The appeals court has made its decision in Selman v. Cobb County, the case concerning textbook disclaimers in the county just to the north of Atlanta, Georgia. There is something for everyone in it, as they vacate the decision of the court, but direct the court to either return to proceedings to complete the evidentiary record or initiate new proceedings to take up the case. In effect, the appeals court has told the lower court to do it over.

Read the whole story at NCSE:

New York Times, May 18 - The split between human and chimpanzee lineages, a pivotal event in human evolution, may have occurred millions of years later than fossil bones suggest, and the break may not have been as clean as humans might like.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/science/18evolve.html?pagewanted=print

Excerpted from http://www.ncccusa.org/news/060330evolution.html

New York, March 27, 2006 – A National Council of Churches USA committee has released a resource on the teaching of evolution in public school science classes.

The brochure, the NCC Committee on Public Education and Literacy says, is “to assist people of faith who experience no conflict between science and religion as they consider the issues around the teaching of evolution.”

“Often today we hear about the teaching of evolution in public schools framed as though it were a debate between people of faith and people of no faith,” the committee said in a statement released today.

“Many well informed and well educated people believe that the learnings of science and religion enrich each other,” and “embrace science as one way of appreciating the beauty and complexity of God’s creation,” the committee said.

The resource addresses four simple questions: What is science? What is religion? Is it possible to think that both religion and science are important? How is religious liberty, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, relevant to a discussion about the teaching of evolution in public school science classes?

While many excellent resources about the teaching of evolution in public school science classes have been made available for public school teachers and the general public from the point of view of science, there has been a shortage of ready resources written from the point of view of religion, the committee said.

For the statement (PDF), visit:
http://www.ncccusa.org/pdfs/evolutionbrochurefinal.pdf

BRYN NELSON
STAFF CORRESPONDENT
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hsevol0221,0,7204235.story?coll=ny-
February 20, 2006, 3:37 PM EST

ST. LOUIS — Emboldened by recent successes, researchers, clergy and teachers assembled at a national science conference said they’re taking the offensive in the pitched battle over teaching evolution in American classrooms.

At the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science here, panelists described how the anti-evolution Intelligent Design movement has changed its tactics in response to recent legal defeats as more than 140 educators from the St. Louis area gathered for an interactive forum on defending and expanding evolution instruction in the classroom.

Intelligent Design holds that life in all its forms is too complicated to have arisen by chance and thus requires the intervention of an unnamed supernatural designer.

On Sunday, Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.) told the assembled K-12 science teachers that attacking evolution in the classroom “risks the validity of science across the board,” and announced three new legislative initiatives to promote research and science education, while the teachers received kits to help them with their classroom instruction.

Organizers of the new Alliance for Science separately announced their goal of bringing together teachers, scientists and clergy “to heighten public understanding and support for science and to preserve the distinctions between science and religion in the public sphere,” while coordinators of the Clergy Letter Project announced their success in gathering signatures from 10,000 clergy for an open letter in support of teaching evolution.

“Science is absolutely neutral with regard to religion,” said the Rev. George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory. The Clergy Letter Project, though, hopes to send the message that science and religion are far from incompatible.

AAAS also released a statement denouncing the anti-evolution bills pending in 14 states, including New York’s Assembly Bill 8036, which explicitly calls for K-12 students to receive instruction “in both theories of ID and evolution.”

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, said other bills contain more coded language arising largely from the anti-evolution movement’s legal defeat in Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District, in which District Court Judge John E. Jones III ruled in a strongly worded 139-page decision in December that the Pennsylvania school board’s pro-Intelligent Design stance promoted religion and was therefore unconstitutional.

“As a legal strategy, Intelligent Design is dead,” Scott said. “That does not mean that Intelligent Design is dead as a very popular social movement.”

On Monday, the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture — a Seattle-based Intelligent Design think tank — hit back with a new release announcing that more than 500 scientists have publicly expressed their doubts over Darwinian evolution.

