Discovery Institute Tells PA Legislature to Stop

John G. West and Seth Cooper of the Discovery Institute wrote a letter to Pennsylvania Representative Jess M. Stairs urging Stairs and the Pennsylvania legislature not to pass HB1007 which would mandate the teaching of “intelligent design” in Pennsylvania K-12 science classes.

While West and Cooper go on at length in their letter, the import is clear: don’t call their tired old antievolution rhetoric “intelligent design”; just put the same content in the classrooms and call it “teaching the controversy”, “scientific criticisms”, or “evidence against evolution” instead. There’s nothing like a marketing effort that goes to the lengths of lobbying the DI does in order to put on a name change for their product while affixing what amounts to a brightly colored sticker saying, “Old! Unimproved!” in the upper left corner of the box.

(Hat tip to Thomas D. Gillespie. Please do keep sending me news items that you see relating to evolutionary biology and antievolution efforts.)