March 7, 2008
Kevin Padian’s article in February’s GeoTimes urges improvements in geology in textbooks, as a means of boosting science education and achievement overall.
I don’t want to imply that every geologist should be visiting third-grade classrooms and discussing radiometric dating with the students. That wouldn’t be comfortable for most of us, or most of them. But we can support a strong geological curriculum by getting involved in state and local textbook adoption procedures and curriculum development. Those folks need good scientific advice, and we need to listen to them to see how we can best meet their needs.
I’m actually going to suggest something even easier — something that most of us who teach in colleges and universities do all the time: improve the textbooks we use.
Texas’s state school board is running in exactly the opposite direction, undertaking several initiatives to dumb down science texts, even after approving a requirement for a fourth year of science classes required for graduation.
We can hope Texas’s policy makers will listen to veteran scientist educators like Padian.
Click thumbnail for larger chart to view. Evolution of Tetrapods, courtesy of Kevin Padian.
“Padian is a professor of Integrative Biology and curator in the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California at Berkeley, and president of the National Center for Science Education.”
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Posted by Ed Darrell
March 5, 2008
Attention focused on one usually-obscure race for a seat on the Texas State Board of Education helped Republican Pat Hardy turn back a malicious challenge. Hardy won her primary against secretive Barney Maddox, a urologist who spent a lot of money on specifically-targeted mailings, but who also refused to speak with reporters or anyone else asking questions.
Showing just how odd and treacherous is the situation in Texas, Hardy got assists from science bloggers across the nation, though her position on science is far from what science advocates would like. Hardy’s genial “don’t gut the textbooks” stand was preferred to Maddox’s mad-dog, teach-creationism-in-science position.
Maddox refused to comment on the election, of course.
Hardy’s district includes parts of Ft. Worth and surrounding counties. According to the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram:
State Board of Education
Social conservatives failed in their attempt to take control of the State Board of Education on Tuesday when incumbent Pat Hardy of Fort Worth retained her seat against a challenge from Cleburne’s Barney Maddox.
Hardy, a career educator, has been a moderate voice on the board. The 15-member body still shows a close ideological split, but Hardy has helped keep it on a straight path.
The board’s powers come from its ability to influence the public school curriculum and the selection of textbooks. District 11covers about three-fourths of Tarrant County, plus all of Ellis, Johnson and Parker counties. There is no Democratic nominee for this seat in the November election.
Maddox’s entry in the race had set the stage for debate over the scientific theory of evolution, which he has described as “fairy tales.” Hardy took a better course: Teach kids about all theories, she said, from creation to evolution, and give them enough information to make up their own minds about what to believe.
Spoken like a teacher — and a person who should hold a seat on the State Board of Education
Tip of the old scrub brush to reader Ediacaran. Thanks, Bret.
Update: News specific to this race from the Fort Worth paper.
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5 Comments | Creationism, Education, Elections, Evolution, Politics, Science, State school boards, Texas | Tagged: 2008 campaign, Creationism, Education, Elections, Evolution, Science, Texas State School Board | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 1, 2008
P. Z. Myers notes the silliness that anti-science types get involved in, especially when they attempt to make scientists look bad over something complex enough that it just can’t be worked out — leap years!
The two most amusing explanations for why we have leap years that I’ve heard came from creationists:
- Those scientists can’t even measure the length of the year accurately! They have to keep fudging their numbers every few years to make everything add up, so why should I trust them?
- We have leap years because the earth is slowing down in its orbit, which proves that the earth can’t be old — a million years ago the earth would have been whirling around the sun so fast it would have flown out of orbit!
Phil Plait at the misnamed (for this post) Bad Astronomy explains in glorious mathematical detail how leap year calculations work, and why we need wait around for more than three millennia to lobby for another calendar correction. Phil is really a remarkable story teller, for an astronomer:
We have two basic units of time: the day and the year. Of all the everyday measurements we use, these are the only two based on concrete physical events: the time it takes for the Earth to spin once on its axis, and the time it takes to go around the Sun. Every other unit of time we use (second, hour, week, month) is rather arbitrary. Convenient, but they are not based on independent, non-arbitrary events.
It takes roughly 365 days for the Earth to orbit the Sun once. If it were exactly 365 days, we’d be all set! Our calendars would be the same every year, and there’d be no worries.
But that’s not the way things are. There are not an exactly even number of days in a year; there are about 365.25 days in a year. That means every year, our calendar is off by about a quarter of a day, an extra 6 or so hours just sitting there, left over. After four years, then, the yearly calendar is off by roughly one day:
4 years at 365 (calendar) days/year = 1460 days, but4 years at 365.25 (physical) days/year = 1461 days.
These are mysteries that beg for explanations in social studies classes. For example, the differences in George Washington’s birth date, as recorded in the year he was born, and as listed today, are due to England’s and the English-speaking world’s late adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, switching from the Julian (England made the switch in 1752, about a half century after almost everyone else in the west, 170 years after Pope Gregory XIII proposed it).
Pope Gregory, who ordered new calendars, better to calculate religious feast days, like Easter. The Gregorian Calendar was introduced about 1583, with leap years. The actual time between two yearly solar events isn’t 365 days exactly. It’s actually 365.2422 days — so every four years there’s approximately one extra day left over. (NPR image and information)
If nothing else, social studies should be good for providing cocktail party trivia, shouldn’t it? And it won’t really matter to you unless one is a scientist launching rockets at a distant planet, or a churchman trying to fix the date of Easter, or a farmer trying to be certain the planting calendar is accurate to the season, or a commodities futures trader trying to figure out when agricultural goods come to market, or a mortgage banker working to make sure mortgages are calculated correctly for the next 30 years and that notices go out to homeowners as required by law, or a homeowner checking up on your mortgage bank, or an average investor checking up on your commodities futures traders and REIT investment advisor, or just a kid interested in the minutiae of how science really affects us in our every day lives.
Now we wonder: In comments, will some creationist bring up the old canard about Harold Hill and NASA’s calculations being off by the one day Joshua stopped the sun?
More:
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Posted by Ed Darrell
February 18, 2008
We owe a great debt to newspapers, especially those shunned by bloggers as MSM (“mainstream media”). This article in the Austin American-Statesman is a key exhibit.
While the minions and poobahs at the Texas Education Agency work to frustrate the teaching of evolution in science classes, real Texas scientists practicing real Texas science dig away at the Gault Site, an archaeological dig that recently has yielded 1.5 million artifacts from ancient Texans, Clovis Man, living 13,500 years ago.
So far nothing indicates any of these ancient people were Baptist or creationist. Surprisingly, perhaps, they didn’t play football, either.
Pamela LeBlanc, a digger at the site wrote the article in first person.
The pasture, named for the Gault family who once farmed the land, made its debut into professional archaeology in 1929 when J.E. Pearce, founder of the UT archaeology department, excavated here. Over the years, visitors could pay a fee to dig at the farm, hauling off what they found and leaving behind shallow craters.
Today, it’s considered the most prolific site of its kind. Gault has generated more than half of the excavated artifacts from the Clovis people, long considered the first human culture in America. Until recently, most archaeologists believed the Clovis came from Asia across the Bering Strait land bridge at the end of the last ice age about 13,500 years ago, walked down the ice-free corridor of Western Canada and slowly spread across the Americas.
Collins and others believe people arrived in the Americas much earlier, probably by boat along the North Atlantic and North Pacific shores. And they believe this site will help prove it. “What we’re trying to do here is expand on our knowledge of the peopling of the Americas,” Collins says.
Even better, you can volunteer to help out at the site, to dig for prehistoric information.
To volunteer at the Gault site, contact Cinda Timperley at ctimperley@austin.rr.com. Membership in the Gault School of Archaeological Research is not required to volunteer, but members have priority. Membership is $10 for students; $45 for adults; and $65 for families. The school also needs non-monetary donations of everything from equipment to electrical work. For more information, call 471-5982.
Not only does the Austin paper print news that sticks in the craw of Don McLeroy, they give details on how you can participate in making such news.
Newspapers. Gotta love ’em.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Remote Central.
Also see Pamela LeBlanc’s earlier story about Lucy in Houson.
Texas A&M undergraduate diggers at Gault site, earlier; Texas Archaeological Society photo.
