Nice diagram

Via PZ:

The bold lies in "Expelled"

The new creationist propaganda piece Expelled is chock full of lies and nonsense.

I have a history with the Richard Sternberg saga, so I wanted to highlight Ed Brayton's recent review of the facts surrounding this affair in Skeptic. This builds on a detailed explanation of the Souder report and its errors from 12/06 he wrote. Also check out the take-down of the other two supposed martyrs for ID: Crocker and Gonzalez.

The long story short is that the premises of Expelled are, to put it generously, false. None of these people suffered consequences for their espousal of ID. Crocker's temporary instructor contract wasn't renewed, but she was pathetic at her job. Gonzalez's productivity plummeted after his post-doc and so he was not offered tenure. Sternberg held his position at the Smithsonian and still has access to a research space there. Lies. Typical creationist lies.

The kicker is that even if they all had been fired, it would not have been wrong, given this simple fact -- academics are judged on the merits of the ideas they produce and defend. In the same sense that someone rejecting the Standard Model would be laughed out of a university physics department, so should biologists rejecting evolution be laughed out of their positions.

Intelligent Design: Evolution = Holocaust!

The upcoming creationist propaganda piece, Expelled, has been exposed. Now, SciAm takes a turn, and it isn't pretty:

April 9, 2008
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed--Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin
In a new documentary film, actor, game show host and financial columnist Ben Stein falls for the pseudoscience of intelligent design
By Michael Shermer

Editor's note: This story is part of a series "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed--Scientific American's Take."

In 1974 I matriculated at Pepperdine University as a born-again Christian who rejected Darwinism and evolutionary theory—not because I knew anything about it (I didn't) but because I thought that in order to believe in God and accept the Bible as true, you had to be a creationist. What I knew about evolution came primarily from creationist literature, so when I finally took a course in evolutionary theory in graduate school I realized that I had been hoodwinked. What I discovered is a massive amount of evidence from multiple sciences—geology, paleontology, biogeography, zoology, botany, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, genetics and embryology—demonstrating that evolution happened.

It was with some irony for me, then, that I saw Ben Stein's antievolution documentary film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opens with the actor, game show host and speechwriter for Richard Nixon addressing a packed audience of adoring students at Pepperdine University, apparently falling for the same trap I did.

Actually they didn't. The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein's screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, associate provost for research and chair of natural science at Pepperdine, "the production company paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus" but that "the company was nervous that they would not have enough people in the audience so they brought in extras. Members of the audience had to sign in and a staff member reports that no more than two to three Pepperdine students were in attendance. Mr. Stein's lecture on that topic was not an event sponsored by the university." And this is one of the least dishonest parts of the film.

At the Crossroads of Conspiracy

Ben Stein came to my office to interview me about what I was told was a film about "the intersection of science and religion" called Crossroads (yet another deception). I knew something was afoot when his first question to me was on whether or not I think someone should be fired for expressing dissenting views. I pressed Stein for specifics: Who is being fired for what, when and where? In my experience, people are usually fired for reasons having to do with budgetary constraints, incompetence or not fulfilling the terms of a contract. Stein finally asked my opinion on people being fired for endorsing intelligent design. I replied that I know of no instance where such a firing has happened.

This seemingly innocent observation was turned into a filmic confession of ignorance when my on-camera interview abruptly ends there, because when I saw Expelled at a preview screening at the National Religious Broadcasters's convention (tellingly, the film is being targeted primarily to religious and conservative groups), I discovered that the central thesis of the film is a conspiracy theory about the systematic attempt to keep intelligent design creationism out of American classrooms and culture.

Stein's case for conspiracy centers on a journal article written by Stephen Meyer, a senior fellow at the intelligent design think tank Discovery Institute and professor at the theologically conservative Christian Palm Beach Atlantic University. Meyer's article, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories," was published in the June 2004 Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, the voice of the Biological Society with a circulation of less than 300 people. In other words, from the get-go this was much ado about nothing.

Nevertheless, some members of the organization voiced their displeasure, so the society's governing council released a statement explaining, "Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The council, which includes officers, elected councilors and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings." So how did it get published? In the words of journal's managing editor at the time, Richard Sternberg, "it was my prerogative to choose the editor who would work directly on the paper, and as I was best qualified among the editors, I chose myself." And what qualified Sternberg to choose himself? Perhaps it was his position as a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, which promotes intelligent design, along with being on the editorial board of the Occasional Papers of the Baraminology Study Group, a creationism journal committed to the literal interpretation of Genesis. Or perhaps it was the fact that he is a signatory of the Discovery Institute's "100 Scientists who Doubt Darwinism" statement.

Meyer's article is the first intelligent design paper ever published in a peer-reviewed journal, but it deals less with systematics (or taxonomy, Sternberg's specialty) than it does paleontology, for which many members of the society would have been better qualified than he to peer-review the paper. (In fact, at least three members were experts on the Cambrian invertebrates discussed in Meyer's paper). Meyer claims that the "Cambrian explosion" of complex hard-bodied life forms over 500 million years ago could not have come about through Darwinian gradualism. The fact that geologists call it an "explosion" leads creationists to glom onto the word as a synonym for "sudden creation." After four billion years of an empty Earth, God reached down from the heavens and willed trilobites into existence ex nihilo. In reality, according to paleontologist Donald Prothero, in his 2007 magisterial book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters (Columbia University Press): "The major groups of invertebrate fossils do not all appear suddenly at the base of the Cambrian but are spaced out over strata spanning 80 million years—hardly an instantaneous 'explosion'! Some groups appear tens of millions of years earlier than others. And preceding the Cambrian explosion was a long slow buildup to the first appearance of typical Cambrian shelled invertebrates." If an intelligent designer did create the Cambrian life forms, it took 80 million years of gradual evolution to do it.

Stein, however, is uninterested in paleontology, or any other science for that matter. His focus is on what happened to Sternberg, who is portrayed in the film as a martyr to the cause of free speech. "As a result of publishing the Meyer article," Stein intones in his inimitably droll voice, "Dr. Sternberg found himself the object of a massive campaign that smeared his reputation and came close to destroying his career." According to Sternberg, "after the publication of the Meyer article the climate changed from being chilly to being outright hostile. Shunned, yes, and discredited." As a result, Sternberg filed a claim against the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) for being "targeted for retaliation and harassment" for his religious beliefs. "I was viewed as an intellectual terrorist," he tells Stein. In August 2005 his claim was rejected. According to Jonathan Coddington, his supervisor at the NMNH, Sternberg was not discriminated against, was never dismissed, and in fact was not even a paid employee, but just an unpaid research associate who had completed his three-year term!

