Red-handed: They lied and lied and lied

Earlier this week, I revealed that Roger Stanyard had had a fall-out with the BCSE, and walked out. What I didn't know at the time, was that the efforts made by the BCSE to effect a reconciliation were on the brink of success - and that Stanyard was almost back. (The walk-out was about a fortnight before).

Now, that's unremarkable enough in itself. The BCSE could have simply said "Yes - so what?" or chosen to ignore the story entirely.

What they did instead, though, has turned this story into a major event. The BCSE leaders Michael Brass and Ian Lowe decided that they were in a strong position to absolutely rubbish my story, and me - and they went ahead and did right that. Brass began personally e-mailing me, and Brass and Lowe together put together some extremely strong words on the BCSE forum. In short, they called me an utter liar who had made up a story with absolutely no basis in reality - and they kindly offered their readers some pyschoanalysis of me to boot to explain how I could do such a thing. According to Lowe, the only reason that Stanyard hasn't been on the BCSE forum lately and why his contact details were removed, was simply because he had Internet connection problems for a bit. A little later, Stanyard himself turned up, to confirm this alleged fact. According to Lowe, I owe them an apology.

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10480#10480

The problem for the BCSE though, is that I actually had far more evidence for Stanyard's walk-out than I showed in my original post. What this does is to turn this story from something of a non-event (Stanyard falling out, then making up) into something else entirely: prima facie evidence of an utterly cynical willingness to lie and slander openly and repeatedly - evidence of the sheer nastiness and deceitfulness of the BCSE's mode of operation.

I invite my readers to tour the thread on the BCSE forum on which this all plays out. Here are some things to look at (http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1116):

• Does this look like the response of an organisation which pretends that "BCSE Revealed" hasn't touched it? Or does it look like the response of individuals who are severely rattled?
  
  
• If the BCSE have nothing to worry about from "BCSE Revealed", why are they so angry? If on the other hand, I've shredded their credibility and they know it, then this response from them makes a lot of sense...
  
  
• Notice Brass and Lowe in particular rubbishing my claims particularly severely, and committee member Brian Jordan also describing them as "imaginary" - and Stanyard confirming that they had no truth in them ("It is wildly out, as, indeed, is nearly all what he says").
  
  
• Notice the various accusations against me - proven liar (Brass), wife-abuser (Lowe), impossible to work with (Lowe), dishonest, nasty (Stanyard), computer hacker (Brass), amoral (Jordan), "fragile ego ... control freak" (Lowe), litigous (Stanyard), lazy (Lowe), "spectacularly wrong" (Stanyard) etc. etc. Then compare those accusations with the verifiable evidence that the various people making them offer to back them up...
  
  One thing's clear: the BCSE haven't changed their basic approach to "BCSE Revealed": throw ten tonnes of mud, in the hope that some of it will stick. If they repeat the same things over and over again, then hopefully you'll end up believing some of it, however little evidence they trouble themselves to offer for it. Michael Brass calls me a "proven liar"; but forgets (again!) to tell us where to find the proof for this... the BCSE has tried really really hard over the last months to smear me in some of the nastiest ways possible... but until it actually troubles itself to accompany its allegations with some attempt at proof, there's simply nothing to respond to.
  
  
• Notice that Ian Lowe goes so far as to condemn me in advance for not apologising for my alleged crime. He's right that I won't be apologising... because I'm about to reveal the enormity of the deceit that he's tried to perpetrate.
  

So... have you got the picture here? At least four BCSE committee members have strongly affirmed that my story that they fell out with Roger Stanyard and that he, for a time, walked out, is absolute rubbish, and evidence of my wickedness. If I can prove the contrary - then the BCSE are about to look very bad.

And, I can... and they are.

So, here it is. Here is what really happened, which Ian Lowe strongly affirms is nothing more than Stanyard losing his Internet connection (and Stanyard confirms), and which Michael Brass calls "crapola":

Lowe said, in the forum post referred to above, "And what I will say is that it's blindlingly apparent that he doesn't have all of the information at his disposal... and he's not going to either". Really? Let's see...

