The Final Curtain!

Notice To All Readers

"BCSE Revealed", the blog, is closed.

For a comprehensive database of articles of information about the gigantic fraud known as the "British Centre for Science Education", visit www.bcse-revealed.info.

I also have a new personal blog, "More Than Words" - http://mothwo.blogspot.com

---

Well, this time it really is it, folks. Two things are now clear:

1. That the BCSE have been well and truly revealed.
   
   
2. The BCSE for the present time do not merit any more attention.
   

For the evidence for the latter assertion, see this recent "Decline and Fall" post.

Hence, I formally announce "BCSE Revealed" to be completed and hence closed. I'm not ruling out sticking up the odd bit here and there as needed, or responding if the BCSE, zombie-like, rises again. For now, though, it's mission complete.

I don't see the BCSE going anywhere at the moment, but some of its members are young, and I've noticed that the same little group of atheist and secularist campaigners tend to pop up all over the place (National Secular Society, anti-academies campaigns, RichardDawkins.Net, the BCSE, etc.). I suppose it's well possible that some of those in the BCSE at the moment may turn up again wearing different hats in future. So I think it will be useful to have information on them easily available. Here, for your amusement, for the informing of anyone else who wants to know, for you to point anyone who might need to know to, and for the inducing of spluttering sounds over at the BCSE HQ, is the collation of everything I've said over the last year and a bit. I am relieved to finally be able to present "BCSE Revealed: The Website". Please stick lots of links to it up where you can (blogs, websites, mailing lists), so that Google gets to know about it and serves it up when asked for info on the BCSE.

Visit "BCSE Revealed : The Website" - www.bcse-revealed.info

And finally... here's my new blog, "More Than Words". Do drop by for a visit.

Many thanks to all those who lent me support over the last 15 months. It's taken about a year longer than I aimed for, and you made a real difference. Thank you.

David Anderson

P.S. If you want to read a book-length parable about atheism, intelligent design and evolution, or if you enjoyed my Richard Dawkins parable, you might like this: Roddy Bullock's "The Cave Painting".

Do you like our new deck-chair arrangement? (Part 2)

In the previous article, I commented on the fact that the BCSE's deckchairs have changed colour, and they sport a re-written front page of their website. In that piece, I pointed out a number of the claims which the BCSE no longer make - because they were exposed. Don't expect to find any link on the BCSE website where they explain or apologise for any of the misleading half-truths or downright falsehoods, though - that's not their way of doing business.

Let us now examine what the present BCSE front page (as of 10th January 2008) actually does say.

The British Centre for Science Education (BCSE) is a group dedicated to promoting and defending science education in the UK.

This statement is misleadingly general. In fact, the BCSE has no other agenda that to silence criticism of Darwinism. As documented many times, its leaders have no experience or credentials in science education, and none of them are currently practising scientists or educators. The thing about the Darwinism debate though is that so much of it depends on philosophy rather than science, that the BCSE feel able to talk to that specific area.

It is run as a cooperative organisation by part-time volunteers with paid membership and a public forum where the general public can debate the key issues involved.

I exposed last year that the BCSE had had to change its policy of asking members to pay for their membership, apparently because hardly anyone was willing to join under such conditions. In fact, the membership page of the new BCSE website also still says that no payment is necessary, so here is a contradiction. I'll refrain from commenting much on the level of co-operation that actually exists within the BCSE! (A majority of its committee resigning within one year of opening...).

We have become deeply worried about attacks on science education, particularly from creationists funded from the USA, and our campaign is dedicated to keeping all forms of creationism including Intelligent Design out of the science classroom in the UK.

This statement is also misleading. Creationism and intelligent design are in fact the BCSE's sole actual interests in the realm of science education. The impression is given by the above statement that the BCSE have long been involved in science education, and that here is one particular present issue. In fact, the BCSE has never done anything about any other issue at all other than creationism and ID. The BCSE's activities have also gone far beyond the science classroom, and for the last year they have been involved in various campaigns of slander and intimidation against religious individuals (ministers, seminary teachers and the like) who have not had any kind of involvement in school science. The BCSE is simply an organisation which exists to silence any criticism of materialism's creation myth not with reasoned argument but simply with insults and smears, whether it occurs within 100 miles of a classroom or not.

Notice too the BCSE's description of intelligent design as a form of creationism. Such rhetoric is just a way of advertising your own ignorance. The concepts of intelligent design have been held and discussed by a wide variety of scientists and philosophers down history, by such names as Plato and Aristotle amongst others. It is supported by people who are neither creationist nor even Christians. To seek to write off the whole concept as merely being a form of creationism is simply to reveal your own ignorance and bigotry. In that regard, I don't really have a problem with the BCSE advertising it on the front page of its website - it's a fair warning sign to those without the BCSE's non-too-subtle agenda.

The membership is open to all who support our aims. Members, in practice, are professional and managerial people from all walks of life who have been through the education system, understand it and have benefited from it.

It is interesting to compare this statement about the BCSE's membership with the one that their website used to make. It is one of the areas in which the pressure from "BCSE Revealed" has paid off - though, as always, there is no recognition nor apology. The BCSE's front page used to say, "Our members come from a broad variety of fields - science, business, theology, education, academia, engineering, IT and research." The mention of a "broad variety of fields", with science put first, gave a completely inaccurate impression. In fact, the BCSE has only a tiny membership, and its leadership is overwhelmingly dominated by IT workers and businessmen. The BCSE now acknowledges this on its website - but is it likely to do so in its lobbying of MPs and newspapers? Though the BCSE now acknowledges that its members are generally not scientists or educators, its practice has always been to send letters with such authoritative-sounding sign-offs as "Chairman, British Centre for Science Education", with no explanation that the signer was, when this letter was written, a 30 year-old IT worker!

We wonder though, what is meant by "professional and managerial people from all walks of life"? Are not "professional and managerial people" from the "professional and managerial" "walk of life"? Obviously the desire is to give the impression of variety and largeness - of which in reality the BCSE has a very short supply, being overwhelmingly dominated by non-science educators who are campaigning atheists.

We are aware of the key issues involved in education both as beneficiaries of it and also because our own children are currently benefiting from it.

This paragraph is obviously intended to explain the reason why the BCSE, though lacking credentials in science education, are lobbying the public as if they were experts. It is meant to explain what their qualifications actually are. Let's take a look. The qualifications are apparently two:

1. They have been to school.
   
   
2. They have children who go to school.
   

Yes, that really is it! Apparently, not getting expelled and being able to procreate are now sufficient qualifications for masquerading as experts. Reality, this ain't. In fact, were I a betting man I'd wager that the majority of the past and present BCSE committee don't even have children. I have very little evidence to go here, but from the little asides I've picked up, from noticing who has enough time to be on the Internet on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's, and my knowledge of the ages of several of them, I'd say that probably only five of the eleven of them at most have children. I don't know how many of those children would actually be at school.

Whilst there is no evidence to hand concerning children, there is, on the other hand, plenty of evidence of these same individuals doing plenty to promote secularism and atheism. Websites, involvement in the National Secular Society, the British Humanist Association, RichardDawkins.Net, signing petitions to make various manifestations of religion illegal, etcetera.

You don't have to be a genius to sum up the balance of probabilities. Lots of evidence of anti-Christian activism; varying from little to no evidence of involvement in children's activities... which is the more likely to be the real motivation, Sherlock?

"It's for the children" is a favourite refuge of many activists. It's also one which the general public see through the shallowness of pretty quickly.

