A Visitor’s Guide to the Dover Intelligent Design and Evolution Case

A “FAQ” for the interested layperson about the current federal lawsuit over the teaching intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania: Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School Board. A decision in the case is now expected on Tuesday, December 20, 2005. This article responds to many questions we have received about what happened in the trial over teaching intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania. Many people have wondered what the potential ramifications of this case are for the teaching of the scientific theory of intelligent design, and have also wondered if the plaintiffs’ arguments in this case were accurate. This is a complex case. This article attempts to address those questions by laying out the case in simple terms, and by explaining Read More ›

Rewriting History: Museum Fails to Disclose Own Role in Social Darwinism

Rewriting History: Museum Fails to Disclose Own Role in Social Darwinism
The Museum’s current exhibit glancingly mentions eugenics as an aberration, but this so-called aberration was supported by most of America’s elite universities and scientists for several decades. In 1932, for example, the AMNH itself played official host for a scientific meeting titled the “Third International Congress of Eugenics,” and in conjunction with that meeting the Museum mounted an extensive public exhibition uncritically extolling the “science” of eugenics (much in the same way the current exhibit uncritically extolls neo-Darwinism). Read the rest at Evolution News & Views, www.evolutionnews.org.

MSNBC does creditable review of students’ anxieties over evolution

This is my second post in 2 days praising media articles which get this issue right. Let there be no mistake: the Evolution News & Views blog is not a “media complaints desk.” It’s a place for objective analysis–and we just try to call the balls and the strikes as we see them! MSNBC’s Current Magazine article by Victoria Bosch (“Monkey Business“), manages to objectively discuss the question of how doubters of Darwin are treated in college science classes. The article sensitively talks about how students who are skeptical of Darwinism cope with the issue. It was also gratifying that Niall Shanks at Wichita State professes to require only that students simply understand–not fully endorse–Darwinian evolution. Not only is it Read More ›

New York Times Reporter Misrepresents Kansas Even After Being Given the Correct Info.

In her new article dumping on intelligent design, New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein presents a fantasy version of the new Kansas science standards, claiming that “in Kansas last month, the board of education voted that students should be exposed to critiques of evolution like intelligent design.” Actually, the Board did no such thing. The Kansas science standards encourage students to learn about scientific criticisms of Darwin’s theory. They do not ask for the teaching of alternatives to Darwin’s theory such as intelligent design. Indeed, the Board included the following explicit statement in the standards: “We also emphasize that the Science Curriculum Standards do not include Intelligent Design….” [emphasis added] This isn’t merely a case of sloppy reporting. When Ms. Read More ›

Did New York Times report the whole story? You decide.

Here is the e-mail I sent to New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein after she interviewed me last Thursday for her predictable hatchet-job on intelligent design in Sunday’s Times. Decide for yourself whether her story accurately reflected all of the information she was given: