science education

From Salvo online: Zombie Killer: The “Icons of Evolution” Have Joined the Ranks of the Undead: You cannot kill all zombies simply by destroying their brains. Only intelligence will kill the really nasty ones. About fifteen years ago, I read Jonathan Wells’s Icons of Evolution (2000). The sheer brazenness of the outdated information that continued to be paraded in decades of textbooks dealing with evolution was striking—even to a longtime textbook editor (now retired) like me. For example, Ernst Haeckel’s doctored vertebrate embryo illustrations from more than a century ago (intended to cement the idea of common descent) were the best modern evolutionary science could offer.1 Which says something about modern evolutionary science. The textbook publishing industry depends on a Read More ›

From Mic, via AP: Bill Nye, the Science Guy, has been in the news a lot. From Bruce Haring and Erik Pedersen at Deadline: Bill Nye Hits Disney With $37 Million Fraud Suit Over ‘Science Guy’ Profits Bill Nye the Science Guy ran on PBS from 1994 to 1999 and also was syndicated to local stations. The show aired for 100 half-hour episodes spanning five seasons and was nominated for 23 Emmy Awards, winning 19 The suit that Nye and his lawyers put before the court contends that “the disturbing size of the supposed ‘accounting error,’ coupled with the seeming indifference of both BVT and WDC, left Nye suspicious of the veracity of the accounting.” More. See also: Bill Nye Read More ›

Lauren Frayer and Gokce Saracoglu report: At a news conference last month, Turkey’s education minister announced that new textbooks will be introduced in all primary and secondary schools, starting with grades 1, 5 and 9 this fall, and the rest next year. They will stop teaching evolution in grade 9, when it’s usually taught. “Evolutionary biology is best left to be taught at the university level,” Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz told reporters. “It’s a theory that requires a higher philosophical understanding than schoolchildren have.” That means students who don’t go on to university may never learn who Charles Darwin was. More. Huh? When Darwin’s publicists speak without thinking, they reveal their true concerns. The big problem, put starkly in the Read More ›

From Phys.org: A commonly proposed solution to help diffuse the political and religious polarization surrounding controversial scientific issues like evolution or climate change is education. However, Carnegie Mellon University researchers found that the opposite is true: people’s beliefs about scientific topics that are associated with their political or religious identities actually become increasingly polarized with education, as measured by years in school, science classes, and science literacy. “A lot of science is generally accepted and trusted, but certain topics have become deeply polarizing. We wanted to find out what factors are related to this polarization, and it turns out the ‘deficit model’—which says the divisions are due to a lack of education or understanding—does not tell the whole story,” said Read More ›

From Burak Bekdil at Gatestone Institute: More recently, in July, Turkish Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz revealed that the final version of Turkey’s national school curriculum left out evolution and added the concept of “jihad,” as part of Islamic law, in the books. The new curriculum will be put into execution for first, fifth, and ninth graders beginning this year, and will extend to other classes in the 2018-2019 academic year. According to Yilmaz: “Jihad is an element in our religion; it is in our religion… The duty of the Education Ministry is to teach every concept deservedly, in a correct way. It is also our job to correct things that are wrongly perceived, seen or taught”. Although the Turkish government Read More ›

Why? Could that be because the teachers are really teaching a religion rather than a discipline and many people are not convinced by that religion? From Amanda Glaze at Evolution Institute: There has long been a discussion in the scientific and science education communities about the dismal state of evolution acceptance in the United States2. For those not aware, the United States presently ranks second to last in terms of acceptance of evolution among all other first tier nations worldwide3. In fact, the only nation that has lower acceptance rates is Turkey, a country where the national education governing body has, just this year, presented new national standards for education that are noticeably missing their previous coverage of evolution4. In Read More ›

From Paul Braterman at The Conversation, we learn stuff like: Evolution, Pence argues, is a theory, theories are uncertain, therefore evolution is uncertain. But evolution is a theory only in the scientific sense of the word. And in the words of the National Academy of Sciences, “The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence.” Attaching this label to evolution is an indicator of strength, not weakness. Actually, string theory and multiverse theories are elaborate theories too; there is just no evidence for them. It simply isn’t the case, as Braterman claims, that Read More ›

From science prof Darrin Durant at The Conversation: Florida recently passed a law which “authorizes county residents to challenge use or adoption of instructional materials” in schools. It’s been described as “anti-science” by individual scientists and USA’s National Center for Science Education. The National Center for Science Education is, among other things, the Darwin-in-the-schools lobby. For what that tends to mean, see Zombie Science. In his book How to be Antiscientific, Steven Shapin argues that descriptions of science, and what ought to be done in science, vary tremendously among scientists themselves. So you’re not anti-science if you have a preference for or against things like a preferred method, or some particular philosophy of science, or some supposed “character” of science. Read More ›