“From our point of view, Intelligent Design is not a legal strategy, it’s a scientific theory,” said center spokesman Robert Crowther in a telephone interview. “It’s a robust theory and we’re getting more and more interest in it all the time.”

In the past, Scott said, anti-evolutionists proffered the argument that balancing evolution with Intelligent Design was only fair. Now, she said, the movement’s arguments are de-emphasizing their own alternative — with its implicit understanding that a supernatural designer must be involved — and tending toward euphemisms such as “sudden emergence,” or “creative evolution,” and focusing on the “flaws,” “controversy,” or “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution.

By attacking evolution’s credibility, Scott said, opponents hope to raise enough doubt in the minds of students that they will embrace Intelligent Design as a viable alternative on their own.

At a Stony Brook University lecture earlier this month as part of the university’s Darwin Day observance, Scott said Intelligent Design’s concept undermines science because it subverts the agreed-upon scientific method.

“How do you put God in a test tube or keep him out of one?” she asked.

Kenneth Miller, a biology professor at Brown University in Providence, R.I., said in an interview that the best way to counter Intelligent Design is to show what’s behind the “scientifically bogus” concept.

Those opposed to teaching evolution, he said, would like to portray the fight as a controversy between liberals and conservatives. But the strong legal decision by Jones, a life-long Republican recommended by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), has undermined that strategy, Miller said.

Even so, teachers gathered in St. Louis said they often feel uncomfortable when teaching evolutionary concepts in public school classrooms. A survey commissioned by the National Science Teachers Association found that nearly one-third of 1,000 respondents said they felt pressured to include creationism, Intelligent Design or other non-scientific alternatives to evolution in classroom instruction.

Jennifer Miller, a biology teacher from Dover, Pa., said she and other teachers at the high school banded together in the face of enormous pressure from the school board at the height of the controversy there.

“It was really the first time I had felt uncomfortable in my own classroom,” she said in an interview. Later, in a video presentation for the assembled teachers, she concluded, “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t stand up.”

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.

[Like the origin of the eye, bee flight was one of those mysteries that creationists said could only be explained by supernatural intervention. Not any more! -SLP]

Scientists Finally Figure Out How Bees Fly
By Sara Goudarzi
Special to LiveScience
posted: 09 January 2005
7:00 am ET
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060110_bee_fight.html
Proponents of intelligent design, which holds that a supreme being rather than evolution is responsible for life’s complexities, have long criticized science for not being able to explain some natural phenomena, such as how bees fly.

Now scientists have put this perplexing mystery to rest.

Using a combination of high-speed digital photography and a robotic model of a bee wing, the researchers figured out the flight mechanisms of honeybees.

“For many years, people tried to understand animal flight using the aerodynamics of airplanes and helicopters,” said Douglas Altshuler, a researcher at California Institute of Technology. “In the last 10 years, flight biologists have gained a remarkable amount of understanding by shifting to experiments with robots that are capable of flapping wings with the same freedom as the animals.”

Exotic flight

The scientists analyzed pictures from hours of filming bees and mimicked the movements using robots with sensors for measuring forces.

Turns out bee flight mechanisms are more exotic than thought.

“The honeybees have a rapid wing beat,” Altshuler told LiveScience. “In contrast to the fruit fly that has one eightieth the body size and flaps its wings 200 times each second, the much larger honeybee flaps its wings 230 times every second.”

This was a surprise because as insects get smaller, their aerodynamic performance decreases and to compensate, they tend to flap their wings faster.

“And this was just for hovering,” Altshuler said of the bees. “They also have to transfer pollen and nectar and carry large loads, sometimes as much as their body mass, for the rest of the colony.”

Try this!

In order to understand how bees carry such heavy cargo, the researchers forced the bees to fly in a small chamber filled with a mixture of oxygen and helium that is less dense than regular air. This required the bees to work harder to stay aloft and gave the scientists a chance to observe their compensation mechanisms for the additional toil.

