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Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover of Biology
National Center for Science Education ^ | 18 April 2006 | Staff

Posted on 04/19/2006 3:57:51 AM PDT by PatrickHenry

A new article in PLoS Biology (April 18, 2006) discusses the state of scientific literacy in the United States, with especial attention to the survey research of Jon D. Miller, who directs the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University Medical School.

To measure public acceptance of the concept of evolution, Miller has been asking adults if "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals" since 1985. He and his colleagues purposefully avoid using the now politically charged word "evolution" in order to determine whether people accept the basics of evolutionary theory. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of Americans who reject this concept has declined (from 48% to 39%), as has the proportion who accept it (45% to 40%). Confusion, on the other hand, has increased considerably, with those expressing uncertainty increasing from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005.
In international surveys, the article reports, "[n]o other country has so many people who are absolutely committed to rejecting the concept of evolution," quoting Miller as saying, "We are truly out on a limb by ourselves."

The "partisan takeover" of the title refers to the embrace of antievolutionism by what the article describes as "the right-wing fundamentalist faction of the Republican Party," noting, "In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Missouri, and Texas all included demands for teaching creation science." NCSE is currently aware of eight state Republican parties that have antievolutionism embedded in their official platforms or policies: those of Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas. Four of them -- those of Alaska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas -- call for teaching forms of creationism in addition to evolution; the remaining three call only for referring the decision whether to teach such "alternatives" to local school districts.

A sidebar to the article, entitled "Evolution under Attack," discusses the role of NCSE and its executive director Eugenie C. Scott in defending the teaching of evolution. Scott explained the current spate of antievolution activity as due in part to the rise of state science standards: "for the first time in many states, school districts are faced with the prospect of needing to teach evolution. ... If you don't want evolution to be taught, you need to attack the standards." Commenting on the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover [Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al.], Scott told PLoS Biology, "Intelligent design may be dead as a legal strategy but that does not mean it is dead as a popular social movement," urging and educators to continue to resist to the onslaught of the antievolution movement. "It's got legs," she quipped. "It will evolve."


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS: biology; creationuts; crevolist; evomania; religiousevos; science; scienceeducation; scientificliteracy
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To: Mamzelle
" Science is not science unless it can be wrong."

Evolution and all the other sciences you disparaged can be wrong. ID is untestable. It can't ever be wrong, because any conceivable observation can be reconciled with it. Not so with evolution. Your ignorance of the subject does not change that fact.

" Stories cannot be wrong, they can only be bad."

Sure they can be wrong. I can make up a story about a paranoid woman who was jilted by an astronaut and who now has lost it and will attack anything remotely related to science. Oh wait, that one is true. Nevermind. :)
341 posted on 04/19/2006 1:37:56 PM PDT by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is grandeur in this view of life....")
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To: KMJames
Isn't that what Dembski is driving at in his work - some way of getting at or describing "eternal truths" mathematically, in his case regarding "design"?

One of the fundamental claims of the IDers is that it's possible to construct mathematical tests that distinguish between designed things and natural things. I haven't ever seen such a thing, but if someday somebody comes up with such a test, I'll be glad to consider it. But right now I have no reason to believe that such a test is possible. All I know is that Dembski, et al. want one, and that they expect it to tell them that organisms are designed and not natural.

342 posted on 04/19/2006 1:44:25 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: Right Wing Professor
" a local origin myth of a tribe of Middle-Eastern camel-herders"

Goat herders. There was a shortage of camels that year and besides, cheese made of goats milk was all the rage.

343 posted on 04/19/2006 1:47:30 PM PDT by b_sharp (A lack of tag line is not a)
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To: MissAmericanPie
"Because evolution is an unproven theory both should be taught. ID is just as valid a theory as evolution and swrim as you may there it is."

List all the 'proven' theories you know.

344 posted on 04/19/2006 1:48:44 PM PDT by b_sharp (A lack of tag line is not a)
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To: CarolinaGuitarman; Sir Francis Dashwood
SFD: "The human sense of sight is not acute enough to directly observe genetic changes..."

CG: But our observational skills are good enough to observe speciation.

If Sir Francis is right, there goes atomic theory.

345 posted on 04/19/2006 1:50:44 PM PDT by Gumlegs
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To: Mamzelle
Holy Hypocrites, Batman! And you accuse libertarians of whining? All you've done in this discussion is spit childish insults. If you're so bored by evolution, what in Darwin's name are you doing here?

