Other Links: Outside links in this document open in new windows. Documentation of many misquotes A list of many pages both from this Archive and from outside sites that document misquoting by those opposing evolution can be found in this document. Statement of Journalistic Ethics: Quotations This is the policy of The Daily Press (Hampton Roads, Virginia) on quotations. Though it does not address evolution, it is still a useful document.

1. What is wrong with antievolutionist arguments via quotations?
   1. The fallacy of the argument from authority
   2. Evolution deniers often use selective quotations
      1. Picking and choosing authorities
      2. Ignoring other relevant things the authority says
   3. Evolution deniers often use out-of-date quotes
   4. Evolution deniers often use inappropriate "authorities"
   5. Evolution deniers are not always honest in representing the identity of the people they quote
   6. Evolution deniers often misquote people
      1. Why misquotes happen
      2. Types of misquotation
2. More Specific examples of out-of-context quotes by antievolutionists
   1. Classic example from The Genesis Flood
   2. Davies and Sarfati on supernova remnants
3. Concluding thoughts
4. Online resources documenting antievolutionist misquotations
   1. Pages from The Talk.Origins Archive
      1. Pages from Fossil Hominids FAQ
      2. Other pages in the Archive
   2. Online resources outside the Archive
5. References
6. Acknowledgements

What is wrong with antievolutionist arguments via quotations?

"This is not to imply that we know everything that can and should be known about biology and about evolution. Any competent biologist is aware of a multitude of problems yet unresolved and of questions yet unanswered. After all, biologic research shows no sign of approaching completion; quite the opposite is true. Disagreements and clashes of opinion are rife among biologists, as they should be in a living and growing science. Antievolutionists mistake, or pretend to mistake, these disagreements as indications of dubiousness of the entire doctrine of evolution. Their favorite sport is stringing together quotations, carefully and sometimes expertly taken out of context, to show that nothing is really established or agreed upon among evolutionists. Some of my colleagues and myself have been amused and amazed to read ourselves quoted in a way showing that we are really antievolutionists under the skin."

- Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975),
   "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution"

ne of the favorite tactics of evolution deniers and other pseudoscientists is to use numerous quotations to make their case. For many people the use of quote after quote makes a very persuasive argument. However, the antievolutionist use of quotes is invalid and does not in any way provide evidence for creationism or against evolution. The reasons for this fall into several major categories: the use of quotations often is a fallacy of "argument from authority," selective quotation may be occurring, the quotations are often out-of-date, the quoted authorities are often not appropriate authorities, evolution deniers are sometimes not honest in representing who the people they quote are, and many of the quotations are misquotations.

The fallacy of the argument from authority

When someone -- no matter what kinds of degrees, qualifications, prestige, or honors he has -- is quoted to support a proposition, it does not imply that the proposition is true. To imply otherwise is a common fallacy called the "argument from authority." What should matter is not who agrees with one of your points but rather what evidence you can provide that supports it.

A scientific argument is not like an elementary school book that says "authoritatively" that Albany is the capital of New York, nor is it a high school or college textbook that functions to summarize current theory and practice of a field. The works of antievolutionists are not merely trying to summarize existing mainstream scientific knowledge, but are rather trying to argue that large parts of it are completely wrong. The young-earth creationists in particular are arguing that most of mainstream science is wrong. A few of them propose that is it very close to all being wrong, including most of physics and chemistry. Can one really accomplish a complete overturning of mainstream scientific thinking and establish creationism as scientific knowledge with a list of quotes? The idea is naïve at best.

Some evolution deniers will undoubtedly state that the overwhelming support of evolution by qualified scientists does not by itself prove evolution. They are correct in saying this. Most scientists do not just assert that evolution is correct, but rather provide overwhelming evidence from many fields. If antievolutionists want to say that they are opposed to the "argument from authority," they cannot reject its use for evolution while simultaneously using it to make their own points. For example, if a paleontologist argues that something is a transitional fossil and points to various features of the fossil as evidence, then merely quoting some other authority saying it is not transitional is not an adequate response. The evolution denier must point to specific evidence to argue that it is not transitional.

Sometimes there is need of some sort of authority. Most people couldn't make heads or tails out of a fossil since they lack the knowledge and practical hands-on experience that a professional paleontologist has, just as a paleontologist probably could not make sense of the accounting books of a large multi-national corporation. There is nothing wrong with going to appropriate experts when the need arises. However, when one uses an authority, it is of vital importance that one not merely quote that authority's opinion. It is not merely the authority's opinion that should be used, but rather the authority's evidence, interpretations of evidence, and lines of reasoning that should be used. Furthermore, one cannot ignore the evidence and lines of reasoning of authorities with different views. In science it is the evidence, and not who says it, that should count. If quotes are to be used at all, they should used in an argument and not as an argument.

