Kenneth Smith and Dunning-Kruger Effect

Kenneth Smith has filed multiple lawsuits against everyone from school boards to state governments to the United States. He’s unhappy because they all refuse to teach his “accurate scientific mathematical system of genetic variations that proves evolution is a religion.” Even among the creationist nut-jobs that plague the United States, Smith stands out as a shining example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect in action.

WC has written before about the well-documented Dunning-Kruger Effect. You can summarize it by saying that if you are dumb enough, you aren’t capable of recognizing how dumb you are.

Meet Kenneth Smith. He’s the author of a couple of truly dreadful, self-published books, including the racist cant, The True Origin of Man, an appalling piece of work. The “accurate, scientific mathematical system” he touts there would make a fifth grade arithmetic teacher despair for the U.S. educational system. And his primary thesis – that the biblical Cain had children by an African mountain gorilla, creating the “colored” races – is as sad an example of self-loathing as anything WC has seen in six decades of reading. Because Mr. Smith – “Doctor Smith” courtesy of a dubious degree from DeVry – is himself African-American. A sample:

DNA states 100% human + 0 combined with 100% primate +0 = 100/2 = 50 +100/2 = 50 for a fused genome of 50/50% human, primate offspring produced. Cain became transfixed with ignominy in his tracks and then he bolted like before, when God had banished him from the homeland of his people.

Got that? Smith is unhappy that his evident genius is unrecognized. So he has filed his lawsuits to force the world to acknowledge that, in his words, he is greater than Charles Darwin.

He lost his latest lawsuit when U.S. District Judge Gina Groh, the Chief Judge of the Northern District of West Virginia, pitched “Dr. Smith” out of court. She ruled, in part, “the Plaintiff’s allegations, which consist of fleeting references to federal law followed by diatribes against the Defendants, do not constitute even “[t]hreadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, [citations omitted] much less plausible claims to relief.” WC only hopes that Smith got nailed for the costs and attorneys’ fees incurred by the folks he sued.

If you read a few pages of his book,using Amazon’s “Look inside,” and sample some of his legal writing, available through the National Center for Science Education, you’ll see not just bad writing, shoddy reasoning, and egregious stupidity; you’ll also see someone who is utterly oblivious to his . . . limited skills. You’ll see a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Remember, Kenneth Smith’s vote counts the same as yours.