There’s a story about biologist Richard Sternberg that he told me after it was too late to include in my new book about his thinking, Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome. By that point, we were too far along in the final editing, so the tale escaped from me, at least as far as the book was concerned. Here it is.

My work on the book began, in a sense, 20 years ago when I reported in the Wall Street Journal on a “scandal” at the Smithsonian Institution. Sternberg was a researcher there, at the National Museum of Natural History. He edited a technical journal at the museum which published an early peer-reviewed article on the Cambrian explosion and ID by philosopher of science Stephen Meyer. All hell broke loose. But not only at the Smithsonian.

Abetting Heresy

A group of Sternberg’s colleagues and employers sought his ouster for the act of abetting heresy. That I knew, and it’s part of the story in Plato’s Revenge. But this detail I didn’t know: even the priest at Sternberg’s Greek Orthodox church at the time worried that the publication of Meyer’s article in favor of ID — then echoing across the national media — with Sternberg as editor, would embarrass parishioners who worked in the Federal Government. Some parishioners themselves had already expressed discomfort.

Sternberg was stressed and troubled and in need of pastoral support. Well, rather than seeking to strengthen him in his resolve to share the truth, the priest urged him to “recant” even if that meant lying. He cited to Sternberg the experience of Greeks when they lived under harsh Turkish rule. Often, to stay out of trouble or danger, said the priest, Greeks would dissemble — tell the Turks what they wanted to hear. And so the shocking piece of advice from the priest: “Recant!” Shelter, perhaps, the truth in your own heart but publicly disavow it.

Two Different Ways

The story cuts in two different directions. I can’t speak to the historical accuracy of the priest’s recollection of Ottoman-dominated Greece (1371–1822, a scene is pictured at the top), but I take him at his word. He ought to know. That it seemed plausible to compare the overlords at the Smithsonian and at Sternberg’s other workplace — the National Center for Biotechnology Information, part of the National Institutes of Health — to the Ottoman Empire tells you something about the bullying and bureaucracy in the world of government science.

At the same time, when Sternberg shared this experience with me and his other co-worker Emily Sandico, one recent afternoon when he was visiting our Redmond office, I was mainly shocked by the behavior of the priest. Pressured, it seems, by the egos of government workers at his church (the church will remain nameless here), he advised a stressed-out and persecuted scientist to lie.

It was a case of what Center for Science and Culture Managing Director John West calls, in the title of his recent book, Stockholm Syndrome Christianity — before Stockholm Syndrome Christianity became a thing. But Sternberg did not lie. He held fast and continued to develop his thinking, which you can now read about in what I hope is an accessible form in Plato’s Revenge.