Strong-arming the show trial

“We on the science side of things strong-armed the Kansas hearings because we realized this was not a scientific exchange, it was a political show trial,” Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, told The New York Times this week for this article about the hearings. “We are never going to solve it by throwing science at it.”
Considering that the conservative members of the board took almost all of the evolution critics’ suggestions, Scott was right about it being a show trial. But by rightly refusing to appear, scientists do risk being told to “put up or shut up,” as one evolution critic said in the article.
Posted by Melissa Cooley

4 Comments

  1. Roo
    Posted June 22, 2005 at 6:25 am | Permalink

    Well, did the presiding judges even read both sides thoroughly? Not only it was a show trial, the also went through the trouble of appointing a council of 26, only to disregard their work completely when it conflict with their convictions. Wait, that’s like the Legislatures and the school funding mess. I guess it’s just schools-in-Kansas thing!

  2. Jim Swan
    Posted June 22, 2005 at 9:54 am | Permalink

    In fact, Connie Morris and the other members of the kangaroo court admitted that they had not even read the majority science standards presented to them. Nor did they respond to, nor likely bother to read, the 13 papers submitted to the KS BOE by scientists, responding to the so-called minority report. In effect, by the time of the kangaroo-court hearings, the Creationist majority on the BOE had already provided ample evidence that it does scientists no good to ‘put up’ scientific responses. That NO reputable scientist, from anywhere in the world, cooperated with the ‘hearings’ is amazing; and it is sufficient indictment of the nonsense that is again going to drag Kansas’ name through the mud.

    I will say that I am glad I don’t live in Kansas anymore.

  3. Vince Canzoneri
    Posted June 22, 2005 at 10:43 am | Permalink

    If Kansas students are entitled to learn by studying controversies, surely the Kansas Board should take its position seriously enough to “teach the controversy” that would inevitably arise if one were to conclude that an “intelligent designer” has been at work, that is: Who might this “designer” be? Not much science can be learned by flogging evolution with religion, but a great deal could be learned — including a measure of humility — by acquainting students with the many creation stories of the world’s religions and traditions, of which Genesis is only the most familiar. How better to convince the watching world that Kansas is acting on principle and not merely the provincialism of which it is so generally suspected?

  4. Roo
    Posted June 23, 2005 at 1:27 pm | Permalink

    If God is not the “designer”, then who design the “designers”? (Thanks, F5 for bringing that up.)