Culture Wars

Last week, Rick Perry made some factually false and deeply disturbing claims about how evolution is and ought to be taught in Texas. In the ensuing flurry of criticism (fueled by the fact that Perry simultaneously doubled down on his climate change denial), retired British biologist Richard Dawkins was invited to comment on the matter at the Washington Post's website. His piece opens by heaping bile on Perry and any political system that allows him to rise to a place of prominence, before repeating a typically Dawkinsian (somewhat florid, always passionate), but somewhat tangential defense…
Yesterday, Rick Perry commented "in Texas we teach both creationism and evolution in our public schools, because I figured you're smart enough to figure out which one is right." It got a lot of play, including my own post on the matter. PolitiFact Texas examined the issue, providing a nice summary of recent fights at the state board of education over evolution and creationism: We wondered whether heâs correct that creationism, the biblical explanation of human origins, and evolution, the scientific theory, are both taught in Texas public schools. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that…
I've already spoken to a reporter in Texas about this, but via Jamie Vernon we have video of Rick Perry telling a 4th grader in New Hampshire that he doesn't know the age of the earth, that Transcript: Student: How old do you think the earth is? Perry: How old do I think the earth is? You know what? I don't have any idea. I know it's pretty old, so it goes back a long, long way. I'm not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely how long, how old the earth is. I hear your mom was asking about evolution. You know, it's a theory that's out there. It's got some gaps in it, but in…
In his book Fed Up, Rick Perry came out solidly in the climate denial camp, repeating long-discredited claims of that the underlying science is fraudulent. ThinkProgress quotes him writing: For example, they have seen the headlines in the past year about doctored data related to global warming. They know we have been experiencing a cooling trend, that the complexities of the global atmosphere have often eluded the most sophisticated scientists, and that draconian policies with dire economic effects based on so-called science may not stand the test of time. Quite frankly, when science gets…
As you'll recall, I spoke toward the end of the public testimony at the Texas science standards supplements, so I departed from my prepared text a bit. Not, perhaps, my finest performance ever, due to the ad libbing. A bunch of other video is online from the hearings, including this stunning video of Vera Preston-Jaeger, who told the board "I am able to be here today because I am in a drug research study in Austin and I got the medicine rather than the placebo. When I was first diagnosed, I was told that I would go blind and die within four years, and I'm still here and I'm very glad to be…
I didn't blog about the debt ceiling becauseâ¦Â ugh. The idea that the Republican party would hold the country, and indeed the world economy, hostage is unimaginably awful. The idea that, in the midst of a recession barely worse than the Great Depression, we're talking about cutting government spending is also absurd. It's a failure of governance and of leadership. Far from being ashamed, Mitch McConnell is gloating about it. The Left is riled up, and righteously so. The problem is that most of the ire seems to be directed at the President, with talk of a primary challenge and so forth.…
In the comments on my post the other day about the importance of evidence in skepticism and science outreach, RBH leaves an interesting comment that's worth digging into a bit. I replied in the thread, RBH's invocation of the Overton Window struck me. He writes: We hear about the Dunning-Kruger effect; let's not forget about the Overton Window. In a lovely irony, it might be PZ's (alleged) ineffectiveness that enables Josh's (purported) effectiveness. It would be ironic indeed, but there's no reason to think it's true. RBH is a smart guy, and may well have a more sophisticated model of that…
Marie-Claire Shanahan has a couple of great posts up about the science of science education, and research on what it takes to actually change someone's mind. They're great posts, and hold the promise of many more insightful looks at the skills and approaches best suited to increasing science literacy. That's a topic of no small interest to me. In my recent posts about the National Science Board, in my testimony and backstage efforts in Texas, and in my workshop on Defending Evolution in the Classroom and Beyond at The Amazing Meeting! (to name this month's major projects), the focus is…
In discussing the National Science Board's latest stand on whether to report evolution literacy, and how to do so, I didn't get into the details of Jon Miller's concerns. Chris Mooney quotes that passage from the Science report, and raises some concerns. Science reported that the NSB will, in the 2014 Science and Engineering Indicators, report results of two questions: the standard true/false "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals" and another version in which people are asked "according to evolutionary theory, human beingsâ¦." An experiment with that…
A bit over a year ago, we reported on the removal of evolution from a report by the NSF's governing body, the National Science Board. The NSB is presidentially appointed and Senate confirmed, and sets broad policy for the NSF. Every other year, it publishes a report on Science and Engineering Indicators for the nation, and Chapter 7's discussion of public science literacy is what I always look at first. I was surprised to find evolution absent from the 2010 edition, and sleuthing by NCSE and others resulted in a report in Science magazine, that revealed some disturbing attitudes. Most…