As such, the BCSE holds a robust position on endeavours without any scientific merit and whose proponents attempt to negatively influence scientific and educational activities.

Again, this is just bluster. The BCSE's leaders generally have neither professional knowledge nor experience in judging what ideas have scientific merit. Some of them do, but this is rather tangential to their work in the BCSE. The BCSE's sole interest is in silencing criticism of Darwinism.

Our public forum allows proponents of creationism and Intelligent Design to put their case forward and debate it.

Indeed it does. Such proponents though, have with only the very tiniest number of exceptions, surveyed the BCSE forum, adjudged it to be a sewer of atheistic ignorance and prejudice, and concluded that to even bother beginning participating would be a monumental waste of time. Who wants to "debate" when that means receiving several insult-laden replies for every responsible one?

Members and participants in our forum include teachers, academics, scientists, members of the clergy, engineers, archaeologists, scientists, students, management consultants, professional managers and businessmen, as well as people of a wide variety of political and religious persuasions.

As we saw in a recent post, in fact over the last 3 months there have been only 23 participants of any kind in the BCSE forum. Dropping those who only posted once, we're down to 19. If you make the mark of being an actual, active participant to have posted 10 times in a 3-month period, then in fact the BCSE forum only has 12 participants. In the most recent complete month, December 2007, there were in fact only 9 people who people who managed 5 posts in the month.

"[T]eachers, academics, scientists, members of the clergy, engineers, archaeologists, scientists, students, management consultants, professional managers and businessmen" is a description which contains 11 different types of people, and they are all in the plural. We are then told that in addition to this ("as well"), there are "people" (note plural again) with a "wide variety of political and religious persuasions." That's quite a lot to fit into only 9, 12 or however-you-want-to-slice-it people, isn't it?

If each of those plurals in fact only means two people, and if the "wide variety" means only three then we'd have a minimum of 25 people. Even on that most generous score, two of the participants completely forgot to ever actually participate.

The BCSE is open to all, irrespective of religious or political affiliations, who wish to oppose the tide of creationism in the United Kingdom.

Well, at least that's accurate. If however your religious affiliations aren't overtly atheistic, you'll probably find you don't want to stay long.

We are then treated to a list of the BCSE's present committee. There's not much need to comment on that, as we know most of them well enough already.

The BCSE believes in the tools for everyone to think for themselves - Science, Education and Reason

You will of course note the conspicuous absence of philosophy or theology as being a useful tool in thinking for yourself; the BCSE are generally followers of the Richard Dawkins-style positivism and empiricism which believes that science is the ultimate arbiter of reality, and that any other field of philosophy or theology must either give way to or preferably be completely replaced by it. Science is the sole source of human knowledge, and all the other fields can go hang.

- and the outcome – Democracy, Pluralism and Liberty.

We've seen before that the actual beliefs of the BCSE leaders are that democracy, pluralism and liberty should be not be extended to those parents or educators who question Darwinism, whether at home or school. The majority of the presentg BCSE committee has at some point voiced support for the position that the state should take active steps to prevent even parents from telling their children that Darwinism can be questionned. The BCSE's "pluralism" is a pluralism of people like themselves - disagreements are permissible are over whether religious people should be hated but tolerated, or hated and exiled from any public life, but not much more than that!

Conclusion

So, what do we learn from this? The BCSE continue to spin, and to present themselves as something they're not. They continue to puff their own credentials to make themselves sound big and authorative, but in the small print we have plenty of hints that the truth is the opposite - and "BCSE Revealed" has documented just what lies behind those little caveats.

The BCSE has relaunched its website, but it's nothing more than the deckchairs being moved around. Same old, same old.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail (bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk). Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Do you like our new deck-chair arrangement?

As demonstrated in this post, the BCSE has been maintaining up an impressive rate of decline in recent months.

But, do not fear - our brave science educators have moved to mitigate the decline by reorganising their website. It now sports a slightly altered colour scheme, and the structure of the content throughout the site has undergone some re-arrangement.

The work was done by Michael Brass, the BCSE's chairman:

(http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=15021)

That fact alone is another indicator of the BCSE's decline. Back one year ago, the BCSE's IT manager was Mr. Ian Lowe, and Mr. Brass announced that by autumn 2007 he would have to step back from the BCSE because he would have no time to be its chairman. By the time a year had passed, though, Lowe had resigned and there was hardly enough of the BCSE left to need any chairing, so Brass was able not only to continue but take over Lowe's job as IT manager too! (You will recall from a previous series of exposes that whereas the BCSE website used to advertise Brass using cleverly-constructed words that would lead you to believe he was a leading archaeologist, he was in fact an assistant IT worker whose BCSE-advertised book was published by... himself, using a notorious vanity publisher: see here). More that that, another member was going to help the BCSE put together a better website - but he also left.

(From the BCSE website's front page, February 2007).

What I want to briefly comment upon is the fact that the BCSE has again rewritten the text on the front page of its website with which it seeks to introduce itself to the world. In fact, one of "BCSE Revealed"'s very first activities was to focus attention on the innaccuracy of the BCSE's self-description (see here and here). It is valuable to review what claims no longer appear on the BCSE's front page. The BCSE's practice is to silently delete embarassing material whenever they're caught out, so you won't find any explanation or retraction of any of these claims - you have to rely on "BCSE Revealed" to point them out. Here's what they no longer say about themselves but once did:

• That the BCSE is a "new group". Of course, such claims become out of date; but at launch time I exposed the truth - that the BCSE was an existing group of secularist activists, renamed.
  
  
• That the BCSE had 83 members. I exposed the fraudulent counting method that the BCSE used to devise this number; as sen recently, even in its hay-day the BCSE had only around 30 interested participants (not all of whom were members), and nowadays has scarcely double figures.
  
  
• That the BCSE was an international group. This claim was deleted after I pointed out the improriety of Americans, Spaniards, etcetera, being members of a campaigning group whose sole stated aim was to influence what was taught in schools funded by British taxpayers.
  
  
• That the presence of creationists at Leeds University had done so much damage that the university had had to introduce remedial courses to re-educate their students. The BCSE had to delete all material about Leeds University from its website after Leeds threatened the BCSE with legal action over its material! At the same time, another section silently disappeared from the BCSE website - the bit where they promised to print in full any threats of legal action that they received!
  
  
• That the goal of those who doubt Darwin in the UK is to overthrow lawful government and institute a theocracy. I exposed firstly the fact that the only basis that the BCSE had for these claims was their own atheistic prejudice which infers that any mention of religion outside of the private sphere is inherently theocratic, and second exposed the fact that more than one BCSE leader was actually lobbying the prime minister to make any non-secularist approach to upbringing illegal! That's not the kind of thing you want to be caught out doing if you're pretending to be committed to pluralism and democracy, as the BCSE's website claimed at the time.
  
  
• That the BCSE had members "resident in the UK, North America, Australia, South Africa and the mainland of Europe". In the last three months, the 15 most active participants of the BCSE active in the BCSE forum (not all of whom are members or even supporters) who together with accounted for 97% of the activity in that forum all lived in the UK.
  
  
• The hilarious claim that the Discovery Institute in the USA "has a clear agenda to take political power" ! Get those tin foil hats on now, everyone!
  

• That the BCSE had a "lively" web forum. In fact, as a recent post demonstrated, a tiny number of die-hards is about all that remains, and the BCSE leader had to recently resort to begging any passing creationist to debate with him! Interestingly, the claim that the forum was "lively" wasn't added until June 2007, by which time the rot had well and truly set in. Methinks he doth protest too much?

May 2007 : it's a discussion forum. But by July 2007 it had become a a "lively discussion forum". Except that it hadn't.

• That the BCSE chairman, Michael Brass, was a "published archaelogist". The reality: Brass was at the time a 29 year-old assistant IT worker who had self-published a single book with a notorious vanity publisher.

There are a whole series of other statements too which are easily demonstrable as nonsense, but most likely have been withdrawn simply to keep the length of the page down rather than because the BCSE wishes to withdraw them. That may go for some of the above as well, of course. Examples would be the claim that the BCSE has a proven track record (of what, exactly? A disintegrating membership, perhaps? Of making not-even-slightly-plausible legal threats against "BCSE Revealed"?), or has no atheistic agenda (apart of course from the majority of the leadership of course, who we documented as saying the opposite!).

In the next article, I take a look at what the BCSE front page does say.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail (bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk). Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

For completeness sake (the updated BCSE committee)

For Completeness' Sake...

There have been three new names added to the BCSE committee recently, to replace the continuing stream of resignations.

I can't do much apart from yawn at them, as it's now obvious enough that the only qualification necessary to get onto the BCSE committee is that you are 1) not dead and 2) willing to join. If you happen to have any experience in teaching science then that is of course good, but it's quite sufficient if all you've done is put up some websites to promote atheism then that's definitely a bonus. Well, on that score we've already commented on new member Mark Edon (see here).

For completeness' sake, that just leaves Dr. Jeremy Hodge and Chris Hyland to add a few notes on.

Dr. Jeremy Hodge

Dr. Hodge joined the BCSE committee in late 2007. He has a doctorate from Oxford University in chemical engineering, and runs an electrical manufacturing company. The BCSE presents itself as an expert source of information on questions about biological origins. Dr. Hodge, though, apparently has no qualifications in biological origins or in science education in general - but he is, as with the BCSE leadership in general, an outspoken atheist. Dr. Hodge was a supporter of the infamous petition which sought to forbid parents to instruct their children in any way of life except for secularism and atheism. In fact, he went as far as to argue that this was required by the UN convention on human rights! So, it's obvious where he's coming from. I'm sure our children all look forward to being carted away to the nearest council home in order to enjoy a better life, free from their religious parents, and they'll certainly thank Dr. Hodge and those of his ilk should it ever come to pass. Ho hum.

(http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=5216#5216)

In the following paragraph, Dr. Hodge shows us that he makes the classic atheist division of religion from science and reason, as if they were mutually exclusive, not to mention some obviously whacky political ideas, and drops in the hallmark of Dawkins-style fundamentalist atheism: the suggestion that Christianity is really little different from Islamic terrorism:

"I think we may be seeing the early stages of the Second US Civil War here, or at least the breakup of the USA into two groups of states, one which follows reason and science (e.g., California and the North East) and which is the dominant economy, and the other which is religion-dominated (e.g., Mid-West and South). Thinking as a secular European, this may be to our ultimate advantage. I don't particularly care if they delude themselves, or whatever else they do, as long as they don't turn dangerous, as some Islamicists appear to have become, and as long as they don't try to peddle their nonsense over here.''

(http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1548)

In other words, Dr. Hodge is a good fit at the BCSE.


Chris Hyland

Finally, Chris Hyland. Mr. Hyland may be Dr. Hyland by now for all I know, as I suppose that most doctorates are finished by age 25 (which is what Mr. Hyland's age is).

Chris Hyland joined the BCSE committee in later 2007. Now aged 25 (end of 2007), he began campaigning with the BCSE as a 23 year-old biology PhD candidate at Leeds University.

Hyland has from the beginning been the only evolutionary biologist of any kind belonging to the BCSE. That fact alone would be enough to convince most investigators that it's probably not his love of biology that drew him to the BCSE!

See these stories for more on Mr. Hyland:

• "The BCSE Caught Lying To MPs" - Hyland was involved in the first major BCSE scandal, as they were caught having lobbied MPs, asking them to condemn the materials of Truth in Science as being "full of errors" before they even knew what was in them.
  
  
• How the BCSE changed its story about its lobbying of MPs - and gave itself more problems - Hyland was then involved in the BCSE's attempt to spin a story to cover itself up; which only created new questions and highlighted new aspects to the apparent deception.
  
  
• Hyland's own university, Leeds University, threatened the BCSE with legal action over the article on the BCSE's website about it and one of its non-Darwinist professors. The BCSE pulled the article without putting up any fight to defend its contents. See here.
  
  
• Hyland was complicit in the BCSE's pre-meditated slander campaign (based upon allegations which I easily proved false) against me. See here. For this, Hyland has never offered any explanation or apology.
  

Mr. Hyland is taking a major risk with his credibility by being involved with a group of imposters such as the BCSE; the only conclusions I can draw from this is either that Mr. Hyland does not intend to be involved in academia any more after his PhD, or that he is so blinded by atheistic zeal that he believes the price is worth paying. Hyland himself appears to know this, because he gave the following effective testimony to the effectiveness of my exposures of the BCSE. Before he joined them, on another website he wrote this about his advice to the BCSE:

"We did also advise that they get their website in order BEFORE starting thei lobbying, which they failed to do. The result = BCSE 'revealed'." Hyland: Yeah I was willing to write that of as the ramblings of some idiot but as it stands now it's a major problem for their credibility."

What changed? When did the BCSE recover its credibility? Or, more likely, is it Hyland that changed? Is it not a "major problem" for Hyland's own credibility that he was prepared to join the BCSE leadership despite knowing all that "BCSE Revealed" had shown about its nature? Note, though, that it's not the nature of the BCSE that was worrying Hyland; it was the fact that unless they re-wrote their website to cover up certain sections, that that nature might be made known to others.

So, the BCSE has added some new committee members - each with demonstrable track records in at least one of atheist campaigning, being caught telling pre-meditated lies without apology, or both. In other words... they'll be right at home in the BCSE.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail (bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk). Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Not Even Good At Being Nasty!

I've briefly mentioned a Mr. Mark Edon before. I haven't taken much notice of him, as I don't think it's a good use of time to go around refuting every atheist-rant blogger who decides to take a pop at me on the Internet - I'd have to give up sleeping.

However, Mr. Edon was recently appointed to the BCSE committee, so I'll provide a little documentation just for completeness (I'm sure there can't be many people left on the Internet who need any proof of what the BCSE are really about).

All You Need To Know...

Mr. Edon joined the BCSE committee in the second half of 2007. Suffice to say that:

• Like most of his colleagues, he has no qualifications in science or education that would qualify him to pose as any kind of science educator, let alone a national expert who should be lobbying newspapers and MPs.
  
  
• Like most of his colleagues, Mr. Edon's motivation is obvious, as he is a rabid supporter of Richard Dawkins.
  
  
• Again, like most of his colleagues, Mr. Edon is seriously equivocating in his involvement in the BCSE, because whereas:
  
  
  • the BCSE claims to be a scientific body and not driven by religion, and to believe that science and religion are broadly complementary ...
    
    
  • ... Mr. Edon's own personal beliefs are exactly the opposite: science and religion are irreconcilably opposed and it is the purpose and destiny of the former to replace the latter. Mr. Edon's own Internet activities are motivated in the most obvious possible way by his own deep dislike of theism.

