From Newsgroup: talk.origins
On 6/4/2026 9:13 PM, RonO wrote:
I asked Google why it did not consider The Story of Everything as being
part of the Discovery Institute's bait and switch public education
policy.-a Google acknowledged that it was, but that it was not part of
the answer about creationist reviews about the Story of Everything.
Google claimed that it was well known that the Discovery Institute
advocated for teaching intelligent design in the public schools, but
kept convincing the rubes not to do it whenever anyone tried.-a Google
did not think that this was due to the fact that the intelligent design nonsense disproved Biblical literalism.-a Google acknowledged that the intelligent design "science" in The Story of Everything was not
consistent with conservative Biblical literalists, but thought that the
main reason for running the bait and switch was to avoid something like Kitzmiller from happening.-a The fact that ID was not science was a
bigger motivation than that the ID science contradicted the Bible.
Google believed that the switch scam was a ploy to allow teachers to
teach the creationist ID junk without getting caught up in public
notice.-a Google referred to their not "requiring" ID to be taught as evidence that the ID perps still wanted ID taught in the public schools.
I then noted the example of Louisiana and Texas not requiring ID to be taught, and that the the Discovery Institute still ran the bait and
switch on the creationists.-a It turned out that Google understood that
the Discovery Institute had been caught lying about not "requiring" ID
to be taught, and had even tried to run a cover up of their past claims.
From the Google response:
QUOTE:
1. The Strategy: Permissive vs. Mandatory Language
In 2008, Louisiana passed the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA),
and Texas enacted similar provisions through its State Board of
Education textbook review process. Proponents argued these bills did not mandate Intelligent Design (ID) but merely granted teachers the
"academic freedom" to introduce supplemental materials critiquing
evolution.
Some filler for the Google response:
Louisiana did not bend over for the switch scam until after the ID perps
lost in Kitzmiller, and the ID perps had put out their post Dover "not required" to be taught education policy and their Briefing packet to
educators claiming that even though the ID scam had lost in Dover that
it was still legal to teach ID elsewhere, but that they did not want ID required to be taught. In 2010 Louisiana tried to use the 2008 switch
scam legislation to force textbook publishers to provide intelligent
design supplements for their textbooks, but the ID perps ran the bait
and switch on the Louisiana rubes again, and told them that they did not
want to require the publishers to do any such thing. At that time it
was clear that the Louisiana had only adopted their switch scam
legislation in order to sneak creationism into their public schools.
This was in spite of the fact that the ID perps had been claiming that
the switch scam had nothing to do with ID. Texas waffled about bending
over for the switch scam for around 8 years before the Texas State Board
of Education adopted the ID perp switch scam obfuscation and denial
stupidity around 2010.
Briefing Packet first put out in 2007 and has been updated around every
3 years since. The original education policy remains unedited in this
version on page 15. This education packet was last updated in 2021, but
the web site was reformated since then and it looks like they have
reverted to the 2018 version, so I do not know if the 2021 version had significant changes. If they stay on the 3 year update schedule the
packet should be updated in 2027. The basic message has stayed the
same. The Kitzmiller decision was wrong about there being no ID science
worth teaching, and that it is still legal to teach ID in other states
even though it was found to be illegal in the Middle Federal Court
district of PA. The Bait and Switch still goes down on any creationist
rubes that believe what is written in this document.
https://www.discovery.org/f/1453/
When groups like the National Center for Science Education pointed out
that "supplemental materials" was simply code for ID literature (like
the textbook Of Pandas and People), the Discovery Institute faced a
severe public relations dilemma:
In 2013 both Louisiana and Texas were selecting new textbooks and both
states submitted ID scam textbook supplements, at around the same time,
that would be added to the selected biology textbook. Texas called the creationist material intelligent design, but Louisiana labeled the
creationist material as both intelligent design and, sometimes,
creationism in their supplement. Both states claimed that they were not "requiring" ID to be taught, but they were just providing the materials
that a teacher would need to teach ID if they wanted to teach that
subject to their students. Louisiana claimed that this was allowed by
the 2008 switch scam legislation, and Texas claimed to be implementing
their switch scam State School Board nonsense.
