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Host McGavin acted impressed: These demonstrations "support the biblical story of the Deluge in every detail." One viewer who had good reason to doubt that statement -- and many others -- was Gerald Larue, a professor emeritus of biblical history and archaeology at the University of Southern California. A member of the Skeptics Society, an organization devoted to investigating pseudo science, Larue had been interviewed for an earlier Sun International production and, after seeing that show, felt he had been set up as a straw man. It inspired him to coach George Jammal, an acquaintance, to perpetrate the hoax, intended to expose the shoddy research of Sun International. "Carbon-14 testing would have revealed that the wood was a modern forgery," says Larue.
Frank Zindler, a Columbus, Ohio, biologist and biblical scholar, was furious after seeing the special. He had been asked to appear in a subsequent Sun International production called Ancient Secrets of the Bible II, which aired on CBS in May. Zindler backed out of his taping appointment and fired off a letter to CBS, calling the ark program "an attempt to show that modern science is wrong and Bronze Age mythology is correct." Earlier, Zindler began having qualms about his interview when he received instructions from Sun International revealing that "most of the pro-con arguments are pre-scripted and are already approved by the CBS-TV network."
CBS defends its role. "When we bought the special," says a spokeswoman, "it was as an entertainment special, not a documentary." Says Sun International executive producer Charles E. Sellier: "We just presented a variety of people saying the different things they knew about Noah's ark." That excuse will hardly mollify discriminating TV viewers. And it will not defuse the anger of archaeologists like Richard Fox, of the University of South Dakota. Writing in the current edition of Free Inquiry, a secular humanist publication, Fox charges, "The program abused my profession and insulted its practitioners. And CBS is responsible."