It is apparent enough too that there were two reasons why Mr. Edon was invited to join the BCSE committee:

1. The BCSE's collapse by that point was so advanced that, if they wanted to still have a committee, they were more-or-less obliged to offer a place to anyone who was willing, and
   
   
2. Mr. Edon's polemical activity on the Internet made him a friend of the BCSE leaders. This is all really we need to know about the BCSE; there is no need to have any real understanding of science education to join it - a bit of experience in atheist polemics is quite sufficient.

So that you can judge for yourself whether I'm justified in identifying Mr. Edon as an "atheist-rant blogger", I offer the following in response to Mr. Edon's prize claim about my integrity.

A Response to Some Of Mr. Edon's Polemics

From examining Mr. Edon's polemical efforts to discredit my research, his prize claim is apparently that I am dishonest because in one place on the Internet I described my degree in more general terms as being in science, whereas in another place I described it more specifically as being in mathematics.

Mr. Edon writes that these two claims are obviously contradictory (he did a straw poll in his office to establish that mathematics cannot be described as a scientific subject), and that therefore I am a liar. He then proceeded to promote his claim in several places, including the BCSE, around the Internet.

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=932

I don't know whether to laugh at this claim for its silliness, or cry at the tragedy of pursuing such a pointless set of goals. What cause could be such a bad one that it requires this to help it?

My course was described as a scientific one by the university which awarded me the degree, where the mathematics department that taught me describes itself on the front page of its website as teaching "Mathematical Sciences", and on my university application, five of the six universities to which I applied awarded a Bachelor of Science (BSC) degree for their mathematics course.

My UCAS application: note the right-hand column

A letter from my college

Even if Mr. Edon had bothered to look up on Wikipedia, he would have found maths described as a science!


That Mr. Edon:

• Never thought of doing such basic checks,
  
  
• had no idea that mathematics degrees in the UK are generally awarded with a Bachelor of Science degree,
  
  
• but instead rushed into print to try to discredit me,
  
  
• and apparently believes that scientific questions are settled by taking a straw poll of people in his office...
  

... is all the evidence we need about what kind of people are leading the "British Centre for Science Education", and what level of competence they have in their purported sphere of expertise. They're not even any good at smearing!

I will leave it to Mr. Edon to decided whether or not the UK's top universities are also pseudo-scientists and liars... or whether it's not the case that his attempts to discredit me have rather scraped the barrel.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail (bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk). Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Decline And Fall (3)

Decline And Fall

How is it with the BCSE? As far as its present incarnation goes, it's all over bar the singing. All that is left is the die-hards talking to themselves. Not that they won't try to pull a few more scams, I'm sure; but it's abundantly evident that the 2006 launch failed.

Evidence-a-plenty of that disintegration is obtained by comparing the BCSE committee of January 2007 with that of January 2008:

Then (both images from http://www.bcseweb.org.uk):

Now:


Only a minority of the original committee made it through the whole of the first year - and one of those who did survive, Roger Stanyard, resigned and rejoined in the meantime (see here for the gory details). This reflects what happened to the BCSE's support as a whole: the majority of those who supported it in January 2007 pulled out, fell out, were chucked out or just plain saw some sense and left.

The present front page of the BCSE says the following about its online discussion forums:

"Members and participants in our forum include teachers, academics, scientists, members of the clergy, engineers, archaeologists, scientists, students, management consultants, professional managers and businessmen, as well as people of a wide variety of political and religious persuasions."

How many people is that? The plurals must mean at least two - and there are eleven different categories there, and then a "wide variety" of others. What's the reality? Here's the reality, in pretty colours - the result of statistical analysis of the online forums...

Number of People Posting

This graph shows the number of different individuals who posted in the BCSE forums in each of the last 5 quarters (i.e. October 2006 until December 2007, split up into 3-month chunks):


That graph though fails to distinguish between posters who posted once, and those who are regulars. If we are very generous and say that a "regular" is someone who posted more than 9 times in a quarter, then the graph looks like this:


The figures for the respective quarters are 29, 25, 17, 14 and 12. If you've read any of their website then you'll know that the BCSE like a good spin - but I think that this set of figures might be beyond even their ability. Remember what I said the BCSE claim on their front page for their forum - did it lead you to believe that there were only actually 12 regular posters in there?

The decline is equally stark when you compare the total number of posts made and put October 2006, November 2006 and December 2006 side by side with the same month from the year just ended:

My estimation, based on the figures available from the in the forum itself, is that there are around only 20 people regularly reading the BCSE web forums. Which means, dear reader, that if you are one and I am another... then together we're 10% of the total!

When I looked at the total number of posts made over the course of the whole of 2007, the decline was more moderate. How can there be a more moderate decline in the total number of posts than in the number of people making posts? It must mean that the remaining BCSE leaders are doing more and more of the talking. And indeed it is so.

In the first three months of 2006, 10 individuals accounted for 70% of posts on the BCSE forums. In the last three months, it took just five individuals to do the same. Over half the posts were made by one of just three individuals, and the top ten individuals accounted for 91.1%.

Summary

In the last 3 months of 2007, a grand total of twenty three individuals participated in the BCSE forums - and that includes four people who only posted once. Allowing a generous measuring stick, there cannot be said to be more than 12 active participants. Compare this with the BCSE's boast back in 2006 that it had 83 real members, and compare it with the spin on the BCSE's home page. As we've seen, the "83 members" claim wasn't even slightly true at the time; and neither is the new statement on the website.


The BCSE's new website claims to have 11 different categories of people in its forum, each with multiple members, plus a "wide variety" of others in addition. In truth, it scarcely has 11 people at all, let alone variety within that grouping.

The BCSE have yet given us again a good dose of evidence as to its own utter inability to deal straightforwardly and honestly. If the Darwinian case is so strong, why does it need such a large does of spin, misdirection and downright falsehoods to help it along? If evolution is such an undoubted fact, why does it require such tactics as this to boost its public image? Of course it is true that the BCSE's porkies do not affect the truth of Darwinism one way or the other. It is also true, though, that the BCSE's leaders are not stupid people, and that they are very strongly motivated to put the best case that they can in order to discredit any questionning of materialism's creation story - and that this is the best they have been able to do. If that doesn't make you at least smell a rat, then nothing will!

David Anderson
Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail (bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk). Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Some Feedback

Here's something I received in my mailbox recently. It's from a real scientist, with a real qualification, doing real research in a real university - not someone working to gain a qualification, but someone who's been long established in his field. i.e. The kind of person still utterly missing from that body which fraudulently writes to MPs, newspapers, etcetera, pretending to be a national authority, a.k.a. the "British Centre for Science Education". Of course, so that he doesn't get his name dragged through the mud on the BCSE's website, I've trimmed it off.

David,

Having laughed so much I wanted to send you a note to say thank you: this evening I discovered your blog and analysis of the so called British Centre for 'Science' Education. There's may be horrid mischief but you certainly have a knack for confronting and humorously demolishing it.

I was a bit alarmed when I first saw the BC'S'E website earlier this year, but fortunately aside from the obvious religious zealots like Dawkins and Jones, in my experience academics have too much integrity (and are too busy) to bother with this sort of nonsense. They are probably far less gullible than I fear MPs may be over the output of BC'S'E.

I think my correspondent is right; the BCSE, generally being outside the world of real science themselves, is only going to con people who aren't in that world - anyone else will smell the rats pretty quickly.

