Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

State board deals preliminary victory to pro-evolution advocates
(By Molly Bloom, Austin American-Statesman, January 22, 2009)

The State Board of Education this afternoon rejected efforts to continue to require Texas children to learn the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories such as evolution.

Two motions to leave that language, or similar phrasing, in place failed. It was a defeat for a group of conservative board members who have been pushing to keep the phrase, which has been part of the Texas science curriculum for all public school students since 1988.

The board is considering a draft document crafted by a committee of teachers and other education experts who had recommended replacing the “strengths and weaknesses” phrase with a requirement to “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations.” Some who supported removing the “strengths and weaknesses” phrase from state science standards have argued that the phrase can promote the teaching of creationism alongside evolution.

Today’s votes were by a committee of the board. Members will vote again on Friday on the state science standards. The board will hold a final vote at its March meeting.

Texas science standards determine what material must be covered in textbooks, discussed in classrooms and covered on standardized tests.

Board member Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, moved to reinsert the “strengths and weaknesses” phrase this afternoon.

“I think the safest and best route to go, then, is to keep the exact language as it currently exists, which has been tried and true for two decades.” said Dunbar, whose district includes Williamson County and parts of Travis County. “It has in no way risen to the level of a government agency of any kind (being involved in) inappropriate religious activity.”

Her initial motion was defeated by a 7-7 vote, with board member Rene Nunez, D-El Paso, absent from the room. Dunbar’s subsequent motion " require students to evaluate scientific theories “by examining scientific evidence supportive or not supportive of those explanations” instead of by evaluating “strengths and weaknesses” " was also defeated.

Board member Mavis Knight, D-Dallas, who voted against both of Dunbar’s amendments, said the longevity of the “strength and weaknesses” language did not mean that it was appropriate.

“The ‘strengths and weaknesses’ phrase has taken on a different meaning from what it might have meant perhaps 10 years ago or 20 years ago,” Knight said.

Several board members said Dunbar’s motions echoed the board’s decision last year to reject recommendations from a teachers’ working group regarding state language arts standards.

“We appointed individuals, educators " good solid people " to review the (standards) in science. They made a recommendation, and again we are taking this away from what the educators have indicated to us is the best wording,” said Bob Craig, R-Lubbock, who voted against both of Dunbar’s motions.

Replacing the requirement that students be taught “strengths and weakness” with a requirement that they learn to “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations “allows discussion,” Craig said. “It allows free thinking. It puts it in scientific terms.”

The State Board of Education this afternoon rejected efforts to continue to require Texas children to learn the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories such as evolution.

"...observant scientific types like me."

Texas education board approves science standards that don't include evolution 'weaknesses'
(By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News, January 24, 2009)

AUSTIN " State Board of Education members tentatively approved new science curriculum standards Friday that scrap a longtime requirement that students be taught the "weaknesses" in the theory of evolution.

The action came after board members aligned with social conservatives were unable to muster enough support on the 15-member board to retain the rule in a preliminary vote Thursday. The decision was a major setback for the seven Republican board members, who argued vigorously for keeping the "weaknesses" requirement.

However, evolution critics scored a minor victory when a majority of board members agreed to an amendment that calls for students to discuss the "sufficiency or insufficiency" of Charles Darwin's tenet that humans and other living things have common ancestors.

The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based organization that sought to preserve the "weaknesses" rule, said the amendment and another similar change adopted by the board would make it easier for teachers and students to raise questions about the theory of evolution. The institute promotes an alternative explanation for the origin of man, one that says life on earth is the result of "intelligent design" by an unknown being or entity.

John West, an associate director of the institute, said the changes will let students analyze "some of the most important and controversial aspects of modern evolutionary theory such as the fossil record and universal common descent."

Representatives for the Texas Freedom Network, which fought to scuttle the "weaknesses" rule, said it will seek to rescind the amendments by social conservatives when the board has a final vote on the curriculum standards in March.

