Author: Casey Luskin
Law Review Note Critiques Selman v. Cobb County District Court Ruling
In March of 2002, the Cobb County School Board adopted a policy requiring stickers to be placed in biology textbooks which committed the apparently unconstitutional crime of stating, “Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.” The lawsuit ended last December, when the school district entered into a lose-lose-lose settlement with the ACLU: (1) The district had to pay the ACLU $166,659, (2) The district had to permanently remove the stickers, and (3) The district was permanently enjoined from “making any disclaimers regarding evolution.” I don’t favor using the “evolution is a theory, not a fact” line because it enters semantic Read More ›
Real Estate Sale: High-Gravity Water-World with Weak Magnetic Field and Large Annual Temperature Fluctuations
Scientists recently discovered what the media is calling a “super-Earth” — a planet which may be able to house liquid water and has properties similar to earth’s own. Before you get ready to buy real estate, you should hear some other aspects of this “super-Earth” which may not be so cozy . . . or even habitable. The following was sent to us by astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, whose work has investigated the requirements for habitability in the universe: You are right about the host star being an M dwarf posing problems for habitability. The smallest planet’s eccentricity is comparable to that of Mercury, so it is probably locked into a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance. So, the planet will experience large temperature Read More ›
Argumentum Ad Baseless Demonization: Assessing Dr. John Wise’s Response to Anika Smith and Sarah Levy
It’s disheartening (and revealing) when people have to demonize their opponents in order to argue against them. Unfortunately, SMU biology professor John Wise has chosen this approach, opening his rebuttal to Anika Smith and Sarah Levy by stating, “Deceptive tactics seem to be a recurring theme at the Discovery Institute,” and continuing for the entirety of his response to supply nothing more than a string of misdirected or misinformed ad hominem attacks. Baseless ad hominem attack 1–Of Pandas and People: Wise attacks the Of Pandas and People textbook as if it is dishonest, and as if that affects the Discovery Institute. But Wise fails to mention that the textbook was first published a year before Discovery Institute was even founded, Read More ›
Intelligent Design Information in Italian
I recently noted that the article “The Positive Case for Design” had been translated into Spanish. Well, now it’s been translated into Italian (see here) over at Progetto Cosmo. Check out their website for more information on intelligent design in Italian!
Mooney and Nisbet Recommend: Drop the Science, Up the Rhetoric
Over at ARN’s Literature Update, David Tyler has an excellent post titled “An Orwellian framing of the debate about evolution and ID,” reporting on an article in Science by Chris Mooney and Matthew Nisbet, who tell scientists how to discuss controversial scientific issues. This same pair wrote the cover article for the influential media journal Columbia Journalism Review just before the Dover trial in September, 2005, encouraging news media to avoid “a quest to achieve ‘balance’” when covering evolution. They even stated, “newspaper editors should think twice about assigning reporters who are fresh to the evolution issue and allowing them to default to the typical strategy frame, carefully balancing ‘both sides’ of the issue.” We have noted that this provides Read More ›