Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science Education

Baton Rouge activist and high school student Zack Kopplin handily debunked the anti-scientific, creationist arguments against evolution of wannabe Tea Party candidate Bachman. Perhaps she should go back to high school herself?

Huffington Post story at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-zimmerman/michele-bachmans-stance-o_b_868771.html

A blog from Clergy Project Director Michael Zimmerman reports that 42 Nobel Prize winners in Physics, Chemistry, or Physiology/Medicine have signed a request to Louisiana’s legislature for repeal of the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act, which would encourage the teaching of creationism and other pseudoscientific dogmas in the science classroom. The letter reads in part:

As Nobel Laureates in various scientific fields, we urge you to repeal the misnamed and misguided Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) of 2008. This law creates a pathway for creationism and other forms of non-scientific instruction to be taught in public school science classrooms.

Join the facebook campaign
and see the article at The Huffington Post

from FairfieldWeekly.com:
Teacher Mark Tangarone says he suspects Mark Ribbens, then-principal at Weston Intermediate School, barred him from teaching the theory of evolution because, “The school wanted to avoid any possible controversy.”

If that’s the case, the plan backfired.

See http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/news/fairfield-county-fair/too-much-monkey-business/ for the full story from the Fairfield Weekly.

A recent study by Berkman and Plutzer of Penn State, published in AAAS’ Science magazine on January 28, 2011, reveals that most high school biology teachers are not teaching evolutionary biology to their students. Many are even teaching creationism, or are ascribing to the equal time concept, that is, teaching Christian creation stories on equal footing with evolution. Apparently the fact that it is explicitly unconstitutional to teach religion in public school science class is less of a deterrent than is community pressure to teach the Bible. For a satirical take on the implications of this sad state of affairs, see a recent column by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Leonard Pitts for the Miami Herald:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/02/2045972/losing-the-race-for-intelligence.html

[Forwarded from
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12999]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

U.S. COMPETITIVE POSITION HAS FURTHER DECLINED IN PAST FIVE YEARS, REPORT SAYS;
NATION NEEDS SUSTAINED COMMITMENT TO INVESTMENT IN INNOVATION

Sept. 23, 2010 — The outlook for America’s ability to compete for
quality jobs in the global economy has continued to deteriorate in the
last five years, and the nation needs a sustained investment in
education and basic research to keep from slipping further, says a new
report requested by the presidents of the National Academy of Sciences,
National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, and authored
by members of the committee that wrote the influential 2005 report
Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a
Brighter Economic Future.

What progress has been made in addressing America’s competitiveness
challenges came largely as the result of the America COMPETES Act and
stimulus package spending advancing its provisions, but both are due to
expire soon, warned authors of the new report, Rising Above the
Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5.

“The Gathering Storm effort once again finds itself at a tipping point,”
said Norman R. Augustine, one of the new report’s authors and chair of
the original Gathering Storm committee. “Addressing America’s
competitiveness challenge is an undertaking that will require many
years, if not decades.” The new report assesses changes in America’s
competitive status since the release of Gathering Storm and the degree
to which its recommendations have been implemented.

The report’s authors concluded that the nation’s competitive outlook has
worsened since 2005, when Gathering Storm issued its call to strengthen
K-12 education and double the federal basic-research budget. While
progress has been made in certain areas, the latitude to fix the
problems being confronted has been severely diminished by the economic
recession and the growth of the national debt over this period from $8
trillion to $13 trillion, the report says. Moreover, other nations have
been markedly progressing, thereby affecting America’s relative ability
to compete for new factories, research laboratories, and jobs.

The report notes many indications that the United States’ competitive
capacity is slipping, including the following:

* In 2009, 51 percent of U.S. patents were awarded to non-U.S.
companies.
* China has replaced the U.S. as the world’s number one
high-technology exporter and is now second in the world in publication
of biomedical research articles.
* Between 1996 and 1999, 157 new drugs were approved in the United
States. In a corresponding period 10 years later, the number dropped to
74.
* Almost one-third of U.S. manufacturing companies responding to a
recent survey say they are suffering from some level of skills shortage.

In addition, in spite of occasional bright spots, the nation’s education
system has shown little sign of improvement, particularly in math and
science, the report says. According to the ACT College Readiness
Report, 78 percent of U.S. high school graduates in 2008 did not meet
readiness benchmark levels for one or more entry-level college courses
in mathematics, science, reading, and English, the report notes. And
the World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. 48th in the quality of its math
and science education.

