If you knew absolutely nothing about the bitter public debates over certain scientific issues in the US, the “teach the controversy” bills that keep surfacing would probably sound reasonable and unremarkable. These state bills, which are mostly identical, encourage science teachers to discuss the scientific strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories. Duh, right?

But why are these bills mainly focused on protecting said science teachers from being shut down by their superiors? Why would that happen?

To understand, you need to see that this is just the latest in a very long line of attempts to undermine the teaching of certain scientific topics that the legislators don’t like, especially evolution and climate change. The aim of these bills is to provide cover for teachers who want to teach their students that evolution isn’t a scientific fact and that creationism (possibly stealthed within the supposedly non-sectarian label of “intelligent design”) is a viable scientific alternative.

Of course, creationism isn’t science—it’s religion. For that reason, the teaching of creationism in public schools was ruled unconstitutional by a federal court in 2005, when it’s called “intelligent design.” Previous court decisions had ruled out the teaching of creationism.

In the wave of “teach the controversy” bills (rebranded as “critical analysis of evolution” or “academic freedom”) developed to work around that court ruling, one interesting tidbit has escaped much scrutiny. The bills usually provide several examples of scientific topics deserving of the “strengths and weaknesses” treatment, and one of the common examples gives the game away when it comes to the motivations of the bills' authors: human cloning.

Legislative cloning

The “teach the controversy” strategy was concocted by the creationist Discovery Institute, the biggest advocacy group for intelligent design in the US. With the institute’s help, bills began popping up in state legislatures to protect public school science teachers who would like to oppose evolution in their classrooms. (The group now vehemently denies that it advocates the teaching of intelligent design—it merely want to see criticism of evolution.)

The Discovery Institute worked with the Louisiana Family Forum, a conservative Christian lobbying group, and Louisiana State Senator Ben Nevers to get the “Louisiana Science Education Act” passed in 2009. (In the run-up to the bill’s passage, Nevers talked frankly about the bill being intended to get creationism into the classroom.) That act states that public school teachers should be allowed to “create and foster an environment… that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."

It goes on to say that teachers “shall teach the material presented in the standard textbook supplied by the school system and thereafter may use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner.”

Since human cloning made the list there, it has made many appearances in other bills, though only one has passed—Tennessee’s.

Two years ago, I contacted Senator Nevers’ office multiple times to try to ask why human cloning was listed in the Louisiana law, but my calls were not returned. Almost a year later, I e-mailed the Louisiana Family Forum with the same question but again received no response.

Just last month, another of these bills was put forward, this time in Indiana. (This ain’t the first anti-evolution rodeo for bill cosponsor Senator Dennis Kruse, by the way.) What makes that bill remarkable is that the example list of scientific topics was pared down—perhaps Kruse was hoping that not mentioning evolution or global warming would help the bill slide through—leaving it focused on just human cloning.

Specifically, it states that “some scientific subjects, such as, but not limited to, human cloning, may produce differing conclusions and theories supported by noted experts on some topics within those subjects.” And again, “A teacher shall be allowed to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and weaknesses of conclusions and theories being presented in a course being taught by the teacher.” Elsewhere it describes the “conclusions and theories” in question as “controversial scientific subjects.”

With human cloning standing alone in the list, the weirdness is even more stark. I contacted Senator Kruse’s office several times for clarification on what the “scientific weaknesses” of human cloning might include, but no explanation was provided. I even e-mailed David DeWolf, the Gonzaga law professor and Discovery Institute Fellow who worked on the Louisiana Science Education Act, desperate for someone to explain what was scientifically controversial about human cloning. Again, I received no response.

You’re doing it wrong

The reason that the inclusion of human cloning gives the game away is that there is no scientific argument to make. We have techniques that work on other mammals, and all research in the area shows that fertilized human eggs and stem cells behave very similarly.

The only plausible explanation for its presence is because it is ethically controversial. The Discovery Institute’s website hosts many blog posts on human cloning written by Wesley J. Smith, the institute’s Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics. Those posts include some paranoid warnings of dystopian, Gattaca-like futures, but they also deal with embryonic stem cell research. Tellingly, one post (which appeared in the Sacramento Bee) is titled “Stem Cell Debate is Over Ethics, Not Science.”

The problem with the bills isn’t that legislators want to see students grapple with bioethics; that could certainly be worthwhile. The problem is that they think it makes sense to describe that as reviewing “in an objective manner the scientific strengths and weaknesses” of human cloning. Ethics are not scientific strengths, scientific weaknesses, or even objective. They’re ethics. Values. Subjective.

It’s not really surprising that some people would conflate the ethical implications of a science or technology with “scientific weaknesses.” It’s the perceived religious implications of evolution that make that science hard for some to accept, just as the perceived political implications of climate change make that science hard for some to accept. But this confusion on the part of the bills' sponsors isn’t protected from being wrong by being unsurprising.

The opposition to evolution and climate change has developed an array of counter-arguments that seek to challenge the science. Those counter-arguments may not be any good, and they almost certainly do not belong in a public school science classroom. But it's at least possible to couch them in scientific language. With human cloning, there's nothing like that to hide behind. The root is exposed bare.

A bill promoting the teaching of “scientific strengths and weaknesses“ of human cloning, in addition to being logically incoherent, is simply a bill promoting the injection of (certain) non-scientific viewpoints into science education. That same aim lies behind the attacks on the other topics—evolution and climate change—albeit slightly less transparently. By claiming that their viewpoints are purely scientific in nature, proponents believe the teaching of their viewpoints can be protected.

That's not how you go about improving critical thinking or understanding of the scientific method, although it makes a fine example as a failure of both those skills. Meanwhile, teachers are already free to help students evaluate the scientific strengths and weaknesses of ideas in their science classes—so long as that's actually what they're doing.