Policy and Politics
tfk | September 7, 2011In the last few weeks, and at tonight's Republican debate, lots of national politicians have been asked their views on evolution, and lots of politicians have answered embarrassingly.
We should bear in mind, as I pointed out before:
Like the Miss USA contestants, most politicians (excluding those on local school boards or state boards of education) will have little opportunity to influence how evolution is taught. In answering questions about evolution during campaigns, their goal is rarely to indicate a clear conception of how science works and why evolution is central to modern biology.…
tfk | August 31, 2011On twitter, journalist Dave Roberts wrote:
Evolution is not a free-floating "theory." It underlies all of modern biology & ecology. Similarly for climate change: it's a foundation.
I wrote back:
I agree (hence @NCSE's work on both). But AGW is less foundation than integrative and crucial knowledge, built on other foundations
As NCSE shifts to combat attacks on climate science in classrooms, I've been thinking about the similarities and dissimilarities of these sciences, as well as the denialisms surrounding both.
Evolution is foundational to modern biology because all life evolved. That…
tfk | August 25, 2011The other day, I quibbled with John Derbyshire's contention that liberals are optimists and with Joel Mathis's objection that his liberalism is pessimistic. Today, CMatt Yglesias writes:
One of the bigger systematic differences between the left and right in America is that progressives have a realistic view of human behavior while conservatives at times seem unhealthily obsessed with moral hazard.
Sounds right: liberals aren't optimists, but conservatives sure are pessimists! (I.e, conservatives think If you don't punish everyone for taking needless risk, like not carrying earthquake…
tfk | August 25, 2011Last week, Rick Perry made some factually false and deeply disturbing claims about how evolution is and ought to be taught in Texas. In the ensuing flurry of criticism (fueled by the fact that Perry simultaneously doubled down on his climate change denial), retired British biologist Richard Dawkins was invited to comment on the matter at the Washington Post's website. His piece opens by heaping bile on Perry and any political system that allows him to rise to a place of prominence, before repeating a typically Dawkinsian (somewhat florid, always passionate), but somewhat tangential defense…
tfk | August 24, 2011John Derbyshire thinks there's a tension between liberalism and science:
liberal scientists, which is to say most scientistsâ¦are stuck in an uncomfortable philosophical fork.
Liberalism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of progress and improvement. (Why do you think they call themselves âprogressivesâ?) In this, liberalism has had the support of science, which has made so much improvement possible â banishing diseases, improving the quality and variety of our food, reducing the need for arduous labor, increasing our comfort and amusements.
The link between liberalism and science is therefore…
tfk | August 21, 2011Early last month, I quoted a dispatch from a checkpoint between rebel-controlled Libya and Qaddafi's Tripoli:
The refugees say that Tripoliâs rebels defiantly paint their flags on anything that will spread their message, including pigeons, cats and balloons.
Today, the rebel flags are flying from buildings across the city, and rumors of Col. Qaddafi's death or flight from the city abound.
The author of that poetic line from early July, Kareem Fahim, reports:
âWe are coordinating the attacks inside [Tripoli], and our forces from outside are ready to enter Tripoli,â said Anwar Fekini, a rebel…
tfk | August 19, 2011Yesterday, Rick Perry commented "in Texas we teach both creationism and evolution in our public schools, because I figured you're smart enough to figure out which one is right." It got a lot of play, including my own post on the matter.
PolitiFact Texas examined the issue, providing a nice summary of recent fights at the state board of education over evolution and creationism:
We wondered whether heâs correct that creationism, the biblical explanation of human origins, and evolution, the scientific theory, are both taught in Texas public schools.
The U.S. Supreme Court has said that…
tfk | August 18, 2011
I've already spoken to a reporter in Texas about this, but via Jamie Vernon we have video of Rick Perry telling a 4th grader in New Hampshire that he doesn't know the age of the earth, that
Transcript:
Student: How old do you think the earth is?
Perry: How old do I think the earth is? You know what? I don't have any idea. I know it's pretty old, so it goes back a long, long way. I'm not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely how long, how old the earth is. I hear your mom was asking about evolution. You know, it's a theory that's out there. It's got some gaps in it, but in…
tfk | August 17, 2011In his book Fed Up, Rick Perry came out solidly in the climate denial camp, repeating long-discredited claims of that the underlying science is fraudulent. ThinkProgress quotes him writing:
For example, they have seen the headlines in the past year about doctored data related to global warming. They know we have been experiencing a cooling trend, that the complexities of the global atmosphere have often eluded the most sophisticated scientists, and that draconian policies with dire economic effects based on so-called science may not stand the test of time. Quite frankly, when science gets…
tfk | August 16, 2011
As you'll recall, I spoke toward the end of the public testimony at the Texas science standards supplements, so I departed from my prepared text a bit. Not, perhaps, my finest performance ever, due to the ad libbing.
