This is just a short note, with no comment, to alert our readers to a splendid article, Killing the Golden Goose: Evangelicals, Trump, and the War on Science, by Rodney Kennedy. Dr. Kennedy is a writer and was formerly pastor at the First Baptist Church of Dayton, an American Baptist Church, and several other churches. His article is hosted by Righting America, which is a forum for scholarly conversation run by William Trollinger and Susan Trollinger.
In brief, Kennedy argues that science is the goose that laid the golden eggs and made America prosperous. Evangelicals, he says, have targeted science for over a century. But now something has changed, and conservative evangelicals allied with Donald Trump have taken direct aim at the entire scientific enterprise.
Kennedy outlines “only a few of [Robert F.] Kennedy’s devastating moves,” “Trump’s disastrous handling of the pandemic,” and how “[s]cience before MAGA [made America] the greatest scientific nation in the world.” As a result, he says, scientists are desperate to find jobs in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere.
To comment on this article, click on its title, which will bring up the article on its own page, with its Disqus comments section after the post.
Taygete decemmaculella, Boulder, Colorado, July17, 2025. Found inside house. I have no idea whether this moth is rare, but Butterflies and Moths of North America (the link above) shows only a handful of sightings and none in Colorado.
Mark Boslough is a Research Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico. For a short biography, see the first link below.
The 2006 new-age book, “Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes,” introduced what is now called the Younger Dryas impact Hypothesis (often abbreviated as “YDIH”). The lead author was Richard Firestone, a nuclear chemist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who had dabbled in alternative archaeology and speculations about cosmic catastrophes caused by supernovas and interstellar comets. Allen West, the second author, was entirely unknown, and there is no record of his existence before 2006. He wrote most of the book in the first person. The third author, Simon Warwick-Smith, appears to have been West’s publicist, whose main contribution was to spice up his prose. The 2nd printing of the book came out on June 5, 2006, and included better graphics and some other changes, including the addition of “PhD” to West’s name.
Last month, as the 20th anniversary of this book approached, I spent some time trying to learn more about West’s background and qualifications. What led him to the prominent leadership role as sample collector and preparer, protocol developer, drafter of data graphs, interpreter of virtually all the evidence on which the YDIH is based, and corresponding author on many of their papers? How did he emerge, seemingly from nowhere, to become the primary founder and director of the Comet Research Group, which describes itself as a group of more than 63 scientists from more than 55 universities in more than 26 countries? How did he form a collaboration with biblical literalists and publish their most widely reported (but now retracted) Sodom comet paper?
I had already learned that West had changed his name from Allen Whitt in 2006 after being convicted in California of a crime associated with fraudulent groundwater survey reports in 1998, but I was never able to lay my hands on his sham reports to see for myself what was wrong with them. Last month, I ran across a USGS report that cited two previous groundwater reports that he had written in 1997, and I was able to check them out from the library of the state engineer in New Mexico.
I’ve also found public records with Allen Whitt’s name associated with earlier lawsuits involving new age businesses, which might shed some light on how he made the transition from purveyor of Sedona woo, to groundwater grifter, to the most prominent and visible member of a group of scientists that claims to have overturned paradigms in multiple established fields, including geology, archaeology, planetary science, impact physics, and paleontology.
I have started a blog series in which I will describe the trail of documents he has published, including the groundwater reports, his new age book, and his peer-reviewed papers. The first installment is here.
Comments can be made at that blog, and also here. To make them here, click on the title of this post, and the area for comments will appear on that page.
Dryocopus pileatus – (male) pileated woodpecker, Ten Mile River Greenway, Rumford, R.I. Mr. Eissenberg writes, "Pileated woodpeckers not only feed on grubs and other insects in rotting wood, they also carve meticulously sculpted nesting holes in the sides of dead trees. These birds make a strong visual case for the dinosaurian origin of birds!"
Today (1/1/26) the Kentucky Department for Public Health announced that an unvaccinated, out-of-state individual with measles visited the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky, on December 29, 2025. Local and regional health departments are scrambling to warn and inform the public.
See this local news story.
I usually laugh heartily at the buffoonery and ignorance associated with the Ark. This latest news, however, is just sad. I can’t laugh. Anti-science is putting large numbers of people in danger, not just anti-vaxx clowns. If not for the known views of the people running the Ark, one could argue this latest news is an excusable random event. Alas, the audience for the Ark Encounter and its leadership are dominated by anti-science and anti-vaccination advocates.
During the Covid pandemic and lockdown, Ken Ham railed against mask mandates, was involved in lawsuits against OSHA vaccine requirements and was ambivalent about vaccines. When writing about vaccine mandates and Covid lockdowns, Mr. Ham said:
Certainly, people died from the virus, although I think we are all confused at what the actual statistics are. People die every day from all sorts of diseases. But once a person dies, God’s Word tells us they will spend eternity in heaven or hell. So how essential is the church, the body of Christ (of which AiG is a part of), for people’s well-being? It is vital.
Several prominent creationists died of Covid during the height of the pandemic. Dr. David Menton of AiG definitely died of Covid. It is very likely that Ark Park designer Patrick Marsh died of the same cause. Henry Morris Ill, of the Institute for Creation Research also died of Covid.
It is a good thing attendance at the Ark is so low this time of year and the public’s measles exposure is minimal. Hopefully, Ark tourists, employees, and Williamstown and Grant County locals will be warned about this exposure. Unfortunately, as of 6 pm January 1, 2026, neither Answers in Genesis nor Ark Encounter have mentioned this measles case on their websites or on their numerous social media accounts. Ken Ham was on his Facebook and “X” accounts today, but only posted about Zohran Mamdani and various religious topics, nothing warning about the measles case at the Ark.
Fortunately, many local media and public health offices have announced the measles case. We will have to see if there are further cases of measles by tourists or Ark employees in the coming days.