I like getting this kind of feedback. The BCSE is essentially a con game; their procedure is to: 1) invent authoritative-sounding name for themselves 2) put up spin-filled website 3) profit!!! Until you dig a little deeper, you might well be worried, or taken in; that's what "BCSE Revealed" is here for. On the Internet, any man and his dog can pretend to be a leading authority; but it's also true that on the Internet, any man and his goldfish (actually, I keep chickens now, but it used to be goldfish!) can point out the scam.

David Anderson

In case you were wondering...

Sometimes, you have to spend several hours digging through different sources to piece things together. Sometimes, the BCSE just hand it to you on a plate.

Here is Roger Stanyard, the founder, de facto leader, and official spokesman, of the "British Centre for Science Education", posting over at RichardDawkins.Net and making a few things quite clear for us. Note that Stanyard is posting in his official capacity, beginning his post with "We at the British Centre for Science Education" and finishing with the tag-line, "Roger Stanyard, British Centre for Science Education". Read it through for yourself:

We at the British Centre for Science Education have done some estimates of the proportion of Christians in the UK who are fundamentalist (extremist if you like). A rough definition of extremism is that the accept Sola Scriptura as extended into all public domains. In English that means into science - creationism if you like.

On a head count of churches it is somewhere between 5% and 10% of all churches. In terms of individual believers it seems to be around 400,000 out of a regular church going population of 3.5-4 million.

However, it ain't no good asking people if they are fundamentalists. No matter how much they foam at the mouth about creationism and hell fire and brimstone, most of them will deny it.

Sadly, in any society there are a lot of authoritarian extremists. Seems to me that you only have to scratch a fundamentalist slightly and underneath they are all the same as hardline fascists, BNPers, white supremicists, Abu Hamza fans, Marxists, racists, homophobes, Trotskyites, Leninists, Maoists, Northern Ireland paramilitaries, KKKers - all birds of a feather.

They all have a 'worldview' that they want to impose on others without consent.

It is silly, though, to suggest all religious believers are of that ilk or that religion is the platform off of which extremism rides. It is like saying that communism is the natural outcome of the beliefs of people who are in the Labour Party or fascism of those in the Conservative Party. The overwhelming majority in both parties believe in liberal democracy, are pragmatic and not prone to authoritarian extremes. Same with religiou believers.

Roger Stanyard, British Centre for Science Education

(http://richarddawkins.net/articleCom...insnet,page1#82332)

Some pertinent questions and observations, for anyone who hasn't yet worked out what the BCSE are really about:

1. How is it that a purported centre for "Science Education" which pretends to operate independently of religious questions, is taking surveys to work out what percentage of Christians are "extremist"? Which branch of science, exactly, is this part of?
   
   
2. Why is the spokesman for a body which presents itself to its lobbying targets as a bona fide scientific institution with expertise in biological origins doing offering us definitions of religious extremism? What branch of biology is this from, please? Or have I missed something - maybe Mr. Stanyard has had his work published in a scientific journal somewhere? Because it looks to me like Stanyard's "science" is nothing other than his atheistic philosophy in a not-very-cunning disguise. My point is not that science and philosophy are separable fields; my point is that Mr. Stanyard's purports to have a scientific viewpoint which is free of all philosophical bias, which is clearly not the case.
   
   
3. Notice too how extremely broad Stanyard's definition of an extremist is - it includes 100% of classical Protestants, being defined by acceptance of the defining Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura - i.e. the belief that the Bible is the highest, unrivaled, authority - the belief that God exercises his own authority through speaking to us in the Bible. The phrase "Sola Scriptura" was coined at the time of the "Protestant" Reformation, to "protest" against the teaching that church, or the Pope, had an equivalent or greater authority than the Bible. According to Stanyard, though, this doctrine is the sina qua non of religious extremism. Has it occurred to Stanyard that whether or not a viewpoint is "extreme" or not also depends on where you are viewing it from? i.e., why is Mr. Stanyard so blind to his own anti-supernatural extremism?
   
   
4. Does not the comment "They [i.e. all classical Protestants] all have a 'worldview' that they want to impose on others without consent." indicate a severe personal antagonism against Christianity, which is the real driving force behind Mr. Stanyard's quest to pass himself off as a legitimate spokesman on science education? (Mr. Stanyard is a life long business consultant who has never been involved in science education or research at any level).
   
   This comment itself is self-contradictory; how can someone accept a view of the world without consenting to it? What does that mean? Or is Mr. Stanyard really saying that the Bible-based Christianity is really a brain-washing and mind-control program in a poor disguise? That Christian preachers are really would-be hypnotists? (Watch out - on this blog I'm not really trying to persuade you with rational arguments in these lines - my real aim is to reprogram your mind using pychadelic images which pop up when you're not expecting them! Wu-ha-ha!) It seems pretty clear that Mr. Stanyard has spent a long time drinking at the Dawkins fountain, because to him all efforts to persuade someone of a religious idea amount to brain-washing.
   
   
5. The BCSE's purported objectives are to prevent any criticism of Darwinism (which they believe is irrefutable truth) in 100% of public schools - even though the percentage of the public who pay for those schools and who share their certainty is very small. How, exactly, is this campaign of theirs different from "imposing a worldview without consent"? Is not the very raison d'etre of the BCSE to ensure that their own view is unchallenged, contrary to the beliefs of the public at large? Does the word "hypocrisy" figure in Mr. Stanyard's lexicon?
   
   
6. Does not the same comment also indicate a severe misunderstanding of Christianity? It is a "fundamental" belief with Christians that becoming a Christian is a supernatural event - the Holy Spirit applies truths to the mind and changes the heart. The method is through supernatural persuasion, as Christian truths are proclaimed. The idea of externally "imposing" on someone "without consent" is foreign to this way of thinking, and is effectively a denial of essential Christian truth claims - the claim that Christian conversion is a real, supernatural phenomena that involves all the immaterial faculties of the person - the rational mind included. That is why Christians like me blog, and author presentations - to persuade.
   
   
7. In other words, do not Mr. Stanyard's words provide more solid evidence for the case that "BCSE Revealed" has been making - that the BCSE is really a badly-disguised atheist/anti-supernaturalist crusade, run by people not with scientific or educational standing, but driven on by their own personal grudges? Mr. Stanyard has such a deep hatred of Biblical Christianity, that his prejudice prevents him from even describing it accurately - all he knows is that he hates it and wants you to do so too!
   
   
8. Notice, as we have continually pointed out on "BCSE Revealed", that Mr. Stanyard's chosen vocabulary is the standard vocabulary of campaigning anti-theists, such as Richard Dawkins. Stanyard poses some conspiracy or mystery as to why those who he calls "fundamentalists" do not themselves accept the label. The real reason is quite simple; the term "fundamentalist" has only two normal usages; in the religious world, it is used one to identify the sub-segment of American Baptists who hold to a number of particular beliefs who developed in the late 19th and early 20th century (distinctive beliefs which Mr. Stanyard's targets do not generally share), and the other is the usage by Dawkins et. al. to try to posit an equivalence between any consistent belief in supernaturalism and the maddest excesses of militant Islam.
   
   
9. Notice too, that Stanyard follows that second course - the Dawkins line. The "fundamentalists" are really "hardline fascists, BNPers, white supremicists, Abu Hamza fans, Marxists, racists, homophobes, Trotskyites, Leninists, Maoists, Northern Ireland paramilitaries, KKKers" in a poor disguise. Mr. Stanyard has forgotten to index for us the scientific paper which has the proof for all this laid out... either that, or he's again confused about the difference between actual science and his own metaphysical prejudices.
   
