NCSE Evolution and Climate Education Update for 2013/07/19

(by NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch)

Dear friends of NCSE,

New poll data on public understanding of evolution in Australia. A new
issue of Reports of the NCSE is now available on-line. NCSE offers a
free preview of Peter M. Hoffman's Life's Ratchet. Elaine Morgan,
advocate of the "aquatic ape" hypothesis, is dead. And videos of a
conference on communicating climate science, featuring NCSE staff, are
now available from the American Geophysical Union.

POLLING EVOLUTION DOWN UNDER AGAIN

A national survey reveals that one in eleven Australians do not
believe in evolution -- and three in eleven think that humans lived at
the same time as dinosaurs.The survey, conducted by Auspoll for the
Australian Academy of Science, was intended to assess the level of
science literacy in Australia. The survey used the same questions as a
previous poll of Australians conducted in 2010 and the California
Academy of Sciences in 2009.

Although a press release issued by the Australian Academy of Science
on July 17, 2013, observed, "the science literacy of young Australian
adults has fallen in the last three years," comparing the survey
results to the results from the 2010 poll, the percentage of
respondents answering the questions about evolution and the
coexistence of dinosaurs and humans correctly in fact increased
slightly.

In the 2013 survey, 73% of respondents said that "The earliest humans
lived at the same time as dinosaurs" (presumably "non-avian dinosaurs"
was intended) was false while 27% said that it was true; "people with
less education and older people" were the most likely to say that it
was true. In 2010, 70% of respondents said that "The earliest humans
lived at the same time as dinosaurs" was false while 30% said that it
was true.

Also in 2013, 70% of respondents agreed that evolution is occurring,
10% said that it is not currently occurring, 9% said that they do not
believe in evolution, and 12% were not sure; "men and people with
higher education" were more likely to agree. In 2010, the figures were
very similar, with 71% agreeing that evolution is occurring, 8% saying
that evolution is not currently occurring, 10% rejecting evolution,
and 11% unsure.

The survey was conducted on-line May 7-10, 2013. According to the
report, "Respondents were drawn from a professional social and market
research panel. The overall sample size was 1515, segmented and
weighted to be nationally representative of Australia’s population by
gender, age and residential location." The accuracy of the results is
+/-2.5% at the 95% confidence interval.

For the announcement, press release, and report (PDF) of the survey, visit:
http://www.science.org.au/reports/science-literacy.html 
http://www.science.org.au/news/media/17july13.html 
http://www.science.org.au/reports/documents/ScienceLiteracyReport.pdf 

For a press release about the California Academy of Sciences poll, visit:
http://www.calacademy.org/newsroom/releases/2009/scientific_literacy.php 

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

RNCSE 33:4 NOW ON-LINE

NCSE is pleased to announce that the latest issue of Reports of the
National Center for Science Educationis now available on-line. The
issue -- volume 33, number 4 -- features Daniel J. Glass's "Talking
Animals, Silly Jokes, and Natural Selection," James J. Krupa's
"Teaching Evolution for a Future Scopes," and Dennis S. Ross's "The
Religious and Political Climate." And for his regular People and
Places column, Randy Moore discusses the Cabazon Dinosaurs.

Plus a host of reviews of books on climate science: Daniel Bedford
reviews Richard B. Alley's Earth: The Operator's Manual, Miriam
Belmaker reviews Renée Hetherington's Living in a Dangerous Climate,
Anne U. Gold reviews Climate Central's Global Weirdness, Amy E. Lesen
reviews Andrew T. Guzman's Overheated: The Human Cost of Climate
Change, John R. Mashey reviews James Lawrence Powell's The Inquisition
of Climate Science, and Norman H. Sleep reviews Bill McGuire's Waking
the Giant.

All of these articles, features, and reviews are freely available in
PDF form from http://reports.ncse.com. Members of NCSE will shortly be 
receiving in the mail the print supplement to Reports 33:4, which, in
addition to summaries of the on-line material, contains news from the
membership, a regular column in which NCSE staffers offer personal
reports on what they've been doing to defend the teaching of
evolution, a regular column interviewing NCSE's favorite people, and
more besides. (Not a member? Join today!)

For the table of contents for RNCSE 33:4, visit:
http://reports.ncse.com/index.php/rncse/issue/current/showToc 

For information about joining NCSE, visit:
http://ncse.com/join 

A GLIMPSE OF LIFE'S RATCHET

NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview of Peter M. Hoffmann's Life's
Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos (Basic Books,
2012). The preview consists of the greater part of chapter 8, "The
Watch and the Ribosome," in which Hoffman asks, "How do molecules
evolve?" and replies, "Despite the histrionic debates in various
American school boards, the mechanism of evolution is ... quite
obvious when contemplated with an open mind." Hoffman addresses
"irreducible complexity" and "the information challenge" in passing
later in the chapter.

