Abstract
Rhetoricians of science often (rightly) demarcate as antiscientific the way creationists engage with, manipulate, and circulate scientific knowledge. Though this demarcation work is essential for understanding how creationists manipulate science in the public sphere, relying on demarcation analysis closes off rhetorical inquiry. By analyzing Answers Research Journal, a creationist scientific journal, this essay contends the way creationist authors engage with scientific knowledge production offers a more nuanced way of seeing how scientific meaning-making has rhetorical capacity, which offers new avenues by which rhetoricians of science can investigate the power of scientific methodologies.
Notes
1 I am grateful for the feedback I received from Christa Olson, Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, Brandee Easter, Tori Thompson Peters, Emily Loney, and Rhetoric Review readers Sarah Hallenbeck and Madison Jones.
2 Images from Answers Research Journal are owned by Answers in Genesis, www.answersresearchjournal.org. Images presented are from Nathanial Jensen’s article, “Mitochondrial DNA Clocks Imply Linear Speciation Rates Within ‘Kinds,’” and page number sources are indicated in the figure captions.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Meg M. Marquardt
Meg M. Marquardt is a PhD Candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at University of Wisconsin-Madison.