   
10. Mr. Stanyard is firstly apparently stumped at why someone convinced that God has spoken in the Bible would not want to accept the label "fundamentalist", and then secondly explains that a "fundamentalist" is basically the same thing as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, etcetera. Does Mr. Stanyard not possess enough grey matter to work out the answer to his own question?
    
    
11. Is there any science at all in Mr. Stanyard's screed? Do not Mr. Stanyard's comments rather bear out the thesis of many of us on the Internet that one of the major problems in the science concerning human origins (Darwinism, origin of life, etcetera), today, is that there are just too many dogmatists like Mr. Stanyard who start with the assumption that their own philosophy is correct and then seek to drown out any other voices?
    

Mr. Stanyard pretends on the BCSE's website that his organisation is religiously neutral. When he's doing something other than authoring that website, he tells us what he really things - that people who believe that God has spoken are all murdering mullahs at heart, and that the goal of scientific organisations it to oppose them. That's what the BCSE's there for - and that's what I'm here to reveal.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail (bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk). Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Being An Internet Investigator

(If you've come here to read research about the "British Centre for Science Education", you should skip this post).

I think I've learnt a few things over the time that I've been investigating and documenting the activities of the non-British non-centre for non-science non-education. It may be useful for others if I write a little about some of those lessons. I've seen other investigative blogs on the Internet; the quality varies greatly! It's an interesting and challenging personal experience too, especially if those whose activities you look into start trying to play nasty.

Here, then, in no particular order, are some of the things I've learnt or questions you ought to ask:

1. You will become a public person

Once you go live, you become a public person. Other will comment on your work, and on you. Some will take remarkable liberties in making all kinds of speculations - even if the only contact they've ever had with you is to read a handful of blog posts. This might make you realise that you've done the same about others; it certainly gives you a different perspective from "the other side of the fence" and teaches us to be a bit more reserved in our own wild speculations!

I recommend not even thinking about doing this kind of work anonymously. Investigative work is about integrity - you are questioning the integrity of someone else or their organisation. If you don't want to be held accountable for what you say (which for me means I list on my blog my name and which church I belong to), then probably you shouldn't be saying it. Maybe if you're investigating the Mafia and your targets are likely to hire hit-men, then anonymity might be an option. Otherwise, remember that if you're going to question someone else's credibility, they're likely to at least wonder what yours is too.

Following on from this is...

2. Are you ready to become a public person?

If you are, like me, seeking to expose a bunch of people who have no qualms about playing dirty, then you really need to think about whether you're ready for the comeback. Either you need to grow a thicker skin, or you should probably consider never starting. Are you ready for a hate-mail, having counter-blogs and websites set up with no discernible purpose other than to insult you, and having small-minded people with infinite amounts of time on their hands run all round the Internet to say about you whatever bizarre inventions their brains can concoct? Are you ready to have them seek to peer into your personal relationships, contact your friends and churches, make bogus legal threats and so on? Are you the sort of person who will have trouble sleeping and develop ulcers because of the strain it'll put you under? If the whole premise of your investigation is that the organisation or whatever that you're researching is in fact a nasty piece of work, then it shouldn't be much of a surprise if instead of responding to the message they attack the messenger instead, should it? If you're not ready for that, then you might want to think again before you start out.

I rejoice that I have a sovereign God who, for some unfathomable reason, loves me is able to help me through all such things. I also had the help of already, as a Christian minister (though a very obscure one!), being a public person in the world beyond the Internet. But nobody should underestimate the challenge.

3. Do your homework!

This is obviously the cardinal rule of research, of whatever kind. Your opponents might think nothing about making the most bizarre allegations about you and offering no evidence for it. Your credibility, though, depends on doing the opposite. (The Bible also forbids us to spread allegations about others without evidence - Leviticus 19:16).

It is tempting once you get into this kind of thing to have a "them and us" mentality. You may develop speculative ideas, and then start interpreting the evidence in the light of those ideas. Suddenly, you see your pet theory everywhere! Don't do this. When you write up your research, you must make sure it is evidence-based and evidence-led. When you make speculations, make it clear that you are doing that. If the main burden of your belief in your opponents' lack of credibility is correct and you can show it, then you don't need to indulge in pointless speculations. Your opponents will, if they cannot rebut your case, instead seek to seize upon and make a mountain out of the tiniest little error or misleading statement. Hence, it's a good idea to make as few of those as possible. Be ready to correct your errors; show an openness to look into any mistakes which people can show you. For this reason I advertise my e-mail address and policy on correcting errors together with an invitation to inform me of them after every post.

4. Remember that most of your audience is unseen.

As a blogger, you now have a public profile, and so do your opponents. You will write up your research; your opponents will do what they decide in order to refute you - whether honestly or through dirty tricks. You should remember, though, that the great majority of your audience watches and listens silently, forming its opinion and never telling you about it. They will vote with their feet, and maybe talk about it on some other forum or more likely just keeping it to themselves. The would-be supporters and insiders of the BCSE didn't generally contact me to tell me that they had decided not to join, or been persuaded to leave - but over the course of the year, I watched the BCSE move from being an organisation with big hopes and dreams into a tiny remnant, smaller even than on the day it launched - people voted with their feet.

You should be realistic about convincing the main players amongst your opponents. The powers that humans possess for self-deception are immense. Once someone has committed to something in a public way, it is very hard for them to change course. If their public enterprise is actually founded on deceit and/or wilful self-deception, then you should not be surprised if when you point this out they don't see it. In many ways, you are not writing for them - you are writing for the onlooking world. As a Christian I don't expect Satan to pack up and go home just because I preach sermons. The point for those of us who are Chirstians isn't that we will easily win the world to our message; it is often more that as preach it, it will make the division between right and wrong, and who is standing on which side, much clearer. The sides might not change - but the existence of those sides and the actual principles they stand for will become much more obvious.

Ultimately the most important audience - your maker - is unseen. Whatever integrity or lack of it we show to the world, and however much they fail to detect it, he will. The judgments and opinions of others matter little, because they're not the ones with power to decide our eternal destinies (see the gospel of Luke, chapter 12). That's another reason to not be anonymous - it helps to keep us honest, remembering that ultimately one day there will be no secrets left at all - everything will be revealed. The all-seeing eyes of God are ultimately very comforting; as a Christian I don't have to resort to suing the BCSE for slander (which they gave me very strong grounds to do on several occasions), because I know that there is already a court that will decide on the matter, and which I can wait patiently for.

This point leads on to another:

5. Be careful and patient in responding to critiscm

We are human beings. We have been made in such a way that we are intended to live in society with other human beings. There are very few people who can really and truly shut themselves off from others - I believe that those who manage to do so completely are known as "psychopaths"! Our natural tendency, particularly fueled by our sinful pride, is to want to respond to everything bad sad about us, and defend ourselves to the hilt. It is often necessary to respond to attacks on us because otherwise we co-operate in the spoiling of our own reputations and join in the ruining of our own future usefulness. However, it is never necessary to respond to everything said against us.

I've found that it's rarely a good idea to make a swift response to something malicious said against us or that reflects badly on us. Much better to wait, ponder on it, pray and sleep on it, and seek to come to a more objective viewpoint. Some attacks on you as an investigative blogger will be so obviously groundless and malicious that the best thing to do is simply to ignore them - rise above it. If you start descending to the level of every muck-thrower, you'll soon find that you've become one. The world does indeed have an excessive quota of people who behave like unthinking zombies with vast amounts of time to waste, and if you make it your task to rebut them then you'll have to give up eating and sleeping. Swat one here, up pops another one there. Simpler just to ignore them, and only respond to challenges which are in some way worthy.

