January 11, 2000
Last month, Steve Case and I pointed out to you that virtually all
the additions made to the standards you passed in August came
verbatim from a document, draft 8A, written this summer by the
creationist group led by Tom Willis of the Creation Science
Association of Mid-America.
Today I’ve come to ask some questions about how this could have
happened. I believe that a few of you owe the public some
explanation, for it looks like you plagiarized from the Willis draft,
falsely claimed to have written the additions yourself, and then
deceived both the public and some of your fellow board members about
what you had done.
Mr. Hill, here is a question for you: At the SUA Forum in Lawrence
you publicly said you were the primary author of the revised
standards, and you denied that any outside religious group did the
work. However, my analysis shows that only two out of over 240
complete sentences added to the standards &endash; less than 1% of
the additions &endash; were not taken verbatim from the Willis draft
8A (See www.sunflower.com/~jkrebs for complete details.)
So what exactly have you meant when you have called yourself the
“primary author”? Which sentences do you claim to have
written? Why did you not give credit to the Willis draft as the
source of the additions? Can you explain how all the Willis material
came to be included in the standards, and can you justify falsely
claiming that work as your own?
Dr. Abrams: you certainly knew the source of the additions -
information on the downloaded file of the Willis draft proves that
Tom Willis passed the draft to you, and that you later passed it back
to him. You obviously took the Willis draft 8A to the Board team
writing sessions and you used it as the source of the additions you
made. My questions to you are these: to what extent did the other
people present know you were doing this? Did you somehow conceal the
extent to which you were using the Willis draft - did you convince
them that you, or they, were the author of those sentences? If so,
how did you do that? Or did some or all of the other people present
know that you were in fact not writing original material, but were
copying from the creationist work?
Then, you and the writing team brought the standards back and
presented them as your own work. Even when asked whether you had
source material, you claimed original authorship, knowing this was
not true.
How can you justify this? How can you justify being the means by
which the creationist group had the opportunity to secretly insert
their material into the state science standards? And, how can you
justify your subsequent dishonesty in concealing the creationist
involvement from your fellow Board members and the public?
I believe that you and Mr. Hill should answer these questions. I
believe the public and the Board deserve to know the true story.
I hope news reporters ask you to explain these things. I am certain
that voters in the upcoming board elections will want explanations,
and I imagine candidates for the Board will be also interested.
In a few months, after the upcoming review of the standards, the
Board will again revisit the question of whether to continue
supporting the current standards. The question of the creationist
involvement in the standards will not go away. I believe it would be
best if the full truth about the situation were out in the open as
you proceed with the standards review process.
As you know, my position is that you should rescind your decision to
adopt these standards, both because of the history of the creationist
involvement that I’ve discussed today and because of the fact
that the standards are deficient by virtue of all the substantial
material that has been omitted. Adopting these standards has been a
mistake - the process by which the creationists were allowed to
influence the proceedings is unjustifiable, and the product is
fatally flawed. It’s not too late to correct your mistake. I
urge you to do so.
Thank you.
Jack Krebs
Lawrence, Kansas
jkrebs@sunflower.com
www.sunflower.com/~jkrebs
home: 785-832-0739
work: 785-863-2281