#259: Mark Mathis

Mark E. Mathis is a movie producer and media consultant. He is currently the president of Mathis Media, LLC, a media-consulting firm. He is most famous as the associate producer for the pro-creationism movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”, which attempts to convince viewers of a conspiracy within the scientific community to silence supporters of intelligent design (or more precisely distort facts to make it look like a conspiracy). A useful but slightly too positive commentary is found here.

This means, of course, that Mathis was personally responsible for misleading evolutionary biologists PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins to get them to appear in the film by presenting the project to them as wildly different from the movie he actually produced (in addition to the usual cut and paste). It was also Mathis who – famously – personally prohibited Myers from viewing the movie, even though he appears in it. Both Mathis and his partner Walt Ruloff predictably misexplained the incident rather feebly.

The animation company XVIVO has also notified the producers that the company would sue for copying a film.

Mathis knows absolutely nothing about evolution. That of course does not prevent him from claiming that it is an unscientific and false theory, of course, which to be expected of hardcore creationists.

Diagnosis: Your typical hardcore dishonest know-nothing who sees a conspiracy whenever the facts don’t line up with his ideology. Complete hack, but his actual long-term impact is uncertain.