Can Biology Textbooks Recover from Over-Praising Darwin?

They say that admitting a problem is the first step on the road to recovery. I’ll admit that I’m something of a bookaholic: I’m constantly picking up books, especially books on evolution. It’s been fascinating to read how Darwin is praised not only as the patron saint of “Western thought,” but sometimes as if he invented sliced bread and cupholders in cars. For example, Douglas Futuyma’s textbook Evolutionary Biology stated that “it was Darwin’s theory of evolution … that provided a crucial plank to the platform of mechanism and materialism–in short, to much of science–that has since been the stage of most Western thought.” John Dupré rejoices that “Darwin’s theory provides the last major piece in the articulation of a Read More ›

Pro-Darwin Biology Professor Laments Academia’s “Intolerance” and Supports Teaching Intelligent Design

Charles Darwin famously said, “A fair result can be obtained only by fully balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” According to a recent article by J. Scott Turner, a pro-Darwin biology professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, modern Neo-Darwinists are failing to heed Darwin’s advice. (We blogged about a similar article by Turner in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January, 2007.) Turner is up front with his skepticism of intelligent design (ID), which will hopefully allow his criticisms to strike a chord with other Darwinists. Turner starts by observing that the real threat to education today is not ID itself, but the attitude of scientists towards ID: Read More ›

Chronicle of Higher Education Promotes Misinformation about Guillermo Gonzalez’s Publication Rate

Let the rewriting of history begin. The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s blog recently carried a post claiming that Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure by Iowa State University (ISU) largely because “Mr. Gonzalez’s publication record has dropped off considerably since he was hired at Iowa State.” But this statement is a gross distortion of Dr. Gonzalez’s real publication record. A simple decrease in publications is meaningless without reference to expected standards of publication for teaching faculty, departmental publication standards, or the publication rates of similarly situated faculty. A fair assessment would ask how Gonzalez compared to other astronomers in his department since the year he joined ISU (2001), especially compared to those astronomers that have already been granted tenure. And the Read More ›

Recent Comments on Flock of Dodos at Telic Thoughts

Links with more Information: Hoax of Dodos, a response to inaccuracies in Flock of Dodos Haeckel’s Bogus Embryo Drawings (Clip on YouTube) There is a thread at Telic Thoughts discussing the Flock of Dodos [FOD] film where I posted a comment last week. I posted the comment after a commenter named “Randy” asked a question about Discovery Institute’s responses to the film. I repost the comment below because it clearly explains my position regarding the film, and also provides various useful links for interested readers to visit for more information: An early commenter named “Randy” asked an interesting question. Having watched FOD a few times now, I understand that many people (including me) will enjoy its humor and its apparent Read More ›

New Law Review Articles Discuss Teaching Evolution: Darwinist Law Professor Supports Censorship of ID Ideas

In a recent law review article in Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Stephen A. Newman, law professor at New York Law School, provides a wonderful example of how prevalent among some academics is the idea that it is acceptable and appropriate to censor intelligent design ideas. Newman writes: Consider the experience of two librarians who received copies of two intelligent design books, Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe and Darwin on Trial by Philip [sic] Johnson, as donations to their high school collections. When the librarians refused to put the books on the school library shelves, they were accused of censorship. In fact, exercising their professional judgment, they concluded that these books had “little or no value to our Read More ›