The bees made up for the extra work by stretching out their wing stroke amplitude but did not adjust wingbeat frequency.

“They work like racing cars,” Altshuler said. “Racing cars can reach higher revolutions per minute but enable the driver to go faster in higher gear. But like honeybees, they are inefficient.”

The work, supervised by Caltech’s Michael Dickinson, was reported last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The scientists said the findings could lead to a model for designing aircraft that could hover in place and carry loads for many purposes such as diaster surveillance after earthquakes and tsunamis. They are also pleased that a simple thing like bee flight can no longer be used as an example of science failing to explain a common phenomenon.

Proponents of intelligent design, or ID, have tried in recent years to promote the idea of a supreme being by discounting science because it can’t explain everything in nature.

“People in the ID community have said that we don’t even know how bees fly,” Altshuler said. “We were finally able to put this one to rest. We do have the tools to understand bee flight and we can use science to understand the world around us.”

BIRD FLU MUTATION OF CONCERN, EXPERTS SAY
Washington Post, January 12 - Preliminary tests show that the strain of bird flu virus that has stricken at least 15 people in Turkey has evolved in a way that could make it somewhat more hazardous to human beings, although it still lacks the capacity to be passed easily from person to person, international health officials said Wednesday. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/11/AR2006011100464.html

BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR:
Evolution in Action
by Elizabeth Culotta and Elizabeth Pennisi

Excerpts:
Today evolution is the foundation of all biology, so basic and all-pervasive that scientists sometimes take its importance for granted. At some level every discovery in biology and medicine rests on it, in much the same way that all terrestrial vertebrates can trace their ancestry back to the first bold fishes to explore land. Each year, researchers worldwide discover enough extraordinary findings tied to evolutionary thinking to fill a book many times as thick as all of Darwin’s works put together.

Amid this outpouring of results, 2005 stands out as a banner year for uncovering the intricacies of how evolution actually proceeds. Concrete genome data allowed researchers to start pinning down the molecular modifications that drive evolutionary change in organisms from viruses to primates. Painstaking field observations shed new light on how populations diverge to form new species–the mystery of mysteries that baffled Darwin himself. Ironically, also this year some segments of American society fought to dilute the teaching of even the basic facts of evolution. With all this in mind, Science has decided to put Darwin in the spotlight by saluting several dramatic discoveries, each of which reveals the laws of evolution in action.

One of the most dramatic results came in September, when an international team published the genome of our closest relative, the chimpanzee. The genome data confirm our close kinship with chimps… the total difference in DNA between our two species [is] about 4%.

2005 was also a standout year for researchers studying the emergence of new species, or speciation. A new species can form when populations of an existing species begin to adapt in different ways and eventually stop interbreeding. . . . This year field biologists recorded compelling examples of that process, some of which featured surprisingly rapid evolution in organisms’ shape and behavior.

Such evolutionary breakthroughs are not just ivory-tower exercises; they hold huge promise for improving human well-being. . . . Humans are highly susceptible to AIDS, coronary heart disease, chronic viral hepatitis, and malignant malarial infections; chimps aren’t. Studying the differences between our species will help pin down the genetic aspects of many such diseases. . . . And in 2005, researchers stepped up to help defend against one of the world’s most urgent biomedical threats: avian influenza. . . . The possible evolution of [an ability to infect humans] in the bird flu now winging its way around the world is why officials worry about a pandemic today.

Source: Science 23 December 2005:
Vol. 310. no. 5756, pp. 1878 - 1879

Immunology: Jawless Fish Have Form of Adaptive Immunity, Science Next Article
Excerpts:

Evolution doesn’t like to do things just once. It came up with flight three times, for example–in insects, birds, and bats. Now it appears that evolutionarily distinct immune systems have exploited a similar genetic trick to battle microbes. New research on page 1970 reveals that the immune defenses of jawless fish such as lampreys generate as much diversity as the immune system that organisms from sharks onward in evolution use. And both employ a similar technique: rearranging DNA.

