Florida Citizens for Science

Here is my letter to the editor for the upcoming Friday Forum in the Orlando Sentinel:

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To the editor:

There are two points that absolutely must be driven home when it comes to intelligent design (ID) in the public school science classroom: it’s not science and there is no big controversy concerning evolution to teach high school students. As clearly shown in a court of law during the recent Dover, Penn. case, ID is not science, but rather an extreme ideology. Any citizen uncritically considering ID as a science needs to be told about the many appalling and unscrupulous methods the Dover school board used to insert it into the school system. The presiding judge said (on page 137 of his opinion):

“It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.”

Many people think they know what the issues are, including the president and our governor. Unfortunately, those people have been systematically misled and lied to. Compare the ID literature attacking evolution to scientist’s irrefutable rebuttals. Read the Dover judge’s clear and well-written opinion.

If you were used car shopping, you would be on guard against buying a lemon. You should be no less vigilant when someone is trying to sell you shoddy non-science for our children’s classrooms. Don’t be suckered by an oily sales pitch. Get the facts!

Brandon Haught

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Have you written a letter? Feel free to let us know and post it in the comments here. I chose to focus on the dishonesty of the ID movement. There are many other points we can hit on, so get to writing, folks! Need some help? Have a look at these 10 Tips for Writing Letters to the Editor.

Governor Bush issued a press release yesterday, supposedly clarifying his stance on the science standards. Um, yeah … clear as mud, buddy.

FRIDAY , DECEMBER 30, 2005
Contact:
RUSSELL SCHWEISS
(850) 488-5394

TALLAHASSEE - “A national debate is ensuing about whether evolution or intelligent design should be taught in science classes. Some confusion about my position on this issue has emerged in recent weeks.

“I am a practicing Catholic and my own personal belief is God created man and all life on earth. However, I do not believe an individual’s personal beliefs should be the basis for determining Florida’s Sunshine State Standards.

“The Sunshine State Standards, approved by the State Board of Education nearly a decade ago, establish the expectations for student achievement in our state - essentially what our students need to know when they complete each grade. The framework provides flexibility to school districts and teachers in designing curriculum, including what specific topics should be taught in each class.

“Within the next three years, the Department of Education will begin an open process to revise Florida’s science standards. These standards need to be made more rigorous to ensure our children will have the knowledge necessary to successfully compete in an increasingly global marketplace. As Florida continues to raise the bar for education, I am confident our educators will rise to the challenge and establish standards that improve students’ learning of science.

“Perhaps more importantly, we should encourage the vigorous discussion of varying viewpoints in our classrooms. A healthy debate of issues challenges our students’ minds.”

I bolded the two possibly conflicting views he stated. Personal beliefs don’t belong in the standards, good. Encourage varying viewpoints, not so good if you are advocating inserting non-science in a science classroom. By using standard political weasel language, he managed to avoid coming right out and saying that ID is fine in the science classroom while still leaving the door cracked open.

Some other nuggets of information below the fold …
(more…)

I had posted about a meeting hosted by the Center for Inquiry branch in Tampa, Florida. Curtis Wolf was kind enough to provide a summary of what happened. Here are some highlights:

20 people met at 4 PM on December 21st at the CFI Florida office.

I gave a short Power Point presentation on the issues that we are facing concerning science educational standards in this state. Basically, the science standards are coming up for review within a year or two. There are creationist storm clouds over the horizon. Science standards were given a grade of ‘F’ by the Thomas B Fordham Foundation. We need to organize and educate ourselves so that we can improve the state education standards when they are made available for comment.

We agreed that the name of the group should remain Florida Science Standards Committee.

We agreed that the purpose of the committee is to improve science educational standards for Florida schools. Even though some in the group had interest in other aspects of science education, it was the consensus that the science standards were a good place to start. Improving the science standards will set the bar high for the educational system as a whole. The educational system will have to improve itself in order to teach the standards correctly. I am hoping that this group will stay together and look at other aspects of science education once we have finished with the standards. However, the improvement of the Florida science standards is a good start and more than enough work in and of itself for now.

