Emergent BioSolutions + SIGA Technologies were in rocky financial territory just weeks ago, but with concerns over global #monkeypox outbreak being hyped by media + health organizations, their worries—and sins—are quickly being forgotten. @_whitneywebb https://t.co/pZQ0bNoqMA
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 24, 2022
Truth/Lies
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‘Even nonscientists can face problems for suggesting that there might be a serious intellectual debate over Darwinism. At Baylor University, philosopher and legal scholar Francis Beckwith was initially denied tenure despite an outstanding record of academic research and publications.1 Although Professor Beckwith was well known for his prolife views, he was most controversial for his law review articles and an academic book defending the constitutionality of teaching about intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinism.2 It is important to note that Beckwith did not advocate that intelligent design should be taught in public schools — only that it was constitutional to teach it in an appropriate manner. But that nuanced position was too much for some of his colleagues, who were defenders of Darwin’s theory. Fortunately for Beckwith, after a public outcry, the president of Baylor later granted him tenure.3
A Dissertation in Limbo
College professors are not the only targets in academia who face discrimination because of their skepticism of Darwinism. Students can be even more vulnerable. Ohio State University doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard had his dissertation defense put in limbo after three pro-Darwin professors filed a spurious complaint attacking Leonard’s dissertation research as “unethical human subject experimentation.” Leonard’s dissertation project looked at how student beliefs changed after students were taught scientific evidence for and against modern evolutionary theory. The complaining professors admitted that they had not actually read Leonard’s dissertation. But they were sure it must be unethical. Why? According to them, there is no valid evidence against evolutionary theory. Thus — by definition — Leonard’s research must be tantamount to child abuse.4
Outside of academia, there have been similar cases of discrimination in government-funded science organizations. David Coppedge was a senior computer systems administrator for the Cassini Mission to Saturn at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California. He faced demotion and discharge after he offended his supervisor by occasionally offering to loan colleagues DVDs about intelligent design.5 No one had ever complained to Coppedge about his offers of DVDs, but when the supervisor found out, Coppedge faced a punitive investigation. His employment evaluations, which had been outstanding, suddenly became negative, and ultimately he lost his job. Coppedge’s dismissal was justified as a budgetary reduction unrelated to his views on intelligent design, but that explanation was questionable given the facts of the case.
The Sternberg Case
Evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg faced similar retaliation by officials at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) after accepting for publication a peer-reviewed article supportive of intelligent design in a biology journal he edited. A research associate at the museum, Sternberg said that after the article was published, he was told to vacate his office space and was shunned and vilified by colleagues. Efforts were also made by administrators to discover Sternberg’s personal religious and political beliefs.6 Investigators for the U.S. Office of Special Counsel concluded that “it is…clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing [Dr. Sternberg]…out of the [Smithsonian].”7
Smithsonian officials denied any wrongdoing, but Sternberg was demoted from a research associate to a research collaborator without explanation.8 A 17-month investigation by subcommittee staff of the House Committee on Government Reform subsequently confirmed and elaborated on the previous findings of the US Office of Special Counsel. In a detailed report released to the public, subcommittee investigators concluded that they had uncovered “substantial, credible evidence of efforts to abuse and harass Dr. Sternberg, including punitively targeting him for investigation in order to supply a pretext for dismissing him, and applying to him regulations and restrictions not imposed on other researchers.”9
Congressional investigators further accused NMNH officials of conspiring “on government time and using government emails…with the pro-evolution National Center for Science Education (NCSE)…to publicly smear and discredit Dr. Sternberg with false and defamatory information.”10 The NCSE even provided a set of “‘talking points’ to…NMNH officials on how to discredit both Sternberg and the Meyer article.” In addition, the NCSE was asked by senior museum administrator Dr. Hans Sues “to monitor Sternberg’s outside activities…The clear purpose of having the NCSE monitor Dr. Sternberg’s outside activities was to find a way to dismiss him.”11 Congressional investigators concluded that “the extent to which NMNH officials colluded on government time and with government resources with the NCSE to publicly discredit Dr. Sternberg’s scientific and professional integrity and investigate opportunities to dismiss him is alarming.”12
When asked about Sternberg’s plight by the Washington Post, Eugenie Scott of the NCSE seemed to suggest that Sternberg was lucky more was not done to get rid of him: “If this was a corporation, and an employee did something that really embarrassed the administration, really blew it, how long do you think that person would be employed?”13
