NCSE’s new web design

October 20, 2008

Visited the website for the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) lately?

NCSE redesigned the website — it looks great!

NCSE is the only group in America — which means it may be the only group in the world — that stands for science education so stoutly, especially with regard to the teaching of evolution.

Arrayed against much more munificently funded “ministries” of many stripes, against the oddball but money-rich Discovery Institute, NCSE is the only organization that stands to defend the teaching of the hard science of evolution in America’s schools.

Particularly in times like these, when forces of darkness mass to assault science education, we need NCSE.  Go check out their website.

And, teachers:  Bookmark that site. It’s one of the verifiable, good sites you can point your students to for any research project.  Click on the logo to see.

Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Education, Education quality, Evolution, Freedom - Economic, Science, Teaching, Textbooks | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Lookin’ good, for 4.28 billion years old

September 25, 2008

New candidate for “oldest rocks on Earth,” from Canada.  They come in perhaps as old as 4.28 billion years.

They’re older than John McCain!

1 Comment | Bell Ringers, Creationism, Evolution, Geography - Physical, geology, History, Science, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

China-Olympics-sized stakes in science education

August 25, 2008

Frank Rich, in Sunday’s New York Times:

We don’t have the time or resources to go off on more quixotic military missions or to indulge in culture wars. (In China, they’re too busy exploiting scientific advances for competitive advantage to reopen settled debates about Darwin.) Americans must band together for change before the new century leaves us completely behind.

It’s an aside in a longer piece of advice to Obama on issues for the rest of the campaign.  It’s a Sputnik statement for this century, for anyone with the brains to pay attention.

Leave a Comment » | China, Creationism, Darwin, Economics, Education, Science, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Dangers of failing to teach evolution, part I

August 24, 2008

From comments at the website of the New York Times today, on the story, “A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash”:

I teach biology and I would like to add a story in encouragement to other biology teachers. About 15 years ago I was teaching a botany course to college sophomores and started discussing the evolution of land plants. Expressions began to harden. Students stopped taking notes. So I stopped and asked if my discussion of evolution was bothering them. Many nodded and one said, “Why do teachers act like evolution is a fact?” At the time I had little experience and had assumed they had a working knowledge of evolution from previous classes at college as well as from high school biology. They did not. I didn’t have much time left that day, but I did explain some of the lines of evidence that support evolution.

The next day, one of my students came in and slammed a stack of books onto her table. She said, “I am so mad! I am so angry!” She looked near tears. She said, “My parents never let me even hear the word, evolution! They said it was all lies! I went to the library last night and got out books about it!” (and here she held up Origin of Species) Then she said, “It makes so much SENSE! I am so angry I never got to learn about it before!”
Now I teach a class entirely about evolution and I think of her often. She still gives me inspiration to keep on trying to open up minds.

— Bio prof, Ohio

Related resources:

14 Comments | Accuracy, Biology, Creationism, Dissent, Education, Ethics, Evolution, Newspapers, Religion, Science, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Read this: Teaching science is hard, made harder by religious claptrap

August 24, 2008

Page A1 of the New York Times on Sunday, August 24, 2008: “A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash.”

Read it, and consider these questions:

  1. Would your local paper have the guts to report on this issue, for your local schools? (The Times went to Florida; heaven knows few Florida papers could cover the issue in Florida so well.)
  2. What is your local school board doing to support science education, especially for evolution, in your town? Or is your local school board making it harder for teachers to do their jobs?
  3. What is your state education authority doing to support science education, especially in evolution, in your state? Or is your state school board working to make it harder for teachers to do their jobs, and working to dumb down America’s kids?
  4. Do your school authorities know that they bet against your students when they short evolution, because knowledge about evolution is required for 25% of the AP biology test, and is useful for boosting scores on the SAT and ACT?
  5. Does your state science test test evolution?
  6. Do your school authorities understand they are throwing away taxpayer dollars when they encourage the teaching of voodoo science, like intelligent design?

It takes a good paper like the Times to lay it on the line:

The Dover decision in December of that year [2005] dealt a blow to “intelligent design,” which posits that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone, and has been widely promoted by religious advocates since the Supreme Court’s 1987 ban on creationism in public schools. The federal judge in the case called the doctrine “creationism re-labeled,” and found the Dover school board had violated the constitutional separation of church and state by requiring teachers to mention it. The school district paid $1 million in legal costs.

That hasn’t slowed the Texas State Board of Education’s rush to get the state entangled in litigation over putting religious dogma in place of science. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) is already embroiled in one suit, brought by the science-promoting science curriculum expert they fired for noting in an e-mail that science historian Barbara Forrest was speaking in a public event in Austin. TEA may well lose this case, and their side is not helped when State Board Chairman Don McLeroy cavorts with creationists in a session teaching illegal classroom tactics to teachers. Clearly Texas education officials are not reading the newspapers, the court decisions, or the science books.

Here’s one of the charts accompanied the article. While you read it, consider these items: The top 10% of science students in China outnumber all the science students in the U.S.; the U.S. last year graduated more engineers from foreign countries than from the U.S.; the largest portion were from China. China graduated several times the number of engineers the U.S. did, and almost all of them were from China.

Copyright 2008 by the New York Times

Copyright 2008 by the New York Times

Can we afford to dumb down any part of our science curriculum, for any reason? Is it unfair to consider creationism advocates, including intelligent design advocates, as “surrender monkeys in the trade and education wars with China?”

Update: 10:00 p.m. Central, this story is the most e-mailed from the New York Times site today; list below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | Biology, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Darwin, Education, Education quality, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Politics, Public education, Religion, Science, Separation of church and state, State school boards, Teaching, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Education Agency (TEA), Texas Freedom Network, Voodoo science, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Alligator bait: Louisiana science teachers, and school boards

August 18, 2008

Louisiana’s state legislature — the legislature that the Supreme Court slapped down in 1987 for trying to introduce religion into science classes in Edwards v. Aguillard — rushed through a bill drafted by the deaf-to-the-law Discovery Institute which purports on its face to make it legal for Louisiana science teachers to teach creationism, intelligent design, tarot card reading, UFO-ism, or any other crank science that the teacher feels compelled to offer.

A Louisiana alligator used by c design proponetsist Denyse OLeary to illustrate a blog post about Louisianas litigation bait law on creationism in schools. Without any appreciation of irony, or as a subtle warning, we cant say. (photo from The Advocate?)

A Louisiana alligator used by c design proponetsist Denyse O'Leary to illustrate a blog post about Louisiana's litigation bait law on creationism in schools. Without any appreciation of th irony, or as a subtle warning, we can't say. (photo from The Advocate?)

Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-Mars, rushed to sign the brain-sucker into law, in his ambitious quest to get John McCain to name him as the nominee for vice president. It appears on the surface that Jindal’s national political aspirations will have to wait, but the law he signed requires Louisiana’s school districts to be ready when the students come back in the next few weeks, to do whatever it is they are going to do about creationism and other crank science.

Discovery Institute minions have been hawking creationism wares, and other creationists have offered to put Genesis into the science curriculum — but the law does not authorize those actions or wares itself. Instead, it passes the judgment to local school boards, sort of.

“Sort of.” Words that make a litigator’s heart flutter when talking about to-be-implemented laws! You’d think that, with all the money the Discovery Institute spends to entice legislators and school board members to poke their noses into matters they do not know, DI could spend a few thousands of dollars to get a competent legislative law drafter to draft a workable law. The cheapskates always pay more, Click and Clack say, and here’s another case to prove the point. It would have been difficult to intentionally write a law better intended to get local school boards sued.

A few of us noted the law does not indemnify local school districts against lawsuits if they goof and put religion into science classes. This is important, because the law requires local school districts to step up to the line and have a policy in place by the start of this school year. Which means, if the district doesn’t have the policy written out now, they’re late.

Tony Whitson at Curricublog spent time this summer pondering exactly how the law works, what it requires, and who it requires to act. His analysis — that the law is litigation bait just waiting to snare a local school board, a real “Dover Trap” — is cool, hard, and chilling. Go read it at his blog.

Whitson recommends that the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education get an opinion from the state’s attorney general. This will not comply with the impossible and punishing deadline the legislature established, but it’s a much wiser stewardship of local monies, to try to avoid litigation. Tony wrote:

Taking stock of the situation: To summarize where things now stand, in light of everything above:

The law is by no means so benign as its promoters pretend. It will unleash all manner of chaotic mischief. On the other hand, there is a method to this madness, making it predictable that the perpetrators’ strategy will be to insinuate Exploring Evolution into the state’s (and then other states’) public schools.

