Presswatch/ Scientific American on Trial
Eastland, Terry
PRESSWATCH SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ON TRIAL Ireached free-lance writer Forrest M. Mims III after he'd been a guest on another radio talk show. He did this one, like most of the three dozen others...
...To his credit, Mims refused to abide by the demands of secular etiquette...
...The next day Lamar Hankins of the Texas affiliate of the ACLU wrote Scientific American to express dismay "about the [magazine's] refusal . . . to honor its offer to employ Forrest M. Mims III as its 'Amateur Scientist' " columnist on account of "his religious beliefs...
...In a letter to Mims, it expressed its commitment "to the principle that articles submitted for publication in journals devoted to science, technology and medicine should be judged exclusively on their scientific merit...
...I urge you to stop this apparent blacklisting of Mr...
...Mims mentioned, in addition to his many science publications, some Christian magazines...
...Mims has had a remarkably successful career doing this sort of writing, and he says he's long wanted the chance to write the "Amateur Scientist...
...In their October 4 phone conversation, Mims, who promised Piel he would not use the column to promote his personal beliefs, told the editor, "I will not be discriminated against...
...Mims contacted two newspapers, the Houston Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal...
...Mims's resume lists dozens of periodicals in which he's been published, including Modern Photography, Physics Today, Popular Mechanics, Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics, Computers & Electronics, Electronics Hobbyist, Electronic Design, Microwaves, by Terry Eastland PC Magazine, Optics News, and Science Digest...
...Nonetheless, Mims always did—and still does—want to write at least for one magazine—the 650,000-circulation Scientific American—and specifically the column that inspired his writing career...
...But since the third of his columns was published in the October issue, Mims has been in newspapers and on the air, framing the issue as one of religious discrimination...
...Mims is no rube, as his own skillful campaign shows...
...The BBC called today," an excited Mims told me...
...Thus, for them, theistic evolution is a contradiction in terms...
...Just ask Forrest Mims, and meanwhile pray for the species...
...My impression," says Schwab, is "that Jonathan got so upset at being called discriminatory that he quit the whole thing...
...Also, generally unexplored by the media is the personal element that might have been at work, to wit: Mims saying in the October 4 phone conversation that he would not be discriminated against, which Piel took as a personal affront...
...I'm not saying Mims would have been offered the column had he not said that...
...I didn't hear the talk show, but having reviewed Mims's labors in recent months, I'm prepared to believe him...
...It's going to do a half hour documentary...
...That provoked the question: About what...
...On October 4, Piel phoned Mims...
...The column began in 1952, when Mims was eight years old...
...The Mims affair has demonstrated the "public relations nightmare" a magazine can have when it acts like Scientific American...
...Timothy Appenzeller, then an associate editor with the magazine and now senior editor at the Sciences magazine, says that when the obviously well-qualified Mims arrived in New York, there was no other candidate for the job...
...By the end of the year an agreement was struck...
...There's no official policy on that," says the publisher, John Moehling, "but from my point of view, after the kind of accusations he's made, I can't imagine him being comfortable in our group and our group being comfortable with him...
...It's the—it's the public relations nightmare that's keeping me awake...
...Two weeks later, in a phone conversation with another editor from Scientific American, Mims says he was asked: "Are you a fundamentalist Christian...
...Mims now, before it spreads to other publicationsand to other scientists...
...Seguin, Texas, can beat New York City...
...Mims is modest...
...He told me he hadn't made up his mind," says Mims...
...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1991...
...Mims says he was asked, "How would you like to take over the 'Amateur Scientist...
...The Journal published its story, by Bob Davis, on October 22...
...And today—pace H. L. Mencken—the press cannot automatically be counted on to dismiss people who dissent from evolution as village THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1991 33 idiots...
...good," that is, for a media trial, though perhaps not a legal one...
...If the column has seen its last day, Mims can take consolation in the fact that his byline was its last ever...
...The committee didn't go quite that far, but did the next best thing...
...For the media, the issue has been civil liberties, not evolution, and Mims has been savvy to frame it this way...
...32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1991 According to Mims, things went swimmingly until Piel asked what other publications Mims wrote for...
...Indeed, I see no basis for a working relationship with anyone who would so describe my motives or actions...
