Science Education

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 ›

Pro-intelligent design astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez is appealing his denial of tenure at Iowa State University to the Iowa State Board of Regents. Dr. Gonzalez’s first appeal was rejected by ISU President Gregory Geoffroy on May 31. On June 19, Gonzalez filed notice with the ISU President’s office that he would make a further appeal to the Board of Regents. Gonzalez’s current appeal will play out over the next couple of months as the record in the case is forwarded by the university to the Board of Regents and both Gonzalez and the university file their written arguments in the case. If Gonzalez’s denial of tenure is not overturned, he will be out of a job at the end of the 2007-08 academic year.

They say that admitting a problem is the first step on the road to recovery. I’ll admit that I’m something of a bookaholic: I’m constantly picking up books, especially books on evolution. It’s been fascinating to read how Darwin is praised not only as the patron saint of “Western thought,” but sometimes as if he invented sliced bread and cupholders in cars. For example, Douglas Futuyma’s textbook Evolutionary Biology stated that “it was Darwin’s theory of evolution … that provided a crucial plank to the platform of mechanism and materialism–in short, to much of science–that has since been the stage of most Western thought.” John Dupré rejoices that “Darwin’s theory provides the last major piece in the articulation of a Read More ›

Charles Darwin famously said, “A fair result can be obtained only by fully balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” According to a recent article by J. Scott Turner, a pro-Darwin biology professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, modern Neo-Darwinists are failing to heed Darwin’s advice. (We blogged about a similar article by Turner in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January, 2007.) Turner is up front with his skepticism of intelligent design (ID), which will hopefully allow his criticisms to strike a chord with other Darwinists. Turner starts by observing that the real threat to education today is not ID itself, but the attitude of scientists towards ID: Read More ›

In a recent law review article in Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Stephen A. Newman, law professor at New York Law School, provides a wonderful example of how prevalent among some academics is the idea that it is acceptable and appropriate to censor intelligent design ideas. Newman writes: Consider the experience of two librarians who received copies of two intelligent design books, Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe and Darwin on Trial by Philip [sic] Johnson, as donations to their high school collections. When the librarians refused to put the books on the school library shelves, they were accused of censorship. In fact, exercising their professional judgment, they concluded that these books had “little or no value to our Read More ›

The current issue of the Montana Law Review features a lively exchange of views about the Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design decision, and the articles are now available online at the law review’s website. The lead article on the Dover decision (“Intelligent Design Will Survive Kitzmiller v. Dover“) is co-authored by David DeWolf, me, and Casey Luskin. A second article by Peter Irons (“Disaster in Dover”) responds to our article, followed by a short rebuttal by DeWolf, me, and Luskin. There is also an editors’ introduction with a timeline of the Dover case (currently not available online).

Two new law review articles were recently published in Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion discussing the teaching of evolution. Asma T. Uddin authored an article entitled, “Evolution Disclaimers, Establishment Jurisprudence Confusions, and a Proposal of Untainted Fruits of a Poisonous Tree,” which aimed to “determine the constitutionality of disclaimers” regarding the teaching of evolution. The second article, “Evolution and the Holy Ghost of Scopes: Can Science Lose the Next Round,” by New York Law School professor Stephen A. Newman, provides a shimmering example of how mainstream academics support blatant censorship of the pro-intelligent design viewpoint. A series of two posts will discuss these articles. Disclaiming Disclaimers I’ve discussed recently why think textbook disclaimers are not an effective way to Read More ›

In a weekend essay in the Des Moines Register, Iowa State Physics Professor John Hauptman explains that ISU astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure because Gonzalez argued that a purposive cause is the best explanation for certain features of our cosmic habitat. By this standard, Hauptman will also need to fire many of the most esteemed physicists and astronomers of our day, as well as the founders of modern science. Hauptman and his fellow thought police at Iowa State have their summer work cut out for them.