BESE and the school districts cannot comply with the statute, which commands that

The State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and each city, parish, or other local public school board shall adopt and promulgate the rules and regulations necessary to implement the provisions of this Section prior to the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year.

There are legal requirements (public notice, etc.) for adopting administrative rules for implementing legislation that make it impossible for that to be done by every state and district school board before the new school year begins.

So what can BESE do?

My suggestion is that BESE, at it’s meeting Tuesday, should move to request an opinion from the State Attorney General. They should ask him for an opion advising them, the district Boards of Education, and individual school principals, as to who will be responsible for the costs of defending against litigation for unconstitutional state promotion of religion in the use of supplemental materials. Presumably, if there’s a suit brought directly against BESE itself because of the substance of a text they have approved, then they would be defended by the AG’s office, on behalf of the state (like when the AG hired Wendell Bird as as special assistant for defending the state’s “Balanced Treatment” law). But will the AG commit his office to defending every district, every school, and every teacher whose use of “supplemental materials” is challenged for violation of the First Amendment?

Louisiana’s legislature set a trap for Louisiana science teachers and local school boards — whether intentionally or not is immaterial. Rather than authorize specific material for the curriculum, the new creationism law requires school boards to analyze materials to supplement the science curriculum. The law passes the buck to the local school boards.

So, Louisiana school board members now must become expert on science, and Constitutional law.

Rule of thumb: It costs a school board about $1 million every time they goof and put religion into science classrooms, in litigation costs alone. Louisiana’s legislature didn’t appropriate any money to compensate the school boards.

This law promises to entangle science educators and curriculum, and ensnare local school boards – all of which helps dumb down science achievement and prevent U.S. kids from getting the education they need to compete in a global economy. Alas.

3 Comments | Creationism, Education, Education success, Evolution, First day, History, Intelligent Design, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Science, Teaching, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Creationist success: Thermodynamicophobia strikes climate change denialists

August 17, 2008

Every once in a while we get a glimpse of what the future would be like if the creationists ruled education and could teach some of the fantastic things they believe to be true as fact.

For example, creationists have for years complained that the basic chemistry of life somehow violates what chemists and physicists know as the “laws” of thermodynamics. Patient explanations of what we know about how photosynthesis works, and how animals use energy, and what the laws of thermodynamics actually are, all fall on deafened ears.

Comes Jennifer Marohasy, an Australian blogger at The Politics and Environment Blog, with this fantastic explanation about how the well-established notion of radiative equilibrium, simply doesn’t work.

“For the Earth to neither warm or cool, the incoming radiation must balance the outgoing.”

Not really.

No, really. Go read the post. And see these critiques, at Tugboat Potemkin, where problems with the rules of the principle of Conservation of Energy are noted, and Deltoid, where LOLCats makes a debut in explaining physics to the warming denialists.

Then go back and read the comments at Marohasy’s blog.

It’s not just the confusion of terms, like treating watts as units of heat. There’s an astonishing lack of regard for cause and effect in history, too:

Conservation of energy: it’s not just a phrase. The theory of radiative equilibrium arose early in the 19th century, before the laws of thermodynamics were understood.

Probably didn’t mention it here before, but Marohasy is also one of those bloggers who suffers from DDT poisoning. Among other things, she and Aynsley Kellow (whose book she recommends) use an astounding confabulation of history to claim DDT wasn’t harming birds at all, completely ignoring more than 1,000 research studies to the contrary (and not one in support of their claim).

Suggestion for research: Is the denialism virus that affects creationists, DDT advocates, and climate denialists, the same one, or are there slight variations? A virus seems the most charitable explanation, unless one wishes to blame prions.

Creationist physics, denialism in meteorology, physics, chemistry, and history. It makes a trifecta winner look like he’s not trying.

See also:

1 Comment | Accuracy, Climate change, Creationism, denialism, Education, Global warming, History, Physics, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Institute for Creation Research: Still fraudulent after all these years

August 13, 2008

Sometime in the spring I let a long-running discussion with pastor Joe Leavell taper off. I thought I’d be back to it more quickly. It’s that sort of summer.

In one of his last posts, Joe said he’d been to a lecture by some folks from the Institute for Creation Research, the same bunch that tried to hornswoggle Texas into letting them grant graduate degrees in science education and biology for teaching creationism to their students instead, as a way of injecting creationism into the schools stealthily but still illegally. Texas refused to give them the authority.  ICR promises to appeal and sue for the privilege.

