More State-Level News

"State science curriculum director resigns under pressure." This will not make Texas look good.

Florida's Science Standards Get a Passing Grade

In an article in the St. Petersburg Times, Florida's new science standards get a thumbs up:

Proposed standards are more focused and better organized. They not only mention evolution, they dub it a "big idea." And this time, they get a thumbs-up from the chief author of the Fordham report.

"Much better," said biologist Paul Gross, a former provost at the University of Virginia, who reviewed the draft at the request of the St. Petersburg Times.

Supporters say good science standards are key to turning around the dismal performance of Florida students on state and national science tests, and making them more competitive in a technology-driven global economy.

Yup.

Walter Williams Responds

Dr. Williams was kind enough to respond to my post. Here is his response:

Thanks for the compliments but you miss my point, or I didn't make it clear. Whether intelligent design is nonsense (I personally think it is) or not is not the issue. It's parental rights!
Cheers.

He is correct about parental rights and my wife and I argued about this and the nature of science until the wee hours of the morning. The scientist in me thinks, though, that science education, precisely because it is not a social issue, should not be treated in quite the same way. A theory is well supported or it is not. If it is not, it should not be offered as an "alternative explanation." This is why we don't teach the theory of phlogisten or the models of Lysenko. Further, we would look askance at teachers who did so.

Should parents be allowed to take their children out of an arena in which they do not agree with what the children are being taught? Absolutely. And with regard to sex education and prayer in school, I encourage it. But if the parents want to teach their children creationism or ID, someone needs to take them aside and tell them that, while it is their right to do so, it will badly prepare the child for future scientific coursework or endeavors. Science education in this country is not very good. ID and creationism just make it worse.

Walter Williams Opines on Public Education

Ordinarily, I agree with Walter Williams, but in his recent column, titled Take School Control From Government, he has engaged in a logical fallacy. He writes:

I like the Lexus LS 460. I also like Dell computers. Many other people have a different set of preferences. Some might prefer a Cadillac and an HP computer while others prefer a Chrysler and IBM computer. With these strong preferences for particular cars and computers, we never see people arguing or fighting in an effort to impose their preferences for cars and computers on other people. There's car and computer peace. Why? You buy the car and computer that you want. I do likewise, and we remain friends.

and a bit further:

Prayers in school, sex education and "intelligent design" are contentious school issues. I believe parents should have the right to decide whether their children will say a morning prayer in school, be taught "intelligent design" and not be given school-based sex education. I also believe other parents should have the right not to have their children exposed to prayers in school, "intelligent design" and receive sex education.

Here he has made a tacit assumption that prayer in school, sex education and ID are equivalent in nature and that to disagree on them is on the level of disagreeing about which car to buy. They are not. Supposing a high school teacher decided he didn't like the theory of gravity and decided that he would teach that it is just as easy to believe that a giant vacuum cleaner exists in the center of the earth (think Spaceballs) and is responsible for the effects we normally attribute to gravity. Even if you could demonstrate that gravitational theory was perfectly capable of explaining the effects of gravity, he might disagree. I think that you would be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks that teaching the vacuum cleaner theory is a good idea. The two are not on the same scientific footing. That is one problem.

The other problem I have is that sex education and prayer in school are social issues. ID is a scientific issue that is quantifiable. It is not subject to debate, but rather to testing. Here, again, it fails because it offers no hypothetical questions to test and, as has been shown by many different authors (Kenneth Miller, Allen Orr, Howard van Till to name a few), offers examples of "design" that have been refuted.

Science education must be uniform and present the most well-founded and supported theories and hypotheses. ID does not do this. ID provides no comparable theoretical structure, other than "God did it." As I have noted before, there are plenty of articles out there that ask, "Yes but HOW?" ID does not currently address that question and, until it does, is not science.

If You Build It, They Will Come.

The Creation Museum is still bringing them in by the ark-full. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer:

In the six months since the museum opened, more than 265,000 people have toured the facility built by Answers in Genesis, a nonprofit evangelical ministry. Answers had predicted it might draw 250,000 the first year.

The museum will double its parking lot by next summer.

"We're starting to find that word of mouth is spreading across the nation," said Ken Ham, president of the ministry. "We're finding people will drive a whole day or two days to get here.

Now here is the disturbing part:

One of the museum's biggest audiences is home-school families. The parents come to the museum to learn how to teach creation-based science classes.

Nancy Paul, of Indianapolis, came in part to find resources to help her teach a sixth-grade home school co-op science class. She and her husband brought their five daughters, who range in age up to 6.

"They are young enough that I just want them to enjoy science at this age," she said. "They are too young to get into the debate about creation versus evolution."

Home schoolers already get looked askance by the government and teacher's unions. This will not help their cause and may come back to bite them on the backside. This museum is like a lightning rod for Christians wishing to have their cherished beliefs upheld and militant atheists, who look for opportunities to make Christians look simple and foolish. This museum does both.

Mark Isaak's Take on the Baylor Affair

This is Mark Isaak's account of the William Dembski, Baylor episode.

Updated Creationist Claims Page

TalkOrigins has updated its Index to Creationist Claims page. Go to the "What's new" link in the first paragraph.

Michael Behe's Response to Kitzmiller

Here is Michael Behe's Response to the Kitzmiller decision in the wake of the NOVA special. He writes:

The Court finds that intelligent design (ID) is not science. In its legal analysis, the Court takes what I would call a restricted sociological view of science: “science” is what the consensus of the community of practicing scientists declares it to be. The word “science” belongs to that community and to no one else. Thus, in the Court’s reasoning, since prominent science organizations have declared intelligent design to not be science, it is not science. Although at first blush that may seem reasonable, the restricted sociological view of science risks conflating the presumptions and prejudices of the current group of practitioners with the way physical reality must be understood.

This suggests that there may be a non-Kuhnian way of viewing physical reality, an as-yet undescribed alternative to hypothesis testing. The problem is that, as Dr. Nelson stated, there is no underlying theory that can drive this alternative.

On the other hand, like myself most of the public takes a broader view: “science” is an unrestricted search for the truth about nature based on reasoning from physical evidence. By those lights, intelligent design is indeed science. Thus there is a disconnect between the two views of what “science” is. Although the two views rarely conflict at all, the dissonance grows acute when the topic turns to the most fundamental matters, such as the origins of the universe, life, and mind.

The suggestion here is that there is a point at which scientific explanations fail and one is left with a "we have no idea" explanation. The problem is that in every instance in which ID has reached this point (e.g. irreducible complexity), modern, Kuhn-based science has offered explanations through further hypothesis testing and observation.

Behe, on whether ID invokes a supernatural entity:

It does no such thing. The Court’s opinion ignores, both here and elsewhere, the distinction between an implication of a theory and the theory itself. As I testified, when it was first proposed the Big Bang theory struck many scientists as pointing to a supernatural cause. Yet it clearly is a scientific theory, because it is based entirely on physical data and logical inferences. The same is true of intelligent design.

Wellllllll, in a sense, he is right here. Big Bang models extend as far back as 10x-³⁴ seconds and are based on mathematical models. There is a point before this point where the math breaks down and we have to say "we don't exactly know what happened then." In a sense, he is not, because there is observational evidence (galactic red shifts, cosmic background radiation) that at least one of the Big Bang models (there are 11) is supported. This is straight hypothesis testing: "if the model is correct, we should see x." "If it is not, we will see y."

The problem here for ID is that, when ID proponents posit "if ID is true, we should see x," they are failing to account for alternative evolutionary explanations that have, as noted above, explained things quite well. Additionally, unlike Big Bang theory, there is no 0 time element. There is no mechanism for explaining phenomena back that far in time. This is not true for evolutionary explanations which can take phenomena back as far as there is life on earth. This is a critical point missed by the writers of Of Pandas and People. Evolution has nothing to say about the origins of life. As long as there is life, evolutionary hypotheses can be tested.

In response to the statement: The argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's, Behe states:

The dualism is “contrived” and “illogical” only if one confuses ID with creationism, as the Court does.

The court was not the only one to confuse creationism with ID. The Discovery Institute did a great job of that with both the Wedge Strategy and the lack of attention to detail between early and later drafts of Of Pandas and People, resulting in "cdesign proponentsists," not to mention the book, itself, which reeks of recycled creationism arguments.