From Nikita Vladimirov at Campus Reform: Bret Weinstein, the Evergreen State College [biology] professor who was driven from campus by a mob of students earlier this year, is preparing to file a $3.8 million claim against the public institution. The claim accuses Evergreen State of “fostering a racially hostile work and retaliatory environment” by encouraging the student protests that forced Weinstein to flee campus for his own safety. The students were upset with Weinstein for objecting to a “Day of Absence” event that called for white students and faculty to leave campus for a day of diversity programming.More. Good for him! No more Mr. Nice Scientist. One can’t teach and run for cover at the same time. If campuses really Read More ›

Just like Coulter and Yiannopoulos? From Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist: Richard Dawkins has a new collection of essays coming out next month in a book called Science in the Soul. Naturally, he’ll be visiting the U.S. on a book tour. One of the stops was going to be in Berkeley, California on August 9. It was sponsored by KPFA, a progressive radio station in the area, in a city known for being the hotbed of liberal activism. But that talk has now been canceled. More. Jerry Coyne quotes the cancellation notice: We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and Read More ›

The icon perished and became a zombie, lurking in the shadows of tax-funded textbooks. But let Wells tell it: Don’t miss the eighteen-winged dragonfly which has never existed except in tax-funded biology textbooks (you can see an illustration in the vid). Note: Tax-funded textbooks? That’s most of what keeps the zombies deadwalking. The vast majority of people compelled to pay for the textbooks cannot make a full-time job of opposing the pressure groups and lobbies that keep the textbooks bad. They can’t afford the time to even know about it. See also: Zombie Science and DNA replication film undermines textbooks

From Brian Gallagher, Nautilus blog editor, at Nautilus:  In 2008 in Louisiana, and then in 2012 in Tennessee, laws passed allowing teachers to discuss the supposed “weaknesses” of evolutionary theory—a loophole, some science-education advocates said, through which creationism would creep in. And there’s good reason to think that it is: A 2008 nationally representative survey of U.S. high school biology teachers found that nearly half of the responders agreed or strongly agreed that creationism or intelligent design was “a valid, scientific alternative” to evolution, just over 15 percent reported adhering to young-Earth creationism, and 18 percent said they either explicitly advocated creationism in class or endorsed it in passing. … How to fix this? They argue the U.S. needs its prospective Read More ›

We were forwarded a PR from The Technics & Science Research Foundation  (TSRF). Turkey is rapidly degenerating into an authoritarian state (journalists imprisoned, etc.), so one should assess what one hears with caution. That said, the following media release on removing evolution teaching from the schools is from an organization associated with longtime Turkish ID advocate, Adnan Ottar (pen name Harun Yahya), whom we interviewed in 2009. (Here is a recent conference.) A couple of comments are interspersed: Turkey recently made a decision to remove the teachings of the theory of evolution from the curriculum taught in classes, a move that is contrary to how the world usually approaches this subject. The news spread very quickly via the European pro-evolutionists Read More ›

From Maria Gallucci at Mashable: Florida residents can now challenge how climate change, evolution are taught in school Florida’s statute is one of 13 measures proposed this year that the National Council for Science Education considers to be “anti-science,” the Washington Post recently noted. Alabama and Indiana, for instance, both adopted non-binding resolutions to promote the “academic freedom” of science teachers in the state’s public schools. Educators are encouraged to “teach the controversy” around “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” Legislators and parents aren’t the only ones putting pressure on public school teachers. More. Reading material like this prompts some reflections: Parents are legally required to send their children to a public school if Read More ›

From Amanda L. Glaze at Researchgate: Divided we fall: the evolution “controversy” as a driver for rethinking science education The present study demonstrates that university students across the United States, including science and education majors, harbor similar misunderstandings of the nature and practice of science as a discipline and way of knowing, inadequate levels of acceptance, and similar misconceptions to those held by the general public when it comes to evolution (Glaze, Goldston, & Dantzler, 2015; Ingram & Nelson, 2006; Nehm, Kim, & Sheppard, 2009; Rissler, Duncan, & Caruso, 2014; Rutledge & Mitchell, 2002; Sinatra, Southerland, McConaughy, & Demastes, 2003). Representations of students from around the United States allows for a comparison across regions that has been a limiting factor Read More ›