...The Forrest Mims story ultimately comes down to the remarkable influence that Darwinian fundamentalism has on institutions of science like Scientc American...
...Although he majored in government at Texas A&M, his passion remained the popular science of the "Amateur Scientist...
...On their own merits the columns are fabulous," said Piel...
...Mims took that as an offer, and in early August Piel flew the writer to New York...
...Forrest Mims should be writing today the column he so clearly would have been good at...
...Mims, as unknown to the world as his tiny hometown, has merely managed to put the nation's oldest continuously published magazine on trial—not in the courts, mind you, but in the national media, which is where, as H. L. Mencken understood when he undertook to make a "fool" of William JenTerry Eastland is resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center nings Bryan during the Scopes Trial in 1925, it often counts far more...
...rom his point of view, Mims could hardly ask for better coverage...
...Later, says Mims, another editor asked about his views on "the sanctity of life...
...As I write in mid-December, Mims is battling on, while Scientific American is hoping the media will lose interest...
...Not that it has always been accurate...
...The New York Times followed on October 24 (with a long but un-bylined piece), and the Washington Post on November 1, with a front-pager by Charles Trueheart in the "Style" section...
...The magazine would publish and pay for (at$2,000 per article) the three pieces, and Mims would not file charges alleging discrimination...
...They have proved enough...
...unlike most free-lancers I know, he doesn't have to live off his magazine submissions...
...My reporting persuades me that Mims was never formally offered the column, but that until early August there was a strong expectation among editors at the magazine that the column would be given to him...
...Bicycling, aerial photography, Mims replied...
...If I hada press agent," he added, "I'd probably be so busy I couldn't work...
...it's being rethought, and it may not appear under that heading, if at all...
...Virtually all the reporters have been very sensitive," says Mims...
...In the spring of 1988 Mims proposed to Scientific American that he take over the "Amateur Scientist...
...For one thing, the "Amateur Scientist" is no longer that...
...Scientific American's worry about "a possible inadvertent linking" of Mims's beliefs "with the good name of this magazine" is irrational unless one irrationally assumes that its readership is also irrational...
...Showing as much savvy as the Reagan White House communications wizards who lined up support for the President's policies before he announced them, Mims as early as last August petitioned the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to take his side...
...The Texas ACLU spoke just in time to make the Post account...
...One must hope that Mims's effort to publicize his story at least will have a deterrent effect...
...Whatever the truth there, the larger truth is that Piel on August 7 had started down a path that made Mims's personal beliefs relevant to the decision not to offer him the column—a point the magazine has conceded in a letter to Mims saying that what "you characterize as 'religious discrimination' was merely the expressed concern of [Piel] that association of the magazine's name with your views concerning evolution could harm the cause of science and alienate crucial groups of authors or readers...
...In three weeks he sent two 3,000-word pieces to the magazine...
...rr he story begins with Mims him-1 self, specifically with his boyhood ambition to write Scientific American's "Amateur Scientist...
...It is by no means clear that Mims was in fact offered the column, as the Houston Chronicle reported when breaking the story (and as Mims himself continues to claim...
...Mims knows that if he had never volunteered that he'd written a few pieces for Christian magazines—on some awfully tame subjects—he'd be writing the "Amateur Scientist" today...
...The magazine, Mims said the professor said, should not have judged Mims's scientific writings, which have nothing to do with evolutionary theory, on the basis of his personal beliefs...
...Piel didn't offer Mims the column that afternoon...
...This was more than a breach of etiquette—it was heresy...
...Further, the committee said: "We emphasize, in particular, the consensus of the Committee that even if a person holds religiously derived beliefs that conflict with views commonly held in the scientific community, those beliefs should not influence decisions about publication of scientific articles unless the beliefs are reflected in the articles...
...he's done fine as his own flack...
...He sees it as "his" column and will tell you, in fact, that C. L. Stong, its longtime author, informed him before his death that "some day I would be writing the column...
...Over the next year he followed up in writing and phone calls, "pushing himself, perfectly fairly," says Armand Schwab, managing editor of Scientifk American at the time and now retired...
...the thing was off the rails by then anyway...
...But it also helps that he has, as the lawyers say, good facts...
...The editor, Jonathan Piel, phoned in late July 1989...
