One recent narrative is that vaccines cause autism in children (see the three-article special section “Vaccines and Autism: Myths and Misconceptions,” SI, November/December 2007). There are few narratives as dramatic, as inflaming, as that of a child being threatened, and that is the core conflict examined by Paul Offit, MD, in his masterful Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure. In the course of his own carefully written narrative, Offit, the chief of Infectious Diseases and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, tells many stories that come together to provide a deeply disturbing depiction of how quack science based on falsified research quickly fueled a monstrous conspiracy theory accusing vaccine manufacturers and the physicians administering them of willfully harming children in a malicious conspiracy for profit.

Offit’s approach to this poisonous idea is to tell his tale from the beginning. He dates the earliest discussion of autism (as a diagnosis) to a paper published in 1943 and tells of the distressing rapidity with which bad information began to crowd out good research. Bruno Bettelheim and his harmful and incorrect ideas about autism and parenting provide an early model for the accusatory and factually deficient approaches taken up by many others, but the grandfather of this conspiracy theory lies in the “research” published in the Lancet in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist working at London’s Royal Free Hospital.

Offit weaves the story of Wakefield’s rise and fall through the book, vividly illustrating how his medical fraud and quackery metastasized through the autism community. It became the basis for the accusation that the medical community not only did not know what to do about autism but was actually intentionally causing it through an amoral and greedy pursuit of profits by administering immunizations that they knew caused the disease.

Offit carefully and clearly explains the shaky basis of Wakefield’s theory: that the MMR vaccine causes inflammation to intestines, allowing harmful proteins (though he could not identify what those were) to pass through the damaged intestine and harm a rapidly developing brain. That such a finding was published in one of the oldest and most respected medical journals in Great Britain, the Lancet, caused an explosion of press coverage whose shock waves carried over the globe. Wakefield’s hypothesis was not generally supported by his paper, but the sheen of legitimacy granted to it by its publication was thrown into the maelstrom of a sensation-seeking and conflict-hungry global media machine that roared to a white-hot pitch in a matter of days.

The need for a narrative took over at this point. That the scientific method (which takes time) and the court proceedings that arose in the aftermath (which take even longer) utterly disproved the legitimacy of this theory was lost on a media interested in dramatic conflict and the pronouncements of celebrities, no matter how incorrect and ignorant they may be, over clarity. The compelling, emotionally gratifying narrative of an evil entity defied by newly empowered victims sells better than the slow, reflective work of science.

Tragically, this story does not begin and end with Wakefield. Despite a lack of corroborative research and court proceedings that revealed the depth to which Wakefield falsified his dubious research, the idea of vaccines causing autism has mutated and survived. If it wasn’t MMR, then it was the mercury in the thimerisol used to preserve multidose vials of vaccines. Wakefield opened a Pandora’s box of bad science that shows no signs of abating. “Cures” have abounded, and some have caused greater harm and even death to the children treated. This is a narrative that still lacks a happy ending.

Science still hasn’t determined the cause of autism, which is frustrating a community of people who are desperate for a cure for their children’s medical condition. What this narrative provides to parents of autistic children (and anyone else interested in their fate) is someone to blame, a nemesis they can safely direct their anger toward. Autism has been a mystery since it was initially identified over half a century ago, and progress on research has only recently begun to illuminate its genetic basis. In the absence of a clear cause, it is more emotionally satisfying to identify already existing villains (Big Pharma and Big Medicine) as the cause of it all. Offit himself has been the victim of this abuse but has bravely produced a definitive account of this tragic story.

Such flinty insights make one yearn for a present-day Mencken to have been at the trial of Kitzmiller v. Dover Board of Education, a twenty-first century Monkey Trial, to launch a fusillade at the intellectual dishonesty that ran rampant in Judge John Jones’s courtroom. Matthew Chapman, the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, is no Mencken, but his account of the trial in 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania is an entertaining and thoughtful look at a notable battle in America’s seemingly endless culture wars.

