Politics

UPDATED 01-27-2011 It’s an outrage that JPL employee David Coppedge was harassed and discriminated against for his pro-intelligent design views, but you can help him. If you want to stand up for academic freedom, this man needs to hear from you: Get ready now to call (preferably) or at least email Charles Bolden, NASA’s administrator, to express your outrage at the fact that Coppedge was fired this week. Here’s that contact information: phone: 202-358-1010; email: charles.bolden@nasa.gov. Your voice has an impact in this debate — make sure it gets heard!

Supervisors at NASA’s prestigious Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) illegally harassed and demoted a high-level computer system administrator for expressing support of intelligent design to co-workers, according to a discrimination lawsuit filed in California Superior Court. The lawsuit was filed by attorneys on behalf of David Coppedge, an information technology specialist and system administrator on JPL’s Cassini mission to Saturn, the most ambitious interplanetary exploration ever launched. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a NASA laboratory managed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where robotic planetary spacecraft, such as the Mars Rovers, are built and operated. Coppedge was a “Team Lead” Systems Administrator on the Cassini mission until JPL demoted him for allegedly “pushing religion” by loaning interested co-workers DVDs supportive Read More ›

Last week’s New York Times article on academic freedom legislation makes a false assertion that the Selman v. Cobb County Board of Education claimed it was illegal to single out evolution in a curricular policy. The NY Times article wrongly states: The legal incentive to pair global warming with evolution in curriculum battles stems in part from a 2005 ruling by a United States District Court judge in Atlanta that the Cobb County Board of Education, which had placed stickers on certain textbooks encouraging students to view evolution as only a theory, had violated First Amendment strictures on the separation of church and state. Although the sticker was not overtly religious, the judge said, its use was unconstitutional because evolution Read More ›

The recent front page New York Times article on academic freedom legislation offers a stark reminder that the intelligentsia is very worried about the prospect of teachers gaining academic freedom, as a bill presently in the Kentucky legislature would allow, “to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner, including but not limited to the study of evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” From 2008-2009, 12 academic freedom bills were submitted into state legislatures, including Florida, Alabama (2), South Carolina (2), Missouri (2), Michigan, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Iowa, and New Mexico. Now in 2010, there are 3 bills already, including bills in Kentucky, Missouri, and Mississippi. The Kentucky bill contains an excellent Read More ›

In the Texas Republican Party primary this week, voters in one part of the state narrowly rejected pro-teach-the-controversy State Board of Education member Don McLeroy. At the same time, voters in another part of the state (Dallas) dumped anti-teach-the-controversy Board member Geraldine Miller in favor of a candidate who has expressed support for teaching the strengths and weaknesses of evolution.

The most interesting thing about incumbent Geraldine Miller’s remarkable defeat by newcomer George Clayton is the unintentional role the pro-Darwin Dallas Morning News may have played in her downfall.

It’s the question raised by yesterday’s New York Times article on the push for balance in classroom discussions of global warming, though, as Jay Richards aptly notes over at The American, the real point of Leslie Kaufman’s story is “to connect the teaching of evolution to the climate change debate.”

Now when I read anything on the environment in the New York Times, I try to keep a couple of deconstructionist qualifiers running in the back of my head: “This is what the New York Times wants me to believe about the issue” and “What are they trying to accomplish with this piece?” I know it’s cynical, but when it comes to environmental stories, I just don’t trust New York Times reporters to keep it straight.

Some things they want to accomplish with this piece:

(1) Divide and conquer skeptics of global warming orthodoxy and Darwinism, by painting the latter as ignorant religious zealots, in hopes of starting a fight among conservatives. No doubt they’re hoping that, say, Richard Lindzen will have to explain why he agrees with those nefarious creationists on the global warming issue, and that he’ll have to spend his time issuing statements of agreement with evolution.

(2) Make it harder for official bodies to encourage critical thinking on global warming, since attempts to do the same with regard to evolution have, in recent years, met with fierce resistance and only modest success.

