I’ve been continuing to put some time into criticizing Michael Behe’s expert report on the creationist texts involved in the California Creationism Case. This is a slow process, partly because I’m also working on other projects and partly because it’s difficult to read the Bob Jones “Biology for Christian Schools” text without encountering a range of unpleasant side effects. I’ve been fighting the increased blood pressure and the nausea, and soldiering on. Along the way, I’ve encountered some real gems that I thought I’d share with you.

Today, I’m going to give you two quotes: one on Darwin, and one on sexually transmitted diseases. The two are connected only by the surreal nature of what’s being said. As you read them, please remember that this is material that’s being taught to high school students, and that the folks who are teaching this stuff are suing the University of California, because for some strange reason UC doesn’t think that people who have been taught this stuff have adequately completed an actual college preparatory class in biology. All quotes are taken from the most recent (3^rd) edition of the text. I’m transcribing by hand, so unless indicated otherwise, all typos are mine.

Read more (at The Questionable Authority, where comments can be left):

From reports that we are getting, starting yesterday a user account on YouTube, called cseministry, began fraudulently claiming that any video which criticized the felon, cheat, liar, fraud, huckster, etc. Kent Hovind violated the copyrights of the Creation Science Evangelism.

Under the draconian DMCA, CSE can use such false claims to silence their critics, with little legal risk to themselves. Once a claim has been filed, YouTube is required by US Law to remove the content immediately and without any review. The real copyright holders then have to jump through hoops to get their content back on YouTube, that is assuming that they haven’t already been falsely banned.

Hovind’s critics have a strong case against CSE’s DMCA claims because CSE’s own website waived copyright: “None of the materials produced by Creation Science Evangelism are copyrighted, so feel free to copy those and distribute them freely.” That waiver appeared in the About Creation Science Evangelism page as recently as yesterday. It looks like they’ve scrubbed their site today, after this waiver was pointed out to them. Apparently, CSE is trying to retroactively remove their productions from the public domain. (They can’t legally do this, but has the Hovind Bunch ever acted within the law?)

But more infuriating to me is that several users have reported that CSE is claiming copyright to homegrown videos that contain no CSE content, and in many cases no content by anyone other than the YouTube user. They are issuing clearly fraudulent DMCA complaints to remove videos critical of their organization and the liar that ran (runs?) it. This type of behavior should land the rest of the Hovind Bunch in jail except that fraudulent infringement notices are not illegal under the DMCA.

Update: And Now a Video

I learned today via an email sent to EvolDir, that some graduate students at Portland State University have put together a petition for Darwin Day. They plan to present this petition on February 12, 2009 to the Library of Congress, libraries, and bookstores, formally asking that that the anti-science works of creationists and intelligent design activists no longer be classified as “science” in libraries and bookstores.

Their hearts are in the right place, but I believe that they have misunderstood the issues facing our libraries and bookstores.

Last week I told y’all about how AiG had corrupted Kentucky’s government. Well according to an email that I received today, the tax-funded Northern Kentucky Convention & Visitors Bureau will change its inflammatory and specious description of the creation anti-museum. The Sunday’s Kentucky Enquirer is going to have a story on it. Someone should post the link in comments when it come available.

Sounds like our public pressure worked. Good job everyone.

Houston Chronicle article

10 of the 15 Texas state board of education members told the Houston Chronicle that they did not favor requiring “intelligent design” in science classes.

That sounds good, but there are a couple of problems.

First off, there’s the “requiring” language. The Discovery Institute Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture has made it a talking point not to ask for IDC to be required in public school science classes, but that teachers should be “permitted” to teach IDC if the Lord so moves them if they want to. So the Chronicle article, useful as it is, doesn’t take us past rhetoric the DI has already deployed.

Second, there’s too much fixation on labels, and not enough on content. We know that the antievolutionists are adept at picking out new labels for the same old tired, bogus, narrowly sectarian arguments they’ve been trying to keep or put back in schools for many decades. We’ve seen “creationism”, “scientific creationism”, “creation science”, “intelligent design”, “critical analysis”, and now it seems to be time for “strengths and weaknesses”, or even just “weaknesses”.

[Original post on the Austringer]

If Answers in Genesis’s creation anti-museum didn’t have enough of lie already, it is beginning to corrupt Kentucky’s government. The tax-funded Northern Kentucky Convention & Visitors Bureau is promoting the anti-museum as a “‘walk through history”” that “counters evolutionary natural history museums that turn countless minds against Christ and Scripture”. This inflammatory lie has rightly upset several organizations, who are fighting to improve the quality of science education in Kentucky. We expect Answers in Genesis to lie, but we hope that government wouldn’t join them in it. So far the visitors bureau has refused to change their website despite having is inflammatory lies pointed out to them. Perhaps some more public pressure can change that.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has the full story.

Well, at least someone is taking the recent threats against the Colorado biologists (http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/07/thre… ) seriously. (See also “Creato-terrorism update,” http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/07/crea… .) Today’s Boulder Daily Camera carries a signed editorial, “Fundamentalist threat not an isolated event” (http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/jul/20/fund… ), by Jennifer Platte. Ms. Platte notes

The packages containing veiled threats that were slipped under the doors of labs at the department of evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado appear to be part of a larger campaign being waged by one man against the department.

Content on the blog www.pandasthumb.org suggests that e-mails that preceded the packages threatened to “take up a pen to kill the enemies of Truth,” and stated that the writer would file charges of child molestation against the professors for teaching evolution. The writer believes that these professors are “the source of every imaginable evil in our society: drugs, crime, prostitution, corruption, war, abortion, death…” He appears to have been inspired by the words of Pastor Jerry Gibson, who allegedly spoke at Doug White’s New Day Covenant Church in Boulder, saying that “every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society.”

Update 30 July 2007. A letter in today’s Boulder Daily Camera claims that Mr. Gibson “never said this or anything like it” and directs us to the New Day Covenant Church’s Web site.

My colleague, Michael Grant of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, was one of the victims of the recent harassment, reported by Steve Reuland here. Professor Grant tells me that he has “been receiving these histrionic emails and books and packages for a year; he even comes into my office when I’m not here. He started with me and Jeff Mitton [chair of EEB] but expanded to the rest of the department and may have crossed a legal line with the rest. I have a huge stack of emails and packages and even a big fat paperback book from him.” I think that, by legal line, he means the threatening tone of the last e-mail below.

“Among other things,” writes Professor Grant, “he identifies me as a ‘child molester’ for teaching evolution and threatens to get me fired plus he threatens legal action on that front. In the most recent communications, he writes words many of my colleagues consider death threats.”

Update, 13 July 2007, 3.55 MDT. The Colorado Daily has released the name of the alleged perpetrator here .

The affair is cited at Red State Rabble here.

There has been controversy over a particular quote of Cheri Pierson Yecke. The Princeton (MN) Union-Eagle reported on October 9^th, 2003 that Yecke had said local schools districts could teach “intelligent design”. I copied that quote in a post on my blog on August 30, 2005. A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from ReputationDefenders on Yecke’s behalf asking for removal of the quote on the grounds that it was false.

Several Minnesotans have said that the position noted by the Princeton Union-Eagle was, in fact, accurate. Over on Greg Laden’s blog, “Cat’s Staff” noted that a Minnesota TV station had video of Yecke discussing the science standards. I viewed it, then transcribed the relevant part. As far as I am concerned, the Princeton Union-Eagle is vindicated in this matter; at the time that they reported, Cheri Pierson Yecke was indeed saying that teaching “intelligent design” was a decision that local school districts could undertake. Both the quote from the Princeton Union-Eagle and the subsequent criticism I made of Yecke’s position on the issue are upheld by this source.

The issue really is intelligent design and evolution and the there was language that was put in the conference committee report that accompanied the no child left behind act that said you know students should be exposed to all sides of a controversial issue. […] And it is well understood now that this is a decision that would be made by local school boards and not the state.

Continue reading at the Austringer.

Egnor wrote:

It’s clear that Dr. Gonzalez was denied tenure for only one reason: he stated publicly that he believes there is evidence for design in the universe. As I observed in a previous post about Georges Lemitare, the Catholic priest who is the father of the Big Bang theory, many of the most prominent astronomers in history have shared Dr. Gonzalez’s opinion about the evidence for design in the universe. Nowadays, it is very dangerous to state such beliefs in science departments of many universities, including Iowa State University.

In spite of the evidence to the contrary, the Discovery Institute insists that Gonzalez was denied tenure for believing that there is design in the universe.
Even Hauptman was clear that it was not an issue of belief but an issue of science and that Intelligent Design is scientifically vacuous.

Hauptman wrote:

Intelligent design is not even a theory. It has not made its first prediction, nor suffered its first test by measurement. Its proponents can call it anything they like, but it is not science.

and

Hauptman wrote:

I believe the comment that somehow this decision had something to do with the feelings of the community was also reprehensible, as are statements that this tenure decision is a denial of free speech.

It is purely a question of what is science and what is not, and a physics department is not obligated to support notions that do not even begin to meet scientific standards.

Source: Des Moines Register: Rights are intact: Vote turns on question, ‘What is science?’ John Hauptman, letter to the editor, June 2, 2007

In other words, its all about the science not the belief.

by Martha Heil, Editor, American Institute of Physics

Scientists fared well in national news about the opening of the Answers in Genesis Creationism exhibit. The scientific process would not recognize the proposition in the creationism exhibits as science-based, because the displays began with a certain conclusion * that the Christian Bible can be interpreted as literal fact * and then found facts and logic to support that idea. This, of course is not how science works * science begins with observations or hypotheses and leads to conclusions, often unpredictable from the beginning of the experiment.

National newspapers correctly reported that scientists are concerned about this Kentucky attraction because it misrepresents scientific thought, and uses deliberate untruths about science to make a specific point. The Washington Post, New York Times, and the country’s best selling paper, USA Today, all recognized that the displays were unscientific. The national newspapers also reported that scientists were concerned about this museum because of its potential to confuse students as to the nature of science.

Zachary Lynn, a student at Eastern Kentucky University was able to tour the $27 Million Lie before the grand opening on “family day”. (He knows the son of one of the AiG leaders.) He has posted his photos on his website. If you don’t want to wait for Prof. Steve Steve’s photos, you can go see Zachary’s.

By Martha Heil, an editor at the American Institute of Physics

Answers in Genesis, the biblical literalist ministry had a local advance opening of its young-earth creationism museum today. It claims that the museum scientifically proves the Word: that the earth was created in six days, that dinosaurs with pointy stabbing teeth ate only plants before the fall of humankind, and that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time. They also would not let scientists in their gates today.

Today was for the believers. Today was also a carefully orchestrated event for people who would carry their message to the citizens of the nation. A huge press conference was planned and drew reporters from all over the country. Tomorrow, in another post, we’ll look carefully at the news stories those messengers carried and see the impact that this ministry had on the conversation about a museum that purports to do science, but deliberately misleads its visitors using scientific terms and hand-picked facts.

On Pharyngula, PZ provides a comment response by Hector Avalos

The Discovery Institute has mounted the latest in a long string of creationist smear campaigns against me in Iowa. While I have never called for Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez to be fired, or even to be denied tenure, there are plenty of creationists who blatantly direct our university to fire me.

After all the Discovery Institute had decided to attack Avalos based on some pretty poor logic.

Determined not to be outdone by his fellows at the Discovery Institute, Dembski responds as well

Noticable quote:

Third, if Avalos has fudged on the status of this article—and has done so in a very public way—his CV may loaded with this type of fluff. Perhaps it’s time to start hunting for the real witch.

How are these kinds of ‘arguments’ going to help their fellow IDist Guillermo Gonzalez?

Fascinating… ID under pressure actually inflates…

Just in from the New York Times:

The National Association of State Boards of Education [NASBE] will elect officers in July, and for one office, president-elect, there is only one candidate: a member of the Kansas school board who supported its efforts against the teaching of evolution.

Who would that be? Ken Willard, someone you may remember.

Let’s say that you are counsel for the Association of Christian Schools. You are looking for an expert witness to stand up before the court and say that the biology and physics textbooks from Bob Jones University and A Beka are just peachy, and students taught from them should be accorded credit in biology and physics sufficient for admission to the University of California system. Who do you turn to? Naturally, you won’t bother with a biologist and a physicist for this matter; what you obviously need is a biochemist. Fortunately, you know where to find one, and, hey, presto! Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture Senior Fellow Michael Behe files an expert report on your behalf.

Here’s a sample:

General conclusions concerning viewpoints and biology textbooks

All biology textbooks that were examined, both the approved texts and the Christian texts, contain material which is not strictly science, but which includes viewpoints, and all texts asked students to discuss non-scientific topics, such as religious, legal, political, ethical, or moral topics. In my opinion in this unanimous practice is pedagogically sound. Science does not exist in a vacuum, and students will naturally have questions about how science relates to other aspects of their world. Discussion of how scientific and other topics impinge on each other and interrelate with each other can equip students to integrate seemingly separate areas into a more coherent whole.

Darwin’s Black Box and Icons of Evolution are cited by Behe in support of his expert report. He has a section extolling a “strengths and weaknesses” approach. And, Behe is going to get a cool $20,000 for his participation in the case.

What I’d like to suggest is a little competition for the readers… how many instances of issues raised in the Behe expert report correspond to items in Mark Isaak’s Index to Creationist Claims? Please use the comments to add sightings.

Here’s an update to “Is There A Systems Biologist In The House?”, in which I described how the head of the New Mexico chapter of the Intelligent Design Network (IDnet), Joe Renick, put a whole new spin on “Systems Biology” in an editorial commentary published in the Albuquerque Tribune (March 28^th):

Joe Renick wrote:

The greatest threat to the Darwinian dogma today is science itself.

There is a revolution underway in the biological sciences. A whole new field of biology called “Systems Biology” has emerged during the past 10 or 15 years. This revolution is just as profound for the biological sciences today as the transition in physics was from classical physics to quantum physics and relativity in the early part of the 20^th century.

In this exciting new field, research is guided not by Darwinian principles but by design principles because design principles are needed to explain design-like features.

The teaching of evolution today in public schools is frozen in the past where it is based largely on a mid-20^th century understanding of biology. Research in the biological sciences has moved far beyond that understanding because of the hopeless inability of Darwinian principles to explain the complexity observed in living things.

In my initial responses to Renick, found here and here (comments), I argued that

Sure, “Systems Biologists” use words like “design” occasionally, but that doesn’t automatically mean they think “designs” in nature must be “poofed” into existence by an un-named magical being.

and

Just bear in mind that Systems Biologists use evolution science, and do NOT utilize so-called “Intelligent Design” in any way, shape or form.

Recently, Joe Renick sent me a letter to clarify his position on Systems Biology and Intelligent Design, and allowed it to be published in the April NMSR Reports.

Renick said all this talk about him wanting to get ID into schools is baseless:

Joe Renick wrote:

You and your colleagues are the ones making the conclusion to a designer, not me.

I kid you not. Read on below the fold.

Few things are more ironic than young-earth creationist John Mark Reynolds (theologian at Biola, Discovery Institute fellow, leader in the ID movement) lecturing scientists about truth, stubborn facts, and having an “open philosophy of science.” If there’s an earthquake in LA today, it won’t be the tectonic plates shifting, it will be the simultaneous detonation of thousands of irony meters. How does the man get up in morning, when young-earth creationism is as hopelessly false on the empirical facts as anything ever has been in the whole history of science, and when the fundamentalist movement’s promotion of young-earth creationism is perhaps the biggest example of systematic fraud ever perpetrated on the American public? If you ever need an example of an ID advocate blathering lip service about “truth”, while shamelessly disregarding it in practice at the exact same time, here you go.

I had an op-ed in the Albuquerque Tribune a couple of weeks ago, on the topics of a rash of creationist bills in the New Mexico Legislature, and the super-sneaky tactics of the New Mexico Science Foundation.