...Even more striking than Mims's telling the editor of the Scientific American that he is a Christian was his failure to confess, when asked about it pointblank, to the theory of evolution...
...While Mims has not developed an alternative theory to evolution—he says he's never written on the subject—he does believe in God, and he was willing to say as much to the editor of Scientific American...
...wally, it bears noting that the beliefs of evolutionary biologists imply a philosophical system that excludes a Creator...
...A father of three, Mims told me he's already paid for his house...
...If there's a civil liberties question involved, the press will do fine by the plaintiff in a media trial...
...Mims's future as the "Amateur Scientist" columnist began to dim right there...
...I take profound exception to this characterization...
...The next day, Piel wrote Mims: "You referred to my concern about a possible inadvertent linking of your beliefs with the good name of this magazine as discriminatory...
...It has also helped Mims's side of the story considerably that former editors Schwab and Appenzeller have been willing to state for the record that the Texan should have been hired...
...The wire services picked up the story, and the radio talk shows followed, some 1,000 radio stations amplifying Mims's complaint...
...The professor, he said, wound up defending him against Scientific American, which last year dropped plans to hire Mims to write its popular "Amateur Scientist" column—which advises on how to run homemade experiments—after it learned he disagreed with evolution and was an evangelical Christian...
...The AAAS letter was dated October 29, 1990, just in time to be folded into the Post story and those that followed...
...I asked Mims how it went...
...Mims was it...
...For another, and more importantly, it's hard to imagine that Mims would be allowed to write anything for Scientific American, given the attitudes toward the writer in its offices...
...A person's private behavior or religious or political beliefs or affiliations should not serve as criteria in the evaluation of articles submitted for publication...
...That's] not an issue...
...While Mims probably could not have won an employment discrimination lawsuit, because employers have a degree of latitude in hiring that would seem to protect Scientific American in this instance, it is this larger truth that has elicited sympathy for Mims on the part of journalists...
...I n late August 1989, the magazine asked Mims to write what Schwab calls some "sample" columns...
...Mims said he didn't...
...Many have told me that their concern is that this could happen to them, too...
...I do what I do today because I read the 'Amateur Scientist' when I was a kid," Mims says...
...That's not going to happen...
...He's written, he says, seventy books, with total sales exceeding three million copies, for McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, and Radio Shack, among others...
...Piel then asked him whether he accepted Darwin's theory of evolution...
...I doubt Mims will win the way he wants to win, but he has managed to attract support from not only some talk show "opponents" but also the New Republic, the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and even Bork basher Laurence Tribe of the Harvard Law School...
...Appenzeller put it bluntly to the Houston Chronicle: "There was concern that Scientific American might be linked to a Flat Earther or something...
...He did this one, like most of the three dozen others since the controversy started, by phone from his Seguin (Texas) home...
...Mims has undertaken this media battle to "get back," as he puts it, a column he never quite had...
...He says those are the only two media contacts he initiated...
...He is a Southern Baptist, a member of First Baptist Church in Seguin...
...As Schwab explains it, Piel was worried about what he would say to evolutionary biologists if a columnist for Scientific American were somehow to be associated with the creation-science movement...
...I suspect his annual royalty checks aren't too shabby...
...Meanwhile, as for Scientific American, it has told the media that it has never discriminated against anyone for religious or any other reasons, thus accepting the terms of debate framed by Mims...
...There ensued a tug of war between Mims and the magazine over whether it had actually committed to publish the sample articles (Mims had sent in a third sample...
...Scientific American published Mims's pieces as the "Amateur Scientist" column in June, August, and October of last year, and Mims has not appeared in a court of law...
...Religious freedom is an essential value in our society, a value that should be protected and strengthened, not threatened and subverted...
...The station was in Chicago, Mims's radio "opponent" some biology professor...
...Mims, concerned the magazine might discriminate against him, recorded their conversation...
...Mims said he was a Christian, defining himself as an evangelical...
...The doctrine of evolution is what's "politically correct," and woe betide those who express dissent...
...Curiously, none of the four networks has gone to Seguin, Texas...
...What you've written is . . . first rate...
...the alternatives are two and only two: creation or evolution, God or not God...
Vol. 24 • February 1991 • No. 2