Here's Ian Lowe talking to BCSE member Chris Hylands, writing in a website discussion on the 13th of June - a website discussion that he didn't realise was being indexed by Google. Compare the above with what Lowe said below, when he thought I wouldn't be listening, and really hoped I wasn't. The level of concern over "BCSE Revealed" is encouraging to me too: it shows that my revelations have really hurt them. This is worth reading twice to let it sink in. (Emphasis mine).

Chris Hyland: I wonder if Anderson is going to notice that the BCSE main page has been changed and no longer includes Roger as a comitee member.

Ian Lowe: Damn.

I wish he had not done that.

I got an email earlier in the day about Roger removing himself from an old committee mailing list that we have - it looks like about 5 minutes later, Roger edited the Homepage and Contacts page to remove all mention of himself.

I removed Roger's admin rights on the BCSE forum, but didn't change his access to the website - largely out of respect for Louis's desire for reconciliation.

This does however bring up the possibility fo scrutiny, which means that rather than BCSE announcing the merger and being fully positive about it, Roger's departure can easily be seen to pre-date the merger.

DAMN.

This is the same situation as we had with leeds - thinkfully, not legal this time, where Roger went off and edited every mention of "Leeds Uni" to say "Name witheld for legal reasons".

If we are *very* lucky, Anderson will not notice (not much chance, as the little weasel indexes our site every other day) and we can keep control of this.

a general question - if Roger is coming along with a thought of reconciliation, why is he removing all mention of himself today?

I'm concerned by this, and would really welcome some other (probably more rational and level headed) input!!

Ian.

http://www.justscience.org.uk/...rentId=2129. [Get it whilst you can - I'm sure they'll delete it from the web asap. As ever, I have copies available for verification for your research purposes. Update a few hours later: Yup, it's gone].

Did you get that? Lowe, Brass, etc., in public strongly affirmed that nothing happened with Stanyard, and that I made it all up as a wicked liar. This page from Google, though, records that two weeks ago Lowe was talking with his fellow BCSE members about Stanyard's departure, possibilities of reconciliation, and talked about how to "keep control of this". In public, Lowe and Brass pretend that my story was total nonsense and that they don't care what I write; in private, they are petrified about what I might know about what they're really up to.

They lied, and lied, and lied

According to Michael Brass, you shouldn't listen to a proven liar. Michael Brass is a proven liar.

According to Ian Lowe, I owe the BCSE an apology for making up a story about Roger Stanyard, which is evidence of my psychological flaws. Lowe is someone who nobody involved with the BCSE who in any way cares about truth will ever work with again.

According to Stanyard, he was away for those two weeks because he had a problem with his ISP. Stanyard lied through his teeth and has destroyed his own credibility.

According to Brian Jordan, my story was "imaginary" and evidence that I have no moral standards. Jordan, being on the committee, must have known that this was a deliberate deception and attempt to smear me; but he joined in anyway.

The BCSE could have just ignored my story, or said "yes - we fell out; so what?". Instead, they allowed Brass and Lowe to persuade them that I wouldn't be able to prove my allegation, and that it was a good chance to rubbish me. Brass and Lowe persuaded their fellow committee members that for the price of a few whopping lies, they could make some capital. Those fellow members bought into the strategy. That strategy is in tatters now, and so are the reputations of Michael Brass, Ian Lowe, Roger Stanyard, Brian Jordan and various other members of the BCSE.

David Anderson



Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Roger Stanyard: Update

(If you've read this story before, there are three updates down the bottom).

It seems that Roger Stanyard and the BCSE have made up; at least according to this thread on the BCSE forum:

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1116

The thread claims that Stanyard never left, and that I made up the entire story; then proceeds into a discussion of my honesty... and then tries to recycle some of the allegations that the BCSE made in the past against me. As in the past, they (again!) forget to produce the evidence... as in the past, whilst saying that this blog is full of untruths, they (again!) forget to say where, or what the contrary truths are... see here for more of that.