Who Speaks for Science?

The rest of the martyrdom stories in Expelled have similar, albeit less menacing explanations, detailed at www.expelledexposed.com, where physical anthropologist Eugenie Scott and her tireless crew at the National Center for Science Education have tracked down the specifics of each case. Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, for example, did not get tenure at Iowa State University in Ames and is portrayed in the film as sacrificed on the alter of tenure denial because of his authorship of a pro–intelligent design book entitled The Privileged Planet (Regnery Publishing, 2004). As Scott told me, "Tenure is based on the evaluation of academic performance at one's current institution for the previous seven years." Although Gonzales was apparently a productive scientist before he moved to Iowa State, Scott says that "while there, his publication record tanked, he brought in only a couple of grants—one of which was from the [John] Templeton Foundation to write The Privileged Planet—didn't have very many graduate students, and those he had never completed their degrees. Lots of people don't get tenure, for the same legitimate reasons that Gonzalez didn't get tenure."

Tenure in any department is serious business, because it means, essentially, employment for life. Tenure decisions for astronomers are based on the number and quality of scientific papers published, the prestige of the journal in which they are published, the number of grants funded (universities are ranked, in part, by the grant-productivity of their faculties), the number of graduate students who completed their program, the amount of telescope time allocated as well as the trends in each of these categories, indicating whether or not the candidate shows potential for continued productivity. In point of fact, according to Gregory Geoffroy, president of Iowa State, "Over the past 10 years, four of the 12 candidates who came up for review in the physics and astronomy department were not granted tenure." Gonzales was one of them, and for good reasons, despite Stein's claim of his "stellar academic record."

For her part, Scott is presented in the film as the cultural filter for determining what is and is not science, begging the rhetorical question: Just who does she think she is anyway? Her response to me was as poignant as it was instructive: "Who is Ben Stein to say what is science and not science? None of us speak for science. Scientists vary all over the map in their religious and philosophical views—for example, Francis Collins [the evangelical Christian and National Human Genome Research Institute director], so no one can speak for science."

From Haeckel to Hitler

Even more disturbing than these distortions is the film's other thesis that Darwinism inexorably leads to atheism, communism, fascism, and could be blamed for the Holocaust. Despite the fact that hundreds of millions of religious believers fully accept the theory of evolution, Stein claims that we are in an ideological war between a scientific natural worldview that leads to Stalin's gulag archipelago and Nazi gas chambers, and a religious supernatural worldview that leads to freedom, justice and the American way. The film's visual motifs leave no doubt in the viewer's emotional brain that Darwinism is leading America into an immoral quagmire. We're going to hell in a Darwinian handbasket. Cleverly edited interview excerpts from scientists are interspersed with various black-and-white clips for guilt by association with: bullies beating up on a 98-pound weakling, Charlton Heston's character in Planet of the Apes being blasted by a water hose, Nikita Khrushchev pounding his fist on a United Nations desk, East Germans captured trying to scale the Berlin Wall, and Nazi crematoria remains and Holocaust victims being bulldozed into mass graves. This propaganda production would make Joseph Goebbels proud.

It is true that the Nazis did occasionally adapt a warped version of social Darwinism proffered by the 19th-century German biologist Ernst Haeckel in a "survival of the fittest races" mode. But this rationale was only in the service of justifying the anti-Semitism that had been inculcated into European culture centuries before. Because Stein is Jewish, he surely knows that the pogroms against his people began ages before Darwin and that the German people were, in Harvard University political scientist Daniel Goldhagen's apt phrase (and book title), "Hitler's willing executioners."

When Stein interviewed me and asked my opinion on the impact of Darwinism on culture, he seemed astonishingly ignorant of the many other ways that Darwinism has been used and abused by political and economic ideologues of all stripes. Because Stein is a well-known economic conservative (and because I had just finished writing my book The Mind of the Market, a chapter of which compares Adam Smith's "invisible hand" with Charles Darwin's natural selection), I pointed out how the captains of industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries justified their beliefs in laissez-faire capitalism through the social Darwinism of "survival of the fittest corporations." And, more recently, I noted that Enron's CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, said his favorite book in Harvard Business School was Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (first published in 1976), a form of Darwinism that Skilling badly misinterpreted. Scientific theorists cannot be held responsible for how their ideas are employed in the service of nonscientific agendas.

Questioning Darwinism

A final leitmotif running through Expelled is inscribed in chalk by Stein in repetitive lines on a classroom blackboard: "Do not question Darwinism." Anyone who thinks that scientists do not question Darwinism has never been to an evolutionary conference. At the World Summit on Evolution held in the Galapagos Islands during June 2005, for example, I witnessed a scientific theory rich in controversy and disputation. Paleontologist William Schopf of the University of California, Los Angeles, for instance, explained that "We know the overall sequence of life's origin, that the origin of life was early, microbial and unicellular, and that an RNA world preceded today's DNA–protein world." He openly admitted, however, "We do not know the precise environments of the early earth in which these events occurred; we do not know the exact chemistry of some of the important chemical reactions that led to life; and we do not have any knowledge of life in a pre-RNA world."

Stanford University biologist Joan Roughgarden declared that Darwin's theory of sexual selection (a specific type of natural selection) is wrong in its claim that females choose mates who are more attractive and well-armed. Calling neo-Darwinians "bullies," the University of Massachusetts Amherst biologist Lynn Margulis pronounced that "neo-Darwinism is dead" and, echoing Darwin, she said, "It was like confessing a murder when I discovered I was not a neo-Darwinist." Why? Because, Margulis explained, "Random changes in DNA alone do not lead to speciation. Symbiogenesis—the appearance of new behaviors, tissues, organs, organ systems, physiologies or species as a result of symbiont interaction—is the major source of evolutionary novelty in eukaryotes: animals, plants and fungi."

Finally, Cornell University evolutionary theorist William Provine (featured in Expelled) presented 11 problems with evolutionary theory, including: "Natural selection does not shape an adaptation or cause a gene to spread over a population or really do anything at all. It is instead the result of specific causes: hereditary changes, developmental causes, ecological causes and demography. Natural selection is the result of these causes, not a cause that is by itself. It is not a mechanism."