Oh, wait. You're sticking your virtual nose into an arena in which you are woefully incapable of competing: a CRIDer specialty. In order for your claims about the frivolity of evolution to have any merit, you'd actually have to understand evolution, much less science in general. Oh, and then supply evidence of your claim. Get back with me when you've done this.

It would be appropriate for me to use your tactic and categorically insult the demographic to which you belong (an eye for an eye), but that would be unfair to those unfortunate enough to share that distinction with you. Hopefully, they will see the damage your type of, um, "thinking", does to their cause and you will become the marginalized voice you deserve to be.

346 posted on 04/19/2006 1:53:59 PM PDT by LibertarianSchmoe
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To: js1138
But no one has seen a squirrel evolve into a toaster. Or a raven into a writing desk.

No one ever said a raven turned into a writing desk. The question is "Why is a raven like a writing desk."

Perhaps it's for the same reason that fruit flies like a banana, but time flies like an arrow.

347 posted on 04/19/2006 1:56:19 PM PDT by Gumlegs
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To: MissAmericanPie
"I understand what you are saying, it's okay for science to censor religion, to demand it not be taught in public schools or taken seriously scientifically when it's explanation is far more reasonable than a cell turning itself into various other functions and species, but to ask science to stick to what it knows as fact, without theory, is censorship."

According to the main ID proponents, ID has nothing to do with religion or God.

According to science, ID has little to do with science.

What is more reasonable about a supernatural cause for our existence than a natural cause?

By the way, the cell did not turn itself into other uses or species, it simply reproduced itself and occasionally errors crept into that process.

348 posted on 04/19/2006 1:57:36 PM PDT by b_sharp (A lack of tag line is not a)
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To: Condorman

Hey you're welcome here where you will only have to worry about the porcupines and the mountain lions.


349 posted on 04/19/2006 2:00:31 PM PDT by furball4paws (Awful Offal)
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To: PatrickHenry
Hopefully, the professionals at the national level have learned from the Dover fiasco, and will keep Darwin out of politics.

What this really means: "Hopefully, the powers that be have learned their lesson that evolution will not be mocked or challenged in the public fora and will take firm and immediate action to shout down and crush dissent the moment it dares raise its voice.

350 posted on 04/19/2006 2:02:00 PM PDT by JCEccles
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To: b_sharp

And camels spit.


351 posted on 04/19/2006 2:02:22 PM PDT by furball4paws (Awful Offal)
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To: Physicist
...One of the fundamental claims of the IDers is that it's possible to construct mathematical tests that distinguish between designed things and natural things...

This, to me, is a very interesting subject, in that I make a living as a designer...perhaps the reason why I am interested in these crevo threads.

352 posted on 04/19/2006 2:05:07 PM PDT by KMJames
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To: Diamond
Not necessarily. It could imply common design rather than common ancestory.

Common design that across the range of genomes catalogued matches the expectations of common descent. A Designer who only apparently designs in nested hierarchies that appear (from the fossil record) to be modifications of earlier nested hierarchies. Yeah, right.

A designer doesn't have to match the expectations of common descent, yet the lunatic who designed life on earth apparently did so, for unfathomable reasons, according to you. If you want a design hypothesis with legs try millions of teams of competing designers, all starting with the same basic template, with the objective of destroying/subverting each others designs, and only allowed to work with successive slight modifications. A celestial God-game or a Raelian management training exercise. That is a design hypothesis that matches the evidence, but curiously we don't see that one coming from the design proponents.

353 posted on 04/19/2006 2:13:18 PM PDT by Thatcherite (Miraculous explanations are just spasmodic omphalism)
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To: Mamzelle
If science is not accountable, reproducible, verifiable by double-blinds, demonstrable, hangs by that thread of cruel anxiety...it's not important.

Like the science of Galileo and Copernicus? Oh, but of course...we enjoy the benefits of their science a mere hundreds of years after their work.

Everyone loves a story. Cosmologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, evolutionists--tell great stories. Some are plausible, many are entertaining, a few provoke insight.

But none of those "ists" tell a story considered "The Greatest Story Ever Told"....

Look what happens when an evolutionary notion is debunked after a better notions comes along

Look at what? It hasn't happened yet...

nobody dies from a bad reaction, no bridge falls down, no piece of shuttle garbage explodes.

Yes, yes...kind of like when a biblical story previously thought of as literal truth is shown to be figurative. But some of us can still hold the message as valid; faith doesn't HAVE to be as fragile as you think.

