Biology textbook hearings prompt science disputes [Texas]

FORT WORTH, Texas - (KRT) -
The long-running debate over the origins of mankind continues Wednesday before the Texas State Board of Education, and the result could change the way science is taught here and across the nation.

Local and out-of-state lobbying groups will try to convince the board that the next generation of biology books should contain new scientific evidence that reportedly pokes holes in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Many of those groups say that they are not pushing to place a divine creator back into science books, but to show that Darwin's theory is far from a perfect explanation of the origin of mankind.

"It has become a battle ground," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of theNational Center of Science Education, which is dedicated to defending the teaching of evolution in the classroom.

Almost 45 scientists, educators and special interest groups from across the state will testify at the state's first public hearing this year on the next generation of textbooks for the courses of biology, family and career studies and English as a Second Language.

Approved textbooks will be available for classrooms for the 2004-05 school year. And because Texas is the second largest textbook buyer in the nation, the outcome could affect education nationwide.

The Texas Freedom Network and a handful of educators held a conference call last week to warn that conservative Christians and special interest organizations will try to twist textbook content to further their own views.

"We are seeing the wave of the future of religious right's attack on basic scientific principles," said Samantha Smoot, executive director of the network, an anti-censorship group and opponent of the radical right.

Those named by the network disagree with the claim, including the Discovery Institute and its Science and Culture Center of Seattle.

"Instead of wasting time looking at motivations, we wish people would look at the facts," said John West, associate director of the center.

"Our goal nationally is to encourage schools and educators to include more about evolution, including controversies about various parts of Darwinian theory that exists between even evolutionary scientists," West said. "We are a secular think tank."

The institute also is perhaps the nation's leading proponent of intelligent design - the idea that life is too complex to have occurred without the help of an unknown, intelligent being.

It pushed this view through grants to teachers and scientists, including Michael J. Behe, professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. The Institute receives millions of dollars from philanthropists and foundations dedicated to discrediting Darwin's theory.

The center sent the state board a 55-page report that graded 11 high school biology textbooks submitted for adoption. None earned a grade above a C minus. The report also includes four arguments it says show that evolutionary theory is not as solid as presented in biology textbooks.

Discovery Institute Fellow Raymond Bohlin, who also is executive director of Probe Ministries, based in Richardson, Texas, will deliver that message in person Wednesday before the State Board of Education. Bohlin has a doctorate degree in molecular cell biology from the University of Texas at Dallas.

"If we can simply allow students to see that evolution is not an established fact, that leaves freedom for students to pursue other ideas," Bohlin said. "All I can do is continue to point these things out and hopefully get a group that hears and sees relevant data and insist on some changes."

The executive director of Texas Citizens for Science, Steven Schafersman, calls the institute's information "pseudoscience nonsense." Schafersman is an evolutionary scientist who, for more than two decades, taught biology, geology, paleontology and environmental science at a number of universities, including the University of Houston and the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

"It sounds plausible to people who are not scientifically informed," Schafersman said. "But they are fraudulently trying to deceive board members. They might succeed, but it will be over the public protests of scientists."

The last time Texas looked at biology books, in 1997, the State Board of Education considered replacing them all with new ones that did not mention evolution. The board voted down the proposal by a slim margin.

The state requires that evolution be in textbooks. But arguments against evolution have been successful over the last decade in other states. Alabama, New Mexico and Nebraska made changes that, to varying degrees, challenge the pre-eminence of evolution in the scientific curriculum.

In 1999, the Kansas Board of Education voted to wash the concepts of evolution from the state's science curricula. A new state board has since put evolution back in. Last year, the Cobb County school board in Georgia voted to include creationism in science classes.

Texas education requirements demand that textbooks include arguments for and against evolution, said Neal Frey, an analyst working with perhaps Texas' most famous textbook reviewers, Mel and Norma Gabler.

The Gablers, of Longview, have been reviewing Texas textbooks for almost four decades. They describe themselves as conservative Christians. Some of their priorities include making sure textbooks include scientific flaws in arguments for evolution.