Despite this public questioning of Darwinism (and neo-Darwinism), which I reported on in Scientific American, Schopf, Roughgarden, Margulis and Provine have not been persecuted, shunned, fired or even Expelled. Why? Because they are doing science, not religion. It is perfectly okay to question Darwinism (or any other "-ism" in science), as long as there is a way to test your challenge. Intelligent design creationists, by contrast, have no interest in doing science at all. In the words of mathematician and philosopher William Dembski of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a key witness in Stein's prosecution of evolution, from a 2000 speech at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Anaheim, Calif.: "Intelligent design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God…. And if there's anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the spirit and people accepting the Scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view."

When will people learn that Darwinian naturalism has nothing whatsoever to do with religious supernaturalism? By the very definitions of the words it is not possible for supernatural processes to be understood by a method designed strictly for analyzing natural causes. Unless God reaches into our world through natural and detectable means, he remains wholly outside the realm of science.

So, yes Mr. Stein, sometimes walls are bad (Berlin), but other times good walls make good neighbors. Let's build up that wall separating church and state, along with science and religion, and let freedom ring for all people to believe or disbelieve what they will.

Michael Shermer is Publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com) and the author of Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design. His new book is The Mind of the Market.

Evolution = Hitler. Hmmm...sounds familiar to me for some reason.

On cell phones & brain tumors

Having a background in chemistry & physics, I am very skeptical of the new report that mobile phones cause brain tumors. Being a "good" scientist, though, I am willing to hear the detailed arguments and wait and see what evidence is brought forth to support the hypothesis.

The major cause of my skepticism is that electromagnetic radiation in the radio frequencies used by mobile phones (UHF) has wavelengths of around 10 to 100 cm. These energies are only high enough to cause bond rotation and vibration, not homolysis or ionization. If, on the physical level, this is true...what is the mechanism responsible for purported biological tissue damage? Government experts have agreed with this logic for decades.

Before people look at the UHF radiation, they should consider alternative explanations, nearly all of which could be fixed easily: I know that some heat is generated by the phones, and there can be some constructive interference, as well as issues with the batteries and materials in the phones themselves. If it is the case that cell phones cause health issues, I'll bet the ranch that one of these is chiefly responsible.

On a lighter note, check out this hilarious video about Expelled! It's supposed to poke fun at science & scientists, but as with everything else, it just makes creationists look stupid.

"Intelligent Design not a true science"

As I recently mentioned, the Alligator's archives are screwed up and a great many links are broken from publications that I or Gator Freethought have gotten in the newspaper. As a result, I'm reposting as many of these as I have the time and ability to, just to preserve and provide an electronic copy of the documents. Below is the first thing I ever submitted to a newspaper in my life, and it got in. After that, I guess it got a little addictive.

Intelligent Design not a true science
by Daniel Morgan
http://www.alligator.org/pt2/050826column2.php
published 8/26/2005

In response to Eric Wang's well-written, but somewhat shortsighted column, he cries foul that, "...there is not a marketplace of competing ideas in our public schools today, but only a monopoly of evolutionary theory." Today is the result of 2000+ years of competing ideas. Aristotle and Plato argued that nature, especially living things, showed "final causes" in their apparent design. Today, ID activists claim the same—that nature shows “the evidence of design”. Empedocles, among others, argued that change could occur in organisms to allow adaptation, giving the appearance of design. Darwin argued 150 years ago the same.

The crux of the issue is whether or not a force or "Designer" moves us towards a presumed goal, teleologically. The error in Wang's thinking is that science has, or can, reject or accept this philosophical notion. How? It can, and does, subject the premise of change and adaptation, both of which are natural phenomena, to its method of inquiry. Science is by definition methodological naturalism, and as such posits, tests, and questions only physical and natural phenomena. Science is limited in scope (and "on purpose") to questions of natural philosophy, not whether or not a "Designer" had it all in mind, or whether or not this "Designer" exists. It ignores the question because science is constrained to natural explanation of natural phenomena.

So now the question remains—can science empirically detect God’s fingerprints? Is it possible, without arguing from incredulity, to know scientifically, rather than “by faith” if “designed”? What is the a priori, natural evidence of supernatural creation/design? How does one distinguish ignorance of natural phenomena from knowledge of supernatural phenomena? Is it possible to scientifically argue for Design without arguing from incredulity? For hundreds of years, gaps in knowledge were filled with “God did it”. Now they are being filled with “Designer did it”. Has science proven either one philosophically wrong, or simply shown us that the mechanism by which posited Designers work is inextricable from the natural universe, and that the this universe and its natural laws is all that science can and will comment upon?

So in short, science describes a natural process, known as "descent with modification". If we want to teach science, we teach natural mechanisms and processes, without invoking supernatural causes. If we want to teach anything else, Wang and others had better realize we may no longer honestly call it “science”, but must admit we have moved into metaphysics, philosophy, or theology. Is there a “monopoly” of thought, or is science the one way of rationally, and objectively, viewing our natural universe? Why did the Kansas board consider redefining science itself into one of these latter three? Is it the job of our state, or of families, to lay the foundation for those?

If I get a new link for the Alligator's archive of this, I'll update it.

Fantastic Intelligent Design posters

Some great ID posters from Touchstone @ banninated.blogspot.com; he calls these "Inspired Designs":

Precious.

Papers on information & evolution

Pim van Meurs, frequent contributor to the Panda's Thumb, recently wrote about the incessant lies on the part of ID-creationists regarding (among other things) evolution and information, and he referenced some papers that I have compiled from a few posts that I've written on the topic:

1. Natural selection as the process of accumulating genetic information in adaptive evolution, M. Kimura, Genetic Research Cambridge, 2 (1961) 127-140
2. Rate of Information Acquisition by a Species subjected to Natural Selection, D.J.C. MacKay, open-source @ http://arxiv.org/ (1999)
3. Evolution of biological information, T.D. Schneider, Nucleic Acids Research, (2000), 2794-2799
4. The fitness value of information, C.T. Bergstrom and M. Lachmann, open-source @ http://arxiv.org/ (2006)
5. Review of W. Dembski’s No Free Lunch, J. Shallit, BioSystems, 66 (2002) 93-99
6. The Evolution and Understanding of Hierarchical Complexity in Biology from an Algebraic Perspective, C.L. Nehaniv and J.L. Rhodes, Artificial Life, 6 (2000) 45–67
7. On the Increase in Complexity in Evolution I, P.T. Saunders and M.W. Ho, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 63 (1976) 375-384
8. On the Increase in Complexity in Evolution II: The Relativity of Complexity and the Principle of Minimum Increase, P.T. Saunders and M.W. Ho, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 90 (1981) 515-530

In addition to these papers, I wanted to highlight six other recent reviews that give a great overview of the present scientific thinking towards the origin of the genetic code:

1. "Selection, history and chemistry: the three faces of the genetic code.", Trends in Biochemical Sciences, Volume 24, Issue 6, 1 June 1999, Pages 241-247 (full-text .pdf)
2. "Genetic code: Lucky chance or fundamental law of nature?", Physics of Life Reviews, Volume 1, Issue 3, Dec 2004, Pages 202-229 (full-text .pdf) [low-quality pub, but expansive overview of the subject]
3. "Stepwise Evolution of Nonliving to Living Chemical Systems.", Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, Volume 34, Issue 4, Aug 2004, Pages 371–389 (full-text .pdf)
4. "The Origin of Cellular Life.", Bioessays, Volume 22, Issue 12, Dec 2004, Pages 1160-1170 (full-text .pdf)
5. "The Origin of the Genetic Code: Theories and Their Relationships, A Review.", Biosystems, Volume 80, Issue 2, May 2005, Pages 175-184 (full-text .pdf)
6. "The Origin and Evolution of the Genetic Code: Statistical and Experimental Investigations.", Robin D. Knight, Ph.D. Dissertation, June 2001.

And three more about evolution and complexity:

1. Understanding the recent evolution of the human genome: insights from human-chimpanzee genome comparisons, Human Mutation, 28(2):99-130, Oct 2006, Download PDF (also see: this article)
2. The origin of new genes: Glimpses from the young and old, Nature Reviews Genetics, 4(11): 865-875 Nov 2003, Download PDF
3. Evolution of biological complexity, PNAS, 97(9):4463-4468, April 2000, Download PDF

See a few of my posts for context with these papers:

1. http://blog.danielmorgan.name/2007/05/cameron-and-comfort-hit-new-low-with.html
2. http://blog.danielmorgan.name/2007/05/something-ive-been-slow-to-realize-re.html
3. http://blog.danielmorgan.name/2007/03/broken-record-that-is-creationism.html
4. http://blog.danielmorgan.name/2007/03/on-origin-of-genetic-code-and.html
5. http://blog.danielmorgan.name/2007/02/destroying-yet-another-creationist-myth.html
   

Science education & the Bible Belt

I just saw that my school is requiring of their new Lower School Division Head, in the "Professional and Personal Qualifications" section:

• "A gracious, hospitable, genuinely caring, and respectful person with an appreciation for the South."

"...an appreciation of the South?" I chuckled to myself and pondered how many ways that could be construed. I teach chemistry in what some consider "the buckle of the Bible Belt," and you know what I've learned in my 26 years living in the South?

That it sucks. I have started to see exactly just how much the South really sucks. We Southerners are fatter. We're poorer.


We're dumber. We have more STDs. We're a bunch of godidiots (exhibit 15). We have the highest crime rates of any region in the US. But goddamn can we make our white lightning!

Before you roll your eyes and move on, dismissing this as an uninformed diatribe, consider that I was born and raised in the heart of the Appalachian mountains in Virginia, where in just one instance in 2000, the ATF disrupted a moonshine trade at one small country store worth millions of dollars. I am railing against the culture I know best. And that is why I have such a hard time appreciating it. I do realize that socio-economic factors are all inextricable from one another and that if any of the above is the primary causation of the others, it's the $$$.

Facts are ugly, but that doesn't change a damn thing. Now, let's hone in on one of the South's deficiencies -- education. When you look at the breakdown of how schools are trending in SC, the facts are sobering:

	Schools		2007		2006		2005		2004		2003
	Excellent (%)		6.4		11.6		15.2		20.4		19.9
	Good (%)		19.6		21.8		27.4		33.9		32.3
	Average (%)		33.6		32.0		31.5		28.5		29.8
	Below Average (%)		26.2		22.3		20.0		14.6		13.8
	Unsatisfactory (%)		14.1		12.1		5.9		2.6		4.2

---

	School Districts		2007		2006		2005		2004		2003
	Excellent (%)		0		3.5		5.9		10.6		10.6
	Good (%)		8.2		4.7		32.9		43.5		30.6
	Average (%)		45.8		49		38.8		30.6		37.7
	Below Average (%)		25.9		29		17.6		14.1		11.8
	Unsatisfactory (%)		20		11		4.7		1.2		9.4

---

It's hardly news to most people that science education in the South suffers from the daily onslaught of creationist ignorance and general religious superstition. Now, PZ just mentioned how creationists were continuing to affirm that ID can be taught in science classes, and the fact that they claim SC state science standards allow this raised my eyebrow. The biology standards don't seem to give them this capability, unless they're seizing on these paltry morsels:

• B-5.5 Exemplify scientific evidence in the fields of anatomy, embryology, biochemistry, and paleontology that underlies the theory of biological evolution.
• B-5.6 Summarize ways that scientists use data from a variety of sources to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.

The whole "critical analysis" meme belies the weakness of intelligent design: it offers no positive evidence, only criticisms of evolution. Does it fill in the gaps in our knowledge? Not in the slightest; it simply identifies and spins them.

So, in short, I don't see how the ID-iots find reason for hope in the SC science standards.

According to an extensive national assessment report (p. 50 of report, p. 80/409 of .PDF), our national science scores are failing:


When we move to the South, we're adding extra poverty, religious superstition and pseudoscientific nonsense to the already serious problem we face nationally in science education. Intelligent Design creationism serves to further nothing but the widening gap we face in competing globally for the status of "scientific superpower". I like the way Mac Johnson, a hardcore conservative, describes ID:

So in light of the issue's new prominence and with a desire to improve the mental hygiene of others, I would just like to say that Intelligent Design is a really, really bad idea --scientifically, politically, and theologically. I say this as a dedicated conservative, who has on many occasions defended and espoused religion and religious conservatism. I also say it as a professional molecular biologist, who has worked daily (or at least week-daily) for years with biological problems to which the theory of evolution has contributed significant understanding -- and to which Intelligent Design is incapable of contributing any understanding at all.

