Are Scientists Always Objective? False Assumptions Concerning Evolution

By: Dr. John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon; ©1999

In this article Drs. Ankerberg and Weldon look at the second false assumption: that scientists are always objective when they do their research and publicly express their belief in evolution.

Contents

FALSE ASSUMPTION 2: Scientists are always objective when they do their research and publicly express their belief in evolution.

To the contrary, scientists are people and people are not often objective and neutral. Scientists, of course, work harder at being objective because of the limits and goals of the scientific disciplines, but this doesn’t mean personal preferences or ideologies never get in the way of their research. Unfortunately, the scientific community has its share of ambition, suppression of truth, prejudice, plagiarism, manipulation of data, etc. This is illustrated by Tel Aviv Medical School’s Professor of Urology Alexander Kohn in his False Prophets: Fraud and Error in Science and Medicine (1986), by Broad and Wade’s Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science (1982), and other books and articles.

For example, that many scientists have biases against scientific creationism can be seen through contemporary examples. When one of the greatest thinkers and scholars of modern times, Mortimer J. Adler of the University of Chicago, referred to evolution as a “popular myth,” the well known materialist and critic, Martin Gardner, actually included him in his study of quacks and frauds in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.^[1] Philosopher and historian Dr. Rousas Rushdoony was entirely correct when he observed of evolution, “To question the myth or to request proof is to be pilloried as a modern heretic and fool.”^[2]

Consider the case of Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith. As noted, Smith earned three doctorates in the field of science; his noteworthy academic career spanned over 40 years including the publication of over 100 scientific papers and over 40 books which have been published in 17 languages. Before discussing his own case, he illustrates with two others where eminent scientists have been silenced because they dared question evolutionary belief:

Over and above this, the situation is such today that any scientist expressing doubts about evolutionary theory is rapidly silenced. Sir Fred Hoyle, the famous astronomer, was well on his way to being nominated for the Nobel Prize. However, after the appearance of his books expressing mathematically based doubts as to Darwinism, he was rapidly eliminated. His books were negatively reviewed and no more was heard about his Nobel Prize. The case of the halo dating methods developed by Robert V. Gentry tell a similar story. Gentry gave good evidence that the earth’s age, when measured by the radiation halo method using polonium, might not be so great as had been thought when measured by more conventional methods. A postulate of this type would have robbed Darwinism of its main weapon, namely long time periods. Gentry lost his research grants and job at one sweep.

It is by such methods, often bordering on psychoterror, that the latter day phlogiston theory (Neodarwinism) still manages to imprint itself in pretty well all scientific publications today. I myself gave the Huxley Memorial Lecture at the Oxford Union, Oxford University, on February 14, 1986. My theses were well received even by my opponents in the debate following the lecture. But I have been to date unable to persuade any reputable scientific journal to publish the manuscript. The comment is uniformly that the text does not fit their scheme of publications.

I recently (December 1986) received an enquiry from the Radcliffe Science Library, Oxford, asking if I had ever really held the Huxley Memorial Lecture on February 14, 1986. No records of my having held the lecture as part of the Oxford Union debate could be found in any library nor was the substance of this debate ever officially recorded. No national newspapers, radio or TV station breathed a word about it. So total is the current censorship on any effective criticism of Neodarwinian science and on any genuine alternative.^[3]

Dr. Jerry Bergman and others have documented that there are thousands of cases of discrimination against creationists—of competent science teachers being fired merely because they taught a “two model approach” to origins; of highly qualified science professors being denied tenure because of their refusal to declare their faith in evolution; of students’ doctoral dissertations in science rejected simply because they supported creation; of students being expelled from class for challenging the idea that evolution is a fact, etc.^[4]

Prominent lawyer Wendell R. Byrd, author of The Origin of Species Revisited observes that “most of higher education is dogmatic and irrationally committed to affirm evolution and to suppress creation science, not on the basis of the scientific evidence but in disregard of that evidence.”^[5] He correctly refers to the “intolerance,” “hysteria,” and “unfairness” of the evolutionary establishment and to the “intolerable denials of tenure, denials of promotion, denials of contract renewals, denials of earned degrees, denials of admission into graduate programs, and other discrimination against that minority that disagrees with the prevailing dogmatism and dares affirm creation science. . . .From my research for published articles in the Yale Law Journal and Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and from my legal work in First Amendment litigation, it is my professional judgment that the cases of discrimination reported [by Bergman]. . .are a very tiny fraction of the general pattern and practice of discrimination against creationists and creation science at both the college and university level and the secondary and elementary school level.”^[6]

In doing research for his book, The Criterion, Dr. Bergman interviewed over 100 cre­ationists who had at least a master’s degree in science, the majority with a Ph.D. degree— among them Nobel prize winners and those with multiple doctorates in science. “Neverthe­less, all, without exception, reported that they had experienced some discrimination… some cases were tragic in the extent, blatancy and consequences of the discrimination.”^[7] For example, “over 12 percent of those interviewed stated that they had received death threats, highly emotional non-verbal feedback or irrational verbalizations against them” and “creationists have never won a single employment discrimination court case.” Further, “Many persons who were denied degrees or lost jobs were forced to move to another community and start over…. Many creationists publish under pseudonyms; others are extremely careful to hide their beliefs while earning their degree and come out of the closet only after they have the degree in hand or have earned tenure.”^[8]

One department supervisor stated, “You creationists are Stone Age Neanderthals, and if I had my way I would fire every one of you.”^[9] One creationist had a Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University. He had actively been seeking a teaching position for 12 years. One employer told him: “Frankly, I don’t like holy people, fundamentalists, especially Baptists, Church of Christ types, Pentecostals or other seventeenth century retrogressives. If we find out we hired one, especially if they start talking to the other research scientists about their beliefs, I terminate them within the month. Usually they leave without much of a protest. And I’ve never had one bring suit even though firing on religious grounds is illegal, and I know that it is.”^[10]

Consider other illustrations of religious bigotry from the evolutionary establishment^[11]:

— Dr. Bergman states that several of his colleagues told him that if they discovered one of their students was a conservative Christian, they would fail him/her. One professor said, “I don’t think this kind of people should get degrees and I’m going to do what I can to stop them.” Bergman observes that “some professors are openly advocating failing creationists” and he cites examples.

— A professor of biology at a large state university was denied tenure admittedly because of his creationist views although he had more publications in scientific journals (well over 100) than any other member of his department, many of them in the most prestigious journals in his field. When the university that granted his Ph.D. in biology learned he was an active creationist, they assembled a committee to rescind his degree six years after it was issued!

— A Michigan science teacher was fired shortly after he donated several boxes of books on creationism to the school library. A “South Dakota Outstanding Teacher of the Year” recipient was also fired because he was teaching creationism in class.

— Dr. David A. Warriner received his B.S. in chemistry from Tulane University, his Ph.D. from Cornell University and was close to a second Ph.D. He was invited to join the Natu­ral Science Department at Michigan State University as a creationist. After four years his department head suggested tenure but the dean of the department claimed he had “damaged the image of science” for the university and was dismissed. He has been unable to find a teaching position at any other university.

— A creationist working on his Ph.D. in zoology at a major university, with almost straight A’s, expressed serious reservations about evolution to his dissertation committee. He was required to take four more courses in evolutionary biology before they would permit him to graduate. After the courses were completed, his dissertation committee asked whether he now “believed in evolution.” When he replied he was “more firmly convinced of the validity of creationism than ever before,” the dissertation committee broke their agreement and refused to grant his degree.

— A researcher at a Cancer Research Center who had earned an excellent reputation for his six years’ work was forced to resign once his creationist views became known.

— Chandra Wickramasinghe of the University College in Cardiff, Wales and co-worker with Fred Hoyle, one of the world’s best known living astronomers, allegedly received death threats merely for speaking out in favor of a two-model teaching position.

Jim Melnick’s study in the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, May 1982, observed that “Significant creationist literature has been self-censored from nearly every major secu­lar university library in America.”^[12]

The hypocrisy in all this seems evident enough. The evolutionary establishment de­mands freedom of expression for itself but refuses this to its opposition. As Dr. Thomas Dwight of Harvard observed, “The tyranny in the matter of evolution is overwhelming to a degree of which the outsider has no idea.”^[13] In our colleges and universities today, the Christian faith can be ridiculed all day long, Marxism can be espoused, the Constitution criticized, marriage degraded, and homosexuality encouraged—but the theory of evolution is somehow sacrosanct. Chicago University’s Professor Paul Shoray observed, “There is no cause so completely immune from criticism today as evolution.”^[14]

Even the head of the science department at an ivy league university tore out an article in Systematic Zoology because it was critical of natural selection. When confronted he said, “Well of course I don’t believe in censorship in any form, but I just couldn’t bear the idea of my students reading that article.”^[15]

NOTES

1. ↑ R. J. Rushdoony, The Mythology of Science (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1968), p. 13.
2. ↑ Ibid.
3. ↑ A. E. Wilder-Smith, The Scientific Alternative to Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory: Infor­mation, Sources and Structures (Costa Mesa, Calif: TWFP Publishers, 1987), pp. iii-iv.
4. ↑ Jerry Bergman, The Criterion (Richfield, MN: Onesimus Publishers, 1984), passim.
5. ↑ Ibid., p. vii.
6. ↑ Ibid., pp. vii-viii.
7. ↑ Ibid., p. xi.
8. ↑ Ibid., p. xiii, xv.
9. ↑ Ibid., p. xi.
10. ↑ Ibid., p. 54.
11. ↑ These are taken from ibid., pp. 4-11, 20-24.
12. ↑ Ibid., 56-57.
13. ↑ Ibid., 7.
14. ↑ Ibid.
15. ↑ Ibid., 28.

 

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