6. Be careful about what you reveal

I've found that some opponents of my work were ready to behave in a very deceitful way - contacting me, or maybe a colleague in the church whose e-mail address they'd obtained from the Internet (or even putting up smears on them in order to pressurise me), pretending to be someone that they weren't or disguising their true purpose.

If someone starts fishing for personal information, you have no obligation to reply to them. You have no obligation to reply to anyone who e-mails you privately at all unless you actually asked for such e-mails (e.g. asking people to point out any mistakes in your research).

Some private e-mails I've received have been frankly little more than invitations to have a bar-room brawl. Often such e-mails have no name on them (or just a first name), and the author doesn't even bother to introduce himself before he piles on in. E-mail seems to be a medium which brings out the worst in some people. I eventually learnt that the best response to anonymous e-mails or deliberately and pointlessly insulting ones is the delete key, together with a "block future e-mails" filter in your e-mail program. I was amused to find one supporter of the BCSE bragging in a forum that my latest blog post was provoked by something he'd e-mailed me... when I'd added his e-mail address to my "block" filter some time before!

Basically this rule is about remembering that you're in control. Unless they are in fact the Mafia or live next door, their powers to compel you to play along with whatever game they're up to are pretty limited.

7. Record everything!

The BCSE are a pretty unscrupulous bunch, and the usual response when I caught them out in some unguarded comment about their true motives or if I documented some obvious and gross set of lies was not for them to apologise or publish any retraction, but simply to whitewash the evidence (e.g. see here). The various pieces of damning evidence that I started drawing attention to would simply disappear, without a word of explanation - whilst, of course, all the parts of the BCSE's website, including the front page, proclaiming their honesty and integrity would all continue to say just what they'd said before. Basically, the BCSE just wanted to pull the wool over everybody's eyes, hoping that people would forget if given enough time.

To counter-act this, you need to take a copy of everything you come across. You need to note down everything potentially interesting or useful as soon as you come across it. This is helpful too for when you later come across something that ties in with something you'd seen earlier - if you didn't note down the earlier thing, then you'll have to waste time in searching for it again. The golden rule here is archive, archive, archive! Which leads me on to...

8. Know the law

When I started quoting the BCSE website and making my own copies for my research use, the BCSE responded with a series of bogus legal threats and attempts to ruin my reputation by publishing their allegations, without accompanying evidence, on their website - in all but one case, without making any attempt to contact me beforehand (e.g. see here and here).

If you don't know the law, then you can end up either being intimidated by such bully-boy tactics, or into restraining your activities because you believe your opponents. In my case, I already knew what copyright law allowed, and knew that the BCSE were either badly mislead by someone or simply making it up as they went along in order to further their own ends. (Their own website violated the standard they had said I should be keeping to many times, e.g. see here).

It is worth pointing out that copyright law has specific provisions for researchers. The BCSE sought to keep certain very revealing materials out of peoples' hands by claiming that I had no right to own and/or distribute them. This was wrong. The law has provisions to prevent the kind of bully-boy tactics the BCSE employed from being effective - but they're only of use if you know about them. I am not a lawyer - so make sure you get your own advice if needed.

9. Don't descend to their level

I think I must have said this a few times already. It's worth saying again though. Don't be reactive; there's no need to respond to everything said. They might even try to bring you down into the sewer as a tactic to discredit you - to show the world that you're as bad as they are and so haven't got a case to make. Avoid it at all costs! If you find it hard to avoid responding or implementing any of the above things, you might want to recruit someone wise to run all your blog posts past before they are published.

And finally, the most obvious one:

10. Make sure your cause is a good one!

Otherwise, all the good and bad advice in the world is just a waste of time!

"For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth." - 2 Corinthians 13:8.

Obviously, in the above I am describing an ideal. How well I met it, I leave others to judge. I hope though that the advice will be useful to someone in some good cause. Take care!

David Anderson

New Presentation - Is Belief In Divine Creation Rational?

This is off-topic for the main research done on this blog (into the true identities and activities of those involved in the "British Centre for Science Education"), but will be of interest to anyone involved in the debate over evolution, intelligent design, creationism, atheism, materialism, etcetera.

As most of you will know, in my "day job" I am a Christian minister. I have just put online a major new audio-visual presentation: "Is belief in divine creation rational? (responding to atheist claims)".

http://david.dw-perspective.org.uk/is-belief-in-creation-rational


The talk is 77 minutes long, accompanied by slides (combined courtesy of Google video), and goes over quite a wide field - rationality, morality, laws (or not?) of logic, Richard Dawkins, the scientific method, world views, the definition of the mind, etc. It's meant to be popular level but stimulating for anyone. You can watch the presentation with audio, or download it to your iPod, etcetera. Lots of links and resources provided. Of course it's a lot more heavyweight than the previous Richard Dawkins parable, but much more stimulating and rewarding and hopefully life-changing for it.

If you like it, please link it. Put it on your blogs, websites, mailing lists, etcetera. As with the previous Richard Dawkins parable, the success of this depends on it getting linked.

David

Who are the BCSE? (2)

When the "British Centre for Slandering Evangelicals Science Education" launched last year, there was one thing that any interested individual would notice pretty quickly. They were almost entirely anonymous. This didn't prevent some more gullible MPs and newspapers from printing their letters, or taking them at face value in some other way - but it's something that I pointed out as a huge question mark over their credibility pretty quickly.

In only my second article, I asked the question, "Who are the BCSE?", and then in the next article on the theme, I concluded as follows:

So, observation number one is that whilst the BCSE are very keen to give you their opinion on a number of other people (including individuals with apparently more qualifications than the entire BCSE membership combined, they're very reluctant to tell you anything about themselves. I look forward to them beginning to read my website, and addressing these criticisms; however, from my research so far I am confident that the more details about themselves they expose, the lower their plausibility as a group of "Science Educators" will sink.

Who They Really Were

After that, I started naming and describing the true identities and their (lack of) credentials to be masquerading as experts on either science or education. The BCSE responded to this pressure by beginning to publish a little information about themselves.

In general, this information only confirmed the accuracy of my research, as even with the best spin that the BCSE could put on it, its descriptions of its committee only confirmed their lack of standing. Some of this "spin", though, we later provided documented proof as being little different to outright fabrication (e.g. see here).

Screenshot from BCSE homepage, December 19th 2006

The More That Changes...

One year on, though, the situation is again that the BCSE have become basically anonymous. A large part of this is certainly due to "BCSE Revealed"; it became a regular occurrence that after I posted a new article, the BCSE would scramble to edit its website to cover up whatever embarrassing revelation had just been made. (e.g. See here). A large part of it is certainly because the internal rumbles that "BCSE Revealed" has caused and other factors have meant that over the course of that year, four of the original seven committee named have resigned (one returned); and the BCSE are rather nervous about us knowing just how bad their internal squabbles have been - so apparently, they decided it was just simpler to delete the list of committee members so that we couldn't know. (See here for more of that).

So basically, one year on, we find that the BCSE have become anonymous again. That's very bad for their attempts to appear credible. If you receive a communication from an organisation you've never heard of, and then seek to find more by checking out their website, and find that their website tells you basically nothing about their identities - what would you conclude? Why ever would a bona fide organisation need to take such measure to not let you know who they were?