Scientifically, attributing every aspect of biology to the arbitrary design of a divine tinkerer explains as much about biology as attributing the eruption of volcanoes to the anger of the Lava God would explain geology. A theory, by definition, makes predictions that can be tested. Intelligent Design predicts nothing, since it essentially states that every thing is the way it is because God wanted it that way.

Well said.

This week in God

Steve Benen's weekly segment is up, and you should read the whole thing. I just wanted to point out two things:

1) I read this the other day and I'm still scratching my head. I mean, I dislike Benny "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" Hinn as much as anyone, and I think the whole lot of those six are probably as corrupt and unethical as it gets. However, I just don't understand the legal power that a Congressperson has to audit the finances of these people.

The IRS? Sure! But Congress...!?!? We'll wait and see if this goes anywhere.

Oh yeah, and worth mention is that this Sen. Grassley of Iowa is a Republican. I found that surprising, given the close ties the GOP has with the RR, especially in a state like Iowa. Bravo to him for rising above the fray of partisan pandering.

2) "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" -- a documentary about Dover comes on PBS Tuesday, November 13, 8:00 pm, details here and here.

Some god stuff

A few points apropos to the Religious Right:

1. Romney's followers inflated the straw poll at the "Value Voters" summit. I sincerely doubt the average Evangelical will vote for this guy.
   


2. The scandal at Oral Roberts U. keeps getting juicier.


3. From a USAToday article: Majorities of young people in America describe modern-day Christianity as judgmental, hypocritical and anti-gay. What's more, many Christians don't even want to call themselves "Christian" because of the baggage that accompanies the label. A new book based on research by the California-based research firm The Barna Group found that church attitudes about people in general and gays in particular are driving a negative image of the Christian faith among people ages 16-29...The vast majority of non-Christians — 91% — said Christianity had an anti-gay image, followed by 87% who said it was judgmental and 85% who said it was hypocritical. Such views were held by smaller percentages of the active churchgoers, but the faith still did not fare well: 80% agreed with the anti-gay label, 52% said Christianity is judgmental, and 47% declared it hypocritical.(h/t -- "This Week in God")


4. If you can't beat 'em, and don't qualify to join 'em, sue 'em! Godidiots with an education in Biblical Biology 101 are finding their admissions applications rejected, as if Young Earth Creationism is not equal to Biology:

   He was referring to the charge that the university rejected core courses using textbooks by leading Christian publishers Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Book because of religious content. These included biology texts that presented evolution but also the biblical account of creation and intelligent design as alternative theories.

   Damn those liberal secular elitists! Always demanding that "alternative theories" have "supplementing evidence" that isn't, "'cause the Bible says so"!

The new skepticism

I was reminded this morning in thinking about things like climate change and evolution how starkly different the certitude level on issues in "pure" politics (like war, foreign policy and economic policy) is from scientific issues. I was thinking about how King W will come out and feign cautious, wise skepticism to reserve judgment on things like whether humans are causing global warming and on ID-creationism. The way these issues are framed appeals to American's sense of fairness and objectivity - "let's sit down and discuss all the rational possibilities, and at the end of it, since these issues are so complicated, we'll still have uncertainty, and thus cause for further debate," this frame says. And conservatives love to toe the party line on this in all discussions about climate change and evolutionary biology.

But look how starkly different these conservatives are when asked to discuss the realities of the Iraq war and our general muscular, hawkish foreign policies, or economic policies. Then, "debate" is not so welcome, and instead you become a terrorist sympathizer or a limp-wristed sissy whose idealitistic notions deserve the label of "flower child"...

Scientists have always been promoters of skepticism. The scientific method is conducive to doubt, as its goal is to provide explanations for natural phenomena which have been thoroughly tested in an effort to debunk their validity. Most of the progress we make in science, contrary to public misconception, is based on what we prove wrong. For example, if I have a hypothesis about how a cell regulates its own MAPK proteins, and I test it and falsify it, then we have progress in the form of eliminating possible rational answers. Cumulatively, these falsifications build up until there are only so many rational alternatives left, and these become, if you will, scientific orthodoxy. But even the most hardened orthodoxy, it is understood, is still subject to modification: that's the beauty of scientific knowledge -- it can always be improved and progress is the goal, not just a possibility.

All that said, I want to point out that it is this very tentative nature of science which those who want to exploit the lack of dogma seize on. Any "controversy" in science, real or imagined, can be created because people understand that a white lab coat is not the same thing as a Roman collar -- our lack of dogma makes it easy to challenge the status quo and current thinking. We eschew rigidity and faith in favor of evidence and questioning.

Those with agendas have exploited this feature of science to no end, emphasizing the fact that "all the facts are never in" -- that it is always possible to find new data that would modify our current interpretations of existing data. Sharon Begley explores this theme in climate change at length in an August Newsweek article, "The Truth About Denial". She carefully chronicles the years-long efforts on the part of energy and oil companies to inject doubt into the mainstream American consciousness about the science behind climate change. It is a powerful strategy, and difficult to overcome.

Just yesterday, I had a surprising conversation with the physics teacher at our school, Mary Peterson, who told me that both she and her husband are "climate skeptics". I started a conversation with her, and she told me that the sorts of scientific issues she feels are unresolved involve such things as Mars warming and the decay of the magnetic field of the earth. What was amazing to me was that, although her degree and background are in mathematics and not physics, she certainly had the available faculties to look up and investigate the veracity of these objections for herself, but hadn't. I found out that she had heard this somewhere (Faux News, probably), and had simply believed her source enough not to even go check it out. Little did she know that scientists have addressed all these possible alternative explanations for years, and that they have all been found lacking in merit for various technical reasons.

I really recommend the following index and "guides" for point-by-point refutations of the common objections to man-made climate change:

• The IPCC AR4 report FAQ section (pdf)
  
• Coby Beck's How to talk to Global Warming Skeptic
• New Scientist: Climate Change: A guide for the perplexed
• RealClimate: Response to common contrarian arguments
• NERC (UK): Climate change debate summary
• UK Met Office: Climate Change Myths
• Brian Angliss A Thorough Debunking
• John Cross Skeptical Science

These are all excellent resources with scientific references that should be shared amongst all your friends and colleagues, especially those with whom you think contentious discussions on climate change could take place.