Joe said:

The response was rather lengthy, but they talked about the research that they have been doing over the past 7-8 years or so and the difference accredited scientists that are working for them. They also claimed that creationists get criticized for not writing peer reviewed articles in journals, but they claimed that they had submitted countless articles over the years and they all get rejected. They simply can’t get printed, was the claim, so they print their own stuff. They also pointed me to the RATE project, which honestly, without knowing a ton about science (though I do know some), is very convincing to me.

Here’s the link:
https://www.icr.org/rate/

The main argument that I found convincing was the presence of helium in the rocks which wouldn’t be there if the rocks were millions of years old. They said they’ve been working on this project about 8 years and have spent $1.5 million on it. They also submitted all of their research to top labs in the country to make sure they weren’t accused of “fudging” the evidence. Check it out (if you have time) and let me know what you come up with.

I’ll be brief in my response here, at least to start: Same old fraud, not even new wineskins.

Dr. Russell Humphreys, a famous creationism crank (to serious geologists and other scientists), claims that the amount of helium he detected in some zircon crystals was so high that the crystals could not be more than a few thousands of years old, rather than the millions of years old all other dating methods by all other scientists produce. Humphreys’ findings have never been submitted to any science journal for publication, but were instead distributed to donors to a creationist ministry.

Oh, Joe: These guys depend on a lack of normal skepticism and a lack of knowledge to perpetrate these frauds on honest Christians. I do wish more Christians would hold their feet to the fire.

A few observations:

First, this project exhibits most of Bob Parks’ seven warning signs of bogus science. Those signs are:

  1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. In this case, to media and donors.
  2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. This thread runs through all ICR work. Humphreys’ later attempts at character assassination against his critics specifically for their critiques of the RATE project are exactly the warning sign of bogus science that we should expect, from bogus science. (See the final three paragraphs here.)
  3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. This sign, not so much.
  4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. In place of the usual description of methodologies used so other scientists can replicate the measurement, we get a story about samples for other purposes, purloined for this measurement. Most of the critical references to the conclusion were unpublished, or revealed only in crank science publications.
  5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. See the paper: “Many creationists believed . . .”
  6. The discoverer has worked in isolation. In this case, it’s difficult to know for certain; there is no methodology, no statement of where the work was carried, by whom, and no peer review. No other labs appear to be working on these issues. Dollars to doughnuts this work at government laboratories in Oak Ridge and Los Alamos is not catalogued in the labs’ work records, nor is it reported to Congress. Not only working in isolation, but completely on the sly.
  7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. Humphreys had earlier proposed diffusion rates far in excess of anything measured, and in this case, he assumes similar, completely uncorroborated conclusions.

Second, the conclusions have been challenged (“debunked” might be a better description) by scientists who know the subject matter. There’s a thorough discussion on Talk.Origins, by Kevin Henke (at the University of Kentucky); to summarize, there is no reason to think that helium could get out of those zircon crystals at depth, especially under the pressures at the depths the samples were recovered from; plus there are other problems:

Throughout Humphreys (2005), Dr. Humphreys stresses that his YEC conclusions must be correct because his Figure 2 shows a supposedly strong correlation between his “creation model” and vacuum helium diffusion measurements from Humphreys (2003a, 2004). However, Dr. Humphreys’ diagram has little scientific merit. First of all, his helium diffusion experiments were performed under a vacuum rather than at realistic pressures that model the subsurface conditions at Fenton Hill (about 200 to 1,200 bars; Winkler, 1979, p. 5). McDougall and Harrison (1999), Dalrymple and Lanphere (1969) and many other researchers have already shown that the diffusion of noble gases in silicate minerals may decrease by at least 3-6 orders of magnitude at a given temperature if the studies are performed under pressure rather than in a vacuum. Secondly, because substantial extraneous helium currently exists in the subsurface of the Valles Caldera, which is only a few kilometers away from the Fenton Hill site, Dr. Humphreys needs to analyze his zircons for 3He, and quartz and other low-uranium minerals in the Fenton Hill cores for extraneous 4He. Thirdly, chemical data in Gentry et al. (1982b) and Zartman (1979) indicate that Humphreys et al. and Gentry et al. (1982a) may have significantly underestimated the amount of uranium in the Fenton Hill zircons, which could reduce many of their Q/Q0 values by at least an order of magnitude and substantially increase Humphreys et al.‘s “creation dates.” Dr. Humphreys needs to perform spot analyses for 3He, 4He, lead, and uranium on numerous zircons from all of his and R. Gentry’s samples so that realistic Q/Q0 values may be obtained.