Real scientific argumentation only rarely involves the use of quotes as anyone who has ever looked at scientific papers or publications knows. When an argument is based on evidence there is little need for frequent quotations. Citations and references in technical papers tend to be for things like where data came from, where an idea was proposed, where methodology was described, where a line of argumentation was made, where a fossil was formally described, and other things along those lines. If the reader doubts that papers only rarely use quotes or wants to see for themselves how how scientists use the work of other scientists there is a simple solution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) is one of the top scientific journals in the world covering virtually the entire breadth of scientific inquiry today. PNAS has its entire contents from 1990 to 2001 available online for free without any need of registration with later issues becoming free after six months. See the contents of the January 2, 2001 issue. The scientific papers begin after the commentaries and perspectives. The issue was chosen because it is, at the time that this paragraph was being written, the "free sample issue" linked from the home page, lest anyone think that the issue was hand-picked for this article. You can examine other issues by clicking the arrows by "other issues."

Evolution deniers often use selective quotations

"The Discovery Institute has used unauthorized, selective quotations from my book In Search of Deep Time to support their outdated, mistaken views."

- Henry Gee
   "Gee Responds to Discovery Institute Use of Quotations"

Picking and choosing authorities

In advertisements for movies, it is usually taken for granted that the studios only quote positive reviews. This kind of Madison Avenue tactic is not a legitimate means of establishing the nature of reality. One cannot just pick the expert whose opinion is convenient for the point one is trying to make while ignoring credible expert opinion to the contrary. This is especially the case when the quoted authority is in the minority among his fellow experts. There might be a very good reason why the authority's views are in the minority. If a writer argues by hand-picking only the experts convenient to him, then that writer has committed the "argument from authority" fallacy. Antievolutionists do this routinely.

• Alan Feduccia who opposes the idea that birds are descended from dinosaurs and instead argues that birds are descended from non-dinosaur archosaurs (a taxon that includes dinosaurs) is often quoted by evolution deniers. Feduccia is a qualified scientist and should not be just dismissed, but his views are in an extreme minority within the scientific community. It is simply bad reasoning for the evolution deniers to use Feduccia's writing disagreeing with conventional ideas of bird evolution while ignoring the many experts that disagree with him.

  "Is Archaeopteryx a 'missing link'?"¹ quotes Feduccia on Archaeopteryx:

  Was Archaeopteryx a feathered dinosaur? Dr. Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself, said: "Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it's not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of 'paleobabble' is going to change that."

  Notice the author is citing Feduccia's conclusion, and not his evidence. There is no mention that that his opinion is a minority opinion. Feduccia's peers in the field of bird evolution are "authorities" too. In short this creationist is saying that Feduccia is an authority and that he says that birds are not descended from dinosaurs, therefore birds are not descended from dinosaurs. It is a classic "argument from authority." It is also very inconsistent. Feduccia also says that evolution occurs, so if this argument is to be followed to its logical conclusion, this creationist must accept the evolution of birds from non-birds! One could also cite many more authorities that say birds are descended from theropod dinosaurs. This is why one should not pick and choose authorities. If Feduccia does turn out to be correct and his views become established within the scientific community, then the evolution deniers will probably become fond of quoting what Kevin Padian and other proponents of birds being descended from dinosaurs had to say about Feduccia's views.

Ignoring other relevant things the authority says

"Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists--whether through design or stupidity, I do not know--as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. Yet a pamphlet entitled 'Harvard Scientists Agree Evolution Is a Hoax' states: 'The facts of punctuated equilibrium which Gould and Eldredge...are forcing Darwinists to swallow fit the picture that Bryan insisted on, and which God has revealed to us in the Bible.'"

- Stephen Jay Gould,
   "Evolution as Fact and Theory"

When one uses an individual authority, one cannot pick and choose his relevant opinions either. If an authority's opinion is credible when he agrees with you then that authority does not become any less of an authority when he disagrees with you. You can disagree with your authority and give the reasons why, but you cannot simply ignore or dismiss him when you don't like what he has to say.

• The above creationist not only did not quote the experts with other views than Feduccia, the creationist did not mention the views of Feduccia that are contrary to his own case. Consider that the antievolutionist article quoted above is called "Is Archaeopteryx a 'missing link'?" and argues that Archaeopteryx is not a transitional form. It uses the Feduccia quote to support this. A reader might be fooled into thinking that Feduccia does not think that it is not a transitional form between reptiles and birds. Here is what Feduccia² had to say in a chapter he called "Feathered Reptiles":

  ...The creature thus memorialized was Archaeopteryx lithographica, and, though indisputably birdlike, it could with equal truth be called reptilian.... The Archaeopteryx fossil is, in fact, the most superb example of a specimen perfectly intermediate between two higher groups of living organisms--what has come to be called a "missing link," a Rosetta stone of evolution....

