The BCSE: Revealed

Documenting the Depths of BCSE Cynicism, Continued

(Roger Stanyard's Departure: Part 6)

(This article first appeared on my blog on 11th July 2007).

This article continues the documentation of the BCSE's lying and slander campaign to discredit me, and its fallout with its leader Roger Stanyard. If you want proof that the BCSE tells bare-faced lies without caring, it's here. Previous parts: one, two, three, four, five.

In the last post from Ian Lowe (containing the words "he resigned" in regard of Stanyard) which we covered in the last installment, Tim Hague then posted on a different subject, regarding plans for re-organising the BCSE. Hague began as follows. This was still on the 13th of June:

Hague then proceeded to list ten areas: overall management, public relations, tech support, forum admin, research, liaison, events, publications, online publications, "SJS campaign".

A very revealing comment is then made by Hague:

In other words, "BCSE Revealed" has been spot-on in its argument that the figures show the BCSE as having failed to recruit beyond the boundaries of its committee. Hague lists ten areas, and then says that there are "more areas than people". I can count more than ten people (but not too many more), so I think Hague means those who would be ready to put in serious hours of work for the BCSE's cause. Remember that when I posted that the BCSE was in serious decline, BCSE chairman Michael Brass posted a statement to the BCSE's public discussion group to say the following (emphasis mine):

Brass knew he was telling untruths in his various claims that Stanyard hadn't left the BCSE - we've documented that many times over. Now, from Hague's comments, we've also shown that the BCSE's public and private statements about the health of its membership are in conflict. According to Hague, ten areas of activity will outnumber the supply of people to work in them. If that's a healthy organisation....

Back to the point

The next comment in the discussion was a reply to Ian Lowe. It was from Paula Thomas, BCSE committee member:

I think that Paula would be surprised by my visitor statistics, but my guess would be that she's probably right in that I also think they generally include people at the opposite polarities in the Darwinism discussion. I'd also tend to agree with Paula that there's no real reason for Lowe to have been so concerned about whether I knew that Stanyard had walked out or not. My concern has always been to document the BCSE's gross dishonesty and lack of credentials, rather than their falling out with each other. What Lowe has done, though, by deciding to try to cover up Stanyard's walk-out and use it as a base to slander me and offer no apology or retraction when caught, has been to turn it into exactly the kind of material that I am interested in documenting.

I wouldn't agree with Paula, though, that "BCSE Revealed" is just a distraction. The fact is, we live in a moral universe. Human beings are hard-wired with consciences, and cannot simply cynically disregard truth without it taking its toll and gaining a bad reputation amongst those who know them - a fact which Christians such as myself have always pointed to as a God-given evidence of an ultimate day of judgment: we have a witness inside ourselves already. The facts that "BCSE Revealed" have been showing have been immensely damaging to the BCSE, and will continue to be so. When you switch off your conscience and decide to simply ignore inconvenient truths, you go down the road of moral nihilism and disaster.

Notice, then, what Thomas suggests: more deception. She suggests that the BCSE, in order to cover up their fall-out with Stanyard, make the false claim that he had had left to be able to spend more time on a book that he is apparently writing: "I think we can use Roger's removal of himself from the frontpage positively after all isn't he writing a book? Maybe he needs time to concentrate on that...".

There is one significant further data-point in the discussion: Michael Brass added a comment. His comment wasn't related to the issue of the deception campaign, but was agreeing with something else said later on by Paula Thomas. The significance, though, is that it shows that Brass read and knew the contents of this discussion: further evidence, added to what we already have, to show Brass's dishonesty. Brass knew that Stanyard had resigned and that my story that he had done so was accurate.

Summing it up

We now know that the individuals listed below:

• Knew that Stanyard had resigned and deleted mentions of himself from the BCSE's website, and then
• Took part in discussions planning the BCSE's slander campaign to discredit me, when it believed that I wouldn't have the evidence to prove that Stanyard's departure had taken place. This included allegations about being a proven liar, that I abuse my wife, that I'm impossible to work with, lazy, with no sense of morality, unable to apologise for wrong-doing, a control freak, a fragile ego, etc. etc.

Some of these individuals took part in the public smear campaign; others merely were involved in discussion of it, and chose to keep silent when it went ahead despite knowing that it was a pack of lies:

• Michael Brass, BCSE chairman
• Roger Stanyard, BCSE founder, spokesman, researcher
• Ian Lowe, BCSE committee member
• Brian Jordan, BCSE committee member
• Chris Hyland, PhD candidate at Leeds University and BCSE member (and one of the leadership of "Science, Just Science", the group in the process of merging into the BCSE)
• Tim Hague, BCSE member (and one of the leadership of "Science, Just Science").
• Paula Thomas, BCSE committee member
• James Rocks, BCSE member (and leader of "Science, Just Science").

I believe that that number, eight, accounts for a majority of those actively involved in the BCSE. It includes five of the seven BCSE committee.

What we've documented here is simply this: the BCSE is rotten to the core. It carries out planned campaigns of lies and slander of the nastiest kind, simply hoping that those who listen to it won't know enough to know what it's doing. This rottenness pervades the whole organisation. The chances of reform or apology are slim, because it's not just the odd renegade doing it: it's from top to bottom.

There is one more interesting comment in the thread I've been documenting above; it's from James Rocks. He says that it might be a good idea to delete some of the content of the "Science, Just Science" forums, and gives the following as one of his reasons:

David Anderson

N.B. SJS/the BCSE have moved to delete some of the above material from the web - a copy is available from me for you to verify the accuracy of the quotations - just e-mail.

Go to: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part seven