Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover of Biology

National Center for Science Education ^ | 18 April 2006 | Staff

[PatrickHenry]

A new article in PLoS Biology (April 18, 2006) discusses the state of scientific literacy in the United States, with especial attention to the survey research of Jon D. Miller, who directs the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University Medical School.

To measure public acceptance of the concept of evolution, Miller has been asking adults if "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals" since 1985. He and his colleagues purposefully avoid using the now politically charged word "evolution" in order to determine whether people accept the basics of evolutionary theory. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of Americans who reject this concept has declined (from 48% to 39%), as has the proportion who accept it (45% to 40%). Confusion, on the other hand, has increased considerably, with those expressing uncertainty increasing from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005.

In international surveys, the article reports, "[n]o other country has so many people who are absolutely committed to rejecting the concept of evolution," quoting Miller as saying, "We are truly out on a limb by ourselves."

The "partisan takeover" of the title refers to the embrace of antievolutionism by what the article describes as "the right-wing fundamentalist faction of the Republican Party," noting, "In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Missouri, and Texas all included demands for teaching creation science." NCSE is currently aware of eight state Republican parties that have antievolutionism embedded in their official platforms or policies: those of Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas. Four of them -- those of Alaska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas -- call for teaching forms of creationism in addition to evolution; the remaining three call only for referring the decision whether to teach such "alternatives" to local school districts.

A sidebar to the article, entitled "Evolution under Attack," discusses the role of NCSE and its executive director Eugenie C. Scott in defending the teaching of evolution. Scott explained the current spate of antievolution activity as due in part to the rise of state science standards: "for the first time in many states, school districts are faced with the prospect of needing to teach evolution. ... If you don't want evolution to be taught, you need to attack the standards." Commenting on the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover [Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al.], Scott told PLoS Biology, "Intelligent design may be dead as a legal strategy but that does not mean it is dead as a popular social movement," urging and educators to continue to resist to the onslaught of the antievolution movement. "It's got legs," she quipped. "It will evolve."

[RightWingAtheist]

Often, in fact, the liberal pomos and the fundamentalists are de facto allies.

Yes, I know. Many of the anti-evos in the speech-comm field are lefty postmodernists who nontheless feel threatened by science because to them, it represents "authoritarianism" and "cultural imperialism". if you read any of John Angus Campbell's work, or the collection Darwinism Design and Public Education which he edited with Stephen C. Meyer, you know what I'm taliking about. The anti-science left is pretty mute now, because the left is united in its hatred of Bush and all things Republican, but wait until the Republicans are out of power. The leftist science-haters will then be back full force, and scientists and pro-science laymen, both left and right, will be scrambling to formulate a new strategy

[Coyoteman]

For the most part, the evomaniacs on FR are NOT scientists and are unwilling to scientifically discuss uncertain fossil evidence and other inconsistencies within the body of evidence in support of evolution.

We can't all be scientists specializing in every field. Some of us study one thing, some another.

I happen to have studied evolution (fossil man, human races, human osteology, etc.) for half my time in grad school. I do not practice in that particular specialty, but still remember a few of the details.

I eagerly await someone to present "uncertain fossil evidence and other inconsistencies within the body of evidence in support of evolution" on these threads but all we get is creationist website cut-and-paste nonsense (usually with no attribution).

I have yet to see somebody really discuss the fossil record with regard to actual problems. I had two seminars on problems in evolution, but nothing that was covered in those has ever been brought up here. Just the usual nonsense -- "You can't prove it, you weren't there!" and "How can you reconstruct all that from a toebone?"

Oh, and it does your scientific credibility no good to call scientists who study evolution "evomaniacs."

[LibertarianSchmoe]

Evolutionists Creationists and environmentalists have done more to undermine scientific education than all the "dumb-it-down-for-equality" civil rights activists combined."

There. fixed it for you. :)

Ever the handyman, CG...

[From many - one.]

My dear Miss Pie,

The discovery channel is not a scientific journal.

Sincerely, A Scientist.

[MonroeDNA]

"The United States is the only country in the world where a political party has taken a position on evolution."

Which we will soon regret.

Which we have regretted for quite some time.

[RightWingAtheist]

It makes you understand why F.A. Hayek felt the need to write an article entitled "Why I Am Not A Conservative".

[Old_Mil]

Hopeful monsterism is a Hollywood fantasy. No biologist since about 1920 has put forward an such thing.

Gould and Eldridge in the 70s with their concept of punctuated equilibrium.

[js1138]

I know that some will disagree with what I am about to say, but I believe the debate on FR has changed over the years. It may not look that way, because new people are continually coming on board, some bringing old arguments, but I think the seasoned anti-evolutionists are looking for more sophisticated arguments.

I suppose one could argue that wrong is wrong and there is no point in debating degrees of wrong, but I disagree. The most damaging thing to political conservatism is not being wrong, but arguing badly.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

" Gould and Eldridge in the 70s with their concept of punctuated equilibrium."

PE is not even close to being *hopeful monsterism* (saltationism).