  In all fairness to the antievolutionist, this was probably not a deliberate attempt at deception. Selective quotations can be the result of poor scholarship. His citation reveals that he got the quote from a news item in the journal Science and not from Feduccia's own writings. This is not saying that one cannot quote news articles, but only that it is not a substitute for finding out what the expert actually thinks from his own writings. If you want to use someone's opinion, it is your responsibility to find out what his opinion really is.

  Thus from one quote we see a whole range of problems that resulted from an attempt to "prove" a point with a quotation. The moral is that quoting someone is not a substitute for researching details and providing details to the reader. Without those details, it is simply saying that it is so because so-and-so said so. Without those details it becomes an "argument from authority."

That evolution deniers have to resort to quotes to make their case shows just how little of a case they have.

Evolution deniers often use out-of-date quotes

One must ask whether a quote reflects current knowledge or whether it is out-of-date. Antievolutionists often use quotations that are decades old. A lot of progress has happened in the last several decades. What the quoted person thought was an unsolved problem may have been solved. What the quoted person said has little evidence might now have lots of evidence.

• Why-the-bible.com's anthropology page³ quotes Richard Leakey as concluding that the australopithecines were not bipedal (walking with two legs) as those who study human evolution almost always claim. But what the evolution deniers do not mention is that Leakey changed his opinion with the discovery of more fossils (including "Lucy") that helped demonstrate that his earlier opinion was wrong. Thus this quote is nearly three decades out-of-date and is simply worthless as evidence against modern notions of human evolution. Leakey's views on this matter are also addressed in the Fossil Hominids: Response to In the Beginning FAQ.

Evolution deniers often use quotes from inappropriate "authorities"

The person being quoted might not be competent or even knowledgeable about the subject he is being quoted on. Antievolutionists often quote non-biologists, who have little knowledge about the field of evolution, as if they were "authorities" in the field. If the reader would be unimpressed by a biologist's opinion of astronomical issues, then he should be equally unimpressed by an astronomer's opinion of biological issues. Chemists, physicists, mathematicians, or astronomers are almost always laymen when they discuss biology.

• Fred Hoyle is often quoted as comparing the probability of the origin of life to the probability of a tornado building a plane in a junkyard. Hoyle's opinion was based on several mistakes and misconceptions about both evolution and abiogenesis. These errors are detailed in the Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations and the Evolution and Chance FAQs. Hoyle was not only a layman and not an "authority" on the subject, but much more importantly he was wrong and no amount of quoting his opinion on the matter will make him right.

Of course there is nothing wrong with a layman making a scientific case so long as he argues substantively and is not presented as an "authority" in biology or evolution.

Evolution deniers also often quote one person and then another in a mix-or-match fashion with little regard to whether the persons being quoted represent a mainstream scientific viewpoint, a minority scientific viewpoint, or are considered to be cranks.

Evolution deniers are not always honest in representing the identity of the people they quote

The people the antievolutionists quote are not always who the antievolutionists say they are.

• "Dr. Etheridge, world-famous paleontologist of the British Museum"⁴ is commonly quoted by evolution deniers but turns out to have been an obscure nineteenth century figure who was an assistant at the British Museum and was never famous at all.
  
  
• Francis Hitching is sometimes represented as being a scientist by antievolutionist sources that quote him -- a "well-known evolutionist" as one antievolutionist put it -- when he was really a sensationalistic television script writer who was neither a scientist nor had scientific training.
  
  
• Another example is the prominent evolution denier that goes by the pseudonym "John Woodmorappe" whose real name is Jan Peczkis. This is easily documented by the fact that Woodmorappe's address listed in an article of his in the Creation Research Society Quarterly is identical to the listing for Jan Peczkis, that Peczkis has the same geology degree as Woodmorappe, and that Woodmorappe claims to be a teacher while Peczkis is a teacher. The claim that the two are the same person has been in print since 1991 though one talk.origins poster reports that Peczkis threatened him with legal action for making this claim online. Why bring this up and why would anyone care who Woodmorappe really is? Because in an online article Woodmorappe⁵ quotes a Peczkis article from the Science Teacher without any mention that they are the same person. Writing something under one name so that it can be quoted and given positive notice using a different name is not honest. It is also worth mentioning that Woodmorappe/Peczkis has a well-deserved reputation for dishonest quoting as well as for name calling and has used some fairly incompetent arguments.

Of course, like everyone else, a scientist may sometimes say dumb things or be careless with his wordings. Also be careful of statements by authorities that might be exaggerations or self-promotion. Statements in the press that a new discovery changes everything that we thought we knew about something are frequently exaggerations or self-promotion.

Thus even without the use of misquotations, one can "prove" pretty much anything by the use of quotations. Argumentation via quote after quote is dubious at best for deciding scientific disputes. This is one reason why scientific papers only rarely use quotes to make their case.

Evolution deniers often misquote people

"It does not surprise me that I am being misquoted because, after all, this is practically the only defense creationists have."

- Donald Johanson,
   Letter to Jim Lippard

Antievolutionists have consistently used misquotations. This document will give some of the many examples.