The book begins with a loose and often rambling journey through the events that led to the trial in late 2005. A decision by the Dover, Pennsylvania, Board of Education to purchase the creationist/intelligent design book Of Pandas and People to replace its aging biology textbook for use in ninth-grade science classes was met with strong resistance by two of its members and a group of eleven parents who united to sue with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union. As the case progressed, more interested parties became attached to the case, and it grew to become, like the Scopes trial, a flashpoint for argument, a cause cél`ebre, a media event across the globe, and yet another referendum on the separation of church and state.

The three rings of this circus were filled with dozens of colorful performers, all of whom are profiled with an eye for telling detail (although that detail is too often a label as “eccentric”) and a large dose of compassion. Indeed, Chapman often comments about how likable the people he encounters are, even though one would think he would dislike them. Leading this category is former board member Bill Buckingham, a retired police and corrections officer who is the most pugnacious and belligerent of the bunch. He defiantly shouted during one of the board discussions over the textbook controversy, “Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can’t someone take a stand for him?” That his curriculum decisions and comments were made while addicted to OxyContin is not glossed over by Chapman. But when he interviews Buckingham during the trial, almost two years after his outrageous behavior that precipitated the conflict, he finds a broken-down man who has experienced the deaths of many family members, had two stints in detox, and contemplated suicide.

Chapman does not have trouble finding compassion for Buckingham but cannot find it in himself to have it for the other board members, and in a chapter titled “Bonsell and His Trinity of Loyal Women,” he gets in touch with his inner Mencken. He finds a particular distaste for one of the female board members whom he describes as a “woman who seemed to think—against all evidence—that everything she did and said was astoundingly adorable and funny” and who “fell squarely into the repellent category without mitigation.” Even the normally evenhanded Judge Jones became exasperated with her inability to answer questions clearly and stopped her from leaving the witness stand after questioning by attorneys in an attempt to clarify her opaque answers.

As the book progresses to the trial stage, its focus sharpens considerably, as does Chapman’s observations of the proceedings. His detailing of the slow and steady demolition of Michael Behe’s credibility as a scientist at the hands of the plaintiff’s lawyers, including the uncovering of documentation that indicates that his “landmark” theory of irreducible complexity was plagiarized from an article in the June 1994 issue of the Creation Research Society Quarterly written by Dr. Dick Bliss, is to be savored.

In some ways, Chapman is the polar opposite of Mencken: he is empathetic where Mencken is condemning, inquisitive where Mencken is barbed. His sensitivity, however, does not mean that the considerable dishonesty of the defendants and the damage done by their actions are slighted. The concluding chapter of the book effectively braids together the many threads of observation made by Chapman about the grave dangers of fundamentalism and irrationality.

While not as scholarly as Edward Humes’s recent Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul, Chapman’s book focuses on the human story behind the trial and succeeds at illuminating the emotional and ideological underpinnings of this legal and political event. Reading these two books along with Judge Jones’s masterfully written decision in the case provides a wide-ranging and thorough view of this generation’s own Scopes trial.

Readers might be justified in thinking that a response to it may be a fool’s errand. However, amidst all the invective and misdirection there are instances when Sampson calls into question the fundamental accuracy and truthfulness of the article. Those require a reply.

After two paragraphs of tiresome boilerplate of how besieged Christians are in America, he accuses me of visiting the park “cowardly undercover.” I attended the park like any other visitor would. I paid my admission fee, toured the grounds with the tour group, wandering off a few times but never sneaking anywhere. I was never asked why I was visiting. I was not asked to declare any religious affiliation. I was simply asked how many admissions I wished to purchase. My intention was to provide an honest, accurate picture of what any average visitor to the park would experience. This hardly constitutes a form of cowardice or being undercover.

The same paragraph accuses me of being “less than truthful” regarding Hovind, the park’s founder and builder. All statements regarding Mr. Hovind’s interactions with the criminal and civil courts of Florida and Escambia County are a matter of public record and are available both at the county courthouse and on the Internet at the Clerk of the Court’s Web site. All statements about Hovind’s battle with the IRS were taken from media reports readily accessible on the Internet and from wire services. Hovind was arrested for assault on a parishioner. Hovind’s home and office were raided by the IRS. Hovind has spent over two years and countless taxpayer dollars on a quixotic battle with Escambia County officials over a failure to pay a $50 fee. These are verifiable facts and their sources were listed in the article.