In fact, though, I have much more evidence than I revealed in the first post: evidence which reveals Brian Jordan, Michael Brass and Ian Lowe - the BCSE committee members in that thread who seek to claim that there Stanyard hadn't left - as brazen liars. Brass, Lowe and Jordan are obviously making a cynical bet on me not having such evidence, and hoping that they'll be able to bluff their way out of what happened. They hope that those on the BCSE forum who aren't in the inner circle will be convinced, and they hope that by blowing enough smoke and changing the subject to a discussion of the wickedness of the "BCSE Revealed" blogger, they'll be able to get away with it.

The others contributing to the thread above do in fact take Jordan, Brass and Lowe's words for it - which they will regret doing once the evidence is brought out into the open. I'm going to wait and see the BCSE's response to the above before I do that, but for now, here are a couple of discrepancies to note in Lowe's story. Lowe claims that Stanyard's e-mail address was removed from the BCSE's contact page because "Roger had a problem with his ISP for a week or so, and we changed the email address to make sure that people could still contact us. " What Lowe doesn't explain, though, is how this could account for the facts that:

• For a time, Stanyard's name was also removed from the list of committee members on the BCSE front page. (Some time later, the BCSE then removed the whole list of committee members - presumably because they didn't want anyone to notice that just one member had left). Why was Stanyard's - and only Stanyard's - name removed from the list of committee members? Why don't the BCSE put back the full list of committee members, so we can see just who is on it?
  
  
• If the problem was with Stanyard's e-mail address, then why was Stanyard's mobile phone number also removed? How would problems with Stanyard's ISP affect his mobile phone, exactly? You might have thought that the difficulty contacting Stanyard by e-mail would make it more necessary to have the mobile phone number up to contact him with, not less...
  

So, I'm now calling the BCSE's bluff on the following scores:

• Are they going to stick with their story that I have made the whole thing up, or will they admit that Stanyard left and that they're now making up with him? (How far that making-up has gone, I don't know - presuming that this isn't itself a fabrication).
  
  
• Are they going to wait for me to produce the further evidence I have, hoping that they can explain it away - or are they going to face the possibility that my further evidence is damning and will reveal Brass, Lowe and Jordan as telling whopping lies?
  
  
• How can they explain the above discrepancies?
  
  
• Are they ever going to explain what the other supposed errors on this blog are, or going to continue to trade in completely general descriptions? Comments are still open for corrections...
  

Let's wait and see...

I've taken a full record of the thread above; particularly Lowe's bold words. Lowe has been exposed on numerous occasions in the past as willing to tell outright lies "for the cause" in the hope that nobody will know better - see here for one example. He's going to have some more explaining to do shortly...

Update 11:32 a.m. I presently have Michael Brass in my inbox. He e-mailed me after the first story, to tell me that my story had no basis in fact. In response, I told him that Stanyard had in fact left, and now apparently returned, and asked him to confirm or deny it. Brass now appears to be back-tracking; he refuses to answer this question, but is now apparently arguing that the story constituted a "lie" and a breach of the "Ten Commandments" (Brass's words), not because I was wrong about Stanyard having left, but because I failed to mention that Stanyard had returned. I have asked Brass to explain how the apparent fact that Stanyard has left and returned makes the statement Stanyard has left into a lie.

Brass's spin machine is going into overload, because he has now both publicly accused me of lying, but also can no longer deny that Stanyard left since I know otherwise. This leaves him in a bit of a spot, so he's now trying to change the basis of accusing me for lying to the claim that Stanyard's leaving and returning means that we can't say he left. Michael Brass has major problems telling the straightforward truth. I challenge him to allow me to publish our correspondence on this topic in full so that my readers can judge for themselves which one of us has a forked tongue. What have you got to hide, Michael?

Update 12:26. Brass refuses me permission to publish the e-mails he sent me trying to spin his way out of this situation. Note that, readers - Brass doesn't want you to be able to judge for yourselves whether he is a liar or not; he wants to keep the evidence secret. I, however, want to publish it. What does that tell you? I will be examining my options....

