lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.) (04/18/84)
In Ray Miller's synopsis of the Arkansas creationism trial he stated: "At another point they [SCIENCE magazine] took great glee in quoting from the court record when a third witness strongly disagreed with a major creationist contention. What they 'forgot' to tell us was that he was *not* a creationist. He was an evolutionist and appeared only because of some probability calculations he and Hoyle had done and because he supported the balanced treatment of creation science along side of evolution." As far as I can figure Ray must be referring to the text of Overton's decision, which was printed in full in the 19 Feb '82 issue of SCIENCE. the "third witness" is evidently Dr. Wickramasinghe. He is mentioned in an article in the 1 Jan '82 issue, but nothing is said about disagreement with "a major creationist contention". I conclude that Ray mistook Judge Overton's opinion for a SCIENCE editorial. Here is the relevant passage from the decision, which comes after a brief description of Wickramasinghe's testimony concerning his theory about genetic material from space: "The court is at a loss to undertstand why Dr. Wickramasinghe was called in behalf of the defendants. Perhaps it was because he was generally critical of the theory of evolution and the scientific community, a tactic consistent with the strategy of the defense. Unfortunately for the defense, he demon- strated that the simplistic approach of the two model analysis of the origins of life is false. Furthermore, he corroborated the plaintiffs' witnesses by concluding that 'no rational scientist' would believe the earth's geology could be explained by reference to a worldwide flood or that the earth was less than one million years old." The 1 Jan '82 article (Creationism on the Defensive in Arkansas) is somewhat derisive in tone. It contains a wrap-up of the trial so I'm assuming I'm not missing anything between 1 Jan and 19 Feb. Anyway, it identifies Wickramasinghe as the state's "star witness", the other's having been so thoroughly demolished by cross examination that one of the remaining ones "fled town". Ray's excuse that Wickramasinghe is "*not* a creationist" is telling. It makes clear that Ray implicitly accepts the notion that creationists are a special breed, and the only ones that can be expected to adhere to their doctrine. Lew Mammel, Jr. ihnp4!ihuxr!lew