Attention Texas Voters!!!

I was gonna write something on this but this said everything I was going to and more...watch and be scared.

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Evolution and Indoctrination...From a Christian Studies Scholar

The "teaching the controversy" canard that many anti-evolutionists roll out concerning fairness is something that irks me to no end. I always fall back on the point that disagreeing with a viewpoint is not a controversy, and now a Christian and religious scholar from Butler University has brilliantly put my thoughts in his own words.
Is it "indoctrination" if we teach the history of the Holocaust and do not give equal time to the deniers of the Holocaust?

Is it indoctrination if we teach astronomy and make no mention of astrology?

Is it indoctrination if we teach the heliocentric view of the solar system without giving equal time to geocentrists?

Asking for equal time for "alternatives" to evolution is in exactly the same category. It is asking that a point of view with nothing but questions and complaints to offer be treated as the equal of a scientific field of research that has been remarkably productive and consistently confirmed by all sorts of evidence not available when the theory was first formulated. The media makes much of being "fair" in trying to always hear another side of the story, and there is something indeed laudable about checking to see if there is an opposing viewpoint. Too many of us forget to do that, and forget too often. But not every opposing viewpoint has merit, and the reason we have education standards is to ensure that educators do not waste time on nonsense to the detriment of things that are truly important, valuable, and (ultimately) true.

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Luskin's Wrist Rant: Leave it to the Experts

I happened to be a little slow confronting the Bobby Jindal/War on Science news coming out of Louisiana, and as soon as I got my post up yesterday my email inbox was flooded with some strange news from the Discovery Institute (DI).

I highlighted in my previous post the new legislation supposing to bring "academic freedom" into Louisiana's high schools by way of allowing outside supplemental material to be brought into science classes. This new scheme though has no title, no name, and no identifying features other than to highlight the need for academic freedom, but only when the issue is evolution. The Bad Idea Blog sums it up pretty nicely:

The obvious trick in all of these bills is that they never specify a standard of accuracy that such criticisms have to meet, and they are often vague as to who is going to evaluate or enforce that standard in any case.

Scientists in general already do a pretty good job of including actual scientific controversy and ambiguity in textbooks and curricula, which makes these bills basically an invitation to introduce legally protected psuedoscience into local classrooms. If this sounds a little too much like the "teach the controversy" strategy of the original creationists, well, you and I are like the 800th and 801st people to notice that.

Whether it is publicly stated or not the DI is right now the leading public institution behind these bills and behind the majority of creationist/intelligent design/academic freedom/untitled "research" and promotion of evolution's faults. Casey Luskin, resident lawyer and cheerleader for the DI has posted an article that contains a major gaffe while trying to throw doubt on recent work by paleontologist Neil Shubin, discoverer of the transitional tetrapod Tiktaalik and the author of the excellent book "Your Inner Fish."

Here is Luskin's argument straight from his mouth.

1. Shubin et al.: "The intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik
have homologues to eponymous wrist bones of tetrapods with which they
share similar positions and articular relations." (Note: I have labeled
the intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik in the diagram below.)
Translation: OK, then exactly which "wrist bones of tetrapods" are Tiktaalik’s
bones homologous to? Shubin doesn’t say. This is a technical scientific
paper, so a few corresponding "wrist bone"-names from tetrapods would
seem appropriate. But Shubin never gives any.

Eponymous, adj: Of, relating to, or being the person after which something is named.

That quick wiktionary search just debunked Luskin's whole argument. Eponymous basically means similarly or derivitatively named, which means Shubin has given the names for the corresponding tetrapod bones (they have the same names in tetrapods as they do in Tiktaalik).

Understandably this was probably a mistake and had Luskin done the proper research (ie: get a fucking dictionary if you don't know what a word means) he would have realized his mistake, but this is one of the guy's that is going to be leading the push for so-called "academic freedom" concerning evolution. He works for an institute who's purpose is to try and punch holes in evolution and bring those holes into the public discussion.

If this is the type of "critical thinking" that the DI is trying to push into school's I think it worth people's time to see just how insufficient the DI's work is. Unfortunately this is where being a lay person and being an expert butt heads, experts are far more qualified to establish what is good and what is crap research. Lay people have trouble understanding the intricacies involved with technical jargon and statistical modeling, which is why we have experts in the first place.

