Posted by PZ Myers on February 19, 2005 | Comments (324) | TrackBack (1)

Yet another school board is contemplating defacing science textbooks with warning stickers (Memphis Commercial Appeal, free reg. req.). Yet again, it's driven by religious interests rather than any desire to improve the quality of science teaching.

The same school board member who helped establish a Bible class in Shelby County Schools is pushing for a creation message on high school biology books.

County school board member Wyatt Bunker, who believes the Bible is the inerrant word of God, said he's concerned that students are being taught only scientific theories such as evolution and the Big Bang.

Continue reading  “Evolving textbook stickers”

Posted by Reed A. Cartwright on February 18, 2005 | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Georgia’s House Bill 179 was tabled by the education committee after hearing comments from the bill’s sponsor, a couple of biologists, and some education groups.  Most of the education committee are former educators and didn’t like the anti-science content of the bill, its opposition to local control, its unfunded mandate, and the need to buy new textbooks and write a new curriculum to match the bill.

Although many people spoke against the bill, the education committee only asked questions from Rep. Bridges, its lone supporter.  He argued that schools should teach facts not theories.  (Although, that is not in his bill, that is how he describes his bill.  Go figure.)  The education committee questioned him on his (mis)use of scientific terminology and whether he had issues with hypotheses.

See that wasn’t hard; was it?

Posted by Steve Reuland on February 18, 2005 | Comments (18) | TrackBack (0)

Carl Zimmer tells us in two must-read posts:

Eyes, Part One: Opening Up the Russian Doll.

Eyes, Part Two: Fleas, Fish, and the Careful Art of Deconstruction.

Enjoy!

Posted by Dr.GH on February 17, 2005 | Comments (133) | TrackBack (1)

An editorial in the “The News Record,” a student newspaper associated with the University of Cincinnati by Scout Foust was brought to my attention late in the afternoon on 15 Feb. I was both insulted, and saddened at the gross incompetence and ignorance it represents.  Mr. Foust, a fourth year student in German Literature, titled his editorial, Evolution perpetuates racist ideologies: Blacks shouldn’t back evolution.

Scout Foust was allowed to publish a baseless slander of not evolution, which as a science will take no notice, but of the hundreds of thousands of scientists who work and teach in disciplines related to evolutionary theory.  Evolution is such a powerful truth that this encompasses nearly every science discipline.  The Editors of  “The News Record” have failed their responsibility to their readers.  Further, such an incompetent article reflects very badly on their newspaper, the University of Cincinnati, and the Department that had the dubious task of educating Mr. Foust.  Nor have the Editors done Mr. Foust personally any favor, as he now is exposed as an incompetent on a national level.  A few hours of internet research reveals that Mr. Foust’s editorial is little more than a string of creationist sites’ propaganda weakly edited together and presented without attribution.  In other words, Mr. Foust is not only incompetent on matters relating to history and science, he is also exposed as a plagiarist.

Continue reading  “Creationist Hate Mongering”

Posted by Timothy Sandefur on February 17, 2005 | Comments (88) | TrackBack (1)

The Texas Tech Law Review recently published an article about evolution disclaimers, which contains some interesting arguments about the creationism/evolution controversy generally. Chad Edgington, Disclaiming Darwin Without Claiming Creation: The Constitutionality of Textbook Disclaimers And Their Mutually Beneficial Effect on Both Sides of the Origins Debate, 5 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 135 (2004). Edgington (whose article was published before the Cobb County decision) argues "not only...that disclaimers which call for a critical approach to evolution are constitutional, but that a liberal policy allowing for their placement in textbooks is the most satisfactory solution to controversy surrounding the teachings of origins." Id. at 138.

Continue reading  “The heckler's veto over evolution”

Posted by Reed A. Cartwright on February 17, 2005 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The voting for the Koufax awards ends tomorrow.  The Panda’s Thumb is a finalist in the Best Group Blogs cateogry.  If you like us and haven’t already voted, please vote for The Panda’s Thumb to help us win.

