'Intelligent design' theory threatens science classrooms

In Cobb County, Ga., controversy erupted this spring when school board officials decided to affix "disclaimer stickers" to science textbooks, alerting students that "evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things."

The stickers were the Cobb County District School Board's response to intelligent design theory, which holds that the complexity of DNA and the diversity of life forms on our planet and beyond can be explained only by an extra-natural intelligent agent. The ID movement -- reminiscent of creationism but more nuanced and harder to label -- has been quietly gaining momentum in a number of states for several years, especially Georgia and Ohio.

Stickers on textbooks are only the latest evidence of the ID movement's successes to date, though Cobb County officials did soften their position somewhat in September following a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. In a subsequent policy statement, officials said the biological theory of evolution is a "disputed view" that must be "balanced" in the classroom, taking into account other, religious teachings.

Surely, few would begrudge ID advocates their views or the right to discuss the concept as part of religious studies. At issue, rather, is whether ID theory, so far unproven by scientific facts, should be served to students on the same platter with the well-supported theory of evolution.

How the Cobb County episode will affect science students remains uncertain since, as the National Center for Science Education noted, the amended policy statement included "mixed signals."

But it's clear that the ID movement is quickly emerging as one of the more significant threats to U.S. science education, fueled by a sophisticated marketing campaign based on a three-pronged penetration of the scientific community, educators and the general public.

In Ohio, the state's education board on Oct. 14 passed a unanimous though preliminary vote to keep ID theory out of the state's science classrooms. But the board's ruling left the door open for local school districts to present ID theory together with science and suggested that scientists should "continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory."

In fact, even while the state-level debate continued, the Patrick Henry Local School District, based in Columbus, passed a motion this June to support "the idea of intelligent design being included as appropriate in classroom discussions in addition to other scientific theories."

Undaunted by tens of thousands of e-mails it has already received on the topic, the state's education board is now gamely inviting further public comment through November. In December, Ohio's Board of Education will vote to conclusively determine whether alternatives to evolution should be included in new guidelines that spell out what students need to know about science at different grade levels.

Meanwhile, ID theorists reportedly have been active in Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, New Jersey and other states as well as Ohio and Georgia.

What do scientists think of all this? We have great problems with the claim that ID is a scientific theory or a science-based alternative to evolutionary theory. We don't question its religious or philosophical underpinnings. That's not our business. But there is no scientific evidence underlying ID theory.

No relevant research has been done; no papers have been published in scientific journals. Because it has no science base, we believe that ID theory should be excluded from science curricula in schools.

In fact, the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest general scientific society in the world, passed a resolution this month urging policy-makers to keep intelligent design theory out of U.S. science classrooms.

Noting that the United States has promised to "leave no child behind," the AAAS Board found that intelligent design theory -- if presented within science courses as factually based -- is likely to confuse American schoolchildren and undermine the integrity of U.S. science education. At a time when standards-based learning and performance assessments are paramount, children would be better served by keeping scientific information separate from religious concepts.

Certainly, American society supports and encourages a broad range of viewpoints and the scientific community is no exception. While this diversity enriches the educational experience for students, science and conceptual belief systems should not be co-mingled, as ID proponents have repeatedly proposed.

The ID argument that random mutations in nature and natural selection, for example, are too complex for scientific explanation is an interesting -- and for some, highly compelling -- philosophical or theological concept. Unfortunately, it's being put forth as a scientifically based alternative to the theory of biological evolution, and it isn't based on science. In sum, there's no data to back it up, and no way of scientifically testing the validity of the ideas proposed by ID advocates.

The quality of U.S. science education is at stake here. We live in an era when science and technology are central to every issue facing our society -- individual and national security, health care, economic prosperity, employment opportunities.

Children who lack an appropriate grounding in science and mathematics, and who can't discriminate what is and isn't evidence, are doomed to lag behind their well-educated counterparts. America's science classrooms are certainly no place to mix church and state.

Alan I. Leshner is CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science; www.aaas.org

Where do I start?

For example, what are the chances of a new species surviving in a hostile environment before the development of the clotting mechanism?

Also, how many mutations (or years) would it require for a new species to develop a working clotting mechanism?

I wonder how many times they would have to bleed to death before they decided to make blood that clots.

But of course the very mechanism by which they are supposed to produce such mutations would contradict survival of the fittest. I mean by bleeding to death they learn to produce blood that clots?

The absurdities of the theory evolution never cease to amaze me.

A few more points; "Blood clotting requires extreme precision. When a pressurized bloodcirculation system is punctured, a clot must form quickly or the animal will bleed to death. On the other hand, if blood congeals at the wrong time or place, then the clot may block circulation as it does in heart attacks and strokes.

Furthermore, a clot has to stop bleeding all along the length of the cut, sealing it completely. Yet blood clotting must be confined to the cut or the entire blood system of the animal might solidify, killing it.

Consequently, clotting requires this enormously complex system so that the clot forms only when and only where it is required."

(Evidence for Intelligent Design from Biochemistry/ Michael J. Behe )

It is inconceivable that evolution could produce such a system. It is another example of strong evidence for creation by an intelligent Creator. Just as the Bible teaches.

good point, and here's a little ditty that shows we have more to fear of bogus science being taught in our schools than diverse theories.

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"During my years as a physical science undergraduate and biology graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, I believed almost everything I read in my textbooks," Wells recounts. "I knew that the books contained a few misprints and minor factual errors, and I was skeptical of philosophical claims that went beyond the evidence, but I thought that most of what I was being taught was substantially true."

But then he made a troubling discovery.

"As I was finishing my Ph.D. in cell and developmental biology," he writes, "I noticed that all of my textbooks dealing with evolutionary biology contained a blatant misrepresentation."

The texts contained drawings of embryos that supposedly provide compelling evidence of evolution.

But there was a problem, says Wells: "As an embryologist, I knew they were false."

Although he didn't stir up a ruckus, the discovery weighed on his mind. He began to notice that other illustrations were also wrong--important illustrations depicting evidence that Darwinists have long touted as "proof" of evolution. These pictures included such perennial favorites as Haeckel's embryos, peppered moths, the evolutionary "tree of life," Darwin's finches, the ape-to-man transition and others.

These images--and their accompanying evolutionary stories--are so widely used in textbooks that some have been called "icons of evolution." In his book, Wells examines 10 of the most common icons, showing that each of them seriously misrepresents the truth--either by presenting assumptions as observed facts, concealing raging scientific controversies or directly contradicting well-established scientific evidence.

Wrong From the Start

Among the most blatantly false icons are the embryo drawings that attracted Wells' attention. The pictures were drawn in the 1800s by German zoologist Ernst Haeckel (pronounced heckle), an enthusiastic supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution.

Haeckel proposed that the development of an organism's embryo replays the evolutionary history of that organism's species. He believed that as new organs or structures evolved, these features were tacked onto the end of an organism's embryonic development. As a result, we can virtually see the organism's evolutionary history in the embryo's development. At the beginning of its development, the embryo looks like its earliest ancestor. But as it develops and more recent features appear, it resembles later ancestors--until it finally reaches the point where it resembles its own species. Haeckel called this the biogenetic law.

On the basis of this law, he reasoned that the embryos of various organisms should look virtually identical early in development, but grow increasingly different over time--reflecting their evolutionary descent from a common ancestor. And when he made drawings of the embryos of several backboned animals, this is exactly what his drawings showed.

Unfortunately, Haeckel had more enthusiasm for his theory than for reality, and faked many of his drawings.

"In some cases," Wells says, "Haeckel used the same woodcut to print embryos that were supposedly from different classes [of animals]. In others, he doctored his drawings to make the embryos look more alike than they really were. His contemporaries repeatedly criticized him for these misrepresentations, and charges of fraud abounded in his lifetime."

In addition to doctoring his drawings, Haeckel also misrepresented the embryos' development. The stage of development that Haeckel called the "first" stage actually occurs about midway through the embryos' development. And although the embryos at this midway stage look faintly similar (if you squint hard and step back a bit), embryos at the earlier stages differ greatly.

Thus, instead of starting out virtually identical and then diverging, the embryos differ from the very beginning. About midway through development they converge to a vague similarity. Then they diverge again to their final forms.

Wells points out that biologists have known this for over a century. In 1894, for example, embryologist Adam Sedgwick rejected the idea that embryos start out similar and diverge over time, stating that this view is "not in accordance with the facts of development."

Sedgwick noted that he could distinguish between a chicken and a duck as early as the second day of development.

"Every embryologist knows that [early differences] exist and could bring forward innumerable instances of them," he said. "I need only say with regard to them that a species is distinct and distinguishable from its allies from the very earliest stages all through development" (emphasis in the original).

Sedgwick's observations are confirmed by modern embryology.

In spite of this, Wells found that Haeckel's drawings are almost universally touted in biology textbooks as powerful evidence for evolution. This is even the case in some advanced college texts written by eminent scientists.

Haeckel's drawings appear, for example, in the latest edition of Molecular Biology of the Cell, written by National Academy of Sciences president and distinguished cell biologist Bruce Alberts and his colleagues. The text states that "early developmental stages of animals whose adult forms appear radically different are often surprisingly similar," and that Darwinian evolution explains why "embryos of different species so often resemble each other in their early stages and, as they develop, seem sometimes to replay the steps of evolution."

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