13 questions evolution can answer, intelligent design cannot

January 18, 2009

Stephen Bratteng, a biology teacher at Westwood High School  in Austin put this together.  I got the list from him when I heard him testify in favor of solid science in biology textbooks, in hearings before the Texas State Board of Education in 2003.

Here are questions that evolution can answer, but intelligent design cannot.

If intelligent design cannot offer any insight into these things, but evolution can, why should we allow intelligent design or any other flaccid “alternative” to evolution into science classes?  (Here’s the Institute for Creation Research, spending hundreds of words to fog over their inability to answer a single one of the questions!)

Why not teach our children the best we know, rather than junk we don’t know at all?

Mr. Bratteng’s 13 Questions

  1. Why does giving vitamin and mineral supplements to undernourished anemic individuals cause so many of them to die of bacterial infections?
  2. Why did Dr. Heimlich have to develop a maneuver to dislodge food particles from people’s wind pipes?

    Dr. Henry Heimlich

    Dr. Henry Heimlich

  3. Why does each of your eyes have a blind spot and strong a tendency toward retinal detachment? But a squid whose eyesight is just as sharp does not have these flaws?
  4. Why are depression and obesity at epidemic levels in the United States?
  5. When Europeans came to the Americas, why did 90 percent of the Native Americans die of European diseases but not many Europeans died of American diseases?
  6. Why do pregnant women get morning sickness?
  7. Why do people in industrialized countries have a greater tendency to get Crohn’s disease and asthma?
  8. Why does malaria still kill over a million people each year?*
  9. Why are so many of the product Depends sold each year?
  10. Why do people given anti-diarrheal medication take twice as long to recover from dysentery as untreated ones?
  11. Why do people of European descent have a fairly high frequency of an allele that can make them resistant to HIV infection?
  12. Close to home: Why do older men often have urinary problems?

    Cedar tree near Austin, Texas

    Cedar tree near Austin, Texas

  13. And why do so many people in Austin get cedar fever?

Of course, I don’t have the list of all the answers!  (Can you help me out, Dear Reader?  List what you know in comments.)

Resources:

American Red Cross poster on Heimlich Maneuver, from BusinessInsider

American Red Cross poster on Heimlich Maneuver, from BusinessInsider

*  Update November 2016: Actually, malaria death rates have been below a million/year worldwide since 2000; in 2015, fewer than 470,000 people died. At other posts on this blog you can learn that most of this great progress against malaria has been accomplished without DDT.  Mr. Bratteng’s question remains valid, despite the happy decline in malaria deaths.

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17 Comments | Darwin, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Junk science, State school boards, Texas, Textbook Selection, Textbooks, Voodoo science, Woo | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas creationist eruptions

June 4, 2008

Not only is ICR appealing their case on granting creationism degrees for science teachers (see preceding post), the State Board of Education is gearing up for another battle in Commissar Don McLeroy’s War on Education and War on Science (two wars for the price of one!  He’ll campaign as a budget cutter next time . . .).

See the New York Times today, “Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy.”

Oy.

1 Comment | Creationism, Education, Politics, Religion, Science, Texas, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

That kid’s at it again

April 17, 2008

The kid in Kearny, New Jersey, who caught his U.S. history teacher peddling religion instead, is at it again.

This time he’s targeting a textbook on government — and it happens to be one written by the most right wing of the semi-mainstream government text writers.

Education Gadfly has the story here, with the Official Fordham Foundation cynicism at anyone who professes to be the the left of Ayn Rand (it’s an endearing cynicism, really — it makes the stuff much more readable, and it indicates that there is gray matter in action behind the comments).   CNBC  has the Associated Press story here.

Matthew LaClair complains about the book’s slant on climate change and church-state relations — two hot-button issues, to be sure.  One wonders why a government text has any view on climate change, and one wonders how anyone could get the church-state thing wrong without criminal intent — but go see for yourself.  LaClair, you recall, recorded his U.S. history teacher going on about the glories of Christianity, and blew the whistle.  For that Matthew got slapped around unjustly in the local media.  He was correct, before, about church state relations, so we might cut him some slack on this complaint. 

Read it all; and remember to trust your textbooks no farther than you can throw them.  The Bathtub tends to agree with the Gadfly that texts should be accurate, and that the selection processes for texts is out of hand (as defined by Diane Ravitch).  But on the other hand, it appears to me that James Q. Wilson and John Dilulio, the authors of the text in question, got some things wrong.  They can fix it, and do so with a smile.

Will they?

See also the other bias on the issue, from the Center for Inquiry — with a detailed critique.

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/

1 Comment | Academic freedom, Accuracy, Climate change, Government, History, Textbook Selection, Textbooks | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Boost geology, boost science education

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.

Evolution of tetrapods, from Kevin 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.”