"None of the texts truly conform to the state's requirements that the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories be presented to students," Frey said.

The Texas textbook proclamation of 2001, which is part of the standard for the state's curriculum, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, requires that biology textbooks instruct students so they may "analyze, review and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weakness using scientific evidence and information."

The state board is empowered to reject books only for factual errors or for not meeting the state's curriculum requirements. If speakers convince the state board that their evidence is scientifically sound, members may see little choice but to demand its presence in schoolbooks.

Proposed books already have been reviewed and approved by Texas Tech University. After a public hearing Wednesday and another Sept. 10, the state board is scheduled to adopt the new textbooks in November.

Satisfying the state board is only half the battle for textbook publishers. Individual school districts choose which books to use and are reimbursed by the state unless they buy texts rejected by the state board.

Districts can opt not to use books with passages they find objectionable. So when speakers at the public hearings criticize what they perceived as flaws in various books - such as failing to portray the United States or Christianity in a positive light - many publishers listen.

State Board member Terri Leo said the Discovery Institute works with esteemed scientists and that their evidence should be heard.

"You cannot teach students how to think if you don't present both sides of a scientific issue," Leo said. "Wouldn't you think that the body that has the responsibility of what's in the classroom would look at all scientific arguments?"

State board member Bob Craig said he had heard of the Intelligent Design theory.

"I'm going in with an open mind about everybody's presentation," Craig said. "I need to hear their presentation before I make any decisions or comments.

State board member Mary Helen Berlanga said she wanted to hear from local scientists.

"If we are going to discuss scientific information in the textbooks, the discussion will have to remain scientific," Berlanga said. "I'd like to hear from some of our scientists in the field on the subject."

Once again, who is doing the questioning? Someone with only a layman's conception of the biology behind the theory, or actual researchers? If the former, I'm afraid you don't really have a case. If the latter I'm certain there would be any number of folks willing to foot the bill for the research.

However...

As Lenny Flank pointed out in his 1995 essay, Who are the Creation "Scientists?" that is often not a viable course of action for creationists:

[...]
The creationist movement also does not like to talk about the scientists who leave after being given the opportunity to do real field research. In 1957, the Geoscience Research Institute was formed in order to search for evidence of Noah's Flood in the geological record. The project fell apart when both of the creationists involved with the project, P. Edgar Hare and Richard Ritland, completed their field research with the conclusion that fossils were much older than allowed under the creationist assertions, and that no geological or paleontological evidence of any sort could be found to indicate the occurrence of a world-wide flood. (Numbers, 1992, pp 291-293) Hare concluded, "We have been taught for years that almost everything in the geological record is the result of the Flood. I've seen enough in the field to realize that quite substantial portions of the geologic record are not the direct result of the Flood. We have also been led to believe . . . that the evidence for the extreme age of the earth is extremely tenuous and really not worthy of any credence at all. I have tried to make a rather careful study of this evidence over the past several years, and I feel that the evidence is not ambiguous but that it is just as clear as the evidence that the earth is round." (cited in Numbers, 1992, p. 294) Ritland, for his part, pointed out that Morris's book The Genesis Flood contained "flagrant errors which the uninitiated person is scarcely able to detect". (cited in Numbers, 1992, p. 294) Ritland concluded that further attempts to justify Flood geology would "only bring embarrassment and discredit to the cause of God". (cited in Numbers, 1992, p. 293)
A few years later, creationist biologists Carl Krekeler and William Bloom, who taught creationist biology at the Lutheran Church's Valparaiso University in Indiana, left after concluding that a literal interpretation of Genesis was not supported by any of the available scientific evidence. Krekeler concluded, "The documentation, not only of changes within a lineage such as horses, but of transitions between the classes of vertebrates-- particularly the details of the transition between reptiles and mammals--forced me to abandon thinking of evolution as occurring only within 'kinds'. " (cited in Numbers, 1992, p. 302) Krekeler also criticized the creationist movement for the "dozens of places where half-truths are spoken, where quotations supporting the authors' views are taken from the context of books representing contrary views, and where there is misrepresentation." (cited in Numbers, 1992, p. 303) The two became theistic evolutionists, and later wrote a biology textbook which accepted evolutionary theory.
[...]

