No Child Left Behind Act and that the State of Ohio was therefore required to require the teaching of alternative theories of evolution as part of the biology curriculum. The professor of biology Kenneth R. Miller replied that comments and not approved amendments in conference committee reports do not carry the weight of law and that Meyer had misled the board of education in implying that they do. Article in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington On 4 August 2004, an article by Meyer appeared in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. On September 7, the publisher of the journal, the Council of the Biological Society of Washington, released a statement retracting the article as not having met its scientific standards and saying that the article had been published at the discretion of the former editor Richard Sternberg "without review by any associate editor". Critics believe that Sternberg's personal and ideological connections to Meyer suggest at least the appearance of a conflict of interest in his approval of Meyer's article. The journal's reasons for disavowing the article were rebutted by Sternberg, who says the paper underwent the standard peer-review process and that he was encouraged to publish it by a member of the Council of the BSW. A critical review of the article is available on the Panda's Thumb website. In January 2005, the Discovery Institute posted its response to the critique on their website. The National Center for Science Education also called "the Meyer paper" pseudoscientific. Claims of persecution Meyer claims that those who oppose the essentially unanimous international scientific consensus on evolution are persecuted by the scientific community and prevented from publishing their views. In 2001, he signed the statement A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, coinciding with the launch of the PBS TV series Evolution, saying in part: The numbers of scientists who question Darwinism is a minority, but it is growing fast. This is happening in the face of fierce attempts to intimidate and suppress legitimate dissent. Young scientists are threatened with deprivation of tenure. Others have seen a consistent pattern of answering scientific arguments with ad hominem attacks. In particular, the series' attempt to stigmatize all critics – including scientists – as religious "creationists" is an excellent example of viewpoint discrimination. A wide range of scholarly, science education, and legislative sources have denied, refuted, or off-handedly dismissed these allegations.