Science Is Constantly Evolving
Discover the latest in climate change and evolution education news.
A member of the board of education of the Shelby County Schools has proposed a textbook disclaimer sticker for biology books used in the district. Shelby County surrounds the city of Memphis. According to news reports from the Associated Press and the Memphis Commercial Appeal, board…
On February 10, 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union announced that the Beebe School District in Beebe, Arkansas, agreed to remove warning labels from its science textbooks which describe evolution as "a controversial theory" and refer to an "intelligent designer" as a possible explanation of…
Noted geologist and NCSE Supporter G. Brent Dalrymple was named a 2005 National Medal of Science Laureate, in an announcement made on February 14, 2005, by President Bush. The medals will be awarded at a White House ceremony on March 14, 2005. The criteria for the award include: (a) The total…
NCSE joins the worldwide scientific community in mourning the death of Ernst Mayr, a towering figure in twentieth-century biology, on February 3, 2005, in Bedford, Massachusetts, at the age of 100. In more than twenty books and hundred of scientific papers, Mayr made fundamental empirical and…
On February 8, 2005, a pair of bills — House Bill 352 and Senate Bill 240 — was introduced in the Alabama legislature, under the rubric of "The Academic Freedom Act." Virtually identical, these bills purport to protect the right of teachers "to present scientific critiques of prevailing scientific…
According to the Associated Press [Link broken], a South Carolina education subcommittee removed the provision from S 114 that would have established a South Carolina Science Standards Committee to "study standards regarding the teaching of the origin of species; determine whether there is…
Writing in the February 2, 2005, issue of Education Week, Sean Cavanagh discusses "Teachers Torn Over Religion, Evolution" (registration required). Beginning with the teachers in Dover, Pennsylvania, who recently refused to read the antievolution disclaimer mandated by the school board…
Barbara Forrest was interviewed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State about her book (coauthored with Paul R. Gross) Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design (Oxford University Press, 2004). An excerpt from the interview will appear in the February…
An important article by Cornelia Dean in the Science section of the February 1, 2005, issue of The New York Times details a common, but rarely recognized, form of evolution censorship in the United States: self-censorship. In her article, "Evolution Takes a Back Seat in U.S. Classes,"…