Of course, in this “Tit-for-tat” world of ours, our local Intelligent Design Creationists finagled an op-ed response. Joe Renick, Executive Director of the Intelligent Design Network, is the author of Fear of exposure: The fight against academic freedom is rooted in the worry that Darwinism’s weakness will be revealed. It’s quite a ramble, but this little tidbit is what caused me to have a coffee spit-take:

Joe Renick wrote:

The greatest threat to the Darwinian dogma today is science itself.

There is a revolution underway in the biological sciences. A whole new field of biology called “Systems Biology” has emerged during the past 10 or 15 years. This revolution is just as profound for the biological sciences today as the transition in physics was from classical physics to quantum physics and relativity in the early part of the 20^th century.

In this exciting new field, research is guided not by Darwinian principles but by design principles because design principles are needed to explain design-like features.

Now hold on just a minute! Sure, “Systems Biologists” use words like “design” occasionally, but that doesn’t automatically mean they think “designs” in nature must be “poofed” into existence by an un-named magical being.

I would like to see a few (or even a dozen) letters from bonafide Systems Biologists setting Renick straight in the Albuquerque Tribune. It’ll be a quality Lesson for New Mexico Creationists: completely misrepresent an entire discipline, and you might just get chewed out.

Some comments on “Systems Biology,” along with information on writing the Trib, appear below the fold.

A news story today from Oregon (story here) is headlined “Oregon teacher fired after veering from evolution textbook.”

The story says, in part:

During his eight days as a part-time biology teacher at Sisters High School, Kris Helphinstine included Biblical references in material he provided to students and gave a PowerPoint presentation that made links between evolution, Nazi Germany and Planned Parenthood.

That was enough for the Sisters School Board, which fired the teacher Monday night for deviating from the curriculum on the theory of evolution….

Helphinstine, 27, said in a phone interview with The Bulletin newspaper of Bend that he included the supplemental material to teach students about bias in sources, and his only agenda was to teach critical thinking.

“Critical thinking is vital to scientific inquiry,” said Helphinstine, who has a master’s degree in science from Oregon State. “My whole purpose was to give accurate information and to get them thinking.”

PZ has done a splendid job of disemboweling Casey Luskin’s silly screed about my op-ed from yesterday’s Albuquerque Tribune.

Speaking of me, Luskin complains

He says that the “creationists” are getting “sneakier,”…

But, readers of the Thumb already know this is exactly what’s happening. This is a totally inappropriate use of ”scare quotes”, and I’m calling Luskin on it.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland featured a strange creature called the Cheshire Cat, which could disappear gradually until nothing was left but its toothy grin.

I was reminded of this strange feline by a recent mailing from a new group calling itself the “New Mexico Science Foundation.”

The group recently sent a package of materials to science teachers in the embattled Rio Rancho School District, where the Intelligent Design/Creationist-friendly Science Policy 401 was adopted, and then amended after strong protests.

You wouldn’t know who is behind this mailing from the group’s website, which has quotes from Einstein, captions like “Dedicated to the pursuit of the scientific method,” and links to bonafide science organizations, like the National Science Foundation, the National Science Teachers Association, the Institute for Systems Biology, and more.

The NMSF site does have a few hints of its real agenda online, for example, links to “Scientific Dissent From Darwinism,” and articles titled “Historical Science versus Empirical Science.”

Some colleagues and I thought it might be a new cover organization for the New Mexico branch of the Intelligent Design Network, or perhaps something done under the auspices of the Discovery Institute.

We were wrong.

The New Mexico Science Foundation website is the work of Bible-believing young-earth creationists (YECs), but you wouldn’t know it just by looking at it. All that’s left of its original YEC incarnation is a toothy grin.

Previous activity on Intelligent Design/Creationist bills in the New Mexico Legislature were discussed here and here.

Today, House Bill 506, “AN ACT RELATING TO PUBLIC EDUCATION; PROVIDING FOR SCHOOL SCIENCE CONTENT STANDARDS AND RULES REGARDING THE TEACHING OF THEORIES OF BIOLOGICAL ORIGINS.” was heard today in the NM House Education Committee: only Mike Edenburn, at sponsor Dub Williams’ side, spoke in favor of the bill. Speaking against were several scientists and educators, myself included.

After the comments, sponsor Dub Williams himself voted to table the bill, which was then tabled 8-4. (I was expecting the same 7-5 split as for the bill on teaching Bible as History, HB 498, which was tabled just before the HB 506 discussion.) But Williams himself moved to table his bill.

Only the Senate measures (Senate Bill 371, “SCHOOL SCIENCE CONTENT STANDARDS,” and Senate Joint Memorial 9, “OBJECTIVE TEACHING OF BIOLOGICAL ORIGINS.”) remain under consideration in the current session.

Two down, two to go.

In August of 2005, the Rio Rancho, New Mexico School Board adopted “Science Policy 401,” which was amended last April, after strong protests from scientists and teachers against the Intelligent-Design friendly policy.

After yesterday’s Rio Rancho school board elections, Policy 401 had better start looking over its shoulder. Even though the amended policy is basically toothless in comparison to the original version, the existence of this totally unnecessary policy still rankles many in the community. One of the policy’s original supporters, Kathy Jackson, decided not to run again, and gave her support to candidate Steve Dietzel. Dietzel, however, was crushed by strong pro-science candidate Divyesh Patel in a landslide vote. So, the creationist-leaning members of the board now find themselves in the minority, and policy 401 itself may be on the chopping block soon.

Another of the policy’s supporters, Marty Scharfglass, was able to keep his seat, but only by a few dozen votes. His opponent, pro-science candidate Sabrina Vidaurri, ran a surprisingly strong campaign against the incumbent.

State Senator Dave Schultheis of Colorado Springs has introduced a “Religious Bill of Rights for Individuals Connected to Public Schools” into the Colorado legislature. I have heard through the grapevine that similar bills may be planned for all other states. You may read some of the purported motivation for the bill at Senator Schultheis’s home page, http://www.daveschultheis.com/ and in the bill itself. You may find the bill by going to http://www.leg.state.co.us/ and searching for SB07-138. Hearings have not yet been scheduled.

Briefly, the bill

The Discovery Institute has certainly been busy since I last posted on a series of Intelligent Design Creationism measures introduced into the New Mexico Legislature.

They have been busy making their usual Opening Moves: claiming The New Mexico bill is not about intelligent design, and It is censorship!

After Casey Luskin’s latest tirade against “Darwinists in New Mexico,” I was inspired to make the following Cartoon Interpretation.

The punchline appears below the fold.

French Schools Swamped by Books Challenging Evolution

PARIS (AFP) - Tens of thousands of French schools and universities have received copies of a Turkish book refuting Darwin’s theory of evolution and describing it as “the true source of terrorism.”

The education ministry said Friday that it had warned school and university directors that the textbook is not in line with the recognized curriculum and that they should disregard it.

Entitled “The Atlas of Creation”, the 770-page book by Turkish author Harun Yahya quotes several passages from the Koran and asserts that “human beings did not evolve (from another species) but were indeed created.”

Does Prof. Steve Steve need to go straighten Europe out?

There’s an interesting op-ed on teaching evolution in today’s edition of the International Herald Tribune. The opinion piece is written by Michael Balter, and suggests that, “The best way to teach the theory of evolution is to teach this contentious history.” To support this position, Balter points to a 2005 study by Steven Verhey that was published in the November, 2005 issue of BioScience, that suggested that creationist students were more likely to change their views if the curriculum directly addressed creationist objections to evolution.

Balter has been advocating this position for a while now, and his views have been discussed at The Panda’s Thumb before now. Still, the position appears to be at least superficially reasonable, so it’s probably worth another quick look.

No fewer than four Intelligent Design Creationism measures have been introduced in the current 60-day 2007 session of the State Legislature of New Mexico. There are two pairs of measures, with corresponding actions before the Senate and the House.

The Senate sponsor is State Sen. Steve Komadina,

who has introduced both Senate Bill 371, “SCHOOL SCIENCE CONTENT STANDARDS,” and Senate Joint Memorial 9, “OBJECTIVE TEACHING OF BIOLOGICAL ORIGINS.”

The House sponsor is State Rep. W. C. “Dub” Williams,

who has introduced identical resolutions House Bill 506 and House Joint Memorial 14

While the House and Senate Bills explicity avoid the E-word (evolution), the Joint Memorials attack evolution four times each.

On Monday, January 29^th, House Joint Memorial 14 was considered by the House Judiciary committee, and was tabled after a lengthy discussion.

The University of Kansas Hall Center for the Humanities has put online the videos from this fall’s “Difficult Dialogs” series. Included are talks by Ken Miller, Judge Jones, Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, and Michael Behe. We had some previous discussion of the Behe talk here. (Apparently Behe was the ID guy who “discovered” that lawyers file a lot of paper with the court before, during, and after a trial, including Proposed Findings of Fact, which of course would be obvious if one had looked at the Kitzmiller documents archive that NCSE has maintained since the trial began.)

I hate to give my English brother-in-law something to crow about, but a December 7 article in the Guardian, “Ministers to ban creationist teaching aids in science lessons,” by James Randerson, gives him ample opportunity. According to the article,

The government is to write to schools telling them that controversial teaching materials promoting creationism should not be used in science lessons.

The packs include DVDs and written materials promoting intelligent design, a creationist alternative to Darwinism, that were sent to every school in the country by the privately-funded group Truth in Science. Advocates of the theory argue that some features of the universe and nature are so complex that they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Last week, the Guardian revealed that 59 schools had told Truth in Science the materials were a “useful classroom resource”.

For more details, check here
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,…

and for a sardonic comment, check here
http://redstaterabble.blogspot.com/2006/12/uk-pl…

Republican State Superintendent of Education candidate Karen Floyd, a strong supporter of Intelligent Design, helpfully tells us what we’ve known all along:

“I support the Education Oversight (Committee)’s premise that we should have critical analysis so that the discussion of intelligent design is not prohibited and could be part of the classroom discussion,” Floyd said.

The Discovery Institute must not be pleased. After having bent over backwards to insist that their “critical analysis of evolution” plan in South Carolina isn’t the same thing as teaching ID, here Floyd goes and lets the cat out of the bag. As we’ve seen time and time again, it’s hard for them to maintain their position that “critical analysis” has nothing to do with ID when their own supporters understand it as teaching ID.

And here’s something else that may have them spinning for damage control:

Forbidding teachers, even science teachers, to broach the subject of life’s origins creates an atmosphere of fear that’s unfair to children, [Floyd] said. Students are smart, she said, “and they connect the dots: Some will wonder “how many dinosaurs boarded Noah’s Ark.”

Uh-oh, here comes Young Earth Creationism. And to think that the Discovery Institute has spent all that time trying make people think that ID had nothing to do with creationism in general, much less the extreme YEC position.

I have more to say about Karen Floyd and the race for State Superintendent of Education over at Sunbeams from Cucumbers.

In what looks like “News of the Weird”, we have a report from Monroe County, Michigan of an antievolution activist taking up arms against the system. What sort of “intelligent design” weapons technology might the modern antievolutionist use? According to the report, Mark A. Wood entered the school offices of Monroe Middle School asking if people thought he looked like an ape while holding onto… a brick.

A man waving a brick barged into Monroe Middle School and ranted about the teachings of evolution before being arrested by police Tuesday morning.

[…]

“The best part is, no students were in danger,” Mr. McLeod said. “Fortunately for us, he came right into the office. It’s pretty obvious he was kind of disturbed.”

In Iowa’s ongoing saga, yesterday’s Ames Tribune, the paper that originally carried Republican lieutenant governor candidate Bob Vander Plaats’ comments supporting the teaching of intelligent design in schools, contained an article noting Republican governor candidate Jim Nussle’s dismissal of Vander Plaats’ idea:

(Continued at Aetiology)…

I mentioned the situation with Lieutenant Governor candidate Bob Vander Plaats and his support of intelligent design last week (posts here and here). A group of us have put together an editorial discussing Vander Plaats’ position and why it matters to Iowa voters (letter and signatories can be found here at the Iowa Citizens for Science site). Yesterday, a columnist for the Des Moines register also wrote up the story, and our response to it:

(Continued at Aetiology).

I have heard some weird reasons why we should reject Darwinian theory but this one seems to offer quite a new perspective:

Orzechowski said that the theory was a feeble idea of an aged non-believer, who had come up with it perhaps because he was a vegetarian and lacked fire inside him

Source

The story continues:

The deputy minister is a member of a Catholic far-right political group, the League of Polish Families. The league’s head, Roman Giertych, is education minister in the conservative coalition government of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Giertych’s father Maciej, who represents the league in the European Parliament, organised a discussion there last week on Darwinism. He described the theory as not supported by proof and called for it to be removed from school books.

The far-right joined the government in May when Kaczynski’s ruling conservative Law and Justice party, after months of ineffective minority government, formed a coalition including LPR and the populist Sambroon party.

Roman Giertych has not spoken out on Darwinism, but the far-right politician’s stance on other issues has stirred protest in Poland since he joined the government.

A school pupils’ association was expected to demonstrate in front of the education ministry on Saturday to call for his resignation.

Let’s hope that the school pupils will get an opportunity to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the leadership of their country.

As one commenter at Aetiology pointed out, support for Intelligent design/creationism is included in the Republican Party of Iowa State Platform:

3.4 We support the teaching of alternative theories on the origins of life including Darwinian Evolution, Creation Science or Intelligent Design, and that each should be given equal weight in presentation.

What I don’t know is if this is typical of other Republican platforms in other states, or how frequently each candidate uses these points in their own campaign. I’ve still not heard back either from Nussle or Culver regarding Intelligent Design, either…

Vander Plaats supports teaching intelligent design

“If we are going to teach evolution, there is another viewpoint and one that holds pretty good too (evolution) in regards to creation,” Vander Plaats said. “I think that is something that I would want to visit further along with Jim Nussle in regards to ‘Where are you at on that?’ But my viewpoint is I would like to give both of these (time in the classroom).”

For those of you unfamiliar wth Iowa politics, Jim Nussle is the Republican candidate for governor, opposed by Democrat Chet Culver. Bob Vander Plaats, as noted, is Nussle’s running mate.

(Continued at Aetiology).

The State Board of Education on Tuesday approved public school curriculum guidelines that support the teaching of evolution in science classes – but not intelligent design.

Intelligent design instruction could be left for other classes in Michigan schools, but it doesn’t belong in science class, according to the unanimously adopted guidelines.

“The intent of the board needs to be very clear,” said board member John Austin, an Ann Arbor Democrat. “Evolution is not under stress. It is not untested science.”

Source

UPDATE MP3 of the Board Debate on Ohio Citizens for Science.

Promoted from the comments:

Though the Achievement Committee skated, dipped and twirled, the full Board finally took it out of the Committee’s hands. This is promoted from the comments.

At today’s board meeting, under new business:

Motion by Martha Wise, second by Rob Hovis.

RESOLVED, That the Achievement Committee of the State Board of Education, having recommended no response to Board Resolution 31 referred to it in February 2006, is hereby discharged from further consideration of Resolution 31 and anything arising therefrom, including the template for teaching controversial issues.

As new business the resolution would normally have to wait 30 days before it could be considered by the board. There was a motion to consider the resolution immediately, as an emergency measure. That passed 13-4.

The motion itself passed 14-3. Cochran, Ross and Westendorf voted No. Owens-Fink and Baker were absent.

This kills Resolution 31 and the template. It effectively answers the question whether anything should replace the deleted lesson plan, benchmark and indicator with a resounding NO.

The remainder of my original post is below the fold, but it’s moot now. The Disco Institute took it in the teeth yet again. As one of our people remarked leaving the meeting, “This is the first time in years that the Disco Institute doesn’t have its hooks in the Ohio State BOE.”

