>Oct 29 Monkey Business Falsely Called Science.  Michael Girouard, M.D.


I attended Michael Girouard's talk of this title in Tucson on December
1, 1989.  In his talk on that date, he claimed that Donald Johanson
found "Lucy"'s knee joint 2 km away from the rest of the bones.  The same
claim has been made by John Morris (_Back to Genesis_, November 1989),
Paul Taylor (_The Illustrated Origins Answer Book_, 1989, p. 91), Tom
Willis (_Bible-Science Newsletter_, October 1987), and Walter Brown
(_Creation/Evolution_ XXV, 1989, p. 44).  The claim is false, as may
be observed in Johanson's book detailing his discoveries (_Lucy_, co-authored
with Maitland Edey).  An account of how the claim arose (first reported
in Willis' article) may be found in a couple of my _Creation/Evolution_
articles (esp. XXVII, Summer 1990, pp. 33-34; also XXVI, Winter 1989-90,
pp. 27-28) as well as in a letter I wrote to _Origins Research_ (vol. 12,
1989, p. 12).  I wrote to Willis asking him some questions; he never replied.
Walter Brown tried to evade the issue in my _Creation/Evolution_ debate--he
also never replied.  I personally gave Michael Girouard a copy of a letter
from Donald Johanson which refuted Girouard's claim, immediately after his
talk.  We spoke for a while after the conference, and he asked me to write
to him further.  I did so, but Girouard never replied.

I would be quite interested in knowing if Girouard continues to make this
claim.  I have never seen any creationist publicly retract the false claim.

Jim Lippard              Lippard@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Dept. of Philosophy      Lippard@ARIZVMS.BITNET
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721