NCSE Evolution and Climate Education Update for 2015/07/03
Submitted by Peter Burns on Fri, 2015-07-03 16:49.
National Center for Science Education
(by NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch)
Dear friends of NCSE, A new issue of Reports of the NCSE. Plus a prize for Francisco J. Ayala and a new poll on dinosaur/human coexistence.
RNCSE 35:4 NOW ON-LINE NCSE is pleased to announce that the latest issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education is now available on-line. The issue -- volume 35, number 4 -- contains Michael Buratovich's "Where Are My Genes? Genomic Considerations on Darwin's Doubt, Lorence G. Collins's "When Was Grand Canyon Carved?" and Maarten Boudry's review-essay of Kelly James Clark's Religion and the Sciences of Origins. And for his regular People and Places column, Randy Moore discusses WGN Radio, which aired a live broadcast of the Scopes trial from Dayton, Tennnessee, in 1925. Plus a host of reviews of books on climate change: Peter Buckland reviews Philippe Squarzoni's Climate Changed, Jeffrey T. Kiehl reviews Michael L. Bender's Paleoclimate, Stephan Lewandowsky reviews George Marshall's Don't Even Think About It, Kenneth G. Miller reviews Vivian Gornitz's Rising Seas: Past, Present, Future, Tegan Morton reviews Grady Klein and Yoram Bauman's The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change, and Gordon Sayre reviews Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway's The Collapse of Western Civilization. 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 35:4, 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 35:4, visit: http://reports.ncse.com/index.php/rncse/issue/current/showToc For information about joining NCSE, visit: http://ncse.com/join FRANCISCO AYALA RECEIVES GOULD AWARD NCSE congratulates Francisco J. Ayala for winning the 2015 Stephen Jay Gould Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution. A member of NCSE's board of directors and of its Advisory Council, Ayala is University Professor, the Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. Ayala received the Gould Prize and presented a public lecture on "Copernicus and Darwin: Two Revolutions" on June 26, 2015, at the Evolution 2015 conference in Guarujá, Brazil. Ayala received the National Medal for Science, the nation's highest award for lifetime achievement in scientific research, in 2001, and the Templeton Prize in 2010, as well as honorary degrees from twenty-one universities worldwide. He testified for the plaintiffs in McLean v. Arkansas, a 1982 case challenging the constitutionality of a law requiring equal time for creation science in the public schools, and was the lead author of Science, Evolution, and Creationism (National Academies Press, 2008). The Stephen Jay Gould Prize is awarded annually by the SSE "to recognize individuals whose sustained and exemplary efforts have advanced public understanding of evolutionary science and its importance in biology, education, and everyday life in the spirit of Stephen Jay Gould." NCSE's Eugenie C. Scott was the recipient of the first Gould Prize, in 2009, followed by Sean B. Carroll in 2010, Kenneth R. Miller in 2011, David Quammen in 2012, Judy Scotchmoor in 2013, and Steve Jones in 2014. For information about the Evolution 2015 conference, visit: http://evolution2015.org/ For Science, Evolution, and Creationism, visit: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11876 A NEW POLL ON DINOSAUR/HUMAN COEXISTENCE Prompted by the release of the movie Jurassic World, a new poll from YouGov indicates that Americans are about evenly split on the question of whether dinosaurs and humans lived on the planet at the same time. Asked "Do you believe that dinosaurs and humans once lived on the planet at the same time," 14% of respondents said definitely, 27% said probably, 18% said probably not, and 25% said definitely not; 16% were unsure. Demographically, YouGov noted, "While most Americans who describe themselves as 'born again' (56%) believe that humans and dinosaurs once shared the planet, most Americans who do not describe themselves as born again (51%) think that they did not." In seeming confirmation of the roughly even split in opinion, a poll of registered voters in Texas in 2010 found that 30% agreed and 41% disagreed with "The earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs," with 30% saying that they didn't know. Similarly, in Reports of the NCSE in 2010, George Bishop and his colleagues described a 2008 survey in which 40% of respondents agreed, and 48% of respondents disagreed, with "Dinosaurs lived at the same time as people." But the 2008 survey, which posed a large number of related but different questions to the respondents, also revealed apparent inconsistencies in their views: for example, 69% of respondents agreed with "Dinosaurs became extinct about 65 million years ago." In its press release, YouGov says that "the last dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago." In fact, the scientific consensus is that dinosaurs are still extant: birds are theropod dinosaurs. It is unclear to what extent respondents were influenced by the scientific consensus. The poll surveyed 1000 adult Americans between June 15 and 17, 2015, apparently on-line; the margin of error reported was plus/minus 4.4%. Further details of the polling methodology are not readily apparent. For YouGov's press release about the poll, visit: https://today.yougov.com/news/2015/06/18/jurassic-world/ For information about the 2010 and 2008 polls cited, visit: http://www.texastribune.org/2010/02/17/texans-dinosaurs-humans-walked-the-earth-at-same/ http://ncse.com/rncse/30/3/americans-scientific-knowledge-beliefs-human-evolution-year- And for NCSE's collection of polls and surveys, visit: http://ncse.com/creationism/polls-surveys WHAT'S NEW FROM THE SCIENCE LEAGUE OF AMERICA Have you been visiting NCSE's blog, The Science League of America, recently? If not, then you've missed: * Steven Newton debunking a claim from John Stossel about politics and science: http://ncse.com/blog/2015/06/john-stossel-s-science-wars-are-phantom-menace-0016481 * Minda Berbeco discussing the creationist presence at NEA's conferences: http://ncse.com/blog/2015/06/creationists-targeting-teachers-0016483 * Josh Rosenau musing on possible titles for Disney's upcoming film about Darwin: http://ncse.com/blog/2015/06/mr-darwin-goes-to-hollywood-0016478 And much more besides! For The Science League of America, visit: http://ncse.com/blog 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 x303 fax: 510-601-7204 800-290-6006 branch@ncse.com http://ncse.com Check out NCSE's new blog, Science League of America: http://ncse.com/blog 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
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