January 2006 Archives

That expression could describe South Carolina state Senator Mike Fair and Governor Mark Sanford. It is somehow more fitting than “peas in a pod”. As I reported previously (here and here), the curriculum standards dealing with evolution are under assault in SC by Sen. Fair, who is being coached behind the scenes by the Discovery Institute. But now Gov. Sanford has thrown his hat in the ring for the side of ID, and in the process, has managed to demonstrate exactly why politicians should quit trying to second-guess scientists: He has no clue what he’s talking about.

The newly formed South Carolinians for Science Education has transcripts up of an interview Sanford did for a local TV station. They even have the audio, if you’re one of those who likes to have a voice to associate with crazy statements. (If you’re a SC resident, please register and/or get on the mailing list while you’re at the site; official means of joining will be available in the near future.) Below the fold I’ve reproduced the relevant portion of Sanford’s interview, and included some discussion.

Catholic Online has published an article in which the director of the Vatican Observatory, Jesuit Father George V. Coyne speaks out, once again, against the perils of intelligent design.

Father Coyne observes that

Intelligent Design reduces and belittles God’s power and might, according to the director of the Vatican Observatory.

But Father Coyne goes much further

I wrote up a critique of an article DI mouthpiece Casey Luskin wrote regarding avian influenza back in October. I don’t know whether Luskin ever read my post; at the time, trackbacks to the DI site weren’t working. But I’d guess I’m not the only one who pointed out the abundant mistakes in his article, which advanced the thesis that avian influenza wasn’t a good example of evolution. He has since written a response to critics here (warning: .pdf file), correcting one of his errors in the original article (and making a confusing mess out of things).

Luskin’s original thesis was that H5N1 wasn’t a good example of evolution because, he claimed, it was simply a reassortant virus: an avian-human hybrid. Therefore, the “evolution” was not any “new information,” but simply a move of information that already existed. Only, of course, the H5N1 strain circulating *isn’t* a reassortant virus: it’s a pure avian virus. You might think that this tidbit of information would shoot down Luskin’s whole thesis, but no, he struggles on.

(Continue reading at Aetiology)

Darksyde’s “Know your creationists” series on Daily Kos has become a “Know your friends” edition today, with a profile of Wesley Elsberry of the NCSE.

Red State Rabble (Pat Hayes) hits the nail dead-on this morning. This is such a central point that I include his post here in its entirety. (I’ll see Pat at our ID, Science Ed and the Law event later today, and beg forgiveness then.)

ID’s Split Personality

In those long-ago days when RSR lived in the Big Apple, we were often accosted on the street by young men who were selling “scents,” by which they meant marijuana. As we wove our way down the street between competing sales teams, we were often struck by the paradoxical situation the job of selling drugs placed these guys in.

On the one hand, they had to be visible enough to move product. On the other, they had to stay hidden in order to avoid arrest and remain on the street.

It strikes us that the theorists charged with pushing intelligent design product on the public find themselves in much the same contradictory situation.

Seems like convergent evolution has been a hot topic recently. (See, for example, this recent PT post.)

On January 25^th, the National Geographic reported that

After languishing for decades in the bowels of a New York museum, a dinosaur- era crocodile relative is seeing the light—and shedding secrets. New studies of the forgotten fossil reveal that the species walked on two feet and looked much like a so-called ostrich dinosaur, though the two are barely related, paleontologists report.

The specimen, Effigia okeeffeae, languished at the American Museum of Natural History for almost 60 years since its discovery at the Ghost Ranch quarry in New Mexico, near the digs of artist Georgia O’Keeffe, after whom the creature is named.

The Discovery Institute, over at their Media Complaints Division Blog, has posted yet another article castigating Judge Jones for ruling that Intelligent Design is unscientific.

This one, by a second-year law student, takes more or less the same tone as the others:

In this detailed analysis, I will take a close look at Judge Jones reasoning, and evaluate the potential legal basis for determining the scientific status of ID. Ultimately, I find that the Kitzmiller opinion has no legal basis to determine the scientific status of intelligent design, and as such, is merely the opinion of one man, not the law as proclaimed by a federal district court judge.

Ed Brayton, over at Dispatches, has already fisked the substance of that post. I’d like to take a second to look at something else: the Discovery Institute’s pre-decision view of how the judge should rule.