The “dating” equations in Humphreys et al. (2003a) are based on many false assumptions (isotropic diffusion, constant temperatures over time, etc.) and the vast majority of Humphreys et al.‘s critical a, b, and Q/Q0 values that are used in these “dating” equations are either missing, poorly defined, improperly measured or inaccurate. Using the best available chemical data on the Fenton Hill zircons from Gentry et al. (1982b) and Zartman (1979), the equations in Humphreys et al. (2003a) provide ridiculous “dates” that range from hundreds to millions of “years” old (average: 60,000 ± 400,000 “years” old [one significant digit and two standard deviations] and not 6,000 ± 2,000 years as claim by Humphreys et al., 2004). Contrary to Humphreys (2005), his mistakes are not petty or peripheral, but completely discredit the reliability of his work.

I think ICR is affect loaded. For years they argued that because there is so little helium in the atmosphere, the Earth cannot be very old. Helium gas floats to the top of the atmosphere and drifts off into space, so there can never be a large accumulation of the stuff in the air. ICR is making a similar argument here: That helium must migrate out of rocks and drift away. Alas, there isn’t much support for the claim that helium cannot be contained in a rock matrix, especially under significantly greater pressures achieved in large rock masses, deep underground. There are a lot of examples of gases being trapped in rocks; that helium in the air drifts away does not mean helium in rock will drift away.

Third, the RATE project tends to rely on disproven or highly questionable claims, rather than solid science. The claims of polonium haloes once were published in a reputable journal, but retracted by the journal after scientists trying to replicate the results discovered that the author had sampled much newer magma intrusions in granite*, and not the base granite at all (* that is, lava that squeezed into cracks in the granite). ICR continues on as if the paper had not been found faulty, as if the results had never been retracted. In any other context, this would be considered academic fraud at best. Were it done as research under a federal grant, it would be a felony.

Fourth, there is the issue of whether RATE can do anything other than fog up the area. One of the original goals of RATE was to date the rocks from Noah’s flood. As you know, claims that such a flood ever occurred are regarded as crank science among geologists. After several years of discussion and meetings, RATE participants announced they had been unable to distinguish which rocks on Earth are pre-flood, and which are post flood. Consequently, dating the rocks of the flood was precluded because they could not be found, reliably (or at all!).

This is long-term scam stuff, Joe. How many little old ladies and upstanding men in how many congregations have given how many millions of dollars to this quackery? Imagine what good could have been done had those dollars gone to honest enterprise among Christians.

Joe, does this stuff make you angry? It should. ICR confesses to have spent $1.5 million in this project over eight years — ostensibly a science project, and yet not one single publishable science paper out of it.

This is academic fraud of the most foul kind, to me. It angers me that ICR carries on these frauds with money contributed by trusting Christians. One has a right to expect better ethics from people who claim to be engaged in ministry for Jesus, I believe.

86 Comments | Creationism, Ethics, Evolution, geology, Higher education, History, Hoaxes, Physics, Religion, Science, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The role of theism in science: A short answer for why intelligent design is not science, and why philosophy shouldn’t be taught in high school chemistry classes

August 12, 2008

This will be a short post, and so will confuse the long-winded but short-thought intelligent design advocates, especially those who claim to be philosophers, and especially those who claim to be philosophers of science who can see a role for intelligent design.

A short visit to Telic Thoughts last week produced a revelation that they have a new philosopher who wants to argue that intelligent design “philosophically” could be science, if. I answered that argument at some length, in lay terms, here: “Intelligent Design, a pig that does not fly.”

Dr. Francis Beckwith, at Baylor, appears to have dropped his campaign to teach philosophy in science classes since he rediscovered that God visits the Pope, and since he moved on to more serious philosophical pursuits and away from his practice of confusing people about the law of separation of church and state in America (especially confusing the Texas State Board of Education).  We hope Beckwith sticks with philosophy and stays out of Texas textbooks.

So there was a vacancy in the phalanx of defenders of intelligent design, in the slot reserved for company store philosohers. Dr. Brad Monton volunteered for the job.  Monton has a blog, here. Monton philosophizes at the University of Colorado.

What should be the role of theism in science?  Exactly this:  Theism should encourage scientists to be diligent, to be honest, to ask tough questions, and be kind.  Theism should encourage scientists to be wise stewards of their lab resources and time, and to share the fruits of their work with humanity, for the benefit of all creation (no, not “creationism”).

That’s it.  Honest and thorough, not mean.  Work quickly and true.

If scientists stick to the noble purposes of their work, using these noble methods, we will see a quick death to creationism and intelligent design, which clamor and riot to be included in the science texts though they have not a lick of evidence to support them that is honest, true and nobly gained.

Philosophical debates do not belong in high school science classes, nor middle school or elementary school science classes.  The fun of science, the honest ethics of science, the value of science, and the stuff of science are appropriate topics for those science classes.  Especially school kids should not be encouraged to offer unevidenced, petulent denials of the facts as we know them.  That will only encourage them to become larcenists, disturbed individuals, and Republican state legislators.  Heaven knows we don’t need those.

Wes Elsberry agrees at his blog, The Austringer, but with more felicity:

The issue is not whether science could make progress in spite of re-adoption of 17th century theistic science, but whether theistic science could provide any benefit to the methods of science today. Monton, Plantinga, and the neo-Luddites have not convincingly made that case. Mostly, they haven’t even badly made that case. They seem to assume that science would be better off reverting to 17th century theistic science and become perplexed when scientists disagree with them. We had that debate, we call it “the 19th century”. Nobody has shown that the mostly-theistic body of scientists who decided to eschew supernatural conjectures as part of science were wrong to do so. Mostly, I think, because they were right to do so, and their reasoning still applies today.

Monton seeks a publisher.  I wish he’d seek a course in botany, another in zoology, another in genetics, and one in evolution.  He might find something worth publishing, then.

Philosophically, anything fits in science, if there is evidence to support it, and especially if there is theory that supports it and offers solid explanations that can be relied upon. But we don’t teach philosophy to kids.  We teach the kids the evidence.  Philosophically, any voodoo science could be considered science, if there were evidence to support it.  Philosophically, the FAA should regulate flying pigs that pose a threat to commercial and general aviation.  Pragmatically, however, pigs don’t fly.  In regulation of our air space, and in our science classes, we rely on theory backed by hard evidence.  I wish theists would all agree on that point, and shut up about intelligent design until some institute of discovery actually provides research results that provide evidence that ID is science, rather than philosophy.

See?  I said it would be short.

10 Comments | Accuracy, Creationism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Politics, Religion, Science, State school boards, Teaching, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The very secret Darwin letter you never hoped to see

August 11, 2008

You can see it here, at the Sneer Review.

What do you think? Is Darwin outed forever?

Gotta run. Someone is knocking at the door — Mencken’s Ghost, probably.

Could be Ben Stein, I suppose.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Kevin Fisher, Texas Citizens for Science.

Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, History, Hoaxes, Humor, Religion, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Northern Ireland creationists push ID for schools

August 11, 2008

Ireland’s economy makes a bright spot on the Emerald Isle.  Ireland no longer appears the backward, backwater it was for much of the 20th century, producing people angry enough to write fantastically.

Northern Ireland?  How can one small island contain such contradictions?  Today, when religiously-fueled backwardness rears its head, it’s more often from the counties of Northern Ireland, the counties England still rules.  It seems that religionists in the northern counties want to keep their area away from the economic success of the south, fighting against almost all advances in economics, technology, and thinking.

That’s the case with the most recent outbreak of creationist tom foolery.

In a recent eruption, Democratic Unionist Party called for intelligent design to be given equal time in public schools.  Better, one guy says, get rid of evolution in science classes altogether, according to a story in The Irish Times (the good reporting and writing still comes from the southern counties).  Heck, he’d probably be happy to get rid of science classes altogether.

Mervyn Storey, who chairs the Stormont education committee, said his “ideal” would be the removal of evolutionary teaching from the curriculum altogether.

“This is not about removing anything from the classroom, although that would probably be the ideal for me, but this is about us having equality of access to other views as to how the world came into existence and that I think is a very, very important issue for many parents in Northern Ireland.”

Mr Storey has also challenged education minister Caitríona Ruane to apply her principles of “equality” to the issue.

“She tells us she’s all for equality; surely if that is the case, you can’t have one set of interpretations being taught at the expense of others,” he told the Belfast News Letter.

Creationists take a position that even the radical Sinn Fein disavows.  When your advocacy is outside the bounds of the radicals, it’s time to reevaluate.