The changes "could provide a small foothold for teaching creationist ideas and dumbing down biology instruction in Texas," said TFN president Kathy Miller, adding that science teachers and college professors will review the changes and make recommendations before the March board meeting.

She also called the board decision against requiring weaknesses of evolution to be taught "a very important victory for sound science education."

All three Dallas-area board members opposed the "weaknesses" rule, citing the recommendations of a review committee of science teachers and academics who contended it would undermine teaching of Darwin's theory. Those board members were Republicans Geraldine Miller of Dallas and Pat Hardy of Weatherford, and Democrat Mavis Knight of Dallas.

Approved on a voice vote, the new curriculum standards spell out not only how evolution is to be covered, but also what is supposed to be taught in all science classes in elementary and secondary schools, as well as provide the material for state tests and textbooks over the next decade.

Split Outcome in Texas Battle on Teaching of Evolution
(By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr., The New York Times, January 24, 2009)

AUSTIN, Tex. " Moderates on the Texas Board of Education prevailed over conservatives Friday when, in a battle over the teaching of evolution, the board voted to drop a 20-year-old mandate that science teachers explore with their students the “strengths and weaknesses” of all theories.

Still, the conservative faction, led by the board’s chairman, Dr. Don McLeroy, managed to pass several amendments to the state’s science curriculum that opponents say would open the door to teaching objections to evolution and might encourage students to reject it.

Chief among these amendments is one that would compel science teachers to instruct students about aspects of the fossil record that do not neatly fit with the idea of species’ gradually changing over time, like the relatively sudden appearance of some species and the fact that others seem to remain unchanged for millions of years.

Dr. McLeroy, a dentist from College Station who describes himself as “a Darwin skeptic,” said during debate on Thursday that students should know that the fossil record does not depict a clean picture of gradual changes.

But some defenders of evolution said the amendment was intended to engender doubt in students about what most biologists accept as fact: that evolution occurs, even if there is debate about how and why.

Friday’s voting capped two days of discussion on the state’s science standards, which are routinely revisited every 10 years. But the final vote does not come until March.

Whatever the 15-member board decides then will have consequences far beyond Texas, since the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks in the nation. The new standards will be in place for the next decade, starting in 2010, and will influence the writing of the next generation of biology texts, which the state will order this summer.

Though the requirement to teach strengths and weaknesses of theories was first adopted here two decades ago, teachers have largely ignored it. But it has taken on new importance in recent years, as groups questioning Darwinism have invoked the mandate in raising objections to evolution’s being taught to the exclusion of other theories.

This year, a panel of science teachers charged with the once-a-decade rewriting of the curriculum recommended dropping the standard and requiring instead that students “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical data.”

Many mainstream biologists say most of the objections like Dr. McElroy’s can be explained under Darwin’s theory. They accuse dissenting scientists of twisting the evidence to promote the notion of a divine hand guiding creation, an approach known as intelligent design. The federal courts have ruled that public schools’ teaching of either creationism or intelligent design violates the separation of church and state.

But even as evolution’s opponents have lost in the courts in recent years, they have gained ground on the Texas school board and now hold 7 of the 15 seats. In deliberations on Thursday, conservatives fought hard to keep the strengths-and-weaknesses standard, arguing that it protected the rights of students and some teachers to question evolution’s underpinnings.

“This is a battle of academic freedom,” said one member, Ken Mercer, a San Antonio Republican. “This is a battle over freedom of speech.”

But the board’s Democrats and moderate Republicans said the change recommended by the panel of teachers left plenty of room for teachers to raise problems with the theory. In the end, the conservative faction could not garner the eight votes it needed.

Still, critics of modern evolutionary theory hailed the board’s decision to ask students to learn more about what skeptics of Darwinism see as puzzles in the fossil record.

“They did something truly remarkable today,” John G. West of the Discovery Institute, a group that questions Darwinism, said in a statement. “They voted to require students to analyze and evaluate some of the most important and controversial aspects of modern evolutionary theory.”