It became clear from the discussion throughout the meeting that we need to become familiar with the current science standards in Florida and any alternatives to them. When we are familiar with all of this, we will have a good idea of how much work that we have ahead of us. We may very well decide that the standards need very few changes. I doubt this, but we will not know this until we become more familiar with the science standards.

…

We also created three lines of inquiry concerning the issues relevant to this committee. I have agreed to inquire about the state education department process of formulating science standards. Jeanette has agreed to look at the Thomas B Fordham Foundation report and determine what criticisms of the Florida science standards are in the report. Susan Gow has agreed to determine whether any other groups are interested in improving the science standards.

Finally, we agreed to meet again on March 24th at 4 PM at the CFI Florida office. This meeting will precede the CFI Florida conference.

The Orlando Sentinel publishes a special page in the op-ed section every Friday called Friday Forum. A question is posed the week before and then an entire page is devoted to the responses.

Friday Forum asks readers: Should intelligent design be taught in public-school science courses? Tell us what you think.

e-mail: insight@orlandosentinel.com

You have to keep it to under 250 words and it needs to be submitted by Wednesday, I think. Get to writing, folks!

Poll: Evolution’s not enough

A majority of Pinellas parents who profess to follow the controversy say intelligent design should be taught in schools.

…

Fifty-eight percent of the parents who said they have been following the national controversy over intelligent design told pollsters it should be taught “just like evolution.”

Only 21 percent said intelligent design should not be taught.

“Being Christian, I believe there is a higher power,” said Jackie Shields of St. Petersburg. “I agree (with) intelligent design more than evolution. It blows my mind to think we evolved over time. There’s no such thing.”

“New ideas develop,” said Kathleen Helfand of Oldsmar, who also supports the teaching of intelligent design. “If there are other theories out there, kids should be able to entertain those theories along with whatever else is being taught.”

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More than a third of the 617 parents polled during the last week of November said they haven’t paid any attention to the debate over intelligent design. But 36 percent said they have paid some attention, and nearly one in four said they have paid “a lot” of attention.

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Sherry Gerodimos, who teaches biology at Largo High School, said while she is “more comfortable siding with evolution,” she was impressed with a DVD she received on intelligent design and has considered showing it to her students.

“It’s offensive to me that biologists shove evolution down people’s throats as the only answer,” Gerodimos said. “If we’re saying (intelligent design) should never be taught, we’re saying we’re afraid, and that we’re against what we say we do, which is investigate.

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Some evolution supporters weren’t surprised by the poll numbers, either.

The intelligent design movement has had “a good 10 years putting the spin on it their way,” said Elsberry, with the science education center.

He said the Pinellas numbers will swing the other way if intelligent design becomes more publicized and debated locally. But he also said the issue shouldn’t be decided by opinion polls.

Astrology is popular, too, but that doesn’t mean it should be taught in science classrooms, he said.

“We don’t decide science by popular vote.”

Elsberry shared in an e-mail with Florida Citizens for Science a thought after having seen this story in print. He said:

One article reports on the polling data I talked about last month. It is no longer embargoed. A significant difference from what I understood from the phone description is that the views on “Teach ID?” come only from those who stated they had “some” or “a lot” of familiarity with the issues. That left 40% of the polling group out. If I had known that, one of my points would have been that many people may think that they know the issues when all that they have looked at is antievolution materials. Those people have been systematically misled and lied to.

Florida gets an F in science

Outstanding job of covering many of the issues in a very no-nonsense manner by Ron Matus here. If you have a moment, send him a note (matus@sptimes.com) to let him know you appreciate the work he put into this article. We need more good writing like this out there.

Gov. Jeb Bush staked out a curious position on a hot-button issue last week: Florida’s K-12 science standards need beefing up, he said. But Darwin’s theory of evolution should not be part of them.
Had they heard, many scientists probably would have cringed.

