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Help Us Dr. Carson

Help Us Dr. Carson

Last updated on: November 9, 2015 at 5:01 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Help Us Dr. Carson 2015-11-09T17:01:16-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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You don’t have to believe the “mainstream media.” Ben Carson could settle one question right now and is choosing not to do so. That should increase worries about his truthfulness.

You don’t have to trust a single reporter. Dr. Ben Carson is making his situation worse all by himself and I do not understand why he is doing so. The Wall Street Journal ran a story showing they had been unable to verify an anecdote that Dr. Carson had told about himself for years. Carson claimed to win a ten dollar prize for being the most honest student in a psychology class.

The problem is that no class exists with the name Carson claimed or with the course number he used. Yale can find no record of the event as he described it. He claimed a picture was taken for the paper, but no picture was ever published.

My friends who support Carson, and I have many, point out memory is fickle. Our family often finds we get big details wrong about things that happened long ago.

Let’s let Carson off the hook for telling a story using very specific details that were wrong. Let’s assume the Wall Street Journal is lying because they are “left wing” or in the “Establishment” pocket. Ben Carson has told this story himself for years to demonstrate his honesty! Shouldn’t this story of all stories be essentially true? Shouldn’t there at least be a class at Yale where he won a prize for being the honest student?

The good news: Dr. Carson does not have to remember the class. He can easily prove it exists.

Ben Carson could make the Wall Street Journal and Yale look bad. He could relieve the sorrow that many of us who were giving him a serious, second look for President of the United States feel and he could do it by showing us the class on his own transcript. He need merely point to any psychology class by name as the one where he won a prize. He need not have gotten the name right or the number. He can end the search for the class and he does not need the Internet, just his own records.

Instead Carson’s Facebook posted the following:

Allow me also to do the research for the Wall Street Journal reporter. Here is a syllabus for the class you claim never existed. Still waiting on the apology.

Here is the link. Check it yourself. Notice something? It is for a class in 2002. The reporter claimed he could find no record of this class when Carson was in school. Carson has done nothing to show the class existed in the 20th century when he took it by linking to a similar class in the 20th century. The reporter did not claim the class never existed but that it did not exist when Carson was in Yale.

Why would Dr. Carson do this?

He could prove the reporter wrong by refreshing his memory with his own transcript. Instead, he is using irrelevant data to make false claims about the reporter. He also linked to a “parody” story from Yale about a psychology test. It is a parody piece (marked so) that has multiple students retaking a psychology test that is a parody set up by the school paper.

This is evidence of nothing. The story Carson told was his passing a psychology “test” that showed he was the most honest student in the class . . . not that he went to a fake test done by the campus paper and retook it . . . falling for a campus prank!

Dr. Carson: why are you throwing up such “evidence” of this story? Why not prove at least part your story was true by showing this class on your transcript? Help us, Dr. Carson. I would love to be wrong about worries regarding your veracity.

——–Anticipated Questions———————

1. Why does this matter?

Some of my friends wonder why I care. Isn’t this minor stuff from long ago?

I care, because Dr. Carson is running for President with no political experience, while touting his character. He has doubled down on this story about his honesty by using evidence a bright man must know is spurious. Releasing a 2002 syllabus as evidence of anything relevant is an insult to the intelligence of his supporters.

That sort of response is deeply disturbing. This isn’t the only problem in this life story.

We also know he claimed a pro-life group lied to him in making a pro-life commercial. They did not. That was one of the few political moments in this life and he continues to claim that he was deceived by some very good people who deny the charge.

2. Aren’t HRC and the Obama Administration much worse?

If I now had to chose between Dr. Carson and HRC, I would vote for Dr. Carson as the better of the two choices. HRC has used her position for profit and told lies about her public life repeatedly. Carson’s possible falsehoods pale in comparison.

That is not the choice I face at present, however. Dr. Carson is one of many GOP candidates.

Finally, I don’t think saying Carson is more honest than HRC does much for him . . . praising him with very faint damns.

3. Can we trust the Christian Media Complex?

Conservatives have good reason not to trust the mainstream media. They are celebrity driven and dislike our values.

I have learned over my career that we cannot always trust the Christian Media Complex. This for profit group too often fails to fact check, peddles dubious product, and is rife with inflated stories and credentials. Sadly, Dr. Carson spent decades in that perilous system of book tours that uses pulpits to market product. The CMC often makes money off of dubious health companies. Listen to Saturday “Christian” radio. It is a culture where a man like David Barton can sell spurious books, be forced to withdraw them, and still be in demand as a speaker.

I hope Dr. Carson did not adopt the ethics of the worst of that sub-culture. I do not know if he did.

4. Why don’t you raise these questions about other candidates?

President Obama never got my vote and he cannot run again. HRC will not get my vote. I have no favorite candidate at the moment. In the past, I have given small amounts of money to Governor Jindal and I once gave money to Senator Cruz. In both cases, my giving was to encourage good things they were doing. I have endorsed neither of them and am still “shopping.”

I raise these questions about Dr. Carson, because I have always thought of him as a hero . . . a man of great integrity. He may still be a great neurosurgeon, but telling falsehoods at this level is not good in a Presidential candidate.

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