In 2007 Congress passed the America COMPETES Act, which authorized many
recommendations from the Gathering Storm report. But most of the Act’s
measures went unfunded until the stimulus package was passed early in
2009, a package that increased total federal funding for K-12 education,
provided scholarships for future math and science teachers, and funded
the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which is dedicated to
supporting transformational basic research on energy.

However, the America COMPETES Act is set to expire this year, and its
funding — whone-time initiative — is also nearing expiration. In order to sustain
the progress that has begun, the report says, it will be necessary to
both reauthorize the America COMPETES Act and “institutionalize”
oversight and funding of Gathering Storm recommendations — or others
that accomplish the same purpose — so that funding and policy changes
will routinely be considered in future years’ legislative processes.

The report’s authors acknowledged the difficulty of carrying out the
Gathering Storm recommendations, such as doubling the research budget,
in the current fiscal environment. But such investments will need to be
made if the nation is to maintain the economic strength to provide
health care, social security, national security, and other basic
services to its citizens, they said.

The study was funded by the National Academy of Sciences, National
Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. These three
organizations, together with the National Research Council, make up the
National Academies. They are private, nonprofit institutions that
provide science, technology, and health policy advice under a
congressional charter. The Research Council is the principal operating
agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of
Engineering.

________________________________________________________________________

Copies of Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly
Approaching Category 5 are available from the National Academies Press;
tel. 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242 or on the Internet at
http://www.nap.edu. Reporters may obtain a copy from the Office of News and Public Information (contacts listed below).

Contacts:
Sara Frueh, Media Relations Officer
William Kearney, Director of Media Relations
Christopher White, Media Relations Assistant
Office of News and Public Information
202-334-2138; e-mail
# # #

[ This news release and report are available at
http://national-academies.org ]

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING
INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Political Insider-Jim Galloway
Kathy Cox’s exit interview: ‘04 attempt to remove ‘evolution’ was a mistake
10:24 am July 6, 2010, by Jim Galloway
[excerpt, full article at:]
http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2010/07/06/kathy-coxs-exit-interview-on-evolution-and-her-bankruptcy/

While she was state school superintendent, Kathy Cox didn’t often mix with members of the fourth estate.

But in an exit interview with Denis O’Hayer of WABE (90.1FM) the state’s former top educator addressed two sensitive topics: Her 2004 attempt to strike references to “evolution,” in favor of the term “biological changes over time,” and her personal declaration of bankruptcy in 2008.

O’Hayer has posted the first portion of that interview here.

On evolution, Cox said:

“It was a great lesson for me….The standards are more than a classroom teacher. They represent something to the larger public. They represent something to the larger entity of the nation. And that was a great lesson for me, that I needed to step out of my shoes as a teacher sometimes and see the bigger picture.

“And even though I was trying to make it so that our science standards could be such that a teacher anywhere in the state could teach what they needed to teach, it wasn’t the right decision from the bigger picture.

“And, boy, did I learn that in a hurry – and kind of had it handed to me in a hurry. We quickly changed….They also saw me stand up as a public official, an elected public official, and say, ‘I messed up. But I’m going to fix it, and I’m not going to waste any time fixing it.’”

© 2010 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Forwarded from Georgia Bio:

“Georgia’s gubernatorial primary elections are July 20. There are seven Democrats and seven Republicans competing for their party’s nomination to run in the general election November 2.”

“Georgia Bio asked all the candidates to submit written answers to three questions of critical significance to Georgia’s life sciences industry and the state’s future. The three questions are:”

“1. What is the role of state government in supporting life sciences economic development?
2. How can Georgia ensure that its students will be able to compete for 21st century advanced technology jobs and that our state will have the skilled work force to support life sciences industry growth?
3. What, if anything, is the most critical need for Georgians when it comes to health care reform?”

Responses were received from 8 of 14 candidates. They can be viewed at the links here:

http://www.gabio.org/content.aspx?pageid=137

Georgia Bio (GaBio) is a non-profit organization that promotes the interests and growth of the life sciences industry. Members include companies, universities, research institutions, government groups and other industry associations involved in discovery and application of life sciences products and related services that improve the health and well-being of people throughout the world.

Forwarded from NCSE:
When the Kentucky legislature adjourned sine die on April 15, 2010,
House Bill 397, the Kentucky Science Education and Intellectual
Freedom Act, died in committee. Modeled on the Louisiana Science
Education Act (Louisiana Revised Statutes 17:285.1), HB 397 would, if
enacted, have allowed teachers to “use, as permitted by the local
school board, other instructional materials to help students
understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an
objective manner, including but not limited to the study of evolution,
the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” A minor
novelty in the bill was the phrase “advantages and disadvantages of
scientific theories,” a variation on the familiar “strengths and
weaknesses” and “evidence for and evidence against” rhetoric. Kentucky
is apparently unique in having a statute (Kentucky Revised Statutes
158.177) on the books that authorizes teachers to teach “the theory of
creation as presented in the Bible” and to “read such passages in the
Bible as are deemed necessary for instruction on the theory of
creation.”

