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.

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 Decline And Fall Of The BCSE (2)

(For the previous post on this topic, see here).

The hard figures are only pointing in one direction. Two-thirds of a year after the BCSE's launch, it has fewer fans now than when it began. Instead of strong growth, it is seeing decline. People have seen what kind of outfit the BCSE is - and are voting with their feet.

The following graph plots the number of unique usernames posting in the BCSE's web forums, month by month. There is growth after the first month; after that, things are only moving in one direction:



Now, statistics of course can be misleading. When they give us answers, how do we know if we've asked the right questions? The above graph doesn't distinguish between those who are heavily involved, and those who just posted once. How about if we limit it to those who posted three times in a month? This shows the BCSE's peak as being in January (with the slight dip in December probably due to the Christmas period). This corresponds more accurately with my gut feeling:


How about if we take 5 or more posts? Same story:


If you look at that last graph, you'll see that the number of those still interested in the BCSE's offerings only just exceeds the size of the BCSE's committee. And we haven't even reached those summer months where people become less interested in the Internet yet...

The message is clear: People have taken a look at the BCSE, and said "no thanks". Can the majority be wrong? Yes. Are they this time? I don't think so...

I repeat what I said last time. I don't expect the BCSE to close this week. Some of its members are far too fanatical. If you have the gumption to pass yourself off as a national authority on science education to MPs and newspapers when you haven't even got a basic qualification in the area, then you're clearly not too bothered about reality. I expect the BCSE to carry on vomiting up their output for a while yet. But I expect fewer and fewer people to be fooled by it.

David Anderson



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

The Decline And Fall Of The BCSE

It's been a while - more than a month!

Why so little posting? Because I've become convinced that my work is mostly done. The BCSE have blown their chance of being what they wanted to be - any kind of influential, respected voice in public debate. And there's no point in continuing to kick a corpse. They have been exposed - too many people have seen through them.

Has "BCSE Revealed" played a part in this? I hope so, but I can't know. I do know of people who took an interest in the BCSE, then spotted what was going on, and quietly slunk away in case they lose their own credibility through involvement with such a group. But those who contact you to tell you are always a minority - you can't know what the silent majority thought.

Yes, the BCSE haven't officially closed their doors yet. And I don't expect they will for a while yet either. But those whose help the BCSE most needed have generally gone away - whether through nausea at the anti-religious prejudice, rampant dishonesty and inflation of credentials, infighting, clashes of egos and/or general inability of militant atheists to get on with anyone other than themselves. They are whittled down to the real hard core. Those who are left are those who simply refuse to believe it has failed: whether because they've invested too much time or reputation for their pride to admit it, or whatever.

If it ever becomes necessary, I have plenty more material that was in the file to document the BCSE's gross dishonesty and incompetence. If they want to carry on pretending to the public that they in any way approximate real "Science Educators", I will be here to point out the facts. I can bring it out. This isn't a "last post"; I have things which just need a little touching up, as time allows. But there's no point in flogging a dead horse - there's real work to do! I don't want to be triumphalistic - I do not have a crystal ball. But the BCSE has a major, major problem if it's going to turn this situation around.

Maybe your remember some of the BCSE's early boasts - of over 100 members - before "BCSE Revealed" exposed the fraudulent method which the BCSE were using to rope the unsuspecting into those figures. Well, here is a graph showing the number of posts made each week on the BCSE's website forum since it began. Here is the dying interest in what the BCSE has to offer, illustrated. The trend is clear:


That first dip just before the middle of the graph is the week between Christmas and New Year, December 2006. People normally find better things to do than twiddle on the Internet at that time of year. But look at the right hand of the graph - now. Interest is lower than even then. If you group the weeks into 4-week chunks, the trend is even clearer (again, the first dip represents Christmas/New Year):


The facts are clear: only the die-hards are still chatting within the BCSE, and their numbers are dwindling too. The rest of the world has moved on.

David Anderson



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