What is so amazing to me is how easily duped people are who feign prudent skepticism towards scientific consensus, but display credulity by swallowing and mindlessly repeating talking points in politics (such as "if we fight them there, we won't have to fight them here" &c.). Is it just that people self-select their news sources in accordance with their pre-determined policy positions, and refuse to budge? Am I the same way? Is it possible to be that way (ignore one side's perspective) if there are actual facts which we can analyze to determine who is right and who is wrong?

Upon further analysis, the president's rationale for invading has been shown a farce and a lie, and every single rationale for the surge and every claim and metric used to support that "the surge is working" falls apart. The central issue of, "Even if we make Iraq 100% safe militarily, that doesn't solve the ethno-sectarian conflict and magically create a unified central government," is continually ignored now, even though Cheney admitted this kept them out of Iraq in 1994.

The numbers get spun in order to keep current policies in place, and people get shuffled when they are no longer willing to spin the right way. As Greenwald recently noted, when Bush is unable to find generals who tell him what he wants to hear, he simply replaces them with those who will. And now, as war with Iran is planned by the right, precipitated by lack of diplomatic progress, and with Faux News dutifully banging the war drums, we need skepticism and cynicism more than ever before. Will it manifest itself? God I hope so.

Why is it that the new skepticism is strongly directed towards scientists, but not towards politics with the same intensity and fervor?

Tom Short & Haldane's Dilemma

A letter I just sent to Tom Short (one of my featured campus preachers) and his son on Haldane's (non)dilemma follows. Remember that Tom and I had a dispute on Hitler and evolution which he promised to clarify, but never did? I'm not hoping for much better when it comes to this, either...

TO: "tomshort@columbus.rr.com" Tom Short, "pilgrim3@gmail.com" Tim Short

Hey guys,

This a guy from UF that had a lot of conversation with you when you last visited. I won't be at UF the next time you're slated to return, I see, by the schedule you guys have posted. You may or may not remember me from the "Nazi and Hitler" thing...?

That's why I'm writing you. I know that you visit a lot of places and bring up a lot of different arguments, so it's probably impossible to expect either of you to remember this, but we had a discussion about evolution that I wanted to point out on specific thing about: Haldane's Dilemma. We spoke for a while about it, but you probably don't recall the specifics, and they don't really matter.

The long and short of it is that this is often brought up (as it was by you) as an argument that evolution couldn't account for common descent because the rate of mutations is not fast enough. I was just reading an article and I thought it was a very good resource to share with you about this topic.

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/07/haldanes_nondil.html

First, recent genomic studies have proven that there is *much* less difference between humans and chimps at the genetic level than previously thought -- of the 14,000 genes studied, only 154 had any phenotype-affecting changes in them whatsoever, and of those, the vast majority were simple point mutations or frame shifts. Second, using Haldane's own work, creationist Walter Remine surmised that only 1,667 phenotype-impacting mutations could occur within the 10M years since we shared a common ancestor with chimps. Third, Haldane was quite misinterpreted by creationists: he never rejected common ancestry, and instead argued brilliantly for it. This should tell you that there is a major problem in citing him to "refute" evolution. Fourth, and most important of all, Haldane's assumptions were undermined by later work.

However, let's assume that you can still validly cite Haldane. Now, being generous, Ian goes through in the article I linked and shows that just using 6M years instead of 10M, and giving up all sorts of ambiguities to favor the creationist accounting, there is still plenty of evidence showing the rate of evolutionary change is perfectly compatible with the observed genomic disparities between ourselves and chimps.

Basically I'm writing you in the hopes that you will consider revising your arguments to make them a bit more intellectually honest. I know you aren't a scientist, and that many of your arguments are prima facie appeals to design, rather than detailed critiques of evolutionary biology. Given both of these two things, and the above-explained problems with using Haldane's work as a "refutation" of evolution, I simply hope you'll stick with integrity and use other appeals and arguments for theism.

Really it's too bad I can't see you again this year; I enjoyed our exchanges.

All the best.

Warmly,
D
http://www.gatorfreethought.org

Don't hold your breath waiting and expecting him to issue a retraction and a promise not to repeat this canard.

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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

Another tactic for ID Creationists

Their newest trick? Bullying school libraries into accepting copies of their junk science books. Luskin screams bloody murder [faux discrimination] when librarians refuse to stock the dreck, and contacts school boards to intimidate those librarians (of intellectual integrity) into shelving them.

If they can't get in the valid front door (developing a real science of IDC), they'll try the back (sneaking it into classrooms ala Dover), then get desperate and crawl through the basement window (making sure their pseudoscience is in every school's library). I'd say the next step is to "inform" sympathetic teachers of the books' existence, once stocked, so they can "loosely suggest" to their students they ought to check out "both sides" of the evolution "debate." Lovely.

Sounds a lot like Dover, doesn't it? They don't learn. Keep the crap out of schools.
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Technorati tags: Religion, Church-state, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

Final note on Behe & the new book

I mentioned a few days ago that Behe's book had already been battered by experts, and now Prof. Lynch documents the deafening silence on the part of creationists in the way of responses to the book. Both Lynch and PZ think, and I agree, that a lot of the problem is that Behe's god of the gaps is a *very small one* -- Behe accepts almost everything about modern evolutionary biology, and thus most creationists will now feel quite uncomfortable taking sides with him. As Prof. Jerry Coyne put it in his recent review:

For a start, let us be clear about what Behe now accepts about evolutionary theory. He has no problem with a 4.5-billion-year-old Earth, nor with evolutionary change over time, nor apparently with its ample documentation through the fossil record--the geographical distribution of organisms, the existence of vestigial traits testifying to ancient ancestry, and the finding of fossil "missing links" that show common ancestry among major groups of organisms. Behe admits that most evolution is caused by natural selection, and that all species share common ancestors. He even accepts the one fact that most other IDers would rather die than admit: that humans shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees and other apes.

Why does Behe come clean about all this? The reason is plain. There is simply too much evidence for any scientist to deny these facts without losing all credibility. "Intelligent design" is desperate for scientific respectability, and you do not get that by fighting facts about which everybody agrees. But with most of evolutionary biology accepted, what's left for a good IDer to contest? Behe finds his bugbear in evolutionary theory's view that "random mutation" provides the raw material for evolutionary change.

Basically, this is the sole point of disagreement Behe finds with evo bio. Behe goes to great lengths to give the "designer" full credit for the lethal design of malaria and other parasites -- IOW, he gives a lot of substance to the "Argument from Evil Design" that I mentioned a long time ago.

This bothers most creationists. They don't like to think of their loving god as having designed retroviruses to efficiently kill us (and other apes).

