One of those annoying habits creationists organizations have is the appropriation of legitimate scientific research to ‘support’ their claims. They almost never do, actually—the creationists have to misrepresent the science, and often they even offer interpretations flatly contradicted by the contents of the paper. For an excellent example, here’s the author of a paper on ERVs complaining that Reason To Believe’s use of her work was unjustified.
I eventually decided to reclaim my research from the people who have consistently tried to distort the science to support their own agenda. I checked a few months ago and found my paper in the RTB archives. I emailed the website’s creators, explained that they had misunderstood the meaning of my paper, that it actually provided evidence in support of evolution, and politely asked if they could please remove it from their site. I repeated my request a couple of times. I never received more than a bland message in reply saying that they would look into it.
She has also posted a summary of her work that shows she was testing evolutionary predictions, and that the evidence fit the predictions of evolutionary biology, not the ones Reason To Believe (an old-earth creationist group) wanted.
You know, I’ve seen a fair number of creationists misrepresenting scientist’s work to fit their conclusions, but I’ve never seen the reverse, where a scientist grabs some creationist’s hard-earned data and claims it supports evolution. I wonder why?
Oh … I forgot. It’s because the creationists don’t have any data! Silly me.
