Discovery Institute

Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity is an organization of Darwin-denying doctors being touted by the Discovery Institute as evidence of growing dissent against evolution. Those on their membership list in Arizona: Dr. Richard D. Friedman, Internal Medicine, Chandler, Arizona Dr. Joseph M. Kezele, Emergency Medicine, Cave Creek, Arizona Dr. William H. Noland, Neurology, Tucson, Arizona Dr. Joel T. Rohrbough, Orthopaedic Surgery, Flagstaff, Arizona Dr. Allan T. Sawyer, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Glendale, Arizona Personally, given the new developments in biological science and medicine that are discovered as a result of evolutionary science, I would not want to use a doctor who denies evolution. ...

For over a year, an individual has been harassing several evolutionary biologists at the Colorado University at Boulder about their “devilutionism,” and has now crossed the line into threats. The Discovery Institute claims that whoever is doing this is clearly not a Christian, a creationist, or religious (of course, only atheists are capable of doing anything unethical or crazy, right?), but the identity of this individual is known to the people being harassed. The Panda’s Thumb, Pharyngula, and Dispatches from the Culture Wars have more. UPDATE (July 13, 2007): The specific kook responsible has been identified as Michael Korn: Menacher “Michael” Korn is a 49-year-old Israeli national and former Messianic Jew who says he was baptized into Christianity in the Sea of Galilee seven years ago and is now on a mission to convert Jews and Muslims. His blog, JesusOverIsrael. blogspot.com, references CU-Boulder specifically and says he lives in Denver, although he has a North Carolina area code.See Pharyngula for links to Korn’s website and other information. ...

The National Center for Science Education has posted a brief report on the Answers in Genesis schism, with links to the coverage by The Australian, the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Duae Quartunciae blog, and this blog. In their report, they mention that A piece by Lippard on the schism is to appear in a future issue of Reports of the NCSE; in it, Lippard concludes, “creationism continues to evolve in fascinating ways."I encourage you to join the NCSE. The NCSE has long been the major force combatting creationism in the United States, including playing a significant support role for the plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case decided last year, and it works on a budget that is tiny by comparison to those of Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, and the Discovery Institute.

Tim Sandefur at the Panda’s Thumb explains how Casey Luskin, attorney at the Discovery Institute, misrepresents the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case of Board of Education v. Pico. Luskin’s misrepresentations of biology can be blamed on incompetency, but as a lawyer, shouldn’t he at least know the law? I don’t see how his continued misrepresentations–and failure to correct them–can be blamed on anything but dishonesty.

The Montana Law Review has published an article by three Discovery Institute Fellows, a reply by Peter Irons, and a response by the DI Fellows (DeWolf, West, and Luskin). Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has now published a reply by Irons to the short response from the DI Fellows; you can find all four contributions at his blog. I recommend starting with the first Irons reply, followed by the short DI Fellows response, followed by the Irons reply that Ed has published.

Judge Jones’ ruling in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case found the Dover Area School District’s policy on intelligent design a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause on two grounds. First, on the ground that it had a specifically religious purpose, and second, that intelligent design is not science but religion, and so the policy was an endorsement of religion. These are two of the three prongs of the “Lemon Test” for whether a state action violates the establishment clause. The Discovery Institute has argued that Jones’ ruling should only have used the “purpose” test and not the “endorsement” test. Ed Brayton points out that this position is contrary to the position that creationists and intelligent design advocates have argued for the last three decades–that the “purpose” prong of the Lemon Test for violations of the First Amendment’s establishment clause is unfair and should be abandoned. Ed observes that at least four DI personnel–Casey Luskin, Frank Beckwith, Mark Ryland, and David DeWolf–have all argued this way in the past. His post also responds in some detail to the specific arguments made by Philip Italiano, a law student at Rutgers Law School, who is the latest to argue that Jones should only have used the “purpose” test.

