New Mexico Bill To Protect Anti-Science Education 726
An anonymous reader writes "From the Wired article: 'If educators in New Mexico want to teach evolution or climate change as a "controversial scientific topic," a new bill seeks to protect them from punishment. House Bill 302, as it's called, states that public school teachers who want to teach "scientific weaknesses" about "controversial scientific topics" including evolution, climate change, human cloning and — ambiguously — "other scientific topics" may do so without fear of reprimand. The legislation was introduced to the New Mexico House of Representatives on Feb. 1 by Republican Rep. Thomas A. Anderson. Supporters of science education say this and other bills are designed to spook teachers who want to teach legitimate science and protect other teachers who may already be customizing their curricula with anti-science lesson plans.'"
How is it anti-science to teach... (Score:3, Insightful)
How is it anti-science to teach the weaknesses of a theory? Shouldn't we already be doing that? Seems to me that is exactly what we should do. Put all the facts on the table , describe the theories and teach the children to think through the problems that exist with all of theories instead of being mindless robots that simply regurgitate the flavor of the month.
Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to be downmodded to death, but isn't science about keeping an open mind? Here in my country school curricula are rigid, limited and biased government mandated crap. As long as the teacher doesn't lie/make things up, teaching the kids to question everything and see both sides of an issue will only do them good. The intelligent ones will eventually make their own decision about who's right or wrong, and the stupid ones will believe what they'll believe anyway...
Re:What scientists... (Score:3, Insightful)
educators aren't "scientists"
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
"It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out."
— Carl Sagan
Re:How is it anti-science to teach... (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, no one is saying that a theory's weaknesses can't be discussed, but these kinds of laws are not designed to do that, they are designed to give weight to Creationism and ID. It has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with giving a false sense of weakness in scientific theories. Evolutionary theory has issues, but then again so does gravity, or any other theory.
A second point is that there are not enough hours in the day to give kids more than a brief survey of, say, evolution. You're notion that teachers are equipped to take children through a theory like evolution in that detail, or that children who are even less well equipped can hope to comprehend. What you want is absurd, but seems fairly standard for Creationists who try to make the unreasonable sound reasonable.
Beyond all of that, of course, is that this law is on the face of it unconstitutional. This was all dealt with a few decades ago, and much of it was reiterated and expanded on by the Dover Trial.
Re:What scientists... (Score:5, Insightful)
As with climate change, the few real scientists who are skeptical seem to be from fields which have nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand.
Even so, I would like to point out Project Steve [ncse.com] to anyone who wants to claim there's a scientific controversy surrounding evolution.
Re:Why not? (Score:2, Insightful)
No, science is not about being open minded. It is about following the evidence, creating explanations that are verifiable, testable and make predictions. You should be downmodded for showing a contemptible lack of knowledge of what science is.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well there's "open mind" and then there's "absurd". You wouldn't sanction another instructor walking into the room and trying to offer the students "alternate options" like a flat earth or the moon made of cheese.
"Open Mind" is for topics that have not been thoroughly figured out. It's good for things that we don't fully understand yet, to encourage different opinions and explore ways to get closer to the truth.
Once all reasonable doubt has been settled, it's time to accept reality and stop placing any credibility in what's written in some 2000 yr old book.
Re:How is it anti-science to teach... (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't anti-science to expose limitations of a theory. In fact, theories are bolstered only due to their ability to rule out alternative hypotheses (rejecting the null hypothesis).
However, it is anti-science to introduce an idea that is unfalsifiable and call it science. Unfalsifiability is one of the major tenants of science, the scientific process, and theory creation and development. In order for a proposition to become a theory it needs to be testable. Creationism is founded upon belief. I cannot tell a student to go find evidence for creationism. I can, however, tell someone to go find evidence either FOR or AGAINST evolution. However, evolution has so much evidence in favor of it, it is a generally accepted framework for the origin of species. It doesn't claim perfection, no scientific process does. Indeed, the rise of post-positivism as a major philosophical and scientific building block is a testament to this. Post-positivism claims that since humans are imperfect it is impossible to measure any phenomenon perfectly (measurement is asymptotic with Truth). Ultimately, the Bible provides merely circular reasoning for Creationism as a possible scientific explanation. There is no way to prove or disprove the existence of God or any mechanisms that he might provide (creationism). Therefore, it is unfalsifiable and cannot be taught as an alternative explanation to any scientific principle, theory, or proposition since creationism ultimately reduces to faith.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, but being unthinkingly critical of any view that contradicts some particular dogma, whatever it is, is anathema to real science. Science may not be about being openminded, but being openminded is certainly a prerequisite.
Probably won't pass (Score:5, Insightful)
Rosenau said House Bill 302 will probably never see the light of day...
However, the fact that it's even being considered is worrying. It's another signpost on a road that seems to be heading for a generation of credulous morons. I don't see any significant barricades.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because this has nothing to do with keeping an open mind, and is in fact intended to do the exact opposite - to keep minds closed. Now, the chances of this bill becoming law are pretty small, but it is pernicious and will have a chilling effect. Representative Anderson should be ashamed of himself, but I suspect that he is nothing more than a conman without that ability.
Bright side (Score:3, Insightful)
At least this means that teachers can't be threatened for completely slamming Intelligent Design.
This is the world of greater democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just the outcome of public provided services and a government increasingly directed by the whims of the majority. I thought that was what everybody here was clamoring for? Freeing the people... ...if the people just happen to be dumb-shits or irrational? Well that's the bed you've made for yourself, why are you disappointed or put out?
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Both sides of the issue? What issue? There are no issues to teach! The only possible "controversy" comes from people who are not scientists and have something to lose by believing the prevailing theory. Nobody wants to teach the "controversy" that surrounds gravity; it's only when you contradict what people already believe that you end up with this kind of irrational resistance. What are these "open-minded" teachers supposed to do? Read from a Bible, so that kids are exposed to the fundamentalist Christian doctrine of creationism? That's for religion or philosophy class, not science class. Have the CEO of a multinational corporation come in and deny man-made climate change? That's for a politics class, not a science class. Have some crank who doesn't believe in the moon landings preach his conspiracy theory, as an equal opportunity to teaching physics?
This is bullshit, and the supporters know it. They just want to indoctrinate the kids with their message, rather than allowing only what they see as their opponents being able to indoctrinate the kids. If this were politics, philosophy, or religion class, I'd say, "Yes, that's a very good idea. All viewpoints should be heard." But it's not. It's science class, and science class doesn't lend itself to this kind of "all viewpoints are equally valid" philosophy. Just because you have an opinion doesn't mean that you should be able to teach it along side an actual theory.
Re:What scientists... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't evolution specific, of course. K-12 physics is usually Newtonian, which isn't just overly simplistic; but known to be false. However, when it comes down to teaching kids how to apply mathematical models to physical situations, albeit with imperfect accuracy, or wait until they finish tensor calculus to even broach the subject, Newtonian physics usually wins. Somehow, we don't have godbots battering down the doors and demanding that "Newtonism" be presented as a controversial theory... K-12 chemistry, while less overtly false than k-12 physics, is usually heavily simplified and pretty much applies (approximately) to idealized ionic compounds, some of the better behaved transition metals, and ideal gasses. Again, as bad or worse than k-12 bio; but uncontroversial.
Math, while more likely to be correct within its limited scope, also tends to be essentially dogmatic in its approach. You might get a few axioms and proofs in geometry; but you pretty much get to take all the properties of numbers on faith until you make it to number theory sometime in college.
It is definitely true that low-level science education is, from a factual/current state of the discipline perspective, reductive, false, or both(and this is why they should really spend more time instilling inquiry, experimentation, hypothesis, testing, conclusions, etc. rather than rote "facts" that are mostly known to be wrong); but that isn't why K-12 evolutionary biology is controversial. Virtually no part of a K-12 curriculum is immune to the charges of excessive simplicity; but only in the cases where the curriculum is also ideologically inconvenient does that become a major issue(mostly evolution, occasionally American history or the English class reading list)...
Re:Luckily for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite the contrary! Creation and Intelligent Design would, in New Mexico, arguably fall under the umbrella of "other scientific topics," which means no teacher could be reprimanded for teaching the serious scientific weaknesses in those "theories." Sounds like they'll open the door for the real teachers to talk freely about how absurd arguments against evolution are.
Re:What scientists... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is it anti-science to teach... (Score:1, Insightful)
Okay, first of all. Things in science are not "proven" in the sense that there is some point when you say "Well, that's 100% positive". As much as any theory can be proven evolution has been proven.
Secondly, "it's still a theory" indicates a woeful ignorance of what a scientific theory is. Theory, in science, isn't some wild-assed guess. It is well supported by multiple streams of evidence. What you're committing is the etymological fallacy, conflating two different definitions of a word.
