You may already know (e.g., from Ann Reid’s recent post) that I have a new role with NCSE, working with Emily Schoerning on the Science Booster Club Program. But as I finish up my work with the Scientist in the Classroom program, I have one more update for you! Let me tell you about what’s…
In the 1974 film Young Frankenstein, directed by Mel Brooks, there is, as I recently realized, a surprisingly erudite joke. In a scene early in the film, Dr. Frankenstein—who, in order to distance himself from a notorious grandfather, pronounces his surname “Fronkenshteen”—is talking with…
"The percentage of U.S. adults who believe that God created humans in their present form at some time within the last 10,000 years or so — the strict creationist view — has reached a new low," reports Gallup (May 22, 2017). "This is the first time since 1982 — when Gallup began asking this…
A recent controversial petition challenging the teaching of evolution and calling for the teaching of creationism in the schools and universities of Serbia is apparently going to be ignored. According to Nature (May 10, 2017), the May 3, 2017, petition, signed by about 170 Serbian…
With the 2017 legislative season nearing its end, Nature (May 12, 2017) turned to consider the year's spate of antiscience bills. "State ... legislatures in the United States are experimenting with new ways to target the topics taught in science classes, and it seems to be paying…
What could be better than three Science Booster Clubs reaching 80,000 Iowans in two years? How about twelve new Science Booster Clubs reaching hundreds of thousands of people in eight additional states in 2017? That’s our goal for the year, and we are happy to announce that Claire Adrian-Tucci is…
NCSE's Glenn Branch and Ann Reid contributed a column — "50 Years Ago: Repeal of Tennessee's 'Monkey Law'" — to Scientific American's Observations blog (May 10, 2017).Taking the fiftieth anniversary of the repeal of Tennessee's Butler Act in 1967 as their cue, Branch and Reid warn, "…
Consider, if you will, Bret Stephens’s inaugural column in The New York Times, published on April 28, 2017, under the title “Climate of Complete Certainty.” Owing to Stephens’s past misrepresentations of climate change, the column received a lot of scrutiny—provoking “an unusually large…
NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of Jeffrey Bennett's A Global Warming Primer (Big Kid Science, 2016). The preview consists of chapter 2, "The Skeptic Debate," in which Bennett attempts "to explain the four major points of debate that have been raised by the skeptics [of…