Skeptical
NewsSkeptical
NewsRecent and fast breaking news of interest to skeptics.
We scan the spectrum of news of interest to skeptics. We don't attempt to filter out the nonsense. It's a test for the reader to figure out which is nonsense and which is not. Contact the editor if you are not sure.
A recent article in the Fort Worth Weekly (August 3, 2008) warns of the impending battle over the place of evolution in Texas's state science standards. "The basic fight is expected to be over what kids are taught about evolution -- which takes up only about three days of teaching in a 180-day school year," Laurie Barker James writes. "But scientists and teachers argue there are much bigger things at stake: the intimidation of teachers and the possible beginning of biblical beliefs being taught as science in Texas public schools."
Steven Schafersman, the president of Texas Citizens for Science, told the Weekly that the current educational climate "intimidates [science] teachers," forcing them "to avoid or minimize" the topic of evolution. James added, "The fact that none of the other science teachers interviewed for this article wanted their names used would seem to back up his allegation of fear in the teaching ranks. All but [Kevin] Fisher said they believe that any statement with their names on it could come back to them in the form of a pink slip."
Naturally, the case of Chris Comer, who was forced to resign from her position as director of science at the Texas Education Agency in October 2007 over her forwarding a note announcing a talk by Barbara Forrest, was discussed. As NCSE previously reported, she is now suing the TEA, seeking, among other things, a declaratory judgment that its policy of requiring its employees to be "neutral" with respect to creationism violates the Establishment Clause. The TEA is asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed.
The article proceeds to explain the political dynamics of the Texas state board of education. Dan Quinn, the communications director of the Texas Freedom Network, told James that Texans have "elected a board with a bloc of ideologues who care more about promoting their own personal agendas than educating Texas kids," with seven of the fifteen members of the board -- one short of a majority -- identified as allied with the religious right. Among them is the chair of the board, Don McLeroy, whose hostility to evolution education is notorious.
Reacting to a claim that those seven members of the board are only seeking accuracy, Schafersman explained, "The intent of the SBOE creationists is to ask for misrepresentation of science, not for accuracy." They plan, he said, to "damage evolution instruction by trying to get the new science standards to include [lessons on] alleged but false 'weaknesses' of evolution, in order to weaken evolution content, confuse students, and make them think science is less accurate and reliable about biological origins than it really is."
What's next? "Experts are currently composing drafts, according to the TEA's schedule, and the SBOE will have another 'discussion' about the science curricula in November. [A spokesperson for the TEA] said the public can comment now, or at any of the meetings between November 2008 and March 2009, as well as via the agency's web site." But, James added, "Science teachers and their advocates are urging interested Texans to write directly to TEA Commissioner Scott or to their local SBOE members now -- and not to wait until the official proposal is released in January."
The TFN's Dan Quinn emphasized the importance of the issue, saying, "Right now, what the SBOE does will determine whether the next generation of Texas public school students get a 19th-century education in their 21st-century classroom ... The adoption of the science curriculum will determine whether students will be prepared to succeed in college and jobs of the future, or whether their education is subordinated to the views and beliefs of a fringe group of SBOE members." And James added, "What happens here will also ripple through the textbooks of other states."
For the article in the Fort Worth Weekly, visit:
http://www.fwweekly.com/content.asp?article=7149
For the website of Texas Citizens for Science, visit:
http://www.texscience.org/
For the website of the Texas Freedom Network, visit:
http://www.tfn.org/
And for NCSE's previous coverage of events in Texas, visit:
http://www.ncseweb.org/pressroom.asp?state=TX
CREATIONIST INITIATIVES DENOUNCED IN ASBMB TODAY
Two articles in the August 2008 issue of ASBMB Today react to recent creationist iniatives. ASBMB's president, Gregory A. Petsko of Brandeis University, pulls no punches in his column, beginning, "They're at it again. Armed with another new idea from the Discovery Institute, that bastion of ignorance, right-wing political ideology, and pseudo-scientific claptrap, the creationist movement has mounted yet another assault on science. This time it comes in two flavors, propaganda and legislative."
The propaganda effort is the film Expelled, "which attempts to link evolution to the eugenics movement in Nazi Germany and to the Holocaust, and portrays advocates of intelligent design as champions of academic freedom and victims of discrimination by the scientific community." Petsko continues, "Fortunately, the film is sinking faster than the Lusitania ... Whether this is because people recognize it as rubbish or because it is simply a bad movie, I don't know."
Less easily dismissable, however, is the passage and enactment of the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act, which threatens to open the door for creationism and scientifically unwarranted critiques of evolution to be taught in the state's public school science classes. Quoting a defender as saying that it enables teachers to "teach the controversy," Petsko responds, "Let me say this as clearly as possible, so there can be no mistake about what I mean: there is no controversy."
Warming to his theme, he continues: "Just because a few misguided so-called scientists question the validity of the concept of evolution doesn't mean there is a controversy. ... The fact that some people believe nonsense does not give that nonsense scientific credibility." And the Louisiana Science Education is not really about academic freedom, he observes. "Any 'science' teacher who teaches that the earth might have been created about 6,000 years ago and that all the material evidence that it's billions of years old is controversial is simply incompetent."
Elsewhere in the same issue of ASBMB Today, ASBMB's policy fellow Angela Hvitved provides a history and analysis of bills like the Louisiana Science Education Act, noting that "most science education groups agree that, at best, these bills are unnecessary and do not provide any additional legitimate protection and at worst, provide cover for introducing intelligent design and other nonscientific topics into the science classroom."
ASBMB Today is a monthly publication of the American Society for Microbiology and Molecular Biology, a non-profit scientific and educational organization with over 12,000 members. Its mission is "to advance the science of biochemistry and molecular biology through publication of scientific and educational journals, ... organization of scientific meetings, advocacy for funding of basic research and education, support of science education at all levels, and promoting the diversity of individuals entering the scientific workforce."
For the August 2008 isue of ASBMB Today, visit:
http://www.asbmbtoday-digital.com/asbmbtoday/200808/
For information about Expelled, visit:
http://www.expelledexposed.com
For NCSE's previous coverage of events in Louisiana, visit:
http://www.ncseweb.org/pressroom.asp?state=LA
And for information about ASBMB, visit:
http://www.asbmb.org/
Thanks for reading! And as always, be sure to consult NCSE's web site: http://www.ncseweb.org where you can always find the latest news on evolution education and threats to it.
Sincerely,
Glenn Branch
Deputy Director
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509
510-601-7203 x305
fax: 510-601-7204
800-290-6006
branch@ncseweb.org
http://www.ncseweb.org
Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools
http://www.ncseweb.org/nioc
Eugenie C. Scott's Evolution vs. Creationism
http://www.ncseweb.org/evc
NCSE's work is supported by its members. Join today!
http://www.ncseweb.org/membership.asp
Pete Chagnon - OneNewsNow - 9/2/2008 8:00:00 AM
The New York Times is rehashing an old argument with the reprinting of "Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution."
The article, penned by Discovery Institute senior fellow Jonathan Wells over five years ago, lists ten questions that were meant to bring awareness to the allegedly sketchy and falsified science behind evolutionary teaching. The New York Times recently reprinted the questions along with rebuttal from the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). But Discovery Institute spokesman Casey Luskin says the NCSE's response was lacking.
"It's very obvious that The New York Times is afraid that students who are about to go back to school might have ideas in their heads that challenge Darwinian evolution," Luskin contends. "And so they took it upon themselves, as an allegedly unbiased media source, to actually print answers to the ten questions that students can ask their biology teachers about evolution. And, of course, all the answers that they print are from a...strictly pro-Darwin-only viewpoint."