Read more (at The Questionable Authority):

Since the Dover ruling came out, the ID crowd has repeated ad nauseum the claim that Judge Jones should have ruled solely on the legal issues of the case and had no authority to rule on the scientific status of ID. The most recent example is this post by new DI Media Complaints Division contributor Michael Francisco. Despite being a second year law student at Cornell, Francisco seems entirely unaware of Federal court rules regarding the evaluation of scientific testimony and of the fact that judges make such decisions every day because they must.

Continue Reading at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Comments may be left there.

by Pete Dunkelberg

Valencia Community College, Orlando FL, 19 Jan 2006, 7:30 PM

Thomas Woodward, professor of religion at Trinity College and Michael Ruse, professor of philosophy at Florida State University debated evolution vs intelligent design (ID) before a packed hall. Woodward spoke first. His first slide advertised the videos Icons of Evolution and Unlocking the Mysteries of Life. Then he flashed a slide associating evolution with atheism in very large letters. (In reality, biology is merely nontheistic just as chemistry, physics and plumbing are.) Then he started with a major theme: there may be some “microevolution”, which doesn’t count, but there is no evidence for “macroevolution”. To glimpse the volumes of evidence, see Transitional Vertebrate Fossils and 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution.

In the comments section of my most recent post on the Discovery Institute’s publication track record, Spike made the following suggestion:

Here is the only scientific paper that one can link from the Discovery Institute’s list of “Peer-Reviewed, Peer-Edited, and other Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design (Annotated)” http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.ph… . (The rest you have to pay the publishers for, I suppose):

http://www.weloennig.de/DynamicGenomes.html

1. Can you, dear reader, understand it? If so, could you explain it to us lay people?

2. Is it science?

Caveat Poster I have no special allegiance to “Darwinsists” (whatever those are), evolutionists, scientists or the people who feel they represent the Truth of Evolution. So don’t play into OSC’s hand and don’t use logical fallacies.

If you want to dismember this paper, do so on rational, scientific grounds. Por favor.

I started out intending to examine the entire paper, but it’s taken me a while to thoroughly respond to (or dismember, if you prefer) just one of the claims. I do have other things to do, so I’m going to restrict my response to addressing his claims about the lack of differences seen between organisms. This doesn’t mean I agree with the rest of the paper - it just means that I only have so much time available for this right now.

Read More (at The Questionable Authority):

I have been reading some of the responses to the Kitzmiller decision from the Discovery Institute and essays they have linked to. There are some interesting contradictions between the various current essays, and between the current essays and past statements from ID advocates. But before we get to that, be sure to check out the Discovery Institute’s new “Judge Jones said it, I believe it, that settles it” bumper stickers. I bet that attitude will go over great the next time ID advocates end up in federal court!

With that said, let’s compare some statements. All bolds added.

Unlike a few other editorials on the Lebec, CA case about a “Philosophy of Intelligent Design” class, Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center went and actually read the Plaintiffs’ complaint and other relevant materials. And guess what? He agrees with the plaintiffs that the class was “a thinly disguised attempt to challenge evolution by promoting intelligent design and creationism.” He goes on to write,

This coming week will be a great one for science carnivals. First up is the Circus of the Spineless which will appear on Pharyngula on Sunday—if you’ve written anything about invertebrates in the past month, send the link to [Enable javascript to see this email address.] by Saturday evening.

The second big event is the next edition of the Tangled Bank, scheduled for Wednesday, 1 February, at Adventures in Ethics and Science. Send links to any science writing to [Enable javascript to see this email address.], [Enable javascript to see this email address.], or [Enable javascript to see this email address.] by next Tuesday.

Hey…and if you written something about the science of invertebrates, send the link to both!

Let’s say that you are someone who is interested in science, knows a bit about it, but aren’t an expert. You might be someone who reads a lot of popular science books, or who watches a lot of science programs on tv. You might read a lot of science fiction. It’s even possible that you are a science fiction author.

You have heard a bit about the whole intelligent design thing, but you may not have been following it closely - particularly when it’s not in the news. You are also at least a bit disposed to root for the underdog. It’s a better story, and you know that it has been real sometimes. People really did laugh at Fulton and the Wright Brothers, and some scientific theories have faced opposition from entrenched opponents. So how do you know that this isn’t the case with Intelligent Design? Why should you trust us when we tell you that the ID people aren’t really doing science, and that their real motives are much, much more political than scientific. Why shouldn’t you believe the DI’s claims that we represent an entrenched “Darwinian orthodoxy?”

