Texas officials plan to fight evolution in science standards

December 13, 2007

Texas political conservatives stand exposed in their plans to gut biology standards to get evolution out of the curriculum after the Dallas Morning News detailed their plans in a front-page news story today.

LEANDER, Texas – Science instruction is about to be dissected in Texas.

You don’t need a Ph.D. in biology to know that things rarely survive dissection.

The resignation of the state’s science curriculum director last month has signaled the beginning of what is shaping up to be a contentious and politically charged revision of the science curriculum, set to begin in earnest in January.

Intelligent design advocates and other creationists are being up front with their plans to teach educationally-suspect and scientifically wrong material as “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution. Of course, they also plan to fail to teach the strengths of evolution theory.

“Emphatically, we are not trying to ‘take evolution out of the schools,’ ” said Mark Ramsey of Texans for Better Science Education, which wants schools to teach about weaknesses in evolution. “All good educators know that when students are taught both sides of an issue such as biologic evolution, they understand each side better. What are the Darwinists afraid of?”

Texans for Better Science is a political group set up in 2003 to advocate putting intelligent design into biology textbooks for religious reasons. It is an astro-turf organization running off of donations from religious fundamentalists. (Note their website is “strengthsandweaknesses” and notice they feature every false and disproven claim IDists have made in the last 20 years — while noting no strength of evolution theory; fairness is not the goal of these people, nor is accuracy, nor scientific literacy).

Scientists appear to be taking their gloves off in this fight. For two decades scientists have essentially stayed out of the frays in education agencies, figuring with some good reason that good sense would eventually prevail. With the global challenges to the eminence of American science, however, and with a lack of qualified graduate students from the U.S.A., this silliness in public school curricula is damaging the core of American science and competitiveness.

Can scientists develop a voice greater than the political and public relations machines of creationists.

As Bette Davis said on stage and screen: Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Also see:

2 Comments | Accuracy, Biology, Creationism, Curricula, Education, Education quality, Intelligent Design, Religion, Science, Separation of church and state | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

How to tell if someone is wrong about DDT and Rachel Carson

December 12, 2007

Here is one surefire way to tell someone is bluffing, and perhaps doing a bit of planned prevarication, about Rachel Carson and the safety of DDT: Look for a footnote like this:

31 Sweeney EM. EPA Hearing Examiner’s recommendations and findings concerning DDT hearings. 25 April 1972 (40 CFR 164.32).

Why is that a sign of a bluff?

The volume and paging, “40 CFR 164.32,” is a reference to the Code of Federal Regulations. One knows that codes do not contain hearing records, and sure enough, this one does not. 40 CFR covers the rules of administrative hearings in federal agencies, but there is nothing whatsoever in that entire chapter about DDT, or birds, or chemical safety.

40 CFR is the chapter of the Code of Federal Regulations that pertains to the rules, regulations and procedures of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); it does not contain transcripts of regulatory hearings.

40 CFR is the chapter of the Code of Federal Regulations that pertains to the rules, regulations and procedures of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); it does not contain transcripts of regulatory hearings.  Anyone who cites a hearing to this publication is giving you a bogus citation, probably to promote bogust history and bogus science.

If that citation shows up in a screed against environmentalists, or against Rachel Carson, or urging that we spray poison till the cows come home to die, you can be pretty sure that the person offering it has copied it wholesale from Steven Milloy’s junk science purveyor shop, and that the person has not read it at all.  If the person has a law degree, or was ever a librarian or active in interscholastic debate, you can be pretty sure the person knows the citation is wrong, and is insulting you by listing it, knowing it’s unlikely you’ll ever find it in your local library.

(What is the accurate citation for the hearings? I’m not sure; but 40 CFR is not it. See the current section of CFR below the fold — it’s one page, not more than 100 pages.)

I have posted about this before. The hearings Judge Sweeney presided over were conducted early in the existence of the EPA. They were conducted under court orders requiring EPA to act. The transcripts are not in usual legal opinion publications, so far as I have been able to find. Many claims have been made about the hearings, most of the claims are false. Jim Easter at Some Are Boojums did the legwork and extracted a copy of the actual decision out of EPA’s library. He’s posted it at his blog, so you can see. Check the pages — “40 CFR” is a bogus citation, designed to keep you from learning the truth.

So the footnote is intended to make the gullible or innocent think there is a reference, where there is no reference.