Now, how do we go about finding out what the "four arguments" are?

I found this article, from the Austin American-Statesman, which lists the DI's four arguments (which I've bolded):

New force in the fray on state's textbooks

'Intelligent design' adherents use science to question evolution

By Melissa Ludwig
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, July 9, 2003
As summer activities chase flagella and mitochondria from the minds of Texas schoolchildren, parents and interest groups are preparing to battle over biology textbooks.
Today brings the State Board of Education's first public hearing on the new books, continuing a decades-long battle over how Texas public school children are taught about the science of life on Earth.
If past years are any indicator, evolution, sex education and the origins of life will be the hot-button topics for parents and conservative groups who will testify before the board. But this year's arguments over evolution may swerve from the beaten path.
As traditional creationism has lost political ground in Texas, a national movement that embraces the concept known as "intelligent design" has gained influence by using science rather than religion to battle evolution. Intelligent designers believe certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained as the product of intelligent action, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
Two senior fellows from the Discovery Institute, a nonprofit Seattle-based think tank that has led the intelligent design movement, will testify at today's hearings.
The institute scored a victory in December 2002 when, after much debate, the Ohio Board of Education adopted science curriculum standards that required the examination of criticisms of the theory of evolution.
Factual errors will be the focus of the institute's criticisms.
John West, assistant director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, said the institute's intelligent design theories are not related to its position on evolution. West says evolution should be taught, but its discussion should include disagreements among biologists about aspects of the theory.
"If you are going to cover it, you need to cover it correctly," West said.
The institute has graded each Texas biology text up for adoption on the basis of four "icons of evolution" they say are inaccurate and misleading.
The institute picks each icon apart. For example, it cites problems with a 1953 experiment that produced organic molecules from a mixture of primordial gases. It also claims that fossil evidence of a sudden explosion of life during the Cambrian era (about 500 million years ago) poses a mystery that evolution can't solve. It argues that drawings of vertebrate embryos are regularly misrepresented and that photos of moths on tree trunks in England, a classic example of the workings of natural selection, were staged.
Bassett Maguire, a biology professor at the University of Texas, says there is truth to the institute's claims. The moths were staged, the embryos exaggerated. But Maguire says the examples don't matter as much as the concepts they teach, which he says are still valid. The icons represent flawed but nevertheless historic moments in science, and the concepts they illustrate have since been heaped with supporting evidence, Maguire said.
The institute has tried hard to publicly extricate itself from creationists and social conservatives who have besieged textbook hearings since the 1980s, most of whom believe that evolution is incompatible with a literal reading of the Book of Genesis in the Bible and that Earth is no more than 10,000 years old.
The Texas Education Agency definitively foiled efforts to get creation taught alongside evolution when they adopted new science education standards in 1997 with a requirement that all students learn the basic concepts of evolution. There is no requirement regarding creationism. Those standards form the basis for the state's new Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, which 11th-graders must pass in order to graduate.
West said institute scientists are not creationists and are not associated with religious fundamentalists. However, The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that one of its major donors is Howard F. Ahmanson, a wealthy Californian who served on the board of directors for the Chalcedon Foundation, a think tank for Christian Reconstruction, a movement that seeks to replace democracy with a Christian theocracy.
West dismisses attacks on the institute for its motives. "Everyone has motives for everything. Science is about the evidence," West said.
But Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, says scientists such as William Dembski, Michael Behe and Jonathan Wells, all senior fellows at the institute, are not taken seriously by mainstream scientists. Scott and Maguire say work on intelligent design is not published in scientific, peer-reviewed journals.
The institute's interest in Texas is obvious. Texas is the second-largest purchaser of books in a multibillion-dollar market; California is first. In recent years, publishers have begun tailoring their books to appease interest groups on both sides of the debate.