Read More (at The Questionable Authority):

FYI: Here is an announcement for an event we are holding in Lawrence, Kansas this Saturday. We have a n overflow crowd signed up. Of course, we will be reporting on this next week. Bloggers Red State Rabble and Josh Rosenau will be there, as well as lots of other media. We hope to have a film available for interested parties later. Stay tuned.

Kansas Citizens For Science and the National Center for Science Education present

“Intelligent Design, Kansas Science Education, and the Law” Saturday, January 28, 2006 1:00 – 5:00 pm The Dole Institute of Politics 2350 Petefish Drive, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS,

Bob Murphy, an economist, has an article at the thoroughly loathsome LewRockwell.com (please don’t try and tell me the people who write for that site are libertarians; that collection of southern nationalists and whackos is anything but libertarian) about what he terms “typical objections to intelligent design.” Much like Orson Scott Card’s article, however, this one relies upon the old tactic of beating up straw men. Rather than engaging the strongest objections to ID he only engages the easy ones, the clumsy attacks on the character of ID advocates rather than the serious and substantive criticism of the validity of ID itself. Let’s take a look at them one at a time.

Continue Reading at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Comments may be left there.

Catherine Odson, a reporter for The University Daily Kansan described the evening this way:

Insistent, assertive questions nagged Monday night’s speaker, who felt his explanation of the scientific evidence of intelligent design fell upon “deaf ears.”

Audience members awarded both applause and laughter to the questioners who stepped publicly into the controversy over intelligent design in Kansas.

Dembski, who may have been led to expect a warmer reception for his ideas – he was in Kansas, after all – seemed to grow testy as questioner after questioner expressed doubt about his assertion that evolution is a failed theory and that patterns in nature are best explained as a result of intelligence.

Read more at Red State Rabble

Or Read Jack Krebs explaining why Dembski had decided to present alone.

Or read on for some observations

It seems I may have spoken too soon. Quoting myself:

One historical event that has been the subject of much speculation over the decades has been the Plague of Athens, a mysterious outbreak that is thought to have changed the direction of the Peloponnesian War, and for which the cause still remains uncertain.

This plague has been attributed to bubonic plague, toxic shock syndrome and/or necrotizing fasciitis due to Streptococcus pyogenes or Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella, yellow fever, malaria, Ebola, influenza, and smallpox, to name just a few. Typhus seems to fit the description best, but it’s likely that a cause will never be known with certainty.

Little did I know when I posted that on my old blog (just last month!) that a study had already been accepted to the International Journal of Infectious Diseases suggesting that it’s not typhus (caused by Rickettsia prowazekii), but typhoid fever (Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi) that appears to be the cause of the plague.

(Find out how over at Aetiology)

Here is a report of what transpired today at the “balanced panel” of the Academic Standards and Assessments Subcommittee meeting that I discussed previously. I am going off of accounts by other people who were present, so please don’t take any of this as chiseled in stone.

The subcommittee actually voted (3-0) to take no action on the standards at present. They will be sent back to the state Dept. of Education for more work, then forwarded to the subcommittee, and then the subcommittee will make its recommendation to the full Educational Oversight Committee. There’s no time limit attached to this, so this could effectively table the thing indefinitely (given that the BOE has already instituted a previous version of the standards for the time being), or it could just keep it going a lot longer. Or it could mean that the four indicators get killed altogether. Hard to say.

Below the fold I list some highlights (or lowlights) of the meeting. Again, let me repeat the caveat that this is my second-hand rendition.

I asked awhile back for some of your thoughts on improving science education, particularly in the U.S. In yesterday’s NY Times, there was a story about discussing one measure that might help in this area:

The measure, backed by the Bush administration and expected to pass the House when it returns next month, would provide $750 to $1,300 grants to low-income college freshmen and sophomores who have completed “a rigorous secondary school program of study” and larger amounts to juniors and seniors majoring in math, science and other critical fields.

Sounds good initially. The problem:

It leaves it to the secretary of education to define rigorous, giving her a new foothold in matters of high school curriculums.

The rest of the article grapples with those issues, so I’ll leave that to you to read (registration may be required).

After examining the pros and cons, what do you think of the idea? *Should* the national government set some standards for a “rigorous program of study” for the kids to meet to receive these grants? Is there a better way to dole them out? Should they be offered at all? I’m interested in hearing your thoughts.

It was bound to happen. A colleague recently described South Carolina as “low hanging fruit” for the ID movement. Nevertheless, the creationists have been relatively quiet in this state, and have instead been acting up in places that you wouldn’t normally associate with the Religious Right – Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, etc. Well, that’s changing.

South Carolina received an “A” for its treatment of evolution in the Fordham Foundation’s recent report, and this has angered state Senator Mike Fair (R-Greenville), who is presumably afraid that this could ruin SC’s reputation as a backwards state. This isn’t the first time. Back in 2003, Fair reacted to the Fordham Foundation’s report by authoring a bill that would put warning labels in text books containing the following bizarre and plainly untrue statement: “The cause or causes of life are not scientifically verifiable. Therefore, empirical science cannot provide data about the beginning of life.” The bill, thankfully, went nowhere. Last June, he filed a bill that would require teaching “alternatives” to evolution, which he specifically said would require teaching ID. I believe that one has yet to be taken up by the legislature, but the Kitzmiller decision pretty well preempted it. More recently, he’s tried to amend an education bill to establish a “science committee” to explore whether “alternatives” to evolution should be taught in schools. The efforts of a few local scientists who spoke out against it helped get the amendment removed.

But now he’s at it again.

On Evolution News (sic)Luskin shows once again why Intelligent Design is scientifically vacuous

Luskin Wrote:

Sure, they just finished decoding the chimp genome but it actually lessened our knowledge of human/chimp similarities rather than upping it. Similarities could easily be the result of “common design” rather than common descent—where a designer wanted to design organisms on a similar blueprint and thus used similar genes in both organisms. This doesn’t challenge ID.

In other words, our ignorance (or perhaps better phrased Luskin’s unfamiliarity with science) seems to be evidence of Intelligent Design?

Common descent requires nested hierarchies, common design has no such requirements and thus the claim that ID can accomodate the evidence is an ad hoc argument. Unless one has independent understanding of the “Designer’s” this argument fails to be scientific.

Of course, even if common descent were true, this would not challenge ID since ID could equally well accomodate that the “Designer” front-loaded evolution. In other words, with Intelligent Design, anything goes.

The Panda’s Thumb went live on March 23^rd, 2004. Back on September 12^th, 2005, Panda’s Thumb celebrated its one millionth user visit. Today, one of you tipped the counter to give PT its two millionth visit.

In between the first and second million mark, you have come to PT to get the latest on happenings in the “Waterloo In Dover”, the Kitzmiller v. DASD court case that now informs school board policies and has proven so useful in educating the media. The recently settled lawsuit in El Tejon, California demonstrated that nicely. Whether you have a preference for digestion or development, PT contributors have also helped keep you informed on recently published findings from the scientific literature. And, of course, our Professor Steve Steve keeps turning up with interesting news, like the finding of a pre-Cambrian chordate, and meeting fascinating people.

So we hope that you will keep coming back to visit, and we will keep working on providing timely news and commentary on evolutionary biology and the religiously-motivated antievolution efforts to deny or diminish its teaching in the public schools.

An article by Catherine Candisky in the Columbus Dispatch documents that various anti-science elements of the Ohio Board of Education think that “teaching the controversy” is just something that they do to other people. Persons of other viewpoints need not try to confuse them with the facts.

Newly released tapes obtained by The Dispatch from the Department of Education show:

* Elected board member Michael Cochran of Blacklick “cross-examined” a string of witnesses, including a graduate student, who criticized the 10 thgrade biology plan.

* Elected board member Deborah Owens Fink of Richfield questioned the character of a witness by producing an e-mail he wrote to a colleague that ridicules a supporter of intelligent design.

* One person declined to testify, citing attacks on previous witnesses.

* Cochran and appointed board member Richard E. Baker of Hollansburg showed their apparent lack of interest by reading a newspaper during the testimony.

The display prompted one board member to urge his colleagues to behave.

“I’m not convinced in my mind that cross-examining witnesses that make presentations before the board is in the best policy of boardmanship. I think it might be better to listen to the testimony and let it pass,” said board member Eric C. Okerson, an appointed member from Cincinnati.

Check out tonight’s InfidelGuy radio program (airs at 8PM EST) featuring Barbara Forrest.

Dr. Barbara Forrest, author of “Creationism’s Trojan Horse” reappears on the program to discuss her thoughts about design, evolution, and the recent court case heard in Dover, Pennsylvania. Dr. Forrest provided key testimony at the trial herself, and we’ll hear first hand how it all unfolded!

(Hat tip to ELGS over at Internet Infidels Discussion Board).

Last week a Toledo Blade editorial called the Ohio State Board of Education “… a painful carbuncle on the posterior of state government …”. Demonstrating that Ohio doesn’t have a lock on governmental duplicity, a report in The State.com out of South Carolina tells us that a legislator plans to call two “experts” to advise a school oversight panel.

