Actions Speak Louder: Exposing Kirk Fitzhugh’s Denial of Suppressing Freedom of Thought on Intelligent Design

In the previous post in this series, we saw that Natural History Museum of LA County (NHMLAC) scientist Kirk Fitzhugh denied that academic freedom for intelligent design (ID) is “being suppressed.” After reviewing the severe misconceptions that Dr. Fitzhugh has about ID, we come to the California Science Center and its decision to cancel the screening of Darwin’s Dilemma last year. In that decision, Kirk Fitzhugh played no direct role but he did participate in the correspondence surrounding it. On October 15, under the subject heading “DI spin,” NHMLAC scientist John Long e-mailed Fitzhugh about attending the rescheduled American Freedom Alliance (AFA) event on October 25. He wrote: “I enjoy reading your commentary on the ID issues. Will catch you Read More ›

Does LA County Natural History Museum Scientist Kirk Fitzhugh Oppose “Freedom of Thought” for Intelligent Design?

In my prior post, I explained that Kirk Fitzhugh, a scientist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC), wrongly claims that intelligent design (ID) is not testable. Fitzhugh’s error that ID is “immune to testing” is important. While he should have the academic freedom to believe and contend that ID is “immune to testing” and not scientific, he uses his claim that ID is not testable to justify suppressing ID. He anticipates this deficiency in his position, and thus writes: First, there’s the claim that science precludes expression of thought. In the context of ID, such a claim of overt suppression is inaccurate. Science is a process of acquiring ever-increasing causal understanding, and such a process has Read More ›

Correcting Kirk Fithzhugh’s Misunderstandings About Intelligent Design

In my prior post, I noted that for years I’ve owned a graduate assignment on evolutionary classification by LA County Museum of Natural History scientist Kirk Fitzhugh. After completing this “Classification” project, he went on to earn his PhD in biology and today is Curator of Polychaetes at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC). Fitzhugh was part of the internal discussions at NHMLAC that I’ve been writing about, in which participants at one point planned to tell the California Science Center (CSC), “We urge you to cancel this event.” Fitzhugh, however, is not nearly so private about his disagreement with ID as some of his NHMLAC colleagues. It’s important to note that Dr. Fitzhugh should have every Read More ›

Responding to LA County Natural History Museum Scientist Kirk Fitzhugh

In a prior post, we saw how the LA County Museum of Natural History (LACMNH) contributed to the pressure on the California Science Center to cancel a pro-ID event sponsored by American Freedom Alliance. But there’s a little story to tell here about a fairly vocal anti-ID scientist at the LACMNH. When I was an undergraduate, a friend gave me a packet titled “Classification: Graduate Student Project,” which explained various methods of building phylogenetic trees. The packet is a three-ring binder collecting the pages of a project completed in 1983 by a then-graduate student at George Washington University, Kirk Fitzhugh. His name came up as I was reviewing e-mail correspondence related to the California Science Center’s cancellation of its contract Read More ›