PBS had a special newshour on the science and creation "debate"—which I completely missed, but a transcript is available. It has some worthwhile comments from the evolution side (Eugenie Scott, as usual, is good), but it's still an example of that flawed journalistic model of flip-flopping between two sides of an issue, as if each is of equal merit. That's the only way clowns like Ken Ham can get significant air time, and you know they are counting on it.

(Speaking of Ham, he's his usual po-mo self, arguing that we can't know anything about the past, so his ideas are just as good as those of trained scientists…and that's why he gets to have a model dinosaur in his creation "science" museum that is wearing a saddle.)

For me, though, the really dismaying part is the series of soundbites from kids: all saying "I don't really believe in the whole evolution theory" and "I believe that God also made us. I just think it's a lot easier to believe then the big bang theory, or any of the other theories about apes." That's just sad. When I was their age, I remember being all fired up and wanting to know more and spending hours in the library reading everything I could. These kids have given up. And they've had their heads stuffed full of fraudulent nonsense before the teachers have even had a chance.

I know they're just kids and they've been subjected to an impoverished intellectual background, so it's a bit unkind to say this…but these kids are actually rather stupid.

I think you have different types of scientists, and the ones that bring about, you know, theories of evolution, I wouldn't call them scientists they're just like philosophers.

By the way, philosophers, you've got an image problem when the way to belittle scientists is to accuse them of committing philosophy.

But that comment includes a whole raft of misconceptions. Not just in the inaccurate stereotyping of science and philosophy, but in the assumption that evolution isn't built on a foundation of empirical research into the real world, just as much as is physiology or chemistry. And those kids are tragic—they're at a scientific dead-end.

And who condemns their kids to this state of ignorance? Their parents and snake-oil salesmen like Ken Ham.

TEACHER: I had a parent come in and basically said I was going to spend an eternity in hell, if I taught her kids about evolution.

TEACHER: I had a group of students all bring copies of the New Testament into class, and as we started to talk about 'change over time' they brought the Bible and said "here's my record of time." I mean, where - I have no place to go with this.

JEFFREY BROWN: Scott says tensions are so high that many teachers across the nation simply avoid evolution altogether.

EUGENIE SCOTT: If they feel that there's community pressure against the teaching of evolution, evolution will just quietly drift out of the curriculum, whether or not it's required.

I just heard from the NSTA, and they're reporting the same thing.

'Call to Arms' on Evolution; NSTA Express Survey Reveals Science Teachers Feel Pressure to Teach Nonscientific Alternatives to Evolution

Results of the NSTA Express survey on evolution were the topic of a USA Today article on March 24, which indicated that one third of teachers feel pressured to include creationism-related ideas in the classroom. The story also reported on the ‘Call to Arms’ by the science community to defend teaching evolution.

"I write to you now because of a growing threat to the teaching of science,” National Academy of Sciences chief Bruce Alberts says in a letter to colleagues March 4. He calls on academy members “to confront the increasing challenges to the teaching of evolution in public schools." The nation's top scientists belong to the National Academy of Sciences.

Thirty-one percent of teachers responding to the NSTA Express survey said they feel pressured to include creationism, intelligent design, or other nonscientific alternatives to evolution in the science classroom. Teachers indicated most of the pressure comes from students (22%) and parents (20%). 30% of the respondents agreed they feel pushed to de-emphasize or omit evolution or evolution-related topics from their curriculum, indicating the most pressure is coming from students and parents. Very few respondents indicated they felt pressured to include creationism by administrators or principals (5% and 3% respectively).

To read the press release on the survey results, go to http://science.nsta.org/nstaexpress/nstaexpress_2005_03_28_pressrelease.htm. Thanks to the 1,050 NSTA Express readers who took the survey.

We need to know about these attitudes, and the PBS show was useful in illustrating them. But we also need to stop this slow drift into the Dark Ages, and what I find appalling is that journalists don't address the consequences. "Oh, here's a bunch of students who want to ignore science, and here's some teachers who think this is terrible, and here's an evangelist who says this is wonderful. End of story." Come on. Think. When scientists and science teachers are overwhelmingly concerned about the poor state of science education and the understanding of science by our students, you don't make the problem go away by interviewing some quack bible-thumper. You don't help us understand the problem by bestowing authority on one of the causes of the problem.

You know what would be a good example of reporting? Compare science test scores internationally, and show that we have a looming problem. Ask qualified people, like professional biologists, what they consider essential knowledge for someone entering their discipline. Get a scientist to sit down with a journalist and leaf through the journals, and get across just how much research is dependent on this theory. Then show all those soundbites of our kids turning their backs on good science. If you must show Ken Ham (for comic effect, perhaps), follow up with a real scientist explaining how everything he said was goofy nonsense, like science learned from The Flintstones.

But please…pretending that this is a contest between two opinions of equal merit plays directly into the hands of the worst of the opinions. It turns journalism into a race for the bottom.