State Sen. Mike Fair has invited two experts to advise the school reform oversight agency, which is evaluating the standards for teaching the origins of life.

Fair said he promised the two advisers he would protect their identities to minimize scrutiny of their views and credentials prior to their appearance before an EOC subcommittee next week..

Experts who can’t be identified? Who have to be anonymous to prevent scrutiny of their credentials? I wonder if they’ll wear brown paper bags over the heads with those neat little eyeholes cut in them.

Between Senator Buttars of Utah pushing “divine design” and anonymous “experts” in South Carolina, it looks like there’s a mad race to the bottom out there in creationism land. But the newspapers are catching on. Of Buttars, the Salt Lake Tribune said

But every time the West Jordan Republican opens his mouth to address the subject, he removes all doubt about the fact that he has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.

…

Buttars’ constant references to the lack of a “missing link” or his insistence that he’s never seen a dog change into a cat display a towering ignorance of the subject. That would be his own business, and perhaps a source of comfort to him, were it not for the fact that he is trying to enshrine his willful misunderstandings into state law.

As Nick points out just below, one of the Disco Institute’s official goals is to have 10 states “rectify the ideological imbalance in their science curricula & include design theory”. Unfortunately, since there is no “design theory”, the freelancers out there in the world are taking the bit in their teeth and running straight to creationism. They’re not fooled at all by the Disco Institute’s rhetoric, it seems.

RBH

(Hat tip to Red State Rabble.)

Today the DI Media Complaints Division is complaining about being misrepresented about its position on ID in public education. The post goes on at some length, but here is a representative declaration:

Rob Crowther, Discovery Institute Wrote:

They [some conservative intellectuals quoted in the Weekly Standard] are cited as being critical of “some” IDers who are trying to shoehorn ID into science curriculum. We completely agree with their underlying concern. At the risk of sounding like a broken record: Discovery Institute has never advocated the mandating of the theory of intelligent design in public school science curriculum.

Unfortunately, this is about as credible as the cdesign proponentsists’ claim that ID isn’t creationism. For example, almost all of the authors of Of Pandas and People, a book aimed at public school ninth grade biology students and originally pushed for statewide adoption in Alabama and Texas, are current DI fellows, and chunks of the book are posted all over the DI website. I suppose Crowther could exclude these facts on the basis that Pandas was written before the DI got into ID. But we also have the Wedge Document. It is fun to search on words like “teach” and “curricula”. For example:

Phase III. Once our research and writing have had time to mature, and the public prepared for the reception of design theory, we will move toward direct confrontation with the advocates of materialist science through challenge conferences in significant academic settings. We will also pursue possible legal assistance in response to resistance to the integration of design theory into public school science curricula

FIVE YEAR OBJECTIVES […] 6. Ten states begin to rectify ideological imbalance in their science curricula & include design theory

How could anyone possibly get confused about the DI’s position?

Buridan of Buridan’s ass has some discussion about Vedic creation in America (Short EvoWiki blurb on vedic creationism), linking an article that claims

Prominent I.D. theorists (Philip Johnson, Michael Behe) and some Catholic creationists have endorsed Vedic creationism.

Afraid of kickin’ anyone outta that tent, ain’t they?

Note: Please see update at the end of this post.

I know, I know, it’s not really possible. But ID advocates keep claiming it’s possible, so it’s important to revisit the issue every now and then. The IDists claim that since the arguments for ID can be falsified, then ID itself is falsifiable. But of course this doesn’t follow. Having an argument proven wrong doesn’t disprove a hypothesis. And this is especially true when the arguments themselves (which are simply arguments against evolution) do not logically support the hypothesis to begin with. Judge Jones noted this in his ruling in the recent Kitzmiller case in regards to the Irreducible Complexity argument:

As irreducible complexity is only a negative argument against evolution, it is refutable and accordingly testable, unlike ID, by showing that there are intermediate structures with selectable functions that could have evolved into the allegedly irreducibly complex systems. Importantly, however, the fact that the negative argument of irreducible complexity is testable does not make testable the argument for ID.

[…]

We find that such evidence demonstrates that the ID argument is dependent upon setting a scientifically unreasonable burden of proof for the theory of evolution. As a further example, the test for ID proposed by both Professors Behe and Minnich is to grow the bacterial flagellum in the laboratory; however, no-one inside or outside of the IDM, including those who propose the test, has conducted it.