Why misquotes happen

There are many reasons why misquotations occur.

• Some misquotations are honest mistakes. It would be hard not to make some misquotations when one's argumentation consists largely of quotations, as is the case for many antievolutionary works. What makes this problem worse in antievolutionist literature is that many creationist writers do not actually read what they are quoting in the original but copy it from another writer, usually (but not necessarily) another evolution denier who himself might have copied it from yet another antievolutionist. This is often revealed by multiple evolution deniers having the same error in the quote or citation. Thus if a single evolution denier is dishonest, sloppy, or incompetent in his quotation then the error becomes widespread. Antievolutionists (and for that matter anyone else) can help avoid this by checking any quote in the original if at all possible. If a quoter has not read the original work he should not cite the original as if he did but rather indicate in his citation that the quote was taken from a secondary source.
  
  
• Another source of misquotation by antievolutionists is how they use quotations and the scientific literature. Daisie and Michael Radner in their Science and Unreason explain this rather well. One of the things they include as "marks of pseudoscience" is "Research by Exegesis." They elucidate: ⁶

  In literary art or in religion, the field of study is the totality of existing writings. Any piece by Shakespeare or any part of a sacred book is fair game for interpretation. The scientist does not approach the literature of his or her field in the same way. Only the historian of science is concerned with the whole body of scientific writings. For the practicing scientist, written reports merely serve to communicate the results of research -- data collected, theories proposed, arguments and counterarguments. Insofar as a piece of scientific writing fails to communicate well or to argue cogently, it is ineffective. Such work is largely ignored in the scientific discipline.

  Pseudoscientists often reveal themselves by their handling of the scientific literature. Their idea of doing scientific research is simply to read the scientific periodicals and monographs. They focus on the words, not on the underlying facts and reasoning. They take science to be all statements by scientists. Science degenerates into a secular substitute for sacred literature. Any statement by any scientist can be cited against any other statement. Every statement counts and every statement is open to interpretation.

• Finally, an evolution denier may indeed not be quoting honestly. Many cases of misquotations by antievolutionists are so blatant and obvious when compared to the original that it is hard to imagine that the original quoter was not being intentionally dishonest. The quotes by Keith Davies from the astronomical literature of supernova remnants that are discussed below are examples of quotes that many find hard to accept as anything other than the result of deliberate deception.

Types of misquotation

"When I first encountered his [Jonathan Wells] attempts at journalism, I thought he might be a woefully deficient scholar because his critiques about peppered moth research were full of errors, but soon it became clear that he was intentionally distorting the literature in my field. He lavishly dresses his essays in quotations from experts (including some from me) which are generally taken out of context, and he systematically omits relevant details to make our conclusions seem ill founded, flawed, or fraudulent."

- Bruce Grant,
   "Charges of Fraud Misleading"

There are many ways to misquote someone.

• One way is to say that a person said something when they never did.
  • Some evolution deniers say that Clarence Darrow said that "It is bigotry for public schools to teach only one theory of origins." He never did.
• Another form of misquotation is the omission of words immediately around the quoted material that radically changes its meaning. Some examples of this are below.
  
  
• Some misquotations are the result of a bad translation of a manuscript originally written in a foreign language.
  
  
• The failure to indicate any textual omission within the quote is always a misquotation and often makes a large effect on the meaning of the words.
  • The Black Hills Creation Science Association: Newsletter tells us⁷:

    FAMOUS EVOLUTIONIST OF THE MONTH QUOTE:
    "Paleontologists cannot operate this way. There is simply no way simply to look at a fossil and say how old it is unless you know the age of the rocks it comes from. And this poses something of a problem: if we date the rocks by their fossils, how can we then turn around and talk about the patterns of evolutionary time in the fossil record?" -Niles Eldredge in "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria", pp. 51, 52, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985)

    When one looks at what Eldredge⁸ wrote, there is a huge omission that is not marked by ellipses. The first two quoted sentences start one paragraph in the original, while "And this poses something of a problem..." is in the middle of the next paragraph. Here is the first paragraph with what the creationist newsletter quoted in green:

    Paleontologists cannot operate this way. There is simply no way simply to look at a fossil and say how old it is unless you know the age of the rocks it comes from. Sometimes igneous rocks, rocks we can date chemically, intrude into sedimentary rocks, and in such a fashion some hard-core "absolute" dates--expressed in terms of millions of years--are available for all subdivisions of geologic time....