The election is over, but creationism isn’t.

P.S. You can also vote for PZ’s Pharyngula as the Best Expert Blog.

Posted by PZ Myers on February 17, 2005 | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

Creationists come up with the weirdest criticisms. Serge at Imago Dei disagrees with my claim that humans build their face using "the same embryonic foundation that fish use to build gills", calling them "pharyngeal phantasies". He bases this on the peculiar notion that there ought to be a simple one-to-one mapping of cranial nerves to pharyngeal arches, and that by his understanding of the arrangement, the cranial nerve that innervate the derivatives of the first pharyngeal arch in us (the trigeminal nerve) ought to innervate the first gill arch in teleosts.

These are both false assumptions. I'll explain why.

Continue reading "Creationist Confusion about pharyngeal homologies" (on Pharyngula)

Posted by Ed Brayton on February 17, 2005 | Comments (33) | TrackBack (0)

Bobby Maddex, senior editor of Crux magazine, has replied to my criticism of inaccuracies that were present in accounts of the Sternberg/Smithsonian situation written by him and by John Coleman. While Coleman responding reasonably and graciously, thanking me for pointing out the inaccuracies and making the requisite corrections, Maddex chooses instead to complain, without justification, about his mistreatment. Along the way, he also adds a few more inaccurate statements to the ones initially criticized. For a full fisking of his reply, see this post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Posted by Timothy Sandefur on February 17, 2005 | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

In the same vein as Don Boudreaux's recent comments, Will Wilkinson has this article on markets and evolutionary psychology.

Posted by Jack Krebs on February 16, 2005 | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

Opportunity to comment on the Science Curriculum Standards Draft and the Intelligent Design/creationist Proposals (Minority Report) on the Kansas Department of Education’s (KSDE) website.

From Kansas Citizens for Science:

One part of the Kansas state Board of Education’s recent Resolution concerning the science standards was to “collect comments from the public regarding the various proposed changes to the Science Curriculum Standards, either contained within the Science Curriculum Standards Draft or contained within the Minority Report.”  KSDE has set up a webpage where one can offer comments on either or both of these.

Furthermore, the Resolution instructed KSDE to “make the raw data available to the members of the Board, and to deliver to the KSBE a report that will organize the data into categories of (a) how many respondents were within Kansas; (b) the number of respondents that generally supported and generally opposed the various areas of input.”

We urge you to go to here and comment.  We understand that science is not established by public vote, and that this survey is merely a vehicle for trying to legitimize inserting Intelligent Design creationism-influenced claims into the standards.  However, as long as the survey is there, we need to respond.

Continue reading  “Wanted: Comments on Kansas Standards”

Posted by Nick Matzke on February 16, 2005 | Comments (23) | TrackBack (0)

Pop quiz: name the state that still has, officially on the books, an “equal time” provision for creationism, in defiance of the 1987 Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard and much additional case law?  No, not Alabama, although they do still have Evolution Warning Labels mandated in all biology textbooks.

That’s right, it’s Kentucky, future home of the $25 million dollar creationism museum run by Answers in Genesis.  We are actually coming up on the 15th anniversiary of Kentucky Revised Statute 158.177, which has been in place since July 13, 1990.  If you don’t believe me, read this article in the Cincinnati Enquirer. 

The Enquirer quotes the statute, which I reproduce below:

Continue reading  “Creationism in Kentucky”

Posted by Nick Matzke on February 16, 2005 | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

I would like to alert readers to a feature story that came out today in the Tuscon Weekly.  “Evolution Revolution” reviews the evolution/creationism issue nationally and in Arizona, and takes the time to explore issues in a bit of depth.  Project Steve gets a mention, always a bonus.