Defining science as its common usage, "branches of study that relate to phenomena of the material universe and their laws" [Wikipedia] [wikimedia.org], evolution is not a scientific theory.
It is intended to answer the question of how life came to exist, which is a historical question (how did this come about) rather than a scientific one (how does the universe work). The fact that some science is used in explaining the theory of evolution does not make it a scientific theory.
Excellent... (Score:4, Insightful)
This means a teacher can discuss examples of creationism from other religions (like from Islam) without fear of reprimand. With, of course, supporting text from the Koran.
It is time to call it (Score:3, Insightful)
Once upon a time, I thought that open communication would help empiricism win out over magical thought, but after watching a couple of decades of religious right mumbo jumbo flowing out over the Internet, unperterbed by anything resembling empirical scepticism, I think nothing will penetrate their confirmation bias.
By pandering to our population's basest fears, they are systematically destroying the ability of one generation to teach the next how to think critically, and disrupting our ability to maintain science and math competence. We're toast, and it is time to acknowledge that, as the primitives dance around celebrating the 100th birthday of their harbinger, Ronald Reagan.
I am so glad my SOs do not want children.
Re:Why not? (Score:2, Insightful)
As a recent slashdot article [slashdot.org] suggests, schools are skipping general critical thinking and replacing it with trivia dumps that are easier to test on. This "testism" is harming our schools.
In the work-place people skip basic comparing and contrasting techniques and methods and instead let some clueless MBA guess based on a gut feeling. Thus, this trend is hurting out economy. Our society is afraid of criticism and analysis because we collectively are ill-equipped to use it properly.
Re:Religion vs Science (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell me of a test that would falsify AGW theory?
If there was a consistent downwards trend in typical global temperature despite increasing CO2 concentration (if other factors, such as solar irradiance, stayed constant). There, that wasn't too hard. Alternatively, if atmospheric CO2 concentrations didn't increase despite our emissions (i.e. there were feedbacks). Or, rather less likely, if someone did a new measurement and determined that CO2 didn't absorb IR after all.
while ONE test that turns up FALSIFIED is usually fatal to a theory. (If it won't kill a theory it isn't a proper test.)
Meanwhile, outside an "introduction to Karl Popper" book, pieces of scientific evidence are often not 100% in favour of one theory or another, especially in a system with many different things interacting. At most, they merely have a "most likely interpretation". There was no one piece of evidence that singly led to AGW theory, and there's to unlikely to be one that singly disproves it.
The sceptics find flaws and outright fraud in the models and datasets and they are attacked and suppressed
No they didn't, and if you think they did you weren't looking closely. And suppressed? Last I checked Watts was still publishing his website, and sceptics still get disproportionately large coverage in the mainstream press.
Remember Islam's history... (Score:4, Insightful)
Modern Islam is not exactly a hotbed for scientific exploration and discovery, the reverse is true. This has not always been the case however as you'll probably know. While Europe was ravaged by norsemen and later held by the leash by restrictive and vindictive Christian churches in the early middle ages, the Islamic world was a place where scientific curiosity was not only allowed but even encouraged [wikipedia.org]. Standing on the shoulders of earlier scientists from eg. Greece, India and China, scholars in the Islamic world produced many works which are still held in high regard. This was the Islamic golden age [wikipedia.org].
And then, something happened. Religious intolerance [meforum.org] was probably one of the factors in the decline of scientific discovery in the Islamic world, led by theologists like Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (1059-1111) who used the tools of the philosophers to undermine philosophical and scientific inquiry.
Of course these developments happened in a span of centuries, not decades. It would not surprise me though if the decline of scientific learning in the Islamic world started just like it seems to happen in the United States of America, by religious zealots trying to undermine and discredit science and scientists and subverting science teaching to their own purposes.
Define "just fine" (Score:2, Insightful)
If parents have little or no choice about what and how their children are taught, are they "just fine"? If people have little or no choice of how and what doctors treat them, are they "just fine"? Generally, how much freedom and personal choice can be taken away from how many for the people to stop being "just fine"? These are no idle questions. For example, in Germany there is no option for home schooling available to common folks for whatever reason they might want it - is that "just fine"?