For example, Luskin points out the peppered moth question. He says, in an attempt to prove natural selection, researchers staged photo shoots. "Basically the researchers glued moths on the tree trunks of trees in locations where it turns out the moths don't normally reside," he explains. "And so what they really do is set up an experiment that does not model the reality of biology."
In response, the NCSE argued that the pictures were meant to prove a point -- and that just because people stage the re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg does not mean the battle never happened.
Comments on this article:
"There is no scientific debate on creationism/evolution, and scientific theories require some level of support before we allow them to be taught in our classrooms. Whether or not a few (and it is a very small number) of people decide they want to believe in this nonsense is irrelevant - schools are not the place for such conversations, especially given the complete lack of scientific support for 'intelligent design' and its various other forms. And for the record, a good number of the scientists you listed never even had a chance to be exposed the the theory of evolution because it had yet to be introduced, and even if they had its still an argument from authority and one unsupported by every shred of evidence."
"How funny! Non-scientists calling such scientists as these "lame": Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Gregor Mendel, Lord Kelvin, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Christian Huygens, Blaise Pascal, Marconi, Roger Bacon, Robert Boyle, Copernicus, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, George Washington Carver, James Joule, Sir Francis Bacon, Bernhard Riemann, Wernher von Braun, John Philoponus, Dietrich von Frieberg, Joseph Lister, Francesco Grimaldi, Niels Steno, John Dalton, Philip Gosse, Leonhard Euler, Arthur Eddington, Samuel F.B. Morse, Louis Agassiz, William Herschel, George Gabriel Stokes, Augustin Cauchy, George Boole, Carolus Linnaeus, Nicole Oresme, Ewald Georg von Kleist, David Brewster, John Herschel..."
"A poor article that does nothing to further belief in Creation. I do believe that God created the world, and He gave the creatures He created to ability to evolve and adapt to changing conditions. Case in point, the peppered moth, to which God gave the ability to adapt as its environment changed. Our world is too wonderful and too carefully in balance to have happened by chance. It had to have been created."
"Darwin disproved his own theory and said as much in several of his writings. Amazing how those conclusions are never published."
"Pretty lame that Luskin insists on going back to the tired, old, peppered moth incident. No serious, degree-holding (I mean, from a real university and not something like Bob Jones) biologist doubts evolution by natural selection, because 1) the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, and 2)there is no other credible theory available."
"Evolution is all fiction. Because if animals evolved, then the previous animals must disappear, such as humans from apes. Check out www.drdino.com for the truth."
"Pretty unscientific arguement from the NCSE. The NCSE might have added because people dress as wherewolves during Halloween doesn't mean there are no wherewolves. Good article."
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
A new study by climate scientists behind the controversial 1998 "hockey stick" graph suggests their earlier analysis was broadly correct.
Michael Mann's team analysed data for the last 2,000 years, and concluded that Northern Hemisphere temperatures now are "anomalously warm".
Different analytical methods give the same result, they report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The 1998 hockey stick was a totem of debates over man-made global warming.
The graph - indicating that Northern Hemisphere temperatures had been roughly constant for 1,000 years (the "shaft" of the stick) before turning abruptly upwards in the industrial age - featured prominently in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2001 assessment.
But some academics questioned its methodology and conclusions, and increasingly strident condemnations reverberated around the blogosphere.
One US politician demanded to see financial and research records from the scientists involved.
However, a 2006 report from the National Research Council (NRC), commissioned by the US Congress, broadly endorsed its conclusion that Northern Hemisphere temperatures in the late 20th Century were probably warmer than at any time in the previous 400 years, and perhaps at any time during the previous 1,000 years.
Twin study
Since then, a number of research groups have produced new "proxy records" of temperatures from the centuries before thermometers were widely deployed.
Such proxies include the growth patterns of trees and coral, the contents of ice cores and sediments, and temperature fluctuations in boreholes.
Unravelling 'climate scepticism'
In their latest study, Dr Mann's group collated more than 1,200 proxy records - the majority from the Northern Hemisphere - and used different statistical methods to analyse their cumulative message.
"We used two different methods that are quite complementary in the assumptions they make about data, so that provides a test of the sensitivity of data to the methods used," he told BBC News.
"We also made use of a far wider network of proxy data than previously available.
"Ten years ago, the availability of data became quite sparse by the time you got back to 1,000 AD, and what we had then was weighted towards tree-ring data; but now you can go back 1,300 years without using tree-ring data at all and still get a verifiable conclusion."
Both analytical methods produced graphs similar to the original hockey stick, though starting further back in time. The "shaft" now extends back to about 700 AD.
The same basic pattern emerged when tree-ring data - whose reliability has been questioned - was excluded from the analysis.
"I think that having this extra data and using more methods to analyse it makes the conclusions more robust," commented Gabi Hegerl from the University of Edinburgh, UK, who was not involved in the research.
Past lessons
Critics of the idea of man-made climate change argue that conditions 1,000 years ago were as warm as, if not warmer than, they are today.
The new paper adds to the evidence against that notion. One of the analytical methods used suggests that temperatures in the Mediaeval Warm Period could have been no higher than they were in about 1980; the other suggests they were no higher than those seen 100 years ago.
In any case, said Dr Hegerl: "The whole line of argument [about whether temperatures have been as high in the past as they are now] is not very relevant."
The climate has always responded to factors such as changes in solar activity or volcanic eruptions, and always will, she said; the issue now is how it is responding to greenhouse gas emissions.
"In any case, the paper still comes to the firm conclusion that the most recent decades are unusual."
Ten years on from the study that provoked all the ire, Michael Mann's conclusion is that far from being broken, "the hockey stick is alive and well".
But, the Penn State University researcher added: "If we want to understand things like El Nino and how it relates to climate change, it's not enough to know just how anomalously warm the climate is today.
"We need to learn from the palaeoclimatic record. The science is not all done, there's still a lot of work to do; but what we are seeing now is definitely unusual in the context of the past."
A particular desire of scientists in the field is to increase the amount of data from the Southern Hemisphere. The majority of proxy records come from land rather than sea, and from land not covered in ice at that, which is in relatively short supply south of the equator.
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
Facts About Argyria, the Gray Skin Condition Rosemary Jacobs Blames on Colloidal Silver
By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Louise Chang, MD
Sept. 5, 2008 -- Media reports are abuzz today with the story of Rosemary Jacobs, a 66-year-old Vermont woman who says her skin is permanently gray because of colloidal silver.
Jacobs blames her gray skin, a condition called argyria, on colloidal silver in nasal drops that she took as needed for four years starting as an 11-year-old. She says her skin slowly turned gray. Jacobs' case was noted in May 1999 in The New England Journal of Medicine.
You wouldn't get colloidal silver exactly the way Jacobs did today. The FDA has cracked down on colloidal silver, but that doesn't mean those products are totally gone. Paul Karason, the so-called "Blue Man" in California who says he drank colloidal silver and applied it to his skin, has also attracted media attention for his argyria.
Jacobs says she wants colloidal silver supplements to carry warning labels about argyria. She also wants anyone who makes unsubstantiated claims about their safety and efficacy to be prosecuted.
What is colloidal silver, why do people take it, and what other health risks does it pose? For answers, WebMD spoke with Andrew Shao, PhD, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group for the dietary supplements industry. Other background information comes from the web sites of the FDA and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM).
What is colloidal silver?
Colloidal silver is composed of tiny silver particles suspended in liquid.
What is argyria?