More in the next post.

The Discovery Institute has a whole series of articles about the NOVA special called "The Truth About the Dover Intelligent Design Trial."

Here is NOVA's publication for educators on the ID special.

Still More thoughts on "What NOVA Won't Tell You About Dover." I can't get the link to work but a web search will bring it up.

In a previous post, I had some thoughts about the Discovery Institute's rebuttal to the NOVA special on Intelligent Design by Anika Smith. Moving on, Ms. Smith writes:

While Michael Behe took the time to explain the distinctions between the scientific theory of intelligent design and its implications, Judge Jones ignored his testimony in favor of the mischaracterization of ID put forth by the plaintiffs.

This is a valid concern in part and also not. Michael Behe is trying to do honest scientific work in his own field. The problem is the non-scientific hierarchy within the DI that hangs like a millstone around the likes of Behe and Dembski. It is this organizational structure that seems to be talking out of both sides of its mouth. On one hand, it employs people like Behe and on the other hand, it creates books like Of Pandas and People, which is truly awful as a texbookBehe was clearly over a barrel. The not true part is that there was a mischaracterization of ID. The show and the transcripts show this not to be the case--culminating in the reading of the Paper by Nelson.

She writes:

Even though Scott Minnich shared the experiments he ran in his University of Idaho lab in his courtroom testimony, spending days explaining his tests on the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum, Judge Jones falsely declared intelligent design untestable, and therefore not scientific.

Minnich, when asked about the three letter codon system and its resistance to point mutations, states, in this instance:

We have a code that from the get go is optimized to minimize the effects of point mutation. Now, that to me, and my colleagues, too, when we've discussed this causes them to pause. I mean, people just stop and get reflective. That to me has a signature of design on it, okay, that you have a, this is a sophisticated, this is the most sophisticated information storage system that we know of. It's true digital code we've got, it codes for algorithms.

It is still an argument from personal incredulity. when questioned about that, he responds:

I mean, that's -- Dawkins makes that argument that because I can't imagine a mechanism that would produce this that I suffer from incredulity, and I'm, darn it, you know, we are trained to be skeptics. We are trained to look at things through, you know, a very narrow lens.

Ms. Smith writes that:

In fact, it was the section on whether intelligent design is science, where Jones might have been expected to consider the testimony of the scientists actively pursuing the theory of intelligent design, where he copied the ACLU verbatim or near-verbatim, even including typographical errors. This is the tragic truth about Dover, as even critics of intelligent design like Boston University law professor Jay Wexler agrees that “[t]he part of Kitzmiller that finds ID not to be science is unnecessary, unconvincing, not particularly suited to the judicial role, and even perhaps dangerous to both science and freedom of religion.”

This appears to be smack on the money. It seems that the esteemed Mr. Jones did copy quite a bit of text from the ACLU's document. While I don't find the ID movement's arguments remotely compelling, I have absolutely no love for the ACLU, which I find to be misguided at best and antagonistic to organized religion at worst. Hat's off to the DI for uncovering this.

Ms. Smith also writes about the original negotiations between the DI and NOVA:

According to Rob Crowther, director of communications for Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, “Going into negotiation with NOVA’s producers, we were initially cautious but hopeful for a chance to tell our side of the story. Unfortunately, they were unwilling to work with us.”

This is not elaborated upon so it is not clear what Mr. Crowther meant by this. Given the statements of Ms. Absell of NOVA, they did not intend to give ID a fair shake in any event.

In closing, Ms. Smith notes:

Past experience with the media teaches that intelligent design is often misrepresented, especially through the editing process. Quotes taken out of context are used to mislead the viewer, often with effective results. Because of this, Discovery Institute has a policy that all interviews be recorded for the protection of its speakers. While NOVA at first agreed to these common-sense measures, they later changed their mind and would not allow Discovery Institute scientists to be interviewed with these protections.

According to World Magazine:

Apsell instead offered to provide Discovery officials with complete footage of the interviews provided they signed away any right to make it public. Rob Crowther, the institute's communications director, told WORLD that arrangement defeated the purpose of holding NOVA accountable. "We have had some other experiences with the media where we've been edited and kind of sliced and diced," he said. "NOVA didn't want to be held accountable."

