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science education

Gunter Bechly on the media that teach nonsense about evolution

The media can’t really help teaching nonsense about evolution and they will definitely resist correction, putting it down to some dark creationist plot. That is because so much of it supports their worldview. Which may well reflect on their worldview. Read More ›

What is National Center for Science Education (the Darwin in the schools lobby) doing now?

Well, an awful lot on climate change, for one thing. Wherever else the climate is changing, it is certainly changing around Darwinism. Perhaps this is a graceful exit for them. Read More ›

Speaker bounced from science teachers’ conference recounts his experiences

One way of looking at the story: When Darwinian evolution became a secular religion, as Darwinian philosopher Michael Ruse admits it is, an inevitable consequence followed: The usual assortment of puritans, pharisees, and timeservers who hang around other religions also hung around Darwinism. Read More ›

National Science Teachers group calls security over questioning Darwin

Okay, but then Suzan Mazur, author of Darwin Overthrown: Hello Mechanobiology, should be invited to speak. She would probably give a great rundown on the various streams of non-Darwinian (and some explicitly contra-Darwinian) research that doesn’t address any faith issues. Read More ›

PLOS editor reflects on teaching evolutionary biology “sensitively”?

What Klymkowsky takes to be demonstrable fact is mostly a series of naturalist statements of belief in the first paragraph and flatly contradicted by mathematical facts in the second. No wonder people don't want this stuff in the schools. Read More ›

Babylon Bee: Earth cools due to Bill Nye’s ego

“We noticed the trend about three years ago, but it really accelerated over the past few months,” an EPA representative told reporters. “After controlling for solar activity and weather patterns, we determined that the biggest factor is the exponential growth in Bill Nye’s self-admiration. His expansive, pretentious hubris now casts a shadow large enough to shield most of the Earth from the warming effects of the sun.” See also: Bill Nye as “a terrible spokesman for science” and “Neil DeGrasse Tyson” Debuts At The Babylon Bee In An Op-Ed and Goes Around, Comes Around: 500 Women Scientists Are Eating Bill Nye…

A flat earth is popular among iGen – kids who grew up with the internet

Most of Novella’s piece has to do with people who seriously espouse a flat earth as opposed to people who check the box and go back to their Twitter feed, surely the vast majority. It won’t be fun when those people have responsible positions, imparting their knowledge of the world. Read More ›

Denmark: Slowly developing a conversation about design in nature

Karsten Pultz: Kristian Østergård and I have both been involved in the translation and publishing of Douglas Axe’s book Undeniable, and it was very satisfying to be able to provide the teachers who attended the course with copies of this important work. Read More ›

If scientists get elected, will they confront the war on STEM education?

Some scientists hope to influence society by running for office: On the verge of Election Day in the U.S. a political movement focused on getting scientists into public office is hoping that results at the polls will lead to more scenes like this one at state houses, city councils and school boards across the country, not just at a federal level. At least 70 scientist–candidates launched bids for office at the state and local level this election cycle, most of them first-time campaigners and part of a record wave of scientists bucking a long-established penchant to avoid the political arena. Organizers hope this will become a deep bench of up-and-coming policy makers with science and technology backgrounds who might contest Read More ›

J. P. Moreland: How scientism leads to post-modern relativism

From an interview with J. P. Moreland, author of Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology (2018): RC: How does science differ from scientism and why does it matter? JPM: Claims of science—water is H20, electro-magnetic fields behave in such and such a manner—what science is limited to. But scientism is a philosophical claim about science, not a claim of science. Scientism is a theory of the nature of knowledge (it can only be obtained through physics, chemistry and the other hard sciences) and limits of knowledge (based on the nature of knowledge, it is limited to the the hard sciences and absent from all other fields, e.g. religious claims or ethical assertions). These types of claims Read More ›

Education prof: Upend science to benefit the oppressed

Published in a Springer journal: Another University of Alberta professor published a piece in the Canadian Journal of Science, Math, Technology, and Education, saying that to simply teach students science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is objectively bad, apparently because it cultivates, and I am listing this directly from the document: “[P]atriarchy, heteronormativity, white supremacy, Eurocentrism, (neo-)colonialism, ableism, classism, labor inequity, anthropocentrism, and/or others.”Keean Bexte, “University of Alberta prof calls for upheaval of science to benefit the “oppressed”” at Rebel Media Marc Higgins and colleagues’ paper (open access) is here. From the opening: It has been argued many times over the course of decades and across diverse paradigms that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education practices-as-usual (re)produce systems of Read More ›

Psychology undergrads misled about science by their textbooks?

Could that be a factor in the recent meltdowns? A recent open access study of textbooks out of the University of Nevada addresses that case: Almost a quarter of the sampled textbooks explicitly and boastfully stated that there is no difference between psychology and other “hard” sciences such as chemistry and physics. Yet only one textbook discussed “methodological freedom” – the idea asserted by the philosopher-critic of science, Paul Feyerabend, that all scientific techniques are different. Only one textbook mentioned the issue of improper use of ad hoc hypotheses, a characteristic of pseudoscience. Similarly, there was only one reference to the ideas put forward by Feyerabend and Alan Gross that persuasion and rhetoric are a key part of science – i.e. Read More ›