As most of you probably know, there’s been a bit of discussion over the question of whether or not the pro-Intelligent Design textbook Of Pandas and People qualifies as a “challenged” or “banned” book as a result of the ruling in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover lawsuit. A few things have happened since my first two posts about the “banning.” In this post, I’m going to summarize the recent events, and explain what I’ve learned about the ALA’s views on this situation.

Read more (at The Questionable Authority):

Via Dean and Science, Just Science comes this story about a new group trying to get ID into class in the UK:

Parents are being encouraged to challenge their children’s science teachers over what they are explaining as the origins of life.

An organisation called Truth in Science has also sent resource packs to all UK secondary school science departments.

It promotes the idea of intelligent design - that there was an intelligence behind the creation of the universe.

On their website, Truth in Science notes that they’ve already sent “ a mailing to all Secondary School and College Heads of Science in the United Kingdom.” Busy little bees, aren’t they?

And boy, doesn’t this sound familiar:

It quotes the Edexcel examining board as explaining that students “need to adopt a critical, questioning frame of mind, going ‘behind the scenes’ to understand the workings of science and how it impacts on society and their lives”.

The Truth in Science website says: “We consider that it is time for students to be permitted to adopt a critical approach to Darwinism in science lessons.”

Something sure has evolved: the anti-evolution catchphrase. “Critical analysis” and its kin are obviously being positively selected!

(Continued at Aetiology).

Monday, I posted an entry here that discussed, in part, a Discovery Institute blog article claiming that the Dover ruling qualifies the cdesign proponentsists textbook Of Pandas and People as a “banned book.” As I explained at the time, the claim is complete and total nonsense, so I suppose I really should have guessed that the anti-evolution movement would get behind it in a hell of a hurry.

That appears to be just what’s happening. The latest twists involve the Uncommon Descent blog and the Wikipedia entry for banned books.

Read more (at The Questionable Authority):

Last week, both PZ Myers and I posted about some anti-evolution candidates running for the school board out here in Hawaii. The state primary election was Saturday, so I thought an update on this election might be a good idea.

There’s good news, not-too-bad news, and bad news.

Read more (at The Questionable Authority):

Two recent posts over at the Discovery Institute’s Media Complaints Division blog have me ready to break out the world’s smallest violin. Their new (well, newish, anyway - it’s popped up from time to time before) argument is that they are being discriminated against. In the first of the two articles, Rob Crowther argues that “Darwinists” are trying to “censor” academic freedom in Michigan. In the second, John West starts by suggesting that “Of Pandas and People” should be the “Banned Book of the Year,” and concludes with the outrageous and insulting claim that the “ultimate goal here is to ban ideas.”

The two posts, unsurprisingly enough, are jam packed with statements that are in gross conflict with reality. I’m not going to go into those here, although there are one or two I’m considering taking a swing at later. Instead, I’m going to focus on their root claim that objecting to what they want to do in the classroom constitutes some sort of “censorship.”

Read more (at the Questionable Authority):

One of the contributors on the “Uncommon Descent” weblog, “BarryA”, has joined the ranks of intelligent design advocates who want in on Monday-morning quarterbacking the Kitzmiller v. DASD case. “BarryA” wrote that Judge Jones was incompetent in permitting Eric Rothschild to present defense expert Michael Behe with a stack of papers and textbooks about the evolution of the immune system, one of those systems that Behe calls “irreducibly complex”. Behe had said this about it, ““We can look high or we can look low in books or in journals, but the result is the same. The scientific literature has no answers to the question of the origin of the immune system.” Rothschild wanted to go into how many papers and how much work was out in the literature. ID advocates have become fond of calling the practice of showing up their essential cluelessness by reference to the scientific literature as “literature bluffing”. The only bluff around that point in the KvD trial, though, was Behe’s.

My response is over at the Austringer.

The Seattle Times published an editorial Tuesday that was reprinted in the Lawrence, Kansas, Journal World today: Seattle applauds Kansas vote

The basic take-home point: Intelligent Design is dead as an attempt to disguise creationism as science.

Oh yes, it is alive and well as a cultural and religious force among anti-evolutionists - that problem still exists. But all this talk about there being anything to ID as science has been rejected by the courts, rejected by the voters, and rejected and ignored due to lack of any substance or relevance by the world of science.

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute has hitched their wagon to a sinking ship (pardon the mixed metaphor.) The only places they have made any temporary progress is when they has tried to use political bodies that were so far out of the mainstream that their successes, such as they have been, were bound to be short-lived.

Here are some excerpts from the editorial:

The success of the recent election in Kansas, in which pro-science moderates took back control of the State Board of Education, depended in part on the willingness of citizens to get out and work on behalf of pro-science candidates, and in part on having strong pro-science candidates on the ballot. Kansas isn’t the only state that will be electing members of its State Board of Education this fall. Ohio will, too, and people and organizations in Ohio are seeking strong pro-science candidates to oppose the ID creationist members of the Ohio Board.

One such organization is HOPE – Help Ohio Public Education. HOPE is actively talking with potential candidates. For example, HOPE is in discussions with a potential pro-science candidate to run in District 7, in northeastern Ohio. That seat is currrently held by one of the two ID creationist thought leaders on the Oho State BOE, the member who made the original “two modesl” motion to the Ohio Board in 2000, first foreshadowed adding global warming to the list of topics to be “critically analyzed” by Ohio school children, and continues to push trash science.

HOPE has been impressed with how much the potential candidate could contribute to solving problems of school funding, state BOE and DOE governance, and curriculum, specifically including science education. He comes with a strong background on education issues and would be an outstanding member of the state board.

Regardless of whether you’re in or out of Ohio you can help. Contact Ohio newspapers, and in particular write a letter to the editor of the Akron Beacon Journal explaining why we need good candidates for the State BOE. Help HOPE improve Ohio education and do it today. If HOPE can persuade good candidates to run we have a good chance of taking out Ohio’s answer to Connie Morris. Help HOPE get a strong candidate on the ballot this fall. Thanks!

Now that the voters of Kansas have replaced the pro-ignorance majority on the state school board with a pro-science one, I highlight a comment made today that demonstrates why good standards are important for teachers who come under political pressure.

About a month ago I wrote “Georgia Education on My Mind“, in which I mentioned the struggle of one veteran science teacher, Pat New, to give her students the education they deserved. Eventually, her administrators backed off when they discovered that what she wanted to teach, evolution, was actually part of the state standards. Today she left the following comment:

I was that teacher in Mike Winerip’s New York Times article. I can’t thank the Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science Education enough for, first of all, their fight to make sure evolution was in the Georgia science standards and, second of all, for their support when I was in the middle of fighting my administrators and parents over my teaching those standards. Having those standards in place was the reason I decided to take the stand in the first place. I knew that, finally, I could teach evolution the way it was supposed to be taught, as the backbone of life science. Thank you, all of you who fought that fight.

Pat New

(Comment 116381)

Let’s keep it up. The teachers need us.

Jack Krebs, president of Kansas Citizens for Science, gave a talk on “What’s the matter with the Standards” at Johnson County Community College this past Monday. Jack has kindly made the audio available as a set of MP3 format files. Jack’s original post on this is here. If what’s going on in Kansas is of any interest to you, you should check out these files. And these are the direct links to the downloads:

Jack Krebs’s JCCC Powerpoint
Text of John Calvert segment. Calvert is the driving force behind the Kansas IDNet and effort to have the antievolution version of the standards stay in place.

MP3 sound files all zipped together (43 MB)

Introduction (MP3)
Overview (MP3)
The context (MP3)
What was added (MP3)
The Plan (MP3)
Abuse of the process (MP3)
The ID movement (MP3)

Calvert’s explanation (MP3)
The rest of the audio (MP3)

Today, John Rennie, Editor-in-Chief of Scientific American, put up on the SciAm blog his thoughts on the Kansas election situation. See: Kansas, Undo the Damage. Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute issued an immediate reply in the comments, linking to his longer blog reply…but it was mostly just long quotes of his reply last week to my PT post showing that the current Kansas Science Standards are (a) wrong and (b) creationism/”intelligent design” in a very thin disguise.

So, I can just kill two birds with one stone by posting my reply to Luskin, which I also just put into the comments on Rennie’s blog. Here it is (short and sweet, plus a few edits):

The primary election for the Kansas Board of Education is coming up on August 1. Everyone is following the election closely, because the creationists currently have a 6-4 majority on the board, but 4 of the creationists are up for reelection, while only 1 of the pro-science candidates is up for relection. Furthermore, in many places in Kansas, the Republicans are so dominant that the real fight is not between a Democrat and a Republican in the general election, but between a moderate Republican and a conservative Republican in the primary.

So, you can expect that the Kansas news will be heating up for the next two weeks. We here at PT will do our best to keep you in the loop, but here are some webpages and blogs based in Kansas that you should follow for the latest firsthand accounts:

Stand Up for REAL Science. This website, which I just found out about, is run by Kansas biology teacher Jeremy Mohn. He appears to be somewhat annoyed at the Discovery Institute’s irony-meter-busting “Stand Up For Science” campaign. It’s a nice looking site, and comes with his blog, An Evolving Creation, where he has already debunked one of the fables that the ID advocates are telling about the group Kansas Citizens for Science.

Earlier this week the Kansas state Board of Education unveiled a glossy pamphlet on the changes made to the Kansas science standards. Even though they claimed to just be including direct quotes from the standards, they in fact did some significant editorializing that supports the Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design network’s campaign position that Intelligent Design is not included in the standards.

But the Kansas science standards do say that students should learn about ID, and that ID content ought to be in the standards.

If you want to read more about this new KBOE pamphlet, see State BOE aligns itself with Intelligent Design campaign in saying “No ID in standards at KCFS News.

However, here I would like to repost from KCFS News my analysis of the Board’s Rationale statement showing that indeed the Board does call for students to learn about ID. I know Nick Matzke posted on this topic earlier, but I wanted to present my take on the matter also.

I know this is just a part of their shameless election strategy for the Kansas Board of Education primaries coming up on August 1, but it is still gratifying to see the Discovery Institute frantically running from ID in an attempt to avoid an election defeat for the “Critical Analysis of Evolution” “intelligent design” crypto-creationist science standards they are attempting to push onto students in Kansas. Check this out:

Critical Analysis of Evolution is Not the Same as Teaching Intelligent Design

A favorite Darwinist conspiracy theory is to claim that education policies requiring critical analysis of evolution are simply a guise for teaching intelligent design (ID). Right now anti-science groups in Kansas are claiming that the state’s new science standards are pushing intelligent design.

The Kansas science standards do not include intelligent design. In spreading this falsehood, opponents of the standards ignore the following clear statement by the Kansas Board of Education in the standards. “We also emphasize that the Science Curriculum Standards do not include Intelligent Design….” (emphasis added) Which part of “do not include Intelligent Design” can’t opponents of the standards understand?

[formatting original]

First, the obvious one-liner: “No, the standards don’t include ‘ID’, they really just include creationism.” But apart from that, I would like to look at the claim that this ID-in-the-Kansas-science-standards idea is a conspiracy theory.

[Note: Some comments have expressed confusion about what I am quoting below, so to be clear: the bits from the Kansas standards that I quote below are in the Kansas Science Standards right now. They were passed into the Kansas Science Standards by the creationists on the Kansas Board of Education on November 8, 2005. The quotes are specifically from the February 14, 2006, version of the standards, which passed minor edits to avoid copyright infringement after the NAS and NSTA denied Kansas permission to use text from the national model standards. However, because it takes a while for school districts to receive the standards and write up science curricula, these new standards are probably not “in effect” anywhere until the next school year starts. Between now and then 4 of the 6 creationists on the Board of Education face reelection this fall, which is why the antievolution groups are gunning up the propaganda.]

Regular readers of the Thumb will recall that in February, the Ohio State Board of Education removed the “critical analysis of evolution” standard, benchmark, and lesson plan from the state’s science standards. The matter was referred to the Achievement Committee of the Board, with instructions to consider whether a replacement should be inserted, and if so, what it should be. That was a hammer blow to the creationists on the board and to the Disco Institute.

Now, consistent with the creationist tradition of repackaging old trash, we learn that the creationists on the Achievement Committee of the Ohio State BOE are pushing yet another load of of the same odoriferous garbage, this time extending it to include global warming as well as evolution. This is the Disco Institute’s replacement for its failed “teach the controversy about evolution” tactic, broadening it to include still more pseudoscience.

More below the fold.

I am in the process of leaving Georgia, but Georgia will never leave me. I feel that my time working on science activism with Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science Education (GCISE) has benefited my state. It was through our efforts that the press learned what was being done to our science standards by the Georgia Department of Education (GADOE), and that the GADOE was lying about it. (My op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was the first to bring it to light.) Because of GCISE’s vigilance, public outcry forced the GADOE to pass standards with descent support for evolution.

Over a year or so ago, a teacher came to us at GCISE, asking for help. Her administrators were trying to force her to compromise her teaching, and she was standing up to them. We provided what support we could, but in the end her best support came from the state standards. Now that she has retired, the NY Times is telling her story: Evolution’s Lonely Battle in a Georgia Classroom.

Ms. New was summoned to a meeting with the superintendent, Dewey Moye, as well as the principal and two parents upset about her teaching evolution. “We have to let parents ask questions,” Mr. Moye told her. “It’s a public school. In a democracy people can ask questions.”

Ms. New said the parents, “badgered, got loud and sarcastic and there was no support from administrators.”

Babs Greene, another administrator, “asked if I was almost finished teaching evolution,” Ms. New recalled. “I explained to her again that it is a unifying concept in life science. It is in every unit I teach. There was a big sigh.”

“I thought I was going crazy,” said Ms. New, who has won several outstanding teacher awards and is one of only two teachers at her school with national board certification. The other is her husband, Ward.

“It takes a lot to stand up and be willing to have people angry at you,” she said. But Ms. New did. She repeatedly urged her supervisors to read Georgia’s science standards, particularly S7L5, which calls for teaching evolution….

Suddenly the superintendent was focused on standards. Mr. Moye called the state department’s middle school science supervisor and asked about evolution. “Obviously the State Department of Education supports evolution,” Mr. Moye said in an interview….

Ms. New said that from then on, including the entire 2005-06 school year, she had no problem teaching evolution. “What saved me, was I didn’t have to argue evolution with these people. All I had to say was, ‘I’m following state standards.’ “

This is why strong science standards are so important for overwhelmed teachers. They give teachers an easy way to resolve curriculum issues in their favor. Of course, in an ideal world all teachers would have the time and patience to teach their parents and administrators about evolution. However, teachers will be the first to tell you that the world is not ideal.

I am glad that I was a part of the campaign to improve Georgia’s standards. And I hope that you will get involved in your state.

It looks like the case of six private school students against the University of California system will go forward to trial, as reported by Sean Nealon. The UC system sets course standards for admission, and has not approved certain courses, including biology, offered at the Christian private schools that the students attend. The students claim a violation of free speech and religious rights. The judge hearing arguments on UC’s motion to dismiss has said that he is leaning toward sending this one to trial.

Update: See also my post on the Austringer and Ed Brayton’s longer discussion on Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

PT readers may recall Jack Krebs’s post from May that recounted the behavior of Kansas State Department of Education Director of Communications David Awbrey at the Kansas City Press Club on May 4, 2006. To summarize, Krebs caught Awbrey asserting that evolution and science were just atheistic metaphysics, and, according to Awbrey, so were dinosaurs:

Anyone see the origin, anyone see the Big Bang, anyone see the dinosaurs? These are all metaphysical speculations by people who look at the same evidence and disagree with what they see.

Krebs later challenged Awbrey at the forum, and Awbrey denied these statements, but Krebs taped the whole thing and posted the quotes and recordings here on PT.

Well, fast forward a month, and now Awbrey has resigned after only six months on the job. Coincidence? We report, you decide.