But read the analysis of the hearings at Some Are Boojums. It is more than just the citation is wrong. Contrary to Internet Legend claims, Sweeney did not determine that DDT was harmless. Sweeney determined that DDT usage provided some benefits that outweighed the harms, considering the dramatically reduced use of DDT then allowed. DDT use had been severely restricted prior to the Sweeney hearings; Sweeney was not looking at all uses, nor even at historic uses. Sweeney was looking at dramatically reduced DDT use under the registrations then allowed. His conclusions of “no harm” where he actually concluded that, were based on greatly reduced use of DDT. This finding cannot be used today to urge an expansion of use — or should not be so used, by honest people.

Not to mention that at Caosblog, footnotes are not even listed in the text. The listing of the footnotes is a gratuitous error, there is no footnote 31 in the text.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Bogus history, History, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Let the candidates debate science!

December 12, 2007

Oh, yeah, good debates are hard to come by.

Still, wouldn’t you like to see the final presidential candidates debate science issues seriously?

Science Debate 2008 logo

Lawrence Krauss got through the muddle at the generally science-averse Wall Street Journal to make the case.

The day before the most recent Democratic presidential debate, the media reported a new study demonstrating that U.S. middle-school students, even in poorly performing states, do better on math and science tests than many of their peers in Europe. The bad news is that students in Asian countries, who are likely to be our chief economic competitors in the 21st century, significantly outperform all U.S. students, even those in the highest-achieving states.

While these figures were not raised in recent Democratic or Republican debates, they reflect a major challenge for the next president: the need to guide both the public and Congress to address the problems that have produced this “science gap,” as well as the serious consequences that may result from it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Almost all of the major challenges we will face as a nation in this new century, from the environment, national security and economic competitiveness to energy strategies, have a scientific or technological basis. Can a president who is not comfortable thinking about science hope to lead instead of follow? Earlier Republican debates underscored this problem. In May, when candidates were asked if they believed in the theory of evolution, three candidates said no. In the next debate Mike Huckabee explained that he was running for president of the U.S., not writing the curriculum for an eighth-grade science book, and therefore the issue was unimportant.

Apparently many Americans agreed with him, according to polls taken shortly after the debate. But lack of interest in the scientific literacy of our next president does not mean that the issue is irrelevant. Popular ambivalence may rather reflect the fact that most Americans are scientifically illiterate. A 2006 National Science Foundation survey found that 25% of Americans did not know the earth goes around the sun.

Our president will thus have to act in part as an “educator in chief” as well as commander in chief. Someone who is not scientifically literate will find it difficult to fill this role.

Chris Mooney makes the case in Seed Magazine.

Science is too important, too big a player in too many issues, to not have a major focus of its own in the final debates. Failing to have such a discussion is tantamount to failing to ask whether the candidates are capitalist or communist in economic policy (as if such a question could be unanswered by a wealth of other campaign material).

Science Debate 2008 argues for a science debate, lists supporters of the idea (it’s an impressive list, really), and offers advice on how you can help the campaign for science discussion at the presidential level. You can track the issue at the Intersection, or at Bora’s place, A Blog Around the Clock.

If nothing else, a science debate might make it clear to the candidates that we need to revive the Office of Technology Assessment, in addition to making the candidates aware that the president needs to have a strong, independent science advisor to whom the president actually pays attention.

Science literacy is to important to leave it up to chance, or partisans alone — in the case of our kids in school, and in the case of the person we elect president.

3 Comments | Education, Elections, Politics, Presidents, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas biologists stand up for evolution

December 11, 2007

 

Leading biologists at several of Texas’s leading universities sent a letter to the Texas State Board of Education trying to scold the agency back onto the path of good science, in the wake of the firing scandal at the agency late last month. Laura Heinauer wrote in Homeroom, an education blog of the Austin American-Statesman:

More than 100 biology faculty from universities across Texas signed a letter sent Monday to Education Commissioner Robert Scott saying Texas Education Agency employees should not have to remain neutral on evolution.The letter is in response to the departure of former science curriculum director Chris Comer, who says she was forced to resign days after forwarding an e-mail her superiors said made the agency appear biased against the idea that life is a result of intelligent design.“I’m an evolutionary biologist, and I and many others simply feel that good evolution education is key to understanding biology as a whole,” said University of Texas professor Daniel Bolnick, who has been collecting signatures since last week.

