Scientist Retracts 1955 Errors Now Cited as Evidence by Creationists
Sometimes it can take a half-century to realize you’ve made a mistake. Homer Jacobson, a professor emeritus of chemistry at the City University of New York’s Brooklyn College, learned that lesson when he decided to Google himself and found that incorrect statements he made in 1955 had come back to haunt him.
To make amends, Mr. Jacobson retracted two statements from an article published in American Scientist magazine more than five decades ago. In a letter in the magazine’s November-December issue, Mr. Jacobson said he had made incorrect assessments of how improbable it would have been for processes on the early earth to bring about the first organisms.
Mr. Jacobson said that it is not normal to retract such old errors but that he was motivated because creationists were now quoting his article to support their cause. “I am deeply embarrassed to have been the originator of such misstatements, allowing bad science to have come into the purview of those who use it for anti-science ends,” he said.
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
To make amends, Mr. Jacobson retracted two statements from an article published in American Scientist magazine more than five decades ago. In a letter in the magazine’s November-December issue, Mr. Jacobson said he had made incorrect assessments of how improbable it would have been for processes on the early earth to bring about the first organisms.
Mr. Jacobson said that it is not normal to retract such old errors but that he was motivated because creationists were now quoting his article to support their cause. “I am deeply embarrassed to have been the originator of such misstatements, allowing bad science to have come into the purview of those who use it for anti-science ends,” he said.