PZ Myers. 2005 May 09. Reviews of the Kansas science revisions. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/reviews_of_the_kansas_science_revisions/>. Accessed 2008 Nov 20.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Monday, May 09, 2005
Reviews of the Kansas science revisions
Since Ken Cope mentioned them, I've been having an entertaining hour browsing through the reviews of the Kansas State Department of Education draft revisions. If it weren't so tragic for the children of Kansas, it would be hilarious. Everyone rips into these stupid Intelligent Design creationist suggestions and comes to the same conclusion: these are ghastly mistakes driven by ideology and ignorance.
I heartily recommend them. I've included links to the pdf files below, with a representative excerpt or the summary statement from each so you can get a feel for what's in each.
As soon as the "Proponents" come up with evidential verification, have it peer-reviewed, and present it at scientific meetings, such "scientific information" may then rightly be discussed at the high school level and below.
As numerous other scientists have noted,– intelligent design isn’t really about science, it’s about religion, and the IDN must believe either that you’re not smart enough to understand this critical distinction, or that you will bow to public pressure at the expense of upholding contemporary standards of science education as advocated by the most prestigious science organizations in the United States, the American Advancement for the Association of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.
After all, the core of Intelligent Design is a master Designer who directs the formation of complex life, and indirectly happens to accord with a personal deity and savior for many people. But scientific understanding is not based upon the popularity of religious doctrine.
These changes present unnecessary intrusions. The new indicators for Benchmark 2 would not serve any valid pedagogical purpose. The changes would, once again, only serve to weaken science instruction. Science is a useful process which students must come to understand in order to be successful, productive citizens. Rather than making students more scientifically literate, these changes would do just the opposite.
None of the proposed changes to the glossary are grounded in any modern consensus view of science. These changes, too, would not be good for Kansas science teachers or their students.
Absent from all of the documents on the relatively slick websites is any body of evidence in the form of publications describing hypotheses posed and tested. If these shallow and misleading initiatives are successful in the courts, then the citizens of the various regions will deserve the diminution in educational value that will result. But the price will be paid by their children: "Better a millstone...."
Such a statement shows no awareness of information theory or cognitive science and makes a thoroughly misleading reference to quantum mechanics. I could have highlighted many examples from previous pages as well. For a document that purports to advance the cause of scientific literacy, it is a very poor example of what it's supposed to promote.
The proponents are confusing the outcomes of scientific laws with the scientific laws themselves. The particular identity of the molecules that comprise the genetic code are not dictated by a scientific law, but their development as the carriers of the genetic code is completely consistent with known scientific laws. However, there is substantial scientific theory that explains the development of this molecular code in biological replication, and the existing sequence of the genetic code can be explained by the application of natural selection over the millennia.. Once again, scientific theories do not invoke non-natural explanations for natural phenomena. Complexity in the natural world, even seemingly baffling complexity, does not justify the use of faith in science as an explanation for natural phenomena. This does not mean that scientists cannot apply faith in framing their efforts to understand the underlying meaning of life. It means that science, by definition, cannot employ faith as a tool in scientific inquiry.
Common descent is sufficiently supported by molecular evidence and the fossil record that it would be accepted by biologists as a fact even if the process of natural selection had not been discovered. Common descent is not controversial within the scientific community. Controversy does exist concerning the mechanisms that result in common descent and students should be made aware of this controversy as long as it is restricted to the natural processes that science is equipped to address.
Finally, I find that even when the Intelligent Design network, inc. proposals seem to be nearly reasonable, they have introduced an unworkable teaching situation. This is obvious when their bad recommendations err merely on the appropriateness of the targeted school population. We do not expect from primary grade students the complexity of 12th grade lesson plans. Similarly, 12th grade students should not be expected to be responsible for university level material. Several of the Intelligent Design network, inc. proposals, while not actually wrong factually are totally wrong pedagogically. The example here I would like the committee to consider is the differentiation between "historical" sciences and the rest of "science." These creationist comments are scattered throughout the IDN proposal. Their first intimation was the notion that there is a special category of science they call "origins science" in their introductory comments. This "origins science" is a creationist invention of about 20 years ago. It argues that there are simplistic lists of "facts" (often called "laws" in creationist writing) that constitute "true science" and there is the study of natural events that are the result of historical contingency they like to call "origins science." It is quite true that there can be a useful distinction drawn about the appropriateness of introducing contingency in the understanding of geological, biological and cultural events, but in no case does this introduce the notion that supernatural events control the outcome. Imagine that you are half way up a ladder- historical events (climbing the ladder half-way) have limited your future options- you may take a step up, or down, stay in place, or jump. There are implications here for the understanding of historical data, but they are most appropriately addressed above the high school level.
