SPECIAL STATEMENT

Wrapping Up the Pianka Controversy

Shawn Carlson, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Society for Amateur Scientists

In a special feature published in The Citizen Scientist on 31 March 2006, editor Forrest M. Mims III reported on a controversial speech given by University of Texas ecologist Eric Pianka at the annual meeting of the Texas Academy of Science. Forrest chairs the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy, and he was present at the speech.

Forrest, like many others that afternoon, left the speech believing he had heard Prof. Pianka openly advocate that the mass death of 90 percent of the world's population is the only way to save the planet from the "scourge of humanity" (Pianka's words), and that Prof. Pianka specifically championed a mutated strain of the Ebola virus as the most likely vehicle to carry this out. 

At first Forrest decided to write Prof. Pianka off as a crank. But a few weeks later he learned of a student who had attended the lecture and had been convinced that Prof. Pianka's thesis was essentially correct; 90 percent of us need to go and pronto. She posted this comment to her blog (which, because of public outcry, was taken down but is archived here):

 “... the bulk of his talk was that he's waiting for the virus that will eventually arise and kill off 90% of human population. In fact, his hope, if you can call it that, is that the ebola virus which attacks humans currently (but only through blood transmission) will mutate with the ebola virus that attacks monkeys airborne to create an airborne ebola virus that attacks humans. He's a radical thinker, that one! I mean, he's basically advocating for the death of all but 10% of the current population! And at the risk of sounding just as radical, I think he's right."

The student went on to question whether her own grandparents should be allowed to live considering the amount of the resources it took to keep them alive. At this point, Forrest realized the tremendous danger of the Piankian worldview. Although Pianka never himself advocated for anyone to release pathogens into the population, any of his biology students who believed his thesis--that only a world population crash could save the planet--might one day become professional biologists and gain access to terrible diseases in a bio-lab. If such a person were to suffer a terrible psychological stress event, like lose a family member or contract a fatal illness, might they decide to infect themselves with that terrible pathogen and, in a misguided attempt to save the planet, spread the illness as far and wide as possible? Clearly, history makes it clear that this terrible scenario is quite plausible, and if it happened thousands of innocent people could die. Faced with such a clear and present danger, Forrest rightly decided that it was his fundamental obligation as a human being to call attention to this danger and tell the world what Prof. Pianka was teaching. 

I fully supported Forrest in this effort. Indeed, in the same issue of TCS, I published an editorial challenging Prof. Pianka's science and strongly condemning his statements as being unscientific and downright dangerous. 

A huge media storm erupted as a result of the articles we published in TCS and an article that appeared in the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise. However, instead of treating his detractors as serious people with serious concerns, Prof. Pianka and his supporters have viciously attacked Forrest in print, on television and on the Web. They have made much of the fact that Forrest accepts the Intelligent Design hypothesis, and have tried to frame this debate as yet another battle in the war between Creationists and Evolutionists. 

From my vantage point at the very center of the genesis of this controversy, I can state absolutely that that is not so! But Pianka and his supporters—including members of the Skeptics community of which I myself am a member and still faithfully serve—have used the charge as a smoke screen behind which they can quit the field rather than face certain defeat. (Note: I shall take up the unfortunate flight from reason that certain members of the Skeptic community fell victim to in another forum. I shall say here only that they have embarrassed themselves shamefully, and that they have stained the reputation of Skepticism with the indelible tint of the worst type of conspiratorial reasoning.) 

How can be I so confident that Pianka has no defense to offer for his views? Because neither Prof. Pianka nor his supporters have attacked me or rebutted the arguments I made in my editorial. I have to ask…why not? In fact, to the best of my knowledge, neither Pianka nor any of his serious supporters have even acknowledged me in this debate, despite my editorial being placed prominently in TCS and being linked to at the bottom of Forrest's report. 

Why has Pianka felt free to level the most scandalously inaccurate charges against Forrest Mims, the amateur scientist, and not even mention me—a Ph.D., MacArthur Fellow and well-known evolutionist? If my arguments were wrong, Pianka certainly should have pointed that out and won the day in a fair and open contest. But rather than deal with the facts at issue, Pianka and his supporters have chosen to frame the debate as the insider vs. the outsider, the Evolutionist against the Creationist, and that argument falls to tatters the instant they acknowledge my editorial. Indeed, Pianka himself has taken this characterization to the level of the utterly absurd by going so far as to portray himself in the role of a near mythic hero, a champion of evolution who has become the victim of a great conspiracy that is aimed at doing nothing less that to subvert the public confidence in science itself.

In short, Pianka has used his attack on Forrest Mims as a ploy to obfuscate the truth that for years he has preached his scientifically untenable thesis of doomsday ecology; that humanity is a "scourge" and that 90 percent of us need to die and soon if the planet is to be saved. 

On that point the record is quite clear. And you don't have to take Forrest's and my word for it, for Pianka himself published on his web site a 2004 student evaluation of one of his courses that affirms what Forrest and others heard Pianka say in his speech:

"Though I agree that convervation [sic] biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90% of the human population should die of ebola [sic] is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness."

Then there is James Redford, who Forrest and I do not know and have never met. Mr. Redford researched the controversy independently and published his detailed findings in "Forrest Mims did not Misrepresent Prof. Eric Pianka's Statements." Redford's report cites reports by several eyewitnesses who heard the same speech Forrest did, as well as statements by students published on Prof. Pianka's own website. The Redford report clearly establishes the veracity of Forrest's article.

Since our reports were published more information has come to light about academics that support a global pandemic as a way of saving the Earth. Two recent commentaries on this scary subject have been written by Jay Richards of the Acton Institute and Deroy Murdock, a Scripps Howard columnist who is also a senior fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Forrest and I have also received e-mails from scholars and one university president affirming that some radical environmentalists advocate a global pandemic. And we have even received e-mails from several scholars and others who want just that. (One prefers an asteroid strike.)

Forrest Mims and I both proudly stand by our articles. Doomsday ecology is an unscientific, anti-human and hateful philosophy that must be struggled against. Left unchallenged it could one day lead to the mass death for which these sirens of destruction are so loudly singing. 

I urge members of SAS to review the links given above so that you can better understand why I directed Forrest to write his report. For as I wrote in my editorial that accompanied Forrest's article,

"When the professional scientists have lost their sense of moral outrage of such ideologies, then it falls to America's great community of citizen scientists to be the conscious of science."