See also the March 4, 2004, BBC story.]

In 2007, the United Kingdom’s General Medical Council (GMC) began an investigation of Wakefield that continued until this year, making it the longest investigation in the GMC’s history. In February 2010, The Lancet‘s total retraction of Wakefield’s article made international headlines. Following the retraction, he resigned from his job as research director at Thoughtful House, a facility for autistic children that he helped found in Austin, Texas. Yet the retraction was only a foreshadowing of what was soon to follow. On May 24, 2010, the GMC banned Wakefield from practicing medicine in the UK. (See the GMC’s nine-page ruling [pdf].) In other words, he has lost his license to practice medicine in the UK.

[T]he Panel concluded that Dr Wakefield’s misconduct not only collectively amounts to serious professional misconduct, over a timeframe from 1996 to 1999, but also, when considered individually, constitutes multiple separate instances of serious professional misconduct. . . .

Accordingly the Panel has determined that Dr Wakefield’s name should be erased from the medical register. . . . [I]t is the only sanction that is appropriate to protect patients and is in the wider public interest, including the maintenance of public trust and confidence in the profession and is proportionate to the serious and wide-ranging findings made against him.

Dr. Paul Offit, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is a national expert on vaccines. In his book, Autism’s False Prophets (Columbia University Press, 2008), he discusses Wakefield extensively. (See especially chapters 2 and 3.) Offit notes that on the day Wakefield’s Lancet paper was published, he held a press conference announcing that he had found the cause of autism (18). However, as Brian Deer discovered six years later, although Wakefield had written that his “investigations were approved by the Ethical Practices Committee,” the committee “had never approved Wakefield’s study” (37).

Wakefield’s team had put children under general anesthesia, performed spinal taps, threaded fiber-optic scopes into their intestines, taken biopsies, and collected large quantities of blood for testing. These procedures weren’t trivial. Several children had difficulties with the anesthesia, and one five-year-old child was in critical condition after his colon was perforated in several places. If the Ethical Practices Committee hadn’t granted its approval, then Wakefield and his coworkers had circumvented a process designed to protect children from unnecessary and potentially harmful tests — a serious charge. (Offit 38)

Dr. Offit also points out that “although study after study showed MMR didn’t cause autism, Wakefield remains unrepentant, wedded to a belief he considers irrefutable” (54). He also relates the view of David Salisbury, the director of immunization for the Department of Health in the UK, concerning Wakefield:

I don’t think he’s an innocent in this. . . . He knew exactly what he was doing. And throughout he has never shown the slightest contrition for what he has caused. He’s had more than enough opportunities to say to the world, ‘I deeply regret the fact that I, acting out of the best of interests, got this wrong and now realize the consequences of what has happened.’ He’s never done this.  (Offit 55-56)

THE AUTISM-CREATIONISM CONNECTION — JOHN W. OLLER, JR.

Given Wakefield’s ethical violations, which began coming to light in 2004, it is a no-brainer that responsible professionals should neither associate with him nor cite him as an authority in their scholarly publications. Yet John Oller has done both.

Oller organized a 2007 conference in Lafayette, LA, “Solving the Autism Puzzle,” at which Wakefield was one of the featured speakers. This was the same year that the General Medical Council began its investigation of Wakefield in the UK, a development about which Oller must surely have had some inkling given the previous three years of high-profile publicity. However, Oller mistakenly accepts Wakefield’s contention that vaccines cause autism and continues to promote this idea, despite all the evidence against it. After Oller’s involvement in the September 2009 episode in which the LFF commandeered BESE’s policy governing complaints about supplementary materials used under the LSEA (see below), his book, Austism: The Diagnosis, Treatment & Etiology of the Undeniable Epidemic, was published (Jones and Barlett 2010). Here’s the kicker: Andrew Wakefield wrote the foreword. (Read it here [pdf]). Wakefield affirms that “this [Oller's] book is unashamedly invested in the belief that the vaccine-autism story has far from run its course” (x).

Forewords are usually written at the author’s invitation, and Wakefield begins his foreword by acknowledging Oller’s invitation (ix). Such an invitation is typically reserved for someone whom the author holds in high esteem for his contributions to his profession. The foreword helps frame an author’s discussion and lends prestige to the work. At least, it is supposed to lend prestige. Given Wakefield’s record of unprofessional behavior — where helpless children are concerned — one would think that any academic author who is concerned about his reputation would avoid Wakefield like the plague. But not John Oller. His standards are far outside those of the mainstream academic community.