Professor Behe conceded that the proposed test could not approximate real world conditions and even if it could, Professor Minnich admitted that it would merely be a test of evolution, not design. We therefore find that Professor Behe’s claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large. Additionally, even if irreducible complexity had not been rejected, it still does not support ID as it is merely a test for evolution, not design.

(Kitzmiller v. Dover, pp. 76-9, citations omitted)

Of course that didn’t stop the Discovery Institute from responding that Intelligent Design is Empirically Testable and Makes Predictions. If you read this article, you’ll learn that Judge Jones was horribly, horribly wrong, because irreducible complexity can be falsified, which therefore means that ID can be falsified! One wonders if they even bothered to read Jones’ decision.

But irreducible complexity isn’t the only argument that ID advocates employ. Another common argument concerns the Cambrian Explosion, which ID advocates claim shows that all “major types” of animals (by which they mean phyla, a very broad category) “appeared suddenly” without fossil precursors. Putting aside the other problems with this argument, a recent post by the esteemed Prof. Steve Steve, in which he accompanied Ian Musgrave to the South Australian Museum, shows us that chordates (the phylum to which humans and pandas belong) existed before the Cambrian, during the Ediacaran, well before the purported “explosion”. That spells doom for the ID advocates’ argument.

So does this falsify ID? Let’s see what a couple of ID advocates themselves have said, and let’s see whether or not they’re willing to exercise a bit of intellectual consistency.

A truly excellent op-ed by Robert Sprackland appeared in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It’s definitely worth reading.

Last month Dave Thomas reported on the Fordham Foundation’s report on America’s science standards. In that report, Ohio got a “B” on the science standards overall, and a 3 (out of 3) on the treatment of evolution.

The authors of the Fordham evaluation were recently made aware of the implementation of the Benchmark and Grade Level Indicator in the form of a creationist “Critical Analysis of Evolution” model lesson plan adopted by the Ohio State Board of Education, and in particular they were made aware of the flaunting of the Fordham “B” grade by ID proponent Michael Cochran of the Ohio State Board of Education at its meeting on January 10, 2006. Cochran implied that the B grade meant that the Fordham evaluation somehow sanctioned the creationist lesson plan created to operationalize the Standards. The motion before the Board was to delete that lesson plan from the model curriculum; the Benchmark was not mentioned in the motion on the floor (summary of the Board meeting). In response, the authors of the Fordham report on science standards, led by Paul R. Gross, have issued this statement to the press in Ohio and nationally:

Ohio’s K-12 Science Standards and Evolution

In the recent report, “The State of State Science Standards” (Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2005), of which I am the lead author, we issued a grade of “B” for the Ohio standards. This was in recognition of documents unnecessarily long and with some errors, but dedicated, on the whole, to good and sufficient science content. My distinguished colleagues, members of the expert advisory committee, join me in the statement that follows.

The standards we reviewed present evolutionary biology well enough, and start it early enough, although the treatment is rather thin in relevant molecular genetics. In one benchmark, there is a mention of “critical analysis” of “aspects of evolutionary theory.” We gave Ohio the benefit of the doubt that such ordinarily innocuous words might raise in the current political climate. After all, modern evolutionary biology includes, in fact comprises, “critical analysis of evolutionary theory,” just as modern physics includes critical analysis of relativity and quantum theory. Serious science is a continuous critical analysis.

But the benefit of doubt we gave the benchmark may have been a mistake. Creationism-inspired “critical analysis” of evolutionary biology - as has been shown over and over again in the scientific literature, and recently in a Pennsylvania Federal Court - is neither serious criticism nor serious analysis. The newest version of creationism, so-called Intelligent Design (ID) theory, is no exception. Like its predecessors, it is neither critical nor analytic, nor has it made any contribution to the literature of science. Any suggestion that our “B” grade for Ohio’s standards endorses sham critiques of evolution, as offered by creationists, is false.

To the extent that model lessons are to be provided in Ohio as curricular guidance, lessons that refer favorably to, or incorporate, sham critiques of evolution, or bad science, or pseudo-science, the standards we reviewed are contradicted. That part of the state’s science education will be a failure. Moreover it will reflect badly on the entire standards undertaking, not just on biology and evolution. To devote scores of pages in the official standards to the principles of good science, and then to teach bad or pseudo-science in the classroom, is to defeat the very purpose of standards. If creationism-driven arguments become an authorized extension of Ohio’s K-12 science standards, then the standards will deserve a failing grade. Paul R. Gross University Professor of Life Sciences, emeritus University of Virginia

So the question is whether creationism-driven arguments have become an authorized extension of the standards. The short answer is yes. The long answer follows below.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced that the El Tejon School District has agreed to terminate the antievolution course currently in session, and will not offer that course or other courses promoting antievolution in the future.