For information about Kentucky’s HB 397, visit:
http://ncse.com/creationism/general/academic-freedom-legislation-kentucky-2010

Patience a necessity in scientific exploration
by Professor Mark Farmer
Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Wednesday, March 24, 2010
http://onlineathens.com/stories/032410/opi_595363740.shtml

A little less than one year from today, NASA’s Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging space probe, MESSENGER, is scheduled to settle into orbit around the planet Mercury. Getting there has required careful planning, teamwork and an awful lot of patience.

Most of NASA’s missions have focused outward, away from our sun. The 1970s Viking missions, and more recently, the exploration rovers and the Phoenix sampler, have all sought to explore Mars, our next-nearest neighbor in the solar system. Both Martian rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been working hard since January 2004. While the rover Spirit appears to be permanently disabled, both now are resting, trying to get through another tough winter on the chilly plains of Mars where they have far exceeded their 90-day missions.

The deep-space probe missions of the 1970s have looked even farther out. Launched more than 30 years ago, the Voyager spacecraft visited the outer planets Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. Having passed the outer edge of our solar system, they now are the most distant manmade objects in the universe. Both continue periodically to phone home and inform us about the outer limits.

But getting MESSENGER to Mercury has presented a different sort of challenge. In order to escape Earth’s gravitational tug, the spacecraft had to be accelerated quickly aboard a Delta II rocket. The next thing it had to do was slow down – way down. The gravitational pull of the sun is so great on a tiny spacecraft that if it misses its target, it will get pulled toward the sun and never be heard from again. To slow down, MESSENGER has had to complete a number of “fly-bys” of Mercury in which it loses a little bit of its momentum each time – a trick known as gravitational braking. For nearly six years, MESSENGER has been patiently flying toward this goal.

If all goes according to plan, a year from now, MESSENGER will finish its journey and settle into orbit around the planet closest to the sun. It will begin sending back a wealth of information about Mercury’s surface, atmosphere and perhaps even what lies deep in her core. But MESSENGER’s journey began long before her August 2004 launch. It started in the 1990s, in the minds of scientists like Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, whose curiosity about the cosmos led him and others to propose the bold plan of exploring this innermost and smallest of planets.

He was joined in this quest by many of the brightest planetary scientists in the world, who devoted their talents to making certain the mission is a success. A great deal of planning goes into such a mission. What sorts of information do we seek, and what instruments will be needed? How much do they weigh? How much fuel will be needed? How do we get the spacecraft safely to its destination? Thousands of man-hours of work go into a NASA mission, and the fruits of these labors may not be realized for years, or even decades, later.

But the rewards can be great, too. What can the other planets tell us about our own past, or even our future? Is life unique to Earth, or is it an emergent property of the universe? As past explorers like Columbus, the Vikings or even the first Native Americans have demonstrated, mankind’s future may lie in exploration and settlement of new worlds far beyond what we can imagine from our own narrow understanding of our comfortable homes.

The essence of science is to try to understand the natural world. Many of us labor in the knowledge that our personal goals of understanding will not be achieved in our lifetimes. In my own area of research – cell biology – we have only just begun to understand the complexity that exists in even the simplest of cells. Each new discovery tells us more about our ignorance than it does our collective wisdom. Yet we are driven to explore, whether at the ever-smaller scale of molecular interactions or at the very edges of space and time itself. We know that these answers do not come easily and that the fruits of our labors may only be enjoyed fully by generations yet unborn.

Yet still we explore. It is human nature to do so. And scientists are very patient people.

• Mark Farmer is a professor of cellular biology at the University of Georgia and a spokesman for Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science Education.

by Stuart Kauffman
13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/

Intelligent Design has been discussed in recent blogs and comments. It is either not science, or, if grudgingly taken as science, is disproved. More importantly, I think, those of us who fear evolution need not do so.

Around the globe, 3 billion of us believe in the Abrahamic God, a billion of us do not believe in God, and some 3 billion of us are members of Eastern Wisdom Traditions. The United States is known to be the most religious among first world nations, perhaps because of the religious backgrounds of our colonies.

A large faction of Americans do not believe in evolution. For those of us who are overwhelmingly convinced of the natural origin of life some 3.7 billion years ago and the gradual evolution of the stunning biosphere, it is deeply important to try to understand the resistance to evolution, and with it, a belief by some in the recently proposed “Intelligent Design” arguments.