Oller is a young-earth creationist who, in September 2009, helped persuade BESE to give the LFF control over the procedure governing complaints about creationist supplementary materials in public schools. This procedure was part of BESE’s implementation of the LSEA. In connection with this development, Oller was featured in a September 28, 2009, press release on this website:

Among the creationists testifying [at the September 16, 2009, Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education meeting] was University of Louisiana-Lafayette professor John W. Oller, Jr., who is a member of the “Technical Advisory Board” of the young-earth creationist Institute for Creation Research in Dallas, Texas. He wrote anti-evolution articles for ICR’s magazine, Impact, for almost twenty years. [UPDATE 9/29/09: It gets worse. Further research has revealed that Oller is also involved with Answers in Genesis, the young-earth creationist outfit that operates the infamous "Creation Museum" in Kentucky. He was one of "eleven creation scientists" who attended a meeting there in 2006 and is shown in a photograph at the museum (left rear, in bright blue shirt). This museum has mis-educated thousands of children. See critiques of this facility here and here, along with a statement of concern by scientists (real ones).] Oller’s field is linguistics; he has no credentials in either biology or science education. In December 2002, he participated in the LFF’s effort to have evolution disclaimers inserted into state-approved biology textbooks (Advocate, 12/11/2002), a move that BESE at that time fortunately defeated by a 7-3 vote.

Here is what Oller said during that 2002 effort, as reported in the Advocate (12/11/02):

John Oller Jr., a professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, also criticized the accuracy of science textbooks under review.

Oller said he was appearing on behalf of the Louisiana Family Forum, a Christian lobbying group.

Oller said the state should force publishers to offer alternatives, correct mistakes in textbooks and fill in gaps in science teachings.

‘We are talking about major falsehoods that should be addressed,’ he said.

As Yogi Berra famously said, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Now, in 2010, Oller is at it again. The public record [pdf; see p. 4] indicates that he made an oral presentation against the proposed biology textbooks at a September 30 meeting of the Life and Environmental Science Committee, which was convened as part of the 2010 textbook adoption process. (See Oller’s completed public comment form. [pdf]) He also submitted for the public record a November 8 letter [pdf] to the Textbook/Media/Library Advisory Council in lieu of his personal testimony at the council’s November 12 meeting.

Concerning the new biology textbooks, which were placed in public libraries for citizen review over the summer, he makes some bold statements in this letter to the advisory council. Oller, who has absolutely no credentials in any of the natural sciences (his degrees are in French, Spanish, and linguistics), claims that “The authors of the books . . . seemed not to have access to modern databases of the journal literature of the most recent decades of biological research.” (That would be news to my friend Kenneth Miller, who uses the most current biological research available both in his work as a cell biologist at Brown University and as co-author with Joe Levine of one of the currently proposed textbooks that Oller is attacking.)

Oller also refers to the “death knell of evolutionary dogma” (creationist talk), which he blames for the “sorry state of our current educational system and the rampant crime and deterioration of our social and economic systems.” He must have picked up this idea from his colleagues on the Technical Advisory Board at the Institute for Creation Research, where the late Henry Morris, a lead figure in the American young-earth creationist movement, wrote an article ominously entitled “Evil-ution.”

As evolutionism has become the dominant teaching in our schools and colleges, those evil doctrines and practices whose rationale is based on evolution have inevitably followed. In terms of its impact on society—especially a society once founded on principles of Biblical morality as ours was—evolutionism has indeed evolved into evil-utionism. . . .

The practices of sexual promiscuity, homosexuality and abortion are already widely promoted and accepted as ‘normal’ and even ‘good’ in our culture, in the name of evolutionism. Infanticide, and euthanasia are being increasingly advocated, on the same basis. . . .

Oller has a long history of creationist activity. He-coauthored an article for a 1994 book entitled The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer, in which he and his co-author posed the question: “Are human beings just beasts with more flexible and better-developed vocal systems, or are we utterly unique creatures who approximate the divine traits of an invisible, omniscient . . . , omnipresent . . . and omnipotent . . . Creator who, according to the Bible, stands both within and outside the space-time continuum?” (Answer: B) The editor was J. P. Moreland, and the foreword was written by Phillip E. Johnson, both of whom are associated with the Discovery Institute, the creationist think tank that helped write the LSEA in 2008.

In July 2006, Oller participated as an invited speaker (topic unknown) at a workshop [pdf] sponsored by ICR and the Society for the Advancement of Creation Science in Starkville, Mississippi. Part of the mission of this workshop was “to develop a new generation of faculty at secular universities who confidently express a Biblical creationist worldview in their research and teaching.”

