#1215: Jeffrey P. Tomkins

The unfortunate demise of John Todd leads us to another stock creationist, Jeffrey P. Tomkins, “research associate” at the Institute for Creation Research. Tomkins has a PhD in genetics (Clemson University) and a master’s degree in “plant science”, and his “research” for the ICR accordingly focuses on genetics, particularly (as per 2011) on the genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees. He has already discovered that the similarity between humans and chimps was “merely” 86– 89% by failing to understand some rather central distinctions (he never told us what the differences were, but did claim that evolutionist attempts to sequence the genome were biased). His 2012 article on the sequencing of the Gorilla genome, “Gorilla Genome Is Bad News for Evolution,” promptly failed to understand the science (detailed explanation here).

Needless to say, Tomkins avoids serious, scientific journals for his rants, but instead likes to publish his “results” in venues such as Answers, the house journal of Answers in Genesis. For volume 4 of that journal he published, in addition to his human-chimp difference paper, “Response to Comments on ‘How Genomes are Sequenced and Why it Matters: Implications for Studies in Comparative Genomics of Humans and Chimpanzees’,”, a response to (creationist) criticisms of said paper. He continued the confusion in volume 6.

His latest project is apparently concerned with the “concept of genetic diversity in biological adaptation.” We are still waiting for any insights.

Diagnosis: Clueless moron, whose understanding of central concepts in biology seems to be – willfully – more or less non-existent.