Conservapedia:Andrew Schlafly/List of supposed expertise

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This Conservapedia-related article is of largely historical interest and is no longer the focus of RationalWiki today. Conservapedia (and religious fundamentalism to an extent) was a major focal point in the early history of RationalWiki, but long ago ceased coming up with new ways to appall and amuse. Our energies are now spent debunking other, fresher examples of pseudoscientific claims, authoritarianism, and deceit. For RationalWiki's less ancient content, try the Best of RationalWiki.

Through participation in various debates and teaching in various classes, Andrew Schlafly has established himself to have a broad range of expertise. This is by no means to be confused with him being an "expert" of any kind, as he'll address himself being a member of "The Best of the Public" rather than as an "expert". The following lists the areas he claims to have expertise in, some of which even surpassed those "experts".

Expertise claimed through public presentation

By teaching courses and giving speeches at various levels, Andrew Schlafly either explicitly or implicitly claims expertise in the subject he is teaching. This is a brief list of the courses he has taught over the years:

• "Current Events", as seen in The Constitution and Current Events and Supreme Court & Current Events
• Economics, both microeconomics and macroeconomics
• Evolution topics, such as Evolution and Politics and Evolution Fallacies
• History, both American history and World history
• Medical practice auditand reform
• Social studies such as American Government and The Supreme Court
• Writing in (presumably American) English
• Education for people with learning disabilities

Expertise claimed through debates

Andrew Schlafly also frequently claims superior expertise in whatever subject he is debating. This is an in-depth, but by no means exhaustive, list of examples.

• Anthropology

- Schlafly believes that the theory that American Indians are descended from Asian peoples who migrated across the Bering Strait is "liberal claptrap"

• Biblical scholarship and translation and his opinion of the views of 'experts' in this field
• Constitutional law in each of the states in the US

- Schlafly has argued with a Professor Emeritus of History from Illinois about the Illinois Constitution.

• Entertainment Industry

- Schlafly estimates there are about 50 "active, well-known" women musicians, perhaps 450 television and movie actors, and "no more than 500 female 'Hollywood' performers under the age of 30".

-In the Evangelist Values section of this conversation^img, Schlafly debates the movie Trainspotting, about which Schlafly holds strong opinions despite openly admitting never having seen (or even heard of) the film. Multiple conservative editors disagree with his complete misunderstanding of the plot and characters, but Schlafly maintains his position.

-He also holds strong opinions about the movie Forrest Gump, of which he has only seen the opening 30 minutes, and Saving Private Ryan, of which he has only seen "quotes and clips", declaring "I didn't see Saving Private Ryan, but I suspect that is liberal also."

-Schlafly claims that "The Wizard of Oz in 1939 was the first color movie." Even though The World, the Flesh and the Devil was released a whole 25 years before The Wizard of Oz.

• Great Works of Mankind

- Schlafly claims that "the greatest works throughout history have been produced by teenagers". While there have indeed been significant contributions to human knowledge by teenagers, even a simple analysis proves this not to be true.

• Gun Control, International laws

- Schlafly asserts he is "thoroughly familiar" with gun control legislation in Australia

• History of the US

- Schlafly claims he is teaching "the largest pre-college American History class in the world".

• History of South Asia

- Schlafly claimed superior knowledge of the history of India and Pakistan over an informed editor in this debate thread.

• Humor

- Schlafly repeatedly asserts that pre-Christians and atheists are devoid of humor. On February 10, 2009, he wrote that "atheists... like the ancient Greeks, are unable (or refuse) to open their minds to what real humor is" No evidence is given of the ancient Greeks refusing to open their minds in this manner. He cites "the dictionary" (he declines to say which, despite being asked) as giving the definition "something 'ludicrous' or 'absurdly incongruous'," which, he insists, disqualifies vulgarity, slapstick, and irony from the category of humor. It should be noted, however, that despite his implied expertise in the area of humour, he failed to see the joke directed against his site in a 'liberal' Telegraph blog post and insisted upon splattering it over the front page^img. He then went on to defend his actions against those who understood the joke.

• Immunology
• International healthcare
• Linguistics

- Despite the fact that Islam is a religion, not a linguistic group, and even though Muslims live all over the world and speak dozens of languages, Schlafly believes that Muslims may be identified by the way they pronounce certain words, or even their ability to dance.

- Schlafly believes that the English language is unique in its ability to use loanwords. In fact, many other non-English languages use loanwords.. While English does have an unusually large amount of loanwords for your average language (often persisting long after the original word is absent or heavily modified in its native language), it's nothing to the extremes of Albanian, for example, whose vocabulary is estimated to be about 92% of foreign origin.

- Schlafly creates often illogical and unsupported linguistic theories, and then acts as though they were true: "If a word inevitably alters its meaning after an approximate number of uses, then the time period for the change in meaning will shorten due to improved technology."

- Non-English languages he claims to have expertise in, explicitly or implicitly:

- Ancient Greek

- Arabic

- In a discussion, he asserted that using British English is a hint of liberal ideology.

• Microbiology
• Nutrition

- He asserts that liberals are fatter than conservatives.

• Oncology

- Schlafly claims that young women in the entertainment industry are at least ten times more likely to develop breast cancer.. (Even a casual student of statistics could, however, easily understand that his statistical analysis suffers dreadfully from selection bias).

• Psychiatry/psychology

- Schlafly has claimed that Tom Hanks "fails to [give] a realistic portrayal of an idiot" in the movie Forrest Gump. Obviously in that at least, he would be an expert. Also, note his view that adopting liberal points of view causes mental illness

- He also asserts that readers of Conservapedia suffer from "0 in mental problems" and has claimed the same for its editors.

- He once stated on the talk page on the "public school culture" article: "...give me a lineup of students, and I can pick out the public school ones based on their appearance and, if necessary, some general conversation. That's objectively observable. It's not opinion. Let's not censor it."

• Pure mathematics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity

- "Nothing useful has even been built based on the theory of relativity."

• Statistics
• World History

- Schlafly insists on a Christian-centric worldview on history. For example, he criticizes Wikipedia's article on Gothic architecture for "crediting Islam before Christianity", despite the fact that Gothic architectural styles are heavily influenced by Islamic architecture..