Also in July 2006, Oller was among “eleven creation scientists [who] gathered together for a 5-day conference” at the Creation Museum in Kentucky, the state-of-the-art misinformation center that has now attracted more than one million visitors. He was photographed (upper left, rear) in front of an exhibit showing children playing alongside animatronic dinosaurs, depicting, as the museum website says, how “children play and dinosaurs roam near Eden’s Rivers.”

UPDATE (12/4/10): An alert reader in Louisiana (hat tip!) pointed out that in Oller’s 2008 article for Answers in Genesis, “More than PIE: Babel Explains Distinct Language Families,” his explanation for the diversity of human languages is the unscientific, biblical story of the tower of Babel, as even just the title makes clear. Here is the heart of his article, with a clarification inserted in blue:

Standard theories argue that languages change when people are separated, but the Bible teaches that people were separated at Babel because God miraculously changed the common language. So which story fits the facts? The miracle of Babel or gradual change? How did we get all these languages? . . .

Enemies of the Bible have especially made sport of this part of the biblical narrative. They have supposed that all the diversity of the languages of the earth can be explained by gradual change. If the Darwinian idea were correct, we should expect a very different picture than the one we have. . . .

In their efforts to explain the multitude of languages, secular [i.e., non-religious] theories come up empty. They are upstaged by the biblical narrative, which credits God with the gift of language and the vast diversity of different language families. . . .  [end update]

Such is the evidence for the quality of the scientific judgment of Prof. Oller, who, in his LinkedIn profile, specifies that his interests are “consulting offers” and “expertise requests.” He hangs out with not only the the disgraced (and disgraceful) Andrew Wakefield but also with young-earth creationists who have misinformed an untold number of innocent children. His association with ICR indicates that he believes that the earth is only a few thousand years old. Yet, according to Oller, the scientists with hard-earned, professional expertise in biology who wrote the proposed textbooks don’t know what they’re doing. Oh, and — lest we forget — evolution is causing the downfall of society.

One has to wonder whether BESE would have given the LFF control over science education policy if they had known who the LFF’s “experts” really are. Ladies and gentlemen of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, wouldn’t you like to rethink — and rescind — your decisions of the past two years?

By Barbara Forrest

In keeping with the November 20 post highlighting Louisiana citizens who have stepped forward to protect science education in our public schools, this post will give a voice to a member of one of Louisiana’s most dedicated groups of citizens: public school science teachers. Our state is blessed with dedicated science teachers, one of whom has stepped forward as a voice of reason with a message to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on behalf of Louisiana students.

That voice belongs to Dr. Jason VanMetre, who teaches Biology II and Advanced Placement Biology II at A. M. Barbe High School in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Dr. VanMetre served on the Louisiana Life Sciences Textbook Adoption Committee, which met in late September and voted to approve the biology textbooks that had been submitted by publishers. Serving as a member of the specially appointed committee in addition to his duties as a teacher, Dr. VanMetre was required to spend a great deal of time reviewing the books, attending meetings, and considering public comments. The public comments, both written and oral, came almost exclusively from followers of the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) in a coordinated campaign to attack the books because of the content about evolution (and, to a lesser extent, global warming).

The LFF also attacked biology textbooks in 2002. Fortunately, they failed when the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) voted 7-3 to reject the insertion of evolution disclaimers in the textbooks. (See “Louisiana Rejects Evolution Disclaimer,” National Center for Science Education, December 11, 2002.)

BESE’s Student/School Performance and Support Committee (SSPS) met on October 19, 2010, for what should have been a routine approval of the textbooks. Instead, SSPS deferred approving the textbooks in order to allow the Textbook/Media/Library Advisory Council — which was hastily constituted and convened after not having met for almost a decade — to consider the textbooks. Contrary to the expectations of pro-science advocates, the advisory council approved the books by a vote of 8-4 on November 12. (See “Panel Approves Contested Textbooks,” Baton Rouge Advocate, November 13, 2010.)

However, on October 28, Dr. VanMetre had felt compelled to communicate to BESE his views as a member of the Life Sciences Textbook Adoption Committee after SSPS’s October 19 decision to defer the issue to the advisory council — despite the adoption committee’s previous approval of the books.

Nothing can add to the eloquence of his letter, so, with his kind permission, it is presented below without additional comment. Please add your voice to Dr. VanMetre’s before Tuesday, December 7. To identify your BESE representative, click on your parish on the BESE map. Note that there are three “at large” members who should be contacted regardless of where you live.