    Radiometric dating usually cannot be used on the layers of sedimentary rocks with fossils, but rather is employed on volcanic layers above and/or below the fossiliferous rocks. If the fossil is in between two datable volcanic tuffs, its date will be dated to being in between the dates of the tuffs. In the work that Eldredge was doing there was often no volcanic layer since he was doing work on isolated outcrops, roadcuts, etc. So how could he tell time? Skipping to the next paragraph Eldredge continues:

    But none of that helps in a cow pasture in upstate New York. Long before radioactivity was known to physicists, paleontologists had another way to tell time. Fossils occur in the same vertical sequence thoughout the geologic column. The same, or closely similar fossils frequently occur in many far-flung localities; some are even found worldwide. This repetitive pattern of occurrence allows geological minded paleontologists to correlate: rocks are mapped, and frequently certain distinctive horizons, such as volcanic ashfalls, can be traced over great distances. But rocks in isolated quarries can be matched up according to the nature of the fossils they contain. And this poses something of a problem: if we date the rocks by their fossils, how can we then turn around and talk about the patterns of evolutionary time in the fossil record? ...

    Kent Hovind has used the same quote without ellipses in the transcript for his creation seminar. In a video file he used the above quote and claimed that it was Eldredge admitting the geologic column was circular reasoning when Eldredge stated a few paragraphs latter that there is "no problem of circularity." More information on this quote can be found in Niles Eldredge Says that the Geologic Column is Circular Reasoning?. The charge of circular reasoning is addressed by the Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale: Circular Reasoning or Reliable Tools? FAQ.
• Ellipses when present can also be abused to form misquotes.
  • Evidence for Creation: Fossil Record by Don Patton quotes Darwin⁹:

    DARWIN'S BIGGEST PROBLEM, "...innumerable transitional forms must have existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? ...why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory". Origin of the Species [sic].

    The first part being quoted is in chapter 6 and the second part is in chapter 9 of The Origin of Species. The ellipses are used to ignore Darwin's answer to the problem. Ellipses should, in any event, never be used to skip whole chapters of material. And do not forget the previous discussion of out-of-date quotes since Darwin died twelve decades ago.
    
    
  • Kevin R. Henke shows how "John Woodmorappe" uses ellipses to hide critical parts of the context in his Hiding the Numbers to Defame Radiometric Dating.

Even if the words are quoted accurately, this does not guarantee that it is not a misquotation.

• In one example below, young-earth creationists quote a rhetorical question and do not tell their readers that it was rhetorical.
  
  
• Putting text in brackets to make clear to the reader what the quoted material means or to note changes made to the text can be part of proper quoting. However sometimes the use of brackets can result in giving readers a false impression of the meaning or content of the quoted material. An example of this is documented in "Doubting Darwinism through Creative License."
  
  
• Another way of misquotation is the result of the readers of the quoter and the readers of the quoted having different vocabularies, making different assumptions, and interpreting things in different ways. In science, words are often used in different ways than what they would mean to a general audience. And of course a word might mean different things in a different field or can mean different things depending on the context. If an evolution denier's readers don't realize this then they are vulnerable to being fooled by a misquotation.
  • Many evolution deniers quote Stephen Jay Gould and other punctuated equilibria proponents as saying that transitional forms are very rare. Most non-specialists get ideas of "missing links" between higher taxa of animals when they hear about transitional forms. Gould has been very clear that these are common and yet he has been quoted many times that transitional forms are rare. What is going on here? In the context of punctuated equilibria, a transitional form is between immediately related species (say two species of squirrels, species of similar Devonian trilobites, etc.), and is not referring to a transition between human and non-human, whales and primitive land mammals, etc. Indeed the transitions Gould and other punctuated equilibria proponents are arguing about would be generally be dismissed as "microevolution" by many evolution deniers. Thus antievolutionists arguing against the existence of transitions between larger taxa are very likely guilty of misquotation if they quote Gould's writings on punctuated equilibria. For more details on this see Gould's¹⁰ classic essay "Evolution as Fact and Theory" where he explains his position on the fossil record as well as demonstrates young-earth creationist misrepresentations of his views.
    
    
  • Another case of a word that different people use differently is "Darwinism." Some authors use that term very broadly and some use it in an extremely narrow sense.
    
    
  • Most laymen do not understand that the word "theory" means a very different thing in science than it does in the vernacular.
    
    
  • Jonathan Wells in the "Darwin's Tree of Life" chapter of his Icons of Evolution book¹¹ tells us:

    Some biologists have described this [the Cambrian explosion] in terms of "bottom-up" versus "top-down" evolution. Darwinian evolution is "bottom-up," referring to its prediction that lower levels in the biological hierarchy should emerge before higher ones. But the Cambrian explosion shows the opposite. In the words of Valentine and his colleagues, the Cambrian pattern "creates the impression that [animal] evolution has by and large proceeded from the 'top down'." [First bracket is mine and the second is by Wells.]

