Bernard d'Abrera

Bernard Laurance d'Abrera was an Australian Fundamentalist Christian scientist butterfly photographer. He was a signatory of A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism and a vehement opponent of evolution.

He was a fellow at the pro-intelligent design organization He owned Hill House Publishers, which restricted itself to publishing his Lepidoptera books, Bella Wyborn d'Abrera's revisionist anti-English Reformation books, and facsimile reprint editions of  works. Ironically, John Gould's island biogeography work was instrumental in the development of evolution and was cited in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

Religion
It seems that he did not publicly state his religious affiliation, but it would seem that he veered towards Traditionalist Catholicism due to his opposition to both the Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic Church's infallibility reversal on evolution.

Qualifications and quality of work
d'Abrera was not a scientist by training. He earned bachelor's degrees in History & Philosophy of Science, and History from the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

Although the sham petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism lists d'Abrera as a Visiting Scholar of the "Department of Entomology, British Museum", the listed affiliation is, quite simply, a lie; d'Abrera was associated with the Natural History Museum, which has not been part of the British Museum for several decades. d'Abrera was not a scientist by training and does not hold a Ph.D.

Lacking a degree is not inherently a hindrance to doing quality scientific work (credentialism), however: He absolutely refused to submit his work to peer review, with the predictable result that his books contain numerous errors, many of which would have been easily identified and resolved even if he had only asked someone to give them the 'once-over'. His innate pomposity, combined with an ego of monumental proportions, resulted in the fact that even major errors were – so far as I can see – rarely if ever corrected in subsequent editions of the same book, even over a period of decades.

View on evolution
He described the theory of evolution as "viscid, asphyxiating baggage" that requires "blind religious faith" since, according to this particular PRATT, it is unfalsifiable. Arthur Shapiro aptly described d'Abrera as "profoundly anti-scientific – not unscientific, but hostile to science."

Dissection of a D'Abrera book
In describing d'Abrera's book Butterflies of the Holarctic Region, Part I, Arthur Shapiro states the following, Attention should be paid to their stupidities, their errors, their pig-headedness, their bad writing. The thing is, as I say in my reviews, they're absolutely indispensable. There's nothing else like them. If you're trying to identify exotic butterflies outside your geographic area, the primary and secondary literatures are so scattered and relatively inaccessible, you're out of hope. Big coffee table picture books are the only way to go. But if you're going to do that, at least get input from the people in the areas you cover geographically so you don't make an ass of yourself.

Analysis of Birdwing Butterflies of the World, new and revised edition by Bernard d'Abrera (Hill House Publishers, 2003):

Hill House
Since d'Abrera's demise, Hill House Publishers has gone belly up, with its web domain purchased sometime in 2018 or 2019.