Caroline Crocker was a professor at a community college a few years ago. She taught Intelligent Design in her biology class. Subsequently, she didn’t have her contract renewed. Not surprisingly, she showed up in the movie Expelled. The IDists have been trying their best to make her look respectable and victimized. Well, recently, some of her powerpoint slides got leaked onto the internet, making her claims to innocence and respectability seem pretty hollow. Here’s a nice little mash-up of the information about Crocker. (The images are from Crocker’s talk.)
IDEA Center Press Release: “Dr. Crocker has top academic credentials, and she received rave reviews as a professor working with students at George Mason University before the university ousted her because she mentioned intelligent design in a class.”
Right – she got ousted because she “mentioned” intelligent design in class. (roll eyes) See slides below.
Former Student: “I ended up having to drop her class just because of her attitude and her teaching methods. She has this pompous I’m-right-you’re-wrong type of personality and she seems to play favorites. I learned later from someone in the class that I had dropped that not one person got an A. Pick another teacher if you can.”
Idea Center Press Release: “Caroline Crocker is the ideal person to come on board as the first Executive Director of the IDEA Center,” said Casey Luskin, co-founder of the IDEA Center.
Former Student: “She doesn’t know the material she teaches. She is unclear and changes her mind often. She doesn’t know how to answer students’ questions. Grading scale is out of wack; watch out for her subtracting points out of nowhere! Most exam questions are not on the material she lectures on. She uses a different textbook and not the assigned book.”

Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture: First there was the monkey. He sat on the left side of the picture, it was a happy chimpanzee, and to the right sat a brooding person. And between the monkey and the person was an arrow with the point aimed at the person, with a question mark over the arrow. This is how Caroline Crocker began her lecture in “Introduction to Biology” course 101 at the George Mason University … By the end of the first hour the nice, secure world of the students was thoroughly messed up, since they had now learned something entirely new: no, wrong, humans did not descend from apes. Most of the students even found that convincing. The university administration quickly sent Caroline Crocker the pink sheet.
She wasn’t “quickly sent … the pink sheet”. She didn’t have her contract renewed. And I highly doubt that “Most of the students even found that convincing.”, rather, I’m sure most students either had their theistic worldviews strengthened or realized they were dealing with a professor on an ideological crusade.
Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture: Without her one could discard the whole controversy as the latest episode of the American freak show: the Americans are nuts, that’s nothing new, there are all kinds of crazy people there … they are all sort of fat, dumb and Bible-believing … With Caroline Crocker the story gets more complicated. She is neither fat nor dumb, she has a PhD in biology, has written books in pharmacology and taught at excellent universities. One cannot simply shrug her off as crazy, one must take her seriously, one must hear her out, one must think things through with her. That is unpleasant, strenuous and confusing.
It is, indeed confusing – obviously, she has no ideological axe to grind. Take this next slide from her lecture as an example. Obviously, it’s the Darwinists who are involved in spin.

Just the facts. For example, it’s important for students to know the “fact” that Darwin was a “rich kid who enjoyed partying, drinking, and gambling.” (What, she left off the part about killing babies and being a pimp?)
Coral Ridge Ministries: I was so careful when I wrote that lecture not to be partial in any way. I was very careful to make sure that I would talk about point by point the evidence that the book would put forward for evolution and then talk about point by point the experiments and say “Well, you know, there’s a problem here.”
Nature: “Caroline Crocker says that she hadn’t meant to start a controversy when she mentioned intelligent design while teaching her second-year cell-biology course at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, last semester…. Crocker tells how she has been barred by her department from teaching both evolution and intelligent design. “It’s an infringement of academic freedom,” she says…. She maintains that the talks help students to think independently about ideas such as evolution. “My goal is to teach students to think for themselves,” she says.”
Right – think for themselves. She presents a lot of bad information, and holds control over their grades. It’s odd that Crocker would even try to present an image of even-handedness. Oh right – that’s the IDist way: lie to the press to make yourself appear more sympathetic.
Here’s a quote from Caroline Crocker’s website (inappropriately named “IntellectualHonesty.info”):
Caroline Crocker’s website, “IntellectualHonesty.info”: “[Caroline Crocker] believes that we must be courageous enough to look the scientific evidence in the face and assess it in as impartial a manner as possible even if it means giving up dearly-held philosophical viewpoints… She promotes logic and right thinking, rather than emotion and knee-jerk reactions, when assessing the information gathered… It is a fact that ad hominem attacks and the banning of certain thoughts stand in the way of the advancement of science.”
Oh, the hypocrisy. She describes Darwin as a “rich kid who enjoyed partying, drinking, and gambling” and “failed at medical school” and then condemns ad hominem attacks.
If it’s all about the evidence, then why does she promote such obvious falsehoods as:

Christianpost: Crocker denies teaching creationism at George Mason University. Rather, she contends that she taught only one lecture on the evidence for and against evolution and did not even mention creationism.
“What I really wanted to do was in an intellectually honest manner give the evidence for evolution, but also the question about evolution – the scientific critiques – that’s all I did,” Crocker said.
See – she did it in an intellectually honest manner. She taught both sides – the “evidence for and against evolution”. By the way, what is this “evidence for” evolution that she teaches?
Washington Post: “There really is not a lot of evidence for evolution,” Crocker said. Besides, she added, she saw her role as trying to balance the “ad nauseum” pro-evolution accounts that students had long been force-fed.
Oh right – she doesn’t teach anything that supports evolution. She merely claims that she does because it makes her look more fair and sympathetic.
I especially like the quote at the end of this slide. It quotes Werner Von Braun, a rocket scientist. And we all know rocket scientists are the smartest people in the world – they know about everything:

Washington Post: “Crocker said, [microevolution is] quite different from macroevolution. No one has ever seen a dog turn into a cat in a laboratory.”
That’s an “intellectually honest” critique, isn’t it? Nevermind the fact that turning a dog into a cat in a laboratory would be indicative of magic or a divine miracle, and would never be predicted by evolution. But, we’re supposed to believe that she just presents “the scientific critiques”?
One has to wonder: as a microbiologist, did Crocker get all of her information about paleontology and larger lifeforms from creationists?

WashingtonPost: The theory of intelligent design holds that while the evolutionary forces of random genetic mutation and natural selection may shape species on a small scale, they cannot account for the kind of large-scale differences between, say, chimpanzees and humans.
In other words, they hold that a few beneficial mutations can occur and spread through the population over a small amount of time, but that many beneficial mutations cannot accumulate over a large amount of time.

Does she even know what the evidence for macroevolution is? Does she attempt to answer the question of why we find identical genetic errors in humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas – assuming we don’t have a common ancestor?
WashingtonPost: [Crocker’s husband, Richard believes] she has become the victim of scientific authoritarianism. It is one thing to believe his wife is wrong, Richard Crocker told me, and quite another to deprive her of her right to speak.
It’s unclear why this amounts to “[depriving] her of her right to speak”. She works for the IDEA center – a pro-IDist group. She gets paid to speak. If anything, she has been “deprived” of her “right” to get paid by a college while teaching students in their classrooms poor criticisms of evolution. I think that’s censorship because everyone should have the right to get paid by colleges to teach kids whatever they want. (It should be added that the college denies not renewing her contract because of ID.) So remember: if you ever sign a contract to teach at a university and you teach ID, then the university will be required to renew your contract forever – or else be accused of attacking free speech.
So yeah, the Darwinists have “[deprived] her of her right to speak”. (Please ignore the fact that she lists speaking fees on her website as $1000, $1,500, or $5000 for four talks.) The evil Darwinists have taken away her constitutionally protected rights! (Fees do not cover travel expenses, which must be covered by the client.)
Caroline Crocker’s website: Caroline Crocker is the Executive Director of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Center, as well as being self-employed in the Washington DC area as an author, speaker, and private tutor. She is working on her first non-academic book, Science Censored, on her experiences as a full time university lecturer who strove to present Darwinian evolution from an intellectually honest viewpoint.
Caroline Crocker’s website: “[Caroline Crocker] is a popular speaker on issues of science and faith, addressing school, church, and other audiences. Dr. Crocker has also written magazine articles and been extensively interviewed for media, such as books, newspapers, T.V. and movies.”
“Deprived of her of her right to speak” just ain’t what it used to be. But, then neither is honesty, apparently.
IDEA Center Press Release: I am excited about helping students in IDEA Clubs to investigate intelligent design in an intellectually honest manner,” said Dr. Crocker.
Right.
Read Full Post »