    Since Wells is saying that evolution predicts the exact opposite of what it actually does it might seem puzzling that Wells could find a quote to support his claim. That is until a visit to the library stacks reveals a problem with the context. Notice that Wells is saying that "top-down" means that the higher Linnean hierarchies like phyla and classes appear before lower Linnean hierarchies like orders and families. This is actually something that must be true if evolution is true. But that is not how the term was used by the authors that Wells quoted as is clear if one reads the sentence before the quoted material. Here is what a bit more of what Valentine et al.¹² had to say on the Cambrian explosion with what Wells quoted in green:

    In general, for those taxonomic levels for which fossil data seems adequate, higher levels reached their peak diversities earlier, and successively lower levels progressively later, in geologic time (Valentine, 1969). This pattern creates the impression that metazoan evolution has by and large proceeded from the "top down," that the body plans of the phyla originated presumably as adaptations that permitted the occupation of major adaptive zones, and then, according to the potentials and constraints provided and imposed by the body plans, they in turn branched to produce the major modifications that are ranked as classes, and so on to the ordinal [order] level and below....

    There is a great deal of difference between "emerge" or "appear first" (a phrase Wells used in his next paragraph) and "reached their peak diversity." Quoting someone and not informing the reader that the key term was used in the original in a completely different manner forms a misquotation. For those interested learning about some of the many distortions Dr. Wells is guilty of might look at the Icons of Evolution FAQs.
  In general, any quote whose impact depends on what the reader does not know is probably out-of-context.

More Specific examples of out-of-context quotes by antievolutionists

"So it goes. One scientist after another receives the Creationist treatment. Any qualifying comment, any deviation from orthodoxy is a potential target. Ripped from its context, it can be made to serve the Creationists' purpose, namely, to convince the uninitiated that Creationist theses are sometimes advanced by scientists in scientific debates. But anyone can play the same game. In conclusion, I cannot resist turning the weapon against the Creationist who has used it to its greatest effect. Referring to the controversy about transitional forms, Gish writes, 'There should be no room for question, no possibility of doubt, no opportunity for debate, no rationale whatsoever for the existence of the Institute for Creation Research' (Gish 1981, ii). How true."

- Philip Kitcher,
  Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism¹³

Classic example from The Genesis Flood

A classic example of an antievolutionist misquotation comes from The Genesis Flood by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris.¹⁴  This book is arguably the most influential young-earth creationist book in the latter half of the twentieth century. They quote C. P. Ross and Richard Rezak.¹⁵  The green text below is quoted by Whitcomb and Morris and black text is what they did not quote. The context of the quote is the young-earthers trying to debunk the existence of the Lewis overthrust by claiming some disturbed strata were little disturbed or undisturbed. Ross and Rezak wrote:

Folds that originated at the time represented by plate 53B but that have been accentuated and locally broken by the later pressures, are visible in ridges, cliffs, and canyon walls both in the mountains south of Glacier National Park and in the part of the Great Plains within some 20 miles of the mountain edge at the eastern border of the park. All the sedimentary rocks that were present were squeezed and folded, but the Belt series, being strong and buried under a blanket of other rocks, was deformed the least. Most visitors, especially those who stay on the roads, get the impression that the Belt of strata are undisturbed and lie almost as flat today as they did when deposited in the sea which vanished so many million years ago. Actually they are folded, and in certain zones they are intensely so. From points on and near the trails in the park it is possible to observe places where the beds of the Belt series, as revealed in outcrops on ridges, cliffs, and canyon walls, are folded and crumpled almost as intricately as the soft younger strata in the mountains south of the park and in the Great Plains adjoining the park to the east.

More details on the Whitcomb and Morris misquotation are presented in the Thrust Faults FAQ. That FAQ covers what Morris said in rebuttal to the out-of-context charge, another out-of-context quote of Ross and Rezak by Whitcomb and Morris, and other false young-earth creationist claims on thrust faults in general and the Lewis Overthrust in particular. Far more recent misquoting by Morris is documented in "Just what DO they say Dr. Morris?"

Davies and Sarfati on supernova remnants

Keith Davies quotes¹⁶ two astronomers and Jonathan Sarfati of Answers in Genesis repeats¹⁷ the quotes saying:

As the evolutionist astronomers Clark and Caswell say, 'Why have the large number of expected remnants not been detected?' and these authors refer to 'The mystery of the missing remnants'.

Both of them give the impression that astronomers cannot explain the number of observed supernova remnants assuming an old universe. The Clark and Caswell paper is online. Both quotes are on page 301. As the reader can easily verify, "Why have the large number of expected remnants not been detected?" is a rhetorical question. And "The mystery of the missing remnants" is followed by "is also solved."

Davies also misquotes the astronomer Donald P. Cox. Cox's article is also online and the reader can check the page where the quote was taken. What Davies quotes is in green and what he did not quote will be left in black:

The final example is the SNR population of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The observations (many collected in Mathewson et al. 1983) have caused considerable surprise and loss of confidence in simple models such as those in this paper.

The phrase "in simple models" changes the meaning considerably and thus the quote is out-of-context. More details on young-earth creationist misquotes on this subject can be found in the Misquoting and Paraphrasing section of the Supernovae, Supernova Remnants and Young Earth Creationism FAQ.