I guess what I'm really trying to get at here is that the guy claiming a grand conspiracy of evolution and promoting the right to question and rethink the dogma himself cannot complete a rational analysis of the data. There is already an institution set up to monitor and judge the worthiness of a paper/journal/theory and that is the scientific community themselves. Scientists, are generally skeptical of claims made in papers. I know when I read a paper, even if I like what it says the first thing I do is scrutinize the figures and tables looking for a weakness or misrepresentation. I like to scour references to further examine the strength of the paper until I am satisfied that the author has interpreted the data correctly. And then here's the kicker; I get on the internet and search through the blogs of those guys who are experts in the field, because my opinion means very little compared to these guys.

In fact, Carl Zimmer and PZ Myers both share their thoughts on Luskin's flub in a far more meaningful way than I can.  Hopefully I will one day join them among the ranks of the experts, confident that I can tease meaning away from the primary literature.  Until then I must defer to the experts and simply add in my little thoughts.  I would hope that the google scholars and high school teachers/administrators could understand this point.  Leave the job of science to the scientists.

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The Louisiana Science Education Act: A Step Closer to Religious Science

Louisiana, with strong support from it's Rhodes Scholar Governor, Bobby Jindall, recently signed into law the "Science Education Act." The stated goal of the legislation is to allow for "academic freedom" in high schools with the respect to teaching science (more on academic freedom later), but this is in fact a cover for the true reason behind the law, to allow the teaching of religious ideals at the expense of examining the evidence and reasoning that have led to the modern synthesis of science.

Under the Act Louisiana teachers may, under protection of the law, "use supplementary textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner." The law is also explicitly clear on prohibiting teaching religion in the name of science, stating that its provisions "shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine." This is the biggest lie I've seen in legislation in a while, although I understand why its there, to protect the constitutionality of the law. By denouncing religious motivation the Act will not be subject to federal separation laws, but the law itself is meant to encourage unconstitutional behavior from local school boards.

Here's where the tricky part comes in, the ACLU knows they can't challenge the law in court as it was deftly written to conform to constitutional standards, but its implications will not be covered under the law. If religion is brought into a science classroom the ACLU will sue, or parents who were irked by religious instruction will sue. This will produce a noisy, expensive federal lawsuit, followed by even noisier and more expensive appeals. Guess where a local school board is going to get the money to fight these lawsuits; the property owners of the school district. The Discovery Institute (DI), a creationist think-tank and clear leader in the anti-science movement, helped support this bill and promoted it over the state. Where will they be when the shit hits the fan and these same school boards are being sued and need the legal and monetary support?

Defending creationist school boards isn't the DI's game, they like to a) sell creationist textbooks and b) keep creationism in the news so they can keep the lecture gigs and wealthy funders going. Just like in the Dover case, where the DI's own book was put on trial, once the books were sold the Institute left the school board and their taxpayers to fend for themselves.

Hoodwinked, being played, becoming the patsy, these are all good ways to describe what the DI did to Louisiana. The motivation behind this should be pretty transparent, the DI really really wants to start selling more books in the classroom and they'll encourage state legislators and clueless governors to enact laws that tempt local school boards to unconstitutional behavior. And when the sucker school boards are spending their own tax dollars on the defense of a hopeless bill the DI will say they had absolutely nothing to do with it, they just offered support to an academic freedom bill.

Now what exactly is academic freedom? The American Association of University Professors' definition refers to the ability to do research and publish outside of the influence of administrators. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) says that this bill has co-opted and misused the term to appeal to the public. Academic freedom is not a principle that applies to high school. Yes we want you to be able to question the evidence and understand the critical thinking process that led to the interpretation of data, but you are not doing research and publishing. High school is a place for students to learn the basics of science so that they may pursue and take full advantage of academic freedom in a university setting and beyond.

This time the DI's motivation was promoting the book, Explore Evolution, a text offering the standard intelligent design critiques of evolution. But unlike its predecessor, Of Pandas and People, which fared badly during the Dover trial, it does not use the term "intelligent design."

They're learning what it takes to pass laws that can stand the test of constitutionality while at the same time allowing individuals to perform unconstitutional acts through a false protection of the law. The DI will certainly benefit in two years when the Supreme Court hears a case that references their book many many times.

Another big problem I have with this law is the availability of students to attend a school that will teach religion. Louisiana has a multitude of catholic schools who will give your child a good religious background, but you may want to be careful because they study evolution in their sciences classes (with the support of the Vatican). Another option is to home school the kid and you can teach him whatever he wants, that's true academic freedom. Just don't expect him to be a doctor or a scientist when you send him to college and his "science" background fails miserably at preparing him for college science courses.

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Miseducation of America

Wow, I almost threw up watching this. Unfortunate really that a bright group of kids is going to have to deal with some issues about this later in life because their parents want confirmation of their own beliefs.

And I really have no problem with religion, I actually attended Easter Mass yesterday (maybe one of the all-time peruasive arguments by a girl) but I believe an understanding of science and religion is not mutually exclusive. And how do I know that teeth evolved from scales you ask? How do I know? Well...

"It has been contended that Reif's odontode regulation theory is a rival and alternative to Stensio and Orvig's lepidomorial theory as means of explaining the evolution of development of the vertebrate dermal and oral skeleton. The lepidomorial theory is a pattern-based theory that provides a homological framework that goes further than the odontode regulation theory in comparing dental papillae and their products, and it provides an explanatory mechanism for such relationships a posteriori. In contrast, the odontode regulation theory is process-based and observes only developmental similarity providing no means of identifying homologies beyond this. The lepidomorial theory is superior to the odontode regulation theory in its ability to trace homology through the evolution of development of the dermal and oral skeleton. The criteria proposed to identify homology between scales-either within a given individual or taxon, or between different individuals or taxa-are, primarily, vascular architecture and, secondarily, external morphology. External morphology may be excluded on Reif's argument for the overarching principle of differentiation, a hypothesis supported by recent advances in the understanding of dental morphogenesis. Vascular architecture is potentially useful but appears to be determined by tooth/scale morphology rather than reflecting historical (phylogenetic) constraint. Data on the development of epithelial appendages, including teeth, scales, and feathers, indicate that individual primordia develop through progressive differentiation of originally larger, homogenous morphogenetic fields. Thus, there is no mechanism of ontogenetic developmental concrescence, just differentiation." Read the full article here (has some great references).

If that doesn't scream empirical evidence and rational deduction based on a body of data then I don't know what does. And when it comes down to it, that is science, the collection of empirical evidence. A lot of theories get thrown out and many get shot down, but over time the data from experiments doesn't change and eventually a theory encompassing the whole of the body of data will arise to explain the underlying mechanisms.

Pay careful attention to what the curator of the museum says at about the 5:20 mark. "Without evolution the whole of biology does not make sense." That seems like a pretty bold statement, but one that you will find little argument with in any biology professor's office or research lab. Evolution is the framework for every life science there is, it is inescapable regardless of your religious views. Your physician, pharmacist, psychiatrist, hell even your landscaper all rely on evolutionary theory to drive their understanding of their craft. Here's one example for the stupid emails I'm gonna get saying "show me one example." Ok, methyllin resistance Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is about to surpass AIDS as the number one killer around the world because it has EVOLVED the ability to resist almost all antibiotics we use. God did not create this bacteria and it did not exist 100 years ago, and we can show you from where it evolved. And in the future we're going to have to learn a whole hell of a lot more about its evolutionary tacticts to defeat it.

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Oklahoma Follows Texas' Stupid Lead: Religion Over Science

The Oklahoma House of Representatives just approved House Bill 2211.

The bill states:

A school district shall treat a student’s voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint, if any, on an otherwise permissible subject in the same manner the district treats a student’s voluntary expression of a secular or other viewpoint on an otherwise permissible subject and may not discriminate against the student based on a religious viewpoint expressed by the student on an otherwise permissible subject.

The "otherwise permissible subject" part of the bill makes it really sticky. That can easily be interpreted as meaning tests, besides just normal classroom discussion. The intent is that a student can say the Earth is 6000 years old and still get a passing grade. The bill itself says that a student cannot be graded down if they say that what they are being taught interferes with their religious beliefs.

I am patently against anything of this sort and can't believe that people give ridiculous ideas as much standing as reality. One problem with this is when you open the door to fantasy you have to let any and all flavors walk on through. But it also elevates fantasy to reality, and that is wrong.

If I was teaching and someone answered that the Earth is 6,000 years old they would be wrong, regardless if they wanted to have me meet their parents, lawyers, supreme court, whoever. I don't care what your religious beliefs are, there are some things that are simple facts. An object with mass has gravity. A lump of lithium dropped into water will create heat and hydrogen gas. An accelerating charged particle will emit radiation. These are facts. It doesn’t matter what you believe: reality is that which, when you go to sleep, doesn’t go away.

What's really bad is that a bunch of conservatives who care little for relativism and political correctness are the ones who pushed this through. They want all religious rights to be accepted but the author of the bill, Sally Kern, has clearly spoken about being against the "gay lifestyle" and that being gay compares to cancer.