A bunch of other video is online from the hearings, including this stunning video of Vera Preston-Jaeger, who told the board "I am able to be here today because I am in a drug research study in Austin and I got the medicine rather than the placebo. When I was first diagnosed, I was told that I would go blind and die within four years, and I'm still here and I'm very glad to be…
tfk | August 15, 2011Sara Mead writes at Ed Week about teacher legislation, especially new policies allowing "ineffective" teachers to be canned, or at least to be laid off first:
But what about teachers who are rated "Needs Improvement" [the second lowest category] --but never actually improve? Under many of these laws, a teacher could remain in the "needs improvement" category for his or her entire career.
Is this a good policy? Or should these teachers be given some window of time in which to improve or find something else to do? I'm not sure, but it's a question worth asking, particularly as we gain more…
tfk | August 15, 2011Delong, a former Clinton economist and current econ professor at UC Berkeley, writes:
You Know, I Arrived in Washington in 1993 to Work for Lloyd Bentsen's Treasury as Part of the Sane Technocratic Bipartisan Center...
And it took me only two months--two months!--to conclude that America's best hope for sane technocratic governance required the elimination of the Republican Party from our political system as rapidly as possible. Nothing since has led me to question or change that belief--only to strengthen it.
This, apropos of TX governor Rick Perry's declaration that anything the Federal…
tfk | August 3, 2011I didn't blog about the debt ceiling becauseâ¦Â ugh. The idea that the Republican party would hold the country, and indeed the world economy, hostage is unimaginably awful. The idea that, in the midst of a recession barely worse than the Great Depression, we're talking about cutting government spending is also absurd. It's a failure of governance and of leadership. Far from being ashamed, Mitch McConnell is gloating about it.
The Left is riled up, and righteously so. The problem is that most of the ire seems to be directed at the President, with talk of a primary challenge and so forth.…
tfk | August 3, 2011In the comments on my post the other day about the importance of evidence in skepticism and science outreach, RBH leaves an interesting comment that's worth digging into a bit. I replied in the thread, RBH's invocation of the Overton Window struck me.
He writes:
We hear about the Dunning-Kruger effect; let's not forget about the Overton Window. In a lovely irony, it might be PZ's (alleged) ineffectiveness that enables Josh's (purported) effectiveness.
It would be ironic indeed, but there's no reason to think it's true. RBH is a smart guy, and may well have a more sophisticated model of that…
tfk | July 29, 2011Marie-Claire Shanahan has a couple of great posts up about the science of science education, and research on what it takes to actually change someone's mind. They're great posts, and hold the promise of many more insightful looks at the skills and approaches best suited to increasing science literacy.
That's a topic of no small interest to me. In my recent posts about the National Science Board, in my testimony and backstage efforts in Texas, and in my workshop on Defending Evolution in the Classroom and Beyond at The Amazing Meeting! (to name this month's major projects), the focus is…
tfk | July 26, 2011In discussing the National Science Board's latest stand on whether to report evolution literacy, and how to do so, I didn't get into the details of Jon Miller's concerns. Chris Mooney quotes that passage from the Science report, and raises some concerns.
Science reported that the NSB will, in the 2014 Science and Engineering Indicators, report results of two questions: the standard true/false "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals" and another version in which people are asked "according to evolutionary theory, human beingsâ¦." An experiment with that…
tfk | July 26, 2011A bit over a year ago, we reported on the removal of evolution from a report by the NSF's governing body, the National Science Board. The NSB is presidentially appointed and Senate confirmed, and sets broad policy for the NSF. Every other year, it publishes a report on Science and Engineering Indicators for the nation, and Chapter 7's discussion of public science literacy is what I always look at first. I was surprised to find evolution absent from the 2010 edition, and sleuthing by NCSE and others resulted in a report in Science magazine, that revealed some disturbing attitudes.
Most…
tfk | July 25, 2011I'm so old now, I remember when raising the debt ceiling didn't produce an existential crisis.
tfk | July 25, 2011Sorry for not posting an update last Friday, but I was in the Board meeting and then on a plane. I gather most of you found the news update at NCSE's website, where traffic hit record levels.
As you recall, the Texas State Board of Education met on Thursday as the Committee of the Full Board to hear public testimony and to debate among themselves as much as was feasible. Friday was the official board meeting, when the final votes on new science supplements were taken. In the end, all of the good supplements were approved (some with minor tweaks still to be made) and the creationist…
tfk | July 21, 2011As folks who follow me on twitter know, today was a pretty good day in Texas. I'm here watching the board vote on science supplements for public schools. I put together a 20 page report on the flaws in a supplement provided by International Databases, LLC, and presented it to the board. Most of the speakers opposed the ID, LLC supplement, and urged adoption of the supplements recommended by expert review committees.
As often happens, board member Ken Mercer asked many of the folks who testified a series of carefully crafted questions, meant somehow to trap them. It wasn't totally obvious…