…be prepared to take some disinfectants along for the ride.

One thing that is a total geek-out for me is reading about ecology. It’s one of the areas I wish I’d taken more coursework on back in college. At the time, it didn’t much interest me–studying species interactions was boring, and molecular biology was much more interesting. I’ve pretty much flipped 180 degrees on that one. (Well, molecular biology isn’t boring, but it’s moved off its rung as a top interest). My main interest as far as ecology is concerned is microbial ecology–especially of the ecosystem we like to call human beings. I’ve discussed bacterial ecology a bit previously (see here, here, and here, for instance), and a new study is once again making us reconsider what we know about our own personal microbial flora.

A new study published in PNAS examined microbial diversity in an unusual place–the human stomach. Though it’s now accepted that bacteria such as Helicobacter pylori can live in the stomach (and cause ulcers), the image of the stomach is still a pretty sterile place: too hostile to harbor much bacterial diversity.

Well, maybe not.

(Continue reading at Aetiology)

Many of the founders of the United States were motivated first and foremost by the ideals of the enlightenment. And among them, Benjamin Franklin most closely resembled the modern scientist, in his temperment, discipline and his lifelong quest for understanding of the natural world.

Among his more compelling aphorisms are:

“In the Affairs of the World Men are saved, not by Faith but by the Want of it.”

“To pour forth benefits for the common good is divine.”

and (my favorite):

“Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

The National Science Foundation has co-sponsored a site celebrating Franklin’s life and writings. Check it out.

Recent work has illuminated the evolution of the very anatomical feature that this site is named after.

TheJanuary 10, 2006 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, vol. 103 | no. 2 | 379-382) includes a paper titled “Evidence of a false thumb in a fossil carnivore clarifies the evolution of pandas” by Manuel J.Salesa,Mauricio Antón, Stéphane Peigné and Jorge Morales.

It seems that the Panda’s Thumb has evolved, not once, but twice!

The Disco Institute’s Media Complaints Division (aka “Evolution News and Views”, a misnomer if I ever saw one) regularly rants about what they deem to be misrepresentations of Intelligent Design “theory”. In spite of Luskin’s and Crowther’s efforts, though, a growing number (!) of journalists are catching on to the Disco Institute’s scam. The most recent example is an editorial in today’s Akron Beacon Journal. The editorial writer, Steve Hoffman, clearly gets it. He writes

What might a judge eventually say about the state school board in Ohio, which this week refused by a narrow margin to revise its guidelines for teaching biology? Those guidelines create false controversy over Darwinian evolution, singling it out from all other scientific theories for critical analysis, indirectly but quite deliberately guiding students toward the conclusion that an intelligent designer (God) must have shaped each amazing, complex organism. Would the judge conclude that in the wake of the Dover decision, the state board in Ohio acted with breathtaking stupidity?

My answer, of course, would be no: the Board, or at least the thought leaders on it, Michael Cochran and Deborah Owens Fink, did not act in ignorance or breathtaking stupidity. In my opinion, they acted knowing full well what they were doing: perverting science education in Ohio schools in service of a religiously grounded socio-cultural movement. Robert Lattimer, a leader of ID troops in Ohio, told an ID conference in late 2003 that science would have very little to do with the development of science standards and education would have very little to do with it. Just so.

Hoffman went on

The Ohio board’s fundamental mistake was that a majority of its members were unable (or unwilling) to differentiate between scientific and political controversy. That mistake has now been compounded.

Again, I vote for “unwilling”. I do not believe this is the honest mistake of unwitting people, but is the intentional perversion of both science and education to further a sectarian agenda.

Catherine Candinsky of the Columbus Dispatch also “gets it”, as do others in Ohio. It remains to be seen whether the middle-of-the-road members of the Ohio Board of Education will get it. Will they realize that they’re allowing Cochran and Owens Fink to lead Ohio public education down an indefensible educational, scientific, and legal path? They still have a chance. The one parallel between Dover and Ohio that hasn’t occurred is that no member of the Ohio Board has lied to a federal judge under oath. Yet.

RBH

Update: 1/13/06 11:17:25 As of this second, my post is back on Dembski and Friends’ blog. It looks like one needs to take a post-by-post snapshot there just so you can keep track of what’s happened.