Update 12:39. Brass is digging himself further into a hole. When he refused me permission to publish his e-mails which document his lying, I told him that he should not e-mail me in future (as it was him who e-mailed to initiate contact), unless he was willing to have those e-mails published. Here are my precise words (the words "have you" should have appeared before "send"):

For future reference, I put you on notice that I will consider all e-mails you send me about the BCSE or my blog as with full permission to publish. I'm not prepared to [sic] send me spin of this kind in future and then have you refuse to let the public see it so that they can see what you've tried to do. Please don't e-mail me unless you find these terms acceptable (unless I specifically say otherwise).

Brass's response was to go to the BCSE forum, and add this:

For everyone's amusement: Anderson is now stating that he has the right to publish in full any e-mails sent to him, regardless of whether the originator (and copyright holder) agrees.

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10479#10479

Can anybody spot any similarities between my statement and Brass's version of it? No, neither can I.

I'm happy to assure anyone who wishes to contact me that I will not publish their e-mails without permission, and that my statement meant what it said - that it applies only to future unsolicited e-mails from Brass. Again, I invite my readers to note the incredible difficulty that Brass, BCSE chairman, has in handling himself with integrity. If the truth is on his side, why does he have to do this kind of thing? I wonder!

It's worth noting that the BCSE are promoting, on their website, a site in which one of their own members publishes private e-mails which I declined to give him permission to publish... do you think that bothers Michael Brass? Is Michael Brass a hypocrite? The answer's not hard to work out.


David Anderson



Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

The BCSE: Decline And Fall: It's Well Underway Now

Here's some news: Roger Stanyard, until now the de facto BCSE leader, has left. (Read stories involving Mr. Stanyard here). He has removed his name from the front page of the site, deleted his e-mail address "roger@bcseweb.org.uk" from the "contacts" page, and deleted his mobile phone number as the BCSE's main contact number.

Before (e-mail address "roger@bcseweb.org.uk"):
After (the e-mail address is now "committee@bcseweb.org.uk", and Stanyard's invitation to call his mobile phone gone):

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/Contacts

As yet, the BCSE have not made any official comment on this departure. I suppose that they are hoping that nobody will notice, and that it won't need commenting on. They have tried this strategy before, and I invite my readers to review the articles on Leeds University to see what the BCSE are still hoping not too many people know about. The BCSE are still doing their best to avoid explaining the legal action that the University threatened them with for the appalling dross that the BCSE presented as "research" on their website: see here. As yet, the BCSE have refused to provide any explanation.

As predicted, the BCSE is falling apart. What other predictions will come true? Let's wait and see. But the fact is, that Stanyard has done the great majority of work in the BCSE until now. The BCSE is now going to have to relaunch itself, because more than half of it has just left! The BCSE is in disarray...

(See also an addition to my post "The Future").

See the continuation of this matter here: It seems that Stanyard has returned (or is in the process of returning). A further twist, though, is that the BCSE have tried to spin this incident by throwing the spotlight onto me, alleging that I have made the whole story up. I, though, will show the BCSE are deliberately lying in the hope that I won't have the evidence to prove it:
http://bcse-revealed.blogspot.com/2007/06/roger-stanyard-update.html

David Anderson



Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

The Future?

This blog is generally dedicated to research; if you're new, you can scroll down and check out the past posts for various damning documentations of the true identity, nature and aims of the "British Centre for Science Education".

In this post, though, I want to ask what the BCSE might do in future.


The Journey So Far

To come up with any kind of ball-park answer to that question, we need to ask where the BCSE have been so far.

The BCSE launched in October 2006, lobbying MPs, newspapers and others, presenting itself as a body of competent experts. However, "BCSE Revealed" soon started showing the reality: the BCSE was nothing more than a few individuals with a website; none of them with any experience in science education, and none of them actually practising scientists. Rather, the vast majority of them were campaigning atheists, humanists and secularists - generally of the Richard Dawkins "all religion is stupidity" variety.

