Entry #056: Barbara Cargill

Another stock conservative creationist, the (well-documented) threat posed by Barbara Cargill lies in the fact that she’s on the Texas Board of Education – another David Barton acolyte, and a Cynthia Dunbar sycophant, in other words. A fine example of the acumen represented by this group of clowns, with emphasis on Cargill, can be found here.

As expected, Cargill is a happy peruser of scientific articles she hasn’t read and wouldn’t understand if she did, twisting any new modification of any biological theory to support creationism – especially newspaper articles reporting (”reporting”) scientific findings. For example, the famous New Scientist article ”Darwin was wrong” (on the exact taxonomy of the Tree of Life, hardly surprising), was interpreted as a ”significant challenge” to the theory of Evolution.

She also decided, in her role as a Board of Education representative, that the age of the universe and whether it's expanding was up for a vote by the board members. As you would expect from the Texas Board of Education, the proposed amendment passed.

Here is a good resource on Cargill (and the rest of the reality-haters, denialists and anti-science fundies related to the Texas Board of Education). She's currently the chairman of the board - and continuing in exact same manner as before to continue the dismal history of the TBoE. Although her allies from the McLeroy years are generally off the Board, Cargill is still pushing her anti-science agenda, no more informed or rational than before.

As leader of the school board Cargill led the most recent creationist attempt to change the education standards. Instead of turning to people who actually know the relevant fields (since these won't generally support her creationist views), Cargill instead tried to a coupe of creationist dietitians and businessmen as experts on evolution and appointed them to the board reviewing the science education materials. Since expertise means "agreeing with her", of course.

Interestingly, and hearteningly, this time around even publishers of school textbooks were clear on their refusal to dumb down their biology textbooks to meet Texan anti-science standards.

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 Diagnosis: Utterly moronic, dishonest wingnut – and severely dangerous given her position (yes, to an unitiated being a member of the TBoE might sound unassuming – it isn’t).