More biologists from more Texas universities would have signed, probably, with more time allowed to gather signatures. Word I have is that the author and organizers wanted to get the letter delivered quickly.The letter was forceful, and stern in emphasizing the strength of scientific support for evolution theory, a rebuke to Commissioner Robert Scott’s political assistant, Lizzette Gonzales Reynolds:

It is inappropriate to expect the TEA’s director of science curriculum to “remain neutral” on this subject, any more than astronomy teachers should “remain neutral” about whether the Earth goes around the sun. In the world of science, evolution is equally well-supported and accepted as heliocentrism. Far from remaining neutral, it is the clear duty of the science staff at TEA and all other Texas educators to speak out unequivocally: evolution is a central pillar in any modern science education, while “intelligent design” is a religious idea that deserves no place in the science classroom at all.

A massive body of scientific evidence supports evolution. All working scientists agree that publication in top peer-reviewed journals is the scoreboard of modern science. A quick database search of scientific publications since 1975 shows 29,639 peer-reviewed scientific papers on evolution in twelve leading journals alone2. To put this in perspective, if you read 5 papers a day, every day, it would take you 16 years to read this body of original research. These tens of thousands of research papers on evolution provide overwhelming support for the common ancestry of living organisms and for the mechanisms of evolution including natural selection. In contrast, a search of the same database for “Intelligent Design” finds a mere 24 articles, every one of which is critical of intelligent design3. Given that evolution currently has a score of 29,639– while “intelligent design” has a score of exactly zero– it is absurd to expect the TEA’s director of science curriculum to “remain neutral” on this subject. In recognition of the overwhelming scientific support for evolution, evolution is taught without qualification– and intelligent design is omitted– at every secular and most sectarian universities in this country, including Baylor (Baptist), Notre Dame (Catholic), Texas Christian (Disciples of Christ) and Brigham Young (Mormon).

This last sentence is weaker than it needs to be. Evolution is taught at every major sectarian university in the U.S., including Southern Methodist University, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, all the Jesuit colleges and all other Catholic institutions, in addition to those named. It is only the rare, odd Bible college that may not teach evolution. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, which does not emphasize science, and the strictly fundamentalist, 19th century Bob Jones University are the only two I have been able to confirm who do not teach evolution in biology courses.

Be sure to check out the footnotes in the letter, too.

There is no serious college textbook available which uses a non-evolution model to explain biology.In 2003, when the Discovery Institute presented a letter to the Texas SBOE urging skepticism of evolution theory, and then misrepresented the letter as support for intelligent design, more than 100 professors at the University of Texas at Austin and more than 100 professors at Rice University wrote to support evolution. Texas’s four Nobel winners in Medicine or Physiology also called on TEA and the SBOE to emphasize evolution in textbooks. Physics Nobelist Steven Weinberg personally appeared at the citizen hearings on textbooks to stress the point.Texas’s top science scholars and researchers have been clear, consistently over the past decade.

It takes a particular form of political chutzpah and political hubris to ignore this unity of opinion among Texas’s leading researchers and teachers of biology. But Gov. Rick Perry’s recent appointment of arch-creationist Donald McLeroy to chair the SBOE, and the firing of science curriculum expert Chris Comer over her FYI e-mail alerting people to a speech by science philosopher Prof. Barbara Forrest, seem to have made most scientists nervous that the Texas SBOE is gearing up to get stupid again.

No comments from any State Board member, nor from the commissioner yet.

The story has been playing on Texas radio stations most of the day. It was picked up by major Texas newspapers, generally from the Associated Press wire:

See also:

One commenter at the American-Statesman site was happy to hear the news. “Big Fat Phil” wrote, “Hello, sanity. I missed you.”

The full text of the letter, and the full list of signers, is below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | Biology, Creationism, Education quality, Evolution, Politics, Science, State school boards, Texas, Textbook Selection, Textbooks | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

How do we know what we know?

December 10, 2007

Especially in science — how do we know what we know?

A charitable trust in Britain called Sense About Science makes a start on explaining peer review, the process scientists use in science journals to referee what is accurate and what is not.

The site looks legitimate, though I’m no great judge of British scientists (see the board of trustees and advisors).

The site has several sets of debunking material, debunking things like “alternative” treatments for malaria, plus an 8-page pamphlet on how peer review works.

See especially these publications (available in downloadable .pdf):

The booklets are available free, but I’ll wager they were intended for British consumption — I’m not sure they’d mail them across the Atlantic.

It’s worth a look. See any problems with using that pamphlet in a classroom? I am very interested if you find a problem with any of the materials there.

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, History, Reason, Santayana's ghost, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Benefits offset by infant deaths? DDT no panacea

December 10, 2007

Cover of August 2008 Emerging Infectious Diseases from the CDC, featuring: Jan Steen (c. 1625–1679). Beware of Luxury (c. 1665). Oil on canvas 105 cm x 145 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

Cover of August 2008 Emerging Infectious Diseases from the CDC, featuring: Jan Steen (c. 1625–1679). Beware of Luxury (c. 1665). Oil on canvas 105 cm x 145 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

Weighing risks against benefits for DDT spraying is very difficult. Anti-environmentalists and junk science purveyors claim millions of deaths from DDT’s not being sprayed.

