NCSE Evolution and Climate Education Update for 2013/05/17

(by NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch)

Dear Friends of NCSE,

A tribute to NCSE in the pages of Nature. A possible sign of progress
in Louisiana. Sad news of the death of Mark Perakh. A worldwide poll
of Muslims offering a degree of insight on their views of evolution.
And a preview of Eugenie C. Scott's Evolution vs. Creationism.

NATURE'S TRIBUTE TO NCSE

Prompted by the announced impending retirement of NCSE's executive
director Eugenie C. Scott, the journal Nature devoted its May 15,
2013, editorial column to applauding NCSE's work. "The scientific
community has much to learn from her example in the fight against
pseudoscience," the editorial commented: "Science is necessary to
defuse anti-science efforts, but not sufficient. Rather than simply
deploying artilleries of scientific facts, the NCSE addresses the
motivations and tactics of those who would misrepresent research."

Among the strategies for defending the integrity of science education
mentioned were attacking dichotomous thinking, such as "false
assumptions that a churchgoer cannot believe in evolution or that a
scientist cannot believe in a higher power"; putting together
"coalitions of people from diverse backgrounds to provide multiple
perspectives"; and NCSE's Project Steve (now with 1273 Steves): "This
light-hearted list of Stephens, Stephanies and similars now dwarfs the
list of doubters, making a clear statement about where mainstream
science stands."

For the editorial in Nature, visit:
http://www.nature.com/news/science-in-schools-1.12979 

For the announcement of Scott's impending retirement, visit:
http://ncse.com/news/2013/05/ncses-scott-to-retire-0014832 

And for information on Project Steve, visit:
http://ncse.com/taking-action/project-steve 

LOUISIANA TO REPEAL 1981 CREATIONISM LAW?

Louisiana's Senate Bill 205 would, if enacted, repeal the state's
Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act,
which was enacted in 1981 and declared to be unconstitutional by the
United States Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard in 1987. SB 205
originally provided only for the establishment of foreign language
immersion programs in public school districts. After the Senate
Committee on Education tabled SB 26, which would have repealed the
so-called Louisiana Science Education Act, at its May 1, 2013,
meeting, Dan Claitor (R-District 16) proposed to amend SB 205,
sponsored by Eric LaFleur (D-District 28), by adding, "Subpart D-2 of
Part III of Chapter 1 of Title 17 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes of
1950, comprised of R.S. 17:286.1 through 286.7, is hereby repealed."
The amendment was unanimously adopted by the committee on a voice
vote.

As amended, SB 205 passed the Senate on a 36-2 vote on May 13, 2013.
During the Senate's deliberations, Karen Carter Peterson (D-District
5), who introduced SB 26 (and identical bills in 2012 and 2011),
proposed to amend SB 205 to repeal the LSEA. The Associated Press (May
13, 2013) quoted her as saying, "This act should not be on the books
... It does not make sense." The repeal effort is endorsed by
seventy-eight Nobel laureates in the sciences, the National
Association of Biology Teachers, the Louisiana Association of Biology
Educators, the Louisiana Coalition for Science, the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for
Biological Sciences, the American Society for Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology, the American Society for Cell Biology, the Society
for the Study of Evolution together with the Society of Systematic
Biologists and the American Society of Naturalists, the Clergy Letter
Project, the New Orleans City Council, and the Baton Rouge Advocate.
But Peterson's motion was rejected on a 5-32 vote.

Before a final vote on SB 205 was taken, Ben Nevers (D-District 12),
who sponsored the LSEA in the Senate in 2008, expressed opposition to
the repeal of the Balanced Treatment Act, arguing that it would be
useful for it to be on the books in case the Supreme Court ever
reverses its holding in Edwards. Barbara Forrest, Professor of
Philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University and a member of NCSE's
board of directors, commented, "It's encouraging that the Louisiana
legislature is finally taking action to remove the Balanced Treatment
Act from the statute book, twenty-six years after the Supreme Court
ruled that it was unconstitutional. But I really hope that it won't
take twenty-six years and a Supreme Court case to convince it to
repeal the equally pernicious Louisiana Science Education Act." The
bill now goes to Louisiana's House of Representatives.

