Evolution Indoctrination on the MCAT: Doubting Darwin an “extremely dangerous idea”

I recently wrote about evolution indoctrination on a test given to measure science knowledge and intelligence in high school students. One of my friends, who is no religious fundamentalist but is a smart young pre-med student who is a skeptic of Darwinism, is presently studying hard to take the medical school entrance examination: the MCAT. Like most MCAT takers, he is studying by taking practice tests with real questions from actual MCAT tests given in the past. The MCAT has a section that tests reading comprehension skills: you read a passage, and then you answer questions about the passage. You don’t have to agree with the passages to answer the questions; you just have to be able to accurately explain Read More ›

Michael Egnor, M.D., joins the ENV Team

Some Evolution News & Views (ENV) readers may have noticed that yesterday we posted Michael Egnor’s response to a pro-evolution essay contest for students. Who is Michael Egnor? We recently reported how Egnor has been asking Darwinists how much information can be produced via Darwinian mechanisms, but has not been receiving satisfactory answers (see here and here). Michael Egnor, M.D. is professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook and an award-winning brain surgeon who has been named one of New York’s best doctors by New York Magazine. He is now an official part of the ENV team, and we’d like to welcome him on board.

Egnor’s Unanswered Questions

What happens when a professor of neurosurgey who is a Darwin-skeptic and just happens to be a brain surgeon visits a popular Darwinist blog? He leaves with unanswered questions. Last week Rob Crowther highlighted how Dr. Michael Egnor visited Time magazine’s science blog where a reporter admitted his Darwinist bias and was unable to answer Egnor’s question: “how much new information can Darwinian mechanisms generate?” Egnor is professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook and an award-winning brain surgeon who has been named one of New York’s best doctors by New York Magazine. Egnor recently took his questions to P.Z. Myers’ popular science blog Pharyngula, where Egnor continues–unanswered–to press Darwinists for how Darwinian mechanisms Read More ›

What’s Up with Ronald Numbers? An Analysis of the Darwinist Metanarrative in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (Part III)

[Editor’s Note: The three individual installments of this series can be seen here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. The final complete article, What’s Up with Ronald Numbers? An Analysis of the Darwinist Metanarrative in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, can be found here.] The noted scholar Ronald Numbers is often cited as an objective authority on the history of the debate over evolution. But when he recently co-authored an article in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, “Defending science education against intelligent design: a call to action,” I was surprised that Numbers used invective language and clearly incorrect claims to discredit the theory of intelligent design. My first two pieces on the article are here and here. Now I want Read More ›

What’s Up with Ronald Numbers? An Analysis of the Darwinist Metanarrative in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (Part II)

[Editor’s Note: The three individual installments of this series can be seen here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. The final complete article, What’s Up with Ronald Numbers? An Analysis of the Darwinist Metanarrative in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, can be found here.] Ronald Numbers is a well-known historian of science, but when he co-authored a recent article in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, “Defending science education against intelligent design: a call to action,” I was surprised by the invective language the authors used in comparing peer-reviewed scientific monographs by ID proponents to religious “tracts. Unfortunately, the flaws of this article go far beyond merely employing inflammatory remarks. Given Numbers’ previously more objective scholarship, I was surprised to find Read More ›