Some biologists, however, said Dr. McLeroy’s amendment had handed teachers a hopelessly muddled task. They said species evolve at different rates " sometimes gradually, sometimes rapidly, sometimes remaining unchanged for eons " and that this has nothing to do with whether they share a common ancestor.

The amendment “makes no sense to me,” said David M. Hillis, a prominent professor of biology at the University of Texas, adding, “It’s a clear indication that the chairman of the state school board doesn’t understand the science.”

The anti-science group is probably cultivating new texts and resources that carefully demean the work of a million geologists. Discovery Institute will find itself spread eagle on a picket fence over this because , in their primal confessions , they yield to and accept the evidence provided by the geosciences. Even Behes first book, on page 6 displays what he fully believes as accurate, and this includes the geologic record of a planet that is 4.55 BY old, and the common descent of species.

The purpose of Explore Evolution, is to examine the scientific controversy about Darwin's theory, and in particular, the contemporary version of the theory known as neo-Darwinism. Whether you are a teacher, a student, or a parent, this book will help you understand what Darwin's theory of evolution is, why many scientists find it persuasive, and why other scientists question the theory or some key aspects of it.

Sometimes, scientists find that the same evidence can be explained in more than one way. When there are competing theories, reasonable people can (and do) disagree about which theory best explains the evidence.

Furthermore, in the historical sciences, neither side can directly verify its claims about past events. Fortunately, even though we can't directly verify these claims, we can test them. How? First, we gather as much evidence as possible and look at it carefully. Then, we compare the competing theories in light of how well they explain the evidence.

Looking at the evidence and comparing the competing explanations will provide the most reliable path to discovering which theory, if any, gives the best account of the evidence at hand. In science, it is ultimately the evidence-and all of the evidence-that should tell us which theory offers the best explanation. This book will help you explore that evidence, and we hope it will stimulate your interest in these questions as you weigh the competing arguments.

The anti-science group

Only one whos allowed that is spendi and hes just a self admitted flake.

Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England by Steve Jones Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins by Adrian Desmond and James Moore
The Sunday Times review by John Carey
Darwin's theory of evolution is often imagined to be the result of his voyage to the Galapagos Islands aboard HMS Beagle. But as Steve Jones points out at the start of his enthralling book, he spent only five weeks in the Galapagos, whereas for 40 years following the Beagle's return he explored the biology and geology of Britain, crisscrossing the land in search of specimens that he took back to his experimental station and family home at Down House in Kent. During this time he wrote 19 books and hundreds of scientific papers, totalling 6m words. Their subjects ranged from barnacles, orchids, insect-eating plants and earthworms to the expression of emotions in dogs, apes and people. But they all contributed to his great evolutionary idea, which was perhaps the most world-changing thought anyone has ever had.

Darwin's Island takes us through the projects and experiments of those 40 years. What constantly astonishes is the homeliness of Darwin's methods. He had none of the expensive equipment modern science requires, just the simple aids available to any Victorian gentleman botanist. But his strengths were indefatigable curiosity and imaginative sympathy with the natural world. Jones's chapter on climbing plants, for example, is both a masterpiece of science writing and a revelation of Darwin's almost poetic sensitivity. Why, he wondered, did plants grow towards the light? What made them reach their tendrils towards supports and twine round them? He found that if he buried a plant in sand the tip would still grow. Clearly the tip was sensitive to light, and it seemed to act, he wrote, like the brain in an animal,collecting information about the world and directing the plant's movements accordingly. But if that were so, the tip must have some way of communicating with the rest of the plant, telling its buried roots about the change of seasons, or instructing the leaves to fall in autumn. There must, he deduced, be a chemical messenger that passes down through the plant carrying the tip's instructions. He was right, and what he had discovered was the first known hormone, though the chemical that carried the messages was not extracted and identified until 40 years after his death.

