Science Education

If you live in Texas and would like to let the state’s board of education know where you stand on teaching the strengths and weaknesses of evolution, you can do so here. You can support academic freedom by signing this statement: I agree that the current wording of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) that specifies teaching both “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution and other theories, having the effect of both interesting students in the subjects and in developing critical thinking skills, and having withstood TWENTY YEARS of good service in Texas without a single lawsuit, should be retained.

Eric Lane, head of the local San Antonio chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, makes bold — and bogus — assertions in the San Antonio Express about the current debate over how to teach evolution, and what he imagines might be the reasons behind it. Not surprisingly, Lane apparently didn’t bother to do a shred of research, instead seeming quite satisfied to let his imagination come up with all sorts ridiculous things. It isn’t as if you can’t read what Discovery’s views are on science education, or even specifically what my own views are (they’re all over this blog after all). So there’s really no excuse to so blatantly misrepresent our position, and what our motivations Read More ›

In Part 1, I showed how Ken Miller purported to refute Michael Behe’s arguments about the irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade, but actually badly misrepresented Behe’s arguments to Judge Jones. In short, the purported knockout experiments (in the form comparative biochemistry) that Ken Miller cited to Judge Jones, where the blood-clotting cascade still worked in the absence of certain factors, dealt entirely with factors that Behe specifically did not claim were part of the irreducibly complex core of the blood-clotting cascade. Behe explained this problem in Miller’s argument to Judge Jones, but apparently Behe’s testimony fell on deaf ears. In Part 2, I discussed how Miller might not have even refuted the more expansive arguments for irreducible complexity of Read More ›

Earlier this month, the peer-reviewed science journal PloS Genetics published its latest earth-shaking contribution to the field of genetics: a personal interview with none other than Judge John Jones of Kitzmiller v. Dover fame. The interview was conducted by Jane Gitschier of the Institute for Human Genetics at the University of California San Francisco, who gushes over the Judge like a school-girl with a crush on her teacher. The non-scientist might be forgiven for thinking that a journal bearing a name like PLoS Genetics would restrict its articles to, well, genetics… or at least, to biology… or at the very least, to science. Not to worry! If the article extols Judge Jones, a lack of scientific content apparently is no Read More ›

Today marks the third anniversary of Judge John Jones’ attempt to ban science classroom discussions of intelligent design in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. In the three years since Jones’ decision was announced, it has not worn well. Judge Jones’ supposedly devastating critique of intelligent design turned out to be cut and pasted (factual errors and all) from a document written by lawyers working with the ACLU. Law professors (including some who oppose intelligent design) have skewered Jones’ embarrassing judicial opinion as poorly argued and unpersuasive. And many of the alleged factual claims on which Judge Jones based his opinion have been refuted. In the meantime, public interest in intelligent design has continued to grow, as has support for academic Read More ›

Recently I went to a public library to do some work, and I saw a book featured on top of a reference desk titled Life on Other Planets (by Rhonda Lucas Donald, Watts Library, 2003). The title page featured little green men with big alien bug-eyes, the kind of picture you might see on some nutty UFO website. The book and its display were clearly aimed at students — perhaps junior high or high school-aged. Fun and silly pictures don’t bother me if they get kids interested in reading about science. The problem here was that when I opened the book, what I found was not science, but science-fiction. Where Does Your Information Come From?The second page of the first Read More ›

In Texas, the far-left activist organization Texas Freedom Network is working overtime to try to gut the state’s science standards. This week the Texas State Board of Education holds their regularly scheduled meeting and it seems the TFN will try and whip up a mob to lobby the board when they discuss the proposed update of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for science. TFN is parading a push-poll survey of scientists they did recently. They emailed over 1,000 scientists and science professors at Texas universities and less than half replied. Still, TFN is trumpeting that of the replies they did get, nearly all were in complete lock step with the Darwin-only lobby. As Casey Luskin pointed out in Read More ›

Three of the six reviewers of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) are recommending that students apply less, rather than more, critical thinking when studying evolution. In Part 1 I discussed the recommendations of David Hills, and in Part 2, I discussed the recommendations of Ronald Wetherington. Like Wetherington and Hillis, TEKS reviewer Gerald Skoog wants the TEKS to include many more standards on evolution which dogmatically only present the evidence for evolution. Here are some of the new standards he wants the TEKS to include: “EXPLAIN HOW NATURAL SELECTION AND ITS EVOLUTIONARY CONSEQUENCES PROVIDE A SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION FOR THE FOSSIL RECORD OF ANCIENT LIFE FORMS, AS WELL AS FOR THE STRIKING MOLECULAR SIMILARITIES OBSERVED AMONG LIVING ORGANISMS.” and Read More ›

In Part 1 I discussed how some Darwinist reviewers of the Texas Science Standards are opposing giving students the opportunity to use critical thinking skills when learning the modern Darwinian theory of evolution. One glaring difference between the reviews submitted by those opposing critical thinking on evolution and the reviews of those supporting it is the lengths of the respective sets of reviews. The TEKS reviews submitted by Stephen Meyer, Ralph Seelke, and Charles Garner in support of students applying critical thinking skills to evolution were each over 25 pages in length. In contrast, two of the three Darwinist reviewers submitted reviews that were 8 pages or less. It seems that some of the Darwinist reviewers didn’t take much time Read More ›

In Origin of Species, Charles Darwin famously wrote, ”A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” One might think that modern proponents of Darwin’s ideas would endorse his approach to scientific thinking within evolution education, but it’s not so. The Texas State Board of Education recently received reviews of the proposed Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) from six science reviewers. Three of those reviewers–who are scientific skeptics of Darwinian evolution–support TEKS that would give students a strong grounding in critical thinking skills by asking them to “analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence Read More ›