The Remarkable Man Who Corrects School Textbooks

In a large and dusty office in Longview, Texas sits a man who corrects school Textbooks. The office is on the first floor, above shops in a rather run-down strip mall. It doesn’t look like the kind of place that would ever have any input on the rest of the World. But Neal Frey, if he’s still alive and well, and his faithful wife, are in the right place. School books are big in Texas. You may remember that the alleged lone gunman in the Kennedy assassination fired from a high floor in a School Book Repository. You won’t find a school book warehouse right in the middle of a British city. And you won’t find, in Britain, the law that Texas has, saying that school textbooks must be accurate. Partly because of this, many other US States follow Texas where school textbooks are concerned. So Texas schoolbooks affect the whole of the USA.

Correcting them just means reading through and picking out the mistakes. Simple! An American Science High School textbook runs to about a thousand pages. There are three publishers, who each produce their own version. Then there are the Teachers Guides. Then there are the other subjects, History, Geography etc. On finding an error, he has to notify the authorities and provide evidence for the mistake.

His biggest triumph has been with the claim that 99% of ape DNA is identical to Human DNA. All versions of the Texas books stated this “fact”. Neal Frey showed that the evidence really puts the figure around 70%. The books were all changed. Did the publishers draw attention to their previous error? Did they amend the 99% to 70%? No, they quietly dropped all reference to similarity or otherwise between Ape and Human DNA. Why? The 99% looks like evidence for evolution. The 70% is profound evidence against. The 99% figure, of course, continues to be stated anywhere that the law doesn’t prevent it.

Some things that Neal digs up would find little support in the UK. He is, for example, a believer in American Exceptionalism like many of his countrymen. Many in the UK would also not approve his move on Human/Ape DNA. But we find it to be an excellent example not only of how spoof evidence of Darwinian evolution is popularised, but also of the complete dishonesty that surrounds the endeavour. That figure was never published to educate young people; it was published to evolutionise them. Otherwise the correct figure would have appeared with an apology. As already stated, the bogus figure is still touted wherever the law permits.

More on the 70% here.