Not sure if you meant to be sarcastic regarding totalitarian regimes keeping people "straight", but it is actually true to an extent. Say, Soviet children would get reasonable science education almost in any corner of the huge country -- and those of the very same children who grew up to be engineers and moved to the US are horrified with how their children are taught in public schools. Only a few of them can afford private schooling on their engineering salaries, and their efforts to bootstrap charter schools are viciously attacked by the US educational establishment such as teacher's unions etc. They do not feel "just fine" about this situation.
Re:What scientists... (Score:5, Insightful)
This comes up all the time, and has been disproved decades ago.
I don't know what the official term for it is, but I call the solution to these "irreducible complexity" arguments the "A B C evolution sequence":
Lets say a scientist looks at a modern organism and sees that the organism has a complex organ or chemical system, or whatever, made of two parts, B and C. Neither B, nor C will work individually. How did this evolve?
The explanation is that the organism originally had a much simpler organ, or chemical, or whatever. Call it 'A'. At some point, a variant evolved that had an enhancement added to A, call it B. Now, B doesn't work by itself, but A does. Together, A & B are better than A alone. At some later point, A gets a mutation, and becomes 'C', which doesn't work by itself, but works together with B. So now you have B & C, neither of which work together, yet it was possible for evolution to take "baby steps" to get to that point.
Practical examples have been investigated by scientists. I believe the canonical example of such a complex inter-dependent system are the proteins involved in blood clotting. A significant number are required, and the whole process fails without any one of them. Obviously, at some point, blood clotting was achieved with just one protein, which then become two, then three, and then the original protein was lost, etc... The evolutionary steps involved can be investigated by looking at the blood clotting proteins in related species, looking for the patterns and commonalities up the evolutionary tree.
No God required.
Re:What scientists... (Score:4, Insightful)
How does evolution explain a four chambered heart? ... Why would we form all the necessary components to be able to form words without the brain power necessary to process speech? ... What possible evolutionary advantage has writing given man? We are the only creature ever on the planet to be able to read and write, so it obviously has never had an evolutionary advantage... why are we able to do it. What is the evolutionary point.
At best, even if there were no current explanations for those things, you've merely listed some interesting avenues for future research.
Whole organs systems can not be formed by random mutation, and they don't work without the entire system. ...but some changes have to come in sets or they never work. Evolution will never explain that.
Now you're just asserting things. I know your intuition is strongly telling you "That can't happen!", but if you're going to deal with modern science you have to learn to deal with things being counter-intuitive.
I have never heard an adequate explanation as to how complex systems can evolve. ... Just because it's not a controversy to you doesn't mean it's not controversial to some very bright and stupid people, alike.
Among people who don't really know a lot about evolution, sure, it's controversial. Among people who actually know what they're talking about there is no controversy.
Being competitive in the 21st century (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What scientists... (Score:5, Insightful)
The hypothesis of global warming is in a similar stage to the Theory of Evolution as it existed 150 years ago. When you equate them, you discard 150 years of investigation, learning, prediction, verification, experimentation, understanding and opportunities for falsification.
Global warming should stand on it's own, without the need to bring unrelated science fact to justify itself.
Right now, there is a consensus that while there are a few outliers, the evidence as a whole points to the warming of the planet by a fraction of a degree in recent history. This is good. What I would like to see now is the very serious separation of global warming from 'man made' global warming in public discussions.
They are separable variables and should be very clearly treated as such. In every single discussion.
Oh, let's also drop the new fad of calling the hypothesis "climate change". The climate ALWAYS changes. Global warming is the only of the two descriptions that actually describes the hypothesis.
Re:What scientists... (Score:2, Insightful)
For one thing, science is hard.
I think the term "relentlessly tedious" might be a better description.
Re:What scientists... (Score:4, Insightful)
Evolution started as a hypothesis, some testable predictions were formed, evidence was gathered that supported it and the process refined into the formal scientific theory we see today.
Creationism is a faith driven belief, documented in a storybook. Science doesnt even come into it.
Re:What scientists... (Score:3, Insightful)
No God required.
\
Why would you bring God into this. I never mentioned God. It's no wonder why religious people get offended when an evolutionary discussion is brought up. Assholes like you try to use evolution to disprove their religion, even though many people, scientists included believe in both God and evolution. It is possible to support two points of view.
Lets say a scientist looks at a modern organism and sees that the organism has a complex organ or chemical system, or whatever, made of two parts, B and C. Neither B, nor C will work individually. How did this evolve?