They never tell us about the kids DDT could kill.

When we combine data from North America on preterm delivery or duration of lactation and DDE with African data on DDT spraying and the effect of preterm birth or lactation duration on infant deaths, we estimate an increase in infant deaths that is of the same order of magnitude as that from eliminating infant malaria. Therefore, the side effects of DDT spraying might reduce or abolish its benefit from the control of malaria in infants, even if such spraying prevents all infant deaths from malaria.

*   *   *   *   *

The prohibition of DDT use for malaria control was probably not the sole cause of increasing malaria burden in sub-Saharan Africa (40), and thus DDT will probably not be the sole cure for the malaria epidemic there. Insecticide-treated bed nets, widely used in African households to prevent mosquito bites, are effective (41,42). Synthetic pyrethroid insecticides, cheaper than DDT, are available (43,44). Where DDT is used, all infant deaths, plus birth weights and the duration of lactation, should be counted. Some thought could also be given to a formal trial, since the risk and benefit calculations apply to individual dwellings, and an effective alternative, namely bed nets, is available. (Chen A, Rogan WJ. Nonmalarial infant deaths and DDT use for malaria control. Emerg Infect Dis [serial online] 2003 Aug. Available from: URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020610/)

Go read it — the issue of spraying or not is complex, and this study talks only about infant deaths (there may be greater life saving among older children and adults that would make the infant deaths a trade off policy makers would consider, for example). It’s a study from the Centers for Disease Control, part of a continuing series of technical publications from CDC titled Emerging Infectious Diseases. This series tracks much of the work done to fight malaria world wide.

This is valuable information. It shows the issue is much more complex that just “spray or don’t spray.” It’s also information that JunkScience.com hopes you will not pursue. It’s real information, and it refutes the junk science claims from that site.

(In June 2004 the denialists at Africa Fighting Malaria had a letter published complaining about this paper’s findings, but offering no data in rebuttal.)

Wikimedia Commons image of Jan Steen's painting,

A more clear image from Wikimedia Commons of Jan Steen’s painting, “Beware of Luxury.” Click on cover of journal at top of post for a discussion of this painting and how it relates to infectious diseases.

7 Comments | Africa, DDT, Environmental protection, Malaria, Natural history, Natural resources, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Peregrine falcons — ‘100 things about DDT #77’

December 8, 2007

Another in an occasional series that analyzes “100 Things You Need to Know About DDT,” a junk science publication by former tobacco lobbyist Steven Milloy.

Here’s a note from Audubon a while ago (August 2004) (emphasis added):

Winged Tonic

For those dispirited by the notion that humanity has doomed itself to a lonely, sterile future in a world increasingly bereft of wild creatures, there is no tonic more curative than the peregrine falcon. Today, on cliffs, bridges, and city buildings nationwide, young peregrines are strengthening their wings. Within a few weeks, those wings will propel them at speeds near 250 mph, enabling them to kill birds as large as great blue herons, mostly by impact. City aeries are frequently monitored by TV cameras, and you can watch the progress of the hatchlings on your computer or television. (Do an Internet search to find the monitored aerie nearest you.) Before World War II the peregrine was among the planet’s most successful species, breeding on every continent and many mid-ocean islands, from the Arctic to as far south as Cape Horn. When University of Wisconsin biologist Joseph Hickey surveyed eastern peregrines in 1942, he found 350 breeding pairs. In 1963, after two decades of DDT use, he found none. But in 1972 the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT, and soon an alliance of federal agencies, conservationists, and private groups was sponsoring captive breeding and the “hacking” of young peregrines into the wild. The recovery goal had been 631 breeding pairs in the United States and Canada. By 1999, when the peregrine was taken off the Endangered Species List, there were at least 1,650.

Compare this with Milloy’s claim #77:

The decline in the U.S. peregrine falcon population occurred long before the DDT years.