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The report by the Washington,D.C.-based Fordham Institute calls Florida’s standards “thin,” “naive,” “disappointing” - and in some cases, flat wrong.

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Critics say the report exposes a glaring oversight in Bush’s education revamp, which has focused mostly on reading and math in early grades. It also adds urgency to a pending review of Florida’s science standards, which some observers say could devolve into a culture war showdown over evolution and intelligent design.

Here’s a thought: How do we prevent this culture war showdown? That should be a prominent thought as we plan for the upcoming review. How do we stay above the fray? We need to avoid being drowned out by the intelligent design noise machine. Avoiding time-wasting, energy-draining, public bickering with the anti-science crowd should be a major piece of our strategy.

Industry groups are sounding alarms over the fallout in economic competition, but science educators say average citizens need to be scientifically literate, too, to get a handle on everything from global warming and pollution to hurricanes and bird flu.

“It is important to have more scientists and engineers,” said Matt Werhner, program manager for physical sciences at Hillsborough Community College. “But we’re going to have many more citizens voting on what the scientists and engineers are doing.”

That hits the nail squarely on the head! Promoting scientific literacy is definitely something we should strive for in any message we craft.

The institute took Florida to task for a “prevalence of errors in fact and presentation” in some subject areas. Example: Florida’s standards say a second-grader should know “a thermometer measures the amount of heat absorbed by an object.”

“This is careless and false: a thermometer measures temperature, or better, changes in temperature, not the amount of heat absorbed,” the report says. “We hope that any second-grade teacher who cannot distinguish between heat and temperature will not pass this disability on to the students.”

Even though oftentimes our focus is on evolution and the intelligent design tripe, there are obviously other things to worry about. We need to have a thorough look at all the science standards and make sure the appropriate changes are made.

Bush leaves office in January 2007, but the board is likely to still have a majority of his appointees when it’s time to vote.

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Another problem: Students’ basic skills in reading comprehension and math.

In Hillsborough Community College science classes, many recent high school graduates have “dismal” reading skills, said Mara Manis, HCC’s program manager for biological sciences. So dismal, she said, that before a recent science test, she had to explain the difference between “preceding” and “proceeding.”

HCC science instructors also say student math skills are so weak they can’t apply the science they do learn. Manis said many students don’t know 1 in 4 is 25 percent.

Florida’s K-12 teachers “teach all the right things,” she said. But too many students “just fill their heads with other cr–.”

Pass this article around. Print it out and post it on bulletin boards. File it away for future reference. Thank you Mr. Matus.

Darwin This
Jews clash over the intelligence of intelligent design

On a recent Tuesday evening, Moshe Tendler, an influential Orthodox rabbi and Yeshiva University biology professor, ambled onto the stage at Kovens Conference Center in North Miami. A stately figure with a wispy white beard and heavy glasses, he surveyed the 300-strong crowd of scientists and intellectuals — most clad in yarmulkes and dark suits with tallith tassels dangling about their waists — and urged them to spread the word that Darwin was wrong. “It is our task to inform the world [about intelligent design],” he implored. “Or the child growing up will grow up with unintelligent design…. Unintelligent design is our ignorance, our stupidity.”

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Lipskar, a soft-spoken man with a thick charcoal beard and wire-rim spectacles, ranks among Miami’s most influential rabbis. And like Tendler, he believes Jews should back the intelligent design movement. “The fundamental question the theory answers is, accidental or intentional?” he explains. “If it’s accidental, then what’s the point? But if there’s design, we’re here for a reason.” Lipskar also advocates bringing intelligent design into Jewish classrooms. “It should be taught together with chemistry and physics,” he says.

OK. So what experiments would you conduct in the classroom? What texts would you refer your students to? Keeping in mind that attacking evolution doesn’t prove ID, what positive evidence is there for ID that you could pass along to the bright, young minds of the future?