Hat tip to Red State Rabble.

Apparently the petition to amend the Nevada constitution to include various creationist objections to evolution is going to die for lack of signatures. Petition author Steve Brown, a Las Vegas masonry contractor, has stopped the signature gathering effort a week before the June 20 deadline. See the NCSE news story for more. Hat tip to Red State Rabble.

If you haven’t seen the text (PDF) of the petition, I have posted it below the fold. It is…unique in several ways:

As I reported awhile ago, the Discovery Institute’s attempts to add “critical analysis” language to the parts of the South Carolina biology curriculum that deal with evolution have failed. The Board of Education did not add those changes, and the Educational Oversight Committee, led by creationist Sen. Mike Fair, finally conceded on that front and decided to accept the standards without the creationist language. Fair and his ally Bob Walker, who is a representative in the lower house, are apparently banking on a budget proviso requiring all textbooks adopted by the state to contain no less than 10% material be given up to 10% weighting for the promotion of “higher-order thinking skills”. In the Bizarro world inhabited by the Discovery Institute, where words mean the precise opposite of what they normally mean, this apparently implies creationism. Walker tried to get the House Education and Public Works committee to add an amendment to a bill to codify this somewhere other than in an obscure budget proviso, but that attempt failed miserably.

So that’s where things stand. But remember: The Discovery Institute exists on Planet Bizarro. In their world, things are the opposite of what they seem:

South Carolina Set to Join Four Other States Calling for Critical Analysis of Evolution.

Columbia, SC – The South Carolina Education Oversight Committee (EOC) will vote Monday, June 12, on whether to give final approval to science standards for biology that require students to summarize how scientists “investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.” The standards were approved unanimously by the South Carolina Board of Education on May 31. Four other states (Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and New Mexico) already have science education standards encouraging critical analysis of evolution.

Back here on Planet Earth, the Board of Education did not add the “critical analysis” language to the curriculum standards, and the EOC cannot accept standards containing that language without the Board of Education adding them first. But when declaring victory, why let a little thing like defeat get in your way?

Edited to add: It was brought to my attention that the science curriculum does actually contain one sentence about “critical analysis” that was added a year ago, so the DI press release isn’t technically untrue. It is, however, grossly misleading in that the changes they lobbied for all throughout the first half of this year, which included adding “critical analysis” language to each and every indicator dealing with evolution, were rejected. It was these changes, not the one from last year, that created the impasse between the EOC and BOE. The EOC’s June 12^th vote is noteworthy in that it will end this impasse with the Discovery Institute failing to get the changes they wanted.

- Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned medical school graduates Thursday that centuries of progress in scientific research are under attack by those who oppose stem cell research and dispute evolution and global warming.

Bloomberg: Science under attack in stem cell research debate by SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writer

On the topic of Intelligent Design, the republican mayor wasted no words

He then ridiculed the campaign to teach schoolchildren about “intelligent design” alongside evolution. The belief proposes that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some type of higher force, and many conservatives, including Bush, say schools should present both concepts.

The mayor said children who learn it are receiving an inferior education that puts them at a disadvantage later.

He told the medical students that they share the same burden carried by the school’s first graduates more than 100 years ago, when the field was “dominated by quacks and poorly trained physicians.”

Their task, Bloomberg said, is to “defend the integrity and power of science.”

They are finally starting to get it… ID is scientifically vacuous.

The appeals court has issued its opinion in Selman v. Cobb County School District. They decided to send the case back to court to clear up some holes in the factual record of the case. The trial court can either hold an entirely new trial or add to the existing record.

Of course, this gives the trial judge the opportunity to apply the ruling in Kitzmiller to Selman.

NCSE has more information.

The New England Journal of Medicine has an excellent article on Intelligent Design titled Intelligent Judging — Evolution in the Classroom and the Courtroom

Requiring public-school science teachers to teach specific religion-based alternatives to Darwin’s theory of evolution is just as bad, in the words of political comedian Bill Maher, as requiring obstetricians to teach medical students the alternative theory that storks deliver babies

Teach the controversy I say… Storks rule…

There has been some recent news in SC concerning the attempts at inserting creationist language into the science curriculum. I have hesitated to report them here previously, because taken separately they are mostly minor incidents, but taken together, they tell a story. I have three posts up on my blog, in chronological order, consisting of good news and bad news (mostly good, I think):

A Small Victory, But We’ll Take It

More on the Death of S114

Update on the Budget Proviso and the EOC

Also, check out the South Carolinians for Science Education page, as they’ve got a blog with news updates and other good tidbits.

A couple of weeks ago (May 4, 2006) I attended a panel discussion hosted by the Kansas City Press Club entitled “Intelligent Design, Intelligent Media: Is Coverage Accurate.” Panelists included Kansas Board of Education chair Steve Abrams, Kansas State Department of Education Director of Communications David Awbrey, and three reporters, Dave Hellings of the KC Star, Toby Cook of WDAF-TV and Ben Embry of KCUR-FM. Derek Donovan, Reader’s Representative for the KC Star, was the moderator.

To me, the most interesting aspect of the forum was listening to the comments of Awbrey. Awbrey is a conservative journalist who was recently hired by the state Board - the same Board that adopted ID creationist-influenced science standards last fall and who also hired Bob Corkins as Commissioner of Education, a rightwing lobbyist with no education experience whatsoever. I was interested in watching Awbrey in action, and I wasn’t disappointed. (For miscellaneous information on Awbrey, see Les Lane’s David Awbrey page.)

The two main things Awbrey said that bothered me were:

1. Scientists and science educators were arrogantly refusing to participate in the democratic process because they wouldn’t “stand on the stage with Steve Abrams” at last May’s “science hearings,” and
2. Scientists and science educators bring to the classroom their “religion” which holds that humans are meaningless cosmic accidents as opposed to being God’s creation.

Phillip E. Johnson may believe six inconsistent things before breakfast, but we don’t have to follow his example – or trust his latest inconsistent pronouncement.

The Sacramento Bee recently ran an article featuring an interview with Phillip E. Johnson, the “godfather” of the “intelligent design” movement.

His main disappointment is that the issue hasn’t made more headway in the mainstream scientific community.

Johnson said his intent never was to use public school education as the forum for his ideas. In fact, he said he opposed the efforts by the “well-intentioned but foolish” school board in Dover, Pa., to require teachers to present intelligent design as a viable scientific theory.

Instead, he hoped to ignite a debate in universities and the higher echelon of scientific thinkers.

But Johnson said he takes comfort knowing he helped fuel the debate that has taken place so far. “Perhaps we’ve done as much as we can do in one generation.”

What has Johnson said and done in the past concerning this topic, though? Is it really the case that public K-12 school curricula were not an issue for Johnson at any point? What we can see from the record is that public education at the K-12 level has, in fact, been a particular hobby-horse of Johnson’s. I also went through all of Johnson’s “Wedge Updates” archived at “Access Research Network” to see what Johnson had to say about public education there.

(Continue reading… on The Austringer)

Some good news from our British friends.

A statement opposing the misrepresentation of evolution in schools to promote particular religious beliefs was published today (11 April 2006) by the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science.

The statement points out that evolution is “recognised as the best explanation for the development of life on Earth from its beginnings and for the diversity of species” and that it is “rightly taught as an essential part of biology and science courses in schools, colleges and universities across the world”.

Royal Society Press Release

For months and months, right up to February 2006, we in Ohio were told that the “critical analysis of evolution” benchmark and lesson plan wasn’t ID. ID advocates on the Ohio State Board of Education – Michael Cochran and Deborah Owens-Fink – told us that; the author of the “critical analysis” lesson plan, Bryan Leonard, told us that; the DI repeatedly trumpeted “no ID!” on its web site. No ID at all here, folks, we were assured. Perish the thought!

But in a recent Seattle Times article, Bruce Chapman, President of the Discovery Institute, was reported to have said that Ohio’s State Board of Education eliminated intelligent design when it discarded the creationist benchmark and lesson plan in February. According to the story,

Already, he [Chapman] said, an effort in Ohio to include intelligent design in school curricula failed when some state school-board members said the Dover case settled the issue. (Italics added)

“… an effort in Ohio to include intelligent design”. Well, well. Who woulda thunk it!

The DI’s Media Complaints Division took immediate umbrage. Rob Crowther complained that the reporter got it all wrong. Crowther wrote

It isn’t just the theory of intelligent design that Postman has trouble getting straight, it is the facts of what is going on in the public policy debate. He writes that:

“an effort in Ohio to include intelligent design in school curricula failed when some state school-board members said the Dover case settled the issue.”

Notice what Crowther left out in the sentence that he quoted from the story: “Already, he said,…”. The reporter didn’t say it, he reported what Chapman said – the antecedent of “he” in that sentence is Chapman.

And now, the rest of the story …

The Douglas County Sheriff is closing the case of Mirecki’s beating because they can’t find any leads.

The trail has gone cold in the investigation of a roadside beating reported late last year by a Kansas University professor.

Douglas County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Lt. Kari Wempe said Thursday that detectives had finished their paperwork related to religious studies professor Paul Mirecki’s report that he was beaten by two unknown men on Dec. 5, 2005, on a roadside south of Lawrence.

The office has not identified any suspects and, unless any new leads come in, the investigation is finished.

At the time, Mirecki was under fire for comments he had posted online critical of organized religion.

Now back when Mirecki was assaulted some pundits claimed that he had staged the beating. Given that the case has closed without any charges filed, it would appear that those pundits owe Mirecki an apology.

Hopefully, Pianka and the Texas Academy of Science are still watching their backs.

Here in the pounding-nails-into-the-ID-coffin department of the Panda’s Thumb, we are still hard at work. Longtime PT posters Andrea Bottaro, Matt Inlay, and I have just published a “Commentary” essay in May 2006 issue of Nature Immunology. (Update: Subscription no longer required. Thanks to NI.) See the NCSE announcement and more background at the NCSE Evolution Education and the Law website.

The article is:

Bottaro, Andrea, Inlay, Matt A., and Matzke, Nicholas J. (2006). “Immunology in the spotlight at the Dover ‘Intelligent Design’ trial.” Nature Immunology. 7(5), 433-435. May 2005. (Subscription no longer required: DOI | Journal | Google Scholar | PubMed | Supplementary Material)

Therein, we review the now-notorious episode in the Kitzmiller case where, during Eric Rothschild’s dissection of Michael Behe, Rothschild challenged Behe’s claims about the scientific literature on the evolutionary origin of the immune system by piling up on Behe’s podium a stack of books and articles on the evolution of the immune system. Behe responded that he had not read most of it, but dismissed it out of hand, and this cavalier attitude seems to have been one (of many) factors that impressed Judge Jones and persuaded him to issue the thorough, detailed ruling that he did.

In the latest misaimed blast from the Whine and Cheese Division of the Discovery Institute, Michael Francisco expresses shock and dismay at the idea that people would actually claim that Intelligent Design and creationism are the same thing:

Finally, during the debate over [Kentucky Governor] Fletcher’s school board nominees, one House member argued they should “send a message that we are not a state that will fall prey to intelligent design, which is nothing more than creationism.” This argument merely repeats the common misconception that intelligent design and creationism are the same.

With all the effort that those dedicated Discovery Institute folks have put into trying to convince people that ID really isn’t creationism, what could possibly make people think that it is?

Read more (at The Questionable Authority):

Last night (April 10^th), the Rio Rancho School Board held a hearing on it’s controversial “Science Policy 401.”

After hearing from about 30 of the more than 100 people packed into the board room, the board deleted the phrase from the original policy

When appropriate and consistent with the New Mexico Science Standards, Benchmarks, and Performance Standards, discussions about issues that are of interest to both science and individual religious and philosophical beliefs will acknowledge that reasonable people may disagree about the meaning and interpretation of data.

and replaced it with this one, taken directly from the New Mexico Science Standards, Benchmarks, and Performance Standards

“Students shall understand that reasonable people may disagree about some issues that are of interest to both science and religion (e.g., the origin of life on earth, the cause of the big bang, the future of the earth).”

Pim van Meurs alerted me to another just plain false broadside from the Discovery Institute*. Joe Manzari (American Enterprise Institute) and Seth Cooper (formerly of the Discovery Institute) say that Brian Rehm, one of the plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, had a “clear” conflict of interest in being part of the new school board that specifically turned down a proposal to rescind the “intelligent design” policy.

One might assume the new board’s first item of business would be to rescind the old board’s evolution policy. Not so. During their first meeting on December 5^th, former Dover Board member David Napierski proposed a resolution to rescind the old board’s evolution policy (prior to any court ruling). Acting as a private citizen, Napierski procured the opinion of an attorney, who said that a vote to rescind the evolution policy could stave off a courtroom defeat and significantly reduce or eliminate legal costs and fees. Yet the new board rejected Napierski’s proposal to rescind the old policy.

What’s more, one of the new board members who rejected any attempt to rescind the old evolution policy was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit whose outcome was pending. Dover C.A.R.E.S candidate turned new Dover Board member Bryan Rehm was represented by the ACLU and AUSCS. Yet, in a clear conflict of interest, he participated in the new Dover Board’s consideration of the resolution to rescind the evolution policy.

Wow. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it? So what’s the evidence that bears upon this serious allegation of misconduct on the part of an elected government official? It turns out that the major claim is contradicted by information easily obtained online. I guess easily for people other than AEI “research assistants” and former DI “policy analysts”.

(* Correction added: Cooper is noted at the bottom of the article as a former policy analyst for the DI. We had to wait a few hours for the Discovery Institute’s official false broadside to appear. Now Ed Brayton has a great takedown of the official DI post.)

A column by S. Michael Craven at Crosswalk.com aptly demonstrates how one can come to an entirely inverted view of things starting from false premises and a false inference. The lead paragraph (below) begins with a false premise (that state science standards prohibit concepts from being presented in classes) and proceeds to a wildly false conclusion (that science teachers somehow are prevented from teaching material that is already in their textbooks).

This past February the Ohio State Board of Education voted 11-4 to remove all language that was critical of evolution from its state’s science curriculum. Previously, Ohio’s public school science guidelines said that students should be free to “describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.” The decision by the State Board of Education effectively eliminates that freedom. This means that science teachers and students are no longer authorized to discuss scientific evidence that questions the claims of Darwin’s theory.

No, Michael, the board’s decision doesn’t remove any “freedom” to discuss “scientific evidence that questions the claims of Darwin’s theory”. What it removed was wording that was specifically being treated as an invitation to discuss a bunch of false, long-refuted arguments which hied from creation science through intelligent design and into the new label of critical analysis. Science standards establish what knowledge and abilities students should have; Ohio’s teachers can (and I assume often do) teach things that are not specifically mentioned in the educational standards. Popular high school textbooks do incorporate material about the limits of science and in biology discuss non-Darwinian evolutionary processes, such as genetic drift. What you won’t find in the textbooks, though, are the patently false arguments that have long served the antievolution movement. There is no good pedagogical reason to teach students falsehoods, though, so much of Craven’s screed completely misses the point.

[Continue reading… on AntiEvolution.org. Comments may be entered via the link there.]

The next time ID movement makes a stink about “censorship” – their word for informed criticism – read this. Almost forty years after the Supreme Court struck down the bans on teaching evolution in public schools, this kind of thing is still shockingly common.

An elementary school teacher in Bennett, Colorado, has been suspended for showing her class a 12-min portion of the opera Faust, according to reports in the Rocky Mountain News, the Denver Post, and the Los Angeles Times.

Specifically, Tresa Waggoner, a first-year teacher, showed her elementary-school class a section of a video that used sock puppets to animate the opera. The video featured the soprano Joan Sutherland, whom many consider the greatest soprano of her generation. Ms. Waggoner found the 30-year-old videotape in the school library. She had invited singers from Opera Colorado to perform at the school and used the video to prepare her students. The performance was canceled, and no reason was given, according to a spokesperson from Opera Colorado.

Parents accused Ms. Waggoner of devil worship and, in at least one instance, of not being a Christian, as if not being a Christian were somehow reprehensible. In fact, Ms. Waggoner, herself an opera singer, describes herself as a Christian and has two Christian recordings among her credentials.

Ms. Waggoner, the mother of two children, was further accused of being a lesbian aiming to promote homosexuality. Ms. Wagonner says she was - get ready for this - explaining “trouser roles” in opera. (In Faust , a young man in love with Marguerite is played by a soprano.) Other parents complained that the video deals with abortion; Ms. Waggoner says flatly that they lied.

Some parents thought that the material was inappropriate for small children and were mollified when they were assured (by whom is unclear) that a similar situation would not arise. But other parents were not so easily satisfied.

On Uncommon Descent Doug Moran announced recently that

Brits to Teach the Controversy

“Creationist theories about how the world was made are to be debated in GCSE science lessons in mainstream secondary schools in England.

The subject has been included in a new syllabus for biology produced by the OCR exam board, due out in September.”

But as usual the ‘victory’ of Intelligent Design was mostly smoke and mirrors and short lived as the OCR Exam Board released a clarification. Why is it that Intelligent Design can only be succesful in our ignorance?

Ed Note: This update comes from a member of Alabama Citizens for Science. It concerns SB45/HB106, the “Academic Freedom Act”, which intends to give any teacher at any level the “freedom” to corrupt science education for any reason. The 2006 version drops the obvious anti-evolution language of its failed predecessors.

As I explained in my last post, the SC Board of Education met today to vote on the “critically analyze” (read: teach erroneous ID arguments) language that the Educational Oversight Committee wanted added. The BOE voted down the measure by a margin of 10-6 or 11-6, depending on whether or not you count the Chairman, whose vote apparently doesn’t count in the official tally (but being the cool guy he is, he wanted to make it clear where he stood).

Here’s the article from the AP: S.C. Schools Won’t ‘Analyze’ Evolution.

From what I hear, there were some excellent speakers who spoke out against the EOC proposal. They deserve major credit for this. Also, here’s a list of who voted for and against the proposal:

Voted to reject the EOC proposal: Woodall, Tindal, Burch, DuBard, Forrester, Mitchell, Pye, Sumter, Simpson, V. Wilson.

Voted support the EOC proposal: Curtis, Maguire, McKinny, Seckinger, Shoopman, R. Wilson.

If you are from SC, feel free to drop a letter of thanks to those board members who voted against the proposal. It’s important that they know they have support. And if you must send a missive to one of those who voted in favor of the proposal, please note that a) it won’t do you any good, and b) if you are anything other than super-polite, they will complain that they’re being persecuted. (Fair’s allies in the EOC have already made a habit of doing this.)

Rep. Bob Walker kicked things off this morning by presenting a petition in favor of the “critically analyze” language signed by 67 of 123 General Assembly members, and warned angrily that he’s going to take this in front of the legislature. Walker is probably the biggest ally of Sen. Mike Fair (who I hear appeared “discernibly turgid” after hearing the vote tally) in trying to get the pro-ID language added to the curriculum standards. Walker previously sent a letter (pdf) to the BOE explaining, among other things, that it was “unanimous” that the evidence for evolution had been fabricated.

While I suspect that a significant portion of those legislators who signed that petition didn’t know what they were signing, one way or another this is going to head to the State House floor. The Discovery Institute is going to have a lot of fun trying to keep 67 table-pounders from spilling the beans and admitting that this is all about the Bible and Jesus. Walker has already done that himself. Careful what you wish for guys.

The anti-evolution crusade in South Carolina, led by the Discovery Institute, continues unabated. There is not much new to report – the Educational Oversight Committee (EOC) has voted to reject, yet again, the curriculum standards that don’t include the pro-ID “critical analysis” language. But the EOC has no power to change the standards. Only the Board of Education, which meets today, can do that. So it gets kicked back to them, and they’ll have to submit another round of standards for EOC approval. Round and round we go.

But the rhetoric and nonsense keep heating up. Sunday’s Charleston Post and Courier carried a front page article which starts out as follows:

In January, state Sen. Mike Fair desperately needed a pair of speakers to challenge the theory of evolution.

The Greenville Republican and Education Oversight Committee member lost the two South Carolina university professors he had lined up for a debate with state science educators after one of his speakers began receiving job threats for agreeing to participate.

The topic of the debate was the proposed injection of language favoring “critical analysis” of evolutionary theory into guidelines or standards used for sophomore biology lessons.

So he turned to the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, for help.

The article goes on to describe the Discovery Institute and its shenanigans – it’s a pretty good article actually. Among other things, we get to learn that South Carolina is now considered a “main focus” of the Discovery Institute, as if we didn’t have enough problems, and that U.S. Senator Jim DeMint’s office was being less than truthful when it said that DeMint had “little familiarity” with the Discovery Institute. (The fact that he gave the opening speech at a DI-sponsored event kind of gave it away). But it’s that peculiar allegation by Mike Fair, reprinted without skepticism, that I want to talk about.

Fair’s claim that there were two SC professors who had to back out because one of them received job threats has the virtue, like ID itself, of being impossible to verify or refute. The fact of the matter is, Fair brought this up well after he had his anti-evolution speakers appear in front of the Academic Standards and Assessments Subcommittee of the EOC (see here and here for background). Those speakers were Richard von Sternberg and Rebecca Keller, who were suggested to Fair by the Discovery Institute. Fair took some amount of heat due to his use of out-of-state personae to represent the anti-evolution cause, while the two pro-science speakers who the EOC lined-up (Karen Stratton and Mary Lang Edwards) were both in-state. But Fair didn’t see fit to mention until a subsequent meeting that he had originally picked two in-state professors who apparently backed out at the last minute – this being, according to Fair’s sob story, because one or both of them received job threats. This is very strange, because Fair steadfastly refused to say who his picks were – not even the other EOC members knew – until it was revealed at the last hour that they would be von Sternberg and Keller. Whoever these two SC professors that supposedly backed-out were, no one knew their identities then, and no one knows their identities now. How could either one of them received job threats when they remained anonymous?

Okay, so color me skeptical. Fair’s story doesn’t add up. But I happen to know for a fact that there are people whose jobs have been threatened over this. And it isn’t Fair or his allies. It’s hard working college professors whose only crime is standing up to Fair and the Discovery Institute.

A parent recently contacted Colorado Citizens for Science, saying that his fourth grader at a public school had brought home a DVD promoting intelligent-design creationism as an alternative to evolution. CCFS advised the parent to contact the teacher before approaching the administration, and also recommended that he read the relevant resources on the Website of the National Center for Science Education and bone up on Judge Jones’s decision in Kitzmiller.

Additionally, a CCFS Board member described her own, similar experience, as well as forwarded to the parent her correspodence with her child’s teacher. The Board member’s case was not resolved successfully until she approached the school board and, ultimately, threatened to file a lawsuit. CCFS has posted its reply to the parent and also the CCFS Board member’s correspondence with the teacher at this URL.

We do not yet know how the parent’s case will come out.

Dr. Dan Ely of the University of Akron testified at last year’s Kansas Creationism hearings. Ely represented himself as knowledgeable about the issues, and supported the Kansas minority report that gutted the teaching of evolutionary biology in Kansas schools.

Ely was also a member of the writing team that produced the ID creationist model lesson plan for Ohio, and testified before the Ohio State Board of Education on a number of occasions. He was also touted as an expert by several board members, including Deborah Owens Fink who first introduced a “two model” approach (evolution and ID) to the Ohio Board of Education in 2000.

Now Ely’s colleagues at the University of Akron have written an open letter to the Kansas State Board of Education taking down Ely’s qualifications, his representations of his conversations with them, and his conclusions. Pat Hayes at Red State Rabble has the story here and here.

One of the money quotes from the Akron biologists’ letter:

It is clear from these statements about his own research that Dr. Ely knows literally nothing about the evolutionary processes that he claims to be competent enough to criticize, which is understandable in that he is a physiologist with no graduate-level training in evolutionary biology whatsoever.

RBH

Addendum A correspondent points out that Ely’s behavior is of a piece with the ID movement’s general practice of having “experts” who attest to material well outside their area of professional competence. If one looks at the “experts” who testified at the Kansas hearings, not one evolutionary biologist or paleontologist was in the list of supporters of the creationist Minority Support.

Did you know that there really is a scientific controversy over evolution? If you didn’t, it’s because you haven’t been reading the internets. Just do a Google search and you’ll see “Intelligent Design” crop up all over the place, proof positive that there really is a controversy.

You can learn about this and other astounding bits of wisdom from SC Educational Oversight Committee member (and disposable products magnate) Karen Iacovelli, on my new blog. Incidentally, Iacovelli is an odd choice for EOC appointee, given that she doesn’t think that public education should even exist.

From our friends at the NCSE, we hear how a local school district has rejected Kansas’s antievolution standards.

The Manhattan-Ogden school district (USD 383) became the first local school district in Kansas to reject the state science standards adopted by the Kansas state board of education in November 2005. At its meeting on February 15, 2006, the USD 383 board of education voted 6-0 to adopt a resolution that endorses the original writing committee’s description of science as “a human activity of systematically seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us.”

Seems that once again the Dover ruling, although not legally binding in Kansas played its role in the decision

USD 383 superintendent Bob Shannon told the Kansas State Collegian (February 16, 2006) that it is unlikely that the adoption of the resolution will have any financial or legal ramifications for the district. Board member Beth Tatarko added that in fact accepting the state standards might be financially and legally precarious, citing the outcome of Kitzmiller v. Dover: “If we had someone in our district teaching Intelligent Design right now, those costs would come back to us.”

Buttars’ crazy anti-evolution bill has been killed in Utah.

The evolution bill is no more.

The Utah House of Representatives voted 46-28 to kill SB96, which cast doubt on the teaching of evolution.

“There are a number of influential legislators who believe you evolved from an ape. I didn’t,” said Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, who sponsored the bill.

He said it was “doubtful” that he would try a similar bill in the future.

The bill would have required a teacher to say the state does not endorse evolution and that the controversial theory is not a proven fact before teaching Charles Darwin’s ideas.

Source: Salt Lake Tribune

NCSE’s Take

The Intelligent Design movement’s clarion call for “teach the controversy” is a very clever strategy; it’s the sort of thing that strikes otherwise bright and sensible people who aren’t creationists as agreeable. It sounds like a good idea as long as you don’t ask yourself the following questions: 1) Is ID legitimate science? 2) Are the ID movement’s criticisms of evolution scientifically valid? 3) What are they trying to achieve by altering science curricula? Given that the answers to these questions are “No”, “No”, and “To advance a religious agenda”, respectively, “teach the controversy” seems upon further analysis to be lousy educational policy. But to the uninitiated, “teach the controversy” appeals to notions of fairness, and moreover, the very wording of the talking point itself implies that there is actually a controversy to teach.

A couple of recent articles explore each of these issues and shed light on why this strategy is bogus. The first one by Stanley Fish recounts the history of “teach the controversy” when it existed as a sensible means for resolving genuine controversies within academia. The ID movement didn’t actually invent this idea (it’s an odd fact that none of their ideas appear to be original) but rather “picked the pocket” of one Gerald Graff, who came up with the notion some 20 years ago concerning wholly unrelated things. The second article by Bob Camp tries to ascertain the extent to which there actually exists a controversy among biologists.

Greetings and salutations! I just returned from the AAAS meeting in St. Louis, and what a trip it was! I finally got to meet Wesley Elsberry and Nick Matzke of NCSE fame, and it was great to see Eugenie again. The occasion for these festivities? The newly formed Alliance for Science ran a three hour symposium entitled Antievolutionism in America: What’s Ahead? We had one hell of a speaker line-up. Dr. Scott kicked it off with her usual eloquence, and was followed by a slew of people to talk about everything from threats to fields outside biology, particularly geology and neuroscience, to the successes of Dover C.A.R.E.S. This symposium was unique because we recognize the plight of those on the front line and gave plenty of podium time to them. For example, Gerald Wheeler from the National Science Teachers Association, a certain pastor from this little town called Dover, and Michael Zimmerman of the Clergy Letter Project all got a chance to air their concerns and suggestions.

Not surprisingly the room was packed for most of the event, with standing room only in the back. The press even ate it up by publishing a story that included the Alliance for Science and a legislative initiative with which we are involved. The article did get one little piece of information wrong though: it suggests that the AAAS itself was involved in the creation of the Alliance for Science. This is not the case.

Reuters reports how scientists have enlisted the help of the clergy in battling creationism.

American scientists fighting back against creationism, intelligent design and other theories that seek to deny or downgrade the importance of evolution have recruited unlikely allies – the clergy.

And they have taken their battle to a new level, trying to educate high school and even elementary school teachers on how to hold their own against parents and school boards who want to mix religion with science.

Reuters

Following up on comments by the maker of Flock of Dodos, PZ Myersh has taken to task the idea that we ought to dumb down our message in order to entertain [summarized by PvM here, with links]. On the Dino List, Kent Stevens posted the following analysis of why science programming is so poor in terms of the sets of audiences and advertisers, which I think needs to be widely available. He has given permission to reproduce it:

The Calculus of Science Documentaries

[Read the rest on my blog, Evolving Thoughts]

On the Loom, Carl Zimmer provides us with an interview with Randy Olson. As you may remember, Randy is the director of the movie “Flock of Dodos”.

Randy’s comments and suggestions have generated quite some disagreement from PZ Myers on Pharyngula and John Lynch on Stranger Fruit.

Let’s first look at Randy’s suggstions as to how to improve communication, then some of the disagreements and finally I will give my $0.02 on the matter. I also hope that the readers of PandasThumb will contribute to explore these issues as they go to the heart of how the issue how to best teach and educate the layperson about evolutionary theory.

William Dembski has joined the fray at evolutionnews with the following non-sequitur:

Ecstatic because “critical analysis of X” removed from standards

Dembski wrote:

Question: Is there any other field of inquiry — other than evolution, that is — whose advocates become ecstatic when critical analysis of its subject is suppressed?

While Dembski may not be trained in logic, the rethoric can be easily addressed by simply pointing out that people are ecstatic because yet another attempt to introduce Intelligent Design to schools has been stopped not because they object to critical thinking. History shows that the opposition was to the term “critical thinking” because it may lead to the inevitable attempt to ‘teach the controversy’ as promoted by so many ID activists. The fears were not unwarranted because soon a lesson plan emerged which used flawed, misleading or plainly wrong arguments, taken often almost verbatim from creationist resources.

Anyone familiar with science knows that science thrives on controversy and critical thinking.

Last January in my public remarks to the Ohio Board of Education after it had narrowly voted to retain the ID creationist lesson plan, I said that “This Board has set a ‘Dover Trap’ for every local school district in Ohio”.

By “Dover Trap” I meant that the Trojan Horse “critically analyze” benchmark and the creationist model lesson plan that operationalized the benchmark tacitly sanctioned teaching intelligent design creationism (in any of its guises) in Ohio schools, and in doing so it exposed Ohio local school districts to the same risk that Dover took. Aside from the pedagogical problems of teaching the intellectual vacuity of creationism, any district that tolerated or sanctioned teaching Wellsian B.S. would in effect be betting $1 million that it was worth teaching.

Father Michael Cochran of the State Board was quoted as saying, “If they think we are wrong — take us to court.” That’s easy for Cochran to say: He wouldn’t pay for anything. But for some little district in Vinton County or Holmes County or Coshocton County, it would be a devastating blow to be so ill served by the Ohio BOE.

In a recent development, the American Family Association has offered similar legal assistance. In a press release its Center for Law & Policy has offered to defend the Ohio State Board if it reinstates the deleted material. (The Ohio ID creationist organization SEAO was a project of AFA.) One can expect that AFA’s defense will be as “free” as the Thomas More Center’s defense in Dover, and worth just as much.

Now that the offending benchmark, indicator, and lesson plan are gone from the Ohio state standards and model curriculum, there is not even the weak justification of State Board action for local Ohio districts to lean on. Any Ohio district that teaches intelligent design creationism-inspired glop now is wholly on its own.

I commend the “Dover Trap” phrase to colleagues elsewhere. Remind local superintendents that neither their state BOE nor their state legislature can protect them from the federal courts, and that they stand to take an enormous hit if they teach sectarian ID creationist pseudoscience, including the “teach the controversy” and “critical analysis of evolution” shams.

As we’ve discussed many times, the ID movement has changed its strategy regarding the policies they are advocating to be adopted by school boards and legislatures. They know that any hint of the phrase “intelligent design” is going to be struck down by the courts, especially in light of the Dover ruling. In fact, they knew this before the Dover ruling ever came down. The big switch really began in Ohio in 2002 in an attempt to make the target too small for our side to attack successfully. Thus, you now have them advocating policies that would not teach ID explicitly.

In one place they may advocate that schools “teach the controversy” over evolution; in another they may advocate that schools teach “the arguments for and against evolution” or “the scientific evidence for and against evolution”; in a third, they may want schools to encourage “critical analysis” or “critical evaluation” of evolution; in a fourth, they may be pushing the idea of teaching “all scientific views about evolution.” All of these phrases mean essentially the same thing - they want the basic arguments that they make against evolution (which is the form that all of their arguments take) taught as valid, they just don’t want them labelled “intelligent design” so as to avoid the scrutiny of the courts.

Another key aspect of their rhetorical strategy is to pretend that their opponents are engaging in crazy conspiracy theories or, to use Casey Luskin’s amusing phrase, suffering from “false fear syndrome”, and seeing the ID boogeyman where it doesn’t exist. They have to say this, of course, whether it’s true or not; to say anything else would give up the game. Thus, we get statements like this from the sponsor of the bill in the Michigan legislature that invokes two of the four variations of the new strategy (“critical analysis” and “arguments for and against”):

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

Ken Ham, AiG’s President and coauthor Mark Looy, lead off today’s daily devotional on their web site claiming that “[e]volutionary scientists throughout America are running scared.” Even to the most casual of readers, this has got to be one of the most obviously desperately penned quips from America’s leading “Humans Plowing Their Fields Behind Dinosaurs” advocate yet.

UPDATE 2: MP3 of Board debate on the motion

Update: Text of the motion is now below the fold

Ohio is no longer on the Disco Institute’s list of favorite states for pilgrimages. Late this afternoon, by an 11-4 vote, the Ohio State Board of Education stripped out the intelligent-design creationist “critical analysis of evolution” benchmark, indicator, and lesson plan from the 10^th Grade Biology curriculum.

I do not yet have the exact text of the resolution – it was amended somewhat in flight, so I have to transcribe the recording to get the precise wording. But the resolution had four main parts: It’s below the fold.

1. Eliminate the “critical analysis of evolution” benchmark and indicator from the Science Standards.

2. Eliminate the “Critical Analysis of Evolution” model lesson plan from the Model Curriculum..

3. Instruct the Achievement Committee (formerly the Standards Committee) to consider whether the benchmark, indicator, and lesson plan should be replaced with something more acceptable.

4. Instruct the Ohio Department of Education to notify every school district in Ohio of these actions.

The press release of Ohio Citizens for Science, distributed immediately after the vote, is below the fold. Later tonight when I have transcribed the final form of the motion from the recording I’ll post that below the fold as well.

On Evolutionnews.org Casey Luskin can be observed making the following comments about a statement made by Ken Miller in a November 19, 2004 NPR program “Talk of the Nation”

Casey Luskin wrote:

Will this role model inspire student interest in science?:

Ken Miller wrote:

“I think the most destructive part of the disclaimer that’s on the textbooks in Georgia, is the last sentence. And it says something to the effect that students are urged to study this material carefully, critically examine it and consider it with an open mind.”

Biologist Dr. Kenneth Miller, star Darwinist expert biology witness in the Dover and Cobb County trials, on NPR, November 19, 2004

MIller’s statements and similar Darwinist policies lead to dogmatism in evolution education. This will not inspire enthusiasm for science in students. But teaching students about views which both support, and question, evolution, and then allowing them to evaluate and investigate this issue for themselves, will increase their interest in science!

Let me add some context that was omitted by Luskin to the claim by Miller.

Do the Kansas Science standards say “teach ID?”

The Discovery Institute and the Kansas state BOE say “no”.

I say “yes”.

Casey Luskin “challenges the Darwinists” - which I presume includes me, to back up our claim that the Kansas standards do say “teach ID”.

Well, here you go, Casey. Read on.

On Friday, Feb. 3^rd, I was able to pose a question to Greer-Heard Forum headliners Michael Ruse and William Dembski. Here’s a transcript of that segment:

WRE:Actually I’m interested in a public policy aspect of this whole thing. Last month, I got on the Web of Science database search and looked up the term “cold fusion” and it came up with 900 papers there. “Cold fusion” is the poster child for the “not-ready-for-prime-time” physics theory, something that is not ready for going into 9^th grade biology, no, physics textbooks. We see the process of science in things like plate tectonics, and the endosymbiotic theory, the neutral theory, and punctuated equilibria, these are things that have earned a place in the textbooks, because the people put in the work, they convinced the scientific community that they had a point, and that’s why they’re in the textbooks. So, what I’d like to hear from both of you is, is there a justification for giving intelligent design a pass on this process?

For the answers, visit The Austringer. Comments may be left there.

One of the main defenses of ID creationists on the Ohio State Board of Education is that in their “process”, the drafting of standards, benchmarks, and model lesson plans was vetted by several committees composed of scientists and educators. Father Michael Cochran brandished that argument during the January OBOE meeting, as did Jennifer Sheets, who was Board President during the development of standards and lesson plan. But processes can be subverted, Ms. Sheets, and this process was completely subverted. ODE packed the lesson plan writing committee with creationists and ignored its internal and external advisors and reviewers. And now we learn that ODE ignored the advice from members of its Science Content Standards Advisory Committee. And both sides on the Board claim they never heard about any of that!

In its addition of the “critical analysis” standard and benchmark the Board violated its own process. The benchmark at issue, H23 in the 10^th grade life sciences standards, was inserted by the Board itself, not by the writing committee that was advised by the Science Content Standards Advisory Committee.

We know already that internal and external consultants to the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) repeatedly warned that the “critical analysis” model lesson plan was a rehash of old and oft-discredited creationist canards. Now we know that ODE was also warned about the “critical analysis” standard early in the process. There was no lack of forewarning to ODE; one wonders why those warnings did not get to the Board from ODE.

Yesterday in an open letter to Governor Taft (see below), 75% (24 of 32) of the members of the Science Content Standards Advisory Committee, composed of scientists and educators, agreed that the standard is flawed.

The Ohio Board of Education accepted those standards in December 2002. The Board, however, added an indicator-benchmark singling out biological evolution from the rest of science by requiring students to “describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory”.

Many of us warned then that in singling out this one scientific theory that has historically been opposed by certain religious sects, the Board sent the message that it “believes there is some problem peculiar to evolution.” This message was unwarranted scientifically and pedagogically. We also noted that such wording created an opportunity to teach creationist misrepresentations of science to Ohio’s students. Indeed, such a lesson tied to this indicator was prepared and accepted by the Ohio Board of Education in March 2004. (Bolding added)

Moreover, at the January 2006 Board meeting, several creationist Board members argued that the model lesson plan and standard could be reviewed in future during the normal course of the “process” in ODE. However, when pressed, ODE senior management admitted that there is no such review process in place.

So there was a subverted writing process and there is no review process in place. Now only the Board can rectify its mistake. Governor Taft is to be commended for his recent stand, described here, on the undesirability of ID in Ohio public schools. Now he must follow through. His appointees were the main support for the creationist benchmark and lesson plan. They must rethink that support.

The full letter to Governor Taft is below the fold.

Some of our readers, concerned about science education in the UK, have started a forum on the issue:

Science, Just Science.

Check it out.

The Georgia Journal of Science has published several articles about Intelligent Design presented during a 2005 Symposium titled titled “Teaching Evolution and the Challenge of Intelligent Design”

Teaching Evolution and the Challenge of Intelligent Design: A Symposium by John V Aliff
Inside Creationism’s Trojan Horse: A Closer Look at Intelligent Design by Barbara Carroll Forrest
Countering Public Misconceptions About the Nature of Evolutionary Science by Keith B Miller
Why “Intelligent Design” is More Interesting than Old-Fashioned Creationism by Taner Edis

In his introduction, John V Aliff, quickly settles the matter

Aliff wrote:

Intelligent Design theory is not a valid scientific theory for these reasons: 1.) Its hypothetical, intuitive and religious assumption of the intelligent design of complex systems is not testable or falsifiable using the scientific method, 2.) ID “theory” cannot develop hypotheses, and 3.) ID theory does not predict new discoveries as a true scientific theory does. More simply put, ID cannot explain natural phenomena beyond the intuitive and religious assumption that “God did it.”

Eric Rothschild, lead attorney for the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, et al. and Tammy Kitzmiller, the lead plaintiff, will speak in Columbus, Ohio, on February 12.

Rothschild, a partner in the Philadelphia office of Pepper Hamilton LLP, will speak on “An Inside Look at the Dover Intelligent Design Case and What it Means for Ohio.” Kitzmiller will describe her experiences as lead plaintiff in the case.

In addition to Rothschild and Kitzmiller, Dr. Hillel Chiel, Professor of Biology, Neurosciences, and Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, will speak on “Religion vs Evolution: An Unnecessary Struggle for Survival”. Dr. Chiel, an orthodox Jew, studies brain-behavior relationships as they affect survival and reproductive success in biological populations.

Rothschild, Kitzmiller and Chiel will speak at Congregation Tifereth Israel, 1354 East Broad Street in Columbus, at 3:00 pm on Sunday, February 12. The event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the talks.

The event is sponsored by Ohio Citizens for Science.

Judge John E. Jones III, who heard the Kitzmiller v. Dover case in Federal Court in Harrisburg, PA, found that intelligent design is no more than traditional creationism with a new name, and thus is unconstitutional to teach in public schools. Judge Jones’ decision, a model of judicial clarity, described a number of points that have direct parallels in the actions of the Ohio State Board of Education over the last three years. As I put it in the Columbus Dispatch, “The State Board of Education’s retention of the intelligent-design based model lesson plan has set a “Dover trap” for every school district in Ohio” (Letter, Jan 27, 2006).

RBH

Cleveland Plain Dealer Story Update

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has the story now, and has a stronger quote from Governor Taft:

“I think we ought to be teaching evolution,” Taft said. “I think intelligent design should not be part of the standards and should not be tested. I want to know what their views are before I decide whether to reappoint them.”

Taft also said he was chagrined by the tone of the January board meeting, which included personal attacks between board members.

In one instance, two board members read the newspaper as members of the public testified about the science standards.

“That’s not a good way to do business,” Taft said.

The money phrase here is “… intelligent design should not be part of the standards …”. It is the “critically analyze” standard that is the gateway through which the intelligent design creationist pseudo-science was wedged into the model curriculum.

=================================

Original Entry

In an exclusive story in the February 3, 2006, Columbus Dispatch, Ohio Governor Bob Taft is reported to have said that he doesn’t think intelligent design should be taught in Ohio schools. According to the story, Taft doesn’t think the standards include intelligent design, but he called for “… a legal review of the companion lesson plan to ensure that Ohio is not vulnerable to a lawsuit”.

Taft also said he would question potential appointees to the Board more closely on the issue.

“There were cases in which I didn’t ask the right questions, in some cases where I supported someone for election or appointment,” Taft said this week when asked about the issue during a meeting with Dispatch editors and reporters.

“I’ll be asking that question now, I can assure you.”

Unfortunately, Taft wouldn’t elaborate on what he would consider a satisfactory answer. Taft will appoint four members to the Ohio State Board of Education before his term expires in early 2007. The four current occupants of those appointments all voted in favor of the ID-originated standard for 10^th grade biology and for inclusion of the ID creationist model lesson plan when a motion to delete it was defeated in 2004. One changed his vote in the recent narrow vote (9-8) to retain it.

This is a reversal for a Governor whose chief of staff when the science standards were being considered, Brian Hicks, lobbied the Governor’s appointees on the Ohio Board of Education to support an ID-based science standard, benchmark, and model lesson plan. (Hicks’ emails were made public during another scandal in Ohio, “Coingate“.) In every OBOE vote on the standards, benchmarks and model curriculum, the Governor’s appointees obediently voted as a block to support the ID-based material with the recent exception noted above.

Ohio ID supporters publicly boasted about the Governor’s role in the process of developing tainted standards. In November 2003, Robert Lattimer, a prominent Ohio ID creationist, described the background for Taft’s earlier support

Our Governor is a moderate Republican. He was up for election last fall. He had done a couple of things that angered conservative voters, and he knew he needed conservative voters to win the election.

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

It didn’t take long for the Discovery Institute to try to call “Darwinists” intolerant for attempting to keep religious advocacy out of the schools. Casey Luskin discusses, over at the Discovery Institute’s Media Complaints Division, the lawsuit that Americans United for the Separation of Church and State just filed against a California school. (Ed Brayton discusses this suit in depth over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

Read more (at The Questionable Authority):

Just Scheduled: Public Info Sessions

Ohio Citizens for Science will host two public information sessions Sunday and Monday evenings on Ohio’s creationist lesson plan and the history and impact of this insult to science and religion. Details here.

Things are heating up in Ohio post-Kitzmiller. The ID troops are spinning Kitzmiller as the aberration of an activist judge (a conservative Republican) who vastly over-stepped the acceptable boundaries of judicial behavior. Tim Sandefur eviscerated that argument here on the Thumb and on Positive Liberty.

Ohio Citizens for Science is issuing a call for action this weekend. We ask people – both in Ohio and elsewhere – to write/email/phone to urge the restoration of good science in Ohio’s schools. In particular, we urge contacting Jim Petro, current state Attorney General who is running for Governor. Let Petro know that it’s time for leadership, not political pandering. The main points to stress are below the fold in the recommended message. Both in-state and out of state people are encouraged to contact Petro. Please also contact members of the State Board of Education with your support for honest science education.

Ohio’s board of education will meet next Tuesday, Jan 10, in Columbus to decide whether to comply with the recent federal court ruling against intelligent-design creationism and its disingenuous “teach the controversy” ploy.

Please write or CALL TODAY to State Board members (as many as you can) and Attorney General Jim Petro.

Board Members’ email addresses are here. Contact them all!

Petro Campaign contact info (we recommend that you contact his campaign; this is a political issue):

Contact via his campaign web site or email him at email(AT)jimpetro.com or call the campaign at 1-877-JIM-2006.

Background and more info below the fold.

The final two nails in the coffin of “Intelligent Design” have been set up, and hammered in.

The new Dover board has scrapped the ID policy that started the whole flap, and the complete electoral defeat of pro- ID board members was finalized.

The following is a letter to the editor that I sent to the St. Petersburg Times. Maybe they’ll print it, maybe they won’t.

In the St. Petersburg Times “Evolution’s Not Enough” article by Donna Winchester and Ron Matus, only those whose self-report of having at least some familiarity with the issues were part of the numbers reported concerning how “intelligent design” should be taught, if at all. The antievolution literature is a source of anti-knowledge, false things confidently stated as if true, and those whose only or primary familiarity with the issues comes from that source may well believe themselves to have some grasp of the issues while being worse off than those who have not been misled.