The reviewer for Nature commented, "Life's Ratchet engagingly tells
the story of how science has begun to realize the potential for matter
to spontaneously construct complex processes, such as those inherent
to living systems. The book is a good mix of history and the latest
concepts, straightforwardly explained." Peter M. Hoffmann is a
professor of physics and materials science at Wayne State University
in Michigan and the founder and director of the university’s
Biomedical Physics program.

For the preview of Life's Ratchet (PDF), visit:
http://ncse.com/book-excerpt 

For information about the book from its publisher, visit:
http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/basic/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0465022537 

ELAINE MORGAN DIES

The writer Elaine Morgan, known for her advocacy of the "aquatic ape"
hypothesis of human evolution, died on July 12, 2013, at the age of
92, according to the BBC (July 12, 2013). Morgan wrote a series of
books advancing and defending her idiosyncratic views on human
evolution, including The Descent of Woman (Souvenir Press, 1972), The
Aquatic Ape (Stein & Day, 1982), The Scars of Evolution (Souvenir
Press, 1990), The Descent of the Child (Oxford University Press,
1995), The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis (Souvenir Press, 1997), and The
Naked Darwinist (Eildon Press, 2008).

The aquatic ape hypothesis, originally due to the marine biologist
Alister Hardy, holds that human evolution included a phase in which
humans were adapted to a marine environment, citing as evidence such
distinctive human features as the reduction of body hair, the unusual
amount of subcutaneous fat, and the diving reflex. Morgan contrasted
the hypothesis with what she called "the savannah theory," as
exemplified in popular books such as Desmond Morris's The Naked Ape,
which she faulted as not only empirically lacking but also relying on
sexist assumptions. Despite their high profile among the general
public, Morgan's ideas attracted little sustained attention from the
scientific community, the main exceptions being a 1987 symposium, the
proceedings of which were published as Aquatic Ape: Fact or Fiction?
(Souvenir Press, 1987), and a paper by John H. Langdon in the Journal
of Human Evolution (1997; 33[4]:479-494). Langdon described the
aquatic ape hypothesis as "troubled by inconsistencies" and unlikely
to be reconcilable with the fossil record, adding, with respect to
Morgan's proclivity to argue from uncertainty or disagreement among
paleoanthropologists, "This aspect of the argument for the aquatic
hypothesis greatly resembles the approach that 'creation science'
takes to evolutionary biology. In comparing a single model to an
entire academic field, there is an illusion of contrasting order with
chaos."

Morgan was born on November 7, 1920, in Pontypridd, Wales, and
received a B.A. from Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford University in 1942
and her M.A. in 1948. She began a professional writing career in the
1950s, writing plays for the stage and television scripts for the BBC,
and winning a number of prizes for her writing for television. She
received an honorary D.Litt. from Glamorgan University in 2006; in
2009 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire
for services to literature and to education and elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Literature.

For the obituary from the BBC, visit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-23291733 

For Langdon's paper (subscription required), visit:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248497901469 

NCSE AT "COMMUNICATING CLIMATE SCIENCE"

The American Geophysical Union held a conference on "Communicating
Climate Science: A Historic Look to the Future" -- and NCSE was there
in force. Held in Granby, Colorado, from June 8 to June 13, 2013, the
conference sought to "bring together scholars, social scientists, and
journalists to discuss both the history and recent advances in the
understanding of climate science and how to communicate that science
to policymakers, the media, and society." And videos of the sessions,
including talks by climate superstars like Michael Mann and Richard B.
Alley, are nowavailable on AGU's YouTube channel.

NCSE's Minda Berbeco spoke on "Climate and Energy Literacy: A New
Direction for Science Education in the 21st Century" and "Addressing
Climate Change Denial in the Age of 'Academic Freedom' Bills." NCSE's
Mark McCaffrey spoke on "Toward an Integrated Approach to Climate
Education, Communications, and Outreach" and ran a related workshop.
And Michael MacCracken, a member of NCSE's Advisory Council, offered
"A Retrospective of Early Climate Science from a Physical Scientists's
Point-of-View" and asked "Might Being More Careful in Our
Communications Help to Improve Public Understanding about Climate
Change?"

For information about the conference, visit:
http://chapman.agu.org/climatescience/ 

For videos from the conference, visit:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Ihm2Mh3MZ5ZVQhhGP8pGu85dj6ued__ 

And for NCSE's climate change initiative, visit:
http://ncse.com/climate 

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 

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http://reports.ncse.com 

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