The fourth paragraph compounds a simple error by throwing insults, asserting that the boarded up buildings I witnessed along Old Palafox Road were in that condition because of Hurricane Ivan, which struck Pensacola on September 16, 2004. I visited the park in June 2004. Hurricane Ivan was not a factor in the long stream of boarded up businesses that line Old Palafox Road. The park stands out in its surroundings, and it merited the attention given it. Dinosaur Adventure Land (DAL) is surrounded by empty, abandoned commercial properties, many in disrepair. Its neighbors are a “buy-here-pay-here” used car dealership, auto repair shops, and a pawn shop. The owners and operators of DAL know this and are dishonest in this dodge, hiding behind the fig leaf of a natural disaster.

Interestingly, the next paragraph does not dispute the rather small number of visitors to the park as incorrect, but attempts to inflate the numbers as an example of a successful outreach. Sampson goes on to taunt: “How many students are educated everyday from Skeptical Inquirer?” While I am not sure of precise numbers, adding together the circulation of the magazine, the efforts of staff at CSICOP and the Center for Inquiry for education and outreach via television programs, media appearances, and so on, the number of people educated is considerable. However, I am certain of the number of visitors educated at DAL: zero. There is simply no education to be found at the park.

Sampson accuses me of launching ad hominem attacks against Hovind, trying to discredit creationism by discrediting Hovind and not directly addressing creationism’s “science.” He defends Hovind and creationism by posing a hypothetical: “Suppose an algebra teacher was convicted of theft and eventually sent to jail. Does that mean algebra is therefore disproved?” My brief biographical sketch of Hovind did not intend to discredit creationism by association. Creationism is a fiction no matter who its proponent. My intention was to provide a snapshot portrait of the scofflaw who built the park I went on to describe in great detail.

Sampson wrongfully accuses the magazine and myself of fraud, insisting that my description of the park is not true. He states: “Later, Martinez claims to have taken pictures of the Dinosaur Adventure Land grounds. Unsurprisingly he fails to include them in his article, but instead only prints an outdated picture of the early stages of DAL’s creation museum building number 5. If Martinez included pictures of DAL grounds with the claims he’s making, it would be all too clear that he’s purposely painting an inaccurate portrait.”

During my visit in June 2004, I took more than 115 digital and film photographs of Dinosaur Adventure Land. The Skeptical Inquirer chose to run only three of them due to space considerations, more than the number Sampson incorrectly states. The photograph of the Creation Museum Sampson attacks as outdated was taken in June 2004, along with all the other images in the article. The top photograph on page 48 is of the actual pamphlet travelers in Florida’s Panhandle can pick up as an advertisement of the park. Their own advertisement depicts the “Fossil Dig” pit, the science center, the “Circle Swivel Springasaurus,” and the “Dinosaur Hunt.” All these are described accurately in the article.

Sampson is particularly exercised about my depiction of the tour guides at DAL. He states his pride in their ministering to the guests. Their quiet physical intimidation of guests at the park is more of a piece with the sales techniques of used car lots than the ministry. He also misses the point of the passage in which I describe eavesdropping on the conversation of a group of guides. He objected that I appeared to be mocking them for discussing scripture in a Christian park. The point I was making was that here were a group of young men, early in their adult lives, passing time by enthusiastically criticizing another branch of the Christian religion. It was difficult to reconcile all the earlier talk of Jesus and love with the “down-time” religious chauvinism I heard.

Sampson wraps up his indictment of my article by continuing to assert that it is a sloppy hatchet job that distorts the many valuable lessons DAL imparts to its visitors and lies about the contents of the park. He makes these claims despite the fact that he knows the descriptions are correct. He claims that a current and accurate photograph is outdated. He claims that the park’s surroundings are in disrepair due to a hurricane when he knows that the deterioration of these buildings predate the storm.