NOVA paints this in very different words. The narrator in the special states:

NOVA made repeated requests to interview members of the Discovery Institute to talk about this and other issues, but the institute set conditions that were inconsistent with normal journalistic practice.

It is difficult to see how this is "inconsistent with normal journalistic practices." Why not come right out and say what the dispute was? Nothing else is mentioned about this and it makes the DI look bad.

If you are interested in the DI's case, further reading can be found here. It seems that errors were made all around and there was sleight of hand performed by both sides: The Dover School Board tying the teaching of ID to the dreadful book Of Pandas and People and NOVA being not quite above board about its intentions or practices.

Apparently, the viewers of WKNO in Memphis didn't see the NOVA special:

In response to one viewer complaint, WKNO program manager Debi Robertson said Wednesday that while the "NOVA" episode reported the outcome of the trial and the arguments during the trial it "might look particularly one-sided to most of our audience."

Funny, usually it goes the other direction.

Intelligent Design vs. Pastafarianism, round 2!

Not sure what the Discovery Institute has up its sleeve here:

In a bizarre twist to the evolution wars, supporters of intelligent design are accusing the producers of a TV science documentary series of bringing religion into US classrooms. The Discovery Institute, based in Seattle, Washington, alleges that teaching materials accompanying Judgment Day: Intelligent design on trial, broadcast on 13 November, encourage unconstitutional teaching practices.

Stay tuned.

Salon.com tracks The Evolution of Creationism.

But like bacteria adapting to antibiotics, creationism has slimmed down once again, this time shedding even a mention of an intelligent designer. A new textbook put out by the Discovery Institute, the Seattle think tank that promotes I.D., doesn't even have the words "intelligent design" in its index. Instead of pushing I.D. explicitly, "Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Darwinism," promoted as a high school- or college-level biology text, "teaches the controversy." Teach the controversy is the new mantra of the I.D. movement.

"We want to teach more about evolution," says Discovery Institute's Casey Luskin, "not less." The "more" they want to teach, of course, is what they see as evolution's shortcomings, leaving an ecological niche that will then be filled by intelligent design.

The problem with this, of course, is that it is a manufactured controversy. As far as 99.9% percent of biologists are concerned, there is no controversy.

According to new research, hominid species appeared in Africa in response to pulses in climate:

"If you look at the new species of hominid that evolved, 80% of those, or 13 out of 15, appeared during these pulsed climate periods. It suggests new human species evolved when the climate was highly variable. We don't know if it's the wet period, the dry period or the transition that triggers this, but we can say that when the climate is highly variable, you get a big change in species."

This is something that most palaeoanthropologists have thought true for some time and drives the "forest/fringe" hypothesis of hominid origins.

More on the tortured relationship between Baylor University, William Dembski and Robert Marks.

Baylor's history of controversy surrounding intelligent design has been well chronicled, especially when former professor Dr. William Dembski has been involved. But such was not the case in November of 2006 when Dembski arrived back on campus to work with Dr. Robert Marks, distinguished professor of computer and electrical engineering.

Baylor was involved in asking for the grant that brought Dembski back, but when his return was made known to the administration, Baylor returned the grant, effectively terminating his position.

Marks, himself, is no stranger to controversy:

Marks became involved in another academic controversy this fall when his Web site containing research related to intelligent design was removed from Baylor's server.

The site chronicled his work in evolutionary informatics, a field which uses computer modeling of evolution and adds information to the understood process.

There are funny things about how this grant, which originated from LifeWorks, a foundation that is no longer in operation, was administered, though:

"I have ... a file of a letter that [University president] Lilley signed off on basically thanking the foundation and all of the paperwork that went through," Dembski said, adding, "If he didn't look it over it closely enough, well, OK, whose fault is that?"

Fogleman said the president receives large amounts of paperwork to sign, and "once anything reaches the president's desk, he is trusting that the processes in place have been properly vetted at that point."

But the LifeWorks grant, which she said "circumvented the standard funding evaluation programs," could have "been vetted completely differently if it had gone through the academic side."

