Bad Science Stories of the Year

Now that I have a working draft of my next BioLogos post done, I can, in good conscience, blog again. Science Daily has a good story on the bad science stories of the year and in there is one of my favorite scientists, Michele Bachmann, who manages to completely mangle the concept and definition of science when she can. Kate Kelland writes:

After Bachmann used an appearance on a television show to tell a story of a woman from Tampa, Florida, who said her daughter had become "mentally retarded" after getting an HPV vaccine designed to protect against cervical cancer, doctors said they feared the damage done may take many years to reverse.

"It's tempting to dismiss celebrity comments on science and health, but their views travel far and wide and, once uttered, a celebrity cancer prevention idea or environmental claim is hard to reverse," said SAS's managing director Tracey Brown.

"At a time when celebrities dominate the public realm, the pressure for sound science and evidence must keep pace."

Wow, did I really just read that? Bachmann sometimes seems like a one-woman war against sound science, one battle at a time.

Please don't vote for this woman.

This article reflects the state of scientific education. I don't think people should be able to exit high school without being able to pass a test on basic science education. That ought to be square one.

----------------
Now playing: Glass Hammer - To Someone
via FoxyTunes

Science Teacher Grants

The Valdosta State University News is reporting that six Georgia local science teachers are being sent to professional development training at the Annual Conference of the Georgia Science Teachers Association. According to the story:

The Georgia Teacher Quality Grant: Strengthening the Teaching of Evolution in South Georgia School has provided more than $80,000 during the last two years to fund workshops and field trips that address ways to present biological evolution effectively in the classroom. Jones said she hopes these professional development opportunities minimize the evolution/creationism controversy among teachers as well as students and parents.

"The point of our project is to emphasize the nature of science as a systematic study of the natural world. Science should not be seen as challenging God or scripture because it does not address anything in the spiritual world,” said Jones, who teaches science education. “We have seen teachers overcome deep personal reticence about evolution and develop the confidence to present this important biological theory to their students.”

If this grant can be expanded to other regions, it would be a boon for science teachers all across the country. It would also force those teachers who are sympathetic to or teach creationism to put their hands on the table before another parent files a lawsuit.

Mariah Blake on Texas

Mariah Blake, writing for the Washington Monthly, has an article on Don McLeroy and the history of the creation/evolution controversy in Texas. She sheds some light on the subject that often gets buried during the struggle for the science:

Battles over textbooks are nothing new, especially in Texas, where bitter skirmishes regularly erupt over everything from sex education to phonics and new math. But never before has the board’s right wing wielded so much power over the writing of the state’s standards. And when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas. The reasons for this are economic: Texas is the nation’s second-largest textbook market and one of the few biggies where the state picks what books schools can buy rather than leaving it up to the whims of local districts, which means publishers that get their books approved can count on millions of dollars in sales. As a result, the Lone Star State has outsized influence over the reading material used in classrooms nationwide, since publishers craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers. As one senior industry executive told me, “Publishers will do whatever it takes to get on the Texas list.”

Until recently, Texas’s influence was balanced to some degree by the more-liberal pull of California, the nation’s largest textbook market. But its economy is in such shambles that California has put off buying new books until at least 2014. This means that McLeroy and his ultraconservative crew have unparalleled power to shape the textbooks that children around the country read for years to come.

While not being as objective as one would hope from an historical account such as this, it is a good read.

Hat tip to the NCSE.



----------------
Now playing: Anthony Phillips - Sky Dawn
via FoxyTunes

Slightly Off-Topic: "Paging Harrison Bergeron!"

Only in Berkeley. The East Bay Express has a story on the redesign of the Berkeley High School, in which the school's science budget, including labs will be cut by 30% so that the money can be funneled to programs for underprivileged students. Eric Klein writes:

The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High's School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley's dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.

Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.

So, lets see. The solution is not to interest underprivileged students in science and science-related disciplines but, rather, to reduce science education to the lowest common denominator in an effort to equalize education. How did the science teachers react?

Science teachers were understandably horrified by the proposal. "The majority of the science department believes that this major policy decision affecting the entire student body, the faculty, and the community has been made without any notification, without a hearing," said Mardi Sicular-Mertens, the senior member of Berkeley High School's science department, at last week's school board meeting.

At a time when science education is becoming increasingly important and the United States is falling further behind in science worldwide, this is absolutely bassackwards. The comments below the article are scathing. Patterico also picked up the story. He writes:

It seems to me struggling students of every race would be better served by more science labs, not fewer ones, but this will be especially hard on any minority student currently benefiting from a science lab. I guess they and their white counterparts must sacrifice so more Berkeley High students score the same.

What is peculiar about the article is the complete lack of information about what kinds of programs will be instituted to help these students instead of science programs. That information will probably not be forthcoming. As one of Patterico's reader's wrote:

Frankly, I’d pull the accreditation of a high school district that did this.

Sadly, there is little chance of that happening. Another thing, though: if there are fewer science students around, who is going to pray at The Atheon? Someone once said "If your mind gets too open, your brains will fall out." They seem to be lying all over the ground in Berzerkeley, California.

----------------
Now playing: Anthony Phillips - Regrets (piano Mix)
via FoxyTunes

The New Texas Science Standards and What is Wrong With Them

The NCSE has a story about what is wrong with the new science standards crafted by the Texas State Board of Education. It is found in the new issue of Earth Scientist and starts on page 30. The article puts a plain face on some of the things that went under the radar of the mainstream press and others that were reporting on the changes. For example:

The ESS standards include material on the fossil record, and this was a predictable
target for creationist board members. A standard in the original ESS read:

(c)(8)(A) evaluate a variety of fossil types, transitional fossils, fossil lineages, and significant fossil deposits with regard to their appearance, completeness, and
rate of diversity of evolution.

This was amended to:

(c)(8)(A) evaluate a variety of fossil types, proposed transitional fossils, fossil
lineages, and significant fossil deposits with regard to their appearance,
completeness, and rate of diversity of evolution and assess the arguments for
and against universal common descent in light of this fossil evidence.

One pro-science board member attempted to return (c)(8)(A) to its original language, but was voted down; as bad as most of these amendments were, things would have been worse had it not been for the efforts of pro-science board members.The final language adopted by the board removed references to common descent and evolution:

(c)(8)(A) analyze and evaluate a variety of fossil types, transitional fossils,
proposed transitional fossils, fossil lineages, and significant fossil deposits with regard to their appearance, completeness, and alignment with scientific explanations in light of this fossil data.

Other changes were made with regard to the age of the earth:

The age of the universe standard was amended from:

(4)(A) evaluate the evidence concerning the Big Bang model, such as red shift
and cosmic microwave background radiation, and the concept of an expanding universe that originated about 14 billion years ago.

to:

(4)(A) evaluate the evidence concerning the Big Bang model, such as red shift and cosmic microwave background radiation, and the concept of an expanding universe that originated 14 billion years ago, current theories of the evolution of the universe including estimates for the age of the universe.

Why would the Texas SBOE omit the specific age of the universe? The basis of this removal is not scientific uncertainty; the widely-accepted number of 13.7 billion years is well-established by numerous separate lines of evidence. The phrase “14 billion years” was removed in order to satisfy creationist board members who believe the universe, and the Earth, to be less than 10,000 years old.

Now one begins to understand why Casey Luskin claimed victory for the standards in his blog. These are absurd changes and, as Steve Newton writes, will only serve to confuse students who are trying to understand these already hard concepts.