Brian Thomas

Brian Thomas is science writer at the Institute for Creation Research and young earth creationist. He is the originator of much of the content that comes out of the Institute's website on a day-to-day basis, not including their various magazines and other content. He has a Ph.D. in paleobiochemistry from the University of Liverpool.[1]

The divine comedy
Creationism
Running gags
Jokes aside
Blooper reel
v - t - e

Specialities

According to his official bio, Thomas specialises in:

Astronomy and cosmology also feature prominently in his writings.

Role

Thomas has apparently been working for the Institute since sometime in 2008. He does various jobs for the ICR, both online and in real life.

ICR News

Thomas' primary contributions to the ICR's website is his (alleged) "Daily Science Updates," or alternatively "ICR News," which is nearly identical in content. These articles are an attempt to cover (stale) news that can be messily shoehorned into supporting creationism, often to much hilarity.

Thomas' first article for "ICR News" was published on the ICR's website on June 4, 2008, and was called Synthetic Life "Breakthrough" Just Demonstrates Design.[2] Daily Science Update articles from him have appeared more-or-less regularly since.

Articles tend to come out around a fortnight after both the news item originally broke and the access dates given for webpages in the 'references,' for reasons unknown. As of March-April 2012, publishing rates have dropped from the usual 5 per week to only 3. Articles are typically - though not always - made available online at midnight Dallas time. A complete list of all Daily Science Updates can be found here.

The content of Thomas' articles suggest that he does very little research on a topic beyond a few news items and the original scientific paper.[note 1] For example, his April 4, 2012 article Distant Watery Planet Looks Young[3] questioned whether the red dwarf-orbiting exoplanet Gliese 1214 bFile:Wikipedia's W.svg could have held on to its atmosphere for billions of years against the solar wind[note 2] while orbiting so close to the star. He then stated:

“”The scientific literature typically does not ask questions like these.

This is despite the fact that a simple google search of “red dwarf solar wind” would turn up articles like Living with a Red Dwarf which very much suggests that he is dead wrong in his claim: the matter has indeed been considered and the planet could have held on to its atmosphere for the time required. Further evidence of the lack of research on Mr Thomas' part comes in the form of a minor change to the opening lines where he had erroneously stated that the planet had been "studied for about a decade" to saying that it had been "studied since 2009".[4]

Similar problems can be found in most, if not all of his articles. One of the few known times that he has been right about anything was in his article More Earthquake Data Does Not Mean More Earthquakes,[5] arguing against the idea of imminent apocalypse due to the apparently increased number of earthquakes.

Acts & Facts

The 'best' (or rather, a small subset) of Thomas' articles are sometimes rewritten with the help of fellow science writer Frank Sherwin and appear in the ICR's monthly newsletter, Acts & Facts. The results tend to have a slightly more general topic than the original, news item-focused article, but are no better when it comes to scientific accuracy and the other problems that Thomas' articles suffer from.

Speaking

Thomas is listed as one of the ICR's speakers,[6] and he does seem to do this from time to time. But the ICR's speakers rarely go far from Dallas, and do not seem to appear often—Thomas seems to be no different.

gollark: Or, well, a fairly high chance.
gollark: I suppose you also have to assume that the child has a 100% chance of helping you with your thing.
gollark: The assumption there is of course very assumptive.
gollark: If we approximate it by saying that having and raising a child consumes 50% of your resources and the other half of said resources can be used on direct contributions to things, and the child will definitely help with whatever your goal is, than the child provides a 50% benefit.
gollark: Children *are* quite expensive, but it's possible that a reducing population would actually be bad for future development of civilization and such - you would have fewer 1-in-1-million geniuses or something.

Notes
  1. Well, he tends to give a reference to the paper, but there's no guarantee he read and understood the whole thing.
  2. Technically it is "stellar wind" here as the star in question is not our own.

References
  1. ICR: Ten ‘Fake Facts’ of Evolution. sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com, 1 May 2019.
  2. Synthetic Life "Breakthrough" Just Demonstrates Design
  3. Distant Watery Planet Looks Young
  4. Two screenshots showing the change.
  5. More Earthquake Data Does Not Mean More Earthquakes
  6. Speaker's page.
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