Teachers at Risk
Science teachers in K-12 schools also face challenges if they criticize Darwinian theory. In Minnesota, high school teacher Rodney LeVake was removed from teaching biology after expressing doubts about Darwin’s theory. LeVake, who holds a master’s degree in biology, agreed to teach evolution as required in the district’s curriculum, but said he wanted to “accompany that treatment of evolution with an honest look at the difficulties and inconsistencies of the theory.”14
In Washington State, longtime high school biology teacher Roger DeHart faced continuing harassment from pro-Darwin activists, who succeeded in getting his school district to prohibit him from discussing scientific criticisms of modern Darwinian theory with his students. DeHart was even banned from sharing mainstream science publications with students that corrected textbook errors about evolution. Although DeHart complied with his district’s gag order, ultimately, he was removed from teaching biology. When he took a job in an adjoining school district so that he could continue to teach biology, the harassment continued. He was eventually reassigned from teaching biology in that district as well, even though there were no allegations by his new district that he was not following the prescribed curriculum. DeHart finally was driven from public education altogether.15
Notes
- John West, “Scandal Brewing At Baylor University? Denial of Tenure to Francis Beckwith Raises Serious Questions About Fairness and Academic Freedom,” Evolution News and Views (March 28, 2006), https://evolutionnews.org/2006/03/scandal_at_baylor_university_d/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
- See, for example, Francis J. Beckwith, Law, Darwinism, and Public Education: The Establishment Clause and the Challenge of Intelligent Design(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); Francis J. Beckwith, “Science and Religion Twenty Years After McLean v. Arkansas: Evolution, Public Education, and the New Challenge of Intelligent Design,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 26 (Spring 2003), 455-499; Francis J. Beckwith, “Public Education, Religious Establishment, and the Challenge of Intelligent Design,” Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, & Public Policy 17 (2003), 461-519; Francis J. Beckwith, “A Liberty Not Fully Evolved?: The Case of Rodney LeVake and the Right of Public School Teachers to Criticize Darwinism,” San Diego Law Review 39 (November/December 2002), 1311-1325.
- Robert Crowther, “Welcome News as Scholar Francis Beckwith Is Granted Tenure At Baylor,” Evolution News & Views (September 27, 2006), https://evolutionnews.org/2006/09/welcome_news_as_scholar_franci/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
- For information about the Bryan Leonard case, see Catherine Candinsky, “Evolution debate re-emerges: Doctoral student’s work was possibly unethical, OSU professors argue,” The Columbus Dispatch (June 9, 2005); “Attack on OSU Graduate Student Endangers Academic Freedom,” Discovery Institute (April 18, 2005), https://www.discovery.org/a/2661/ (accessed November 24, 2020); “Professors Defend Ohio Grad Student Under Attack by Darwinists,” Discovery Institute (July 11, 2005), https://www.discovery.org/a/2715/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
- For information and documentation about the Coppedge case, see Robert Crowther, “Trial to Begin in Intelligent Design Discrimination Lawsuit against NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab,” Evolution News and Views (March 5, 2012), https://evolutionnews.org/2012/03/trial_to_begin_/ (accessed November 24, 2020); “Facts of the Coppedge Lawsuit Contradict the Spin from Jet Propulsion Lab and National Center for Science Education,” Evolution News and Views, March 12, 2012, https://evolutionnews.org/2012/03/facts_of_the_co/ (accessed November 24, 2020); Joshua Youngkin, “Why Did NASA’s JPL Discriminate Against David Coppedge and Why Does It Matter?” Evolution News and Views (November 22, 2011), https://evolutionnews.org/2011/11/what_happened_t/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
- See David Klinghoffer, “The Branding of a Heretic,” The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2005, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110687499948738917 (accessed November 24, 2020). For more information about the controversy surrounding the publication of the journal article supportive of intelligent design, see “Sternberg, Smithsonian, Meyer, and the Paper That Started It All,” https://www.discovery.org/a/2399/ (accessed November 24, 2020); Richard Sternberg, “Smithsonian Controversy,” http://www.richardsternberg.com/smithsonian.php (accessed November 24, 2020).
- Letter to Richard Sternberg from the US Office of Special Counsel, August 5, 2005, available at http://www.richardsternberg.com/smithsonian.php?page=letter (accessed November 24, 2020). Also see Klinghoffer, “The Branding of a Heretic.”
- Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian: Smithsonian’s Top Officials Permit the Demotion and Harassment of Scientist Skeptical of Darwinian Evolution, Staff Report Prepared for the Hon. Mark Souder, Chairman, Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources (Washington, DC: US House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform, December 11, 2006), 3, 20-21, https://www.discovery.org/m/securepdfs/2020/11/IntoleranceandthePoliticizationofScienceattheSmithsonian.pdf (accessed November 26, 2020).
- Intolerance and the Politicization of Science At the Smithsonian, 4.
- Intolerance and the Politicization of Science At the Smithsonian, 5-6.