I won't bore you by going where we've already been; if you don't know about the BCSE's catalogue of attempts to deceive the public, tell outright lies in trying to cover its tracks and intimidate those who would expose it into silence, then you can always check the archives. The basic facts, though are these: since launching, the BCSE has not grown, but has shrunk; it has not attracted the wider (i.e. beyond anti-Christian activists) support base it desired, but hardened. It has not established itself as any kind of credible player, but now pulls in fewer visitors to its website and forum than shortly after it first launched.

So where from here? Having seen the BCSE leadership's handiwork over the last months, I don't think they're capable of morphing into a serious body without becoming something totally unrecognisable. The sheer anti-religious bigotry of individuals like BCSE leaders Roger Stanyard, Brian Jordan and Ian Lowe means simply that it is impossible for them to appear in public again in any organisation that hopes to be taken seriously. For the BCSE to recover from their efforts, they'd have to leave; but without them, the BCSE wouldn't be able to go on existing. What might the BCSE try instead, then? As far as I can see, the following are the options. I think that the BCSE are pretty reality blind, and instead of realising that it's all over, they might try one or more of these band-aids:

1. New launch: Some combination of a new logo, new name or re-designed website. If we change our brand, maybe people will think we're not bigots any more! Let's re-arrange the deck-chairs and pretend everything's OK.
   
   
2. Recruit one or more "big names" to lend them some credibility. The thinking would be like this: "If we can get some real science educators to speak on our behalf, this will get us the platform and credibility we desire and haven't achieved". The trouble here though is that the only scientists likely to join the BCSE are those are like the BCSE at heart anyway - they hate religion and want to bash it, however obvious it then becomes that they're not using but abusing science to do so. Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, Matt Ridley - these kind of people. Any real scientist who has some integrity in distinguishing science from materialism is going to look at the BCSE's website, and in about 2 minutes spot that this isn't a real scientific body - and run a mile.
   
   
3. Try to boost the size of the organisation - a recruitment drive. The BCSE has become pretty run down; a rather hackneyed core. But where would the BCSE recruit from? Again, it's not going to take long for people to see what's really going on; at which point only the atheists will remain. Maybe the BCSE might try to merge with other similar groups. This, though, won't be progress... the only kind of group which would consider merging with the BCSE in the first place would be one run and dominated by atheists who aren't professional scientists or educators. Why would any professional risk their career and credibility unless they had a major axe to grind?
   
   
4. Alternatively, the BCSE could simply carry on in completely reality blindness - pretend all's OK, do what they're doing now, and just hope that nobody who receives any of their lobbying efforts ever types their name into Google to discover "BCSE Revealed" and similar pages.
   
   
5. Update 25th June. I forgot to add in one of the options. The other is that the "BCSE" will re-launch with a wider platform. It may take the mask off, and explicitly begin campaigning against the influence of non-secular world-views in public life. Or it may widen only a little, to campaign only against evangelical Christianity in particular. The campaign to silence criticisms of Darwinism in publicly-funded schools may become just one amongst many. If this option happens, it will certainly give "BCSE Revealed" a big shot in the arm - that the BCSE actually has a far wider, anti-Christian, agenda than it has been admitting to, has been our claim all along.
   

David Anderson


Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

The BCSE - According To Those Involved

Since opening, "BCSE Revealed" has shown with pretty comprehensive thoroughness that the "British Centre for Science Education" is not a bona fide group of scientists or educators, but simply a group of people, almost all hard-line atheists, with a strong grudge against evangelical Christianity. For most of them, their support for the creation myth of Darwinism is simply an outlet for them to promote their own materialist philosophy and fight against Christian ways of thinking.