Besides disclosing the beautiful ingenuities of Darwin's thought, Jones updates Darwin's science. With dazzling versatility he traverses the field of modern genetics to show how evolutionary theory has become fact, and how DNA evidence, together with the fossil record, has allowed Darwin's speculations about past biological events to be confirmed, extended and given approximate dates. We now know that humans are related not just to chimpanzees and gorillas but to plants and bacteria. Humans and chimps separated into distinct species 5m to 7m years ago, and their common ancestor broke away from the gorilla line about 1m years before that. Genetic evidence sheds light on more recent developments in human history. Louse DNA shows that the body louse and the head louse separated some 50,000 years back, and this, Jones suggests, may mark the moment when humans first wore clothes, giving the louse a new place to live.

Crossovers between what seem different parts of creation were crucial to Darwin's theory. Insecteating plants fascinated him because they developed the equivalent of teeth, gullets and stomachs, like animals. Jones shows how enormously, and how surprisingly, modern genetics has added to this kind of knowledge. Touch genes have been identified in plants, which are activated by a drop of rain or a gust of wind. More than 500 parts of DNA respond when a leaf is prodded. The touch genes in plants are related to genes in young rats that are activated when they are caressed by their mothers. If they are not caressed, their physical and emotional growth is stunted. Some of the signal proteins that plants use to detect touch resemble the molecules that control our heartbeats and switch on the hormones that determine our growth. As Jones accumulates his evidence, the vision of the relatedness of all life becomes more and more breathtaking. I have never read a book that made me gasp with amazement so often.

Darwin was worried about the dangers of inbreeding, since he had married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and feared this might have caused the death of their young daughter Annie. Pollinating cowslips in his greenhouse he found that female flowers of one strain were readier to accept pollen from males of another, rather than their own. Could this mean nature abhorred inbreeding? Again, he was right, and modern genetics have shown why. Inbreeding, Jones explains, carries perils because damaged genes may become harmful when inherited in double copy. Plants accept or reject pollen on genetic grounds. The female parts judge male cells by comparing their genes with their own, and reject any pollen grain if it is too alike. Animals have similar safeguards. The smell of a male mouse's urine conveys important genetic information to female mice, who avoid males with the same odour and the same family history as themselves. Our noses have grown dull, so we can no longer smell our close relatives. But rats can still sniff out human kinship, distinguishing between sweat-soaked shirts that have been worn by brothers and those belonging to cousins.

It is unlucky for Adrian Desmond and James Moore that their book should have come out at the same time as Darwin's Island, since the case they make out is bound to look narrow and reductive when compared with Jones's world of wonders. For all that, Darwin's Sacred Cause is prodigiously researched and propelled by its own excitements, though they are political as much as scientific. Their argument is that Darwin was driven not simply by a zeal for scientific knowledge but by a moral passion. His motive was hatred of black slavery and the cruelties it sanctioned. On the Beagle voyage he had witnessed the treatment of slaves in South America and been revolted by it. He was haunted by the scream of a tortured slave he had overheard in Brazil. The Darwins and Wedgwoods were all ardent abolitionists, and he joined the family crusade. In the run-up to the American civil war, scientists who sided with the slave-owning South argued that the black and white races were separate species, and Darwin's conviction, confirmed by modern genetics, that they share a common ancestor was abhorrent to them.

The Desmond-Moore case would be damaging to Darwin if they were suggesting that he had allowed political considerations to influence his scientific findings. But it seems clear they are not. In the Origin of Species he proposed that the different breeds of dogs did not have a common ancestor, but were descended from various wild stocks. A friend pointed out that this played into the slave-owners' hands, since they believed the same of humans. Desmond and Moore quote Darwin's reply, which was that he would “infinitely prefer the theory of single origin in all cases” if the facts allowed it, but they did not. Darwin's Sacred Cause does not question Darwin's scientific integrity, but illustrates his hatred of cruelty. In that respect it examines a particular aspect of the sympathy with other organisms - human, animal and plant - that Jones's book explores with such bravura.

More than 500 parts of DNA respond when a leaf is prodded.

Darwin was worried about the dangers of inbreeding, since he had married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and feared this might have caused the death of their young daughter Annie.