354 posted on 04/19/2006 2:14:02 PM PDT by LibertarianSchmoe
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To: MissAmericanPie
"And testing evolution hasn't moved it from the theory category into fact has it.

Theory never graduates to fact-hood. A theory is not supposition, nor is it a guess. Perhaps you should spend some time learning what a theory is and how it is developed?

"Evolution should not feel so threatened by ID as to go so far as to censor it. I thought democracy was suppose to be a market place of open ideas."

It sounds as if you are repeating ill understood but heartily desired sound bites from creationist sources.

Evolution is not threatened by ID on the level of science. That is simply not where the battle is taking place. ID attacked not just evolution but the scientific method, the very basis of science, at the political level. Just take a look at the 'Wedge Document' and the writings of Philip Johnson. If ID was traversing the science landscape in the same manner as any other science there would not be such a vociferous outcry from the scientific community. IDists have jumped over this step, simply because of a lack of research and scientific basis, and are now trying to infiltrate the minds of students through purely political means.

Being open to new ideas is a good thing. Accepting new ideas which are bereft of any corroborating evidence is bad. It is this type of floppy thinking that encourages people to believe in homeopathy, astrology, pyramid power, psychics and worst of all, Monday Night Football.

Should we put to vote the acceptance of heliocentrism?

"So far, evolutionists have only proven one theory, that they are scared spitless at the thought of both being taught.

Hardly. It is the Discovery Institute fellows who are afraid of having ID exposed for what it is, a non-science political movement. Aside from that, how exactly would you teach ID in science class?

Would you include Astrology as a serious science in astronomy class, Homeopathy as a serious science in health class (or chemistry class, or quantum physics class), Intelligent Falling as a serious science in Physics class?

355 posted on 04/19/2006 2:20:29 PM PDT by b_sharp (A lack of tag line is not a)
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To: Physicist; KMJames
One of the fundamental claims of the IDers is that it's possible to construct mathematical tests that distinguish between designed things and natural things. I haven't ever seen such a thing, but if someday somebody comes up with such a test, I'll be glad to consider it. But right now I have no reason to believe that such a test is possible. All I know is that Dembski, et al. want one, and that they expect it to tell them that organisms are designed and not natural.

Christians believe that the entire universe and everything in it is designed by God. No-one can show that this belief is false. It gives rise to the unfortunate consequence (for Dembski), however, that Dembski's marvellous "design filter" could never provide a false positive if he ever managed to construct such a filter. After all, everything is designed, so the design filter can never be wrong when it says of a particular object, "Yep, Design!". Spectacularly useless.

356 posted on 04/19/2006 2:22:27 PM PDT by Thatcherite (Miraculous explanations are just spasmodic omphalism)
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To: LibertarianSchmoe
re: Look what happens when an evolutionary notion is debunked after a better notion comes along.... Look at what? It hasn't happened yet...

Indeed? There are so many threads on FR I couldn't count them about "new" ideas in evolution. The latest and most interesting concerned a woman scientist (I noticed that, yes) who found tissue of a dinosaur--not a fossil, but some residual tissue--and calls into question either the assumed age of dinosaurs or the presumed decay-time of said dinosaur.

And the infantile sniggerings about a discovered "new" beaver really did the maturity of the FRevos proud!

Evo ideas are regularly abandoned. But they just fade into the cosmos with little dismay, along with other fairy tales gone stale. A bad pharmeceudical is accountable in a scientific way. It gets tested, it seems to cure, but fails.

Evolution can't fail, therefore it is not science.

357 posted on 04/19/2006 2:24:08 PM PDT by Mamzelle
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To: MissAmericanPie
"No but science will enter a public school and censor ID."

A more correct statement would be - 'No but science will enter a public school and censor non-science'.

Why should the scientific community allow a non-science be taught in a science class. You will note that there is no opposition to ID being taught in a philosophy or science history class. Science classes should teach science and only science. Liberal arts can teach the other stuff.

358 posted on 04/19/2006 2:27:37 PM PDT by b_sharp (A lack of tag line is not a)
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To: js1138
In another 200 years, creationists will have moved on to something else.

Courtesy of motorized goal-posts.....

359 posted on 04/19/2006 2:27:55 PM PDT by longshadow (FReeper #405, entering his ninth year of ignoring nitwits, nutcases, and recycled newbies)
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To: Mamzelle
EvolutionHeliocentrism can't fail, therefore it is not science.
360 posted on 04/19/2006 2:29:44 PM PDT by js1138 (~()):~)>)
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