Argyria is a permanent blue-gray discoloration of the skin and deep tissues. It can result from using colloidal silver products.
What other risks are there from colloidal silver products?
Apart from argyria, the NCCAM says colloidal silver products may cause side effects including "neurologic problems (such as seizures), kidney damage, stomach distress, headaches, fatigue, and skin irritation," and that colloidal silver may hamper the body's absorption of certain drugs (penacillamine, quinolones, tetracyclines, and thyroxine).
Why do people take colloidal silver?
"The products are purported to alleviate all sorts of medical conditions and diseases but there's no substantiation for that," says Shao.
Colloidal silver products are often marketed with unproven health claims. "Examples include that they benefit the immune system; kill disease-causing agents such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi; are an alternative to prescription antibiotics; or treat diseases such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, syphilis, scarlet fever, shingles, herpes, pneumonia, and prostatitis (inflammation of the prostate)," states the NCCAM's web site.
Is colloidal silver still in nasal drops?
No. The FDA banned colloidal silver from all over-the-counter drugs in 1999.
What about colloidal silver supplements?The FDA's 1999 ban on colloidal silver is specifically about over-the-counter drugs, not dietary supplements. But the FDA has cracked down on companies selling colloidal silver supplements that claim that the supplements cure conditions or do other things that drugs do.
Shao says that colloidal silver -- and colloidal gold and colloidal titanium -- "are not legitimate dietary ingredients. They play no role in the diet; they're not essential in the diet." But that doesn't mean colloidal silver hasn't been hawked online.
"The fact that it's on the Internet -- there's lots of stuff on the Internet that maybe shouldn't be," says Shao. "That's not an indication of FDA's blessing or lack thereof; it's more of an indication of insufficient enforcement."
by Ralph Stone‚ Sep. 05‚ 2008
Reportedly, Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is a creationist--or at least she advocates teaching creationism alongside evolution in the public schools. I, therefore, conclude that she believes that Charles Darwin's tested theory of evolution is on the same scientific level as creationism. But just what is creationism?
The Bible (Genesis) tells us that God created heaven and earth and all contained therein in six days. (God rested on the seventh day). Genesis is treated by most scholars as an allegory, not literally true. Remarkably, creationists like Palin believe the Bible is literally true. While most Americans probably agree that God was responsible for the creation of life on earth, many disagree on what happened next. Creationists believe that humans and other living things have stayed the same since creation.
Creationists believe that the earth is less than 10,000 years old and that Darwin’s theory of evolution does not adequately explain the complexity of life. They believe that various forms of life began abruptly by an intelligent agency (God) with their distinctive features in place, i.e., fish with scales and fins, birds with feathers and wings, etc. Creationists cannot accept that humans evolved from apes. To them this is sacrilege. "Intelligent design” -- creationism repackaged -- holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause (God), not an undirected process such as natural selection.
Darwinism is based on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution set forth in his "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life," and subsequent writings. His theory of evolution is considered the foundation of biology. Darwin posited a tree of life with one species giving rise to another species over billions of years. Species evolved over time through natural selection acting on inherited traits. Darwin had no idea how those traits arose or how they were passed on from generation to generation. The discovery of DNA gave rise to a new field of science called genetics, which confirmed Darwin’s theory and explained how traits are passed on. Genetics also confirmed the most controversial part of Darwin’s theory that humans and apes have a common ancestry. But even after 126 years, his theory supported by information which has been tested again and again over time is still anathema to the creationists.
The courts have ruled that intelligent design and creationism should be taught, if at all, in Sunday school - not in our public schools. For example, in 2005, the federal court in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (Pennsylvania), stated: "Intelligent design cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents" and thus, is unconstitutional. The judge also stated: "Intelligent design is not science and cannot be adjudged a valid, accepted scientific theory as it has failed to publish in peer-reviewed journals, engage in research and testing, and gain acceptance in the scientific community."
Like Palin, President Bush has said that schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life. Education, however, is not necessarily about debating both sides because that assumes both evolution, which has been tested over time, should be taught alongside creationism, which is superstitious nonsense. Not surprisingly, Bush White House appointees have been accused of suppressing or censoring science that goes against the administration's political and religious leanings.
Another adherent of junk science is not going to improve this country's tarnished world image.
Last Sunday morning, MSNBC's "Meet the Press" (hosted by Tom Brokaw) interviewed Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty about whether "creationism vs. evolution ... should be taught side by side in public schools." Pawlenty observed that Brokaw should be talking about intelligent design (ID), not creationism: "In the scientific community, it seems like intelligent design is dismissed. Not entirely, there are a lot of scientists who would make the case that it is appropriate to be taught and appropriate to be demonstrated." Pawlenty said that the decision should be left to local districts. Discovery Institute, of course, has long-opposed mandating ID in public schools.
Continuing to call the issue "creationism vs. evolution" and failing to acknowledge intelligent design, Brokaw then asked political strategist Mike Murphy how the teaching of "creationism vs. evolution" would "cut with the independents." Also confused and mistaken, Murphy replied, "It's trouble."
In fact, polls have shown that large percentages of Independent voters — and even strong majorities of Democrats — support both teaching ID alongside evolution as well as the far more modest proposition to simply teach both the scientific evidence for and against evolution, without teaching ID.
A 2006 Zogby Poll found that 74% of Independent voters and 60% of Democrats support the view that biology teachers should teach Darwinian evolution, but also the evidence against it. The poll also found that 65% of Democrats and 79% of Independents support the view that "When Darwin's theory of evolution is taught in school, students should also be able to learn about scientific evidence that points to an intelligent design of life." This bears repeating: 79% of Independent voters supported teaching ID when evolution is taught. 86% and 85% of Republicans in the poll supported these positions, respectively.
In these politically polarized times, on how many issues do over 60% of Democrats and over 70% of Independents agree with a viewpoint held by over 80% of Republicans? It seems that Brokaw and Murphy may need to re-analyze the poll data about where the majority of Americans truly stand on the reasonable proposition that evolution should be taught in a non-dogmatic and critical fashion.
Posted by Casey Luskin on September 5, 2008 9:21 AM | Permalink
Posted on Sun, Sep. 7, 2008
Arthur Caplan is chairman of the medical-ethics department at the University of Pennsylvania
There has been no end of reaction to Sen. John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential pick. After the initial "Sarah who?" response from those in the other 49 states, some commentators have decided it was brilliant to place a dynamic young woman at McCain's side.
Despite Palin's boisterous coming-out speech at the Republican convention, I think McCain has actually thrown away any chance he had of being elected because the selection of Palin puts an issue on the table that McCain may find exceedingly uncomfortable to have to wrestle with over the next two months.
No, I don't mean Palin's views on abortion, although she is staunchly anti-choice. Nor do I mean her pro-gun views, her vociferous opposition to embryonic stem cell research, or her involvement in "Troopergate."
Instead, her selection forces out into the open the question of whether the United States can compete in world markets that rely on our scientific and technical prowess with a creationist as vice president or president.
Palin wants creationism taught in school. She told the Anchorage Daily News that schools ought to "teach both." Really?
Faithful followers of the battle over creationism in Pennsylvania will recall that nearly three years ago federal Judge John E. Jones barred a public school district from teaching "intelligent design" in biology classes. The judge delivered a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board, saying its decision in October 2004 to insert "intelligent design" into the science curriculum violated the constitutional separation of church and state. Creationism is a religious belief that has no place in science classes.
Of all the staunchly conservative views Palin holds, this one may pose the greatest threat to the future of our children, your health, and the nation's economy.