Dembski commented on a discussion on the BBC between himself and Ken Miller and attempts to address two issues raised by Ken Miller. As I shall show, in both cases Dembski fails.

Dembski wrote:

(1) The main weakness of evolution is that it is science (yes, Miller actually did say this and went on so long about it that the BBC host could not give me my closing comment as he had intended to) and (2) ID’s main fault is that it proceeds by negative argumentation.

This is going to be interesting. Dembski, who is a philosopher, mathematician and theologian may not be too familiar with the scientific evidence for evolution. As far as how he is going to argue against (2) is beyond me. It’s self evident that ID’s approach is by negative argumentation. In fact when Dembski was asked for details for Intelligent Design he responded

Dembski wrote:

“You’re asking me to play a game: ‘Provide as much detail in terms of possible causal mechanisms for your ID position as I do for my Darwinian position.’ ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it’s not ID’s task to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories.”

One question I received from a reporter yesterday asked, essentially, if the fight against intelligent design is over with yesterday’s decision. MSNBC has an article along a similar theme today, and those interviewed in the article say the same thing I did: it ain’t over by a long shot. (PZ has some similar sobering thoughts on the topic). While I do think the decision handed down yesterday will make it more difficult for anyone contemplating introducing ID into the classroom, as suggested in the MSNBC article, all that means is that the focus will have to shift a bit. I suspect we’ll see more of “teach the controversy” and less push to teach intelligent design–something the Discovery Institute has already moved to, anyway.

Additionally, while ID has been the major thorn in the side of pro-science groups, it’s obviously not the only bad science out there: just the best-funded. As discussed a few days ago, we still have huge challenges to deal with regarding science education in this country–and ID is but one facet of that. We still have groups that regularly spew misinformation about HIV/AIDS, vaccination, global warming, etc.–and certainly, the evolution deniers won’t be going away. Answers in Genesis is working on their “creation museum”, the Discovery Institute is still crying about the decision, and certainly ID proponents around the country are going to regroup and work on a revised strategy. This isn’t something that’s going to go away, and it’s not time to rest on our laurels.

My central passion is working on teaching good science, and getting both students and the general public interested in and educated about scientific topics–and that won’t change just because we’ve achieved a major victory against one faction of the anti-science movement. Thus, while I whole-heartedly salute and appreciate the efforts of all of those involved with this trial, the fact remains that we still have much more work to do. I hope many of you who’ve become interested in these issues during the Dover trial will stick with us as we deal with future challenges as well.

2005/12/20: PLAINTIFFS PREVAIL! Judge Jones passed down a 139 page ruling which finds for the plaintiffs. Jones found the DASD policy violated both purpose and effect prongs of the Lemon test, asserts that “intelligent design” is not science, and that the policy also violates the Pennsylvania state constitution. The PDF is linked from the NCSE KvD site.

Judge John E. Jones wrote:

The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID. We will also issue a declaratory judgment that Plaintiffs’ rights under the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been violated by Defendants’ actions.

Defendants’ actions in violation of Plaintiffs’ civil rights as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffs’ attorneys’ services and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.

NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED THAT:
1. A declaratory judgment is hereby issued in favor of Plaintiffs pursuant
to 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201, 2202, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 such that
Defendants’ ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause of the First
Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and Art. I, § 3 of
the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
2. Pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 65, Defendants are permanently enjoined
from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area
School District.
3. Because Plaintiffs seek nominal damages, Plaintiffs shall file with the
Court and serve on Defendants, their claim for damages and a verified
statement of any fees and/or costs to which they claim entitlement.
Defendants shall have the right to object to any such fees and costs to
the extent provided in the applicable statutes and court rules.

s/John E. Jones III
John E. Jones III
United States District Judge

2005/11/04: (Warning: approximate quotes ahead.) At close, Pat Gillen remarked to Judge Jones, “Your honor, by my reckoning we have been here 40 days. That seems an auspicious number.” Jones replied, “So it seems, but it was not designed!” At which point the courtroom burst out in applause. Jones let that go on for about 15 seconds, then adjourned the court. And that finished off the testimonial, in-court phase of this case.

During that last day, the cross-examination of Scott Minnich continued. Stephen Harvey explored a number of issues with Minnich, such as whether the “tests” that Minnich and Behe have proposed were actually being performed by anyone (they aren’t), whether there could be multiple designers (there could be), and whether there might be an … evil … designer (yes, there could be). On that last, though, Harvey did not, at any time, hold his pinky up to the corner of his mouth.

Following lunch, the lawyers plotted out the remainder of the issues, such as the schedule for briefs (two weeks for initial, one week for revisions/responses). Judge Jones mentioned that it was his intention to provide a ruling on this case this year, meaning that the lawyers would be held to a tight schedule.

Exhibits… there were a number of exhibits entered into the record, including several things produced by Barbara Forrest that were not directly referred to in testimony. Among those items, one will find (once they go online) that in a draft of OPAP, there was an incomplete erasure of the word “creationist”, with an insertion of “design proponents” into it, meaning that students might have had the opportunity to learn the position of “cdesign proponentsists” on these matters. This verbal intermediate fossil was uncovered through the patient digging of Dr. Forrest.

Paul Mirecki professor (and former chairman) of the University of Kansas Department of Religious Studies, reported that he was attacked by two men at about 6:30 AM on last Monday, 05/12/05. As one may observe from the link above, Panda’s Thumb has to date not discussed this issue beyond merely mentioning that it occurred. This was the result of considerable debate, hundreds of emails- many very heated, amongst the dozen or so of us who are regular contributors to the Thumb.

The religious right was not so restrained. Within hours, “conservatives” were claiming that Mirecki’s report was false and that his injuries were faked Mirecki hospitalized after beating. Within two days William Dembski promoted the idea that Mirecki had faked the attack. The website Dembski directed his readers to also held the possibility that Mirecki was a drug addict and/or drug dealer;

Comment by Sean — Wed 7 Dec 2005 @ 6:39 am

I think it’s most likely that he was beat up for some completely different reason, which would have been embarrassing, or even incriminating, for him to admit. A drug deal, perhaps.

Without any supporting evidence at all, or time to reflect, right-wing zealots began braying about Tawana Brawley and Al Sharpton, and comparing Mirecki with Kerri Francis Dunn. We have seen the far right employ this technique so often it is now known as “swift boating.” I am reminded of the advice provided to the Army’s Airborne Rangers if captured, “Admit nothing, Deny everything, Make counter-accusations.”

From The Muscatine Journal:

Although they don’t all agree on the merits of intelligent design, most members of the Muscatine School District Board of Education believe that students should know about it, and they agree that it will likely be discussed by the Board within the next two years.

Ann Hart, vice president of the Muscatine School Board, said she would not remove evolution from the school district’s curriculum, because of its scientific basis, but that students should also know about intelligent design.

“I think somewhere along the line, intelligent design should be brought up because a lot of people believe in it; and, otherwise, kids aren’t going to understand it as well as they should,” Hart said. “I don’t think we should go in-depth with it, just let kids know what it’s about and that it’s what some people believe and then go on to evolution. I believe in evolution, for sure, but we do need to let kids know this is something that people believe.”

(Continued on Aetiology)

It’s near the end of the fall term, and Report Cards are in!

The Fordham Foundation report on America’s science standards, “The State of State Science Standards 2005”, has been released.

Links to state reports, along with their overall letter grades (A-F) and evolution scores (0 - 3 points possible), appear below the fold. There are some key points emerging from this report.

For one, this year’s dumbing-down of Kansas standards got the Fordham folks mad - really mad.

Note added In Proof:The early warnings have been justified. Kansas has adopted standards whose treatment of evolutionary material has been radically compromised. The effect transcends evolution, however. It now makes a mockery of the very definition of science. The grade for Kansas is accordingly reduced to F.

Additionally, the report directly contradicts the claims of the Discovery Institute’s incessant revisionists. In a report on the Dover suit on November 10^th, Steve Jordahl of Family News in Focus reports

…Rob Crowther of the Discover [sic] Institute says that fight is probably coming…. He says the ACLU hopes to ride this issue to the Supreme Court. Crowther says four other states have successfully integrated the controversies surrounding evolution into their curriculum. They are Ohio, New Mexico, Minnesota and ironically Pennsylvania, where the state has adopted a much broader standard than Dover….

Is this really the case?
No, No, No, and No.

As reported previously, The Discovery Institute has been fabricating stories about the states. Even the New York Times has been fooled, but at least they corrected the error.

Will Rob Crowther correct his error? I’m skeptical.

Here are the grades for each state. How did your state do?

The mainstream media, and a growing number of academics have “discovered” the threat that the new creationism, AKA intelligent design, poses to science education in the United States.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that some of these newly minted ‘experts’ will be proffering up their solutions, many of which will be shallow, and some even counterproductive. The recent proposal for high school debates on evo/creato by Michael Balter is an example. During the long and contentious discussion of Balter’s editorial and proposals, a research article by Prof. Steve Verhey was introduced by Balter who claimed it was a vindication of his proposal. A short while later Verhey also joined the discussion. That Verhey’s work did not support Balter is clear, as was stated explicitly by Verhey,

I don’t know what to say about high school evolution education. I don’t think my approach would work there. Perhaps it could work, but it would take too much time. Evolution can’t be avoided in HS biology classes, and creationism/ID can’t be presented as even vaguely valid alternatives, so we are where we are.

Since the paper in question had not been seen in print, we deferred further discussion of its contents. Dr. Verhey has now kindly made the PDF of his paper available to Panda’s Thumb readers. Note also that he has also presented key portions of his raw data as well.

I commend Dr. Verhey’s efforts and transparency which are in the best scientific tradition, and I will insist that any comments by PT readers will also. Dr. Verhey and I have exchanged a number of emails over the last two weeks concerning his paper, and the data which informs his conclusions. These emails (with only trivial edits) form the bulk of the following post. Quite obviously any cogent remarks regarding Dr. Verhey’s paper and the material below will require that one has read and understood the paper. Non-cogent remarks will be simply deleted.

Just when I thought I’d seen it all, Red State Rabble notes that Kansas Board of Education chairman Steve Abrams has just published an op-ed entitled “Science standards aren’t about religion” in the Wichita Eagle. I can’t tell if it is the same op-ed that Abrams said in an interview yesterday he was sending to “newspapers across the state, as well as CNN, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post,” but it probably is.

To begin, Abrams declares that the changes to the Kansas science standards are not about religion, and then promptly makes it extremely clear that they actually are. Specifically, Abrams makes it clear that this really is about good old-fashioned creationism, when he writes this:

The Kansas Board of Education has rewritten the science standards so that they may include the supernatural. That’s OK with me, as long as they play fair: Scientists must now be allowed to investigate the supernatural, including the truth claims of religion, and their judgements must be taken seriously. Science is, after all, our most successful enterprise (especially if we count medicine and sanitation), and we should be allowed to apply the principles of science to religion or anything else that makes objective claims. I say, Bring science into the churches!

The York Dispatch is reporting that eight out of the eight incumbent school board members in Dover have lost their bids for re-election to pro-evolution candidates. Wes already gave the preliminary results in an earlier Panda’s Thumb post. What I’d like to do is talk about the implications a bit.

Continue reading (at The Questionable Authority)

Just days after the close of testimony in the Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School Board case, the people got a chance to put in their two cents via school board elections, choosing between the

with their “intelligent design policy”, or the

of the Dover CARES campaign. The results, courtesy of the York Dispatch:

 ----- Dover -----
B Reinking 	Dem. 	2754
H Mc Ilvaine, Jr. Dem. 	2677
B Rehm 	        Dem. 	2625
T Emig 	        Dem. 	2716
A Bonsell 	Rep. 	2469
J Cashman 	Rep. 	2526
S Leber 	Rep. 	2584
E Rowand 	Rep. 	2547

2-Year Term
L Gurreri 	Dem. 	2623
P Dapp 	        Dem. 	2670
J Mc Ilvaine 	Dem. 	2658
E Riddle 	Rep. 	2545
R Short 	Rep. 	2544
S Harkins 	Rep. 	2466

2-Year Unexp
P Herman 	Dem. 	2542
D Napierskie 	Rep. 	2516

6 Out of 6 precincts

The Democratic slate contains the challengers to the current board members.

It should be noted that the incoming board members from the Dover CARES campaign have a platform plank saying that “intelligent design” will be taught in Dover public schools. However, the venue of such instruction will not be the science classrooms, where it was out-of-place, but rather an elective course on comparative religion, where it fits perfectly.

Jonathan Wells just reposted an article over at ID: The Future that he wrote about a year ago. The article is a fictional account looking at the history of the ID movement from now until 2025. Here’s what Wells thinks will lead (or will have lead - I never can keep track of the right tense in these future history pieces) to the downfall of Darwinism:

Read more (at The Questionable Authority):

Mr. Michael Balter wrote what he referred to as a “somewhat contrarian view on the ID controversy” which was published as an editorial by the Los Angles Times on October 2, 2005.

I happen to subscribe to the Los Angeles Times. I even tried to canceled my week-day subscription to the LA Times protesting the far-right political shift in their editorial pages. Perversely, the only result is that I now receive the paper for free. And, I did read the editorial written by Mr. Balter and would have responded at the time but for other deadlines. I was reminded when he posted a link to his essay on the TalkOrigins Feedback page for October. What irritates me most about Mr. Balter’s editorial is its presentation of ID arguments without refutations so that it reads more easily as a pro-ID than as anti-ID.

The battle over creationism in public schools is heading for Indiana, as lawmakers there prepare to submit a bill to mandate the teaching of intelligent design there. And in the process, they’re leaving behind all sorts of evidence of the essential equation of ID and creationism.

The proposal comes a little more than a month after Bosma and a handful of other House members met privately with Carl Baugh, host of the Trinity Broadcasting Network show “Creationism in the 21^st Century,” to discuss bringing intelligent design to public schools.

Baugh was in town as the guest of Zion Unity Missionary Baptist Church, a small Indianapolis church whose pastor, the Rev. Fredrick W. Boyd Jr., is an acquaintance of Baugh’s. Baugh is founder and director of the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas.

Boyd said Bosma and the lawmakers already were pursuing the idea, but they wanted to hear Baugh’s thoughts on how to create the legislation.

Join Alabama Citizens for Science Education to protect Alabama education.

The Associated Press is reporting this morning that Alabama state textbook committee several textbooks because they contained information on evolution.

The state textbook committee Thursday recommended dozens of science textbooks to be approved by the state school board for Alabama students, but rejected three elementary-level books for containing material on evolution which was deemed “controversial” for that age group.

The books were considered supplementary readers, meaning they could not be used as the sole textbook in the science curriculum, said Ron Dodson, a member of the committee, who presented the recommendations to the school board.

Each of the three elementary books rejected contained “controversial material at a grade level that is not developmentally ready for such controversial material,” according to a series of Sept. 28 memos sent to school board members. The books also didn’t meet the state’s science guidelines and were not “appropriate for the maturity level of the age group” they were targeting, the memos said.

The book “Geologic Time” (Perfection Learning Company) was rejected for an illustrated diagram that shows humans evolving from apes. Similarly, “Reptiles” (Heinemann-Raintree Classroom), incorporates two pages on reptiles evolving from amphibians. “Orangutan” (Heinemann-Raintree Classroom) discusses natural selection – a key part of the evolutionary theory.

(Committee turns down science texts)

In addition the committee has recommended that textbooks still contain a disclaimer.

The committee made its recommendations with the stipulation that high school biology textbooks would continue to carry a disclaimer which describes evolution as “a controversial theory” in the first paragraph and says in the second paragraph that any statement about the origin of life is “not fact.”

The purpose of the disclaimer is to give room to teachers who want to discuss alternative theories, namely creationism.

In addition it looks like some board members want textbooks to contain creationism.