Since the whole Dembski affair, life has been not especially easy for Dr. Marks, either:

"Our professors are expected to research and teach in areas that they are hired to produce," Fogleman said.

"We're talking about any kind of outside research -- outside of their particular field of expertise in which they are hired to produce at the university. If they fulfill all of their contractual obligations to the university regarding time and productivity, then that professor is perfectly free to research in an outside area," Fogleman said.

"Right now, this continues to be an ongoing legal discussion that we hope will be resolved satisfactorily."

It seems to me that Baylor needs to demonstrate that Dr. Marks is not fulfilling the parts in this contract pertaining to research.

More thoughts on the Dover NOVA special:
1. I don't think that it was the slam dunk for evolution that Josh Rosenau of "Thoughts from Kansas" said it was. There was so much more that could have been shown in support of the theory that would have been more "in your face" than Tiktaalik, although that particular fossil is pretty cool. The human fossil record has an amazing array of transitional fossils. That probably would have been a bit controversial for their purposes, though.
2. After having read the trial transcripts for the testimony of Michael Behe, it seems to me that NOVA was very selective in what they showed. While I could quibble with Behe's acceptance of ID, he is a much better scientist than was painted.
3. Behe takes great pains to describe ID in non-religious terms. That is missed entirely in the special.
4. Nowhere is theistic evolution mentioned, which would have put a somewhat less antagonistic air about the proceedings. It is implied that some of the participants held this view but never expanded upon.
5. The NOVA special did a good job of expounding on Barbara Forrest's testimony about the "missing link" between "creation" and "Intelligent Design" in the two drafts of the book Of Pandas and People that straddled the Edwards Vs. Aguilard decision in 1987. The trial transcripts don't mention the changes from "Creation" to "cdesign proponentsists" to "design proponents."
6. It was a combination of point 5 and the Wedge Document that did them in. I remember thinking that the Wedge document was pretty critical to the plaintiff's case.

It was not a completely unbiased special, but it did show the gaps in ID pretty clearly.

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Now playing: Genesis - Duke's Travels/End (Live)
via FoxyTunes

Mac Johnson of Human Events Online has this to say about ID in the wake of the NOVA special:

I, for one, have religiously ignored the topic before now. I have done this partly out of a sort of professional courtesy to its supporters, with whom I share most other beliefs (and in many cases a personal affection), partly out of a belief that the idea was too obscure to argue over, and partly because the idea is so patently ridiculous to me that I felt that pointing this out would be somewhat akin to telling a friend that they have really, really bad breath. I mean - it would be an uncomfortable moment for both of us. But then how will they ever know, if I don’t tell them?

I sympathize. I feel the same way. He mentions, once again, the elephant in the living room:

Scientifically, attributing every aspect of biology to the arbitrary design of a divine tinkerer explains as much about biology as attributing the eruption of volcanoes to the anger of the Lava God would explain geology. A theory, by definition, makes predictions that can be tested. Intelligent Design predicts nothing, since it essentially states that every thing is the way it is because God wanted it that way.

Yup. This is a very good article and worth a complete read. He correctly describes evolution as anything but intelligent but a collection of "good enoughs" and "why not"s.

The Discovery Institute has an article up about the Dover Trial titled "What NOVA Won't Tell You About Dover." Here is the link for it. The link address is so long, Blogger can't link it.

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=4300&program=DI%20Main%20Page%20-%20Article&callingPage=discoMainPage">an article

The first two paragraphs are nothing short of spiteful:

When John E. Jones decided in 2005 to “traipse into” the controversial area of evolution and science education, deciding the scientific merit of intelligent design as a federal court judge in Dover, PA, he may have only dreamed of the day when he would see himself on the silver screen.

As the author of the 139-page verdict in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, Jones gained national notoriety (and much acclaim from certain fashionable quarters) for ruling that intelligent design is not science but religion. That more than 90% of the section on intelligent design was copied nearly verbatim from the ACLU didn't diminish his standing as a “great thinker” in the mainstream press. Neither did the fact that the Judge ignored the testimony of two scientists currently conducting intelligent design research.

I need to see the whole program (tonight) before I can comment further on this, though.