Forrest addresses the politicization of the Texas Education Agency

The recent unpleasant affair at the Texas Education Agency, in which the director of the science curriculum, Chris Comer, was pressured to resign, was triggered by Comer forwarding an email announcing a talk by Barbara Forrest. Forrest is a philosopher of science, and one of our leading advocates in the ongoing fight for better science education in the face of the nonsense the creationists are promoting. She's also one of their critics the creationists most fear, so it's not surprising that her name would elicit knee-jerk panic.

Forrest has now issued a formal statement on the termination of Chris Comer. You can download the pdf from NCSE, or read it on the web. She doesn't pull any punches. Here's a taste, but you really should read the whole thing.

The incident now involving Ms. Comer exemplifies perfectly the reason my co-author Paul R. Gross and I felt that our book, Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, had to be written. (http://www.creationismstrojanhorse.com) By forcing Ms. Comer to resign, the TEA seems to have confirmed our contention that the ID creationist movement — a religious movement with absolutely no standing in the scientific world — is being advanced by means of power politics.