Scientific American

Wow, Scientific American’s January issue is awesome. It’s an issue devoted to evolution. One of the several articles in there is The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom. Florida gets a number of mentions in there.

“Academic freedom” was the creationist catchphrase of choice in 2008: the Louisiana Science Education Act was in fact born as the Louisiana Academic Freedom Act, and bills invoking the idea were introduced in Alabama, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina, although, as of November, all were dead or stalled. And academic freedom was a central theme of the first creationist movie to tarnish the silver screen: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. (Science columnist Michael Shermer eviscerated Expelled in his review in the June 2008 issue of Scientific American, and the magazine’s staff added commentary on www.SciAm.com.) Portraying the scientific community as conspiring to persecute scientists for their views on creationism, Expelled was ostensibly concerned with academic freedom mainly at the college level, but it was used to lobby for the academic freedom legislation in Missouri and Florida aimed at the public schools. (The movie, by the way, was a critical failure and jam-packed with errors.)

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Second, was there in fact a special need for the Louisiana legislature to encourage teachers to promote critical thinking with respect to evolution in particular? No evidence seems to have been forthcoming. […] In neighboring Florida, the sponsors of similar bills alleged that there were teachers who were prevented from or penalized for “teaching the ‘holes’” in evolution. But no such teachers were ever produced, and the state department of education and local newspapers were unable to confirm that the claimed incidents of persecution ever occurred.

And, third, what are these “holes” in evolution, anyhow? The savvier supporters of bills such as Florida’s and Louisiana’s realize that it is crucial to disclaim any intention to promote creationism. But because there is no scientifically credible challenge to evolution, only long-ago-debunked creationist claptrap [see “15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense,” by John Rennie; Scientific American, June 2002], the supporters of such bills are forced to be evasive when asked about what material would be covered.

In Florida, for example, a representative of the Discovery Institute dithered when asked whether intelligent design constituted “scientific information” in the sense of the bill, saying, “In my personal opinion, I think it does. But the intent of this bill is not to settle that question,” and adding, unhelpfully, “The intent of this bill is … it protects the ‘teaching of scientific information.’” Similarly, during debate on the Senate floor, the bill’s sponsor was noticeably reluctant to address the question of whether it would license the teaching of creationism, preferring instead to simply recite its text.