Continue reading  “Tucson Weekly story”

Posted by Jason Rosenhouse on February 16, 2005 | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0)

There is a truly excellent op-ed from Barry Lynn today in The Houston Chronicle. Here's an excerpt I especially liked:

Phillip Johnson, a former law professor who pioneered intelligent design, told a conservative religious audience a few years ago that his goal is to use intelligent design to spread doubts about evolution and then introduce people to “the truth” of the Bible and “the question of sin.” Ultimately, Johnson said, he wants people to be “introduced to Jesus.”

If the end result of what you are doing is aimed at religious conversion, then it's evangelism, not science. It belongs in a house of worship, not a public school.

Well said.

Alas, not everyone agrees with Lynn. The Discovery Institute's Seth Cooper has weighed in with a sulky blog entry about it.

But Cooper allows blogger Darrick Dean do the heavy lifting for him. Over at EvolutionBlog I have posted entries about Lynn, Cooper and Dean, available here, here and here, respectively. Enjoy!

Posted by Yang Yang on February 16, 2005 | Comments (393) | TrackBack (0)

With any tavern, one can expect that certain things that get said are out-of-place. But there is one place where almost any saying or scribble can find a home: the bathroom wall. This is where random thoughts and oddments that don’t follow the other entries at the Panda’s Thumb wind up. As with most bathroom walls, expect to sort through a lot of oyster guts before you locate any pearls of wisdom.

The previous wall got a little cluttered, so we’ve splashed a coat of paint on it.

Posted by Steve Reuland on February 16, 2005 | Comments (17) | TrackBack (0)

Here’s a provocative exclusive from Space.com:

Exclusive: NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars.

A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.

The scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told the group that they have submitted their findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their paper currently is being peer reviewed.

What Stoker and Lemke have found, according to several attendees of the private meeting, is not direct proof of life on Mars, but methane signatures and other signs of possible biological activity remarkably similar to those recently discovered in caves here on Earth.

If confirmed, this could have some serious ramifications for evolution on the early Earth.  Did living things go from Mars to Earth or vice versa?  Are we talking about multiple origin of life events?  Interesting stuff.  I guess we’ll have to live with a mere teaser for now.

Posted by Timothy Sandefur on February 16, 2005 | Comments (77) | TrackBack (0)

Daniel Dennett, author of such brilliant books as Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained, will be giving the W.D. Hamilton Memorial Lecture at the University of New England in April.

Posted by Jim Foley on February 16, 2005 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

For Darwin Day (Feb 12th), the Canberra Skeptics arranged a talk by paleoanthropologist Colin Groves at the National Museum of Australia on the subject of Homo floresiensis, the “Hobbit”. It’s clearly a popular subject; the small lecture theatre was filled to capacity with a few hundred people.

Some scientists have disputed the idea that floresiensis is a new species, suggesting instead that the skeleton is a pathological modern human - Maciej Henneberg, for one, has claimed that it closely resembles a 4000-year-old microcephalic skull found on Crete. Groves showed pictures of that skull and compared it to the hobbit. They did not look very similar to my unqualified judgement, nor, apparently, to the judgement of many qualified scientists. The hobbit femur also has differences from that of any other hominid, and the pelvis flares more than in H. sapiens or H. erectus.

Continue reading  “Homo floresiensis on Darwin Day”

Posted by Matt Inlay on February 16, 2005 | Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)

While ID ‘scientists’ vociferously object to being labeled creationists, they share one notable feature with the creation scientists of the 80s: their frequent use of discredited sources.  In a 1983 PBS special, Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), a YEC institution, claimed that certain human proteins were more similar to bullfrog proteins than chimpanzee homologues, a claim that would be nearly inexplicable if our current understanding of evolution was correct.  However, despite countless public and private requests spanning the last 20 years, Gish has never provided a source for that claim, nor retracted it (see here for more).  A few years ago, Bill Dembski claimed that there was evidence of a biochemical system for which any slight modification would not only destroy the system’s current function, but any possible function of that system whatsoever.  He concluded that such a system could not have evolved through ‘Darwinian’ evolution, because of the supposed lack of functional intermediates between the current system and any hypothetical precursor.  However, as I document in this post, not only is Dembski’s claim unsupported by his lone source, Dembski admits this, and yet he continues to assert that claim, even strengthening it in recent writings.  One of those writings was even published in the IDists’ “peer-reviewed” journal PCID, despite the editors’ knowledge that this claim was unsupported.  The intention of this blog entry is to add yet another example to the list of shoddy scholarship inherent in IDist writings.

