Changing tactics

The Dover trial was the latest in a long line of court cases involving the teaching of evolution, but it was exceptional in that it was the first case that tested the legality of teaching Intelligent Design in a science class. The decision at Dover determined that ID was unscientific and fundamentally religious. Tonight, the PBS show NOVA will will take a look at the trial in a show that includes dramatized reenactments of courtroom scenes.

Not surprisingly, the organized ID movement has not been pleased with the Dover decision and has disparaged it at every opportunity (they're not fond of the NOVA special, either). Regardless of their opinion, however, the court's ruling was decisive, and no court cases regarding ID have made it to the trial stage since; Dover has become an effective threat to both hasten legal settlements and changes of policy.

That's not to say that the Discovery Institute and other ID proponents have packed up and called it a day; instead, they seem to simply be changing tactics. Recent developments indicate that the next wave of anti-evolution agitation will take a two-pronged approach. The first will be to try to foster doubt regarding evolution during high school education, while the second aims to explicitly carve a space for ID proponents at the college level by pressuring for their inclusion as a form of academic freedom. We'll take a brief look at both of these developments.

Public schools: a battle over books

The battle over evolution in the public school system may see Texas return to prominence as a battleground. In July, Governor Rick Perry appointed creationist Don McLeroy chairman of the state school board. Back in 2003, he was one of a group of board members that voted against adoption of the system's current textbooks because they did not emphasize the flaws in evolutionary theory. While disavowing plans to introduce ID into the state curriculum, that group claims that, once again, "they'll push for books to include a more thorough examination of weaknesses in the theory of evolution."

This push for teaching weaknesses comes at the same time that the Discovery Institute, the pro-ID think tank, has decided to take precisely that approach. They've produced a textbook, Explore Evolution, that's specifically designed to emphasize supposed weaknesses in evolutionary theory. Targeted at high school level biology classes, the book purports to use an "inquiry-based approach" to introduce students to evolutionary biology. Based on its promotional material, however, it appears to simply raise the same flawed arguments that have been used against evolution for years, primarily those from Discovery fellows Michael Behe and Jonathan Wells.

There is clearly controversy within evolutionary studies—I've covered a number of them at Nobel Intent in the past—but these have nothing to do with the supposed issues brought up in this text, such as whether natural selection is important and the supposed existence of "molecular machines." Neither of these topics are the least bit controversial within the scientific community, and the book's promotional material can only be described as stretching the truth past its breaking point when it claims, "Explore Evolution brings to the classroom data and debates that already are raised regularly by scientists in their science journals."

Is the appearance of both this text and a new push to introduce facetious criticisms of evolution merely coincidental? I'd suspect myself of paranoia if it weren't for a sermon delivered by the person who's now heading the Texas School Board. Reading through the text, you'll find McLeroy making repeated references to major players in the ID movement, and a discussion of its "big tent" strategy for undermining science. Given the overlap, it's hard to imagine that there's not been some long-term planning involved.