He keeps up a steady drumbeat of mocking the piece because it does nothing to disprove creationism scientifically. That was never the intention. This magazine has published many other articles by some of the finest scientists in the world effectively demolishing creationism as the pseudoscience it is. It should have been obvious to most readers that this was intended as descriptive reporting, and done in an intentionally deadpan style so that the absurdity of the place would shine through. This piece was carefully researched, reported, and written, and I stand by every word of it.

Sampson perpetrates a shabby sham of a rebuttal to my piece, and distorts what the article actually states and reports. Sampson should have included a link to the actual article on the Skeptical Inquirer Web page so that his visitors could have read the article for themselves. But then Hovind and his Dinosaur Adventure Land have never been about accuracy and honesty.

The year 2005 brings the centennial of the publication of the seventeenth volume of Annalen der Physik, one of the leading academic physics journals of its day. This particular issue has achieved a legend all its own, because its contents included three papers by a hitherto obscure patent clerk and physicist named Albert Einstein. Addressing the topics of statistical mechanics, electromagnetism, and relativity, the author painstakingly and clearly laid out a vision of time, space, and the physical forces of the universe that would eventually transform our understanding of our place in time and the universe.

Einstein’s “miracle year” of 1905 did not come about easily. As Michio Kaku depicts in his nimbly written and absorbing new biography, the path to this breakthrough was strewn with academic setbacks and hardships due to young Einstein’s very individualistic learning methods. Balking at the pointless rigidity of German schooling, Einstein grew to become an accomplished autodidact both from orientation and necessity. Difficulties in the use of expressive language led instructors of the young Einstein to forsake his education, predicting a future of simple labor. His peripatetic family life (his father tried and failed at several businesses during Einstein’s youth, resulting in many relocations across eastern Europe) also disrupted young Einstein’s education. It is an irony treasured by countless parents that the muttering child forsaken by an inflexible educational system was in reality the greatest genius of the age, perhaps of all time. Einstein had to educate himself, but, more profoundly, he could educate himself, usually far beyond the abilities of his instructors.

This blazing mind singed more than a few egos, and his attempts at earning a doctorate or even a teaching position were actively thwarted by professors and administrators he had alienated with his superior intellect and impatience with their inability to recognize the gifts he possessed. He was finally awarded a doctorate just a few months before the publication of his landmark papers, while still working as a clerk in a Swiss patent office.

The reaction to these papers was muted at first, as the science community digested ideas that, if correct, would at the very least amend shortcomings in Newton’s theories of motion, but, in fact, would cause an upheaval in contemporary views of time, space, gravity, and quantum physics. Eventually the theories were acclaimed, and as subsequent experimental testing of the theories validated Einstein’s conjectures, his fame erupted from the enclosed world of mathematical physics into the nascent world of celebrity culture. In the time between the world wars, Einstein became the most recognized science figure in the world and one of the most famous by any measure.

This burst of fame roughly coincided with an increasing hostility toward Jews in Germany and Eastern Europe, hostility that was faced by even a nonobservant Jew like Einstein. His prominence made him a highly visible target for the rising Nazi movement. A German magazine published an edition listing perceived enemies of the Nazi movement with Einstein as its cover model and a caption reading, “Not yet hanged.” In short order, Einstein fled to America, where his celebrity was fixed.

It was while in America, at Princeton University, that Einstein became the tousle-haired, pipe-smoking, sockless, and sweatshirt-wearing figure that is his widely recognized caricature. He spent his time in America working on a grand unified theory, the Holy Grail of physics, but with no success. He used his celebrity for activism (and irritating J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI) and charitable works, seemingly enjoying a fame that baffled him, until his death in 1955. Kaku addresses these last few decades of Einstein’s life with great sympathy and admiration. Most biographers gloss over this period as the fading glory of a once-great scientist, but Kaku argues persuasively that the groundwork for much latter-day research was laid during these years. As Kaku writes, “crumbs that have tumbled off Einstein’s plate are now winning Nobel Prizes for oth- er scientists.”

