In my last entry, in which I briefly reviewed an article from the new creationist journal ARJ, fellow Nature Network blogger Lee Turnpenny posted a comment questioning my appeal for dialogue between mainstream scientists and creationists. He asserted that these people (the creationists) “know exactly what they are doing … they need people to remain ignorant of how science really operates; so they can get away with presenting as though they are scientific.”
I agree with the substance of Lee’s comment, but after doing a bit of research on ARJ_’s editor, Andrew Snellingsnelling.asp, I can’t help wondering whether they really do know what they are doing.
According to a 1991 article published in the Australian magazine The Skeptic (scroll to page 12 of the pdf, or find an html version of the article here), Snelling, who has a PhD in geology from the University of Sydney in Australia (my home country!), has previously published legitimate research in numerous reputable geology journals. Indeed, the Institute for Creation Research website, which proudly lists him as one of their Scientists in the Physical Sciences (a list of scientists with PhDs from big research universities who are also creationists), mentions many of Dr Snelling’s publications in “mainstream” journals.
The curious point that the Skeptic article raises is not that Snelling has published in mainstream journals, but that what he has written in mainstream journals appears to be at odds with his creationist writings. (Perhaps not surprisingly, the biography of Dr Snelling listed on the ARJ site does not mention any of his publications in mainstream journals.) Perusing a 1990 article that Dr Snelling had written on uranium deposits in Geology of the Mineral Deposits of Australia and Papua New Guinea, the author of the Skeptic article (himself a PhD-trained geologist) found Dr Snelling referring to the age of particular geological formations in “Myr” (i.e., millions of years), as in the following quote (supposedly taken directly from the 1990 article):
“The Archaean basement consists of domes of granitoids and granitic gneisses (the Nanambu Complex), the nearest outcrop being 5 km to the north. Some of the lowermost overlying Proterozoic metasediments were accreted to these domes during amphibolite grade regional metamorphism (5 to 8 kb and 550 to 630 C) at 1870 to 1800 Myr. Multiple isoclinal recumbent folding accompanied metamorphism.”
Unfortunately, I don’t have access to Geology of the Mineral Deposits of Australia and Papua New Guinea, otherwise I would check the veracity of these claims myself. However, if they are true, then one can only wonder what on earth (sorry for the pun) Dr Snelling is doing writing articles like the one he just published in ARJ, in which all things geological are forced into a young-earth creationist framework. Perhaps he’s hoping that no-one will read his mainstream and his creationist publications at the same time?
