Ah, the old, ‘The biologists support me in private’ ploy.
He’s lying. This isn’t something one with any actual experience with the worldwide biological research community could be honestly mistaken about. Among mainstream biologists, common descent is viewed as the central, organizing framework for understanding biological diversity. While there are plenty of disagreements about the details of evolution, the core reality is far too useful and far too well supported to be the subject of doubt.
Seriously, how does this make even the tiniest bit of sense to you? Why would thousands of evolutionary biologists, and hundreds of thousands of biologists whose work touches on evolution or depends on it in some way, spend their lives studying and relying on something they know to be false? Why not just take a job in biotech industry, where the hours are shorter and the pay better? And why would anyone bother enforcing such a ridiculous orthodoxy? What’s the gain in forcing others to study something you know to be false?
Yeah, but there’s the rub.