Last week U.S District Court Judge John E. Jones III issued a memorandum and order in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Kitzmiller is the lawsuit brought by the ACLU against the school board in Dover, PA, for its policy requiring students in science class be read a statement by administrators mentioning both intelligent design and problems with evolution. Discovery Institute’s prior press release concerning the Dover School Board policy can be found here. Judge Jones’ memorandum and order concerned two pre-trial motions, namely; (1) a motion of the Rutherford Institute to intervene as a third-party in the lawsuit on behalf of Dover parents; and (2) the motion to dismiss by the Defendant Dover Area School District Read More ›

In a blog post a couple of weeks ago, I wondered aloud whether the Washington Post’s Peter Slevin would fairly report on our lengthy conversation about public policy battles over evolution. Well, Slevin’s article is out, and now I know. In my previous post, I listed six main points from our interview and asked whether Slevin would accurately convey the points. Slevin basically ignored most of what I told him (in fact, I’m not even quoted in the story). Instead, he misleadingly stitched together some quotes from my colleague Steve Meyer all the while ignoring most of what Steve told him as well. (See here for a discussion of how Slevin mischaracterized Steve’s comments.) As I indicated earlier, I liked Read More ›

The Associated Press (AP) in Kansas must have hired the National Center for Science Education to edit news reports on that state’s evolution controversy. Why else would the Kansas AP continue to pass off the following biased and inaccurate definition of intelligent design theory as an impartial description of the differences between design and Darwinian evolution: Evolution says species change in response to environmental and genetic factors over the course of many generations. Intelligent design, a form of creationism, holds there’s evidence of an intelligent design behind the origin of the universe, the formation of the Earth and biological change. There are at least two things egregiously wrong with the above paragraph. First and foremost, intelligent design is NOT “a Read More ›

The Washington Post today published on their front page the latest in a series of drive-by reportings on intelligent design. Not surprisingly the reporter, Peter Slevin, sees this more as a political issue than a scientific issue. He’s much more concerned with how religious zealots may try to use ID theory in the political realm than whether or not peppered moths really rest on trees. Are Heaeckel’s embryo drawings less fake because the Post wants to make this a political issue? They’re missing the point, which is a scientific one. I tried to get Slevin to focus more on the science than the politics, but he was determined to do a political piece. So he decided to come to Seattle Read More ›