[Hickey JJ. 1942. (Only 170 pairs of peregrines in eastern U.S. in 1940) Auk 59:176; Hickey JJ. 1971 Testimony at DDT hearings before EPA hearing examiner. (350 pre- DDT peregrines claimed in eastern U.S., with 28 of the females sterile); and Beebe FL. 1971. The Myth of the Vanishing Peregrine Falcon: A study in manipulation of public and official attitudes. Canadian Raptor Society Publication, 31 pages]

Here are some potential problems:

Eggs of peregrine falcon, crushed by parent due to thin shells caused by DDT. Photo copyright Steve Hopkin, www.ardea.com

Eggs of peregrine falcon, crushed by parent due to thin shells caused by DDT. Photo copyright Steve Hopkin, http://www.ardea.com

1. Milloy offers no real citation to Hickey in 1942. The quote would be impossible to track down. Why is Milloy hiding sources, being so coy?

2. While Milloy doesn’t quote Hickey directly, Milloy’s citation of Hickey implies that Hickey’s work supports Milloy’s point. But when we read what Hickey found, according to Audubon, it contradicts Milloy’s point. If Hickey found only 170 nesting peregrines in 1940, and 350 in 1942, clearly that suggests the peregrines were doing very well, more than doubling their nests in two years. Milloy claims peregrines were on the decline, but from what little we have, it looks like their populations were rocketing up prior to DDT. Hickey developed a great reputation for his work revealing the bad effects of DDT; how is it that Milloy has found the only instant ever recorded where Hickey discovers no harm? I suspect Milloy has doctored the data, and not that he’s made a grand discovery of a missing Hickey manuscript.

3. A general decline of raptors prior to DDT does not refute the evidence that DDT killed embryoes, killed hatchlings before they could fledge, and killed fledglings before they could mature. DDT wasn’t the sole cause of the decline of peregrines, nor eagles, nor brown pelicans, but DDT was the major barrier to their recovery. The history of the war against eagles, for example, is rather well documented, as is the development of the wild lands eagles use as habitat. Eagle populations started to decline at the latest when Europeans started to settle North America. Those pressures have never gone away. But after the eagle was protected from hunting in 1918, and then with a tougher law in 1940, the decline was not ended. After 1950, eagles essentially stopped reproducing. This made recovery impossible, and this was the problem DDT caused. When DDT spraying stopped, peregrine falcon populations started to rise, and so did eagle and brown pelican populations, among others.

I have been unable to find a single study that does not corroborate the claim that DDT and its daughter products were hammering the reproduction of predator birds in North America — nor have I found a single study that says the damage has ended. Where does Milloy find any evidence to support his implied claim that DDT was not responsible? It’s not in the citations he offers.

There may be more on this issue coming. So far, nothing Milloy has said against a DDT ban, or in favor of DDT, has checked out to be truthful from the citations he gives, nor from any other source. There are 109 points in his diatribe; I’ve only researched fewer than 20 in any depth.

Other posts pointing out Milloy’s errors:

Peregrine Falcon

Peregrine falcon – “Mr. Milloy, you wouldn’t tell fibs about what’s killing my babies, would you?”

20 Comments | Bad Quotes, Cost of Green, DDT, Environmental protection, History, Junk science, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the moment: Ted Williams (the conservationist)

December 8, 2007

It’s a long passage, but worth the read. Go to the Audubon site for the full essay; it’s longer, and worth more. (Photo: Bald eagle, from the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Bald Eagle, USFWS photo

This is from an essay the great conservation curmudgeon Ted Williams published in Audubon in December 2004.

I envy young environmentalists of the 21st century, but I feel bad for them, too. They don’t know what it feels like to win big against seemingly impossible odds. When I started out, America and the world were environmentally lawless. There was no Endangered Species Act, no Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, no Clean Water Act, no Clean Air Act, no National Environmental Policy Act, no National Forest Management Act. In 1970 I remember standing on the steps of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife field headquarters and arguing with a colleague, Joe, about the banning of DDT. “It will never happen,” he told me. When DDT was banned two years later, he said, “It won’t make any difference.”

For a while it didn’t. The March 1976 Audubon reported “considerable gloomy speculation” about the plight of endangered bald eagles in the Lower 48—more birds dying than hatching, fewer than a thousand nesting pairs. Today there are an estimated 7,000 nesting pairs. The September 1975 Audubon reported that 300 brown pelicans transplanted from Florida to Louisiana—”the Pelican State”—had died from lethal doses of DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons. Today Louisiana has more than 13,000 nesting pairs. In 1972 I was assigned by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife to write an article on the peregrine falcon in the East—a history piece, because the species had been extirpated from the region. By 1999 peregrines had fully recovered, and they were removed from the Endangered Species List.

