Pro-Science News

A new report issued by the National Center for Science Education, "Toward a Climate & Energy Literate Society" (PDF) offers recommendations for improving climate and energy literacy in the United States over the course of the next decade.

NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of Peter D. Ward's The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps (Basic Books, 2010).

Zack Kopplin, the young activist behind the initiative to repeal Louisiana's antievolution law and the effort to expose the funding of creationism through vouchers-for-private-schools schemes nationally, was interviewed on Moyers and Company — and the segment is now viewable on line.

Kansas's House Bill 2306 (PDF), a "strengths and weaknesses" bill aimed at climate science alone, died on March 1, 2013, when a deadline for bills to be considered in their house of origin passed.

What is the source of the antiscience bills that have been infesting statehouses around the country?

NCSE is pleased to announce that the latest issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education is now available on-line.

Indiana's House Bill 1283 died on February 25, 2013, when the deadline for House bills to have their third reading in the House passed.

Arizona's Senate Bill 1213 died on February 22, 2013, when the deadline for Senate bills to be heard in their Senate committees passed.

Senate Bill 758 (document), the so-called Oklahoma Science Education Act, which would have undermined the integrity of science education in the Sooner State, is dead.

Would a proposed amendment to the Virginia state constitution have undermined the teaching of evolution in the state's public schools?

NCSE is pleased to announce the winners of the Friend of Darwin award for 2013: Baba Brinkman, of "The Rap Guide to Evolution" fame; Jay Labov, the senior advisor for education and communication for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council; and Sean B. Carroll, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Wisconsin and Vice President for Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Zack Kopplin, the young activist behind the initiative to repeal Louisiana's antievolution law and the effort to expose the funding of creationism through vouchers-for-private-schools schemes nationally, was profiled in the Houston Press (February 20, 2013).

Project Steve — NCSE's lighthearted response to the creationist tradition of amassing lists of "scientists who doubt evolution" — debuted ten years ago, on February 16, 2003.

House Bill 2306 (PDF), introduced in the Kansas House of Representatives on February 12, 2013, is a novelty: a "strengths and weaknesses" bill directed at climate science alone.

Missouri's House Bill 291, which would, if enacted, require "the equal treatment of science instruction regarding evolution and intelligent design," is receiving renewed attention.

"The percentage of Americans who think climate change is occurring has rebounded ... and is at its highest level since 2006," according to a new poll conducted by researchers at Duke University.

Montana's House Bill 183, which purports to "encourage critical thinking regarding controversial scientific theories" such as "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, random mutation, natural selection, DNA, and fossil discoveries," was tabled in the House Education Committee on February 5, 2013.

House Bill 13-1089 (PDF), which would have encouraged teachers in Colorado to misrepresent the scientific status of evolution and climate change, was rejected by a 7-6 vote in the House Committee on Education on February 4, 2013.

"Two congressmen, two Christians and two very different views of the man who in 1859 published 'On the Origin of Species,'" writes Mark Oppenheimer in The New York Times (February 1, 2013).