It may thrill the Republican Party's conservative base to have a woman as president who believes in biblical inerrancy and wants to see creationism taught as science, but it will mean the United States can kiss goodbye any chance this nation has of using biomedical science to take on the rest of the world in biotechnology, alternative-energy technology, synthetic biology or genetics.
And that means we can more or less kiss goodbye any chance we have of using our current prowess in biomedical science to drive our economy forward both in states such as Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey and in high-tech areas around the country.
The pundits will gurgle on as they have been about how Palin can gut a fish or cook up a mean mooseburger. But what cannot be ignored is her view that a narrow religious account of how the world began and evolved belongs in the science classroom.
If Palin's fundamentalist religious thinking are on display in the White House, then the odds are lower that America can tap biological science to work our way out of global warming, oil dependency, pollution, dying oceans, and finding new ways to grow healthy food.
A vote for Palin, or any creationist, is casting a vote for change, all right. A change back to the lifestyles of the 19th century.
Science magazine urgently contacted us several days ago allegedly to get our take on the Louisiana Science Education Act passed by the state’s legislature and awaiting the governor’s signature. (A bill opposed by the AAAS, publishers of Science.) The reporter interviewed CSC's John West for upwards of an hour seemingly trying to get the facts straight. Then she called back with an urgent request for a picture of the cover of Explore Evolution: The Case For and Against Neo-Darwinism. One wonders why she bothered.
Science has a story in their latest issue that is in lock step with their typical Darwin only approach to science education policy. It leads with a from Darwin defender Barbara Forrest, puts the words academic freedom in scare quotes, and then inserts a quote from LA. Governor Jindal that was not about, nor had anything to do with, the LSEA. Finally they round it out with attacks from critics, nicely referred to as science educators.
“Science educators say the new wording is intended simply to circumvent rulings by U.S. courts that creationism and intelligent design are unconstitutional religious intrusions into a public school science curriculum.”
Never mind that they ignored us. But, what about the science educators who testified in support of the act? What do they say? Dr. Caroline Crocker, a noted skeptic of Darwinism, and Professors of Biology Dr. Wade Warren and Dr. Brenda Pierson of Louisiana College all spoke on behalf of the LSEA and in support of teaching students both the strengths and weaknesses of evolution. Dr. Pierson summed it up pretty well:
“The bottom line is this: science is complicated, often controversial, but oh so interesting. We need to be academically honest when discussing scientific theories and searching for scientific truth. Teachers deserve the freedom to present the evidence for controversial theories and also the evidence against them.”
And what about the bill itself, what does it say? Again, let me quote from Section 1D:
“it shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or non-religion.”
So, the reporter waste her time as well as ours and files a report that doesn't even mention Discovery Institute or cite any of the points we made. And of course it doesn't cite anything responding to the critics of the bill, least of all the section of the legislation that prohibits any promotion of religion.
Oh yeah, they do use a graphic of Explore Evolution that they urgently demanded as well--with dismissive caption that doesn't even describe the book. Well, I guess at least we can describe Explore Evolution as "featured in Science."
Posted by Robert Crowther on June 22, 2008 8:37 AM | Permalink
Joanna Sugden From Times Online September 4, 2008
Degrees in homoeopathy and herbalism could be scrapped after academics branded them “quackery” and said they would damage their university’s reputation.
In an open letter to the vice-chancellor of the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), academics said courses such as acupuncture contain a “roll-call of quackery” and damage the institution’s hopes of being taken seriously.
Now the university has announced a review into the degrees after the first-year course in homeopathy, due to begin this term, was cancelled because of lack of interest.
Mike Eslea, a senior lecturer in UCLan’s School of Psychology, organised the letter criticising the introduction of a degree in Chinese herbal medicine.
Eileen Martin, pro vice-chancellor and dean of the faculty of health, which runs the courses, will lead the review.
David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology at University College London and an outspoken critic of “pseudoscience” degrees, said the review could result in an "internal whitewash".
He criticised the choice of Ms Martin to lead the investigation. "(The courses) presumably generate income for her faculty, so she can hardly be regarded as being free of vested interest," he said.
A spokesman for UCLan told the Times Higher Education Supplement: "As a university we value and practise transparency and tolerance and welcome all academic viewpoints.
"With this in mind, and because we have received concerns from some colleagues as to whether the university should offer courses in homoeopathy, herbalism and acupuncture, the university has set up a working group to review all the issues."
Kate Chatfield and Jean Duckworth, who lead the homeopathy course said “relentless attacks” by the “anti-homeopathy league” had taken their toll and the review was a small victory for their opponents.
A list of universities offering alternative medicine degrees was published earlier this year by Dr Simon Singh and Professor Edzard Ernst, co-authors of Trick or Treatment, alternative medicine on trial. They found 43 institutions, including Westminster University and Greenwich, with 155 courses they deemed unscientific including Ayurvedic medicine.
Westminster University top, followed by Greenwich, Middlesex, Salford and Thames Valley.
In total they found 43 institutions offering 155 unscientific courses, including homoeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, and Ayurvedic medicine, in some cases as a BSc or MSc.
Related Links
Full text: letter calling for homeopathy boycott
No miracle cure for junk science
Alternative therapies should not be dismissed
A Catholic scientist frames a national debate.
By Paul Cottle | SEPTEMBER 15, 2008
There is no issue more visible and emotional in the field of science education today than evolution, and no state where the issue has been more hotly debated than Florida. For much of the last year, a committee of educators and scientists worked with officials from the state’s Department of Education to hammer out new standards for science education. Their decision to designate evolution one of the “big ideas” in the state’s science curriculum was opposed by groups like the Florida Family Policy Council and conservative lawmakers who objected to the teaching of evolution in the classroom. In the end a compromise was reached, and new standards were passed requiring the teaching of evolution, but the wording of the law was changed to call it a “scientific theory” (see sidebar for details).
I was a member of the standards committee. At the outset, we spent little time worrying about the potential controversy over the teaching of evolution. Instead, our goal was to apply the results of recent research on how children learn science to the state science education standards. Yet when we made public a draft of the new standards in October 2007, it quickly became clear that the debate over teaching evolution would dominate the process.
I am an “evolutionist,” as the opponents of evolution education would say. More to the point, I am a naturalistic scientist in that I believe that my mission as a scientist is to explain scientific observations within the framework of the laws of nature. Yet I am also a Christian, and as such I do not reject the supernatural. I believe in Christ’s resurrection.
The Debate in Florida The debate over evolution education in Florida was rancorous and presented particular ethical dilemmas for me. For one, a majority of my fellow Christians were on the opposite side of the argument from me—indeed, most Americans are. As an evolution education advocate, I am on the same side as many atheists, including militant “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins, who see evolution education as an opportunity to beat back religion in our society. As a result, I found that I was self-consciously vetting my own statements—both public and private—to make sure I was not denying my faith. I made several brief public professions of my faith during prepared statements, including during my talk before the State Board of Education on Feb. 19 and in an op-ed piece published by The Tallahassee Democrat. I was not alone: many of the other Christians on the standards committee also made their faith known during public meetings and to the media. Members of the public who followed the debate learned that there were several church officers and Sunday school teachers among the advocates of evolution education.
Unfortunately, I was in the minority among Catholics in my defense of evolution. It came as no surprise that according to a St. Petersburg Times poll published this February, a few days before the State Board of Education vote, 91 percent of evangelicals in Florida oppose evolution education. Yet that same poll reported that 79 percent of Catholics also took the anti-evolution education position. This is particularly disappointing given the church’s well-established position in favor of the teaching of evolution. David M. Byers, executive director of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Science and Human Values from 1984 to 2003, noted this stunning separation between the beliefs of the American faithful and church teaching in an article in America (“Religion and Science in Dialogue,” 2/7/05). He said that the Catholic Church “properly recognizes evolutionary theory as firmly grounded in fact,” but noted that the church’s “educational leadership has been very slow to correct the anti-evolution biases that Catholics pick up from prominent elements in contemporary culture.”