Sorry for not posting an update last Friday, but I was in the Board meeting and then on a plane. I gather most of you found the news update at NCSE's website, where traffic hit record levels. As you recall, the Texas State Board of Education met on Thursday as the Committee of the Full Board to hear public testimony and to debate among themselves as much as was feasible. Friday was the official board meeting, when the final votes on new science supplements were taken. In the end, all of the good supplements were approved (some with minor tweaks still to be made) and the creationist…
As folks who follow me on twitter know, today was a pretty good day in Texas. I'm here watching the board vote on science supplements for public schools. I put together a 20 page report on the flaws in a supplement provided by International Databases, LLC, and presented it to the board. Most of the speakers opposed the ID, LLC supplement, and urged adoption of the supplements recommended by expert review committees. As often happens, board member Ken Mercer asked many of the folks who testified a series of carefully crafted questions, meant somehow to trap them. It wasn't totally obvious…
Tomorrow, I'll be speaking to the Texas Board of Education to urge them not to undermine science textbooks, and to reject any supplement that includes creationist content. The only textbook supplement I know of that was submitted containing such creationist content comes from a one-man publisher called International Databases. ID, LLC's supplement, not surprisingly, promotes IDC. If only that were its greatest flaw. The supplement is rife with errors, probably over a thousand all told. It doesn't address all the topics required from supplements. And there's this: I've driven from Salt Lake…
This Thursday, the Texas Board of Education will vote to adopt science textbook supplements. You'll recall that the board approved new science standards a couple years ago, and that they were a mixed bag. They dropped inaccurate language about "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories (language used to attack evolution in textbooks last time they did textbook adoption). But they stuck in a line about "all sides of the evidence," whatever that means, and inserted language requiring greater scrutiny for evolutionary concepts than for all others, and inserting creationist ideas about…
From last Thursday through Sunday, I was in Las Vegas at The Amazing Meeting!, a gathering of skeptics hosted by James "The Amazing" Randi. Randi, for those of you unschooled in these matters, was a stage magician who got involved in debunking the claims of psychics and other flimflam artists. He orchestrated a rather famous debunking of psychic Uri Geller on the Carson show (you can find it on Youtube). It was great to meet Randi, who urged us to give him copious hugs, and whose beard threatened to overwhelm the entire crowd of 1600 TAMmers. It was great, too, to watch magician Penn (of…
Remember when I invited readers to take a survey on the Miss USA evolution answers? And I was kinda vague about why I was doing it? At last it can be told, I was working on a guest blog post at Scientific American. You should read the whole thing, but here's the bit about how I used the survey data: Watching the video and reading the transcript, it is obvious that many contestants were conflicted in their views, and quite a few had to discover their views on the spot. Instead of mocking these women for struggling with the issue, it should be said that most Americans probably go through a…
I'm here in Las Vegas, and already my work is done. Genie Scott, Occidental College's Don Prothero, and I did a workshop at 9am today about Defending Evolution in Classrooms. Planning for this was complicated, because we wanted it to be a true workshop, i.e., to have interactive aspects, and time for people to work through exercises in small groups. But we didn't know what sort of crowd to expect for the first workshop of the first day. Chatting about our plan, we joked about how embarrassing it'd be if only 3 people showed up, but we planned for about 30, and made 60 copies of the…
In the course of my talk at TAM, I mentioned at one point "There's nothing so unfair as equal treatment of unequal ideas." Various people tweeted and retweeted it, so the line was clearly a hit. That's actually a misquotation (I was working from memory) of a line I've always loved, but have had a hard time tracking down. You often see the correct version attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but rarely with any citation accurate enough to confirm. In a 1950 Supreme Court dissent, Justice Felix Frankfurter said: "It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal…
Science Cheerleader Darlene Cavalier reports What you donât know about Ms. Virginia: Next week, Laura Eilers, AKA Ms. Virginia , will compete for the title of Ms. United States. The Science Cheerleadersâcurrent and former NFL and NBA cheerleaders pursuing science and engineering careersâare very fortunate to have Laura as our extremely talented choreographer and creative director. ⦠In school, her favorite science projects included âcreating an amoeba structure out of cookie cake and icing, researching anthropologist Dian Fossey and her work with gorillas, as well as engineering a balsa wood…
Long-time readers know that, last April and May, I invested a decent amount of time in tearing apart a book by conservative punditress S. E. Cupp. Cupp, a self-proclaimed atheist, had written a book defending the religious right, and she titled it Losing Our Religion: The Media's Attack on Christianity. Why, you may be asking, would an avowed atheist describe fundamentalism as "our religion"? I don't know. But she does, consistently adopting the fringiest, least atheist-friendly forms of Christianity as if they were the only form Christianity could take. Thus, she mocked Chris Matthews's…