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The plan says several "areas of disagreement" would have to be covered by teachers, including the view by some scientists that "it is mathematically impossible for the first cell to have evolved by itself."

Students also would have to be told some scientists argue "that nowhere in the fossil record is there an indisputable skeleton of a transitional species, or a 'missing link,'" the proposal says.

Also, the proposal says students "must be informed that the origin of sex, or sex drive, is one of biology's mysteries".

To be fair, it is true that there have been some scientists (only very rarely those with any expertise in the specific field) who sadly have demonstrated misunderstandings of this sort about evolution. This is the entire reason a peer review system exists: to prevent discredited concepts like these from surfacing in journals (and subsequently, educational material).

If I was a science teacher in Nevada, and this ridiculous amendment passed, I would be glad to tell my students the honest truth within the bounds of the law (that a few scientists like these exist, but are wrong and that bad ideas like these are weeded out in the first steps of peer review), and then explain why the consensus of experts points to overwhelmingly evolutionary theory, and why people who say these things are wrong.

38 posted on 03/01/2006 6:20:47 AM PST by Quark2005 (Confidence follows from consilience.)
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To: Quark2005
re: but are wrong and that bad ideas like these are weeded out in the first steps of peer review)))

In CA, there is a hugely expensive upheaval over this very thing, only it concerns bogus claims about embryonic stem-cell research. The South Korean "scientist" has been shown to have fabricated the research which directly led to CA allocating Three BBBBillion Dollars to promote and "capitalize". Now the research has been debunked, but the allocation lives on. The taxpayers are being forced to sue to prevent the money being spent.

The stem-cell research that has since been debunked directly gained its prominence from Science Magazine, which was peer reviewed.

Maybe all the teachers in Nevada ought to say is "Science has a long history of overcoming its own errors, hopefully to our ultimate advantage." "Scientists are human beings, and profoundly fallible like all human beings." "Science Magazine's Peer Review System is Unreliable."

39 posted on 03/01/2006 6:28:03 AM PST by Mamzelle
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