The fact that my opponents in the evolution education debate were almost exclusively my brothers and sisters in the Christian faith imposed certain responsibilities. To quote one of several scriptural injunctions on this topic, “So then, as often as we have the chance, we should do good to everyone, and especially to those who belong to our family in the faith” (Gal 6:10). This meant that my comments—both private and public—had to remain civil at a minimum, and respectful whenever possible. My working assumption was that my opponents were acting on the basis of their deepest convictions, even though there seemed to be a few cynical opportunists on both sides of the debate. Overall my evangelical opponents displayed both a deep commitment to their cause and a basic decency. One of the first people to congratulate me after my talk to the State Board of Education was John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council and a fervent opponent of evolution education. Only moments before I spoke, Stemberger had loudly warned the board that thousands of evangelical parents would withdraw their children from the public schools if the proposed standards on evolution were adopted.
In the end, the religious dimensions of the debate made it impossible to craft a resolution that satisfied everyone. Many Christians who were not committed to “young earth creationism” were attracted by the ideas of the intelligent design movement, which holds “that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection,” according to the New World Encyclopedia, quoted on the Web site of the Discovery Institute, a well-funded think tank formed to support the movement.
Intelligent Design
Some Catholics in Florida are among those intrigued by the notion of intelligent design. In the weeks following the board of education vote, I heard homilies by two priests who, in addressing the nature and meaning of God’s creation, acknowledged that parishioners held a variety of beliefs about the origin and development of life. But they did not mention the church’s acceptance of modern evolutionary biology. Meanwhile, as of this writing, no Catholic priests in Florida have signed a public letter endorsing the teaching of evolution in public schools, an initiative known as the Clergy Letter Project that has drawn 11,000 signatures nationwide.
This reluctance to take a public stand on evolution is not limited to Catholics in Florida. In June, I was stunned when Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a devout Catholic and holder of a bachelor’s degree in biology from Brown University, voiced his support during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” for teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in public schools. It is clear that despite Byers’s urging, the Catholic Church in the United States has not fully addressed the widely held misconceptions regarding church teaching on evolution.
In Florida, as elsewhere, the evolution education debate featured strongly worded volleys between vocal minorities at both extremes, between those who see the scientific clarity of evolution and religious conservatives who claim that evolution promotes moral decay. (If that sounds a little strong, consider this quote from the Truth Project, an educational initiative of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family: “Darwinian theory transforms science from the honest investigation of nature into a vehicle for propagating a godless philosophy.”)
The Discovery Institute has framed the evolution education debate as a struggle over academic freedom—in particular the freedom of teachers to challenge and even disregard the naturalistic approach to science and to argue that the existence of unanswered scientific questions on the origin and development of life provides proof of the existence of God. Politically, it seems prudent for supporters of evolution education to frame a competing vision for teaching science in public schools, one that appeals to many parents and voters in the vast middle ground. These include individuals (and many Catholics) who are neither committed to an anti-evolution position nor convinced by arguments for evolution.
Even though this group does not have strong opinions on evolution, I think they would endorse an educational approach that focuses on two principles: tolerance for students from a variety of backgrounds, including religious backgrounds; and the accountability of teachers and administrators for their adherence to state educational standards and their performance in helping their students learn science. Such a vision of the science classroom might provide a potent moral and political antidote to the dubious assertion that academic freedom should apply to the teaching of science in the K-12 classrooms.
Educating Catholics
Catholics not convinced by this argument might consider the words of Pope Benedict XVI, who recently called the debate over evolution “an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.” Catholics in Florida can also look to the guidance of their bishops. In February, Bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando published an op-ed piece in The Orlando Sentinel endorsing the teaching of evolution while at the same time rejecting the notion that “evolution requires a materialistic or an atheistic understanding of the human person or of the entire universe.” “The Catholic Church does not have to reject the theory of evolution in order to affirm our belief in our Creator,” Bishop Wenski concluded. “As Catholics, we can affirm an understanding of evolution that is open to the full truth about the human person and about the world.”
Still, the task of educating Catholics on this issue remains a tricky one, not least because it could threaten the strong partnership the church has forged with evangelical groups to advance pro-life causes. (One need only recall the controversy surrounding Terri Schiavo in Florida to remember how powerful the partnership between Catholics and evangelicals can be.) Indeed, when during one of my prepared statements I read a quotation from a church source defending the teaching of evolution, my evangelical opponents expressed great surprise that the church held a position different from theirs.
Evolution education is a national issue, with heated debates taking place in legislatures and state education departments all over the country. The Catholic Church in the United States has an opportunity to lead the nation to a resolution of this matter by educating its own followers about the church’s embrace of modern science. They can also point out to their Christian brothers and sisters, as Bishop Wenski did, that the teaching of evolution need not go hand in hand with a materialistic atheism.
As a physicist and a Christian, I have learned that faith and science need not be antithetical, that a deeper understanding of the natural world can inspire awe at the workings of God’s creation. Yet I have come to this understanding by working within the intellectual framework widely accepted by the scientific community, a framework that includes the tenets of evolution. This framework should also guide the teaching of young people, in Florida and elsewhere. The Catholic Church and its partners in the faith have no reason to fear the results.
Paul Cottle is a professor of physics at Florida State University and a member of the committee appointed by the Florida Department of Education to draft new science standards for the state’s primary and secondary public schools.
The fight is on over teaching “intelligent design” in Texas schools.
By Laurie Barker James
Regularly updating the subject matter taught in public schools would seem such a basic good idea as to be a no-brainer — and noncontroversial. Who would want their kids learning from history textbooks, for example, that end with the Soviet Union still intact or literature classes that cover only the works of dead white guys from Europe who wrote with lots of where-art-thou’s?
The Texas Education Agency reviews each subject matter area, from kindergarten through high school, once a decade. A committee of teachers spends months studying the curriculum, recommending what new material should be added and outmoded information eliminated. Then the proposal goes to the 15-member elected State Board of Education for review, and the public gets to comment.
This summer and fall, the science curriculum comes under scrutiny. But far from being a yawner, the review may turn out to be a key battleground between scientists and science teachers on one hand and the religious right on the other.
The basic fight is expected to be over what kids are taught about evolution — which takes up only about three days of teaching in a 180-day school year. But scientists and teachers argue there are much bigger things at stake: the intimidation of teachers and the possible beginning of biblical beliefs being taught as science in Texas public schools.
Those teachers believe that for the religious right — or any religious group — to be able to dictate what is taught, or how, on any scientific subject undermines science education. They believe the religious right is confusing the debate by talking about how evolution is “only” a theory and that ideas like creationism or “intelligent design” should be given equal weight. While many elected officials in this country, including even Alaska governor and presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, say that a “healthy debate” on creationism is possible, for scientists that’s almost akin to equating rock-solid math principles with a religious debate on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Science teachers like Kevin Fisher say evolution is not a complex idea. “First-graders are capable of understanding evolution,” said the science coordinator for Lewisville public schools, who is a player in the curriculum review process. “It’s descent with modification, or how things change over time.”
Simple it may be, but Texas science teachers report that they’re now unsure what they can say to their classes or how they can say it. Steven Schafersman, president of Texas Citizens for Science, said that the current educational climate “intimidates [science] teachers” to pressure them “to avoid or minimize” the topic of evolution.