Concluding thoughts

Brian and Sandra Alters¹⁸ give some good advice for classroom instructors that is just plain good advice for everyone else as well:

When students read or hear the out-of-context quotes from such a book [That Their Words May be Used Against Them from the Institute for Creation Research], they quite often think that evolution must be a theory in crisis within the scientific community. If creationist students suddenly quote respected evolutionary scientists and expect science instructors to respond instantly (without even knowing the context of the quotes) we recommend the following two actions: (1) instructors should explain to the students that they are cognizant of the scientists being quoted (if they are) and that the evidence compels these scientists to conclude that evolution is an accurate scientific theory, and (2) instructors request that the students bring in the original sources of the quotes of the quotes so that they can read in context. Having the original source (not the quote book) will allow instructors to illustrate to students that there is an entire book or article surrounding the one quote and that the publication is not challenging the occurrence of evolution. The goal of this exercise is not for students to find evolution compelling simply because experts find the data compelling; they should examine the evidence and come to their own conclusions. However, when students quote these experts, they need to understand clearly the positions of the people they quoting and the contextual meaning of the quotes [footnote omitted].

If you are a creationist who rejects evolution then before you use such quotes, do look them up in the original. If you a supporter of evolution and find evolution deniers giving you quotations, demand that they personally look up their quotes in the original. And always be wary any quote that seems "too good" to be true. If the quote makes you ask "how could this person accept evolution?" it is probably best to assume their is something wrong with the quotation until concrete evidence provided and independent verification is done. That is not dogma, but the voice of experience. Antievolutionists have "cried wolf" far too many times.

To sum up, when evolution deniers provide quotations many questions need to be asked including:

• Is the quote itself accurate?
• Do the preceding and following passages change the meaning of the quote?
• Does the creationist use the key terms in the same way as the quoted person?
• What is the quoted person's actual opinion on the point in question?
• Who was the quoted person addressing?
• Is the quote out-of-date?
• Who is the quoted person?
• Is the quoted person a relevant authority to the issue at hand?
• What do other relevant authorities think?
• Is the quote from a popular source or from the primary peer-reviewed literature?
• Is the quoted person actually correct?

If a verifiable reference is not provided then consider the quote to be hearsay. Also remember that it very easy to find statements by qualified statements strongly supporting evolution and/or objecting to how they have been quoted by evolution deniers. This ends the essay portion of this document. The next section gives online sources for the reader to continue exploring this issue.

Online resources documenting antievolutionist misquotations

The Fossil Hominid FAQ of The Talk.Origins Archive has several pages on creationist misquotations on human evolution:

• Creationist Arguments: Misquotes (Many specific examples are provided.)
• Duane Gish quote about ER 1470
• Creationist Arguments: The Monkey Quote
• Rear view of Sinanthropus

Here are some other pages of The Talk.Origins Archive that are about creationist misquotes:

• The Quote Mine Project: Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines (Looks at dozens of quotes.)
• The Revised Quote Book: Looking at how Creationists Quote Evolutionists
• Patterson Misquoted: A Tale of Two 'Cites'
• Clarence Darrow: Misquoted by Creationists
• Missing Supernova Remnants as Evidence of a Young Universe?: A Case of Fabrication
• Muller and Mutations
• Another Dishonest Creationist Quote: Post of the Month Runner-Up: February 2004 (Phillip Johnson quote mining)

The following articles from The Talk.Origins Archive that that, in part, address creationist misquotations:

• Lucy's Knee Joint: A Case Study in Creationists' Willingness to Admit their Errors
• Creationist Whoppers
• Geochronology kata John Woodmorappe
• Supernovae, Supernova Remnants and Young Earth Creationism FAQs
• Thrust Faults
• 29 Evidences for Macroevolution: A Response to Ashby Camp's "Critique"
• January 2003 Feedback: Ilya Prigogine Quote

Here are some pages on the web that address creationist misquotations:

• Hiding the Numbers to Defame Radiometric Dating: A Few Examples of the Many Misused References in Woodmorappe (1999)
• More Classic Misquotations in Woodmorappe (1999)
• Chopping a Title Hides the Truth
• Quote-Mining...The Tradition Continues - ICR Representative Frank Sherwin Visits Eureka College
• Quotes About Evolution
• Gee Responds to Discovery Institute Use of Quotations
• Discovery Institute Quotes Clark Out of Context
• Gilbert Rebukes Discovery Institute for Use of Quote
• Coyne Exposes Discovery Institute's "old tricks"
• Doubting Darwinism through Creative License
• Intelligent Design Bibliography Misleading
• Discovery Institute Again Accused of Quote-Mining
• Misquotations in the Creation Book
• George Gaylord Simpson Said There Are No Transitional Fossils?
• Tom Kemp Said that the Mammal-like Reptiles Are Not Transitions Between Mammals and Reptiles?
• "Dawn Horse" Is a Good "Ancestor" For Rhinos Discredits Horse Evolution?
• Simpson Rejected the Transformation From "Dawn Horse" to Modern Horse?
• Niles Eldredge Says that the Geologic Column is Circular Reasoning?
• D.M.S. Watson Admitted Evolutionists Dogmatically Rejected Creation?
• Creation Science is Garbage (This article has an example of a creationist citing a negative review as if it were an endorsement.)
• Famous Quotes found in books
• Just what DO they say Dr. Morris?
• Does Dr Jonathan Sarfati Have Any Integrity?
• Creationist "Out of Context" Quotes
• Creation Book: a critical analysis
• Re: Disowing Darwin
• Ted Holden's "intermediate fossil" quotes from Walter ReMine's "Biotic Message"
• Another Creationist Misquote (News report in Science two decades ago screwed-up and the creationists continue the error.)
• Lie Ho! Lie Ho! It's off to the quote mine we go...
• Michael Ruse on the misuse of his religion comments