Kaku’s book, the third volume in W.W. Norton’s “Great Discoveries” series of popular-science books, is a fine accomplishment, balancing a sensitive and sympathetic narrative of Einstein’s difficult life with marvelously clear and lucid explanations of theories that are truly mind-boggling and genuinely awe- inspiring. As technologies have advanced, experimental science has been able to catch up with the thought experiments of a lonely patent clerk with a seemingly boundless mind, and he has been vindicated repeatedly. The first century of Einstein’s influence has been remarkable and thrilling; one can only dream about what the second century may bring.

Old Palafox Street is an aging, two-lane stretch of road running through the middle of Pensacola, Florida. To the east of Old Palafox, the next major road is Interstate 110 and in between those thoroughfares rests the sprawling campus of Pensacola Christian Academy, quickly followed by the even more sprawling campus of Pensacola Christian College. Both campuses are crammed with spotlessly maintained buildings and grounds. They stand out starkly amid the visible economic decline that surrounds them. The area is littered with empty, boarded-up buildings and abandoned strip malls.

Less than a mile north of the Academy on Old Palafox is a Christian educational center aimed at an even younger set of pupils. Bracketed by auto-repair businesses and across the street from a pawn shop, Dinosaur Adventure Land beckons all comers with a billboard-sized street sign that includes a fierce cartoon dinosaur and announces, “Evolution: What a Dumb Idea!” The park’s slogan is: “Where dinosaurs and the Bible meet!” Built in 2001 by Kent Hovind, founder of ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, the park boasts having hosted over 38,000 guests (Goodnough 2004). (This number may seem small compared to attendance rates at other Florida theme parks like Walt Disney World and Universal Studios, but it is also small in actual numbers. This averages out to approximately two hundred and forty guests a week, or less than fifty a day.)

The building of this rather small park has created a “tempest in a teapot” kind of controversy with local government. Essentially, Hovind converted the backyard of his home at 29 Cummings Road into a theme park, improvising an entrance off Palafox and refusing to file the proper zoning-permit requests with Escambia County. Hovind was charged on September 13, 2002, for failure to observe county zoning regulations, but through many legal maneuvers (multiple requests to have judges recuse themselves, switching lawyers and eventually requesting a public defender, and various stays requested, once for failing to appear), the case is approaching its two-year anniversary in the court system with no conclusion imminent. The charge is a second-degree misdemeanor resulting from refusing to pay a $50 permitting fee.

This is not Hovind’s only scrape with the law (a visit to the Escambia County Clerk of the Courts Web site shows over a dozen court cases involving Hovind and his family). A month before the misdemeanor charge, Hovind was charged with felony assault, battery, and burglary with assault or battery. Charges were dropped in December 2002 when the victim, a member of Hovind’s congregation, withdrew the complaint. (A lengthy description of the incident and an e-mail tit-for-tat between Hovind and his accuser can be found at www.geocities.com/kenthovind.) More significantly, the Internal Revenue Service raided Hovind’s home and office in April 2004, confiscating financial documents related to the ministry and the park since January 1997. The IRS is charging that Hovind is evading taxes on more than $1 million in annual income and does not have a business license nor tax-exempt status for his ministry and the park (Norman 2004).

Dinosaur Adventure Land (DAL) and Hovind’s home and ministry compound reside on approximately two acres. The entrance to DAL is off a road dominated by industrial parks, car dealerships, closed businesses, and convenience stores. The rear entrance, which leads to Hovind’s home and the buildings for his Creation Science Evangelism (CSE) ministry, are off a pleasant and quiet residential road lined with modest single-family homes. One could walk from the entrance of the park (with a gate that very much recalls the memorable entrance in the film Jurassic Park) to the entrance of Hovind’s ministry in about thirty seconds. The effect really is like being in someone’s big backyard, stuffed full of children’s games and playground equipment . . . and lots of fiberglass dinosaurs. (A pamphlet in the bookstore explains that the park is available for children’s birthday parties.)