The fact that none of the other science teachers interviewed for this article wanted their names used would seem to back up his allegation of fear in the teaching ranks. All but Fisher said they believe that any statement with their names on it could come back to them in the form of a pink slip. And they may be right. Just ask Christine Comer.
Comer, formerly the director of science curriculum for the TEA, alleges that she was forced to resign last October after she sent out an e-mail announcing that renowned author Barbara Forrest was coming to speak in Austin. Forrest, author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, is a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University. The notice went out to a listserv of educators to whom Comer routinely sent information about speakers and resources.
“I sent the e-mail as an ‘fyi,’ not as something formally endorsed by TEA,” Comer said. Because evolution is included in the state’s current science curriculum, she maintains, it was completely proper for her to make her colleagues aware that a nationally known expert on the subject was coming to town.
Roughly two hours later, Comer was called into her supervisor’s office and handed an e-mail written by Lizzette Reynolds, who’d just been appointed by Gov. Rick Perry as the TEA’s commissioner for statewide policy and programs. Reynolds had received a copy of Comer’s message and deemed it both “potentially an offense” and contrary to TEA policy of “remaining neutral” on the subject of creationism. She recommended that Comer be reassigned or fired. First, Comer was told to send a second e-mail with a disclaimer. Then, she said, TEA administrators told her to choose between being fired — potentially putting her retirement funds and other benefits into jeopardy — and quitting her job.
TEA officials said that there were legitimate reasons for Comer’s dismissal, unrelated to the events in October, although the timing seems suspicious to many observers. According to TEA officials, Comer’s termination was related to “repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination,” and it was coincidental that the “last straw” coincided with a fairly controversial issue. A Nov. 5 memo from Monica Martinez, then the TEA’s acting curriculum director, recommended the termination, noting that Comer had been “counseled” previously that year about “exercising good judgment … when sharing information regarding science education in Texas.”
Comer filed suit in July against the agency and Education Commissioner Robert Scott, alleging she was illegally fired for “contravening an unconstitutional policy at the TEA.” She charges that the policy requiring employees to be neutral on the biblical interpretation of the origin of humans is illegal, since the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that teaching creationism as science in public schools is illegal. The Texas attorney general’s office, on behalf of the TEA, has made a motion to dismiss Comer’s lawsuit.
The TEA is being cautious in its public statements about science curriculum, in part, officials said, because the review process is in its early stages. But the issue of what state employees and teachers can and cannot say has deep roots in Texas’ conservative government.
The process of chipping away at the theory of evolution in Texas science curriculum actually began with Texas Proclamation 95 in the mid-1990s. Signed by then-Gov. George Bush, the proclamation requires basic biology textbooks to “formulate, discuss, critique, and review hypotheses, theories, laws, and principles, and their strengths and weaknesses.”
Opponents of the theory of evolution, who are variously called creationists, Young Earth believers, or anti-Neo-Darwinists, have laid the groundwork both nationally and in Texas over the past decade to turn the relatively simple task of curriculum development into a fight over the basic theory of how humans came to be. Whatever you call them, this group of mostly fundamentalist Christians believes in biblical inerrancy. In recent years, many of them have lined up behind the concept of “intelligent design,” which attempts to use scientific terminology to promote the idea that, as it says in Genesis, the world was created in six days. If the Bible is correct, the proponents say, the Earth is very young — less than 7,000 years old.
The Austin-based Texas Freedom Network, which says its members include more than 30,000 religious and community leaders, watches “far-right issues” affecting Texas schools. In the early 1990s, TFN began charting the religious right’s progress in turning what the network calls “a sleepy corner of Texas government” — the State Board of Education — into a battleground over issues such as the theory of evolution.
Dan Quinn, communications director for TFN, said that Texans have “elected a board with a bloc of ideologues who care more about promoting their own personal agendas than educating Texas kids.”
According to TFN, the 2006 elections brought the number of SBOE members with religious right affiliations to seven — one short of a majority. Pat Hardy, who represents Tarrant County on the board, is a relatively conservative Republican and one of the few board members who’s actually a teacher. As a Christian, Hardy believes that God is responsible for the creation of the universe. As an educator who taught for more than 30 years, she sees the danger in pushing religion into the state’s public school science curriculum, a stance that causes considerable heartburn for more conservative Republicans.
In her recent primary battle to keep her education board seat, Hardy had the dubious distinction of being branded a “RINO” by some members of her own party. A “Republican in name only” runs the risk of challenges from more conservative candidates, backed by a mega-church or two. Hardy said that her 2006 opponent, Dr. Barney Maddox, never attacked her personally but used campaign materials that fed the allegation of “weaknesses” in the current science theory.
During the campaign, Maddox refused to talk about his position on evolution. However, his affiliations seem to confirm his ideological leanings. As a doctor, Maddox was tapped more than a decade ago to sit on the state review panel for high school biology textbooks. He condemned one potential textbook (Prentice Hall’s Biology: The Living Science) because, he said, the book “violated state law [Proclamation 95] requiring discussion of scientific weaknesses of evolution.” Maddox also wrote an article for the Institute for Creation Research, in which he is credited as “author of the biological sciences course material for the Creationist Worldview distance education program offered by ICR.”
Hardy won re-election this spring, and the SBOE remains, for the time being, tenuously balanced.
In the curriculum revision process that began earlier this year, some teachers’ groups have accused the SBOE of smokescreening its true agenda, a charge that the SBOE leadership denies. David Bradley, a Republican board member from Beaumont, has been quoted as saying that, during the science curriculum revision process, “the only thing this board is going to do is ask for accuracy.” Conservative board members have denied that there will be any controversy, unless liberal-thinking groups like the Texas Freedom Network bring it.
Schafersman, of Texas Citizens for Science, said Bradley is being disingenuous at best. “The intent of the SBOE creationists is to ask for misrepresentation of science, not for accuracy,” he wrote in an e-mail. “What Bradley and his colleagues actually plan to do is damage evolution instruction by trying to get the new science standards to include [lessons on] alleged but false ‘weaknesses’ of evolution, in order to weaken evolution content, confuse students, and make them think science is less accurate and reliable about biological origins than it really is.”
Don McLeroy, a Bryan dentist, is the current State Board of Education chairman. As a medical professional, his credentials for board membership might seem impeccable. However, McLeroy, who was appointed by Perry, is also an evangelical Christian who rejects the theory of evolution. Quoted in The New York Times on June 4, McLeroy said his rejection of evolution — “I just don’t think it’s true or it’s ever happened” — is not based on religious grounds.
“My personal religious beliefs are going to make no difference in how well our students are going to learn science,” he said in the interview.
That may be true. But the decidedly anti-evolution slant of McLeroy and his conservative colleagues on the education board may make that difference.
In an interview with the San Antonio Express-News on May 31, Bradley told a reporter, “Evolution is not fact. Evolution is a theory and, as such, cannot be proven.”
Statements like that — throwing around terms like theory and hypothesis and guess as though they were interchangeable — just illustrate the problem, as far as Lewisville’s Fisher is concerned.
In layperson’s terms, if you say, “It’s just a theory,” that usually means you’re talking about a guess, or something unproven. But Fisher said that, in the precise language of science, a theory is something that has been rigorously tested, reviewed by scientists, modified when new evidence becomes available, verified by repeated experimentation, and has become part of the scientific consensus. A theory differs from a law in that a law governs a single action, like the law of gravity. A theory, on the other hand, explains a whole series of related phenomena, like the theory of relativity. A hypothesis, Fisher said, is a guess that hasn’t been through that scientific process of being tested and proved up. And creationism, which is based on biblical interpretation, isn’t even a guess: It’s a belief, based on faith, he said.