Some scholars of biblical history, (I don’t remember who unfortunately), say, interestingly, that before Newton, Christianity often interpreted the Bible as largely allegorical. With Newton and Celestial Mechanics, there seemed nothing for a theistic God to do, and the Deistic God of the 18th Century, who wound up the universe and let it go to follow Newton’s laws, became a new view of God. Others, believers in a theistic God that acts continuously in the universe, came to view the Bible as the literal word of God. If so, then there is the familiar struggle between science and religion where the two disagree. Evolution is a major case.

I suspect the fear of evolution is also based in the view of many that God is the author of our moral laws. Then if the Bible is God’s literal word, and yet evolution is true, the Bible, the very word of God, is false, and our morality falls to the ground. Hence some of us hold to Intelligent Design, the idea that organisms are, as ID proponent Michael Behe wrote, “Irreducibly complex”, and, as ID proponent William Demsky says, vastly improbable, so are signs of Intelligent Design.

But evolution, in fact, is no enemy of morality. I tell of a story written in an Edmonton Alberta newspaper eighteen months ago. A six month baby was outside in a rocker with the family dog. A rattle snake coiled to strike the infant. The dog stepped between the snake and dog and took six strikes. Why? We cannot prove dogs are conscious, although I am convinced, having our dog Winsor, that dogs are conscious. I think this dog knew perfectly well what it was doing, and was trying to save the baby. Happily, the dog survived.

Franz de Waal, in “Good Natured”, writes of a experiment with higher primates: Two were in facing cages, unable to see one another. A third “observer” was in a cage able to see the other two. The experimenter fed one of the two well, and nearly starved the second, and fed the observer well. One day, the experimenter gave the observing primate lots of extra food. What happened? The observer gave the extra food to the starved primate. These, as de Waal says, are signs of the evolution of “prosocial behavior”, presumably due to group selection.

No evolution is not the enemy of morality, but its first source.

What then of Intelligent Design?

Intelligent Design argues that complex traits such as the famous flagellar motor in some bacteria enabling them to swim, are too complex to have evolved. The probabilities of achieving the motor are too remote to have remotely occurred, ID proponents say.

Now, if we take ID to be science, one would think that the next hugely pressing scientific questions would be: who or what is the Designer? And, how does the Designer manage to achieve the designs in organisms? It is no accident that ID proponents do not ask these questions. On the one hand, no one has any idea of a natural mechanism whereby this design and implementation might have occurred. On the other hand, the quiet premise of these ID proponents of what was earlier, as the Dover trial showed, Creation Science, is that the Designer is our theistic God. But to mention God as the Designer would put ID at odds with our separation of Church and State.

How do biologists explain “irreducible complexity” such as the flagellar motor? Largely by our now well discussed Darwinian “exaptations”. Other bacteria have been found, and presented in the Dover trial, that have parts of the flagellar motor. In these other bacteria, the parts of the flagellar motor play entirely different functional roles, unrelated to swimming via the flagellar motor. The transition, we believe, to the flagellar motor arose, like the swim bladder from the lungs of lung fish, via Darwinian exapatations. The flagellar motor was never selected for directly and ab initio. It arose by a succession of exaptations, like the three bones of our middle ears from three adjacent bones of an early fish. Furthermore, as I’ve described before, we can have no probability measure for the evolution of the biosphere into its Adjacent Possible, since we do not know all the possibilities, hence we do not know the sample space of the process, so cannot construct a probability measure. Therefore, the calculations of improbability that the ID proponents make are vacuous.

If ID were taken to be a science, it would make one prediction: Darwinian exaptations do not occur, hence cannot offer an explanation for “irreducible complexity”. But exaptations arise in evolution all the time. The one testable prediction of ID that I can think of is false.

So: to all of us, those who believe in God and those who do not: We do not need ID. And to those of us who believe in our theistic God, perhaps the views of those before Newton have merit, the Bible may be partially allegorical, and we need not fear evolution.

Finally, science itself may be transforming. Adam, Frank and I all doubt the reductionist scientific belief that all that happens in the universe is entailed by the fundamental laws of physics. I will be discussing “The Open Universe” in forthcoming posts, trying to show that the becoming of the universe is partially beyond sufficient natural law. If so, we can take the natural creativity in the universe as God, and nature, with all of life, as sacred, to be treasured. And for those of us who believe in a supernatural theistic God, there is room for that God to act in such an open universe, compared to that of Newton. Perhaps a newer science and a sharable sense of the sacred can arise together as a co-evolving ecology of civilizations around the globe forms.