Science Reporting

I just found this (you’ll have to scroll down to Oct. 22, the day it was posted) courageous defense of academic freedom and free and open scientific inquiry posted by the The American Council of Trustees and Alumni. It’s a blog post responding to the recent wave of viewpoint discrimination against ID in higher education. ACTA writes: Denunciations are not reasoned refutations. Administrative bans on intellectual inquiry do more to chill debate than to foster it, and do considerable damage not only to the ideas being banned, but also to those being protected from challenge or dispute. … Universities should be actively fostering debate about intelligent design, not seeking to shut down investigation of the idea entirely. And they should Read More ›

In this column in the Washington Post, Anne Applebaum writes:

The President of Cornell stirred up a hornets nest when he spoke out against intelligent design last week. While he stopped short of trying ban it from campus science courses as has been tried at University of Idaho and Iowa State University, he definitely struck a blow against academic freedom. The IDEA Club at Cornell was quick to point out that the President really didn’t know what ID is, or was willfully misleading with his characterizations of it.

George Neumayr of the American Spectator has a good column about the Dover trial:

The ACLU has gone from defending teachers to prosecuting them. In a federal courtroom this week, the ACLU argued that science teachers in the school district of Dover, Pennyslvania, are not free under the Constitution to question evolutionary theory.

He discusses various journalists’ reactions to it:

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

In this case, plaintiffs have made two main types of claims. First, they have made fact-based claims that the specific policy adopted by the Dover Area School Board (“DASB”) violates the first and second prongs of the Lemon test. Second, they claim that the theory of intelligent design is an “inherently religious concept” such that teaching students about it would necessarily violate Lemon’s first and second prongs under any circumstances. Amicus vigorously disputes this second, more general claim, but takes no position on the first.