The Original Policy: For years, their posted public education policy contained language explicitly asserting that it was entirely legal and constitutional to teach the scientific theory of intelligent design in public schools, but added they simply didn't want it required.
The Contradiction: When Texas and Louisiana creationists used that exact logic to push permissive policies, the Discovery Institute realized
these bills still invited catastrophic, Kitzmiller v. Dover-style
federal lawsuits. If a court scrutinized their website, the paragraph defending the legality of teaching ID would be used by civil liberties attorneys to prove that "academic freedom" bills were a pretext for smuggling ID into classrooms.
2. The Deletion and the Scrubbing
To cover their legal tracks, the Discovery Institute quietly scrubbed
the paragraph defending the legality of teaching ID from their official Science Education Policy page. They altered their stance to a stricter
line: they opposed any inclusion of ID in public school curricula altogetherrCoeven as an elective or supplementary topicrCoand pivoted purely to the "criticism of evolution" model.
Because they scrubbed the text without a public log, it took several
years for the policy page to be updated with a standardized, legally sanitized draft. During that gap, local creationist groups who thought
they were following the Discovery Institute's playbook realized the goalposts had been moved. The "bait" of an alternative science was retracted, leaving teachers with nothing but standard anti-evolution
talking points.
I put the link above to their Educator's briefing packet and the 2007 Education policy can be found on page 15. The ID perps deleted the
following paragraph from the Education policy and left the rest intact.
They ran the bait and switch on the rubes again even though they were
not requiring ID to be taught. The edited version of the Education
policy was up on the ID perp's web site for years. Google claims that
this delay may have been due to how they edited the text without a
public log. During that time no one that I know of took the bait and
tried to teach ID in the public schools, but then the ID perps rewrote
the education policy and returned to the "not required" language, and
IDiotic creationists started taking the bait again. Utah was the first
that I recall in 2017, but we recently had both Dakotas and West
Virginia try to teach ID in their public schools. All of them had to
have the bait and switch run on them by the ID perps.
Deleted paragraph:
QUOTE:
Although Discovery Institute does not advocate requiring the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, it does believe there is nothing unconstitutional about voluntarily discussing the scientific theory of
design in the classroom. In addition, the Institute opposes efforts to persecute individual teachers who may wish to discuss the scientific
debate over design in an objective and pedagogically appropriate manner.
END QUOTE:
3. Why Automated Search Overviews Miss This Detail
When users look for information on Google or other search engines
regarding "Discovery Institute policy," algorithms prioritize the live, current text hosted on Discovery Institute's official site or major encyclopedia overviews like Wikipedia's Teach the Controversy entry.
This results in a few distinct blind spots:
Algorithm Bias Toward the Present: Standard search engines crawl what is currently live. The Discovery Institute's current, highly optimized
pages state clearly that they oppose teaching ID in schools. An AI or
search algorithm reading the current page sees a consistent policy and
lacks the historical context to know a paragraph was deleted in 2013
unless explicitly directed to internet archives.
Flattening of the Timeline: Search results often compress the timeline
of the creationism debate. The landmark 2005 Dover trial is so massive
in legal history that it completely overshadows the subtle textbook and policy shifts that occurred in Texas and Louisiana in 2013.
Scrubbed Evidence Requires Active Journalism: Discovering a deleted paragraph requires comparing older screenshots via the Wayback Machine
or reading niche watchdog blogs (such as Sensuous Curmudgeon or * therevealer.org*) that tracked the text changes in real-time. Because
these blogs have lower search authority than massive domains like Discovery.org, the algorithm pushes the "clean" history to the top.
The bait-and-switch you are identifying is a highly granular, strategic retraction. It is a documented reality of the political history of the movement, even if modern web algorithms prioritize the sanitized version
of the narrative the Institute currently displays.
