#1980: Tom McMullen

Tom McMullen is a hardcore creationist affiliated with Georgia Southern University, where he is apparently working hard to push his religious views on his students, apparently by suggesting these views have anything to do with science. Thing is, like many hardcore creationists, McMullen seems to fancy himself a “real scientist”, although we have found preciously little by way of research that would even remotely back up the claim. McMullen does, however, have a degree (which emphatically does not make you a scientist on its own), and is thus qualified to sign creationist petitions like the Discovery Institute’s A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism. Indeed, McMullen’s degree isn’t even a science degree, but then creationism has nothing to do with science either.

McMullen thinks that most of the enormous body of scientific research supporting evolution is “fraud”, primarily because he rejects evolution on decidedly non-scientific grounds. He also thinks evolution is a matter of belief and that the “religion of humanism” is pushing for evolution without scientific grounding – McMullen being apparently unable to distinguish scientific research from creationist petitions if his life depended on it.

Diagnosis: Not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but a religious extremist who apparently doesn’t mind much that his audiences fail to recognize that he isn’t. Pseudoscientist, though – we may be willing to grant him that title.