~crickets chirping~

What do the students think? Many of those who heard Dembski speak said they would like to study his ideas in class. “His words make sense,” commented Annale Fleisher, a seventeen-year-old senior at Miami Beach’s Hebrew Academy. “Saying life comes from evolution is like saying a library was made by someone spilling a bottle of ink.”

That comparison is wrong on so many different levels. There is no “end goal” for evolution to achieve, so you can’t compare it to achieving the end goal of a complete library. On the other hand, if you look at an ink blot and see flying monkeys, guess what? That was created by spilt ink. You didn’t set out to create the image of flying monkeys; that’s just what turned up as a result of the spilling, spreading, soaking, drying etc. Please realize that we humans are not the end goal of evolution. We’re just another link in the ever-growing chain along with all other living things. I would be interested in knowing what humans will look like in 50,000 years, provided we don’t blow ourselves up. Will humans die out, leaving cats to rule the earth?

It must also be mentioned that evolution has taken place over mind-boggling lengths of time. Who knows what spilled ink would develop into over the course of millions of years? Certainly not a library, of course, but any number of things or maybe nothing at all.

But critics in the audience at the conference chafed at the prospect of Jewish scientists contributing to a movement that has stated as its goal the “overthrow” of “scientific materialism.” “We would be helping to eliminate science as a discipline,” said Aviezar. “And that would put us back in the Fifteenth Century. It would be a disaster.”

Amen, Aviezar. Amen!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have our work cut out for us. People are afraid of “you know what,” from the person you meet on the street all the way up to Florida’s governor. I already posted about Bush’s comment on intelligent design and “you know what,” but there is a little update today.

Leave evolution out of standards, Bush says

On Tuesday, Bush spokesman Russell Schweiss clarified Bush’s position somewhat: Evolution “is a scientific theory and he’s not opposed to it being taught in classrooms,” Schweiss said. “But he doesn’t think it should necessarily be dictated in the standards.”

…

Bush, a Catholic who personally believes God created life on Earth, also thinks science teachers should have some discretion to discuss “any scientific theory,” Schweiss said.

But he did not know whether Bush would put intelligent design in that category, and Bush has refused to comment on the issue.

There is a very real fear when it comes to using “you know what” in the state science standards. Slip the e-word in there and suddenly you have the Discovery Institute knocking on your door demanding equal time. Then come the controversy and the lawsuits. It’s not science’s fault that “you know what” is such a hot potato. Smear campaigns that play to people’s deep-seated religious convictions create a poison those without a halfway decent science education are loath to touch. Many people feel they know their bibles and they trust their religious authority figures, regardless if those figures actually have any authority or not. Religion is a personal foundation for much of the population whereas science is some strange, esoteric thing that produces flu vaccines and the latest DVD innovations. Science lacks the charisma and personal touch the Discovery Institute warriors bring to a public debate. It’s easy to vilify and distort.

We need an outreach effort to scrub away the tarnish on “you know …”, er, um, evolution. Evolution is not evil or atheist. It’s a widely accepted overall explanation for the body of facts collected thus far and is neutral as far as theology goes. There is no need to stand over a bible with sword in hand to defend faith from Darwin. Exploring evolution produces benefits to all of mankind. We need to counter the noise machine and get this positive message out there. There is not one single acceptable reason to avoid using the word evolution in the public schools.

What I’m afraid of is a domino effect. Right now it is apparently just fine and dandy to tiptoe around the word evolution in the science standards. Newspaper editorials think it’s wise, and our governor does too. Next, someone might think “changes over time” is much too close to saying evolution, so let’s erase that troublesome phrase. Then let’s find textbooks that dance around the concept. Oh, sure, we won’t officially mention intelligent design at all, but out of fairness, let’s also not mention evolution. We don’t want to upset anyone, you know. Speaking of fairness, how about we let our impressionable students know about other scientific theories and let them decide for themselves. There are no other scientific theories? Well, I’m sure we can dig some up. It’s only fair! We don’t want to offend anyone by only presenting things that have been actually researched! How about we change the very definition of science so that it’s more inclusive of what various people think. It’s only fair …

Like I said, domino effect. That’s why fighting to put evolution back where it belongs in the state science standards is important and not just some nit-picking crusade.