Leave a Comment » | Biology, Education quality, Evolution, geology, Science, Textbooks | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A Christian’s view on biology textbooks

January 21, 2008

From Rob Dillon, president of South Carolinians for Science Education:

Creationism is a doctrine to which I, like most Christians, do not subscribe. It springs from a wrong understanding of the Word of God. And anybody who thinks he or she is going to impose his own personal narrow, vain, idolatrous doctrine on the children of this state as they sit helpless in their tenth grade Biology classrooms will have a fight on his hands. Again.

9 Comments | Accuracy, Biology, Creationism, Religion, Science, State school boards, Textbook Selection, Textbooks | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Analyses of proposed changes to Texas science standards

November 17, 2007

Before new science textbooks will be approved by the Texas State Board of Education, the Board is engaging in a review and possible rewriting of science standards. In the wake of the Board’s voting to require Texas high school graduates to get an additional year of science education, this should be a good sign of concern for tough standards and high quality education.

Science standard rewrites in other states have been seen as open season on evolution in biology, however. Ohio and Kansas experiences in the since 1999 suggest advocates of science and education should be wary. Texas is not known for strong support of evolution by education officials (a reputation that serious education officials should think hard about changing).

Texas Citizens for Science, a group assembled in 2003 to defend good science and especially evolution, is watching the SBOE actions. TCS President Steven Schafersman has shared his views on actions in the past month, in an e-mail to TCS members and supporters of good textbooks. For the record, I reproduce his e-mail text completely below the fold. This material is also available in different form at the TCS website.

Citizens still carry a lot of clout in government in this nation. Good science standards in textbooks require vigilance of such people. We thank them.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Education, Education quality, Evolution, Science and faith, Texas, Textbook Selection | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

History text accuracy: Okinawa mass suicides

October 25, 2007

Controversy surrounds history textbooks all over the world. Texans may be a bit more sensitive to the issues while the Texas Education Agency is revising curricula, but others are even more sensitive – such as Turkey, where controversy over the Armenian Genocide threatens to derail Turkey’s 40-year project to join the European Union; Japan, where citizens and other nations protest failures to mention harms done to people by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II; and even Europe in general, where controversy surrounds efforts to find a unifying, Europe-wide culture.

History is important in our relations with other nations. With increasing globalization, it becomes ever more important that all citizens have basic understanding of their local history, their national history, and world history, if only to avoid the social faux pas in socializing with people from other nations.

The issue is hot in Japan right now. Okinawa, a formerly independent kingdom annexed by Japan in the 19th century (did you know that?), hosted the biggest protest demonstration the island prefecture has ever seen, earlier this month – a protest over the changing of a few words in Japanese school history texts, removing the responsibility for mass suicides on Okinawa from the Japanese Imperial Army.

A story in the New York Times describes the anguish felt by Okinawans:

Brainwashed by Japanese Imperial Army soldiers into believing that victorious American troops would rape all the local women and run over the men with their tanks, Mr. Kinjo and others in his village here in Okinawa thought that suicide was their only choice. A week before American troops landed and initiated the Battle of Okinawa in March 1945, Japanese soldiers stationed in his village gave the men two hand grenades each, with instructions to hurl one at the Americans and then to kill themselves with the other.

Most of the grenades failed to explode. After watching a former district chief break off a tree branch and use it to kill his wife and children, Mr. Kinjo and his older brother followed suit.

”My older brother and I struck to death the mother who had given birth to us,” Mr. Kinjo said in an interview at the Naha Central Church, where he is the senior minister. ”I was wailing of course. We also struck to death our younger brother and sister.”

Mr. Kinjo agreed to tell his story again because the Japanese government is now denying, in new high school textbooks, that Okinawans had been coerced by Imperial troops into committing mass suicide.

The proposed changes to the school textbooks — the deletion of a subject, the change to the passive voice — amounted to just a couple of words among hundreds of pages. But the seemingly minor grammatical alterations have led to swelling anger in the Okinawa islands in Japan, cresting recently in the biggest protest here in at least 35 years and stunning the Japanese government.

How should texts deal with such issues?

China and Korea also protested the rewrite. Hot button issues involve the Japanese invasion and taking of Nanking in 1937, generally known to western historians as “the rape of Nanking;” Japanese treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs), including the Bataan Death March in the Philippines, what amounted to slave labor using POWs in Japan, and Korean women impressed into service as prostitutes to the Japanese Army, at what are euphemistically called “comfort stations.”

Texas history standards writers may benefit from taking a look at some of these other controversies, in other places. These lessons can apply to Texas and U.S. history, where Anglo and European colonist treatment of aboriginal natives is certainly an issue, but also to subjects such as biology and the treatment of evolution, health and the treatment of preventing sexually-transmitted diseases, and environmental science, and the treatment of pollution and climate change issues.

3 Comments | History, History Revisionism, Teaching, Textbook Selection, Textbooks, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

History of public health victories in the U.S.