The recommendations of the eight dissenting members of the Standards Writing Committee are intended to undermine the teaching of evolution and to support the introduction of non-scientific explanations of origins into the science classroom. The radical redefinition of science in these recommendations would bring supernatural explanations into the classroom under the guise of science, and would distort the meaning of science itself. They would serve only to confuse students, demoralize teachers, and to bring needless religious conflicts into the teaching of science in Kansas.
The Revisions proposed by the Revisers misrepresent scientific practice. The Revisions display little knowledge of real biology, not enough to know the very basic and elementary difference between genetic drift and natural selection. They misrepresent real predictions from evolutionary theory and downplay its essential importance in modern medicine, ecology, and agriculture. They suggest a nihilistic view of biology, as if it is impossible to know anything about the history of life (or of anything, for that matter) with any certainty. They engage in the classic anti-evolutionary Creationist tactic of using misleading quotes from scientists, implying that the scientists meant something which they never intended. In sum, the proposed revisions do not accurately reflect modern scientific biological knowledge.
The revisers paint a distorted of science in general and do not seem to know enough about evolution to understand that genetic drift is different from natural selection. They imply that we can know nothing substantial about the history of life. They misuse literature implying that scientists say one thing when they say another. The quotes used are frequently misleading and inaccurate.
I think it is absurd that anyone is taking the creationists' claim that there is a genuine controversy in biology seriously. The tripe from the Discovery Institute simply does not hold up under even casual inspection.
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This is something of an aside, but I was looking at the summary of Jonathan Wells background where it claims that he has published in Development, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, BioSystems, The Scientist and The American Biology Teacher. It took a while, but I found the first two. He isn't first author on either. The Biosystems paper was a review/theoretical piece published prior to his entry into the Berkeley program. How the heck did he receive a Ph.D.from UC-B based on this body of work? Did they just want to get rid of him? Anyone from Berkeley able to shed some light?
#: Posted by on 05/09 at 12:44 PM
- This is something that really bothers me. I am aware of at least three people who received PhD's in various Life Science Departments over the past several years at my school who are Creationists. All of them did their work in the most evolutionary labs on campus (not biotech or fisheries management). At least some of the committee members were aware of that nasty fact. Still, they passed them. I cannot understand why!? This is just filling the ranks of Creationists with people with "proper" credentials - a future PR disaster. Not to mention that some of those people are going to TEACH! I have no pity on 10 years of tough field-work or endless nights of pipetting - if you did not learn enough to understand and accept evolution, you do not deserve a PhD - go be a technician.
- I'm starting to think that, instead of pro-evolution scientists completely boycotting, there should've been just one very well-prepared scientist at the Kansas hearings. Given the way the IDers are demolishing themselves, it would've looked like a huge victory for science.
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Perhaps its the genetic hybrids of wheat, or the airborne particles of grasshopper dung that drives the Kansans to these logic-defying excesses. Having driven through its endless waves of grain, I think it could just be sheer boredom that compells them to a mass fantasy, because the reality there's so dull.
#: Posted by Kevin Hayden on 05/10 at 05:52 AM
- Creationism on NPR this morning. At 11am EST on Connection (second hour - check your local listings). Tune in.
- Alas some folks are going to believe what they want to believe regardless of what the reality happens to be.
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Well, even if there were a raging controversy in biology, so what? It still wouldn't mean that you should bring theologians in to settle things.
And if internecine conflict were reliable evidence of a theory in crisis, so much the worse for ID. The rabid young-earthers have almost nothing in common with folks like Behe, after all. If they can't even agree among themselves, who are they to lecture anyone else? - The Connection was actually excellent, mainly due to the host taking no nonsense from the IDC guest (Roger Hart?sp?). The president of Kansas Teachers for Science (I hope I got that correctly) was the other guest and he did a great job at exposing ID for what it was. The IDC-er was cornered and fumbled and sounded very lame in the end. The callers, though some were not perfectly accurate on everything, were uniformly (each for a different personal reason, though) against teaching ID in schools. This was a good MSM hour for us.