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Taken to Task: California Academy of Science Mag Publishes Scott’s “Mea Culpa”

In the wake of a libel lawsuit, NCSE, Inc. Director Eugenie Scott has a published a letter retracting her prior false statements concerning California parent Larry Caldwell. The letter is published in California Wild, the magazine of the California Academy of Sciences — and the same magazine that published her earlier article containing her false assertions about Caldwell. (Available online, here.) Caldwell’s letter in response to Scott was also published in California Wild.

John West has previously blogged about Scott’s defamatory article and attacks on Caldwell (here, here, and here). As Caldwell noted in a press release from last month:

It’s a shame it took a lawsuit to get Scott, the author of the article, to retract some of the more outrageous factual misstatements in her article.

Caldwell’s response letter further elaborates upon some of Scott’s bogus claims and makes an important point:

The public policy debate over how we should teach evolution in America is too important to be based on such science fiction. At stake is whether our students will receive a quality science education, in which they learn the truth about evolution, or a science indoctrination, in which the truth is hidden from them.

Caldwell goes on to ask:

So why do Eugenie Scott and her National Center for Science Education feel the need to resort to such science fiction in order to prevail in this debate?

Quite so. How does such a group expect to maintain any sort of credibility when it undermines public understanding of the issues with blatant character attacks and inaccurate statements?

As noted earlier, NCSE, Inc. has demonstrated a pattern of making false claims and character attacks. In this instance, however, Caldwell’s steadfastness has helped to restore some honesty to the debate over how to best teach students about the controversy over neo-Darwinian theory.