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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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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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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