Northern Ireland is already riven by religiously-driven strife.  Creationism wants to throw gasoline on that fire.  Pray for the peacemakers and scholars to win.

(Full text of The Irish Times story below the fold.)

Read the rest of this entry »

8 Comments | Creationism, Education, Education quality, History, Public education, Religion, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Creationist educational problem

August 10, 2008

Y’all with a smattering of understanding about evolution:  Go to this blog and help straighten out the creationists, will you?

“Creationist medical dilemma” at Unreasonable Faith

This is one of the hottest posts in the WordPress blogging continent at the moment.  Unreasonable Faith posted the old Doonesbury cartoon about the guy whose doctor diagnoses tuberculosis, and then asks the guy whether he’s a creationist before prescribing treatment (if you don’t know the cartoon, go see!).  I don’t think it was intended to attract so much traffic.

In the past three days creationists have moved into the comments section with all manner of creationist misinformation.  Few of the creationists are the hard-shelled, obnoxious type, but they could use some good information on genetics, mutations and evolution rates from someone familiar with the topics.

Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Evolution, Health care, Religion, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Confirmation of dinosaur/human print accuracy?

August 7, 2008

Testimony for the new dinosaur/human footprint specimen:

“This work is suitable for publication in the same journals that carry my work.”

— Dinosaur scholar J. Hart

“This rock specimen resembles several other examples found in the V. T. Hamlin collection at the University of Missouri Libraries.”

— Dinosaur reconstruction artist

“We have video of similar dinosaur prints.”

— Hannah, W., Barbera, J.

Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Humor | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fred Flintstone waded here: Hoaxsters ready to teach creationism to Texas kids

August 5, 2008

Creationists in Texas claim to have found a stone with footprints of a human and a dinosaur.

No, I’m not kidding.

Hoax

Hoax “dinosaur and human footprints” claimed to be found in the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas.

Could you make this stuff up? Well, yeah, I guess some people think you could. Somebody did make this stuff up.

According to a report in the too-gullible Mineral Wells Index, long-time hoaxster and faux doctorate Carl Baugh’s Creation Evidence Museum announced the rock was found just outside Dinosaur Valley State Park. The area has been the site of more than one creationist hoax since 1960, and was an area rife with hoax dinosaur prints dating back to the 1930s. (See these notes on the warning signs of science hoaxes and history hoaxes.)

The estimated 140-pound stone was recovered in July 2000 from the bank of a creek that feeds the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas, located about 53 miles south of Fort Worth. The find was made just outside Dinosaur Valley State Park, a popular destination for tourists known for its well-preserved dinosaur tracks and other fossils.

The limestone contains two distinct prints – one of a human footprint and one belonging to a dinosaur. The significance of the cement-hard fossil is that it shows the dinosaur print partially over and intersecting the human print.

In other words, the stone’s impressions indicate that the human stepped first, the dinosaur second. If proven genuine, the artifact would provide evidence that man and dinosaur roamed the Earth at the same time, according to those associated with the find and with its safekeeping. It could potentially toss out the window many commonly held scientific theories on evolution and the history of the world.

Except, as you can see, Dear Reader and Viewer, it’s a hoax. No dinosaur has a footprint exactly resembling the print of Fred Flintstone’s pet Dino, as the rock shows; nor do human footprints left in mud look like the print shown.

Dear God, save us from such tom-foolery, please.

To the newspaper’s credit, they consulted with an expert who knows better. The expert gave a conservative, scientific answer, however, when the rock deserved a chorus of derisive hoots:

However, Dr. Phillip Murry, a vertebrate paleontology instructor in the Geoscience department of Tarleton State University at Stephenville, Texas, stated in his response to an interview request: “There has never been a proven association of dinosaur (prints) with human footprints.”

The longtime amateur archeologist who found the fossil thinks that statement is now proven untrue.

“It is unbelievable, that’s what it is,” Alvis Delk, 72, said of what could be not only the find of a lifetime, but of mankind.

Delk is a current Stephenville and former Mineral Wells resident (1950-69) who said he found the rock eight years ago while on a hunt with a friend, James Bishop, also of Stephenville, and friend and current fiancee Elizabeth Harris.

Yes, it’s unbelievable.