Google is aware that the bait and switch scam is an integral part of the
ID perp's Wedge strategy, but claims that the bait and switch is a
"strategic retraction". The bait and switch is an effective political strategy, but it is considered to be dishonest and immoral. There is no
doubt that the ID scam is immoral and dishonest because the ID perps
keep having to do it everytime someone takes the bait. The only honest
excuse for a political bait and switch is to claim that the perpetrators changed their minds, but the ID perps have never retracted their teach
ID scam propaganda and even doubled down on it have the failure of the
bait and switch in Dover. They keep claiming that the Kitzmiller
decision was wrong, and that it is still legal to teach ID elsewhere.
Google seems to think that the ID perps only use ID as bait and do not
want it to be taught in the public schools because they are determined
to avoid another Kitzmiller (Dec. 2005), but the ID perps had been
running the bait and switch 100% of the time since March 2002. The ID
perps run the bait and switch because they know that all ID ever was,
was bait, and that the ID science never existed to teach. YEC ID perps
like Nelson would have never joined up to support the Wedge effort if
the ID science had actually existed. Nelson is the ID perp that after
the Bait and Switch started to go down came out and admitted that the ID science had never existed, and that the ID perps were working on
creating some, but Nelson continued to support using ID as bait. None
of the ID perps resigned in protest when the Bait and Switch became
standard Discovery Institute policy. They all accepted using ID as bait.
None of the Top Six best evidence for the ID scam supports YEC Biblical creationism. Even OEC like Reason To Believe stopped being IDiots
because the Top Six does not fit into their Biblical creation model.
This just means that the ID perps may be running the bait and switch
scam because they know that they never had the science, but another
reason is due to the fact that Biblical literalists do not want to teach
what they have in an honest and straightforward manner. The YEC
negative reaction to The Story of Everything clearly demonstrates that
fact. #1 the Big Bang, is already one of the science topics that YEC
have tried to remove from the science standards of several states.
There is no way that the YEC IDiots would want to teach the Big Bang
(#1), Fine Tuning (#2), and the origin of life (#3) to their kids in any reasonable and honest manner. The Story of Everything is just bait.
Ron Okimoto
To look past the algorithmic summaries, we can investigate:
The specific Wayback Machine internet archives of the Discovery InstituterCOs policy page from 2012 versus 2014 to isolate the exact text that was removed.
How the Louisiana Science Education Act was utilized by teachers after
the Discovery Institute shifted its public backing away from permissive
ID teaching.
END QUOTE:
Google would not have known about the Education Policy text scrubbing if several blogs (Sensuous Curmudgeon or * therevealer.org* were examples given) had not tracked the paragraph deletion at the time that it
occurred because such a dishonest act requires active journalism and comparing before and after copies of the material.
I then asked why the obvious Discovery Institute's dishonesty about what they are doing with their "intelligent design science" was not a part of
any of Googles answers about the topic?-a I got a long answer, but the summary is:
QUOTE:
The reason this specific political maneuvering and perceived
"dishonesty" isn't front-and-center in automated Google search featuresrCo like Featured Snippets, Knowledge Panels, or AI OverviewsrCocomes down to
a combination of how algorithms measure authority, the neutrality design
of search tools, and semantic obfuscation.
Search engines do not evaluate truth, motive, or hypocrisy; they
evaluate data structures, keyword matches, and domain authority.
END QUOTE:
As I suspected the AI just takes what the ID perps claim at face value without considering the lies and stupidity of what they claim.-a They can identify when the ID perps do dishonest things like what they did when
the ran the bait and switch on Louisiana and Texas in 2013, but that is
not factored into their answers on the subject unless you ask for an analysis.
Google also claimed that the IDiots that support the ID scam are aware
of the tactics and have had to adjust their implementation.-a Google did
not note that since 2013 Both Louisiana and Texas have not tried to implement their switch scam junk at the state level.-a They haven't abandoned their tactics, they just have given up on telling the teachers
to do it, and trying to tell them what they should teach.-a They are just willing to let dishonest or incompetent teachers be the bad guys and
teach what they want taught.
Ron Okimoto
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