The Washington Times, October 08, 2000, Sunday, Pg. B5
Jonathan Wells, Ph.D., Jay Richards, Ph.D.
HEADLINE: Natural selection found in report on science education

    Science teaching, and the teaching of evolution in particular,
continue
to be a flashpoint in American education.  Hoping to correct the
problem,the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation just released a report (with the
American Association for the Advancement of Science), "Good Science, Bad
Science: Teaching Evolution in the States."

    Written by Lawrence Lerner, the report recommends increased emphasis
in America's public schools on biological evolution.  Unfortunately, by
failing to point out that students are being systematically misled about
the scientific evidence, Mr.  Lerner and the Fordham Foundation are
encouraging precisely the sort of bad science they pretend to criticize.

      Of course, biology students should be taught about biological
evolution.  But in most of our schools the concept is being supported with
evidence that scientists themselves have shown to be false or
misleading.For example, most introductory biology textbooks feature
drawings that supposedly show similarities in the early embryos of animals
with backbones, and these similarities are claimed to be evidence that
humans and fish evolved from a common ancestor.  But embryologists have
known for more than a century that the embryos are not most similar in
their earliest stages.  In 1997, a British embryologist called the
drawings one of the most famous fakes in biology.

    Earlier this year, Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould called the
continued use of these fraudulent embryo drawings the academic equivalent
of murder.  We do, I think, have the right, he wrote, to be both
astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led
to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority,
of modern textbooks.  Obviously, this is a serious problem in biology
education.  Why does the Fordham report ignore it?

    There are least 10 major examples of such textbook falsehoods, such as

the popular photographs of camouflaged peppered moths resting on tree
trunks as evidence for natural selection.  But biologists have known since
the 1980s that peppered moths don't normally rest on tree trunks.  The
textbook photographs have been faked -many of them by pinning or gluing
dead moths on desired backgrounds.

    When University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne learned
of this in 1998 - more than a decade after it was announced in the
scientific literature - he wrote that he was embarrassed to find that the
peppered moth story he had been teaching his students for years was
seriously flawed.  He compared his reaction to the dismay attending my
discovery, at age 6, that it was my father and not Santa who brought the
presents on Christmas Eve.

    If a professional evolutionary biologist can be misled for so long by
such falsehoods, then surely it is time to correct them.  By failing to do
so, the Lerner report implicitly condones scientific misconduct instead of
good science.
    The Lerner report also perpetuates the lie that Kansas has eliminated
evolution from its state science standards, awarding that state an F-minus
for removing all references to biological evolution.  In fact, the
standards adopted by Kansas in August 1999 increased coverage of
biological evolution fivefold over the standards that had been in effect
since 1995. In fact, the wording of the new standards resembles the Lerner
report's own recommendations for higher grade levels.  What enraged
dogmatic Darwinists was that the Kansas School Board failed to require
local districts to teach that Darwin's theory explains all major features
of living things - something that even respected biologists question.

    Either Mr.  Lerner did not bother to read the 1999 Kansas State
Science
Standards, or he is intentionally misrepresenting them.  Whichever is
true, his report appears to be just another attempt to promote Darwinian
dogmatism without regard for the facts.  Such dogmatism bears a major
share of the responsibility for the current problems in American science
education.

    In the past, the Thomas B.  Fordham Foundation has made valuable
contributions to educational reform.  In this case, however, the
Foundation has allied itself with the wrong people.  Foundation President
Chester R. Finn laments the tendency of public schools to brainwash
children. Instead of children being taught to think for themselves, he
writes, students are purposefully led into certain belief structures of
importance to one or another group of adult activists.  Instead of being
presented with accurate information, they are fed opinions and
conclusions.

    Sadly, the Lerner report contributes to just the sort of brainwashing
Mr. Finn criticizes.  Mr.  Lerner wants students to learn Darwinian
evolution - without being told that many textbook evidences for the theory
have been faked. Mr.  Lerner wants students to be taught scientific
misconduct masquerading as good science, instead of being given accurate
information and being encouraged to think for themselves.

    This stunning failure of the Fordham Foundation to live up to its
principles may be due partly to its reliance on the advice of biologist
Paul Gross.  The high-minded language of Chester Finn quoted above is from
the Foreword of a Fordham Foundation article by Mr.  Gross (quoted in the
Lerner report). In that article, Mr.  Gross claims assertions that
Darwinism is in trouble with the evidence are propaganda, and the Lerner
report follows Mr.  Gross in implying that only creationists are critical
of Darwinism.  If Darwinism is not in trouble with the evidence, however,
why is the best-known evidence for it misrepresented so consistently in
our nation's textbooks?  The propagandists in this case are Mr.  Gross and
Mr. Lerner, and they have beguiled the Fordham Foundation into promoting
bad science.

    American science education is in serious need of reform.  But the
Fordham Foundation report is part of the problem, not the solution.

    JONATHAN WELLS, Ph.D.

    A biologist and senior Fellow of Discovery Institute in Seattle, Mr.
Wells is author of the book "Icons of Evolution" (Washington, D.C.:
Regnery, 2000).

    JAY RICHARDS, Ph.D.

Senior Fellow and program director of Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture.

POWRÓT