It is notable that the “Suggested Donation $7.00” mentioned on the ground-level entrance sign becomes a required admission fee by the time one enters the attraction. The park is centralized around the three-story main building that houses the admission office/bookstore, “Hands-on Science Center,” and park offices.

The bookstore is small but has a wide-ranging selection of books, videos, DVDs, fossil replicas, hats, T-shirts, toys, cold drinks, photographic film, and so forth. The book selection reveals a broad array of concerns for Hovind aside from creationism. Unsurprisingly, there are titles addressing how to fight the teaching of evolution in public schools, but there are also some that describe how to fight the coming New World Order. Beyond conspiracies, Hovind also seeks to inform visitors about cryptozoology (books about sea and lake monsters—more about that later), home schooling, the risks of immunization, and a government-suppressed cure for cancer (Laetril).

Touring Pseudoscience

Practically from the moment you enter the park, you are surrounded by tour guides. They are all male, appear to be in their twenties, and all wear the same yellow, oxford, button-down shirts with the DAL logo embossed above the breast pocket. They are omnipresent and suffocatingly attentive. They are the most important part of the park, because they are the ones who carry out its true mission. They keep up a breathless stream of patter and proselytizing, declaring almost everything in the environs an example of God’s love and power.

The guides sweep the crowd of children and their adult escorts to the first part of the tour, called “The Expedition.” It is a collection of playground equipment and learning-center activities dressed up with dinosaur-related names and the occasional dino head or tail. There is a sign next to each activity that explains what to do, the science it purports to illustrate, and the spiritual lesson that one should really take away from the experience. There is a simple lever-and-pulley device that a child can sit in and pull himself up and down on very easily. It is called the “Longneck Liftasaurus,” and after the guides demonstrate the device with a child volunteer, they tell their audience that while the block-and-tackle device can give one a physical lift—that’s the science lesson—it is only God that can give one a spiritual lift—that’s the spiritual lesson.

Then it is on to the “Circle Swivel Springasaurus,” in which a child volunteer is spun around a clearing on a swiveling harness that is suspended under the spreading branches of a huge, live oak tree. The child is instructed in how to hold his legs and arms to control his balance and change the shape of the arc. The science lesson includes some vague statements about centrifugal forces and conservation of energy, but the real point is that a life without God can leave you dizzy and confused and only God’s guidance can show you the way. This is recited while the child stumbles around and nearly falls, indeed dizzy and confused after his Springasaurus experience, eliciting laughter from the crowd. The guides get a bigger laugh when they advise him that if he feels like he’s going to “puke,” he “should puke in the bushes and not on any of the rides.” This, like almost everything said by the tour guides, is scripted. There is a television in the bookstore running a copy of the videotaped tour of the park hosted by Hovind, and his narration, even down to the “puke” joke, is repeated by the guides.

And on and on it goes. A visit to a common trampoline equipped with a low basketball hoop is next. The object is to bounce but stay in enough control to focus on getting the ball through the hoop. God, the guide intones, requires your total concentration; you need to focus on Him too. A climbing wall gets the same tiresome treatment. The guides get to rest their voices when they declare twenty minutes of free play for the kids.

Two single-user restrooms form a border to “The Expedition,” and they provide what may be the most humorous item in the park. Bolted to the wall in both the boys and girls rooms are chains with tracts by the cartoonist/evangelist Jack Chick hanging from them. The pages are laminated and set on rings for ease of reading while using the toilet.

Eventually, the guides gather up the visitors and direct them to the “Raptor Range” on the other side of the park. This section follows the same pattern as “The Expedition,” but with less control by the guides. The area is dominated by the “Dinosaur Frisbee Golf” course and the “Super Sound Satellite” (two concave disks that send echoes back and forth across the park that can only be heard by standing and speaking in a particular spot). The game with the longest line is the “Dinosaur Hunt,” which is two large, rubber slingshots mounted in a wooden frame. Participants are given three water balloons apiece to launch at a metal-sculpture T. rex and stegosaurus.