From: Jason VanMetre

Date: Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 8:49 PM

Subject: Concerned Textbook Committee Member

To: sbese@la.gov

Dear BESE Board Members,

My name is Jason VanMetre and I am a biology teacher at A.M. Barbe High School in Calcasieu Parish. I recently served on the Life Sciences Textbook Adoption Committee. I was very concerned when I read that rather than approving the list of life science textbooks immediately, the BESE Board voted to send the textbooks to the Textbook Advisory Council accompanied by public comments.

The Life Science Textbook Committee was charged with evaluating whether or not the textbooks on the list were acceptable for adoption. The committee was comprised of life science teachers from all over the state. Teachers on the committee had anywhere from a few years to over thirty years experience in public education. All committee members spent an extensive amount of time before the fall meetings in an effort to properly prepare for the proceedings. The books voted acceptable by the committee were consistent with the Louisiana Department of Education Grade-Level Expectations (GLE’s). It is my belief that we did our jobs admirably and that our recommendations should be approved as voted on by the Life Science Textbook Committee.

One of the most unique experiences that I encountered at the textbook committee meetings was the opportunity for public comment.  These comments came in both written form and oral presentation. Most of the negative comments expressed were related to the coverage of evolution by the proposed textbooks. Many of these public comments expressed the view that evolution should be taught as a controversial theory filled with inconsistencies and problems. While I appreciate the fervor with which the written comments and oral presentations were delivered, I can assure you that the textbooks are completely in line with the current scientific view of evolution as well as our state GLE’s. Many of the public comments contained numerous factual inaccuracies, misunderstandings and a general lack of basic scientific knowledge concerning natural selection.

Natural selection is the most important theory in all of biology. It has been empirically tested and subject to peer-review for over 150 years. To tell the students of Louisiana that natural selection is a controversial idea is ludicrous. Natural selection is supported by every major scientific and educational association. Taking a very strong stand on this issue are the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Science Teachers Association, National Association of Biology Teachers, and the Louisiana Academy of Sciences, just to name a few. For a more complete list of scientific, religious, educational and civil liberties organizations who fully support the teaching of natural selection in public schools, I encourage you [to] consult the National Center for Science Education website at http://ncse.com/voices. Statements from state, national and international scientific organizations can be accessed directly at http://ncse.com/media/voices/science. With a small amount of research, I am sure that you will find natural selection to be neither controversial nor hotly debated by the scientific community. It is an idea grounded in scientific fact and is essential for a complete understanding of the biological sciences.

Please don’t make your decision based solely on my comments or the comments of the public. I suggest that you contact a scientist with a PhD in Biology to get their expert opinion on this issue.

I appreciate your time and encourage you to swiftly approve the textbooks recommended by the Life Sciences Textbook Committee.

Thank you,

Jason VanMetre, Ed.D.

Teacher – Biology II and Advanced Placement Biology II

A.M. Barbe High School

By Barbara Forrest

So much bad publicity spins out of Louisiana about so many things that we don’t often get a chance to shine a spotlight on the competent, dedicated people who are the real reason that this state works at all. And since Thanksgiving is almost here, it is a good time to tell the world that Louisiana has intelligent, accomplished, dedicated citizens, teachers, scientists — and students! — who are trying to stop the damage that the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) and their allies are doing to Louisiana science education. Several of Louisiana’s finest testified on November 12, 2010, in favor of accepting the biology textbooks that had already been approved by the Louisiana Textbook Review Committee.

Here are the names of the people who have given their permission to be publicly recognized for their testimony at the November 12 meeting of the Louisiana Textbook/Media/Library Advisory Council. As others give permission, their names will be added to the list. Here, listed in alphabetical order, are some of the people to whom those of us who value public schools and good science education owe a debt of gratitude. (Affiliations are provided for identification only.)

1. Dr. Ian Binns, Assistant Professor of Science Education, Louisiana State University (LSU)
2. Dr. Kevin Carman, Dean, College of Science, LSU
3. Dr. Bryan Carstens, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, LSU
4. Dr. Jeffrey Gimble, scientist and parent
5. Zachary Kopplin, senior at Baton Rouge Magnet High School and leader of the effort to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act — bless his sweet little heart. (See http://www.repealcreationism.com.)
6. Adrienne Lopez, K-12 Outreach Coordinator, Dept. of  Biological Sciences, LSU
7. Patsye Peebles, co-founder of Louisiana Coalition for Science and retired high school biology teacher (University Lab School, LSU)
8. Brad Wood, LSU undergraduate in both biology and philosophy!
9. Tammy Wood, teacher and Brad’s proud mom!