Now that's fine, in it's own way; unlike the BCSE I don't believe that there should be "illegal ideas" which can't be discussed; if they want to promote Darwinism, let them. The problem, though, is the BCSE's track record in outright deception: constantly lobbying public bodies and conveniently omitting to mention that its grand sounding name does not have any reality behind it. If you're an editor of a national newspaper and you receive a letter from the spokesman of the "British Centre for Science Education", you might think that carries some weight - wouldn't you? If you knew that said spokesman was a management consultant who has never been professionally involved in science education - and that the same went for everyone else in the organisation's leadership (one has been professionally involved in science, but is retired) - wouldn't you feel like you'd been conned?

Not Science; atheism - the testimony of those who have been involved

In some previous posts, "BCSE Revealed" has catalogued some of the opinions of those who had close involvement in the BCSE. Consider these words, from a man who himself is an atheist activist:

"I am against fighting alongside other members of BSCE who are, themselves, religiously motivated" and "One of the reasons I distanced myself from the BSCE is for the very reason you have pinned that they are ... a small number of individuals claiming to be something bigger than they are."

http://bcse-revealed.blogspot.com/2006/10/fact-check.html

And now: more of the above

Michael Roberts himself is very confident of the truth of Darwinism, and actively campaigns in its favour. He has offered various bits of advice and encouragement to the BCSE, because he supports their position that any alternative position to Darwinism is unscientific and as such should never be discussed in schools. Roberts has on various occasions published some pretty insulting comments about myself on the BCSE's forum, which I take as an attempt to ingratiate himself with them; not being an atheist himself, presumably they might consider him suspect. Roberts posts on the BCSE forum under the name "Michael"; I suspect he doesn't supply his full name or a picture because he's a bit nervous about being too publicly associated with the BCSE:

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10133#10133

But what does Roberts really think of the BCSE? The Internet has the answer. Roberts gave a lecture to Garstang Methodist Church (http://www.gmeth.clara.net) in which he sought to give an overview of young earth creationism and intelligent design. Now, it's not my purpose in "BCSE Revealed" to critique such articles; in general I think it has good spots but is spoilt by a number of fairly major mistakes, particularly in touching upon history. I certainly don't think that Roberts provides anything to substantiate his conclusion "I rest my case that YEC and ID are disasters for education and the church", as the whole lecture appears to be more of a statement of Roberts' position rather than the outlining of arguments for it. The paragraph that has relevance to "BCSE Revealed" is this one. It is placed right at the opening of a section titled "Atheistic Science":

"One result of Truthinscience [sic] has been opposition from atheistic scientists, who can rightly point out the bad science, but also use it as an argument for their mantra “faith is contrary to reason”, and opposition to faith schools. Some of this is coming out on the web forum of the British Council for Science Education, which seems to have no leading scientists among its members."

(http://www.gmeth.clara.net/creation.htm)

Now, "British Council" should clearly read "British Centre", because there is no such body as the "British Council for Science Education". There is only one body with a name like that which matches Roberts' description. Whether the error was in Roberts' notes or in the transcription of them I don't know.

Notice then what Robert says:

• The BCSE are an example "atheistic scientists" ...
  
  
• ... except with the caveat that none of them appear to be scientists.
  
  
• Despite the BCSE's protestations of purely being motivated by good science rather than ideology, what they actually do is use evolution to forward the argument that "faith is contrary to reason".
  
  
• The BCSE's leaders are actually secularist campaigners who would like to do away with faith schools. In other words, they want taxpayers, the vast majority of whom aren't atheists, to have their money taken from them to fund an atheistic education that they don't agree with. Again, this makes the BCSE's slogan on their website's front page - "BCSE believes in... Democracy, Pluralism, Freedom and Righteousness" sound rather hollow.
  
  
• In fact, the BCSE are the pre-eminent example that Roberts could think of to illustrate the above behaviour on the behalf of atheists (he then goes on to discuss Richard Dawkins).
  

Such testimonies as Roberts are valuable, because Roberts very strongly sympathises with the BCSE's aims, and has offered them his own help and assistance on several occasions. When such people describe the BSCE as being atheists without scientific standing, that carries a lot of weight - and leaves the BCSE with a lot of explaining to do.

David Anderson


Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.