Tennessee scientists warn against revisiting Scopes Monkey Trial contentiousness
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0187
[Original post appears below revisions.]
Revised 04/11/12:
Addendum to the report below:
The 11 April WSJ carries letters answering the WSJs news report:
• One comes from a nurse practitioner who is offended that “voices that might want to question gaps in various theories are being silenced,” and who demands, “Shouldn’t we challenge young people to think?”
• Another comes from Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association in Washington, DC, who begins, “Yet again, conservative Christian legislators find a way to involve themselves in issues they are unfit to address,” and who predicts that “thousands of students will be ill-equipped with the scientific knowledge necessary to pursue degrees in biology and chemistry without a grounding in evolutionary theory.”
• A third comes from a physicist named Robert A. Myers in New York, who stipulates that he has “no sympathy for efforts to inject the teaching of ‘creation science’ into high-school science curricula,” but who continues, “On the other hand, I applaud legislation that would allow teachers to question the scientific strengths and weaknesses of accepted scientific theories — even evolution. Even better would be encouraging students to do the same. After all, science evolves from questioning and criticizing accepted wisdom.”
Original post 04/06/12:The 6 April Wall Street Journal article ‘ Tennessee is lab for national clash over science class ’ reports that Tennessee’s Republican governor Bill Haslam is likely to sign a bill ‘requiring that public schools allow science teachers to discuss purported weaknesses of theories such as evolution and global warming in their classrooms.’
In a major state newspaper, the Tennessean, three Tennessee members of the National Academy of Sciences recently published an op-ed under the headline ‘ Anti-science legislation offers prospect of a new Scopes trial .’ Roger D. Cone and Jon Kaas of Vanderbilt University and Robert G. Webster of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital begin the piece by charging, ‘Almost 90 years ago, Tennessee became a national laughingstock with the Scopes trial of 1925, when a young teacher was prosecuted for violating a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution.’
The three scientists condemn the Tennessee legislature for ‘doing the unbelievable: attempting to roll the clock back to 1925 by attempting to insert religious beliefs in the teaching of science.’ They continue:
These bills, if enacted, would encourage teachers to present the ‘scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses’ of ‘controversial’ topics such as ‘biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.’ As such, the bills are misleading, unnecessary, likely to provoke unnecessary and divisive legal proceedings, and likely to have adverse economic consequences for the state.
It is misleading to describe these topics as scientifically controversial. What is taught about evolution, the origin of life, and climate change in the public school science curriculum is — as with all scientific topics — based on the settled consensus of the scientific community. While there is no doubt social controversy about these topics, the actual science is solid.
The authors cite religious leaders’ pro-evolution views, quote the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s opposition to the legislation, argue that teachers themselves are against it, warn that enactment could lead to expensive and unnecessary lawsuits, and foresee ill effects for the state’s competitiveness.
They close by wondering about the governor: ‘Will he heed the informed opinion of the scientific community and of Tennessee’s science teachers? Or are we in for a repeat of the Scopes trial?’
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.