Myth: There is a conspiracy among scientists to suppress "creation science."

Fact: Creation scientists aren't even trying.



Summary

Creation scientists are not even submitting scientific theories on creation for publication. Needless to say, mainstream scientists cannot censor what is not being submitted.



Argument

A frequent claim in creationist literature is that there is a wealth of scientific evidence to support creationism, but that secular, mainstream scientists are suppressing its publication in peer-reviewed journals. They are not giving creation-scientists a fair shake, they claim; they are being censored.

Is this true?

One way to find out is to examine what the creation-scientists are submitting for publication. One of the easiest, freest and most uncensored publishing mediums is the Internet. People can post any message they desire to talk.origins, the newsgroup devoted to spirited debate between evolutionists and creationists. So do creationists submit their scientific evidence there? The welcome page for talk.origins contains the following special plea to creationists:

But what about more old-fashioned media, like scientific, peer-reviewed journals?

In Arkansas in 1982, a famous trial pitted creation-scientists against evolutionists in a battle over what should be taught in public school textbooks. During the trial, creation-scientists repeated their claim that mainstream scientists were ignoring or suppressing their evidence. In response, two researchers, Eugenie Scott and Henry Cole, conducted a computer search of 1,000 scientific and technical journals over a 3-year time period for articles having anything to do with creation scientists or their work. (2) Their search uncovered only 18 items, some of them critical of creation science, some news reports on the controversy, some letters to the editor. In other words, nothing that positively supported a scientific theory of creation.

Scott and Cole then surveyed 68 scientific, technical and educational journals, to see if any articles on creation-science had been submitted but rejected. (3) Collectively, these journals had received over 135,000 submitted manuscripts over a 3-year period, but only 18 addressing the subject of creation-science. Even American Zoologist, which has a very open policy on submission of abstracts, did not receive a single manuscript detailing scientific evidence for creationism. Of these 18 submissions, 15 were rejected and three were still under review at the time of the survey.

The editors who rejected the submissions gave the following reasons: "ramblings…"; "no coherent arguments…"; "high-school theme quality…"; "tendentious essay not suitable for publication anywhere…"; "more like a long letter than a reference article…"; "no systematic treatment…"; "does not define terms…"; "flawed arguments…"; "failure to acknowledge and use extensive literature on particular questions…".

Scott and Cole write: "From the reviewers comments, it appears as if laymen rather than professional scientists are submitting the few articles that have surfaced in the last three years. When only 18 articles are submitted to 68 journals in three years, and those articles are submitted by persons not skilled in established scientific methodology and theory, it is inappropriate to invoke censorship. To be published, one must first submit, and scientific creationists are apparently not submitting manuscripts."

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Endnotes:

1. Andy Peters, "Welcome to talk.origins!" http://earth.ics.uci.edu:8080/faqs/faq-welcome.html .

2. Henry Cole and Eugenie Scott, Phi Delta Kapan, (April, 1982), p. 657.

3. Eugenie Scott and Henry Cole, Quat. Rev. Biol. 60, (1985), p. 21.