- Intolerance and the Politicization of Science At the Smithsonian, 22, emphasis in original. The congressional report further explained, “Dr. Sues hoped that the NCSE could unearth evidence that Dr. Sternberg had misrepresented himself as a Smithsonian employee, which would have been grounds for his dismissal as a Research Associate: ‘As a Research Associate, Sternberg is not allowed to represent himself as an employee of the Smithsonian Institution, and, if he were to do so, he would forfeit his appointment.’”
- Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian, 23, emphasis in original.
- Quoted in Michael Powell, “Editor Explains Reasons for ‘Intelligent Design’ Article,” The Washington Post (August 19, 2005), A19.
- Quoted in Rodney LeVake vs. Independent School District #656, State of Minnesota Court of Appeals, C8-00-1613 (May 8, 2001); https://web.archive.org/web/20130314100547/http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/0105/c8001613.htm (accessed November 24, 2020). Additional information on the LeVake case can be found in James Kilpatrick, “Case of Scientific Heresy is Doomed,” Augusta Chronicle (December 23, 2001), A4. The Minnesota Court of Appeals found that the school district’s interest in maintaining its curriculum overrode LeVake’s First Amendment interest in teaching material critical of Darwinian evolution.
- John G. West, Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007), 231-232, 234-238.’https://evolutionnews.org/2022/03/do-non-scientists-have-freedom-to-question-darwinism/
‘The least conservative Liberal (and National) government in Australia’s history lost last weekend.
There was no enthusiastic move to Labor. In fact, both major parties scored woefully low first preference counts. In any country with a first-past-the-post voting system both big parties would be reeling. There’s a reason why only Australia and one small South Pacific nation uses preferential voting; it’s because it works as a protection racket for the two big parties.
The only way to show your displeasure with your own side of politics – because you can’t even stay home when there’s also compulsory voting – is to preference the other side. I did that this past Saturday, practising what I preached.
Clearly, more than a few others did too.
Now, you will not see this on the ABC or hear it from any of the Liberal ‘moderates’, but it was a very good thing having all those Teals take out the inner core of the lefty-Lib gang – Zimmerman ‘I forgot about freedom once I was elected’ Wilson, Sharma, Falinski, and yes, even Josh Frydenberg (who I’m guessing was the driving force behind pushing Scott Morrison to sign up to Net Zero and to pay the ABC all that money just before the election).
These seats were always going to leave the column for any remotely conservative party. Many may not like that fact, but it’s already happened in Canada, Britain, and America. Our voting system merely slowed it down here. The truth is that the well-off rich (and I generalise of course) now vote solidly Left – maybe because they can afford to and like to virtue-signal? They vote more like Canberra public servants than anything else.
So in a losing election, it was good to lose these seats. Frankly, I don’t see them coming back for a long time.’https://spectator.com.au/2022/05/the-rich-vote-left/
‘Perhaps no subject illustrates the Leftist bias in Big Science better than the abortion issue. If the leading journals and science reporters actually respected observational science, they would have to agree with the pro-life position: that human life begins at conception. Instead, they fall in line with the radical Left on this subject as well as all their other current hotbed issues. A lot has happened since April 29 when we reported on Big Science’s activity promoting abortion, and how a major Supreme Court document was leaked to the press. Take a look.
After this list of recent evidence, we will see an ID scientist with a good rebuttal from actual science and logic.
The Court is ignoring science (Diana Greene Foster in Science Magazine, 19 May 2022).
This essay appeared in America’s leading science journal from the AAAS, with no rebuttal. Foster’s title indicates that she sides with the leftists currently protesting the draft opinion in Dobbs that would overturn Roe v Wade – a document was leaked illegally by a still-unidentified staffer at the Supreme Court. Foster is claiming that her pro-abortion stance is scientific. Let’s see.
The research revealed that patients who were able to receive an abortion were more than six times more likely to report aspirational 1-year plans than those who were denied one. They are more likely to have a wanted child later and better able to take care of the children they already have. Because the majority of abortion patients are already parents, this means that being able to obtain an abortion has powerful, multigenerational impacts.
By contrast, if people are forced to carry a pregnancy to term, they are more likely to experience lasting financial hardships. After being denied an abortion, women had three times greater odds of being unemployed than those who obtained abortions and had four times higher odds of being below the federal poverty level.
Foster’s “science” consisted only of surveys of 1,000 women in the so-called Turnaway Study, commissioned by former justice Anthony Kennedy. It had nothing to do with biology. It only measured subjective feelings of women who had abortions and those who did not. Most importantly, it said nothing about the human life inside the womb. The tacit conclusion is this: if something is inconvenient, and is getting in your way, or is making you unhappy, kill it. Treat it like you would a nuisance dog or cat or gopher.
The US Supreme Court is wrong to disregard evidence on the harm of banning abortion (Nature Editorial, 5 May 2022).