[Right Wing Professor]

It's really funny you have to stoop to characterizing Dawkins as a 'rabid' atheist in order to find anything at all wrong with his characterization of Kurt Wise. In fact, Dawkin's criticism is eminently moderate and reasonable. He lauds Wise's command of science, and nails the problem:

When he could bear the strain no longer, he clinched the matter with a Bible and a pair of scissors. He went right through from Genesis 1 to Revelations 22, literally cutting out every verse that would have to go if the scientific worldview were true. At the end of this exercise, there was so little left of his Bible that '. . . try as I might, and even with the benefit of intact margins throughout the pages of Scripture, I found it impossible to pick up the Bible without it being rent in two. I had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture. Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible. . . . It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science.'

... (my ellipsis)

This leaves me, as a scientist, speechless. I cannot imagine what it must be like to have a mind capable of such doublethink.

Me neither. And people who are capable of abandoning reason and logic and evidence and science to embrace, as Dawkins accurately characterizes it, a local origin myth of a tribe of Middle-Eastern camel-herders, are scary people.

[MissAmericanPie]

Everything you just attacked ID with can also be applied to Evolutionists. Both have their agendas and neither is proveable.

So why not just put out what is known and leave it to the individual to take his own stand with no undue influence from either? Because evolution is an unproven theory both should be taught. ID is just as valid a theory as evolution and swrim as you may there it is.

[js1138]

Gould and Eldridge in the 70s with their concept of punctuated equilibrium.

I risk name calling here, but you really don't know what you are talking about.

The "hopeful monster" is a fictional mutation that produces a new adaptation in one swoop, possibly even a new species.

Punctuated equilibrium is simply the observation that evolution occurs at different rates at different times and places. The most obvious factors in rapid evolution are sexual selection, climate change, mass extinction, and reproductive isolation of a population by physical barriers.

The rates of change are never rapid on a human time scale.

[Liberal Classic]

Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it - or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. I will not deny that scientists as much as others are given to fads and fashions and that we have much reason to be cautious in accepting the conclusions that they draw from their latest theories. But the reasons for our reluctance must themselves be rational and must be kept separate from our regret that the new theories upset our cherished beliefs. I can have little patience with those who oppose, for instance, the theory of evolution or what are called "mechanistic" explanations of the phenomena of life because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irrelevant or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts, the conservative only weakens his own position.

[PatrickHenry]

The anti-science left is pretty mute now, because the left is united in its hatred of Bush and all things Republican, but wait until the Republicans are out of power. The leftist science-haters will then be back full force, and scientists and pro-science laymen, both left and right, will be scrambling to formulate a new strategy

The lefties are far-more anti-science than we are, with all their Marxism, global warming, anti nuclear power, and junk-science litigation. But we've got the creationists. It gives the lefties an argument that they are the intellectuals. Whatcha gonna do?

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Because evolution is an unproven theory both should be taught."

All theories in science are unproven. ID isn't science. Whole Science is for leftists.

"ID is just as valid a theory as evolution and swrim as you may there it is."

ID is a philosophical/theological claim with no testable claims. It may be true... it may not; there is no way test it.

[Right Wing Professor]

With one party embracing creationism, and the other embracing surrender and treason

I don't think Joe Lieberman embraces surrender and treason. Problem is, just as our fundamentalists are trying to drive scientists out of the GOP, so the far-left true-believers on the other side are trying to drive out Lieberman and the minority of Democrats like him. The result is we have two ever more unsavory alternatives. At some point, one has to stop accepting the choice of the lesser of two evils.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Old_Mil]

PE is not even close to being *hopeful monsterism* (saltationism).

Technically speaking, you are correct. However, from a philosophical standpoint, PE can be considered an attempt to rehabilitate saltationism and put forth a flavor of evolution that is more compatible with the lack of geological evidence.

[MissAmericanPie]

"For scientists to teach facts and omit theories, as you request, would be to censor science for religious reasons. That would be a sad thing to see".

I understand what you are saying, it's okay for science to censor religion, to demand it not be taught in public schools or taken seriously scientifically when it's explanation is far more reasonable than a cell turning itself into various other functions and species, but to ask science to stick to what it knows as fact, without theory, is censorship.

ID's are members of a "big tent" but there is no politics in science and no "big tent".

If this is your theory it fails in places.

[Matchett-PI]

"..Please refer to Genesis 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth ... Many people make the same mistake .. of just skimming over the scriptures rather than acutally taking in what is being taught." ~ MissAmericanPie

God created the heavens and the earth and said --- read it again -- without any preconceived notions: "Let the earth bring forth".

The Origins Solution: An Answer in the Creation-Evolution Debate by Dick Fischer
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1556731884/104-2003831-4261530?v=glance&n=283155


Dick Fisher is a Fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA). Here are the links to his fascinating articles defending the special creation of Adam and Eve while at the same time providing a possible explanation for why many scientists insist they have biological evidence that all life descended from one single ancestor:

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Evolution/PSCF12-93Fisher.html

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Evolution/PSCF3-94Fisher.html

~Dick Fischer~ Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
http://www.genesisproclaimed.org