Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Advances in Deception

Those pesky creationists are at it again.

"'Last fall, Commissioner Yecke received a letter from Congress stressing that this guidance in the No Child Left Behind Act Conference Report was the official position of Congress on science education. The letter was signed by Minnesota Congressman John Kline and Congressman John Boehner, chairman of the U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee.'

You would never guess from this passage that the wording about evolution was cut out of the act before it became a bill. It is not Congress's official position.

Finally, the press release ends by urging Minnesota to 'teach the controversy.' The Discovery Institute would like to pretend that their specious claims are actually part of a scientific controversy. If that were true, then you'd expect them publishing new findings in Cell or The Journal of Biochemistry, and being invited to give talks at major scientific venues like the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology. Instead, they whine with their bogus claims of censorship. Having been unable to make a dent in the scientific arena, they create a political controversy, through which they hope to get from high schools what they can't get from real science: credibility."

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