sex, lies and a math mistake
First, the sex. I’ll admit right up front that this post has nothing to do with sex, except for the general nature of what the ID movement is trying to do to public science education in this country.
Before moving on to lies, let’s take care of the math mistake first.
Last week, in response to the splendid PBS/NOVA production on the Dover trial (Judgment Day: ID on Trial”), the Discovery Institute hacked out a booklet for teachers, called “The Theory of Intelligent Design: A briefing packet for educators, to help teachers understand the debate between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design”. The packet was prepared by the Institute’s John West and Casey Luskin, both of whom apparently slept through all of their math and ethics classes.
On Page 12 of 24, the PDF document declares
“Five states (Kansas, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Minnesota) have already adopted science standards that require learning about some of the scientific controversies relating to evolution.”
But on page 13, they declare that
“Four states (Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina) have science standards that require learning about some of the scientific controversies relating to evolution.”
These people clearly have trouble with numbers bigger than three, as PZ pointed out last week: : four is not five.
And that brings us back to lies. Five states, five lies, courtesy of the Discovery Institute.
The “Briefing Packet” claims on page 12 that
“Five states (Kansas, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Minnesota) have already adopted science standards that require learning about some of the scientific controversies relating to evolution.”
But, as NCSE reported in “Evolution returns to Kansas” way back in February,
On February 13, 2007, the Kansas state board of education voted 6-4 to approve a set of state science education standards in which evolution is treated in a scientifically appropriate and pedagogically responsible way. These standards replace a set adopted in November 2005, in which evolution was systematically misrepresented as scientifically controversial.
One down, four to go.
Does Minnesota “require learning about some of the scientific controversies relating to evolution”?
No. As NCSE noted in “New Science Standards Adopted in Minnesota” (June 2004),
On its last working day, the Minnesota legislature adopted new science standards for the state. In one of their last acts before adjourning on May 16, both houses voted for the standards as forwarded to them by the Department of Education in December, 2003. They thus approved the standards as written and submitted by a committee of educators and citizens. In contrast with some other states, the place of evolution in the science curriculum attracted only a moderate amount of public attention during the writing and approval process in Minnesota. … The House of Representatives did amend the science standards at one point, but the Senate refused to accept the amendment and the final version remained unchanged. …
Another one down, three to go.
Does New Mexico “require learning about some of the scientific controversies relating to evolution”?
No. As NCSE noted in New Science Standards Adopted,
On August 28 the New Mexico State Board of Education (SBE) voted 13-0 to adopt the final draft of new science standards without any modifications. Opponents of evolution had campaigned for changes in wording which would have implicitly cast doubt on the position of evolutionary theory in science and especially on the concept of “macroevolution”. The group Intelligent Design Network - New Mexico was prominent among those seeking changes in the treatment of evolution. The SBE did not accept any of their proposals.
To see what NM’s ID community was demanding in the new standards compared to what they actually ended up getting, please see “Do NM’s Science Standards Embrace Intelligent Design?”
We in New Mexico have been chasing down reporters who thoughtlessly repeat the Discovery Institute’s lies about our standards, which have even been repeated in the New York Times. These occurrences are documented in The Lie: “New Mexico’s Science Standards embrace the Intelligent Design Movement’s ‘Teach the Controversy’ Approach” at NMSR, and and New Mexico Science Standards Do Not Support ID’s Concept of Teach the “Controversy” here on The Thumb.
Another one down, two to go.
Does Pennsylvania “require learning about some of the scientific controversies relating to evolution”?
No. As NCSE noted in Final Science Standards Approved,
On November 15, 2001, the Pennsylvania Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) unanimously approved the latest version of the Science and Technology education standards proposed by the state’s Board of Education (BoE). …The revised standards were produced by the BoE after the IRRC rejected an earlier version, which contained several statements singling out evolution as a theory in need of special questioning by students and included requirements for teachers to present “evidence against evolution”. The IRRC ruled in July, 2001 that these proposed standards were unclear and their implementation was likely to be burdensome. Furthermore, they did not clearly relate to the stated intent of their proposers, to promote critical thinking. They were redundant and unnecessary.
Another one down, one to go.
Does South Carolina “require learning about some of the scientific controversies relating to evolution”?
No. As NCSE noted in Evolution standard approved after 7-month delay,
South Carolina’s Education Oversight Committee (EOC) approved the state science standard concerned with evolution on June 12, after delaying for seven months at the behest of committee member Senator Michael Fair (R-District 6), a well-known opponent of teaching evolution. The State Board of Education approved a new version of statewide academic standards last November, including the evolution standard and its seven indicators, one of which involves “critical analysis.” In December 2005, the EOC refused to approve the evolution standard while Fair and committee member Representative Bob Walker (R-District 31) spent several months lobbying for insertion of “critical analysis” language into all of the evolution indicators and the overarching standard. South Carolina parents and educators along with the Fordham Foundation’s science standards review panel and the American Association for the Advancement of Science expressed broad opposition to Fair’s proposals on the grounds that such language could weaken science education and allow the introduction of intelligent design or creationism. … On March 8, the State Board of Education rejected Fair’s proposal to expand the “critical analysis” language, and returned the original standard to the EOC for approval. … Since its approval on June 12, the indicator within the evolution standard has been subject to differing interpretations. An article in The State (June 13) quotes Department of Education spokesman Jim Foster as saying that the indicator “…does not require students to study alternatives to evolution…” In a report in the The Sun News (Myrtle Beach, SC, June 12) Martha Fout, a science specialist who helped write the standards, commented, “It’s not as if members of the scientific community do not want the students to think critically. We want them to think critically everywhere.” According to an Agape Press story (June 15), however, Fair “…says it is his hope that these guidelines will be a precursor to allowing alternatives to the theory of evolution, such as intelligent design, to be taught in the state’s schools.” For more comment and analysis, visit the website of South Carolinians for Science Education.
And there you have it. Even when the “Intelligent Design” movement’s pleas for “non-dogmatic” language in standards are firmly rebuffed, they’ll spin the word “critical” to mean “require learning about some of the scientific controversies relating to evolution”.(i.e. the same old creationist canards). In the end, the math mistakes are the least of the Discovery Institute’s problems, It’s not a question of “Is it four or five states?” They are ALL lies. Every single one.