The hopelessness I felt about DDT in 1970 was nothing compared with what Rachel Carson felt when she started her campaign against this World War II hero. Writing a book about DDT seemed impossible; she was a nature writer, not an investigative reporter. Barely had she taken pen to paper when she was assailed by arthritis, flu, intestinal virus, sinus infections, staph infections, ulcers, phlebitis, and breast cancer. She didn’t get discouraged; she got mad. Her ulcers, she told her editor, “might have waited till the book was done.” Radiation treatments were “a serious diversion of time.” She found the phlebitis that prevented her from walking “quite trying””not for herself but for “poor Roger,” her adopted son.

When Silent Spring appeared in 1962, Chemical World News condemned it as “science fiction.” Time magazine dismissed it as an “emotional and inaccurate outburst.” Reader’s Digest canceled a contract for a 20,000-word condensation and ran the Time piece instead. But only seven years later Time used a photo of Carson to illustrate its new Environment section. Silent Spring was not a prediction, as anti-environmentalists profess; it was a warning, full of hope. “No,” Carson wrote her friend Lois Crisler, “I myself never thought the ugly facts would dominate. . . . The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind.” If Rachel Carson could find hope in the face of what and who were closing in on her, no environmentalist has the right to feel discouraged in 2004.

Leave a Comment » | Environmental protection, History, History and art, Politics, Quotes, Rachel Carson, Science, Science and faith | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The difference between science and intelligent design/creationism

December 6, 2007

Or is it just the difference between the rational English and the U.S.?

James K. Wilmot in the Louisville (Kentucky!) Courier-Journal:

Last month in England, I toured the Natural History Museum in London. (It’s free by the way.) They too [with Ken Ham’s Creation Museum] have animatronic dinosaurs. However, that’s where the similarity between this “real” museum and the AIG’s creation museum ends. The NHM of London has 55 million preserved animal specimens, nine million fossils, six million plant specimens and more than 500,000 rocks and minerals.

They have a staff of over 300 scientists working on various projects to gain a better understanding of the Earth and the creatures that inhabit (or did inhabit) our planet. Is there not something wrong when thousands of people are flocking to Northern Kentucky and paying $20 a pop to see a Flintstones-like interpretation of pre-history, and yet anyone who lives in or visits London can see one of the world’s greatest real science centers for free?

According to the Courier-Journal, “James K. Willmot is a former science teacher at St. Francis School in Goshen, Ky., and an environmental laboratory director. He is the author of many articles on science, science education and science understanding. Formerly from Louisville, he now lives in Virginia Water, England.” (Be sure to check out the comments, where advocates of the Creation Museum make the case that it is damaging to education and knowledge.)

Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Religion, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Snuffing out math talent

December 6, 2007

Could I cover one block of math? Family emergency, the teacher had to go, math practice assignment was all duplicated, I didn’t have a class at that time . . .

Sure.

It was a class for kids generally not on the college-bound track, certainly not on the mathematics-intensive path. In a couple of minutes three kids told me they were there because they failed the state math test, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). We got into the exercise and found it featured a whole bunch of algebraic equations that would tax my memory of the rules quite well.

As I was struggling to remember how to divide and multiply exponents in fractional forms, 15 minutes into the class a woman handed in the assignment. More than 30 equations done, each one I spot checked done correctly, all the work shown — even beautifully legible handwriting.

“You have a real facility for math,” I said. “Why are you here and not in the calculus-bound class?”

She said she had failed the TAKS math portion. I told her I found that highly unlikely.

“I can’t do story problems,” she said. “I can’t figure out how they should go.”

So here was a mathematics savant, relegated to remedial math because of a difficulty translating prose into equation.

In the old days, we’d take a kid like that, let her run as far and as fast as possible in what she was good at (higher abstract mathematics concepts), and work with her on the story problem thingy. If she’s stuck where she doesn’t learn new concepts, she probably won’t make “adequate yearly progress,” either. We have taken a kid with great math talent, and turned her into a statistic of failure.

It was a flawed sample, of course. 30 kids, one savant, three others not quite as fast but with roughly the same problem: Math is easy for them, prose is not easy, especially when it has to be translated into equations. 4/30 is 13%. Do we have that many mathematically capable kids who we flunk and put into remedial math — 13% of the total?

One way to make sure no child is left behind is to stop the train completely. If the train does not move, no one gets left behind.

No mail gets delivered, no milk gets delivered, people can’t go to far off places to study, or to sell. But nobody gets “left behind.”

Did I mention that the Texas Education Agency fired their science curriculum person in direct violation of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution? Is there a correlation there?

1 Comment | Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Education assessment, Education quality, Education success, No Child Left Behind Act, Science, TAKS, Testing, Texas | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas creationism scandal only one of many

December 6, 2007

McBlogger has an interesting, Texas-based take on the scandals at the Texas Education Agency: It’s a hallmark of Republicans in Texas government.