Then, to add insult to injury, he accepts the common ancestry of man & apes, an old earth, and speciation. No wonder so few creationists are willing to wade in and defend him from the critiques of his book. They couldn't do it with a clear conscience, because they probably see him now as almost as bad as one of those "godless evolutionists" that they see themselves fighting against.

In closing: the next time you hear a creationist cite Behe, Darwin's Black Box, or The Edge of Evolution, immediately bring up the fact that Behe accepts common descent and nearly everything within modern evolutionary biology. Then, the creationist must focus on the sole argument that Behe makes which he would still agree with Behe on -- that mutations don't provide enough substance for natural selection to act upon. And this is where 99.9% of them will lose interest in defending the argument, due to lack of knowledge and the overall hollow ringing of such a victory (should they claim one), and jettison Behe in favor of ye olde-time creationists, like Ken Ham and Henry Morris.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

ID-Creationism really does make otherwise-smart people very dumb

Michael Behe has produced another dreck of a book, The Edge of Evolution: sThe Search for the Limits of Darwinism, which PZ has already taken a stab at (part 1, part 2) and Mark Chu-Carroll shreds the probability argument of. Now, the poor man is pummeled in peer-reviewed literature on his own turf -- biochemistry, by Sean B. Carroll. The sorts of errors he makes, in his own field, in arguing against evolution are nothing short of humiliating:

This lack of quantitative thinking underlies a second, fatal blunder resulting from the mistaken assumptions Behe makes about protein interactions. The author has long been concerned about protein complexes and how they could or, rather, could not evolve. He argues that the generation of a single new protein-protein binding site is extremely improbable and that complexes of just three different proteins "are beyond the edge of evolution." But Behe bases his arguments on unfounded requirements for protein interactions. He insists, based on consideration of just one type of protein structure (the combining sites of antibodies), that five or six positions must change at once in order to make a good fit between proteins--and, therefore, good fits are impossible to evolve. An immense body of experimental data directly refutes this claim.

Very simple calculations indicate how easily such motifs evolve at random. If one assumes an average length of 400 amino acids for proteins and equal abundance of all amino acids, any given two-amino acid motif is likely to occur at random in every protein in a cell. (There are 399 dipeptide motifs in a 400-amino acid protein and 20 mult 20 = 400 possible dipeptide motifs.) Any specific three-amino acid motif will occur once at random in every 20 proteins and any four-amino acid motif will occur once in every 400 proteins. That means that, without any new mutations or natural selection, many sequences that are identical or close matches to many interaction motifs already exist. New motifs can arise readily at random, and any weak interaction can easily evolve, via random mutation and natural selection, to become a strong interaction (9). Furthermore, any pair of interacting proteins can readily recruit a third protein, and so forth, to form larger complexes. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that new protein interactions (10) and protein networks (11) can evolve fairly rapidly and are thus well within the limits of evolution.

Is it possible that Behe does not know this body of data? Or does he just choose to ignore it? Behe has quite a record of declaring what is impossible and of disregarding the scientific literature, and he has clearly not learned any lessons from some earlier gaffes. He has again gone "public" with assertions without the benefit (or wisdom) of first testing their strength before qualified experts.

Should we really be surprised that the creationists' arguments are getting worse and worse, and their arguments poorer and poorer? How could they not, given the slow steady advance of knowledge that further shores the validity of evolution every day?

We see unbelievable stupidity crop up like this again with the Disco Institute's new "textbook".

I noted that Ralph Seelke is one of the authors of this"textbook" put out by the Disco Institute in an attempt to supplant quality texts (like Miller's) with their own dreck, to circumvent the issue of promoting creationism by substituting science with BS. He testified in the KS Kangaroo Court hearings, and so I checked out his webpage, which contains some materials which advertise his Christian background and anti-evolutionary positions. I was blown away with the paucity of his argumentation to reject evolutionary biology.

Note, in particular, his Why I am a doubter of evolution- 11/06. On slide six, he says:

•The main way evolution works is through random processes at low probability- ~ 1 in a million is a common probability that a mutation might occur.

•So if you need one mutation, the odds are one in a million; if you need TWO- the odds are now one in a TRILLION!!!

Unbelievable. I can't believe this man is a tenured professor.

First issue -- the only time you multiply probabilities is when they are independent, which is obviously not the case in something like a frameshift mutation or gene duplication.

Second -- 1 in a million is the probability that *A* mutation might occur? This is absolutely ridiculous. What he means is that this is the probability for a mutation *for each nucleotide*. And, considering that there are 3B of them in humans, this corresponds to 3000 mutations in each genome. Then, remember that this is per replication event = per cell.

How many cells are there in the body...how many replication events per cell...?

Hopefully you get the picture here.

This is such a bad argument I really couldn't believe that this man is a professor of anything, much the less microbiology!

From the peer-reviewed literature:

Many previous estimates of the mutation rate in humans have relied on screens of visible mutants. We investigated the rate and pattern of mutations at the nucleotide level by comparing pseudogenes in humans and chimpanzees to (i) provide an estimate of the average mutation rate per nucleotide, (ii) assess heterogeneity of mutation rate at different sites and for different types of mutations, (iii) test the hypothesis that the X chromosome has a lower mutation rate than autosomes, and (iv) estimate the deleterious mutation rate. Eighteen processed pseudogenes were sequenced, including 12 on autosomes and 6 on the X chromosome. The average mutation rate was estimated to be approximately 2.5 x 10(-8) mutations per nucleotide site or 175 mutations per diploid genome per generation. Rates of mutation for both transitions and transversions at CpG dinucleotides are one order of magnitude higher than mutation rates at other sites. Single nucleotide substitutions are 10 times more frequent than length mutations. Comparison of rates of evolution for X-linked and autosomal pseudogenes suggests that the male mutation rate is 4 times the female mutation rate, but provides no evidence for a reduction in mutation rate that is specific to the X chromosome. Using conservative calculations of the proportion of the genome subject to purifying selection, we estimate that the genomic deleterious mutation rate (U) is at least 3. This high rate is difficult to reconcile with multiplicative fitness effects of individual mutations and suggests that synergistic epistasis among harmful mutations may be common.

You really do have to be dumb to reject evolution these days. There's just too much evidence for any other explanation.
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Technorati tags: Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

The "Intelligent Designer" is kinda dumb...

