JW update: North Texas Skeptics, Curtis D. Mobley, and Raptor Educational Foundation

Former Secretary of the Interior James Watt has been the victim of a pair of bogus quotations. I've been trying to contact sites who post the erroneous information to try to convince them to correct the record.

North Texas Skeptics, one of the sources where I originally located the bogus quotation, was contacted over a week ago. I explained the problem at some length. I've received replies asking for more information, and they have not changed their use of a bogus Watt quotation as of this writing.

As noted before, it's a shame that they didn't apply the same level of skepticism when they first posted the bogus quotation.

Scientist Curtis Mobley readily agreed that the quotation is bogus, and implied that he would change his page accordingly.

Apparently page update is on the back burner. Meanwhile, we have the following irony:

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth."
—Vladimir Lenin


"The bigger the lie, the more people believe it."
—paraphrase of a statement by Adolf Hitler


"My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns. We don't have to protect the environment; the Second Coming is at hand."
—James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under President Reagan; Washington Post, May 24, 1981
(Ann & Curt's Excellent Adventures)

As if to illustrate, eh?

Raptor Educational Foundation gets major props. "Jeff" from the Raptor group responded promptly to my message, promising to look into it and make changes if what I was saying was correct. Their site removed the bogus quotation within about a week.

Those who are trustworthy in small things gain some measure of trust in handling larger things, I believe. This environmental group earns a big point for integrity in my book.