So, that's good news for "BCSE Revealed". The BCSE have been forced back into a semi-secret mode of operation. If you visit the BCSE website today, then you will find, in a situation almost identical to a year ago:

• The section "What is the BCSE", on its front page, contains lots of spin, but no actual names or their credentials.
  
  
• If you then follow the link to the "More about the BCSE page" (here), then you will find approximately 1800 words - approaching 3 pages of A4 - which, amongst all the spin there, still manages not to find any room to give more than two names: informing us that in the BCSE's past, Alan Bellis handed over the reins to Roger Stanyard - whoever they might be - and then telling us that Ian Lowe (whoever he is!) brought them some IT help; and omitting to mention that Lowe resigned some months ago...
  
  
• Go to the "Contacts" page (here) and there are no names, no postal address, no information on any credentials... just an e-mail address, admin@bcseweb.org.uk. They offer to help the media with any help they need... but no information on just why the BCSE might have any credibility that the media should rely on.
  
  
• In terms of identifying any serving officers of the BCSE, there's just what you can find on the front page: "... phone our press officer, Roger Stanyard, on 07724938890." As we've seen before, this description is itself bogus; Stanyard basically is the BCSE, or at least half of it in terms of foundation, direction setting, putting in the hours of work, and so on. But notice, no mention again of what Stanyard's credentials might be to talk about this or any other subject.

Dotted throughout the website, you can find a few individuals named in the odd place, described with the adjective "BCSE Member": but many of these are out of date, as the individuals in question have resigned once they'd perceived that the BCSE was spouting bigoted nonsense, was doomed, or they fell out, etcetera.

Looks a bit odd, doesn't it? They want you to believe them - but they're unwilling to tell you anything at all about themselves. Why would that be? "BCSE Revealed" readers will know: because the facts about themselves are damning.

As I write this today, though, I do find that Roger Stanyard recognises that this is an unsatisfactory situation to be in, because I find him complaining that some other organisation hasn't published a list of its committee members.

"How convenient that the Causeway Creation Committee just doesn't happen to name who are its members and doesn't have a web site.

...

I suspect that if they did disclose who is involved we would have a field day in pulling it apart."


http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=13284#13284

Well, you might think from that that irony isn't Stanyard's strong point. He certainly ought to know a thing or two about trying to hide the identities of your committee, because of being ripped apart, by now...

David Anderson




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

Happy Birthday!

I missed it! Yesterday was the anniversary of the launch of "BCSE Revealed". It all began here.

Several bogus legal threats, lots of atheist panic, and a whole dictionary full of nasty words sent my way, and it's time to have a mini review of what's gone on.

One year ago, the "British Centre for Science Education" had launched itself publicly, and had quick success in managing to persuade newspapers and MPs to accept its pronouncements as if they came from a real scientific body. I, though, knew better - and began blogging. The pressure's told, and the BCSE's suffered the following set backs, largely I believe, to the pressure that our revelations have put on them:

• We pointed out their semi-anonymous nature, revealed the real people behind them, and forced them to put up a list of names on their website.
  
  
• Of that list of names, around half have subsequently resigned from the BCSE during the course of the year. I haven't documented much of that, because the BCSE has imploded so impressively that it's almost removed the need to have anyone document it at all.
  
  
• And now, the BCSE has been forced to go semi-anonymous again; search the website; who are the BCSE? You can't find out. Who are the credentialed scientists and educators and what are their qualifications? None who can be named. Not good if you want to appear credible.
  
  
• We now have several dozen documented, verifiable articles demonstrating to anyone who cares to find out, that:
  
  
  1. The "British Centre for Science Education" is basically a two or three man band, in terms of anyone willing to put real hours into it, with a website.
     
     
  2. None of its leaders are, or have ever been, employed, or received credentials as, science educators.
     
     
  3. Its chairman, Michael Brass, is now exposed as a charlatan who sought to promote himself as a "published archaelogist" when he was in fact an assistant IT worker with a vanity-published book. Oh, and his degrees are in archaeology and history - not the primary fields that the BCSE claims to be experts in.
     
     
  4. The other leg of the all-but two-man band is Roger Stanyard, a management consultant who has been a businessman all his working life; never a scientist or educator of any stripe. What Stanyard and Brass do have in common, though, is a deep hatred of any kind of belief that the supernatural might affect day to day life, and evangelical Christianity in particular. We've documented some of Stanyard's more extreme anti-Christian rantings in some depth.
     
     
  5. The BCSE are a really nasty operation. When caught lying, they simply delete the material - no corrections or acknowledgments. When caught slandering, they do the same - no apologies. They are classic bullies; they make big threats which they never carry through on, and when the teacher comes they run and hide.
     
     
  6. The quality of the BCSE "research" is appalling, almost never documented and often stating baldly the very opposite of what the primary sources actually say. In very recent times, it appears that a new policy has been agreed that articles need to be based on primary sources (gasp!), but there's no indication that there will be any retrospective re-writing of the present website.
     
     
  7. The leadership of the BCSE in general are not motivated by science, in which they lack qualifications and experience; they are generally hardline atheists of the Richard Dawkins variety, taking part in such activities as signing petitions to persuade the government to outlaw parents from teaching their own children about religion until the age of 16. We exposed some of the pre-launch discussions in which various of them stated their campaigning goals or ideas, such as trying to persuade the media to portray Christians like paedophiles, or turning the UK into a fully secular state. Science isn't apparently what we thought it was, folks!
     
     
     
• These revelations thwarted the BCSE's plans to gain real science educators, or other helpful figureheads, to boost its credibility. It began with the cupboard bare, hoping that it would attract support; but too much of the above ruined its chances. It's one thing to start small and hope to gain support; but a year later to be smaller than you started means only one thing: it's been a disaster. Do you know why the BCSE spill such venom when they talk about me? Is it because my revelations have been totally ineffective and they see no need to care about anything I blog? Would that tally? ;-)
  
  
• This set of articles has now basically put the BCSE into a position whereby they form a convenient litmus test: people now know what they're like, and anyone whose reality meter is still even vaguely functioning will avoid being seen to be associated with them like the plague. Whenever someone credits them or refers to them, it tells you that that person has a metaphysical agenda to promote naturalism and/or atheism; nobody who didn't have that agenda would ever find any reason to refer to the BCSE as any kind of credible source. In short: they've been revealed.

I believe that the last year has been a fantastic success for "BCSE Revealed", and I give God all the glory for helping me to press on through it. I've seen the BCSE all but implode due to the pressure which plain, documented evidence of their true thoughts and agenda has brought to bear on them. I've pretty much done what I aimed to do: put myself out of a job, blogging wise. Oh yes, and we've had the Richard Dawkins parable too: approaching 120,000 views on YouTube, and 11,000 in written form.

Does that mean that my work is over? Is it time to wallow in past success? I don't believe so. The BCSE's general response to revelations about what's going on has been to delete the evidence, go silent on the topic in question, and wait for the storm to pass. In short, they hope that nobody will notice, and that I'll get bored and leave them alone, and that they'll then be able to go on passing themselves off as real authorities. The corpse keeps twitching, and there's the danger of zombie attacks. I'm determined that their strategy won't work. The Internet has a long memory, and for now, I'm going to carry on turning the screws as and when it seems necessary to do so.

I plan in the near future to supply more evidence of the BCSE's deep decline, and the reasons behind it. Keep in touch!

David Anderson




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