The immune system in sharks, mammals, and other jawed vertebrates generates antibodies–proteins that recognize very specific molecular features of invading pathogens–by rearranging DNA segments and inducing random mutations to give rise to a hundred million million different possible proteins. This allows the immune system to adapt to each new infectious agent by boosting production of antibodies specific for the attacking microbe.

Researchers don’t yet know whether the lamprey’s immune system arose before our own or if it spun off from its own evolutionary tangent, but they’re impressed by its sophistication. “It’s just fascinating that there’s another adaptive immune system,” says David Davies of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, who studies Toll-like receptors, other immune proteins that recognize pathogens.

Whether vertebrates started out with a [lamprey-like] system and later gave it up for the antibody-based immunity is anybody’s bet. The study authors are looking both in invertebrates–squid and octopus–and in bony fish for remnants of such a system. “It may well be that this exists in us because nature very rarely throws things away,” says Davies.

* Source: Immunology: Jawless Fish Have Form of Adaptive Immunity, Mary Beckman, Science : Vol. 310. no. 5756, pp. 1892 - 1893, 12/23/05

Judge John E. Jones has issued his ruling in the Kitzmiller v Dover trial in Harrisburg, PA. It reads in part:

In the section concerning whether ID is Science:
After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are:
(1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation;
(2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980’s; and
(3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. As we will discuss in more detail below, it is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research.

From the conclusion:
The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. 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.

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID. We will also issue a declaratory judgment that Plaintiffs’ rights under the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been violated by Defendants’ actions.

Defendants’ actions in violation of Plaintiffs’ civil rights as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffs’ attorneys’ services and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.

NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED THAT:
1. A declaratory judgment is hereby issued in favor of Plaintiffs pursuant
to 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201, 2202, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 such that
Defendants’ ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause of the First
Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and Art. I, § 3 of
the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
2. Pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 65, Defendants are permanently enjoined
from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area
School District.
3. Because Plaintiffs seek nominal damages, Plaintiffs shall file with the
Court and serve on Defendants, their claim for damages and a verified
statement of any fees and/or costs to which they claim entitlement.
Defendants shall have the right to object to any such fees and costs to
the extent provided in the applicable statutes and court rules.

s/John E. Jones III
John E. Jones III
United States District Judge

AJC: Appeals judges skeptical about Cobb ruling

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is not expected to rule until next year, but the three judges’ skeptical questioning indicated they may be poised to side with the Cobb school board in the now-famous sticker case. Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper found that the stickers, which say evolution is a “theory, not a fact,” improperly endorsed religion.

Judge Ed Carnes, who dominated the questioning, said the three-sentence disclaimer seemed to him to be “literally accurate.”

Carnes took issue with Cooper’s finding that a petition with 2,300 names opposing the purchase of new biology textbooks with evolution instruction had been presented to the board before it agreed to place stickers on the books in March 2002. The court record indicates the petitions were presented to the board six months later, in September 2002, Carnes said.

At the end of the arguments, Carnes took the highly unusual step of calling Atlanta lawyer Jeffrey Bramlett, who argued on behalf of parents who filed suit against the stickers, back to the podium before the packed courtroom. Carnes suggested that Bramlett may have misled the court in his legal brief on exactly when the petitions where presented to the school board. Bramlett was told to write a letter to the court explaining how the confusion occurred.

But Carnes may have been misinformed by an incomplete trial record. On March 29, 2002, the day after the school board agreed to affix the stickers to science textbooks, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Marjorie Rogers told the board she had collected petitions signed by 2,300 people who were dissatisfied with the new science texts.

In an interview after Thursday’s court hearing, Rogers, a self-avowed six-day biblical creationist, said she gave the petitions to the board before it decided to buy new science books with chapters on evolution.

“There wouldn’t have been any reason to give it to them in the fall,” she said. “They were done to try and persuade them not to buy the books.” One of the petition’s three options, she said, was for the board to put disclaimers in the new books.