And Then They Lied Some More

Roger Stanyard's departure - Part 4

(Originally published on my blog, 2nd July 2007).

My plan in the next few posts is to start demonstrating just how badly the BCSE has lied in its recent campaign against "BCSE Revealed". If you're just picking this story up, the earlier parts are here: one, two, three.

Basically, the story is this: "BCSE Revealed" began running a story that Roger Stanyard had fallen out with the rest of the BCSE committee, and walked out. The BCSE then made attempts at reconciliation - which, after a fortnight or so, were successful. As I posted this story, the BCSE committee, in particular Ian Lowe, Michael Brass, Stanyard himself and Brian Jordan, decided that they didn't think I'd have the evidence to prove it: so they used the opportunity to rubbish me and the accuracy of "BCSE Revealed" in some particularly insulting ways. However, it turned out that I did have the evidence. As I've begun showing this evidence, the above named BCSE leaders have been exposed as telling the most astonishingly bare-faced lies.

Before I showed the evidence, the BCSE leaders were running away with a theme of "this set of lies from Anderson is so appalling - let us pyschoanalyze just how he could do this". Lowe started offering the BCSE forum readers his diagnosis - apparently I'm lazy, abuse my wife, and have a pathological inability to work with others - and then he condemned me in advance for not apologising.

So, Lowe appears to know that heinous misdeeds ought to, when exposed, be followed by an apology. The lack of any such apology (whether from Lowe or any others of the BCSE leaders who jumped in with the premature insults) simply gives us more data to go on when we're trying to evaluate if the BCSE are bona fide science educators, or liars and hypocrites. As yet Lowe has been strangely silent in offering us a pyschoanalysis of just why he has such problems in handling truth...

Here's More Of The Evidence

In fact, the fact that Stanyard had walked out on the BCSE was not only known by the BCSE committee. The below quotations are part of a discussion by Chris Hyland and Tim Hague, two BCSE members. They're discussing it over on the website of "Science, Just Science", which is presently in the process of merging into the BCSE. (As the two groups are very similar and have a considerable overlap in membership, I've considered this something of a non-event, so am not saying much about it at the present). I don't believe Mr. Hague's name has come up on "BCSE Revealed" before; you may remember Hyland from his involvement in the events when the BCSE began telling MPs that "Truth in Science" were distributing material "full of scientific errors" before the BCSE knew the contents of the material... (see here).

On the 19th of June, Hyland asked the following question:

Notice that Hyland appears to know that Roger had been responsible for removing himself from the SJS forum - back in mid June. This contradicts the story spun by the BCSE that Lowe temporarily removed Roger because Roger was having problems with his ISP.

What was Hague's reply?

Note that - the reason why Stanyard wasn't posting on the SJS forum wasn't because he had Internet problems - it was actually because he asked the forum administrator to delete his account. He was leaving permanently. What happened?

Notice that: Stanyard quit, and told everyone so. Hague doesn't know exactly when it was, because Ian (Lowe) removed the dated "I quit" messages which Stanyard had posted. This is presumably from the BCSE forum rather than the SJS one, as that is the form that Lowe is the administrator of (Hague is the administrator of the SJS one). So here we have the following facts:

Roger quit, and posted "I quit" messages to announce it. Stanyard's endorsement of Lowe's "Roger hasn't been around for a while because he had ISP problems" upon his reconciliation and return was a massive lie.

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=10517#10517 (Access since locked by the BCSE - covering up their tracks).

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=10480#10480 (Access since locked by the BCSE - covering up their tracks).

Lowe actually removed Stanyard's "I quit" messages. From the beginning, Lowe went into panic mode and tried to cover up what had happened. (I don't know why... the fall-out is evidence of childishness, but hardly more than that; "BCSE Revealed" cares about the BCSE's deceptions; its childishness is small beer). His campaign of lies and insults against "BCSE Revealed" is the continuation of a policy he decided on immediately. Remember again Lowe's words when he thought he would be able to get away with this:

How many lies and slanders is that? Not just one or two. Well, rather than making our own comment, we'll leave Lowe facing his own verdict; does he agree with himself? Apparently, someone who behaves like this and then fails to apologise is a very small person indeed. Apparently, we should "watch him now" to see what his measure is.

Stanyard's quitting was well-known. It was announced publicly by Stanyard, seen by members of the forum, and known by those outside of the committee. None of those individuals, though, stepped in when the BCSE began its campaign of lies and slanders against "BCSE Revealed"; some of them kept silent, some joined in. Hyland and Hague were complicit. If they have evidence otherwise of e-mails and forum posts in which they tried to persuade Lowe/Brass/Jordan/Stanyard not to go down the path they did, then I'd be more than willing to reproduce them in order to clear their reputations.

This is a disaster for the BCSE: its public representatives have been caught telling the most cynical and bare-faced of untruths and running a nasty slander campaign based on statements it knew were baseless. Who, knowing this, is going to believe any of their future pronouncements? The only people who are going to accord credibility to the BCSE in future are those who have made their minds up, evidence or not. The BCSE has the choice either to get rid of its committee and start over - which will be very hard to do because it is now such a small organisation that its committee are almost a majority of active members - or to cynically bet that it will be able to carry on with nobody noticing, hoping people aren't going to find out what kind of individuals those behind it are.

The BCSE's website alleges that one of the major issues in the Darwinism debate is that those who opposed Darwinism are systematic and cynical liars. Well, on this one I can't make the common criticism I've been making over the months... this time, the BCSE really do appear to be talking within their field of expertise.

You can find the web page with the posts extracted here. You'll have to rush, though: the BCSE's response to these revelations so far has been to remove such evidence within minutes... whilst leaving all the lies and slanders against me up for you to read. Go figure what that tells you about how they operate! As ever, I have copies to supply to researchers - just e-mail me.

David

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