This post is a followup to my series of ten posts about the finances of creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Access Research Network, the Creation Evidence Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Discovery Institute, and, though not reported in Cole’s article, I also looked at Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation. As Nick Matzke pointed out in a comment on the last of these, there are other creationist organizations out there of some significance, such as the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (publisher of the creationist/intelligent design textbook, Of Pandas and People), Probe Ministries (Ray Bohlin’s group in Texas which authored the annotated bibliography of Josh McDowell’s book Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity–the anti-evolution sections of which were ghost authored by an individual who now supports evolution), and Hugh Ross’s old-earth creationist group, Reasons To Believe. There are also five groups that were listed in Cole’s article which I did not cover–these were the five smallest groups, the Creation Education Society of Tennessee, the Creation Resource Foundation of El Dorado, California, the Creation Science Association for Mid-America of Kansas City, Missouri (originators of the “Lucy’s knee joint” argument), the Creation-Science Fellowship of Pittsburgh, and the Genesis Institute of Mead, Washington. And there are still others out there, like the Twin Cities Creation Science Association of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Kent Hovind’s organization (which didn’t file anything with the IRS, which is part of why he’s in jail right now), and various online creationist ministries. I may, as Nick suggested, take a look at some of these others in the future. At this point, however, I wanted to see if any conclusions can be drawn from the data in the Form 990s of the groups I’ve covered so far. I took a look at one section of each of the Form 990s which gives income data for previous years, and totaled those amounts up for each year across all the groups for which I had data. In some cases, I had to use other sources which were not quite comparable (such as the revenue figures from John Cole’s article), but are probably good enough for approximation to look at the size of the creationist market each year. (The main difference between the income figures I used versus the revenue figures is that the income figures show money coming in for purchases without subtracting the cost of goods sold, while the revenue numbers deduct the cost of goods sold.) The Discovery Institute’s totals were used, even though the DI does more than creationism, so that may have contributed to an overestimate, while the omission of all of the other groups above would have contributed to an underestimate. Since the DI brings in considerably more revenue than the other groups, it would take quite a few creationist groups making less than $100,000 a year to make up the difference. So this can’t be considered definitive. Given this total size of the creationist market for each year, I then looked at each group’s percentage of that marketplace, and how it has changed over time. Here are the numbers, rounded to the closest $1 million: 1998: $13 million market Institute for Creation Research: 45% Answers in Genesis: 28% Discovery Institute: 15% Creation Evidence Museum: 3% Creation Moments: 2% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 3% Creation Research Society: no data All others: less than 1% each 1999: $13 million market Institute for Creation Research: 41% Answers in Genesis: 30% Discovery Institute: 13% Creation Evidence Museum: 7% Creation Moments: 2% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 2% Creation Research Society: 2% All others: less than 1% each 2000: $16 million market Answers in Genesis: 46% Institute for Creation Research: 34% Discovery Institute: 10% Creation Evidence Museum: 4% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 2% Creation Moments: 1% Creation Research Society: 1% All others: less than 1% each 2001: $20 million market Answers in Genesis: 46% Institute for Creation Research: 30% Discovery Institute: 15% Creation Evidence Museum: 3% Creation Research Society: 1% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 1% Creation Moments: 1% All others: less than 1% each 2002: $19 million market Answers in Genesis: 49% Institute for Creation Research: 31% Discovery Institute: 12% Creation Evidence Museum: 3% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 2% Creation Research Society: 2% Creation Moments: 1% All others: less than 1% each 2003: $21 million market Answers in Genesis: 52% Institute for Creation Research: 28% Discovery Institute: 15% Creation Evidence Museum: 2% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 2% Creation Moments: 1% Creation Research Society: 1% All others: less than 1% each 2004: $22 million market Answers in Genesis: 59% Institute for Creation Research: 20% Discovery Institute: 16% Creation Research Society: 1% Creation Moments: 1% Creation Evidence Museum: no data Creation Illustrated Ministries: no data Even with these approximations and limitations, there are a few things that stand out clearly: 1. The marketplace for creationism has been growing. 2. Answers in Genesis’ market share has grown and dominates the market. 3. The Institute for Creation Research has had a declining market share. 4. The Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture has had a fairly static market share (overrepresented here, as well, since their numbers include other branches of the DI). 5. Other creationist groups have tended to lose market share in the face of Answers in Genesis’s dominance, even if their overall revenue has grown.

This is the ninth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I’ll add Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to the list. ...

This is the third in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I’ll add Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to the list. ...

Steve Reuland at the Panda’s Thumb points out how egregiously bad the OSC has become under Special Counsel Scott Bloch, and how that led to its poor handling of the Sternberg affair: Bloch is a far-right wing activist and a notorious homophobe. Upon taking office Bloch immediately removed references to sexual orientation discrimination from the OSC website. Bloch has indicated that he will not protect gays from discrimination in contradiction of White House policy. Bloch is alleged to have used the OSC for partisan political purposes by ignoring claims made against Republicans while vigorously pursuing complaints lodged against Democrats. Bloch doubled the number of political appointees in the OSC, giving high paying salaries to many of his friends and fellow right-wing activists who have no relevant experience. He has simultaneously eviscerated the OSC’s professional staff, much of whom has either been fired for not relocating on short notice or resigned in frustration. James McVay, who wrote the preliminary report concerning Sternberg, is one of Bloch’s more controversial political appointees. He has no experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal-sector work. Many hundreds of meritorious cases, which by all accounts should have been investigated, were dismissed without investigation by Bloch’s office. Meanwhile, matters over which OSC has no jurisdiction have been pursued rigorously. (Sound familiar?) According to the OSC’s own polling, Federal employees are extremely dissatisfied with the work being done by the OSC, and effectively no whistleblowers have received relief as a result of the complaints they filed. When complaints were made about Bloch’s behavior and mistreatment of the staff, Bloch not only dismissed the complaints, he allegedly retaliated against the people who made them and issued a gag order preventing the OSC staff from speaking to anyone outside of the agency. Ironically, it is precisely this type of retaliation and intimidation of whistleblowers that the OSC is tasked with investigating. As a result of OSC failing to discharge its duties and taking revenge on aggrieved staff, former staff members and numerous whistleblower protection groups have filed a complaint with the Office of Personnel Management, which has launched an investigation (still on-going, as far as I can tell). Additionally, two Senate committees were forced to hold hearings concerning Bloch’s behavior. It almost couldn’t get worse. There is a long and sordid history since Bloch took over the OSC of cronyism, political bias, shirking, and unfair treatment of staff. Scott Bloch makes former FEMA director Michael Brown look like a brilliant leader and seasoned professional by comparison. ...