JW science blunders aren’t always the result of misunderstanding the working principles of the phenomenon being discussed. Sometimes they’re simply the result of not properly researching a secular quote that dovetails with the worldview of the JW leadership
Today’s JW science quote of the day is a good example:
Awake! June 22 1993 p. 29"The scientific community reconfirms the severity of the Spanish influenza. According to The New York Times Magazine, 196,000 people died in the United States alone during the month of October 1918. "By the end of the winter of 1918-19, two billion people around the world had come down with influenza, and between 20 million and 40 million had died, the magazine says
The problem here is that world population didn’t reach the 2 billion mark until the early 1930's. In 1918 the total world population was only about 1.8 billion persons. So even if we assume that every single individual on the face of the earth had been infected by the end of winter 1918-1919, (Which did not happen) we still fall short of the claim by about two million.
This series of JW science quotes could have been continued indefinitely, but I trust that by now everyone understands the point. --Neither the JW leadership nor those under their direction are "Celebrated scholars." It doesn’t even have to be a matter of science; you can pretty much name your topic and this is what you will find.
These are just ordinary men, no more and no less educated or intelligent than your neighbor across the street who washes his SUV every Saturday. Jehovah’s "Spirit" doesn’t prevent them from being wrong, sometimes seriously so, and it doesn’t prevent those that follow them from coming to harm as a result.