Science Education

The top two news pieces for local CBS and Fox affiliates in Des Moines are about the press conference yesterday at which it was revealed the extensive lengths ISU faculty and administration went to cover up the hostile work environment and blatant viewpoint discrimination directed against ISU astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez. Fox News affiliate channel 17 click hereCBS News affiliate channel 8 click here (Note, these links may die. If you go to the video page for each channel you should be able to scroll down and find the news reports.)

Some Darwinists are presently making the false assertion that Discovery Institute wanted Judge Jones to rule broadly on whether ID is science in the Kitzmiller case. All this comes in the wake of Judge Jones’ recent admissions regarding the activist nature of the Kitzmiller ruling. The Darwinist response to Judge Jones’s admissions is revealing: Rather than defending the Judge Jones activist behavior in the Kitzmller ruling, Darwinists have implicitly conceded the activism by changing the subject, and attacking us for allegedly encouraging its activism. As is the usual case when ID proponents make a good point, Darwinists try to deflect the issue by changing the subject and launching into personal attacks. This tells you that we have done something right Read More ›

As part of our response to the PBS-NOVA documentary “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design,” Discovery Institute recently released “The Theory of Intelligent Design: A Briefing Packet for Educators” (available free for download, here). The packet contains numerous resources for educators trying to effectively teach about biological origins in public schools. These resources include: The packet also details Discovery Institute’s preferred policy for teaching intelligent design (ID) and evolution in public schools, explaining that we oppose mandating ID in public schools: As a matter of public policy, Discovery Institute opposes any effort require the teaching of intelligent design by school districts or state boards of education. Attempts to mandate teaching about intelligent design only politicize the theory and will hinder fair and Read More ›

Federal judges don’t ordinarily travel around the country speaking about their judicial rulings, but Judge Jones is no ordinary federal judge. While promoting the PBS-NOVA special on intelligent design, he recently appeared the Lehrer Newshour, where he made striking admissions that demonstrate the activist nature of the Kitzmiller ruling. Two hallmarks of judicial activism are (1) the tendency to resolve questions outside the scope of the judiciary, which are best left to other branches of government,1 and (2) the intent to make policy and influence parties outside of the case.2 Judge Jones’ own admissions on the Lehrer Newshour demonstrate that both of these criticisms correctly apply to his Kitzmiller ruling. Judge Jones’ Expansive Intrusion into Legislative QuestionsFirst, Judge Jones admitted Read More ›

Nearly 20 years ago, a small non-profit in Texas, The Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), published a short supplemental textbook called Of Pandas and People (Pandas). This event did not go unnoticed. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) soon thereafter published numerous reviews condemning Pandas as a “creationist … ‘equal time’ tract” that presented “a pot pourri of half-truths, untruths, and nonsense.” Law review articles were published hoping to prove Pandas unconstitutional. In 2005, a federal judge banned Pandas outright from science classrooms in Dover, Pennsylvania — but only after denying FTE the right to appear before the court to defend the book. Most troubling, the judge largely ignored the published text of Pandas, instead scrutinizing long-forgotten pre-publication Read More ›

Today’s edition of the student newspaper at Baylor University carries a devastating investigative report exposing new details of the university’s shameful treatment of pro-ID engineering professor Robert Marks. Anyone who thinks Baylor science faculty have academic freedom to research and write about ID should read this article, which provides extensive documentation of the lengths to which some Baylor administrators will go to censor and shut down open discussion and research about intelligent design. From reading the article, it appears that the intolerance of pro-ID faculty comes from the very top of the institution. This account makes a mockery of Baylor’s own Faculty Handbook, which promises faculty that

Sometimes you run across something so head-shakingly wrong that you have to ask yourself, where did they come up with that? Take this editorial today in the Arizona Daily Wildcat for example. Upon hearing the basis for the new movie “Expelled,” student columnist Taylor Kessinger actually calls for more academic persecution to rain down upon ID proponents:

On the other hand, does science discriminate against proponents of intelligent design? Well, sure, but only in the same sense that a university discriminates against bad students or the stock market discriminates against people who make poor financial decisions.

If anything, the problem is that there isn’t enough discrimination against this idea. (emphasis added)

According to CSC senior fellow and leading ID theorist William Dembski, what follows is: “[A] big story, perhaps the biggest story yet of academic suppression relating to ID. Robert Marks is a world-class expert in the field of evolutionary computing, and yet the Baylor administration, without any consideration of the actual content of Marks’s work at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, decided to shut it down simply because there were anonymous complaints linking the lab to intelligent design.” Read on if you care at all about academic freedom and protecting the right of scientists to freedom of scientific inquiry. What a difference a year or two makes. Or not. The ugly specter of academic suppression seems incapable of being dispelled at Read More ›

PZ Myers Then: Comment #35130 Posted by PZ Myers on June 14, 2005 07:50 AM (e) (s) Here I am, a biologist living in the 21st century in one of the richest countries in the world, and one of the two biology teachers in my kids’ high school is a creationist. Last year, the education commissioner in my state tried to subvert the recommendations for the state science standards by packing a hand-picked ‘minority report’ committee to push for required instruction in intelligent design creationism in our schools. All across the country, we have these lunatics trying to stuff pseudoscientific religious garbage into our schools and museums and zoos. This is insane. Please don’t try to tell me that you Read More ›

Last summer I reported how theistic evolutionist and biologist Kenneth Miller gave some inaccurate testimony during the Dover trial when he wrongly claiming that the phrase “[e]volution is random and undirected” exists only in the third edition of his textbook. Miller claimed, “[T]hat statement was not in the first edition the book, it was not in the second edition, it was not in the fourth edition.” The problem is that the phrase “[e]volution is random and undirected” was in the first, second, and fourth editions. As I noted, “The facts are very different from Miller’s testimony. All of the first four editions of his ‘elephant’ Biology textbook contain the phrase ‘[e]volution is random and undirected.’” Now, I have recently discovered Read More ›