This is the media analysis required with today’s journalism, though I would call it prudent rather than cynical.
Richards goes on to consider how the debate over evolution and the debate over climate change are alike — and how they differ:

The nationwide effort to protect the freedom of teachers to hold balanced classroom discussions of evolution, global warming, and other scientific issues is highlighted on the front page of today’s New York Times. The article, “Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets,” contains the usual errors and mischaracterizations one expects from the establishment media. But mischaracterizations or not, the article gets one thing right: It reveals how both the public and policymakers are increasingly dissatisfied with the scientific establishment’s attempt to misuse science to support various ideological agendas, whether it be Richard Dawkins’ scientific atheism or some global warming alarmists’ efforts to push us back to the Stone Age. People want genuine education about scientific topics, and that includes being able Read More ›

UPDATE: A sentence in the original post has been corrected to read: I stopped her right there and explained that we do not favor mandating the teaching of intelligent design — as is so often misreported — but rather that we think when evolution is taught teachers should present both the evidence the supports Darwinian evolution as well as some of the evidence that challenges it.

http://www.academicfreedompetition.comTomorrow The New York Times will publish an article about academic freedom bills being considered in a few states. We’ve obviously had some involvement: in 2008 we created the Academic Freedom Petition, which has sample language that legislators could adapt for use in their own states. That led to a very good piece of legislation, the Louisiana Science Education Act, that was finally signed into law last year.

Months ago NYT reporter Leslie Kaufman interviewed CSC associate director John West about academic freedom bills, our views on science education policy, and whether or not we were turning our focus to the global warming issue. As usual, West explained our longstanding science education policy position, which is: “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 open discussion of the merits of the theory among scholars and within the scientific community.” Bills that don’t follow this approach are not ones we’re likely to support. When they do, we’re glad to lend our seal of approval, for what it’s worth.

I greatly appreciate that Leslie had the integrity to call us today and verify the quote she wanted to use from West and to make sure it still reflected our general position. I spoke with her briefly and she told me she also planned to describe Discovery Institute as leading the movement to get intelligent design taught in science classes. I stopped her right there and explained that we do not favor mandating the teaching of intelligent design — as is so often misreported — but rather that we think when evolution is taught teachers should present both the evidence the supports Darwinian evolution as well as some of the evidence that challenges it. She said that was too long to fit in her story (in the New York Times, remember, where they promise to report “All the News That’s Fit to Print”; maybe letting people speak for themselves isn’t fit to print, we shall see). So I was encouraged when she read back to me a sentence that describes the Institute as endorsing the teaching of critiques of modern evolution. I agreed to that. Upon reflection I probably should have insisted on finding out how she plans to define both “critiques” and “evolution.” Again, we shall see what sort of meanings are implied and what perceptions readers are likely to take away from the story. I hope her context is as accurate as the sentence she read back.
She might just as well call it what it is, the teach the controversy approach. As I’ve explained it previously:

One of the reasons CSC has advocated for the teach the controversy approach is because it is a good way to teach critical thinking to students who all too often are not learning to analyze things and think critically about the arguments for and against.

Darwinian evolution is mostly taught as if it were a done deal, as if there were no unsolved problems, as if the theory had been proven. Such is not the case. Telling students about the debate amongst scientists over certain evidences for Darwin’s theory is not only necessary for good science, it is a pedagogically sound way of teaching a controversial subject.

See here for some other good reasons this is a good approach.
The important point of couse is

Last Thursday night I spoke at the University of Arkansas for an Academic Freedom Day Event. The crowd was civil with a good mix of both ID-friendly folks and ID-skeptics. The Q & A was generally harmless but the most amusing question of all came from a very nice gentleman with a local “Free Thinkers” group who asked me a ‘how dare you’ type question, arguing that because the “consensus” or “thousands” of scientists oppose ID, so should I. Here’s a little snippet of what I said in reply: “ID is a minority scientific view. But you owe it to yourself to examine the issue for yourself and come up with your own viewpoint. And if the consensus is right, Read More ›

There’s a disturbing trend for the role of media in a democracy: journalists who don’t trust their profession, the public, or themselves. These days more reporters, editors, and journalism advocates are urging their colleagues to jettison objectivity in reporting and replace it with something they can trust: their blind allegiance to authority.
Perhaps no one serves as a better example of this than New York Times science writer Cornelia Dean. Her new book, Am I Making Myself Clear?: A Scientist’s Guide to Talking to the Public, has a gem of a chapter titled “The Problem of Objectivity.”

You read that correctly. Here’s a journalist who sees objectivity as a problem. To wit:

In striving to be “objective” journalists try to tell all sides of the story. But it is not always easy for us to tell when a science story really has more than one side — or to know who must be heeded and who can safely be ignored. When we cast too wide a net in search of balance, we can end up painting situations as more complicated or confusing than they really are. (pp. 47-48, emphasis added)

And here I thought that journalists were supposed to investigate the story and search for nuance, layers, complexity… the things that make for a compelling narrative. I guess that Dean gave that up a while ago when she decided to simplify things. And what better way to simplify than to edit out dissenting voices?