Science Education

In his fictional Los Angeles Times op-ed, arch ID-hater Michael Shermer asserted that “Nine states have recently proposed legislation that would require” providing “equal time” for intelligent design in public school science classes. This claim has been popping up elsewhere on the internet as well (see here and here.) But the claim is sheer fantasy on the part of hyperactive Darwinists. In the interest of bringing out the truth, I hereby issue Mr. Shermer the following challenge: Provide proof for your outlandish claim. Identify the nine states that are supposedly considering legislation to mandate equal time for intelligent design, and cite the legislative language that would actually do this. If you can prove your claim, I will send you a Read More ›

As Jonathan Witt noted in an earlier post, Michael Shermer in his Los Angeles Times opinion piece pretty much made up the comments he attributes to Stephen Meyer in a recent debate. But that’s only one example of the science fiction in Shermer’s essay. Here are some others.
Consider Shermer’s mangled description of intelligent design (ID):

The Pacific Justice Institute has announced that it has joined (as co-counsel) Sacramento-area parent Larry Caldwell’s federal lawsuit against the Roseville Joint Union High School District for the violation of Caldwell’s civil rights. This welcomed news is discussed further in Pacific Justice Insitute’s press release (found here).

As we have previously blogged about (here and elsewhere), Caldwell had presented to RJUHSD School Board a Quality Science Education Policy, which simply stated that teachers should “help students analyze the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories, including the theory of evolution.” The policy proposal included the supplementing of existing curricula with scientific materials that included some of the scientific criticisms that have been raised against aspects of chemical and biological evolutionary theories by members of the scientific community.

The Quality Science Education Policy, contrary to some earlier, erroneous claims, did NOT call for the removal of evolutionary theory, nor did it call for the teaching of the alternative scientific theory of intelligent design.)

But Caldwell never received a fair hearing on the merits of his proposal. As the Pacific Justice Institute’s Press release states:

The USA Today has published an article about the chicken littles at the National Academy of Sciences. Apparently, their pet theory hasn’t been faring so well of late, and they’ve decided to circle the wagons.

The article itself isn’t so bad. It’s the comments from the desperate Darwinists that provide any real entertainment.

The story opens with this not so stupendous news:

“Nearly one-third of science teachers who participated in a national survey say they feel pressured to include creationism-related ideas in the classroom.”

Never mind that they’ve mucked up the differences between creationism and other science based theories, and lumped them all together, this is hardly news.

What is interesting is the way they interpret these numbers. Typically, a newspaper leads with the majority numbers when a survey is reported. Most people tend to want to know what the prevailing opinion is. That only one-third are expressing this opinion here means that the majority, over two-thirds, don’t feel this pressure. But, of course, that isn’t news.

The article goes on (you can refer to any typical article on the subject to catch up at this point).

Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews is a courageous man to be sure to write an article (“Who’s Afraid of Intelligent Design?”) that goes against the crusade of his employer.

Specifically, Mathews argues that it would be good for science education to teach the scientific criticisms of Darwinian evolution. This is exactly the approach that CSC has always advocated.

Last week U.S District Court Judge John E. Jones III issued a memorandum and order in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Kitzmiller is the lawsuit brought by the ACLU against the school board in Dover, PA, for its policy requiring students in science class be read a statement by administrators mentioning both intelligent design and problems with evolution. Discovery Institute’s prior press release concerning the Dover School Board policy can be found here.

Judge Jones’ memorandum and order concerned two pre-trial motions, namely; (1) a motion of the Rutherford Institute to intervene as a third-party in the lawsuit on behalf of Dover parents; and (2) the motion to dismiss by the Defendant Dover Area School District (represented by the Thomas More Law Center). Continuation of the lawsuit to trial did not directly hinge one way or the other upon the Judge’s ruling on these motions.