Continue reading  “Bill Dembski and the case of the unsupported assertion”

Posted by Steve Reuland on February 15, 2005 | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

Someone stole my idea. 

In celebration of Darwin Day, someone has set the Origin of Species to Dub, a kind of music related to Reggae.  No, really. 

This new artistic endeavor is the creation of the Genomic Dub Collective, a group which aims to “create a new musical genre… that celebrates recent successes in the field of genomics and evolutionary biology.”  Why someone didn’t think of this before, I’ll never know.  The group draws talent from a Microbial Genomicist and a Jamaican scientist of some sort. 

Each track is named after or takes inspiration from a chapter of the Origin, and you get two bonus tracks, the Dobzhansky Dance Trance and Ras Darwin.  (For all you Sheriff John Browns, Ras refers to Erasmus Darwin, Chuck’s grandfather.)

You can listen to some samples here, or you can order the entire thing for £3.99 (about the price of a dime bag).  These chaps are just trying to recoup their costs, so don’t kill the seed before it grows.

Posted by Nick Matzke on February 15, 2005 | Comments (35) | TrackBack (0)

The “telling it straight” award today goes to James Gibbons, an editor at the Houston Chronicle.  A short letter that Gibbons sent to the Discovery Institute in 2003 (during the textbook adoption battle in Texas) was quoted by the Discovery Institute Media Complaints Division today.  They called it “one of the tackiest letters we’ve received from the media.”  Readers can judge for themselves:

Continue reading  “Telling it straight”

Posted by Timothy Sandefur on February 14, 2005 | Comments (37) | TrackBack (0)

Don Boudreaux on whether markets are an "extended phenotype."

Update: More at Inclination to Criticize.

Posted by Jack Krebs on February 13, 2005 | Comments (72) | TrackBack (0)

The Kansas Department of Education (KSDE) recently posted a complete transcript of the public hearing on the science standards held on February 1 at Schwagle High School in Kansas City, Kansas.  If you are interesting in seeing for yourself the kinds of concerns and arguments the public has about evolution and Intelligent Design creationism, you might want to read some of the transcript (here).

Also, as I reported in the post Creationist Power Play in Kansas, this week the state Board of Education created a special Science Hearings committee, comprised of three creationist Board members, to hear testimony from “scientific experts” concerned the two “opposing views” (evolution and Intelligent Design creationism-based anti-evolution) - essentially giving the Intelligent Design creationists the “equal-time” platform they desire to try to give Intelligent Design creationism credibility as science and to deflect criticism that it is really disguised religion.

These two events, the public hearings that are an established part of the standards development process and the creation of this kangaroo-court Science Hearings committee, are related in an interesting way, I think.  Let me explain.

Continue reading  “Kansas: public hearings vs. "expert panel"”

Posted by Richard B. Hoppe on February 13, 2005 | Comments (25) | TrackBack (0)

Intelligent design creationists have made rhetorical hay out of Stephen Jay Gould’s use of Kipling’s title, when Gould said that adaptationist accounts of biological phenomena sometimes seem to be “just so stories.”  John Wendt on ARN has made the perfect riposte.  An ID creationist claimed

Not really. You can for instance learn a lot about bacteria flagellum from ID proponents because they are reasoning from its detailed exposition. It is much more substantive than the just so stories that have been so popular among Darwinists.

Wendt responded

Evolutionary arguments are based on observable processes. All ID has is “just not-so stories”.  (Emphasis added; typo corrected)

I love that phrase!  “Just not-so stories.”  It perfectly captures the content-free explanations offered by ID “theory.”

RBH