For information on Louisiana's Senate Bills 205 and 26, visit:
http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/BillInfo.aspx?s=13RS&b=SB205 
http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/BillInfo.aspx?s=13RS&b=SB26 

For the text of the decision in Edwards v. Aguillard, visit:
http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/BillInfo.aspx?s=13RS&b=SB26 

For the Associated Press story (via the Lafayette Advertiser), visit:
http://www.theadvertiser.com/viewart/20130513/NEWS01/305130021/Senate-rejects-attempt-kill-Louisiana-Science-Act 

And for NCSE's previous coverage of events in Louisiana, visit:
http://ncse.com/news/louisiana 

MARK PERAKH DIES

The physicist Mark Perakh, a notable critic of creationism, died on
May 7, 2013, at the age of 88,according to The Panda's Thumb blog (May
12, 2013). After a distinguished academic career in three countries,
Perakh turned, in his retirement, to investigating the claims of
religiously motivated pseudoscience, beginning with the Bible Code and
then focusing on creationism. Among the products of his work were his
book Unintelligent Design(Prometheus Books, 2003), two chapters
("There is a free lunch after all: William Dembski's wrong answers to
irrelevant questions" and, with Matt Young, "Is intelligent design
science?") in Matt Young and Taner Edis's collection Why Intelligent
Design Fails (Rutgers University Press, 2004), and reviews and
articles in such venues as Skeptic, Skeptical Inquirer, Reports of the
NCSE, The Panda's Thumb, and the Talk.Reason website, of which he was
a founder and editor.

Unintelligent Design was widely praised, with the reviewer for the
Quarterly Review of Biology describing it as "an incisive, rigorous,
and very competent critique of the attempts by neo-creationists to
force their religious beliefs into the realm of scientific
respectability by dressing them up in what purports to be scientific
discourse" and adding, "It would be a real service to secondary
education in this country if the book was required reading for school
board members and teachers considering inclusion of these arguments in
their science courses." The book contains three sections. The first
offers a detailed critique of "intelligent design" creationism as
purveyed by William Dembski, Michael Behe, and Phillip Johnson;
reviewing the book for RNCSE in 2004, Jason Rosenhouse commented, "I
did not fully appreciate the sheer extent of ["intelligent design"'s]
awfulness before reading Mark Perakh's Unintelligent Design." The
second addresses various attempts to reconcile the Bible with science,
focusing on those by Hugh Ross, Grant Jeffrey, Fred Hereen, Nathan
Aviezer, Lee Spetner, and Gerald Schroeder. The third discusses issues
in the nature of science and in probability theory, using the
so-called Bible Code as a cautionary example. Interviewed by NCSE's
Glenn Branch for RNCSE in 2009, Perakh reflected on the inspiration,
composition, and reception of his book. "Writing a book gathering my
ideas about creationism and its pernicious efforts to undermine
genuine science was a natural outcome of my pro-science and pro-reason
activity," he explained.

Perakh was born (as Mark Yakovlevich Popereka) on November 2, 1924, in
Kiev, Ukraine. After serving in the Soviet Army during World War II,
he earned the equivalent of a PhD in physics from the Odessa
Polytechnic Institute in 1946. From 1950 to 1973, he conducted
research and taught physics in several universities in the USSR,
receiving a Diploma of Doctorate of Sciences from Kazan Institute of
Technology in 1968. He emigrated to Israel, where he changed his
surname to Perakh and was appointed a professor of physics at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in 1973. He subsequently emigrated to
the United States in 1978, where he was a professor of physics at
California State University, Fullerton, from 1985 to 1994. During his
career, he received a number of prizes and awards for his research,
including one from the Royal Society of London, and authored almost
three hundred scientific papers and several monographs.

For the post about Perakh's death at The Panda's Thumb blog, visit:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2013/05/mark-perakh-die.html 

For information about Perakh's Unintelligent Design from its publisher, visit:
http://www.prometheusbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1812 

For the Talk.Reason website, visit:
http://talkreason.org/ 

And for Branch's interview with Perakh, visit:
http://ncse.com/rncse/29/4/unintelligent-design 

POLLING MUSLIMS ON EVOLUTION

A new report discussing a poll of Muslims around the globe suggests
(p. 132) that "[m]any Muslims around the world believe in evolution."
Specifically, the report, entitled "The World?s Muslims: Religion,
Politics and Society," explains, "[i]n 13 of the 22 countries where
the question was asked, at least half say humans and other living
things have evolved over time. By contrast, in just four countries do
at least half say that humans have remained in their present form
since the beginning of time." The underlying poll, conducted by
Opinion Research Business and Princeton Survey Research for the Pew
Research Center "between 2008 and 2012 in a total of 39 countries and
territories on three continents," "involved more than 38,000
face-to-face interviews in 80-plus languages and dialects."

