Education Icon Education
News Media Icon News Media

Eugenie Scott Forced to Retract Defamation of California Parent?

It looks like Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education isn’t going to be able to get away with her defamation of California parent Larry Caldwell after all. (For the history of the Caldwell case, see here and here and here.) In a press release issued this week, Caldwell states that the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) has agreed to permanently remove Scott’s defamatory article from the world wide web and will be printing a retraction letter by Scott in the next issue of California Wild. In addition, CAS will give Caldwell the opportunity to accurately present his views in his own words in the next issue of the same magazine. Denyse O’Leary has an excellent blog about this latest development, here.

It’s lucky for Caldwell that he is an attorney. The NCSE and the California Academy of Sciences initially refused to respond to his demand for a correction, perhaps because the NCSE is used to defaming people without being called to account (read about the NCSE’s refusal to retract its false claims about Jonathan Wells here). One hopes that the Caldwell case will cause the newsmedia to be a lot more careful about spreading defamatory allegations put out by the NCSE and its spokespersons.

John G. West

Senior Fellow, Managing Director, and Vice President of Discovery Institute
Dr. John G. West is Vice President of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and Managing Director of the Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Formerly the Chair of the Department of Political Science and Geography at Seattle Pacific University, West is an award-winning author and documentary filmmaker who has written or edited 12 books, including Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, and Walt Disney and Live Action: The Disney Studio’s Live-Action Features of the 1950s and 60s. His documentary films include Fire-Maker, Revolutionary, The War on Humans, and (most recently) Human Zoos. West holds a PhD in Government from Claremont Graduate University, and he has been interviewed by media outlets such as CNN, Fox News, Reuters, Time magazine, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post.

Share

Tags

__editedCaliforniaCalifornia Academy of SciencesDenyse O'LearyEugenie ScottNational Center for Science Education