In California ,the debate has tended to center on politically correct phrasing. Samantha Smoot of the Texas Freedom Network, a political watchdog group, says Texas is the other side of the California coin. Here, conservative and religious ideologies have made condoms and Cambrian fossils controversial, Smoot said.
"Concerns about how elderly people are depicted are the tip of the iceberg; the rest is in Texas, where accurate scientific and historical information and age-appropriate health education are at risk. We're not talking about world choices or window dressing," Smoot, who advocates the teaching of evolution, said.
Smoot says many members of the State Board of Education favor the kind of social conservatism propagated by groups such as the Eagle Forum, Texas Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Texas Pubic Policy Foundation. San Antonio millionaire James Leininger, who founded the Texas Public Policy Foundation, also funded many of the board members' campaigns in the 1990s, Smoot said.
Vance Miller, husband of State Board of Education member Geraldine "Tincy" Miller, serves on the foundation's board.
Because textbook rejections were being influenced by ideologies, the Legislature in 1995 halted the board's power to reject textbooks on the basis of anything except a factual error or a manufacturing defect.
Two years ago an environmental science text was rejected for the first time since the law went into effect. Smoot and board member Mary Helen Berlanga condemned the rejection as censorship, but the board majority insisted there were numerous factual errors.
Last year, publishers made several changes in response to complaints, including a reference to the Ice Age as occurring millions of years ago to taking place "in the distant past."
Though intelligent design theorists and creationists may be a minority in the scientific community, the most recent Gallup poll shows that nearly half the American public leans more toward creationism than evolution.
Research conducted by Kim Bilica, an assistant professor of science education at the State University of New York in Buffalo, indicated that science teachers across the state were not emphasizing evolution as much as the teachers would like..
"Given unlimited instructional freedom, in almost every single case they would prefer to emphasize evolution more than they had that last class year," Bilica said.
Clay Smith and Nicole Sorto, both biology teachers at McCallum High School, say the controversial nature of evolution affects how they teach it. Both try to accommodate children who say they are uncomfortable learning it.
Gladys Havel, a biology teacher at LBJ High School, said she uses supplemental materials more than the text when teaching evolution, although she says texts remain important .
"At home the kids have their textbooks to read over and reinforce the lesson," Havel said. Havel said when students bring up creationism, she tells them that they can believe whatever they wish and that evolution is merely an explanation for the changes in life forms. She also teaches them that all scientific theories are just that -- theories.
"Science is a constantly changing realm," Havel said. "There are not many things you can say are absolutely concrete."
mludwig@statesman.com; 445-3645
Intelligent design
What is it?
Popularized in the early 1990s, the intelligent design movement claims that the development of life can't be explained by natural selection. Though intelligent designers disagree among themselves about the history of life on Earth, most agree that life suggests the hand of some creator, rather than a series of developments governed only by the laws of nature.
Where is it based?
Center for Science and Culture, part of the Discovery Institute in Seattle.
On what grounds do proponents dispute evolution?
* In 1953, two scientists set out to show how life evolved by sending an electric current through a mixture of primordial gases and growing organic material. Later, it was discovered that the gases used in the experiment weren't the gases that composed Earth's early atmosphere. Based on the new findings, the scientists tried the experiment again, and it did not work. (Other scientists say similar experiments have succeeded, and there are other theories for origin as well, including hydrothermal vents and meteorites.)
* Fossils show a huge burst of life during the Cambrian era (about 500 million years ago), posing a challenge to evolutionary theory, which says that life forms developed over time. (The National Center for Science Education says the Cambrian era lasted millions of years and that intermediate life forms are detectable in fossil record.)
* A classic example of natural selection shows light-colored moths disappearing during the English Industrial Revolution because of pollution-blackened trees.Black moths, which were better camouflaged, survived. After the pollution was cleaned up, the example showed light-colored moths returning. Photos of moths on trees were later found to be staged.

If you go
What: State Board of Education public hearing on adopting new textbooks
Where: William B. Travis Building, Room 1-104
When: 1 p.m. today

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