And now DaveScot comments (with no mention of having deleted and then restored my post)

You’re saying an undergraduate degree in anthropology is more science than a PhD in math? There’s a good laugh.

How do credentials in biology qualify one to recognize design? I don’t see the connection. Biology is a cross between pipetting and stamp collecting. How does that make one an expert on the nature of digital codes and automated machinery? At least the math guys know a digital code when they see one.

Here are some quotes from your article that make me think you imply “chicken”

What are they afraid of here?

Who exactly is refusing to engage in a competition?

I’m not afraid of competition

Are you going to sit there with a straight face and say you aren’t implying the other side is afraid of the competition you represent? I’m going to have call you a liar if you do.

Well, for one thing I am a math teacher, and I do know a digital code when I see one. Secondly, math is not science. Third, my comments about “competition” were in reference to something John Calvert said about the ID movement in general, not about Dembski. (If one read the newspaper article and had an intent to keep context in mind, one would know that.)

And I am saying that “the other side” is afraid of the point of view about ID that I represent. However, I said that without calling people names, and without making demands.

I would like this conversation to go on at Uncommon Dissent, where it belongs, and not here. However, given that posts can so easily disappear there, I’ve posted this here so there is a record of this exchange.

I know some of you out there do this. You’ve spent so many hours asking your creationist friends to define a “kind,” or explaining why the “tornado in a junkyard” or “watchmaker” analogies are hopelessly flawed, that you’re beginning to see flagella and mousetraps in your sleep. I mean, look at poor Nick. Kid can’t even hear the word “truthiness” without having visions of IDists dancing in his head. I caught myself doing this today, too.

I listen to a lot of country music. (Yeah, yeah, go ahead and mock. I’m used to it). Couple that with 1) the fact that I live in Iowa, where there’s a *lot* of country radio, and 2) the fact that my car didn’t have a CD player, that meant lots of time on the road tuned in to a country station. As a mom (aka taxi), that means the kids also spent a lot of time listening to it–and my daughter’s favorite song of the past year was Faith Hill’s “Mississippi Girl.” So, we bought her Faith’s new CD for Christmas.

(Yes, there is a point to this–see over at Aetiology)

Kenneth Miller, the lead-off expert witness in Kitzmiller v. Dover, is the guest on The Colbert Report tonight on Comedy Central. The show airs at 11:30 pm EST and PST, and rebroadcasts several times the following day, e.g. 7:30 pm I believe.

Every day this week, Stephen Colbert has been mentioning the fact that the word “truthiness”, which he invented, became the official 2005 Word of the Year declared by the American Dialect Society. Considering the relationship of “Truthiness” and the also-ran Word of the Year, “intelligent design” (a runner-up in the “Most Outrageous” category, although the category “Most Euphemistic” seems appropriate also) is rather entertaining. According to the ADS, “truthiness” is defined as “the quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.” I can’t think of a better word to describe ID…

Lou Dobbs will be “discussing” ID at 6:00 pm (Eastern Time) tonight. Rob Hovis, a strong defender of honest science education on the Ohio State Board of Education, will be on the show along with another OBOE Board member – possibly ID creationist Deborah Owens Fink, who introduced a “two model” (ID and Evo) motion to the Board in 2000. Anyone remember Debbie denying that they want ID taught in Ohio publics schools? Yeah, sure.

As usual, the Discovery Institute appears to be having some trouble settling on a coherent position on matter of the lawsuit filed against the El Tejon Unified School District in California. Like their many shifting positions on whether the designer is supernatural or not (Dembski says it must be supernatural, so does Behe, but when it’s convenient they all claim that the designer need not be supernatural even though that contradicts all their previous arguments) and on whether ID should be taught in schools (they initially promise to “pursue possible legal assistance in response to resistance to the integration of design theory into public school science curricula” and then claim that they’ve never wanted to put ID into public school science curricula), the DI appears to have at least two mutually exclusive positions on the El Tejon situation, in a matter of two days.

For more information, read the full text at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Comments may be left there.

Over at the DI’s News Evolution News and Views blog, (where you can’t comment on anything), Jonathon Witt writes,

KU Darwinists Duck Intelligent Design Debate

The Lawrence Journal-World covers the story here.

======= “Why won’t the Darwinists at KU debate philosopher and mathematician William Dembski, who will be speaking at a campus forum Jan. 28?

Leonard Krishtalka, director of KU’s Biodiversity Institute, said he was one scientist who declined an invita