Since He...uh, I mean, it, put nervous system genes in sea sponges.

Obviously, evolutionary change explains this very well -- the components necessary for nervous systems must have been present as precursors in our ancient ancestors. The idea is that co-option, or exaptation, confers upon existing genes new functions. Why do sea sponges need them if God "designed" everything that way? For those animals that have no need for the function, why in the hell would they need the genes, if they were specially created? There is no logical answer.

Ed has an excellent discussion of this.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

"Calling all frauds, calling all frauds..."

The "Creation Museum" is looking for a geologist Ph.D. with a decided lack of integrity and scientific understanding.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

Funny Article in Onion on Evolution

Intelligent Design Creationism, the Disco Institute's underdeveloped brainchild, has been parodied by The Onion today, although you might not realize it at first.

One of creationists' favorite claims involves the "Cambrian Explosion" -- simply replace "Triassic Period" in this article with "Cambrian Explosion" and you'll get the humor.

The basic question applies as much to the Cambrian as to "irreducible complexity" -- how does one recognize supernatural intervention? What's humorous is that when examples like the flagellum are pointed out, one must ask, "So God 'poofed' the flagellum into being, but everything else in the organism evolved?" The point is, just like with the Cambrian, if there is some issue of complexity, or if some facet of knowledge has not yet been thoroughly explained by science, this is a "gap" for a god to fit in. But all around this "gap" are perfectly reasonable explanations for everything else.

Since gods like these get squeezed out of all the other gaps, these gaps become very, very rare. And so one is left with a ridiculous belief system, like that parodied in the article, where you accept 99.9% of the world as naturally-explained, but fill 0.01% of our ignorance with your god.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

Review of Physics-based Theological Arguments

Retired Prof. of Physics Mark Perakh has just posted a great review of physicist Joseph Stephen M. Barr's cosmological arguments for god's existence.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Atheism, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

Is our children learning?

As I was reading about the FCAT science scores, it reminded me of some ground I covered a while back. Before that, some stunning facts:

Fifth graders leapt from 35 percent being at level 3 or higher last year to 42 percent at level 3 or higher this year. That’s a very encouraging sign and shows a wonderful commitment to science education at the elementary school level. Eighth graders climbed 6 percentage points to 38 percent this year, and 11th graders inched up 2 percentage points to 37 percent passing at level 3 or higher.

This despite the political pressure that led to,

...Wednesday's results were overshadowed by the state's admission that it made errors in scoring last year's FCAT. State officials are recalculating the third-grade reading scores after finding that the assessment was too easy.

That was no "error" -- it was a calculated move to reduce the bright glaring obvious failure of our science education system, and deflect a little of the responsibility from Jeb et. al during the election (to help the GOP).

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"— King W, Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

I would say, "Nope. But neither "is" our adults."

The government recently released its 2006 Science & Engineering Indicators (SE). You can download the entire v2 as a PDF (2.7 MB). The SE serve many functions, but I wanted to highlight, in particular, its assessment of science literacy in America (and other countries), and consider its impact on our culture. The tables of interest are in chapter 7, "Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding". They are available as Excel files (.xls) and PDF files:

• 7-10 (PDF) "Correct answers to specific science literacy questions, by country/region: Most recent year"
• 7-11 (PDF) "Correct answers to scientific terms and concept questions: Selected years, 1995–2004"
• 7-12 (PDF) "Correct answers to science literacy questions, by respondent characteristic: 2004"
• 7-13 (PDF) "Public understanding of nature of scientific inquiry, by respondent characteristic: 2004"

I haven't yet had time to review the data extensively, but suffice it to say, 2004 (most recent year) was the worst year since 1995 for general scientific literacy, across most categories, if not all. I am not surprised.

Can we ever expect a scientifically-illiterate society to acknowledge rationalism, humanism, and atheism as valuable worldviews/positions? What hope do atheists have for expecting religious dogma and superstition to diminish, and reason and freethought to catch on, in a society where a large majority of the population has no grasp on basic scientific principles and methods, to substantiate a naturalistic outlook? If people have no scientific basis to give them answers to some of the basic questions of natural history and philosophy, should we expect them to have anything other than faith? Here are some numbers to consider, reported as the % answered correctly (2006 SE, Table 7-10):

1. The center of the Earth is very hot. (True) 78
2. All radioactivity is man-made. (False) 73
3. It is the father’s gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl. (True) 62
4. Lasers work by focusing sound waves. (False) 42
5. Electrons are smaller than atoms. (True) 45
6. Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria. (False) 54
7. The universe began with a huge explosion. (True) 35
8. The continents have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move. (True) 77
9. Human beings are developed from earlier species of animals. (True) 44
10. Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth? (Earth around the Sun) 71
    

Jesus H. Frickin' Christ. 29% of US adults don't know THAT THE EARTH ORBITS THE SUN!!!!!! And this is about the same pie slice of Americana that abhors stem cell research, and stubbornly clings to approval of the worst (and most stupid) president in all US history. If you sample this same demographic for the percentage who identify as being: religious right, fundamentalist, home-schooled or church-schooled, what do you think you'll get? R² values ~1, I'll bet.

Now, compare these numbers to the 2002 SE report:

1. 70% of American adults do not understand the scientific process;
2. Double digit percentage gains in belief of haunted houses, ghosts, communication with the dead, and witches in the past decade;
   
3. U.S. depends heavily on foreign born scientists at all degree levels, as high as 45% in engineering;
4. Belief in pseudoscience is relatively widespread and growing;
5. 60% believe some people posses psychic powers or extrasensory perception (ESP);
6. 30% believe some reported objects in the sky are really space vehicles from other civilizations;
7. 30% read astrology charts at least occasionally in the newspaper;
8. 46% did not know how long it takes the Earth to orbit the sun (1 year);
9. 45% thought lasers work by focusing sound waves (they focus light);
10. 49% believe antibiotics kill viruses (they kill bacteria);
11. 66% don't believe the Big Bang theory widely accepted by scientists;
12. 48% believe humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs;
13. 47% don't believe in evolution which is widely accepted by scientists;
14. 55% couldn't define DNA;
15. 78% couldn't define a molecule; (particularly sad to me, a chemist)
    
16. 32% believe in 'Lucky Numbers'.
    

And we call our period in history "progress"...There's always plenty of superstition, ignorance, and religious/pseudoscientific nonsense to fill in people's heads while these abysmal standards exist.

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Technorati tags: Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism