The publishers of new anti-evolution propaganda, distributed to schools across the UK, conform rather well to the Salem Hypothesis: their scientific credentials are almost entirely in engineering.

In principle a textbook could be called Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and against Neo-Darwinism and could do a good job of explaining the overwhelming evidence in favour of evolution, before proceeding to refute the arguments against it.

However, an expensive, glossy publication by this title distributed freely to schools across the UK recently, is rather less in tune with the merited scientific consensus.

Today the BHA described the distribution of Explore Evolution as “a new wave of propagandist material dressed up as science”. It has been distributed by ‘Truth in Science’, whom the BHA have criticised in the past.

James Williams, Lecturer in Science Education at the University of Sussex, said today, “The book cleverly omits any mention of creationism and intelligent design, but merely contains updated and rehashed creationist arguments. The book is subtly loaded against evolution, yet purports to be a ‘balanced argument’. It is cleverly constructed and leads the reader down a path where the answer always seems ‘obvious’ – design – it is if you follow their arguments – but the arguments they have loaded in favour of design cannot be balanced.”

Williams goes on to describe Explore Evolution as a “back-door” route to children, avoiding actual science teachers by sending the book straight to school librarians. “They could be easily be taken in by the glossy production values and miss the arguments loaded in favour of ‘design’. Many unsuspecting librarians may well have placed this on school shelves.”

The organisation behind the literature is Truth in Science. The glossy book claims to be a balanced argument, but the people behind so-called ‘Truth in Science’ are anything but a balanced reflection of the scientific community. ‘Truth in Science’ describe their mission, saying:

At Truth in Science, we wish to highlight the scientific weaknesses of Neo-Darwinism and to encourage a more critical approach to the teaching of evolution in schools and universities.

We consider it is time for students to be exposed to the fact that there is a modern controversy over Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and that this has considerable social, spiritual, moral and ethical implications.

When it comes to their individual Directors and advisors, ‘Truth in Science’ makes much of their published papers (“He is author or co-author of over 170 papers and articles in the scientific literature”; “He has over 50 peer-reviewed papers and several chapters in scientific textbooks”) but the disciplines and leanings of these advisors leaves something to be desired given the purported aims of Explore Evolution.

Not one of the Board of Directors or even the Council of Reference is a biologist, evolutionary or otherwise. There are no geologists who could have spoken about the age of the Earth and the slow march of the continents, no petrologists who could have corroborated the ages of fossil-encrusted rock formations, no biochemists who could have shed light on the ways in which evolved biological systems are quite different from human engineered technologies.

This last point is not arbitrary. The Salem Hypothesis notes a correlation between being a Creationist, and being an engineer. As P Z Myers has explained,  this is no sleight on engineers. The Salem Hypothesis says that Creationists with any scientific credentials are disproportionately engineers, it does not say that all engineers are Creationists. But the ‘Truth in Science’ Directors and those on the “Council of Reference” do conform rather well to expectations from the Salem Hypothesis…

In the five-strong Board of Directors there are two engineers, including the Chair.

• The Chair, Stephen Hyde is a “Chartered Engineer and Managing Director of a Building and Development Company”.
• Andy McIntosh, Professor of Thermodynamics and Combustion Theory at the University of Leeds.

Two of the remaining three directors are religious evangelists.

• An agriculturalist, Philip Metcalfe, “also involved with the publication and distribution of evangelical Christian literature” (such as Explore Evolution…?);
• Free Church of Scotland minister Maurice Roberts.

The remaining director is a teacher, John Perfect.

Four out of the ten members of the “Council of Reference” are also engineers.

• Stuart Burgess is Professor of Design and Nature and Head of Mechanical Engineering at Bristol University.
• Russell Healey, formerly a lecturer in the Engineering Department at Cambridge University, now teaches maths.
• Derek Linkens is Dean Emeritus at the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield. He’s also a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
• Steve Taylor is a reader in Micro and Nano Technology at the University of Liverpool. His research “involves design, simulation and fabrication of microengineered electronic devices”.

This time, all the members of the Council of Reference who are not engineers are in various religious positions:

• Gerard A. Chrispin is a lawyer and directs the Daylight Christian Prison Trust.
• George Curry is a minister (Elswick Parish Church in Newcastle upon Tyne) as well as the Chairman of Church Society.
• John Blanchard is an author of “many popular books including Evolution: fact or fiction? Has Science Got Rid of God? and Does God Believe in Atheists?”
• David Harding is pastor of Milnrow Evangelical Church, Lancashire.
• John MacArthur is the pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and president of The Master’s College and Seminary.
• Albert N. Martin is the pastor Of Trinity Baptist Church, Montville, New Jersey and taught Pastoral Theology in the Trinity Ministerial Academy.

So, the valid scientific dispute represented by Explore Evolution comes from a Limited Company lead by six engineers, eight people who evangelise about religion for a living, and one teacher.

We come at last to the “Scientific Panel” (goodness knows what the “Reference panel” are supposed to be referencing, then). This does contain members with some vaguely relevant qualifications. There are only four people on the “Scientific Panel”:

• Geoff Barnard is a researcher in veterinary medicine (Cambridge).
• Arthur Jones is a Science and Education Consultant and a member of the Institute of Biology. His PhD from Birmingham University is for research on the diversification of cichlid fish (presumably their diversity is not down to Darwinian speciation…)
• Tim Wells is Senior Lecturer in Neuroendocrinology (think nerves and glands) at Cardiff University.
• Paul Garner holds a degree: “a BSc (Hons) in Environmental Science (Geology and Biology)”. He is a fellow of the Geological Society; the Society says that fellowship can be attained if you hold  ”a degree or equivalent qualification in geology (or a related subject)”. Garner “is now a full time lecturer and researcher with Biblical Creation Ministries.”

What does it mean, that so many anti-evolutionary scientists are engineers? Perhaps there is an academically ingrained engineering predisposition to finding ‘purpose’ in an item under scrutiny. Perhaps it’s a kind of cognitive dissonance: given that the engineer’s job is to find solutions to difficult problems, it’s hard to believe that nature just “blindly” happens across the right solution. In this case, a re-emphasis on the stochastic, ratcheting process of natural selection, rather than on the “blind” variation underneath it, would be a sensible recommendation for the ‘engineer’ in all of us.

When ‘Truth in Science’ first posted costly teaching resources to heads of science in secondary schools across the UK in 2006 the BHA wrote to the Department for Children, Schools and Families, amid a flurry of media comment on the issue. The resolution was relatively positive: the Government distanced itself from the resources and published its ‘Guidance on the place of creationism and intelligent design in science lessons‘ that September, making it clear that Creationism and intelligent design must not be taught in science lessons because they have “no underlying scientific principles, or explanations”. In response to Explore Evolution the BHA has again asked Ed Balls to take action in response to the threat of scientific misrepresentation and educational confusion which Explore Evolution embodies.

'Truth in Science' and the Salem Hypothesis, 7.7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings