Thread by @mattsheffield

A little known fact about Scott Atlas, Trump's top COVID adviser, is that besides having no credentials in public health or epidemiology, he works for a creationist think tank.

The group, called the Hoover Institution, is located on the campus of Stanford University. Besides spreading conservative economics, it has been churning out convoluted anti-evolution nonsense for years.

Here's a Hoover page featuring Atlas discussing Obamacare that further downward touts a discussion about the supposed "mathematical challenges" of macroevolutionary theory. hoover.org/publications/d…

Here's Hoover in 2005 discussing "Monkey Business: Evolution and Intelligent Design" hoover.org/research/monke…

Here's a 2001 discussion about evolution and religion featuring a staffer for the Discovery Institute, the top Christian right creationist group hoover.org/research/whose…

Here's another 2001 discussion attacking "Darwinism" explicitly promoting "intelligent design" in conjunction with the Discovery Institute hoover.org/research/darwi…

In 2019, Hoover gave a glowing interview to creationist advocate David Berlinski, author of "The Deniable Darwin”. hoover.org/research/uncom…

This was not the first time that Hoover had promoted Berlinski, however. They featured him in 2014 as well hoover.org/research/david…

In 2007, Hoover fellow Peter Robinson attempted to debate the late atheist Christopher Hitchens by advocating for the idea that atheism encourages immorality hoover.org/research/hitch…

Promoting creationist flimflam has been a longtime project for Robinson and Hoover. Here is a 1998 piece that Hoover published from Robinson on the topic hoover.org/research/faith…

Here's a 2016 piece from another Hoover author warning of "The Dangerous Rise Of Scientism." It's a much smarter version of the faulty response to SARS2 that Atlas is advocating today hoover.org/research/dange…

It's unclear if Atlas is a creationist but given his long affiliation with a group that advocates for "intelligent design," it is an urgent public matter that he be asked about it. Someone who denies evolution is utterly unfit to supervise the response to a pandemic. /end

PostScripts: I should add that Hoover is also the home of Richard Epstein, the lawyer who badly screwed up the Trump admin's initial SARS2 response and was shredded by @IChotiner newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/t…

Hoover also was long the institutional home of conservative troll Dinesh D'Souza, one of Trump's favorite people today.