For comparison, real hominid footprints look much different — the print below was left in a thin-layer of volcanic ash about 4 million years ago, 61 million years after dinosaurs went extinct, according to timelines corroborated by geologists, paleontologists, astronomers, nuclear physicists and biologists:

Print of a hominid, found at Laetoli, Africa; image from Stanford University

Print of a hominid, found at Laetoli, Tanzania, Africa; image from Stanford University. Photo: J. Reader/SPL

With luck, serious scientists will get a chance to analyze the prints soon, and note that they are hoaxes. If history is any guide, however, Baugh and his comrades will keep the rock from scientific analysis, claiming that scientists refuse to analyze it.

The rock is approximately 30 inches by 24 inches. The human footprint, with a deep big toe impression, measures 11 inches in length. Baugh said the theropod track was made by an Acrocanthosaurus. Baugh said this particular track was likely made by a juvenile Acrocanthosaurus, one he said was probably about 20 feet long, stood about 8 feet tall and walked stooped over, weighing a few tons.

Its tracks common in the Glen Rose area, the Acrocanthosaurus is a dinosaur that many experts believe existed primarily in North America during the mid-Cretaceous Period, approximately 125 million to 100 million years ago.

Baugh said Delk’s discovery casts doubts on that theory. Baugh said he believes both sets of prints were made “within minutes, or no more than hours of each other” about 4,500 years ago, around the time of Noah’s Flood. He said the clay-like material that the human and dinosaur stepped in soon hardened, becoming thick, dense limestone common in North Texas.

He said the human print matches seven others found in the same area, stating the museum has performed excavations since 1982 in the area Baugh has dubbed the “Alvis Delk Cretaceous Footprint” discovery.

This “find” comes as the State Board of Education begins rewriting science standards for Texas schools. The chairman of the SBOE is a committed creationist who publicly says he hopes to get creationism into the standards and textbooks in Texas, miseducating Texas students that creationism has a scientific basis.

Delk’s own daughter, Kristi Delk, is a geology major at Tarleton State University in Stephenville and holds different beliefs from her dad about the creation of Earth and the origins of man.

She said she wants to see data from more tests before jumping to any conclusions.

“I haven’t come to terms with it,” she said. “I am skeptical, actually.”

Listen to your daughter, Mr. Delk.

In a story Texas educators hope to keep completely unrelated to the foot prints hoax, Mineral Wells area schools showed gains in academic achievement on the Texas state test program.

Additional resources:

________________________

Gary Hurd at Stones and Bones, who Is a bit of an expert in this stuff, calls “fake.“

Here is how to fake a patina that will look like this fake fossil: Brush the surface with vinegar, and then sprinkle with baking powder followed by baking soda, and let dry. Repeat until you are happy with the results. This is not the only way, or even the best way. But it is simple, and will fool the average fool. Especially easy if they want to be fooled.

So, having spent a little bit more time on the photo of this fake, I feel that I understand a bit more about how it was produced. A legitimate dinosaur track was found and removed. Incompetent, unprofessional “Cleaning” damaged it. An parital overprint, or simple erosion depression was “improved” by adding “toes.” The faked surfaces were smothed over with a simple kitchen concoction to make a “patina.” Artifact fabricators next bury the fake for a year or two, or they smear it with fertilizer and leave it exposed. This helps weather the object and obscure tool marks.

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37 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Creationism, Education, History, Hoaxes, Public education, Religion, Science, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Teach evolution at your peril

July 27, 2008

Untamed Teacher carries one more story about the dangers of trying to teach evolution to students who are not particularly interested, in a school where administrators don’t know much about science. Cynics will write it off as an inexperienced teacher in a difficult school — but that’s precisely where we need to be teaching the most serious material most often. (Tip of the old scrub brush to Education Notes Online.)

The Balloon Man notes a story in the Los Angeles Times about a much more experienced, and patient, teacher, whose lesson biology is heckled by religious students bent on disrupting the instruction.

How would Jesus heckle a teacher? Which parable covers being obnoxious?

Update: Open Parachute ponders whether the behaviors exhibited by the churchy adults in the news report below, constitute child abuse:

Can you imagine the reaction were a group of scientists to arrive at Ken Ham’s creation museum and lead a “science tour” of the place? Dollars to doughnuts Ham would come out looking a lot like Joe Stalin on the issue of allowing free discussion in his place.

Resource:  Why study evolution?  Read the benefits of such study in one of the permanent posts of this blog.

11 Comments | Creationism, Education, Evolution, School discipline, Science, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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