The world’s leading science journal preceded by two weeks the AAAS in jumping on the bandwagon to fight the Supreme Court’s draft opinion, claiming the high moral ground: it is “wrong” to ban the killing of babies (imagine!). Nature makes similar quasi-scientific arguments that only concern the health and convenience of the woman.
Abortion bans will extract an unequal toll on society. Some 75% of women who choose to have abortions are in a low income bracket and nearly 60% already have children, according to one court brief submitted ahead of the December hearing and signed by more than 150 economists. Travelling across state lines to receive care will be particularly difficult for people who do not have the funds for flights or the ability to take time off work, or who struggle to find childcare.
So what’s their solution? Kill the baby who had nothing to do with the problem? These crocodile tears fail to point out that Planned Parenthood puts their abortion centers in poor neighborhoods that are mostly black and minority. Some 40% of abortions are of black children, even though they make up just 7% of the population. This harks back to the plan of racist eugenicist evolutionist Margaret Sanger (31 July 2020), who saw minorities as less fit than whites; abortion was her way of reducing the numbers of the poor and unfit (Fox News). Sanger’s arguments still gain traction; they were reiterated recently by Janet Yellen, Biden’s Treasury Secretary (Daily Wire, 10 May 2022). Nature‘s editors are just as guilty of promoting eugenics. Rather than helping poor women, they want to eliminate them.
Abortion funds are in the spotlight with the likely end of Roe v. Wade – 3 findings about what they do (Gretchen Ely, The Conversation, 13 May 2022).
As a social work professor who studies reproductive health care, I have led research that reviewed thousands of case records of patients who requested assistance from abortion funds to help pay for a procedure that they could not afford.
Dr Ely’s article consists only of statistics about how abortion funds are allocated to women seeking abortions, and how overturning Roe might make them harder to get. Her euphemism (linking abortion with “reproductive health care”) reveals her pro-abort position. Again, nothing is said about the vulnerable living human being inside the womb. Her silence treats “it” as a non-person.
The Lancet warns US Supreme Court over abortion (Medical Xpress, 13 May 2022).
Editors of one of the leading medical journals in the world, The Lancet in Britain, give their support to protestors who are fighting the draft Supreme Court decision. Look for any sign of balance, or any concern for the life of the unborn, or any analysis of whether the Roe decision in 1973 was a good legal decision. It’s not there. Instead, you will find slogans and hate speech that could have been shouted by Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader, who literally threatened two pro-life justices (Kavanaugh and Gorsuch) from the steps of the Supreme Court during their confirmation hearings (YouTube).
“The fact is that if the US Supreme Court confirms its draft decision, women will die,” the publication said.
“The justices who vote to strike down Roe will not succeed in ending abortion, they will only succeed in ending safe abortion.”
“Alito and his supporters will have women’s blood on their hands,” it concluded, referring to justice Samuel Alito, who authored the draft majority opinion of the court that was leaked last week.
Less than 1% of abortions take place in the third trimester – here’s why people get them (Katrina Kimport, The Conversation, 17 May 2022).
Baby in the womb (Illustra media)
Kimport’s article begins with a stock photo of 9 smiling young women with the caption, “If Roe v. Wade is overturned, more people could find themselves needing a third-trimester abortion.” Is that a scientific argument for abortion? No. Like the other articles emanating from Big Science and its lapdog Big Science Media, it is another argument for the convenience of the mother. Knowing that late-term abortion is unpopular even among those who support abortion “rights,” Kimport tries to make the case that there aren’t very many of those now, but there will be more if Roe is overturned (see fear-mongering in the Baloney Detector). Her evidence is anecdotal, not scientific:
Other women described barriers that weren’t directly related to policy. One young woman, for example, was so afraid that her parents would judge her for becoming pregnant and wanting an abortion that she took no action toward getting the abortion. By the time she felt able to confide in her brother, who was able to get her an appointment for an abortion, she was in the third trimester of pregnancy.
Such an argument, though, is inconsistent, because it assumes that late-term abortion is bad. So if early-term abortion is good, where does she draw the line to where it becomes bad? Like the others, she completely overlooks the issue of whether the baby growing within the mother, with its own genome, sex and human potential, has a right to life.
Roe v. Wade FAQ: What if abortion rights law gets overturned? (Live Science, 4 May 2022).
Devoid of any pro-life arguments, this article, pretending to be objective, ends up only telling women where they can still get abortions if Roe is overturned.’ The rest of the article may be read at https://crev.info/2022/05/big-science-goes-all-in-for-abortion/
I forgot that Tuesday was “Vile Affections” Day! Yes, ‘31 years ago – on May 17, 1990 – the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems.
International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia & Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) celebrates LGBTQIA+ people globally, and raises awareness for the work still needed to combat discrimination.’https://www.idahobit.org.au/index.php/get-active/the-stats
whatyareckon 