Here’s an editorial in today’s Orlando Sentinel about the Dover, Penn. case:
Stick to science

Overall, this editorial is great and drives the point home that intelligent design doesn’t belong in science classrooms. But then there’s this strange twist:

Is this fight really worth people of faith stepping dangerously close to perjury? Judge John Jones III ruled, correctly, that the school board was endorsing “a particular view of Christianity” and clearly violated the Constitution.

Presenting intelligent design as an alternative scientific theory without subjecting it to the same rigorous peer review as evolution is simply pushing religion wrapped in a white lab coat.

Florida’s educators learned this lesson in 1996, when the science standards were approved with the inclusion of Mr. Darwin’s theories, but without using the word “evolution.” That avoided the kind of senseless fight that is now raging in other states.

If I’m reading that correctly, the editorial is saying that it’s good that the word evolution isn’t included in the science standards. And yet in the previous paragraph it is stated that evolution has undergone rigorous peer review. It’s sad how in the middle of inspiring triumph we still suffer these little defeats. Even though intelligent design took a beating, the ID public relations machine kept the word evolution radioactive. This reminds me of the Harry Potter villain, Lord Voldemort, who nearly everyone but the hero refers to as “you know who” out of unreasonable fear.

The National Center for Science Education has a great response to this Voldemort dilemma:

Suggestions to change specific “sensitive” terms in curriculum standards: For example “adaptation,” “natural selection” and “evolution,” terms which have specific scientific meanings, are sometimes targeted as “controversial.” Eliminating them or substituting “more neutral” phrasing makes terminology inaccurate and can weaken the presentation of crucial concepts.

Response: Point out that substitute terminology reduces clarity and still may not defuse controversy. For example, words like “change,” “change over time,” or “how organisms change” in place of “evolution” could mean “how individual organisms change,” or could refer to short time frames. They don’t tell teachers whether they should present topics like the change of hormone levels during the “fight or flight” response, or the relation between environmental changes and natural selection. While key terms like “evolution” do not have to be used every time the underlying concepts are discussed, make sure they are included in curriculum documents, and that the underlying concepts are presented clearly and accurately.

And another good point:

Not teaching students about evolution leaves them unprepared for college. Evolution is presented matter-of-factly at every decent college and university in the United States, including religious institutions such as Brigham Young, Baylor, and Notre Dame.

I would like to know more about the 1996 revision process. Anyone have newspaper articles on file from then about this issue? Was there a publicized controversy then?

Microscope finds clues, thrills kids

Children bring her pocket lint, spider legs and orange skins.

In a laboratory on the fourth floor of the Orlando Science Center, Sally Graziano gratefully takes the offerings and works her high-tech magic.

Aiming a high-powered beam of electrons, honed by magnetic fields to a point finer than the sharpest scalpel, Graziano can peel back secrets held by things too small for light to see.

With one of the few scanning electron microscopes in a U.S. science museum, she zeroes in on a haystack of threads inside the pocket lint; critters perched on a single hair on the spider’s limb; and the pock-marked moonscape of the orange rind.

Graziano, 76, a specialist with the electron microscope, came out of retirement a few years ago to help inspire children to tackle the world of science.

“Science is a booming industry,” she said. “We need to get the young people interested in it. We have to let them know it’s within their reach.”

Along the way, she also used the museum’s lab to do some real science and helped earn a presidential award.

Educators experience weightlessness

Through the years, Okeechobee teachers have accomplished many unusual feats. Perhaps the most unusual feat was accomplished recently by seven Okeechobee teachers who were privileged to experience the out-of-this-world feeling of weightlessness that is usually experienced only by astronauts.