In a blog post a couple of weeks ago, I wondered aloud whether the Washington Post’s Peter Slevin would fairly report on our lengthy conversation about public policy battles over evolution. Well, Slevin’s article is out, and now I know. In my previous post, I listed six main points from our interview and asked whether Slevin would accurately convey the points. Slevin basically ignored most of what I told him (in fact, I’m not even quoted in the story). Instead, he misleadingly stitched together some quotes from my colleague Steve Meyer all the while ignoring most of what Steve told him as well. (See here for a discussion of how Slevin mischaracterized Steve’s comments.) As I indicated earlier, I liked Slevin. He seemed like a nice guy. But I don’t like his one-sided reporting. True, he does make clear that Discovery Institute is NOT trying to require the teaching of intelligent design. But that’s about the only good thing in his lopsided potpourri of stereotypes that completely ignores the substance of the science education controversy and only delves into motives and funding on one side of the debate. If you want to see just how slanted Slevin’s report is, please read my previous blog post. Here I want to focus just on one point, because it relates to the central claim of Slevin’s piece.

Slevin tries to assert that the the evolution issue is gaining traction now because of the forces of the so-called religious right. He takes this talking point straight from the mouth of Eugenie Scott at the NCSE, whom he quotes in his article. What Slevin neglects to report is Discovery Institute’s response to Scott’s assertion. When Slevin asked me about this, I pointed out that the religious right has been around for a long time, so that really doesn’t explain why scientific criticisms of evolution finally seem to be gaining traction. What is different from the past is that today there are growing numbers of scientists at American academic institutions who are challenging evolution for scientific reasons. As I explained in more detail in my previous blog:

The Associated Press (AP) in Kansas must have hired the National Center for Science Education to edit news reports on that state’s evolution controversy. Why else would the Kansas AP continue to pass off the following biased and inaccurate definition of intelligent design theory as an impartial description of the differences between design and Darwinian evolution:

Evolution says species change in response to environmental and genetic factors over the course of many generations. Intelligent design, a form of creationism, holds there’s evidence of an intelligent design behind the origin of the universe, the formation of the Earth and biological change.

There are at least two things egregiously wrong with the above paragraph. First and foremost, intelligent design is NOT “a form of creationism.” While some Darwinists certainly try to categorize design theory in this way, intelligent design proponents vigrously disagree. (For some of the reasons why, read my article here.) By presenting the Darwinists’ biased assertion about ID being a form of creationism as a fact (and ignoring what the proponents of design say about their own theory!), the Kansas AP has left the realm of impartial reporting and entered spin zone of the NCSE.

The Washington Post today published on their front page the latest in a series of drive-by reportings on intelligent design. Not surprisingly the reporter, Peter Slevin, sees this more as a political issue than a scientific issue. He’s much more concerned with how religious zealots may try to use ID theory in the political realm than whether or not peppered moths really rest on trees. Are Heaeckel’s embryo drawings less fake because the Post wants to make this a political issue? They’re missing the point, which is a scientific one.

I tried to get Slevin to focus more on the science than the politics, but he was determined to do a political piece. So he decided to come to Seattle and I encouraged him to interview both John West (see West’s blog about the interview here), our main policy person, and Steve Meyer as the director of the CSC and one of the main scientists involved in design theory. Slevin spent a day in Seattle and interviewed each of them at length. I sat in on the interviews and took notes myself, as well as helped to clarify certain issues when they came up.

The upshot is that John West spent nearly two hours with Slevin talking about the policy and politics of ID, and Steve Meyer spent equal time with Slevin and focused almost solely on what the case for ID is and how it is not an argument from ignorance as the Washington Post, and others, has persisted in defining it.

What does Slevin do? He does not quote John West at all. He does quote Steve Meyer — but he strings together different thoughts on different issues from different points in the conversation and presents them as if they are one single quote:

The Kansas Board of Education is thinking about implementing science curricula that would teach the controversy over neo-Darwinism. The ultra-Darwinists insist that there is no scientific controversy, that opponents of Darwin’s theory of common descent by natural selection are Christian fundamentalists conspiring to establish a global theocracy. Piercing this smokescreen of ad hominem rhetoric comes the wry voice of Jewish agnostic David Berlinski. In today’s Wichita Eagle he writes: The suggestion that Darwin’s theory of evolution is like theories in the serious sciences — quantum electrodynamics, say — is grotesque. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to 13 unyielding decimal places. Darwin’s theory makes no tight quantitative predictions at all. Perhaps Berlinski, a philospher and mathematician with a Ph.D. from Princeton, is Read More ›