We will return very shortly to our usual fare on this website. There is much to tell you (unfortunately). But as Thanksgiving approaches, let us all be thankful to these fellow citizens who stepped up when we needed them and who will continue to work on behalf of the young people of Louisiana. Give them a well-deserved (virtual) round of applause. And then contact your BESE representatives to request that they approve the textbooks on December 7 so that our teachers can get on with the business of educating our students. Do it now. (And please remember to be polite!)

By Barbara Forrest

Well, friends, the fun just never stops here in Louisiana. As the saying goes, “Here we go again.” What, you ask, is the state of Louisiana up to now?

We now have a Texas-style attack on the selection of biology textbooks, courtesy of the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), which brought us the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) of 2008. (See the LFF’s “Action Item” in its August 10, 2010, Family Facts newsletter.) This attack began with a volley of letters written by LFF operative Darrell White to various Louisiana newspapers in July of this year. (See White’s July 22, 2010, letter in the Hammond Daily Star. See my response in the July 26 Daily Star.) However, the process has been developing under the radar. The November 9, 2010, story on the front page of the Baton Rouge Advocate has now provided a glimpse of what may be about to happen on Friday, November 12, at a meeting of the Textbook/Media/Advisory Council in Baton Rouge [agenda here (pdf)]. According to the Advocate article, the LFF and its followers just have all kinds of problems with the biology textbooks.

Critics contend some biology I, biology II and other school books under scrutiny  for public classrooms put too much credence in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

‘It is like Charles Darwin and his theory is a saint,’ said Winston White, of Baton Rouge, who filed a comment with state officials reviewing the textbooks. . . .

Darrell White, who is the father of Winston White and is  co-founder of the Louisiana Family Forum, said the proposed biology textbooks he reviewed fail to meet the benchmarks spelled out in a [2008] law aimed at expanding classroom talks on the theory of evolution.

‘If this was a beauty contest, we have got all ugly contestants in these biology textbooks,’ [Darrell] White said.

And — hush my puppies! — the article says that “In written comments to state officials, David Mathers, of West Monroe, said he would ‘like to see intelligent design explained as an alternate theory to the theory of evolution.’” Moreover, Curt Eberts of Monroe “faulted a biology textbook he reviewed for lacking material on the concept of intelligent design.” One would think that these folks were coordinating their efforts, wouldn’t one?

The meeting is open to the public, and concerned citizens may want to attend. But first, a little history is in order, because this goes all the way back to 2002, when the LFF made its first attempt to influence the selection of state-approved biology textbooks. So let’s take a little stroll down memory lane.

Readers of this blog already know about the Louisiana Science Education Act, which we enjoy courtesy of the LFF and some (actually a lot of) helpful politicians. Senator Ben Nevers introduced the bill on behalf of the LFF in 2008, and Rep. Frank Hoffman of Monroe shepherded the bill through the House of Representatives, where he sits on the House Education Committee. Sen. Nevers was quoted as saying that he introduced the bill because the LFF thought that “scientific data related to creationism should be discussed when dealing with Darwin’s theory.” Rep. Hoffman had been Assistant Superintendent of the Ouachita Parish School District in 2006 and had, along with Darrell White, helped engineer the Ouachita Parish School Board’s adoption of an “academic freedom” policy [pdf] that was the forerunner of the LSEA. According to the Ouachita Citizen’s November 29, 2006, story about the adoption of the policy, “Assistant superintendent Dr. Frank Hoffman said the issue is not about evolution or religion, but rather giving school teachers the freedom to teach all facets of a subject.” (Remember these little factoids. You’ll see why momentarily.)

But getting the LSEA passed wasn’t quite enough for the LFF. They wanted control over the LSEA implementation policy, which falls under the purview of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). In January 2009, BESE obliged by stripping the draft policy (which had been drawn up by the Louisiana Department of Education) of its prohibition against teaching creationism, in effect gutting it. But BESE didn’t stop there. In September 2009, they handed the LFF another victory in the form of control over the complaint procedure governing the review of supplementary materials used in classrooms. If a parent complains about creationist materials, the review process will be stacked in favor of the creationists. But all of this recent history is rooted in the LFF’s first effort in 2002 to influence the selection of state-approved biology textbooks. So let’s go there now.