“A theory isn’t a guess,” Fisher said. “Science deals with natural explanations which are testable.” In that context, he said, “evolution can be proven. The evidence is overwhelming.”
Teachers like Fisher, with science backgrounds, and scientists like Schafersman believe that evolution is a concept critical to the understanding of all of the sciences. A former geology professor, Schafersman said his biggest criticism of the state board’s process is that most of the elected officials who will formally approve the curriculum are not educators. And in this case, he said, the fact that most also are not scientists can make a huge — and dangerous — difference for Texas students.
The lack of science background on the part of most state board members means they may not understand that creationism is a belief, not a scientific theory, like evolution, that is subject to being proved.
The idea that divine guidance played a part in the creation of the world — the basis of “intelligent design” — “is a possibility, but we have no way of testing it,” Fisher said.
However, that doesn’t stop “ID” proponents from touting it as a credible scientific theory or, conversely, attempting to discredit evolution with the words, “It’s just a theory.”
Chief among the proponents of intelligent design are the “fellows” at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. According to its web site, the institute’s Center for Science and Culture is run by a group of “more than 40 … biologists, biochemists, chemists, physicists, philosophers and historians of science, and public policy and legal experts.” The web site states that the institute is not a religious organization and also maintains that intelligent design is not the same as creationism.
One of the center’s primary goals is to support research by scientists and other scholars challenging various aspects of Darwinian theory. The CSC’s leaders have advanced degrees — but they aren’t scientists: Director Stephen Meyer has a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science, while Associate Director John G. West holds a doctorate in government.
One of the hallmarks of the institute, according to many scientists, is that the CSC generates pseudo-scientific research, done by researchers with Ph.D. credentials, to bolster claims concerning intelligent design, to build support for that idea as a credible scientific theory. Of course the proponents of intelligent design also include those with legitimate hard-science backgrounds, like McLeroy and Maddox.
The argument at the root of the issue is biblical inerrancy, a doctrine as old as the Christian church itself. Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei, early scientists and Christians, challenged the Catholic Church’s doctrine on the Earth as the center of the universe.
We can now demonstrate that the Earth moves around the sun, not vice versa. Back before the Protestant Reformation, however, even scientific evidence drew a penalty when it came into conflict with accepted interpretation of what the Judeo-Christian Bible (which had been translated from Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek and then Latin at that point) said. Perhaps it’s fittingly ironic that Charles Darwin, who proposed the theory of evolution in the mid-1800s, was first a ministry student before a voyage aboard the Beagle changed the course of his future. Now people of diverse faiths — clergy as well as laypeople — accept the theory of evolution and want to see it taught in schools. The TFN’s Quinn says that many people of faith do not believe evolution to be “anti-God.”
“We can honor the faith of all Texans by teaching sound science in science classrooms and leaving personal views of the creation of the world to families and houses of worship,” he said. “As a person of faith, I find it insulting when it’s implied that those who want their kids to get a sound science education aren’t ‘Christian enough.’ ”
Ralph Mecklenburger, the rabbi at Fort Worth’s Beth-El Congregation, has been paying attention to the debate about Texas’ science curriculum. As an expert in the Torah, or Old Testament, upon which the proponents of intelligent design base their theories, the rabbi is concerned with misinterpretation.
“Has evolution been demonstrated experimentally? Yes, many times,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Intelligent design, on the other hand, may be true, but until someone comes up with a way to test it, it will not be science.”
Many scientists echo Mecklenburger’s statement that, despite challenges, the theory of evolution has held up for more than a century. Those scientists and many teachers believe that intelligent design proponents ignore the proofs and use outdated information to hammer away at accepted science. Historically, Jews found the Bible to be “full of memorable ways to teach values, but we know it is not science,” Mecklenburger said. “We deny that science and religion conflict, but that is because we recognize that the Bible is about religion, not about science.”
The Discovery Institute was the prime source of information for a group of school board members in Dover, Pa., who, like the seven Young Earth philosophists on the Texas SBOE, wanted to put forth their version of natural history. In 2004, Dover school administrators, at the insistence of the district’s board, added the following sentence to the biology curriculum: “Students will be made aware of the gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design.”
Other school trustees resigned in protest, and science teachers refused to read the statement to their students, citing a part of the Pennsylvania code of education stating that teachers cannot present information they believe to be false. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of 11 parents with children in the district, and the case went to trial in September 2005. Discovery Institute fellows were listed initially as key witnesses, but the defense case unraveled as it became clear that, despite their protests, the proponents of intelligent design actually did have religious motivation and were using religious theory.
That December, U.S. District Judge John Jones ruled that the Dover board was using religious materials, which was unconstitutional. In his 139-page ruling, Jones wrote that “a significant aspect of intelligent design movement is that, despite defendants’ protestations to the contrary, it describes intelligent design as a religious argument.” The writings of leading ID proponents, he said, “reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity.” The judge further noted that “making students aware” of the alternative hypotheses to evolution is in essence the same thing as teaching them about it, and, under current law, promoting religion in the public school classroom is not acceptable.
The Discovery Institute’s policy of promoting intelligent design as secular science was thwarted in Pennsylvania, but it may well reappear in Texas. According to Comer, the issue of intelligent design isn’t problematic just for biologists.
“People who teach astronomy have already been verbally attacked in workshops discussing the Big Bang theory and the idea that the Earth is 14 million years old,” she said. “It’s an area I never would have thought would be controversial.”
Comer also said she thinks that the process of science curriculum review is more “secretive” this year. However, according to Debbie Ratcliffe, TEA’s director of communications, that’s not true.
“We just started [the curriculum review] in January,” she said. “A year is the standard time frame for this kind of review. We’re following the normal process.”
Hardy, the Tarrant County member of SBOE, said the education board is scheduled to take an initial vote on the science curriculum recommendations in January 2009, with the final vote in March.
A lot can happen between then and now. Bradley, one of the SBOE’s most vocal evolution opponents, is up for re-election, and his opponent, Democrat Laura Ewing, is a Pearland educator. Ewing’s campaign slogan is “Special interest groups have derailed Texas education.”
Ratcliffe said that the public will have ample time for comment. Experts are currently composing drafts, according to the TEA’s schedule, and the SBOE will have another “discussion” about the science curricula in November. She said the public can comment now, or at any of the meetings between November 2008 and March 2009, as well as via the agency’s web site. However, as of Tuesday, there was no official link on the TEA’s web site to post public comment about the science curriculum. Science teachers and their advocates are urging interested Texans to write directly to TEA Commissioner Scott or to their local SBOE members now — and not to wait until the official proposal is released in January.
Religiously conservative states like Texas, Louisiana, and Florida are all facing the same kind of challenge to their science curricula. It could happen in other states as well, but in Texas, a small number of citizens with a particular ideological viewpoint have been elected to positions of power. In addition to the probable threat of lawsuits filed on behalf of parents if any part of the theory of intelligent design makes its way into Texas textbooks, the issue poses other problems, not only for Texas children but for the nation.
“Right now, what the SBOE does will determine whether the next generation of Texas public school students get a 19th-century education in their 21st-century classroom,” said Quinn. “The adoption of the science curriculum will determine whether students will be prepared to succeed in college and jobs of the future, or whether their education is subordinated to the views and beliefs of a fringe group of SBOE members.”
