According to a recent Prentice Hall biology textbook, a few centuries ago ‘very light-skinned’ people, shipwrecked on a tropical island, became “dark-skinned” after “many years under the tropical sun.” But as Pamela R. Winnick at the Weekly Standard explains, this is nonsense, one of many examples of junk science in our high school science textbooks: There’s lots that’s puzzling about the science textbooks used in American classrooms. A sloppy way with facts, a preference for the politically correct over the scientifically sound, and sheer faddism characterize their content. It’s as if their authors had decided above all not to expose students to the intellectual rigor that is the lifeblood of science.