The explanation is that the organism originally had a much simpler organ, or chemical, or whatever. Call it 'A'. At some point, a variant evolved that had an enhancement added to A, call it B. Now, B doesn't work by itself, but A does. Together, A & B are better than A alone. At some later point, A gets a mutation, and becomes 'C', which doesn't work by itself, but works together with B. So now you have B & C, neither of which work together, yet it was possible for evolution to take "baby steps" to get to that point.
Great! Now if you could just provide an example of an creature who has an organ necessary for the creature to survive, that is obviously adequate or the creature would have gone extinct, evolving two more organs independently of eachother, neither of which form any function on their own, hanging on to these two separate, worthless organs, they both combine to perform the already adequate function of another organ, AND, the original organ slowly being evolved out of existance.
Wow! What a mouthful. Seeing as how nearly all of the systems in any organism's body are depending on eachother, a single example should be fairly easy to find.
Just like you said. Animal has organ A that is adequate. Animal evolves organs B and C, which are worthless without eachother, and B and C combine out of random chance to perform the job of organ A, better than A, and the animal loses organ A.
One example.
And, no. You may not ask God for help again.
Re:What scientists... (Score:5, Insightful)
If there were no flying squirrels/bats, etc. you'd probably also be arguing that wings are irreducibly complex. After all, why would evolution cause an animal to lose a perfectly good set of limbs, just to spend thousands of years developing wings capable of actually flying. Fortunately, we can see dozens of examples in nature of rudimentary wings at different stages of development that make it very obvious how it happens. Despite all this, people, including respected scientists, still once upon a time tried to insist that the feathers on Archeopteryx were fake, even though it obviously has wings (if not wings, then it has a ridiculously long finger). The respected scientist in that case was curmudgeon Fred Hoyle, who coined the term 'big bang' (although he disagreed and originated the competing steady state theory), and did the important early work on stellar nucleosynthesis. Notably lacking among his credentials are paleontology and geology, and his debunking of Archeopteryx has since been thoroughly debunked (everything he claimed about the fossil was a misconception, not to mention that too many other Archeopteryx and other feathered dinosaur fossils have been found since then). For some reason, people with an agenda to push can always find these supposedly logical impossible puzzles in development.
To address the points you made in your discussion, I'd like to start by correcting your misconception that an important part of evolution is that "the strong survive while the weak die off". It's not survival of the strongest, it's survival of the _fittest_. Evolution isn't some path to godlike perfection. Evolution is just a way of describing a system of trial and error that reacts to the environment (an environment that, by the way, is made up of other organisms that are always evolving). Any genetic change that makes an individual stronger (such as 25% larger muscles), doesn't necessarily make the individual fitter because there could be a drought and a sudden lack of food and the individual with more mass to support isn't going to be able to get enough food to survive and is therefore less fit (or, in some conditions it will be able to get more food and will be more fit - a lot depends on random circumstance). Not to mention the other important fact that the individual with the bloated muscles or increased size due to a mutation may find itself without the skeletal structure to support its muscles or with a circulatory system the design of which doesn't scale up with the demands of its increased size. Heart problems are very common in human giants, even though bipedal creatures massively larger than them have existed. It's obvious then that most "beneficial" mutations are not actually beneficial to start with. Instead, most of them are survived rather than increasing survivability. Other mutations, or genetic combinations with existing mutations, can later combine to actually confer genetic advantage and then the bearers of the beneficial genetic legacy can go on to supplant the rest of the population, or use their newfound ability to spread out into a new environmental niche. Obviously evolution isn't just one process, simply illustrated in a textbook, it's a blanket term for an entire set of feedback processes.
On to four chambered hearts. You ask how evolution explains it, then go on to claim that "nowhere is there any type of record, fossil or otherwise that explains how a four chambered mammalian heard evolved from a three chambered reptilian heart". If you'd open your eyes, you'd see that there are plenty of examples of birth defects in which even human infants are born with extra heart chambers. They usually are not functional, and usually lead to early death. If there's a genetic predisposition to such defects, and conditions are right, entire populations can exist with the same defect. They don't have to be fittest, they just have to be viable. Then, eventually, other mutations may occur that improve the functionality of the mutation, up to the point where it actually provides an advantage over
Re:What scientists... (Score:4, Insightful)
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. If you can't cut it doing work in your field, I believe you have no business teaching it.
They're largely different skill sets. Those who "can't" might not be able to design experiments to save their lives, or are terrible at keeping track of their experiments, but do great with understanding the background, or theories.
Re:What scientists... (Score:3, Insightful)