October 19, 2007

I wish U.S. history texts for public schools would invest more in the history of public health practice in the U.S.  Much of our prosperity can be traced to good public health practices — the wide availability of generally safe drinking water, effective systems to remove sewage and garbage, and other work to diminish illness.

So, in quick note form pirated directly from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (and because this has been hanging fire in my “to edit” box for way too long), here are some public health achievements I think the textbook editors need to consider for the next editions: 

Ten Great Public Health Achievements — United States, 1900-1999

  • Vaccination
  • Motor-vehicle safety
  • Safer workplaces
  • Control of infectious diseases
  • Decline in deaths from coronary heart disease and stroke
  • Safer and healthier foods
  • Healthier mothers and babies
  • Family planning
  • Fluoridation of drinking water
  • Recognition of tobacco use as a health hazard

More internet friendly version here, with links to articles on each one:

http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/tengpha.htm

Here are the details.

Much more available. Here is a site, with a good section talking about careers in public health (for those career planning courses out there). Here’s a similar, less wowee site from the American Schools of Public Health (ASPH). Ethics issues here.

I include the links — there is no reason you can’t add this to your courses, especially in the sections that meet the standards on discussion of achievements of technology.  Surely these are technological achievements of great merit.

4 Comments | History, Public education, Public health, TEKS | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fearful IDists can’t meet ethics challenge in Dallas

April 10, 2007

Advocates of intelligent design at the Discovery Institute have been rattled by the strong showing of scientists at Southern Methodist University who called their bluff, and questioned SMU for hosting an ID conference this week. SMU’s officials pointed out they were just renting out facilities, and not hosting the conference at all.

The ID conference, with special religious group activities preceding it, is scheduled for April 13 and 14 at SMU. It is a rerun of a similar revival held in Knoxville, Tennessee, last month. The conference features no new scientific research, no serious science sessions with scientists looking at new research, or new findings from old data.

In return, ID advocates “challenged” scientists to show up at a creationist-stacked function Friday evening. To the best of my knowledge, all working scientists declined the invitation, on the understanding that in science, there is no debate.

This morning’s Dallas Morning News features the expected desperation move by Discovery Institute officials Bruce Chapman and John West. They accuse the scientists of being “would-be censors.”

This is highly ironic coming from the group that spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to convince the Texas State Board of Education to censor and bowdlerize* Texas biology books in 2003.  (*  Thanks, Jim Dixon)

But go read the stuff for yourself. Some of us have real work to do today, and there is not time for the appropriate, godly Fisking this piece deserves right now. (Readers? Friends?)

My dander is up, however, and I offer a counter challenge:

Discovery Institute, what is it you’re afraid of? Let’s meet, and discuss the ethical challenges you’ve experienced in this discussion. Specifically, let’s discuss:

One, your misrepresentation of the science of Darwin, and your repeated attempts to mislead school officials — remember the claim in Ohio that federal law requires discussion of intelligent design? Was that a hoax that fell flat, or an honest misunderstanding? In any case, we still await your disowning of the falsehood, years later.

Two, your support of unethical screeds against science and scientists. I’ll mention one here: You need to disown the dishonest and unethical work of Jonathan Wells. Look at his book, Icons of Evolution, which is promoted at your website. I call your attention to his chapter of misinformation against the work of Bernard Kettlewell on peppered moths. Check out the citations in his chapter. If one believes his footnotes, there are many scientists who support his views on Kettlewell’s pioneering and still valid work. You need to acknowledge that the footnotes are ethically challenged; you need to acknowledge in print that each of the scientists involved, and others, have disowned Wells’ work and said that his claims misrepresent their work and the status of science. In polite, scientific terms, these people have called Wells a prevaricator. You still promote his screed as valid.

Three, your support of name-calling must stop. Especially, you need to pull your support from books, conferences, and editorial pieces that say evolution was a cause of the Holocaust. The attempts to connect Darwin to Hitler are scurrilous, inaccurate, unethical and unholy.

Chapman, West, the Methodist Church does not endorse your views on evolution, and if they understood your tactics I suspect they would disown your tactics as well. You are guests on a campus that does serious science work and also hosts people of faith. You need to bring your organizations ethical standards up to a higher level.

You want a debate? The science journals are open — the federal courts have repeatedly found that claims of bias against you are completely unfounded (untrue, that is . . . well, you understand what I’m trying to say politely, right?). The journals await your research reports.

All of science has been awaiting your research reports for years, for decades. (Here’s one famous case: “Three Years and Counting,” at Pharyngula (a science-related blog run by an evolutionary biologist).

You want to debate? Stop hurling epithets, and bring evidence.

As an attorney, parent, teacher, and reader of Texas biology textbooks, I’d be pleased to debate your need to change your ways. The debate needs to focus on your methods and ethics. Are you up to it?

Earlier posts of interest:

16 Comments | Accuracy, Bad Quotes, Blog Against Theocracy, Bogus history, Business Ethics, Charles Darwin, Darwin, Ethics, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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