To look at what a disaster this kind of bill will be you don't have to look very far, right here in the lone star state we're in a heap of trouble for passing the same bill.

After this bill passes the Oklahoma Senate all those folks north of the Red River can join us down here in Texas in the Dark Ages, huzzah conservatism!

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Creationists Fail to Take Texas School Board

So the Presidential Primary in Texas was yesterday, but another equally important vote was won in the Texas School Board.

Barney Maddox ran a weird campaign where he spent $120,000 to the incumbent Pat Hardy's $10,000. But Maddox refused interviews and really only put forth one statement of purpose and that was to include creationism in the state textbooks (and thereby leverage national bookmaking companies to sell creationist edited books, more here). Hardy won handily.

Mary Helen Berlanga, also challenged by a right-wing creationist soundly defeated her in District 2.

Later this year the Texas School Board will come together to adopt new science curriculum standards, and these two nutballs luckily won't be there to spew their creationist agenda.

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Texans of Fort Worth, Parker, Ellis, and Johnson counties: Vote for Pat Hardy!

There's a school board election in District 11 of Texas that has a clear choice: Pat Hardy is the pro-science candidate, despite being a conservative, religious Baptist, while her opponent is a deranged lunatic who is quietly outspending her 12:1 while avoiding the public eye altogether. You do not want to vote for Barney Maddox — he is an "ill-informed nutcase".

What's weird is how people across the country and tuning in to see how this Texas thing goes. In Minnesota a fellow blogger covering the situation said, "we're affected by the outcomes of local school board races in Texas — allowing ignorant, raving lunatics to make textbook decisions there is going to shape the choices we get to make here." So if you know any Texans, spread the word: Barney Maddox is bad news.

As a little background, Texas, along with Florida, buy more textbooks than the rest of the nation combined so creationists are looking to change the Texas curriculum to include creationist information. Most likely to save costs, the book companies will print only the versions with creationist info and distribute it around the country. This is why many scientists and policy makers are watching Texas and Florida closely about this issue.

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Florida stands at the brink again...

If you haven't gotten a chance, go ahead and read this account of evolution and its shortcomings by a group in Florida trying to show opposition towards science. Last year they tried to get ID on the ballot for inclusion into the curriculum and were shut down. But even though they lost, the fight isn't over as the zealots continue to battle what is a large and overwhelming collection of facts.
I'm going to do a little breakdown of this article to show most of the false statements and red herring journalism that is used to make their argument appeal to the public.


My favorite line may be the first where Eva bemoans the controversy over Florida curriculum while previous to the religious right's crossover into the scientific realm there was none. So like most conservative power tripping right winger she doesn't see the obvious fallacy that this controversy didn't arise until the close-minded circle of America came down upon what is a free standing institution and tried to impose its will.

"They believe that millions of years ago there was nothing and then suddenly there was something. They have no proof. It's not replicable. It's clearly a belief," Kemple said. "

Which is why the only explanation of the origin of life is that out of nothingness a willing creator believed all beings into existence within 6 days. I just don't understand the notion that putting a diety behind an unexplained mechanism of nature explains away the unknown. One of the biggest (and I'm sure most of you screamed at the top of your lungs when you saw this) problems with the previous quote is that evolution is not a mechanism to describe the Origin of Life but to describe the Origin of Species and detail the mechanisms by which life generated millions of fully distinct but ultimately related branches on the tree of life.

The kicker of the article for me is where their science expert, a retired middle school science teacher, expounds upon the differing opinions of evolution within science.

"...quoted from a number of well-educated people who disagree with the theory of evolution. Drawing from philosopher Karl Popper, astronomer Fred Hoyle, law professor and author Phillip E. Johnson and quantum physicist Paul Davies, Brown discussed ideas promoted by these men that argue against evolution and/or develop the idea of Intelligent Design."

My father has to have a heart valve replacement operation at the end of the month and I'm going to assemble his team to work on him. I can either have a; A) 1 cardiothoracic surgeon, 3 RNs, 1 general internist surgeon, and an attending chief of surgery, or I could go with option B) evolutionary biologist, physicist, nutritionist, biochemist. All equally skilled within the field of science, but unfortunately team B can offer little in the way of expertise when it comes to slicing a person's chest open. Physics, astronomy, and other science disciplines are just not qualified to speak on the mechanisms and effects of evolution. And you notice the only person with an actual biology degree referenced is as much of an expert in evolution as the fast food drive-thru guy is an expert in meat production.

Kinda long winded for a first post, but hopefully many to come and watch out Florida, the crazy are coming for you!

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