What happens here will also ripple through the textbooks of other states. Texas, the second-largest purchaser of textbooks (behind California) spent more than $25 million in the 2004-2005 school year on high school biology texts alone, which means that publishers create books based on the needs of Texas schools.
Quinn also warned that the science curriculum may go the excruciating way of the language arts curriculum review process, completed earlier this year. Experts in language arts — teachers and volunteers — worked for three years to develop a new curriculum, only to have their work thrown out by the SBOE (Static, May 21, 2008). Asked why the board rejected the recommendations of acknowledged experts, SBOE chair McLeroy told reporters at the time that, “My experts are Winston Churchill and common sense.”
Quinn called the statement “arrogance and willful ignorance.”
“Just like teachers wouldn’t know better than Dr. McLeroy how to fill a cavity, he does not know better than [the educators] how to educate Texas children,” he said.
Laurie Barker James is a local freelance writer.
This story by Laurie James Barker in the Fort Worth Weekly completely misrepresents not just the important issue of how evolution is taught in Texas, but also the views and policy positions of Discovery Institute. Ms. Barker didn’t bother to talk with anyone at Discovery Institute, or it seems to even adequately research our organization. Never mind that she’s produced an extremely biased polemical piece, as opposed to objective reporting of the issue.
There are numerous factual errors, errors of omission and such, but for brevity I will simply focus on a few of her mistakes.
First, Barker misrepresents the credentials of Discovery Institute’s scientists and scholars and through her writing leads the reader to believe that those affiliated with the Institute do not have scientific degrees. This is simply untrue.
She writes:
Discovery Institute has as Fellows nine PhD biologists or biochemists. Additionally, there are several who are chemists, physicists or astronomers. To imply that Discovery’s PhD credentialed Fellows are only in philosophy or some other non-hard science area is untrue, and a disservice to readers.
Barker goes on to say:
Adding later:
This is absolutely false. Discovery Institute actively opposed the actions of the Dover School Board. Indeed, before the ACLU ever filed a lawsuit the Institute released a statement explaining that we did not endorse the Dover board’s action. And, on December 14th 2004, when the ACLU filed their suit Discovery Institute issued a press release saying: The policy on teaching evolution recently adopted by the Dover, PA School Board was called "misguided" today by Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, which advised that the policy should be withdrawn and rewritten.
We’ve been very clear for the better part of a decade that we do not favor mandating or requiring the inclusion of intelligent design theory in science classes. Discovery’s science education policy states:
Barker’s article tries to persuade readers that there is no scientific debate or controversy over Darwinian evolution. Typically, she plays fast and loose with definitions, and conflates creationists and creationism with intelligent design theory and the scientists that advocate it.
There are three simple, but very different definitions of biological evolution.
1) Change over time (even billions of years, most leading ID scientists believe the universe is billions of years old)
2) Common ancestry, all forms of life evolved from a single original life form
3) Natural selection acting on random mutation is the primary mechanism by which life forms have evolved.
Barker’s article implies that evolution is simply change over time – something which almost no one disagrees with, certainly not any Discovery Institute scientists.
Intelligent Design scientists do not have a problem with definition #1. There is some debate over definition #2 within the scientific community, but the idea itself is not incompatible with ID. Definition #3, commonly referred to as Darwinian Evolution, is a specific part of evolution that ID challenges and is the heart of Darwin’s theory.
One point of the story seems to be to present evolution as completely and widely accepted by scientists. If you mean evolution as defined in points one or two above, that is likely the case. However, the third point, which we dispute, is also considered controversial among many scientists who are not proponents of intelligent design.
Recently, some of the world’s most prominent scientists met at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Austria to discuss this very subject. Writes science reporter Susan Mazur in New Zealand’s Scoop magazine:
Eminent evolutionary biologist Stanley Salthe oversees an e-mail debate among a number of leading biologists, which led to this Altenberg meeting. Interestingly, Salthe is pretty straightforward in what he thinks about it all:
Barker’s article is wrong about Discovery Institute, misrepresents what evolution and intelligent design are, and misleads readers about the evidence related to Darwinian evolution. Perhaps she should stick to what she knows enough about to have an informed opinion: restaurant reviews.
Posted by Robert Crowther on September 4, 2008 2:59 PM | Permalink
Digestive Problems, MMR Scrutinized
A CDC official said that in the first eight months of 2008, 91 percent of the 131 children with measles had not been vaccinated or had uncertain status. (By Mike Hutmacher -- Associated Press)
A common vaccine given to children to protect them against measles, mumps and rubella is not linked to autism, a study published yesterday concludes.
The findings contradict earlier research that had fueled fears of a possible link between childhood vaccinations and a steep increase in autism diagnoses. In February 1998, the Lancet journal published a study by British researcher Andrew Wakefield of 12 children with autism and other behavioral problems that suggested the onset of their behavioral abnormalities was linked to receiving the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine.
The new study comes as the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington is in the midst of evaluating evidence on whether children's vaccines are implicated in causing autism. A special master is evaluating three different kinds of claims -- two of which specifically link the MMR vaccine with autism.
Like Wakefield's study, the new study looked for evidence of potential links between MMR vaccinations, autism and the digestive (gastrointestinal, or GI) problems sometimes seen in autistic children.
"If in fact you want to implicate a factor in the causation of an illness, it must be present before the illness," said W. Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology, neurology and pathology at Columbia University, explaining the idea behind the study. "In the event MMR was responsible for autism, the MMR must precede the onset of autism."
"There was no evidence . . . MMR preceded either autism or GI problems" in the children studied, he said.
The research, published in the journal Public Library of Science One, examined when the children began showing behavioral problems and when they were vaccinated, and it examined bowel biopsies for telltale genetic traces of the MMR vaccine. Since obtaining the biopsies required sedating the children and an invasive procedure, Lipkin said his analysis was limited to a small sample of 38 children who needed the biopsies as part of their medical care.
The researchers studied the biopsies for traces of measles virus RNA. Where a 2002 study had found traces of the measles virus in a high percentage of biopsies taken from autistic children, the new study did not -- and also found no difference in the biopsies of children who were autistic and children of similar age who were not.
Lipkin said the theory linking MMR vaccine to autism involves a chain of events where the live virus in the measles vaccine would grow in the intestinal tract, cause inflammation and trigger formation of toxins that would affect the central nervous system.
If the dramatic results reported in the earlier research were accurate, Lipkin and his coauthors said, they should have found traces of measles RNA in bowel biopsies of a large proportion of the autistic children. Instead, they found such traces in just one child who was autistic and one child who was not.
Patient advocate Rick Rollens, who is convinced that vaccines caused his son to become autistic, said the new research had been rigorously conducted. Rollens, who co-founded the MIND Institute at the University of California at Davis, which studies autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, praised the study for highlighting the importance of gastro-intestinal problems among autistic children, but he predicted it would not put the controversy to rest.
"This study has addressed one of many theories" about how vaccines might be linked to autism, Rollens said. "This study by itself does not exonerate the role of all vaccines."
Larry Pickering, a pediatrician and immunization expert at Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said the 1998 study and others had prompted some parents to forgo vaccinating their children.
In the first eight months of 2008, he said, 91 percent of the 131 children diagnosed with measles in the United States had not been vaccinated against the disease or had uncertain vaccination status.
"Often these children will cluster," he said. "If a measles case comes into this cluster, this virus is very easily transmitted. The clustering of people without protection against measles is doubly worrisome."
Contacting the North Texas Skeptics
The North Texas
Skeptics
P. O. Box 111794
Carrollton, TX 75011-1794
214-335-9248 Skeptics Hotline (current information)
E-mail