The respondents were asked "Thinking about evolution, which comes
closer to your view?" and presented with "Humans and other living
things have evolved over time" and "Humans and other living things
have existed in their present form since the beginning of time." The
greatest level of acceptance of evolution was in Kazakhstan (79%),
Lebanon (78%), and the Palestinian territories (67%); the lowest level
was in Afghanistan (26%), Iraq (27%), and Pakistan (30%). The global
median was 53%. There was a correlation between religious observance
and rejection of evolution in Southern and Eastern Europe, but not
elsewhere, In a Pew poll conducted in 2011, Muslims in the United
States were almost evenly split, with 45% accepting evolution, a level
comparable with Indonesia (39%), Tunisia (45%), and Bosnia-Herzegovina
(50%), but below the global median.

The countries in which the evolution question was asked were Albania,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Russia in Southern-Eastern Europe;
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan
in Central Asia; Indonesia, Malaysia, and (five southern provinces of)
Thailand in Southeast Asian; Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan in
South Asia; and Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Palestinian
terrorities, and Tunisia in the Middle East and North Africa. The
report notes that the survey covered "every country that has more than
10 million Muslims except for a handful (including China, India, Saudi
Arabia and Syria) where political sensitivities or security concerns
prevented opinion research among Muslims," but questions on evolution
and conflict between science and religion were not asked in
sub-Saharan Africa.

According to the report, "In all countries, surveys were administered
through face-to-face interviews conducted at a respondent's place of
residence. All samples are based on area probability designs, which
typically entailed proportional stratification by region and urbanity,
selection of primary sampling units (PSUs) proportional to population
size, and random selection of secondary and tertiary sampling units
within PSUs." The questionnaire was translated into appropriate
languages, reviewed, and pretested prior to fieldwork. After the
fieldwork, the data were weighted for different probabilities of
selection and for demographic factors, and the reported sampling
errors take into account both types of weighting. The margins of error
vary for each country, from +/- 2.8% for Russia to +/- 6.3 for the
Palestinian territories.

For the report (PDF), visit:
http://www.pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Religious_Affiliation/Muslim/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-full-report.pdf 

And for NCSE's collection of polls and surveys, visit:
http://ncse.com/creationism/polls-surveys 

A PREVIEW OF EVOLUTION VS. CREATIONISM

NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview of Eugenie C. Scott's
Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction, second edition (Greenwood
Press/University of California Press, 2009) in honor of her impending
retirement as NCSE's executive director. The preview consists of
chapter 2, "Evolution," in which Scott sketches the basics of
evolutionary science. Echoing Dobzhansky, she concludes, "Evolution
tells us why biology is like it is: living things had common
ancestors, which makes a comprehensible whole of all those facts and
details."

The historian Edward J. Larson described Evolution vs. Creationism as
"an invaluable resource for those seeking to understand the American
controversy over creationism and evolution from the perspective of an
eloquent and knowledgeable partisan," adding that it "offers an
insightful overview of the American controversy over teaching
evolution along with a representative sampling of short excerpts from
both creationists and evolutionists. By reading it, teachers, parents,
students and the public can be better prepared to answer creationist
claims and defend the teaching of evolution."

For the preview of Evolution vs. Creationism (PDF), visit:
http://ncse.com/book-excerpt 

For information about Evolution vs. Creationism, visit:
http://ncse.com/media/evc1 

For the announcement of Scott's impending retirement, visit:
http://ncse.com/news/2013/05/ncses-scott-to-retire-0014832 

And for Larson's description of Evolution vs. Creationism, visit:
http://www.issrlibrary.org/introductory-essays/essay/?title=Evolution%20vs.%20Creationism:%20An%20Introduction&ref=essays 

Thanks for reading. And don't forget to visit NCSE's website --
http://ncse.com -- where you can always find the latest news on 
evolution and climate education and threats to them.

--
Sincerely,

Glenn Branch
Deputy Director
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509
510-601-7203 x305
fax: 510-601-7204
800-290-6006
branch@ncse.com 
http://ncse.com 

Read Reports of the NCSE on-line:
http://reports.ncse.com 

Subscribe to NCSE's free weekly e-newsletter:
http://groups.google.com/group/ncse-news 

NCSE is on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter:
http://www.facebook.com/evolution.ncse 
http://www.youtube.com/NatCen4ScienceEd 
http://twitter.com/ncse 

NCSE's work is supported by its members. Join today!
http://ncse.com/join