During the free-play session earlier, five of the guides went to that game and began filling a large bucket with water balloons in preparation for the next stage of the tour. I wandered past taking photographs and eavesdropped on their conversation for a few moments. One would expect that men of that age would be talking about girls, sports, or even politics, but they were animatedly discussing a particular bit of scripture and how Presbyterians were particularly misguided in their interpretation. There was much gentle tsk-tsking when a balloon got loose from a fill-valve and sprayed the khakis of two of the guides.

Second in popularity to the water-balloon attack is the “Flingasaurus,” a four-seat swing like one would find at a carnival. It is painted with black and yellow striping and spots on a green background. There is also a teeter-totter with a crossbeam that is cut and painted to resemble a row of large teeth. The science lessons are quite a bit thinner here than on “The Expedition,” but the spiritual lessons are always there.

The “Science” Center

The crowd is eventually pushed along to visit the “Science Center.” Happily, it is air-conditioned and parents are slow to leave when the next stage of the tour is announced. The center is probably the cleverest in its seduction of the park visitors. Spread over three stories are demonstrations of actual science (gyroscopes, the Bernoulli effect, magnets, etc.) resting side by side with displays of pseudoscience, parapsychology, religious cant, and quackery. Each display is written in the same authoritative voice, but the voice is deceptive. Factually accurate sentences are mixed in with sentences that are patently false, producing a farrago of argument that only the most careful of readers will be able to parse.

A perfect example of this stands directly to the right of the entrance door. A sandwich sign rests above a long trough filled with sand, and a water spigot rests above the sand. Visitors are encouraged to make their own miniature Grand Canyon the way it was really made: by the Noachian Flood. The signs mock any other ideas of the canyon’s formation.

Another installation purports to address Haeckel’s Law (biogenetic law, or “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”), but only muddies and confuses an already complex debate. The many reasonable criticisms of Haeckel’s research and theorizing are blown out of proportion until they are distorted. One would believe that Haeckel’s theory was still an important part of biological research. This sign is the most intemperate of only a few that actually become active in their criticism. Most exhibits are gentle and nonconfrontational in their tone, which is what would be expected of instruction aimed at children. One seeking fire and brimstone would have to look elsewhere.

The middle of the bottom floor of the center is a sandpit with toy shovels and pails so that younger children can dig up fossil replicas. The pit is surrounded on three sides by glass cases at waist height that include fossil replicas and signs with scurrilous information denigrating geology, chemistry, and evolution. Particularly notable are the two models in the case directly next to the entrance of the “Fossil Dig.” One dramatizes a scene from the Old English epic poem Beowulf (an inexpensive Dover Books edition of the poem is for sale in the bookstore.) The plaque explains that this is one of many examples of dinosaurs living contemporaneously with humans; apparently, Beowulf is a historical documentary and not just a legend. Next to that is a model of a sinking ship with survivors floating in the clear acrylic waves being caused by what appears to be an Ichthyosaurus. The plaque accompanying this model provides a quote from a survivor of a torpedoed English warship, which describes the sea monster he sighted during the chaos. This is only the first example of what will be a much more richly addressed topic in the “Creation Museum”: dinosaurs did not become extinct in an ice age but are the sea and lake monsters that are known as Nessie, Ogopogo, Champ, and so on.

A staircase to the second floor runs along the back of the “Fossil Dig.” The staircase is decorated with an installation that has more than three dozen different kinds of scissors attached to it and declares itself to be “The Phylogenetic Tree: Scissor Evolution?” The second floor is much smaller and contains a few computers and television/VCR combos to peruse the CD-ROM and video library offered there. Small posters illustrating various aspects of evolution and geology decorate the walls of the second floor. They are printed with what appears to be a red-ink stamp that declares each of these tenets of scientific research a “Lie.” In the midst of these posters, Haeckel is invoked again and a small flame of outrage jets up briefly. The text on one poster insists that embryos never grow gills and that abortions are killing human beings, not fish. There is also a detailed model of Noah’s Ark.

