Is Michael Guillen a Flake?

Was the doctor who offered to check out the Raelian cloning claim attacked because of his personal beliefs?

BY: James Pethokoukis

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The parents of little Eve are no-shows, the media is off the cloning scent, and the Clonaid cloning saga has boiled down to who'll play Raëlian sexpot scientist Brigitte Boisselier when they get around to making the Lifetime Channel movie. Hollywood, after all, loves a good drama about religion clashing with science. In 1960, the eminently reasonable Spencer Tracy starred in "Inherit the Wind" as a lawyer arguing for evolution against creationism in the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial." (Tracy lost the case, but Darwin won the war.)

But a film about the Raëlians, their religious will to clone, and their cloning-services company, Clonaid, would be way weirder. The Scopes Trial can't compete with supposed alien contact, orgiastic initiation rituals and accusations of a massive hoax. But hidden in these juicy details would be the same skirmish between science and religion.

At the center of this particular tussle stands Dr. Michael Guillen, who by now probably has his doubts about the the old ad-game adage that "any publicity is good publicity as long as they spell your name right." Thanks to his bold offer to put Clonaid's claim to the test, Guillen, a theoretical physicist and former ABC News science reporter, could well be the most famous science journalist after Bill Nye the Science Guy. Or perhaps infamous would be a more apt appraisal given a month of humiliating headlines like these:

"Harsh scrutiny for TV reporter called on to verify the claim" (The Miami Herald)

"Clone investigator criticized in past; Journalist has won quackery award" (The Times-Picayune)

"Journalist heading test panel ridiculed" (Toronto Star)

Similar articles in The New York Times, USA Today and scores of other publications followed, a common thread being complaints about Guillen's journalistic judgement. Scientists complained that when he reported for Good Morning America and 20/20, Guillen's stories presented too many subjects with vaporous of scientific underpinnings: UFOs, astrology, ESP and psychokinesis. His reporting smacked of more Stephen King, they claimed, than Stephen Hawking. And when

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