Kopernicus and friend were young-earth creationists.... Um. Were there any other kind of people in Galileo's time? This was centuries before Darwin or even the old-earth geologists who preceded him.
I don't know, but the point he makes about duplicity is valid regardless of whether his implication that the scientists at the universities that were the main opposition were anything other than YEC.
Bringing up the long history of creationists who were pioneers in science also puts down the oft repeated claim of evolutionists that creationists are bad for science and will lead us into the dark ages.