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5 Comments | Anthropology, Archaeology, Education, Evolution, Prehistory, TEKS, Texas history | Tagged: Archaeology, Clovis Man, Education, Evolution, Media, Newspapers, Science, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
February 18, 2008
Oh, remember to check out the latest 4 Stone Hearth. This carnival of archaeology was posted at Our Cultural World last week, its 34th outing.
John Hawks has a post featured about Neandertal’s roaming habits, all determined from a tooth. Interesting archaeology, interesting anthropology, and just how can they tell all that from one tooth? Hawks’ blog has articles I’ll use in U.S. history, world history, psychology, and maybe economics. One of the best things about 4 Stone Hearth is the way it points to outstanding sources.
Got a tagger in your classroom? He (rarely a she) may be interested in ancient taggers — if we may call them that.
If you live on the Pacific coast, or in the Caribbean, should you worry about your local volcano? A Very Remote Period Indeed pointed to a paper that suggests the hominids found at Dmanisi were a family killed by a volcanic eruption — perhaps your local volcano can help you become immortal, after a fashion?
Also featured is an article about language development at a blog I only recently discovered, Not Exactly Rocket Science. It’s another blog worth watching.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
February 18, 2008
I love irony.
Henry VIII devised a novel way to save money. He ordered coins be minted containing silver, as during the reign of Henry VII, but he ordered that the purity of the silver be reduced. Edward VI continued the policy so that, by the time of the rule of Queen Elizabeth I, royal advisor and financier Sir Thomas Gresham observed that most of the old, high-silver content coins were out of circulation, hoarded by people against future inflation, allowing the lesser-valued money to circulate. Gresham told Elizabeth the bad money drove out the good money.
Sir Thomas Gresham (c. 1519 – 21 November 1579), British financier and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I and earlier regents. Portrait c. 1554 by Anthonis Mor.
The principle had been observed earlier by Aristophanes and others. It is known in modern economics as Gresham’s Law, since 1858 when British economist Henry Dunning McLeod decided to honor Gresham by naming the rule after him.
The bad drives out the good, the cheap drives out the more expensive, gossip drives out good information — the principle is widely observed in areas beyond economics.
And so it is that with regard to DDT, the good information about the dangers of DDT and the benefits of restricting use of the chemical has been driven out of the marketplace by bad information claiming DDT is safe, and ignoring the significant benefits reaped when massive use of DDT was stopped.
And here’s the irony: DDT-happy critics of good environmental policy now claim to be the good information driven out by the “bad” information of DDT’s harms. No kidding. A columnist named Natalie Sirkin, in a column delivering almost nothing but bad, vile information, says bad information drives out the good, never once noting the irony.
The defense of DDT was, from the beginning, a lost cause. A few of us vainly hoped that science would prevail. We soon found that Gresham ’s Law, which states that bad currency drives out good currency, applies to science as well as to economics.
No kidding it applies. Do a Google search for “DDT” today and you’ll find all over the internet the disinformation of Gordon Edwards’ ghost and junk science purveyor Steven Milloy. You will have a difficult time finding any solid study showing how DDT nearly killed off the American bald eagle, however, and you’ll have to do a targeted search to learn of any dangers of DDT — information on human toxicity is almost impossible to find, though it’s easy to find many recountings of Gordon Edwards’ bold drinking of a teaspoon of DDT before lectures.
(Natalie and Gerald Sirkin write for the American Spectator; at this writing, Google features warnings on all of their material at the time of this writing, saying the site host may try to insert “malicious software” on your computer — so I have not linked there. This problem should sort itself out, I hope.)
(The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) works to get a history of the agency up on the ‘net; a lot from the DDT ban era is now available at the EPA site for scholars; Milloy will not be happy to have factual rebuttal officially and easily available.)
Below the fold, I’ll offer a point-by-point rebuttal of the bizarre claims in favor of DDT and against the noble public officials who worked to restrict its use.