In other words, other agencies are similarly screwed up, and the common thread is Republican appointees out of their depth and unaware of it.

(Do short posts make this place start to look like Instapundit? Looks only — check the substance.)

Tip of the old scrub brush to Bluedaze.

Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Evolution, Government, Intelligent Design, Rampant stupidity, Religion, Science, Separation of church and state, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The whole world is watching: Evolution in Texas, or new Dark Ages

December 4, 2007

The whole world should be watching.

Today’s New York Times editorial, “Evolution and Texas”:

It was especially disturbing that the agency accused Ms. Comer — by forwarding the e-mail message — of taking a position on “a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.” Surely the agency should not remain neutral on the central struggle between science and religion in the public schools. It should take a stand in favor of evolution as a central theory in modern biology. Texas’s own education standards require the teaching of evolution.

Those standards are scheduled to be reviewed next year. Ms. Comer’s dismissal and comments in favor of intelligent design by the chairman of the state board of education do not augur well for that review. We can only hope that adherents of a sound science education can save Texas from a retreat into the darker ages.

It remains a mystery how an education agency official could take such a public stand against the state’s education standards and still keep the job in these days, but no one is seriously talking about even investigating the odd events at TEA under the new highly-political director Robert Scott, or the Republican Party operative Lizzette Reynolds.

Texas is a particularly ironic location for these events, being the home of George Bush, who staked his reputation on education reforms that require higher standards, not lower ones; Texas being a state whose money and history rest on oil and natural gas, two fossil fuels found with the geology the TEA now repudiates; Texas being a state trying to get rid of the cotton boll weevil and the imported fire ant, both of which have nationally-coordinated eradication programs based on thorough knowledge of evolution to prevent the insects from evolving resistance or immunity to pesticides. Texas A&M University is one of the nation’s leaders in creating new food crops, using the evolution principles Ms. Comer was fired for noting.

Talk in Austin Rick Perry’s mind ponders whether Gov. Rick Perry has a chance at a vice president nomination. Perry is a typically-weak-by-state constitution Southern governor. He still has clout with agencies, if and when he chooses to use it. Perhaps Perry will read the New York Times today while sitting in an Iowa coffee shop, and wonder what’s up in Texas.

What passes for leadership these days.

Also see:

6 Comments | Accuracy, Evolution, Politics, Public education, Religion, Science, State school boards, Texas | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Religious/political bias against good education, at Texas Education Agency

December 3, 2007

The religious bias against good education we noted here appears to have exploded into the Texas Education Agency. Unfortunately, there is an ugly political tone to the scrap.

TEA fired a top science curriculum specialist just as it starts a review of science standards, because she passed along word that a defender of science in textbooks was speaking in Austin to several people in an e-mail. The firing was urged by a political apparatchik now working inside TEA, one of several political operatives put into positions of influence in the agency in the past year or so.

(I don’t practice in Texas employment law, and Texas administrative law probably has strong employment-at-will leanings even in government agencies — but this strikes me as an illegal action on the part of TEA; we can’t fire people for doing their jobs as the law requires; we shouldn’t fire public officials for informing people about the law, nor for supporting good academics.)

Several Texas news outlets picked up the story of the firing, but to my knowledge, only the Austin American-Statesman has complained, in a Saturday editorial, “Is Misdeed a Creation of Political Doctrine?”

The education agency, of course, portrays the problem as one of insubordination and misconduct. But from all appearances, Comer was pushed out because the agency is enforcing a political doctrine of strict conservatism that allows no criticism of creationism.

This state has struggled for years with the ideological bent of the state school board, but lawmakers took away most of its power to infect education some years ago. Politicizing the Texas Education Agency, which oversees the education of children in public schools, would be a monumental mistake.

This isn’t the space to explore the debate over creationism, intelligent design and evolution. Each approach should be fair game for critical analysis, so terminating someone for just mentioning a critic of intelligent design smacks of the dogma and purges in the Soviet era.

But then, this is a new and more political time at the state’s education agency.

Robert Scott, the new education commissioner, is not an educator but a lawyer and former adviser to Gov. Rick Perry. This presents an excellent opportunity for the governor and his appointee to step in firmly to put an end to ideological witch hunts in the agency.

The person who called for Comer to be fired is Lizzette Reynolds, a former deputy legislative director for Gov. George Bush. She joined the state education agency this year as an adviser after a stint in the U.S. Department of Education.

The paper is factual and gentle: The position Ms. Reynolds filled at the U.S. Department of Education was in Texas, in a regional office, a plum often reserved for political supporters of the president’s party who need a place to draw a paycheck until the next election season.

(This where the irony bites: The Louisville Courier-Journal editorialized against creationism and the deceiving of students conducted by Ken Ham’s organization with their creationism museum; Kentucky appears to be well ahead of Texas in recognizing the dangers to education of this war against science conducted by creationists.)

Details come from the Texas Citizens for Science, and Steven Schaffersman, here. More details with extensive comments are at Pharyngula, here, here, here, and here.

The firing damages Texas’s reputation, certainly. The state is already portrayed as having an education agency run amok:

There’s a major standards review coming up, and the guy running the show is a bible-thumping clown of a dentist. Note the hint of the wider ramifications: Texas is a huge textbook market, and what goes down in Texas affects what publishers put in books that are marketed nationwide. It is time to start thinking about ending Texas’s influence. If you’re a teacher, a school board member, or an involved parent, and if you get an opportunity to evaluate textbooks for your local schools, look carefully at your biology offerings. If you’re reviewing a textbook and discover that it has been approved for use in Texas, then strike it from your list. It’s too dumb and watered down for your kids.

Nature, one of the preeminent science magazines in the world, has a blog; Texans need to reflect on the article there which lends perspective:

Attitudes to education differ round the world, but things are looking pretty odd in Texas right now. The director of the state’s science curriculum is claiming she was forced out for forwarding an email. Its content was not a risqué joke or a sleazy photo: it was a note about a forthcoming lecture by a philosopher who has been heavily involved in debates over creationism.

The Statesman reports that the Texas Education Agency had recommended firing Chris Comer for repeated misconduct and insubordination (the details of which are unclear) before she resigned. But Comer and others are saying she was forced out for seeming to endorse criticism of intelligent design. An agency memo, according to the Statesman, said: “Ms Comer’s e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker’s position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.”

In other news, a new international ranking of the science ability of 15 year olds has been conducted by the OECD. The US is below average, a little under Latvia. Finland tops the chart. Those with spare time might find it interesting to compare this chart of the new OECD ranking, with this chart of belief in evolution.

If Ms. Comer’s e-mail implies endorsement of good science, her firing explicitly endorses bad science and crappy education, and thereby contradicts the policies of the State of Texas expressed in law and regulation. Firing an employee for supporting the law, which calls for good and high academic standards, should not be the policy of political appointees; it shouldn’t be legal.

It looks really bad:

. . . [A] dismissal letter stated Comer shouldn’t have sided one way or the other on evolution, “a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.”

And:

It can’t be a good thing when a state fires its head of science education for promoting science education. But that’s what happened when the Texas Education Agency put its science curriculum director Chris Comer on administrative leave in late October, leading to what she calls a forced resignation.

When the Texas Education Agency urges “neutrality” on good versus bad, you know something is very, very rotten in Austin.

Action avenues:

  • Gov. Rick Perry‘s phone number is: (800) 252-9600 (Citizen Opinion Hotline); (512) 463-2000 (main switchboard for governor)
  • TEA Commissioner Robert Scott’s e-mail is: commissioner@tea.state.tx.us, and his phone number is: (512) 463-9734

News links:

1 Comment | Evolution, History, Intelligent Design, Rampant stupidity, Science, Separation of church and state, Texas, Textbooks | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Make ocean foam in your classroom!

December 2, 2007

I’m not sure exactly why, but my post on ocean foam in Australia continues to be one of the most popular.

Now you can make ocean foam in your classroom! I suppose this was planned for a science class, but why not use it in geography or world history?

Kid making ocean foam, at NY Hall of Science

Instructions here: What Molecules are in Ocean Foam? (repeated below the fold). This is one of several easy-to-do science experiments promoted at the Pfizer Foundation Discovery Lab at the New York Hall of Science.

Also see this explanation from New Scientist about how foam forms on ocean waves in the first place.

Go ahead. Cover the entire school with it.

Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | Bell Ringers, Geography - Physical, Lesson plans, Natural history, Science, Warm-up exercises | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Unintelligent designs in Texas

November 29, 2007

The Texas Education Agency has lost its mind.  Again, or still.

P.Z. has details. I’m off to discuss economics with economics teachers.  Talk among yourselves until I get back later tonight.

If someone organizes a march on the TEA with torches and other farm implements, somebody text message me, please.

3 Comments | Biology, Evolution, Paranoia, Rampant stupidity, Religion, Science, Science and faith, Separation of church and state, TEKS, Texas | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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