The third floor is considerably smaller than the two other floors and is a recreation room with a television, board games, and an air-hockey table. The table is scattered with pamphlets for the park, Bibles, and many copies of Chick cartoon tracts that rail against evolution.

The tour moves on to the “Creation Museum,” which directly adjoins the main building and has a fiberglass T. rex dramatically bursting through the wall above the museum’s entry door. The first room of the museum greets you with a large heirloom Bible opened to Genesis. The room also houses a collection of several small animals (a Madagascar hissing cockroach, a ruby tarantula, chinchillas, etc.) whose complexities are alleged to be sterling examples of deficiencies in evolution that serve to disprove Darwin’s science and demonstrate the superiority of creation science.

The next room is a small theatre where one can watch a videocassette that explains Hovind’s grand vision of biblical creation, a young earth, and so forth. Directly above the large-screen television is a sign that says: “Reality! Evolution is a religion.” The back of the theater consists of two large, glass display cases, one that addresses the many ways in which the Noachian Flood created the modern world and the other devoted to explaining that dragons are not mythology but instead accurate reports of dinosaurs living among humans.

The third and final room of the museum is a collection of fossils, including a plaster cast (under glass with muted lights, as if it was truly a fragile antiquity and not a painted plaster casting) that purports to be from a thirteen-foot-tall human giant that was unearthed in California in 1883. This, coupled with other anecdotes and photos of other modern-age giants (Robert Wadlow, et al.), leads to an assertion that biblical accounts of giants were indeed factual. The room also contains a collection of replica fossils both real and fraudulent (including replicas of the Ica Stones and Paluxy dinosaur/man tracks). The room resembles a cramped version of a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum.

Dinosaurs and Deception

Dinosaur Adventure Land is deceptive on many levels. It is obviously wrong about its claims of a scientific explanation of the origins of life on Earth based on the Book of Genesis. But it is also deceptive in its manner and methods. Much of the park contains little more than playground equipment, exhibits, and activities one would find at a real science education center for children. These rather commonplace activities are dressed up in a dinosaur drag that has no real point except to act as a come-on, a lure to children and families that might otherwise stray away. A plain creationist museum would serve to attract only the already converted, acting as an echo chamber so that they might have their ideas repeated back to them. To attach a bunch of silly dinosaur names to playground equipment and stick fiberglass dinosaur parts here and there is the beginning of an effective marketing ploy. The realization that there really isn’t anything much dinosaur about it comes only after you have paid your admission and been subjected to a lengthy bath of proselytizing.

The proselytizing is very carefully scripted. Such a script is necessary because the connections between the games and activities and biblical doctrine are virtually nonexistent. The lesson signs are usually too high for any but the tallest of children to read, and the kids probably wouldn’t read them anyway. The guides are always there, always polite and always present, repeating the message. The message needs to be emphasized in this way because the items in the science center and museum are so scattered and diffuse that they never really add up to an effective argument. Here you will find some confounding assertions about granite and polonium halos; there a sign calls Darwin a liar. Here’s a display telling you that sea monsters are real; there a beach ball floats on a shaft of air generated by a fan. Curatorially speaking, the place is a disaster.

Dinosaur Adventure Land is just a playground tricked out with dinosaur dressage to attract an audience that can then be enticed, seduced, and eventually duped into accepting superstitions, pseudoscience, and plain nonsense passed off with a patina of both scientific and religious authority.

Acknowledgement

I thank Susan McLaughlin and Toria Martinez for their invaluable assistance in the researching and writing of this article. I also thank Barry Karr for his help and support.

References

• Analysis of Kent Hovind. 2004. Available at www.kent-hovind.com/.
• Dinosaur Adventure Land. 2004. Available at www.dinosauradventureland.com.
• Goodnough, Abby. 2004. “Darwin-free Fun for Creationists.” The New York Times, May 1.
• Hovind, Kent. 2004. Available at www.drdino.com.
• Norman, Brett. 2004. “IRS Raids Business, Home of Creationist.” Pensacola News Journal, April 17.
• The Talk.Origins Archive. 2004. Available at talkorigins.org.