However, after the meeting, school board member Betty Peters said she had hoped to see the textbooks discuss alternative theories of life, including creationism and intelligent design, in addition to evolution. She said that despite the disclaimer, many teachers are still afraid to teach about theories that are not included in textbooks….

“I’m not saying advocate it, just open it for discussion,” Peters said.

The York Daily Record reports on the testimony by Dover Board Member Heather Geesey who wrote a letter to the editor stating:

Dover Board Member Heather Geesey wrote:

“You can teach creationism without its being Christianity”

But things only got better…

UPDATE: 10-28-05: The Kansas BOE issued a news release later yesterday saying that they were immediately addressing the copyright issue, and that they still intended to have the science standards on the November agenda. I have posted the news release in Comment 3 below. End update

From the National Academy of Sciences today:

Kansas Denied Use of National Science Education Standards
National Science Education Standards.

October 26 – The National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association have refused to grant copyright permission to the Kansas State Board of Education to make use of publications by the two organizations in the state’s science education standards. According to a statement from the two groups, the new Kansas standards are improved, but as currently written, they overemphasize controversy in the theory of evolution and distort the definition of science.

These two organizations issued a joint statement, sent letters to the state BOE officially notifying them of this refusal to grant copyright permission, and released a lengthy response to those parts of the Kansas standards to which they object. All three of these documents can be downloaded from the NAS News Today webpage. These are strong and well-written statements, and, as a member of the writing committee, I appreciate this support from these national organizations very much .

Here are some excerpts, and a few comments.

‘New recruits’ said needed for intelligent design

In the Dover circus (updates continue here), a sociologist named Steve Fuller testified yesterday on behalf of the defense. What was a theme of his testimony? Recruit the younger generation to give ID theory a boost–since apparently, the senior level ID “theorists” haven’t been able to come up with jack squat.

Introducing “intelligent design” to high school students could help the idea gain wider acceptance among mainstream scientists, a sociology professor testified Monday in a landmark federal trial over whether the concept can be mentioned in public school biology classes.

Fuller said minority views can sometimes have a difficult time getting a toehold in the scientific community, but students might be inspired to develop intelligent design as future scientists if they hear about the concept in school.

“You have to provide openings where you have new recruits to the theory,” Fuller said. “Unless you put it into the school system, it’s not going to happen spontaneously.”

And later in the article:

“It seems to me in many respects the cards are stacked against radical, innovative views getting a fair hearing in science these days,” he said.

Once again, it makes you wonder how such “minority views” as a bacterial cause for ulcers and symbiogenesis ever made it without a political lobby.

Edited to add: once again, Mike Argento nails it.

Fuller said intelligent design is, essentially, a half-baked idea, pretty much something the intelligent design guys have whipped up without doing much in the way of producing evidence.

And that’s why it should be taught to ninth-graders in Dover.

You know, I can come up with a lot of half-baked ideas that no one in their right mind would want to teach to kids in Dover. Let’s see. How about this? Cows think in Spanish. Discuss.

During my visit to Sydney (Australia), a coalition of 70,000 Australian scientists and educators has published an open letter condemning the teaching of intelligent design in school science classes.

Professor Mike Archer, the Dean of Sciences at the University of New South Wales, seems to have been one of the leading forces behind this initiative.

ABC AUstralia: Scientists, teachers protest intelligent design

Australian scientists have been outspoken about Intelligent Design.

Australia’s world-renowned physicist Paul Davies say ID is codswallop, not science but creationism in disguise.

The Australian September 03, 2005

The Rio Rancho (NM) School District adopted a slickly-worded “Science” policy in August, which many fear will open up the classrooms of this Intel bedroom community to “Intelligent Design.” (See earlier reports on the Thumb here, here, here, here, and here.)

Now, the school employees union has sued to stop the policy, and the Saga has made the National News.

Dearest Cheri: whether you inundated the committee with every other standard used in the civilized world does not address the point at issue, which is whether you handed the committee the completely useless “Santorum language” with the implication that it had any legal force with respect to drawing up science standards.

(Continue reading… on The Austringer)

I was going to title this post something like, “Casey Luskin totally misunderstands and misrepresents something related to biology,” but the title I settled on seems to sum up the news level involved much more concisely. In this instance, Casey attempts to explain away some of the evidence for human-chimp common descent that was presented by Ken Miller during his testimony last week in the Dover case.

Read more (at The Questionable Authority):

I just read, for the second time, an article by Doug Kern that’s available at Tech Central Station. After my blood pressure came back down a bit, the article got me to thinking. The tone of the piece is annoying and condescending, and there is far more in it that is wrong than is right, but it illustrates a number of the political problems that we face all too well.

The title of the article is, “Why Intelligent Design is Going to Win.” The thesis statement is short and simple: “Intelligent Design theory is destined to supplant Darwinism as the primary scientific explanation for the origin of human life. ID will be taught in public schools as a matter of course.”

Read more (at The Questionable Authority)

After spending most of the week stranded deep in the mire of proposal writing, I’ve rewarded myself with a day off. Actually, it’s not so much a matter of rewarding myself as it is a matter of attempting to resusitate the last remaining shreds of my sanity. So instead of continuing to pickle my brains in the volumnous literature surrounding the history of genetic divergence in various species of Drosophila, I decided to take some time to skim through a number of the news articles that the Dover trial has spawned in the last week. (Why I thought this would help maintain my sanity should serve to indicate just how brain-corroding the scientific proposal process actually is.)

Rather than taking as inclusive a look as I did last time, I think I’m mostly going to focus on the more annoying articles this time. It might just have been my mood this week, but it certainly felt like there was a heck of a lot more stupidity being aired this time.

Read More (At The Questionable Authority)

On 27 September 1905, a paper was published in the journal “Annalen der Physik”. The paper, titled, “Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?” (“Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?”), was only three pages long. It was the fourth published by the same author that year. None of the four papers was immediately embraced by the scientific community. In fact, most were initially considered to be fairly controversial. At the time, the author of the papers had neither a doctoral degree nor an academic position. He had a few prior papers to his credit, but was essentially an unknown in the field of physics.

Within a relatively short period of time, those four papers would be recognized as having revolutionized the field of physics. The author, who was a relatively obscure Swiss patent clerk in 1905, would become one of the icons of our time.

Continue reading (at The Questionable Authority):

Here’s another excellent resource for timely updates on the Dover trial. The ACLU of Pennsylvania has set up a blog with frequent updates on what is going on in the courtroom. Jonathan Witt of the Discovery Institute is also blogging live from the trial on the DI blog. His post on Ken Miller’s testimony yesterday was rather off the mark, as one would expect. He makes the superficially compelling argument that Ken Miller argued both that ID was not falsifiable and was falsified. But this ignores a fairly obvious logical distinction. Witt writes:

In friendly questioning from the plaintiff, Miller asserted that the theory of intelligent design was “not a testable theory in any sense” and so wasn’t science. Later, however, Miller argued that science has tested Michael Behe’s bacterial flagellum argument and falsified it, by pointing to a micro-syringe called the Type III Secretory System, and arguing that it could have served as a functional step on the gradual, Darwinian pathway to the full flagellar motor.

Did the journalists covering the trial notice the contradiction? Miller tried to provide a fig leaf for it, but the fig leaf was itself a misrepresentation. Miller said Behe’s argument was in every respect a negative argument (and, further, that ALL the leading design theorists’ arguments he was aware of are purely negative, with nothing positive anywhere). Miller conceded that Behe’s irreducible complexity argument was testable, but said Behe’s inference to design doesn’t follow from irreducible complexity because Behe was committing the either/or fallacy–If not A (Darwinism), then it must be B (design). Miller said there were, in principle, an infinite number of other possible explanations, so jumping from a refutation of Darwinism to design was illegitimate.

He’s missing a crucial distinction by conflating Behe’s argument for ID with ID itself. The notion that an intelligent designer was involved is not in any way falsifiable. There is no conceivable set of data that could falsify that proposition. But specific arguments that purport to point to such a designer can be falsified, and it’s important to distinguish here between facts and theories. Behe’s argument offers both factual claims and a theoretical or explanatory claim. It goes like this:

First, for anyone unfamiliar with the current goings-on here in the Hawkeye state, I refer you to these threads for some background information. At the heart of the current situation is a letter signed by ~120 Iowa State faculty, saying that intelligent design isn’t science. This hits home at ISU, because Discovery Institute fellow Guillermo Gonzalez, author of The Privileged Planet, happens to be a faculty member in the astronomy department there.

Now, Sigma Xi at the University of Northern Iowa has invited Gonzalez to speak there. This lead the UNI faculty to endorse the ISU statement as well. Over 100 signatures were collected in just 24 hours’ time there.

Additionally, the secretary of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) wrote to the Iowa State Daily, endorsing the faculty’s position there.

This morning, I took a few minutes to look at a number of the various news articles about the upcoming Dover Intelligent Design lawsuit. The articles that I looked at seem to present a wide range of views, and a few of them were actually quite good. Initially, I was just planning on commenting on one or two. After reading a few, I thought it might be a little more fun to present a bunch of them blog-carnival style.

Continue reading (at The Questionable Authority)

[Minnesota’s experience in 2003 and 2004 with antievolution efforts to change the state science standards rings a warning bell for Florida, which is currently in the process of revising its science standards, with adoption of new standards scheduled to occur in 2006. The following article provides a first-hand account from two members of the Minnesota science standards writing committee of the many and various attempts to incorporate antievolution material into the Minnesota science standards.]

by Melanie A. Reap, Ph.D., and Mr. Jamie Crannell

During the summer of 2003, more than fifty classroom teachers, parents, professors of science and education, and business people convened at the Department of Education to create the new Minnesota Academic Standards in Science (see this page). The state legislature overturned the Profile of Learning standards in April of 2003 with the requirement that new standards in five areas (mathematics, language arts, science, social studies, and art) be developed and implemented by the 2004-2005 school year (see this page).

(Continue reading… on Florida Citizens for Science)

As we have discovered in Dover, public statements by Board members that are subsequently reported in the press can later become important pieces of evidence about the true motivations of those Board members’ actions

Now Kansas sate BOE chairperson Steve Abrams, mastermind of the 1999 creationists standards, the May 2005 “science hearings” and the current 2005 creationist standards, has given us a quote to remember. Speaking to a “group of Christian men called Open Public Education Now,” the Lawrence Journal World reports that

During a question-and-answer period to a mostly receptive audience of church-going social conservatives fed up with evolution, Abrams said one couldn’t believe in the Bible and evolution. You must believe one or the other.

“At some point in time, if you compare evolution and the Bible, you have to decide which one you believe,” Abrams said. “That’s the bottom line.”(my emphasis)

Well, that takes care of that, it seems.

One of the items available via the new NCSE resource on Kitzmiller v. DASD is the court transcript of testimony in the FTE motion to intervene. There is a telling interchange between the Foundation for Thought and Ethics President Jon A. Buell and Pepper Hamilton lawyer Eric Rothschild, showing precisely the relationship between “intelligent design” and “creation”: it’s the very same thing, defined in exactly the same way.

The Rio Rancho School Board met again on Sept. 19^th, and the Rio Rancho Observer reported on Sept. 22^nd that Board president Lisa Cour said there are

no current plans to revisit that decision.

“That decision,” of course, is Rio Rancho’s adoption of “Science Policy 401,” discussed previously here.

Also, on the preceding Sunday, the Flying Spaghetti Monster made a glorious appearance on the Observer’s Editorial Page.

Dr. Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education put a comment on a thread here that delivers some interesting news on the nuisance lawsuit filed earlier this year: it was never served on NCSE, and in fact was withdrawn in July, although the filer failed to notify NCSE of this action.

Dr. Eugenie C. Scott wrote:

This is not the first time that Mr. Caldwell has claimed that I maliciously wrote in the California Wild article that he submitted YEC books to the district. Castigating me for my not having explained the source of that error is is disingenuous. After Mr. Caldwell filed suit against NCSE and me personally, my lawyer advised me to not make any public statements. And of course Mr. Caldwell has threatened some members of PT and PT itself for linking to the CW article, is sueing the Roseville school district, and also attempted to subpoena NCSE’s records in regards to THAT lawsuit – you get the picture. The advice seemed prudent. Not being able to speak out has chafed greatly, as NCSE staff and my family are very aware. I have long wanted to get the truth out about Mr. Caldwell’s claims, but have been hampered by his own actions in suing me, and twice threatening to sue the California Academy of Sciences.

However, we have just discovered that Mr. Caldwell has dismissed the lawsuit against us – way back in July, in fact! He had sent us a settlement offer, we replied, and my lawyer and I have been waiting for his response to our reply– but we have heard nothing from him. In fact, although he filed the suit in April, he never even bothered to formally serve me with notice of his legal action! Now, shortly after receiving our reply to his settlement offer, he has moved to dismiss the lawsuit.

He never informed us that he had dismissed the case (which is apparently not legally required, but certainly would have been courteous) and thinking that I was still under the advice of my counsel to maintail silence, I have remained mute. This should not be mistaken for any acquiescence to Caldwell’s claims, nor certainly lack of confidence in the strength of our legal position! But you can’t take certain actions until certain procedural events take place – one usually gets served when one gets sued, for example, and then the clock starts ticking for response. We’ve been waiting around for Caldwell, but I’m happy to say that since he dismissed his lawsuit, I am not longer under those constraints.

Although we are very busy right now getting ready for the Dover trial, which certainly takes precedence over a nuisance suit, however personally annoying this has been, I will soon explain fully the actual facts of the Caldwell vs Scott lawsuit, as contrasted with the distorted version presented by Caldwell here, in Caldwell’s press releases, and in the religious right media echo chamber.

That we would not be able to “defend <ourselves> in court” is laughable, as anyone who reads the corrected version of the article on NCSE’s web site will quickly see: Corrected article

Stay tuned.

(Comment #48088)

Jay Bookman, deputy editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, had a great column on September 12^th. Bookman writes

Unfortunately, though, I don’t believe ID advocates are sincere about wanting to teach the controversy. If they are, they simply haven’t thought through the implications. A controversy, remember, has two sides. And if alleged weaknesses in evolution theory are to be taught in our schools as science, then scientific evidence against the existence of an intelligent designer or God must be taught, too. That’s how science works. If you propose a theory, you issue an invitation to others to shoot holes in your theory. So think about that: Do we really want science teachers exploring the evidence for — but also against — the existence of a designer? I don’t think that’s wise or useful for a number of reasons, but that’s what a rigorous and intellectually honest debate would require.

Anyone wanna bet whether or not the Discovery Institute agrees to teach all controversies? I dibbs “No.”

Looks like they’re coming for mathematics now:

Forget about isosceles triangles and the Pythagorean Theorem—they’re square. The hottest trend in high-school math these days is deometry, the study of how the Creator created points, lines, angles, shapes and proofs. While critics decry the entry of religion into math class, fans of the new teaching method maintain that by giving God a primary role in geometry and other fields of mathematics, they are merely restoring balance to an area that has sought to remove all vestiges of religion from the public polygon.

I’m pretty sure this is a parody…

Since last week’s report, there have been several developments in the Rio Rancho situation, wherein the local school board adopted a new science policy that, according to the Sept. 2^nd Albuquerque Journal’s print edition

means teachers will lead discussions on alternative ideas to evolution.

For starters, on Thursday, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (info) has again reached his noodly appendage beyond the internet, into Mainstream Media, or at least to the twice-weekly pages of the Rio Rancho Observer:

And also yesterday (Sept. 1^st), several science chairs from the University of New Mexico recommended that Rio Rancho’s Policy 401 should be abolished.

It seems that ID proponents are at least mildly successful in coaching ID supporters in what to say and not to say and when to say it…

Tim Borseth wrote:

Well, my arm was twisted. Rather than working hard on campus ministry stuff, I was coerced into writting a letter to the editor of the D.M. Register regarding the Intelligent Design debate. It we