We’ve covered a couple of the signatories to the Discovery
Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism before – the true believers; not those who were hoodwinked into signing. The
thing is: The US has a lot of questionable educational institutions that hire a
lot of faculty with questionable levels of competence (but formal degrees), so
it isn’t much surprise that the Discovery Institute are able to find a handful
of fundamentalists willing to sign whatever anti-science petition they put in
front of them.
Bruce Evans is a good example. Evans has a PhD in
neurobiology and published some papers in fields unrelated to evolution back in
the days. Currently, Evans is a professor of biology and department chair at
Huntington University, a Christian liberal arts college, the faculty of which
subscribe to a fundamentalist statement of faith (“[w]e believe the Bible to be
the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God”), and which
apparently happily allowed Evans to teach an EXCEL class on the Origins of
Life. Evans is a committed creationist (and Sunday school teacher), and was even
on the board of reviewers for Explore Evolution.
According to the, uh, educational institution’s website, Evans’ “primary
interests are in the areas of intelligent design, cognitive neuroscience and
dinosaurs.” Dinosaurs? What are his credentials? Oh, he “has spent time with
paleontologists at fossil sites in Colorado, Utah, Texas, and Indiana,” which
is … not exactly the same as having a research background. More insidiously,
though, he “helps to educate local elementary students about dinosaurs.” He has
also given presentations at Intelligent Design conferences and “led discussions
on these topics in colleges and churches in Indiana and Ohio.” That should
count for something, shouldn’t it?
What is interesting in this context is that Evans is also on
the list Rethinking AIDS, an HIV denialist petition. We’ve found no further elaboration of his views on this matter,
however.
Diagnosis: Fundamentalist pseudo-scientist. “Anti-scientist”
is probably more accurate, given his outreach efforts. Not one of the big fish,
to be sure, but he seems to have influence enough to be considered very
dangerous.
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