A searchable archive on creationist quotes can be found at Antievolution Quotes and Misquotes: The Archive.

References

1.	"Is Archaeopteryx a 'missing link,'?" http://www.users.bigpond.com/rdoolan/arch.html. Accessed online on January 31, 2002.
2.	Alan Feduccia, The Origin and Evolution of Birds, (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1996), p. 1. The same quote sans the Rosetta stone clause appears in: Alan Feduccia, The Age of Birds, (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 1.
3.	"why-the-bible.com: Anthropology," http://www.why-the-bible.com/anthropology.htm. Accessed online on December 30, 2001.
4.	Scott M. Huse, The Collapse of Evolution, (Grand Rapids, Mi, Baker Book House, 1983), p. 119. Some readers will find Huse's reference in the same page of a "Nobel Peace Prize in science" amusing.
5.	John Woodmorappe, "New Educational Activities for Home Schooling Science: A Hands-on Science Activity that Demonstrates the Atheism and Nihilism of Evolution," http://www.rae.org/nihilism.html. Accessed online on January 22, 2002.
6.	Daisie Radner & Michael Radner, Science and Unreason, (Belmont, Ca; Wadsworth, 1982), p. 48.
7.	Black Hills Creation Science Association: Newsletter, http://bhcsa.org/newsletterSum2000.asp. Last accessed online on July 29, 2003.
8.	Niles Eldredge, Time Frames : The Re-Thinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria, (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1985), pp. 51-52.
9.	Don Patton, Evidence for Creation: Fossil Record, http://www.bible.ca/tracks/fossil-record.htm. Accessed online on February 7, 2002.
10.	Stephen Jay Gould's essay can be found in three places: 1) Discover May 1981. 2) Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History, (New York, NY: Norton, 1983), pp. 253-262. 3) http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/gould_fact-and-theory.html.
11.	Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?: Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong, (Washington D.C., Regnery, 2000), pp. 41-42.
12.	James W. Valentine, Stanley M. Awramik, Philip W. Signor, and Peter M. Sadler, "The Biological Explosion at the Precambrian-Cambrian Boundary," Evolutionary Biology 25: 279-356, 1991. Quote is from pp. 293-294. Valentine's reference is "Valentine, J. W., 1969, Patterns of taxonomic and ecological structure of the shelf benthos during Phanerozoic time, Palaeontology 12:684-709."
13.	Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1982), p 185. Kitcher's reference is "Gish, D. T. 1981. Acts, Facts and Impacts (December issue)."
14.	John C. Whitcomb & Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood, (Grand Rapids, Mi; Baker, 1961), p. 187, footnote 1.
15.	C. P. Ross & Richard Rezak, "The Rocks and Fossils of Glacier National Park: The Story of Their Origin and History," United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 294-K, p. 420.
16.	Keith Davies, "Distribution of Supernova Remnants in the Galaxy," in E. Walsh, ed., Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism , (Pittsburgh, Creation Science Fellowship, 1994) Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, pp. 175-184. Accessed online on November 28, 2001. Linked updated and content reverified on March 12, 2004.
17.	Jonathan Sarfati, "Exploding stars point to a young universe: Where are all the supernova remnants?" Creation Ex Nihilo 19:46-48, June/August 1997. Accessed online on November 28, 2001.
18.	Brian J. Alters and Sandra M. Alters, Defending Evolution: A Guide to the Creation/Evolution Controversy, (Sudbury, Ma; Jones and Bartlett, 2001), pp. 91-92.

Acknowledgements

Many people provided advice or were otherwise helpful in the making of this resource. Of course, any errors or assaults on the English language are solely the responsibility of the author. Any opinions expressed in this document are that of the author and not of any other person or organization unless explicitly stated. A very partial list of helpful persons includes Cathy Ball, Coragyps, Pete Dunkelberg, Adam Marczyk, Morpho, The Sapient, John Solum, Nic Tamzek, Douglas Theobald, theyeti, and Ed Vinson. This document is dedicated to all those who have bothered to look up what the evolution deniers have quoted and published or posted the results.