Frank Cerabino’s column about Andy Tuck, the new chairman of the Florida Board of Education, a man who doesn’t believe that evolution ought to be taught as a fact.

More bad news for the Florida Citizens for Science.

That’s a real group. And its mission is to try to keep Florida’s leaders from corrupting the education of science in the state’s public schools.

Talk about a lost cause. The group is currently sounding the alarm about Andy Tuck, the new Chairman of the Florida Board of Education, an orange farmer who doesn’t want the state’s kids to be taught that evolution is a fact.

“Decades of legal losses whenever creationists have tried to outlaw evolution instruction or insert blatant creationism into the curriculum have forced them to clean up their overtly religious language,” wrote science teacher Brandon Haught, the communications director for the Florida Citizens for Science. “Now they want to allow teachers to spend time on ‘other theories’ while declining to be more specific about what those other theories that teachers might bring up are.

“They want to force a bogus disclaimer into evolution lessons that there are ‘strengths and weaknesses’ to the theory,” Haught wrote. “These are the kinds of moves Florida Citizens for Science faced in 2008 when a state Board of Education member and some lawmakers in the state legislature tried tinkering with the state science standards.”

Tuck was one of the four members of the Highlands County School Board who fought the change in the state curriculum in 2008 that treated evolution as a scientific fact.

“As a person of faith, I strongly oppose any study of evolution as fact at all,” Tuck said at the time. “I’m purely in favor of it staying a theory and only a theory.”

Tuck and others who inject theology into science classrooms are trying to introduce doubt and, in the process, pervert what the word “theory” means in a scientific context.

“In everyday usage, "theory" often refers to a hunch or a speculation,” the National Academies of Sciences explained. “When people say, ‘I have a theory about why that happened,’ they are often drawing a conclusion based on fragmentary or inconclusive evidence.

“The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence.

“Many scientific theories are so well-established that no new evidence is likely to alter them substantially,” the explanation continued. “For example, no new evidence will demonstrate that the Earth does not orbit around the sun (heliocentric theory), or that living things are not made of cells (cell theory), that matter is not composed of atoms, or that the surface of the Earth is not divided into solid plates that have moved over geological timescales (the theory of plate tectonics).

“Like these other foundational scientific theories, the theory of evolution is supported by so many observations and confirming experiments that scientists are confident that the basic components of the theory will not be overturned by new evidence.”

So in a reasonable world, educationally challenged school board members with unconstitutionally tinged religious motives like Tuck would have a limited, and brief, tenure as a public guardian of educational standards.

But in Florida, former Gov. Rick Scott elevated Tuck to be a member of the statewide Board of Education, and this summer, Tuck became that board’s chairman.

The wrong people have a tendency to evolve upward here.

This is not an isolated defeat for Florida’s science teachers.

Two years ago, the state Legislature passed a bill called the Florida Student and School Personnel Religious Liberties Act.

It was written by State Sen. Dennis Baxley, the Ocala mortician who wrote the deadly Stand Your Ground Gun law when he wasn’t serving as the director of the Christian Coalition of Florida.

Baxley’s not a fan of evolution either.

“At one time, the scientific community thought that for good health, you should attach leeches to your body,” Baxley said. “We’re just asking them to leave the door open a little bit.”

The “religious liberties” bill said “a student may express his or her religious beliefs in coursework, artwork and any other written and oral assignment free from discrimination.”

This is fine for poetry or artwork, but as the Florida Citizens for Science explained, it’s not valid for science, because “the proper focus of science education is the study of the natural world through observation, testing and analysis.”

But that bill passed, and Scott signed it into law before he evolved upward to the U.S. Senate.

And now Florida school kids can submit assignments in earth science that contend that the earth is 6,000 years old and man and dinosaurs lived together. And if a teacher points out the obvious flaws in that answer, based on observable evidence, it’s a form of “religious liberties discrimination.”

That’s got to be hard to take. So if you see a Florida science teacher, offer your condolences.

It can’t be easy working in a state that refuses to evolve.

fcerabino@pbpost.com

@FranklyFlorida