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8 Comments | Accuracy, DDT, Economics, Environmental protection, Geography - Physical, History, Junk science, Public health, Rachel Carson, Research, Science, War on Science | Tagged: DDT, eagles, Environmental protection, Junk science, Politics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
February 16, 2008
So, if you check the comments over at Neil Simpson’s blog, somebody asked about the post Simpson deleted, and Simpson answered:
Didn’t read the thing? Heh. Figures. The comment reveals the depths of moral difficulty of the anti-Rachel Carson position — the position Simpson takes in the blog. Simpson can’t answer any of the criticisms. No, I didn’t change my e-mail address — Simpson’s blog was just more loving of correcting dissent than Simpson.
Personal attacks? Bullbleep. Simpson thinks any correction is “a personal attack.” If one is chronically in error about the facts, and chronically belligerent about dealing with data, one gets a lot of corrections.
Here’s a challenge to Simpson: This blog is open. I’ll edit out only your profanities if you use them. But I’ll wager you can’t defend your position. I won’t go Joe Stalin on you the way you did on me.
Neil, you’re in error about Carson’s book. You’re wrong. You have a Christian duty to fix the errors. Bet you won’t.
Marshall Art, if you’re interested, you can read the remarks Simpson won’t read, here. Now you know why, in my opinion, he’s afraid to read them. The comment isn’t even snarky, though heaven knows there’d be a right.
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7 Comments | Accuracy, Censorship, DDT, Ethics, Malaria, Point of personal privilege, Rachel Carson | Tagged: Accuracy, Ethics, Junk science, Malaria, Religion, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
February 16, 2008
You know the syndrome: Someone is caught in a scandal relating to sex, and then they take an offer to pose nude for pornography, and end up merely as a naked embarrassment to everybody.
Same syndrome, but mercifully, without the nudism (yet): Creationists taking it just a bit too far. Two examples.
Example 1: Don McLeroy, newly appointed to the chair of the Texas State Board of Education, was embarrassed by the release of tapes of a talk he gave in a church, demonstrating for anyone who didn’t already know that he’s opposed to teaching science in biology, especially if that science involves evolution. Bad enough?
He’s posted a transcript of the tape on his own website. It almost appears he’s hoping for an appointment as a “fellow” of the Discovery Institute.
McLeroy may have posted the transcript to try to correct a statement the transcripts say he made: “”Remember keep chipping away at the objective empirical evidence.”
At McLeroy’s website, it’s listed like this: “Remember keep chipping away with the objective empirical evidence.” It’s a subtle difference, but it suggests McLeroy is ill-informed enough that he thinks there may be evidence to support creationism, rather than devious enough to urge the denial of reality. Bob, at Hot Dogs, Pretzels and Perplexing Questions, wrote:
I’m not quite sure what to make of all this. Was it a Freudian slip? Did he innocently misspeak? Or could it be that he edited the text after the fact? Either way, I don’t think it makes that much of a difference. They have no objective empirical evidence of their own to chip away with, just the objective empirical evidence they stubbornly attempt to chip away at, and to no avail. I’ll leave the discovery of any other discrepancies as an exercise for the reader, at least for now.
McLeroy shows no desire to appear neutral, as employees of TEA are now required to be toward science — or “neutered” toward science, as one might say.
Example 2: McLeroy’s Islamist partner, Adnan Oktar ( aka “Harun Yahya”), is a continuing embarrassment. This isn’t news, but I stumbled across the actual images he pirated — and they are impressive.
The Atlas of Creation purports to show that no evolution has occurred between a few fossil forms and modern forms of animals — therefore, Oktar concludes in his book, evolution could not have occurred at all. Oktar couldn’t sell the book, so he sent copies of the thing to school libraries across Europe, and then to selected people and school libraries across North America.
The book is beautifully printed and bound, with hundreds of full color plates — it must have cost a fortune to produce.
And so, Oktar had to make economies somewhere. He chose to plagiarize photos and not bother with lawyers to procure rights to print the photos. He also chose to abandon the use of fact checkers, it appears.
And so we get embarrassments, like Oktar comparing this caddis fly, below, to one caught in amber, and concluding there’s been no evolution. The problem, as you can plainly see from the photo I borrow from Forbidden Music, is that the “living” example is actually a fishing lure; Oktar has plagiarized a photograph of one of Graham Owen’s wonderul fishing lures.
Jesus urged his followers to become “fishers of men.” McLeroy and Oktar have confused such imprecations, horribly, with the hoax P. T. Barnum line, that there’s a sucker born every minute.
Owen’s lures are designed to fool fish. If McLeroy and Oktar have their way, Texas school children may end up as ignorant as the fish, and as easily fooled.
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213 Comments | Accuracy, Biology, Creationism, Plagiarism, Public education, Rampant stupidity, Religion, Science, Textbook Selection, War on Education | Tagged: Creationism, Don McLeroy, Evolution, Plagiarism, Religion, Science, Texas State Board of Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
February 16, 2008
Meanwhile, back in reality, the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology signed on to cosponsor the conference on DDT’s effects on human health and the environment at Alma College in Michigan, set for March 14.
Logo for the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology
Religionists and conservative pundits won’t boycott the conference. But they won’t be there, either, I’ll wager. They don’t want to confuse their rants with the facts, you see.
Do we know any bloggers up Alma College way (Alma, Michigan, in the heart of the peninsula) who might attend the conference and provide hourly reports? Ed Brayton, are you close? Got a day to play blog journalist for a good cause?
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1 Comment | Accuracy, DDT, Education, Environmental protection, Public education, Public health, Science | Tagged: DDT, Junk science, Rachel Carson, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
February 16, 2008
Anti-science and anti-environment protection advocates appear to be ramping up their campaign to poison Africa with DDT. Whether it’s related to U.S. President George Bush’s last-gasp trip to Africa or something else, is difficult to determine.
The vicious campaign is popping up everywhere. Is there too much vitriol against sanity to be more than coincidence?
Religionist Neil Simpson’s poke in the eye of reason got me going this time. In “Dangerous environmentalism” he hits just about every false claim against environmentalists and every false claim for DDT in just a few paragraphs — he got it from Steve Forbes and repeated it without bothering to consider whether Forbes was engaging in ill-informed rant.
Steve Forbes doesn’t know much about the history, science or law of DDT or malaria, but that never stops him from opining that others are dead wrong in what they do know.
The rant hits so many of the favorite punching bags of the modern angry white male bigot: Intellectuals (those scientists and environmentalists with their college degrees), women and women’s rights (Rachel Carson didn’t marry, and fought her way to prominence in fields men dominated), history (they wish it weren’t so, and if they repeat what they want history to have been, maybe Santayana’s Ghost will leave them alone — not that they are ever bothered by repeating historical error), race (never miss a chance to accuse scientists, environmentalists, intellectuals and other “liberals” with race bigotry), foreign aid (see, we can just poison Africa back to health — if you’d just stop sending them money for bed nets and good medical care, DDT is all they need).
This is the money line from Forbes:
Yet in one of history’s more murderously myopic ongoing actions, most advanced countries and international agencies discourage its use. Why? Blame Rachel Carson’s seismically influential–and now largely discredited–book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962. In it she blames DDT for imperiling birds and people, portraying it as a blight of almost biblical proportions. It ain’t so. As Dr. Elizabeth Whelan of the American Council on Science & Health once put it, there “has never been a documented case of human illness or death in the U.S. as a result of the standard and accepted use of pesticides.” The British medical journal The Lancet similarly notes that after 40 years of research no significant health threat from DDT has been found.
Count the errors:
- The treaty that regulates the phase out of long-lasting, environmentally-damaging and human-killing poisons has a carve-out provision that specifically allows the use of DDT for limited indoor use (see Annex B); this treaty was negotiated at the end of the 20th century, eight years ago [1999 taking effect in 2001]. It represents the official position of “advanced countries and international agencies.” The treaty position is exactly the opposite of Forbes’ claim. How many years behind is Forbes in his reading? one might wonder.
- No one has ever discredited any significant part of Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring. Exactly contrary to Forbes’ claim, the book was found to be scientifically solid by a specially-appointed group of science advisors to President Kennedy, in 1963 [full text of “Use of Pesticides,” here]; it was found solid by later research by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Discover Magazine recently noted that there are more than 1,000 follow-up references since 1962 that verify Carson’s work.*
- Carson’s book accurately noted the damage to birds — not a single incident she recounts has ever been seriously questioned. The stories have been distorted and wild claims made against the distortions — but there is not a single study anywhere which contradicts Carson’s claims about damage to birds. Carson worried about human health effects, but stopped far short of saying DDT kills humans. Subsequent research has won DDT a listing as a probable human carcinogen by all of the world’s most respected and conservative health agencies, every single one.
- Elizabeth Whelan’s career is built on slamming scientists and science. But apart from the dubious provenance of the source, look at what Forbes quotes her as saying. Never a death in the U.S. as a result of using DDT in the limited way it’s now used in the U.S. There have been deaths outside the U.S. (and my recollection is at least one in the U.S.); and the methods that have prevented deaths are the banning of DDT for broadcast use, and extremely limited use at any time. She’s right: No deaths can be attributed to the non-use of DDT. She doesn’t say DDT isn’t a poison, or that it is not carcinogenic. She doesn’t account for deaths outside the U.S. She doesn’t get close to accounting for damage to wildlife and African food supplies from DDT. Half-truth to whole lie.
(It is often useful to remind critics that DDT was not banned because of dangers to human health, but instead because of its damage to beneficial animals outdoors. It’s also good to remind them that DDT was specifically reinserted into disease fighting by the EPA order in 1972 that banned DDT use on crops, only in the U.S.)
Then, with no sense for the irony, Simpson extols the virtues of mosquito netting.
Mosquito nets are another inexpensive solution. See Nothing But Nets if you want to help.
The Nothing But Net drive faces implicit opposition chiefly from interests who claim poisoning with DDT is a better idea.
One wishes critics of Rachel Carson would show a bit of Christian charity, calling for bed nets, but avoiding unjustified and misinformed calumny against Carson and environmentalists, who have labored intensively for 40 years to fight malaria.
One gets the idea it’s not malaria these pundits worry about.
A few words about totalitarianism below the fold.
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88 Comments | Accuracy, DDT, Environmental protection, Junk science, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Religion, Science | Tagged: DDT, Malaria, Neil Simpson's unreason, Rachel Carson, Religion, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
February 13, 2008
The Waco Tribune published an opinion piece three weeks ago that I should have noted earlier. Trib columnist John Young noted that creationism isn’t science, and that generally creationists are not friends of science education (or any other education, sadly, not even Bible education).
Conditions surrounding Texas science standards, and education standards in general, have deteriorated very rapidly, with the chairman of the State Board of Education going on the warpath against mathematics, English and science teaching. For quick destruction to get the foolishness out of the way, one might hope he’ll go on the warpath against football and cheerleading. I’ve not had time to pass along all the sad details.
But then, not all crazies are stupid.
Earlier:
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111 Comments | Creationism, Education, Education quality, Evolution, TEKS, Texas | Tagged: Creationism, Education, Politics, Religion, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
February 11, 2008
It was easy to miss it in most Texas churches yesterday, but it was Evolution Sunday. Darwin’s birthday, February 12, comes this week.
Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Blow offered an explanation that deserves reading outside of Dallas. I think he’s a little optimistic, saying “hundreds” of preachers participate — in Texas? Really?
Blow writes:
“Evolution Sunday offers an opportunity to educate our congregations that science is a gift,” said the Rev. Timothy McLemore, senior pastor at Kessler Park United Methodist Church in Oak Cliff.
“If we believe God is truth, we don’t need to shrink from truth in whatever way it presents itself. We don’t have to be threatened.”
The State Board of Education is set to review and revise science curriculum standards in Texas. And Dr. McLemore said he is “deeply concerned” about attempts to inject religion-based “intelligent design” theories into science classes.
“It seems profoundly unhealthy,” he said. “Do we really want the government deciding what religious beliefs and viewpoints are taught in school? It’s our job to promote our understanding of faith, not the government’s job.”
Even in Texas. We can hope government officials in Texas are listening.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
February 6, 2008
King Canute* couldn’t hold back the tides.
Surely the Utah legislature doesn’t think they can hold back the rumblings of the Rocky Mountains, either — but the proposed legislation raises delectable questions about the role of government in preventing disasters, especially using zoning laws as the method of prevention.
Good discussion material for government, civics, geology and “integrated physics and chemistry (IPC).”
* Canute was a Viking. Is anyone from Pleasant Grove, Utah, wondering about the symbolism here, with the high school mascot being the Viking, and the town being located at the foot of the mountains, almost astride the Wasatch Fault?
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Leave a Comment » | geology, Government, Law, Science | Tagged: civics, Cnut the Great, earthquakes, geology, Government, King Canute, landslides, Law, Science, zoning | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
February 6, 2008
Must government agencies be “neutral” between science and non-science, between evolution and intelligent design?
The Texas Education Agency lost it’s long-time science curriculum expert Chris Comer last year in a sad incident in which Comer was criticized for siding with Texas education standards on evolution rather than remaining neutral between evolution and intelligent design.
Comes now Timothy Sandefur of the very conservative Pacific Legal Foundation with an article in the Chapman Law Review which argues that science is solid, a good way of determining good from bad, dross from gold. Plus, Sandefur refutes claims that evolution is religion, and so illegal in public schools. TEA’s position in the Comer affair is shown to be not defensible legally; Sandefur’s article also points out that the post-modern relativism of the TEA’s argument is damaging to the search for knowledge and freedom, too.
In short, Sandefur’s article demonstrates that the position of the Texas Education Agency is untenable in liberty and U.S. law.
Moreover, science is an essential part of the training for a free citizen because the values of scientific discourse — respect, freedom to dissent, and a demand for logical, reasoned arguments supported by evidence — create a common ground for people of diverse ethnicities and cultures. In a nation made up of people as different as we are, a commitment to tolerance and the search for empirically verifiable, logically established, objective truth suggests a path to peace and freedom. Our founding fathers understood this. Professor Sherry has said it well: “it is difficult to envision a civic republican polity — at least a polity with any diversity of viewpoints — without an emphasis on reason. . . . In a diverse society, no [definition of ‘the common good’] can develop without reasoned discourse.”
Science’s focus on empirical evidence and demonstrable theories is part of an Enlightenment legacy that made possible a peaceful and free society among diverse equals. Teaching that habit of mind is of the essence for keeping our civilization alive. To reject the existence of positive truth is to deny the possibility of common ground, to undermine the very purpose of scholarly, intellectual discourse, and to strike at the root of all that makes our values valuable and our society worthwhile. It goes Plato one better — it is the ignoble lie. At a time when Americans are threatened by an enemy that rejects science and reason, and demands respect for dog-mas entailing violence, persecution, and tyranny, nothing more deserves our attention than nourishing respect for reason.
III. CONCLUSION
The debate over evolution and creationism has raged for a long time, and will continue to do so. The science behind evolution is overwhelming and only continues to grow, but those who insist that evolution is false will continue to resist its promulgation in schools. The appeal to Postmo-dernism represents the most recent — and so far, the most desperate — attempt on the part of creationists to support their claim that the teaching of valid, empirically-tested, experimentally-confirmed science in government schools is somehow a violation of the Constitution. When shorn of its sophisticated-sounding language, however, this argument is beneath serious consideration. It essentially holds that truth is meaningless; that all ways of knowing — whether it be the scientist’s empirically tested, experimentally confirmed, well-documented theory, or the mumbo-jumbo of mystics, psychics, and shamans — are equally valid myths; and that government has no right to base its policies on solid evidence rather than supernatural conjurations. This argument has no support in epistemology, history, law, or common sense. It should simply not be heard again.
Chapman Law Review, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2008
Sandefur’s article is available online in .pdf format at the Social Science Research Network (SSRN).
Is anyone at the Texas Education Agency listening?
Tip of the old scrub brush to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
1 Comment | Biology, Creationism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Junk science, Law, Politics, Public education, Religion, Science, Separation of church and state, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network, Textbook Selection, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: Biology, Creationism, Evolution, Junk science, Law, Politics, public schools, Religion, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Hey, wasn’t there some environmentalist’s post here earlier? Someone defending Carson’s position? What happened?
That might have been the comment I deleted. I didn’t read the whole thing. The guy must have changed his email address, because my filter usually blocks him. He was the first guy I ever had to block for repeated inane arguments and personal attacks. I gave him a lot of chances but in the end he was just not worth the time to discuss anything with.