The LFF’s First Attack on Biology Textbooks

The state of Louisiana selects new textbooks every seven years. The scheduled 2009 process was delayed for one year. It has been under way for several months, having last been done in 2002. The LFF’s current effort to secure control over science education policy in Louisiana actually began during this 2002 selection process. Speaking in 2006, after securing the passage of the Ouachita Parish policy, Darrell White recalled the 2002 effort.

In 2002, White reviewed science textbooks that the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved. He said those were flawed textbooks that numerous state lawmakers, public officials, college professors and high school teachers opposed.

He said documented scientific errors, misleading statements and ‘glaring omissions’ were noted in all of the  textbooks BESE approved.

‘They really give a one-sided story,’ White said.  ‘They don’t teach the weaknesses of Darwinism, and the weaknesses of evolution need to be taught right along with the strengths.’ BESE officials said those who opposed the textbooks should take their concerns to the individual school boards that use the books.

‘This [the passage of the Ouachita policy] is just a follow up today to what started back in 2002,’ White said. (“Board Gives Teachers ‘Academic Freedom,’” Ouachita Citizen, November 29, 2006)

In 2005, the LFF chronicled its 2002 effort in its now defunct “Forum Notes” [pdf]:

During the summer and fall of 2002, Louisiana citizens had an opportunity to review proposed new biology textbooks pursuant to 7-year adoption cycle promulgated by Louisiana Department of Education. In December of 2002, a group of educators, lawmakers, parents, and other concerned citizens presented uncontradicted facts to education officials (Louisiana Textbook Adoption Committee, Textbook Review Committee, and State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education) showing that new biology textbooks proposed for adoption contained numerous inaccuracies and satisfied neither the state science standard benchmarks as promulgated by Louisiana Department of Education nor the above-stated curricula standards announced by Congress for science education. All of the proposed biology texts censor or downplay scientific criticisms of biological evolution and fail to ‘recognize and analyze alternative scientific models.’ SBESE rejected six proposed textbooks; however SBESE inexplicably approved ten biology books that contain the same errors. SBESE initially considered adopting Alabama’s approach by insisting that an insert label be placed in the front of all biology textbooks, but ended up rejecting that proposal and instead advised concerned citizens to voice their views about the textbooks to local school boards.

To its credit, BESE rejected this effort by a vote of 7-3 against inserting disclaimer stickers into Louisiana biology books. (See National Center for Science Education, “Louisiana Rejects Evolution Disclaimer,” December 11, 2002. See also “State Rejects Evolution Disclaimer,” New York Times, December 13, 2002.) But, as they say, that was then, and this is now. BESE has unfortunately become complicit in the LFF’s grab for control over science education policy. (See Louisiana Coalition for Science, “BESE can’t say we didn’t tell ‘em,” January 10, 2010.) So let’s now fast forward back to the present.

The LFF’s 2010 Attack on Biology Textbooks

The biology textbooks that various publishers submitted for consideration in 2010 were placed on display in various public libraries around the state where citizens could review them. Citizens could also submit comment forms [pdf] concerning the books. The books were on display until September 11, and comment forms had to be submitted to the Dept. of Education by September 13. (See the General Timeline [pdf] for the 2010-2011 State Textbook Adoption Cycle.) The LFF put out calls through its weekly Family Facts newsletter and Rev. Gene Mills’ End of Week newsletter for their followers to review the books and fill out the forms. The comment forms were transmitted to the Textbook Review Committee, which was appointed by the Dept. of Education to review the textbooks and receive public comments. This had to be done by the first week of October. According to the timelines specified in Bulletin 1794 — State Textbook Adoption Policy and Procedure Manual [Word], BESE had to receive all of the necessary information in order to approve the textbooks by the end of October.

BESE’s Student/School Performance and Support Committee (SSPS), chaired by LFF point man Dale Bayard, met on October 19, 2010. The committee’s meeting packet contains a recommendation from the Dept. of Education that the SSPS Committee approve the textbooks. (See the SSPS Committee’s meeting packet [pdf].) Notably, the recommendation form also says that “No problematic areas are foreseen” concerning the textbooks. The form is signed by LDoE Director of Curriculum Standards Nancy Beben, State Superintendent Paul Pastorek, and other LDoE officials. However, rather than approving the books, SSPS deferred the decision and referred the matter to the Textbook/Media/Library Advisory Council, which, according to the Advocate article, is not very well known. It was apparently created by statute. The advisory council consists of various people, including two state legislators. (See the specifications [pdf] for council membership and duties.) And the two legislative members are . . .  — wait for it — . . .  Senator Ben Nevers and Rep. Frank Hoffman.