NCSE Evolution and Climate Education Update for 2014/02/21

(by NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch)

Dear friends of NCSE,

Public opinion about climate change and about evolution is canvassed
in the National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators for
2014. A second antievolution bill surfaces, or resurfaces, in
Oklahoma, but in South Carolina there is reportedly a withdrawal of
opposition to evolution in the state science standards. A new issue of
Reports of the NCSE is available on-line. The National Association of
Biology Teachers registers its opposition to the (first) antievolution
bill in Oklahoma. And sad news of the death of Aykut Kence.

CLIMATE IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING INDICATORS 2014

Public opinion about climate change was reviewed in the National
Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators 2014.

Climate change, according to the NSB's report, has "been the subject
of widespread polling in recent years, with evidence showing clear
shifts in views" (p. 7-40). A 2012 survey from the Pew Research Center
was cited as showing that 67% of Americans accept that the earth is
getting warning and about two thirds of them (so 42% of respondents)
attribute the cause to "human activity such as burning fossil fuels"
while one third (so 19% of respondents) attribute the cause to
"natural patterns in the earth's environment. The historical high for
the "human activity" answer is 50% in 2006; the historical low is 36%
in 2009.

"Many of the other countries surveyed show more concern than the
United States about climate change," the NSB's report adds (p. 7-5).
According to a 2010 survey from Gallup, asked about the causes of
rising temperatures as part of global warming or climate change, 34%
of respondents in the United States, 46% of Eastern Europeans, 49% of
Western Europeans, 56% of Latin Americans, and 76% of respondents in
"developed Asia" said that it was a result of human activities. Only
respondents in sub-Saharan Africa (22%), Middle East and North Africa
(25%), and "developing Asia" (27%) were less likely to agree than
Americans.

A variety of reports and commentaries on previous polls about public
opinion about climate science is available on NCSE's website.

For chapter 7 of Science and Engineering Indicators 2014 (PDF), visit:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/c07.pdf 

For the surveys from Pew and Gallup, visit:
http://www.people-press.org/2012/10/15/more-say-there-is-solid-evidence-of-global-warming/ 
http://www.gallup.com/poll/147242/Worldwide-Blame-Climate-Change-Falls-Humans.aspx 

And for NCSE's collection of polls and surveys on climate, visit:
http://ncse.com/polls/polls-climate-change 

EVOLUTION IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING INDICATORS 2014

Public opinion about evolution, the Big Bang, and teaching evolution
in public schools was reviewed in the National Science Board's Science
and Engineering Indicators 2014.

The 2012 General Social Survey experimented with two versions of
true/false questions addressing evolution and the Big Bang. Half of
the survey respondents received versions focusing on the natural world
-- "human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier
species of animals" and "the universe began with a big explosion" --
while half received versions focusing on the scientific community --
"according to the theory of evolution, human beings, as we know them
today, developed from earlier species of animals" and "according to
astronomers, the universe began with a big explosion."

According to the NSB's report, "For evolution, 48% of Americans
answered 'true' when presented with the statement that human beings
evolved from earlier species with no preface, whereas 72% of those who
received the prefaced said 'true,' a 24 percentage point difference.
... For the big bang question, the pattern was very similar: in 2012,
39% of Americans answered 'true' when presented with the statement
about the origin of the universe without the preface, whereas 60% of
those who heard the statement with the preface answered 'true.' This
represents a 21 percentage point difference" (p. 7-21).

As NCSE previously reported, the questions about evolution and the Big
Bang were deleted from the 2010 edition of Science and Engineering
Indicators, a decision which drew criticism at the time, including
from veteran science literacy researcher Jon Miller, who originally
devised the question about evolution, and from NCSE's Joshua Rosenau.
The NSB eventually acknowledged that it was a mistake, and in the 2012
edition, as in the 2014 edition, the questions about evolution and the
Big Bang were discussed. But in the 2010 edition and in all subsequent
editions, those questions are not used in the assessment of scientific
literacy.

"Public views about evolution and the role of teaching evolution in
the schools have been relatively stable over the course of 30 years,"
according to the NSB's report, which highlights two key patterns,
citing work by Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer. "First, when asked
whether intelligent design should be taught alongside or in addition
to evolution, a majority of Americans favor this approach to
education." "Second, when asked whether creation should be taught
instead of evolution -- thereby replacing it in the science curriculum
-- a majority oppose those idea, but a sizeable minority favors it"
(p. 7-45).

A variety of reports and commentaries on previous polls about public
opinion about evolution and teaching evolution is available on NCSE's
website.

For chapter 7 of Science and Engineering Indicators 2014 (PDF), visit:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/c07.pdf 

For NCSE's report on the deletion of the questions about evolution and
the Big Bang, visit:
http://ncse.com/news/2012/02/evolution-partly-restored-to-nsb-report-0013853 

And for NCSE's collection of polls and surveys, visit:
http://ncse.com/creationism/polls-surveys 

A SECOND ANTISCIENCE BILL IN OKLAHOMA

A bill in Oklahoma that would, if enacted, deprive administrators of
the ability to prevent teachers from miseducating students about
"scientific controversies" is back from the dead. House Bill 1674,
styled the Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act, was supposed
to have died in the Oklahoma House of Representatives on March 14,
2013, when a deadline for bills to have their third reading in their
house of origin passed. But it is now listed as available for
consideration on the House floor in the afternoon of February 18,
2014. The first antiscience bill in Oklahoma for 2014, Senate Bill
1765, sponsored by Josh Brecheen (R-District 6), is currently before
the Senate Education Committee.

House Bill 1674, would, if enacted, require state and local
educational authorities to "assist teachers to find more effective
ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific
controversies" and permit teachers to "help students understand,
analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific
strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories
pertinent to the course being taught," prohibiting administrators from
interfering. As introduced, the bill specifically mentions "biological
evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human
cloning" as subjects which "some teachers may be unsure" about how to
teach.

The House sponsors of HB 1674 are Gus Blackwell (R-District 61) and
Sally Kern (R-District 84). In 2012, Blackwell revived House Bill
1551, which was originally introduced in the Oklahoma House of
Representatives by Kern in 2011. HB 1551 was rejected in the House
Common Education Committee in 2011, but Blackwell resurrected the bill
in 2012, adding a reference to controversial "premises in the areas of
biology, chemistry, meteorology, bioethics and physics." The revised
bill quickly passed the House Common Education Committee, which
amended it slightly to provide "Nothing in this subsection shall be
construed to exempt students from learning, understanding, and being
tested on curriculum as prescribed by state and local education
standards."

HB 1551 passed the House of Representatives on March 15, 2012, by
which time it managed to attract condemnation from national scientific
and educational organizations. The American Association for the
Advancement of Science's chief executive officer Alan I. Leshner
expressed his concerns with the bill, for example, writing in a March
21, 2012, letter, "There is virtually no scientific controversy among
the overwhelming majority of researchers on the core facts of global
warming and evolution," and adding, "asserting that there are
significant scientific controversies about the overall nature of these
concepts when there are none will only confuse students, not enlighten
them." HB 1551 died in the Senate Education Committee in April 2012.

The new bill, HB 1674, is apparently identical to the final version of
HB 1551 as passed by the House of Representatives and unconsidered by
the Senate, and only slightly different from Oklahoma's Senate Bill
320 from 2009, which a member of the Senate Education Committee
memorably described to the Tulsa World (February 17, 2009) as one of
the worst bills that he had ever seen. In its detailed critique of SB
320, Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education argued, "Promoting
the notion that there is some scientific controversy is just plain
dishonest." With respect to the supposed "weaknesses" of evolution,
OESE added, "they are phony fabrications, invented and promoted by
people who don't like evolution."

In The Oklahoma Daily (March 6, 2013), Richard E. Broughton of the
University of Oklahoma described HB 1674 as "a 'Trojan horse' bill
specifically crafted by an out-of-state, religious think tank to open
the door for the teaching of religious or political views in school
science classes. This is clearly understood by everyone familiar with
the bill on both sides. HB 1674 would write false claims about science
into state law, contradicting the wealth of scientific evidence, our
own curriculum standards and the expertise of Oklahoma's scientists
and teachers." He concluded, "Passage of this bill will damage the
education of our students, diminish the ability to attract
scientifically-based industries to Oklahoma and will likely lead to
costly lawsuits over constitutionality."

For the text of House Bill 1674 as before the House (PDF), visit:
http://webserver1.lsb.state.ok.us/cf_pdf/2013-14%20FLR/HFLR/HB1674%20HFLR.PDF 

For Richard E. Broughton's critique of House Bill 1674, visit:
http://www.oudaily.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-ou-professor-opposes-controversial-academic-freedom/article_5d092ac2-8bc4-5158-967d-92a7d181d0d0.html 

And for NCSE's previous coverage of events in Oklahoma, visit:
http://ncse.com/news/oklahoma 

A REVERSAL IN SOUTH CAROLINA?

Just three days after the South Carolina Education Oversight Committee
refused to approve a section of the new state science standards
involving evolution, Senator Mike Fair (R-District 6), a member of the
committee whose opposition was responsible for the refusal, is
reportedly withdrawing his objection. Fair told the Charleston City
Paper (February 13, 2014), "I support the scientific standards as they
were given to our subcommittee," adding, "I just needed a few days to
look at the possible overreach of the terminology, and it's not
there."

"We are, of course, very pleased to learn that Senator Fair has
changed his mind about this important issue," South Carolinians for
Science Education's Robert T. Dillon, a professor of biology at the
College of Charleston, told NCSE. Dillon added, "We hope that the
deleted material regarding natural selection can be patched back into
the standards without further delay in the process." It remains
unclear when the EOC will reconsider the standards. The committee's
next meeting is scheduled for April 14, 2014, and its agenda is not
yet posted.

In a subsequent story, the Charleston City Paper (February 14, 2014)
wondered about Fair's delay in accepting the standard: "either Fair
needed two more days to parse the verbiage, or it was all a
saber-rattling publicity stunt." NCSE's Glenn Branch observed that
antievolution politicians sometimes indulge in "a kind of
chest-thumping that is pandering to their base," adding, "So when
election season comes around, they can go home and say, 'Well, I
introduced this bill and it didn't go through, but re-elect me and
I'll introduce it again.'"

Dillon told the newspaper that Fair "gets his marching orders" from
the Discovery Institute, the de facto institutional home of
"intelligent design" creationism, but Fair demurred, saying, "I talk
to them regularly, but their views aren't like mine." Fair is a
young-earth creationist, but Dillon observed that "his latest
shenanigans" are similar to the Discovery Institute's strategy: "The
idea, Dillon says, is to suggest that the theory of evolution is
somehow controversial among scientists, or that it 'needs further
study,' without explicitly offering an alternative theory."

The South Carolina board of education voted in 2014 to accept the new
set of science standards, rejecting two different proposals that would
have compromised the treatment of evolution in the process.  The EOC
was supposed to have voted on the standards before the board's vote,
but instead sent the standards to the board with a list of recommended
changes, including a revision that seemed to be intended to open the
door to the use of non-scientific critiques of evolution. Both the EOC
and the state board must agree on the standards for them to be
adopted.

For the two articles in the Charleston City Paper, visit:
http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/TheBattery/archives/2014/02/13/sc-sen-mike-fair-drops-opposition-to-evolution-teaching-standards 
http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/the-long-defeat-sen-mike-fairs-fight-against-evolution-in-sc-schools/Content?oid=4864627 

And for NCSE's previous coverage of events in South Carolina, visit:
http://ncse.com/news/south-carolina 

RNCSE 34:1 NOW ON-LINE

NCSE is pleased to announce that the latest issue of Reports of the
National Center for Science Education is now available on-line. The
issue -- volume 34, number 1 -- features Joseph E. Armstrong and
Marshall D. Sundberg's "Yes, Bobby, Evolution is True!"; Barbara
Forrest's "Louisiana's Love Affair with Creationism"; and Stanley A.
Rice's "Confessions of an Oklahoma Evolutionist." And for his regular
People and Places column, Randy Moore discusses the petroleum magnate
and paleontology fan Harry Sinclair.

Plus a host of reviews of books on evolutionary biology: Robert M. Cox
reviews Daphne J. Fairbairn's Odd Couples, James H. Hunt reviews
Robert E. Page Jr.'s The Spirit of the Hive, Roy E. Plotnick reviews
Douglas H. Erwin and James W. Valentine's The Cambrian Explosion, John
H. Relethford reviews Edward O. Wilson's The Social Conquest of Earth,
Christopher Irwin Smith reviews John N. Thompson's Relentless
Evolution, and Tara C. Smith reviews Roberto Kolter and Stanley
Maloy's edited collected Microbes and Evolution.

All of these articles, features, and reviews are freely available in
PDF form from http://reports.ncse.com. Members of NCSE will shortly be 
receiving in the mail the print supplement to Reports 34:1, which, in
addition to summaries of the on-line material, contains news from the
membership, a regular column in which NCSE staffers offer personal
reports on what they've been doing to defend the teaching of
evolution, a regular column interviewing NCSE's favorite people, and
more besides. (Not a member? Join today!)

For the table of contents for RNCSE 34:1, visit:
http://reports.ncse.com/index.php/rncse/issue/current/showToc 

For information about joining NCSE, visit:
http://ncse.com/join 

NABT OPPOSES OKLAHOMA'S ANTISCIENCE BILL

The National Association of Biology Teachers expressed its opposition
to Oklahoma's Senate Bill 1765, which, if enacted, would deprive
administrators of the ability to prevent teachers from miseducating
students about "scientific controversies." Although no scientific
topics are specifically identified as controversial, the fact that the
primary sponsor of SB 1765 is Josh Brecheen (R-District 6), who
introduced similar legislation that directly targeted evolution in two
previous legislative sessions, is suggestive. The bill is presently
before the Senate Education Committee.

Dated February 12, 2014, and addressed to the chair of the Senate
Education Committee, NABT's letter warned that the bill "could easily
permit non-science based discussions of 'strengths and weaknesses' to
take place in science classrooms, confusing students about the nature
of science. Well-established scientific principles and theories such
as cell division, photosynthesis, or evolution should not be
misrepresented as controversial, or in need of special exploration.
Instead, they should be presented to students as they are understood
by both the scientific and education communities."

For Oklahoma's Senate Bill 1765 as introduced (document), visit:
http://www.oklegislature.gov/BillInfo.aspx?Bill=sb1765 

For NABT's letter (PDF), visit:
http://ncse.com/files/NABT-Letter-SB-1765.pdf 

AYKUT KENCE DIES

The Turkish biologist Aykut Kence died on February 1, 2014, at the age
of 67, according to soL Portal (February 1, 2014). A pioneer in
evolutionary biology and population genetics in Turkey, and a mentor
to many of the country's evolutionary biologists, he was also a
tireless advocate for the teaching of evolution, opposing the
government's attempts to include creationism in the Turkish biology
curriculum and the efforts of fundamentalist groups to undermine the
teaching of evolution.

Writing in Reports of the NCSE in 1999, Kence and a colleague reviewed
the history of evolution education in the Turkish Republic. From 1923,
when the country was founded, to 1948, education was wholly secular.
The rise of fundamentalism after World War II eventually ushered
creationism to the biology classroom in the 1980s, thanks to a
minister of education impressed with "scientific creationism," and
textbooks were revised to teach evolution "in a biased, ludicrous, and
non-scientific way." A change in government in 1998 led to temporary
improvements in evolution education. But these improvements
"infuriated and mobilized those who wanted evolution to be taken out
of the curriculum," including powerful Turkish politicians as well as
the Islamic creationist organization headed by the pseudonymous Harun
Yahya, which launched -- and continues -- a well-funded and
ill-founded blitz against evolution, both in Turkey and worldwide. The
result is that Turkey enjoys the lowest rate of acceptance of
evolution in the developed world, according  to a 2005 study published
in Science, and as Kence and two colleagues wrote in Science and
Education in 2010, "[c]urrently most students at K-12 and beyond in
Turkey are not provided with a scientific understanding of the origin
and history of life." From the 1980s to his death, Kence consistently
was at the forefront of scientists working to counter and reverse the
antievolution activity in Turkey -- even despite receiving anonymous
death threats. "I won't let them silence me," Kence told the journal
Science in 2001. "If knowledgeable people keep quiet, it only helps
those who spread nonsense."

Aykut Kence was born in Istanbul, Turkey, on August 27, 1946. He
received his diploma in zoology and botany from Istanbul University in
1968 and then earned his Ph.D. in biology from the State University of
New York, Stony Brook, in 1973. After a postdoctoral stint at the
University of Houston, he returned to Turkey, spending the rest of his
career in the biology department of the Middle East Technical
University of Ankara. He served as the president of the Biological
Association of Turkey from 1988 to 1992.

For the obituary from soL Portal, visit:
http://haber.sol.org.tr/bilim-teknoloji/prof-dr-aykut-kenceyi-kaybettik-haberi-86993 

For Kence's coauthored article in Reports of the NCSE, visit:
http://ncse.com/rncse/19/6/islamic-scientific-creationism 

For Kence's coauthored article in Science Education (subscription
required), visit:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11191-009-9199-1 

For the Science article on rates of acceptance of evolution
(subscription required), visit:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/313/5788/765.full 

For Science's 2001 report on creationism in Turkey (subscription
required), visit:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/292/5520/1286.full 

WHAT'S NEW FROM THE SCIENCE LEAGUE OF AMERICA

Have you been visiting NCSE's blog, The Science League of America,
recently? If not, then you've missed:

* Ann Reid wishing a happy Presidents' Day to Lincoln:
http://ncse.com/blog/2014/02/happy-presidents-day-mr-lincoln-0015403 

* Josh Rosenau considering which president was the most science-friendly:
http://ncse.com/blog/2014/02/which-was-most-science-friendly-president-0015406 

* Eugenie C. Scott remembering the late Robert Schadewald:
http://ncse.com/blog/2014/02/thinking-bob-0015411 

* Glenn Branch assessing a history lesson from The Atlantic:
http://ncse.com/blog/2014/02/berlatsky-s-history-lesson-part-1-0015387 
http://ncse.com/blog/2014/02/berlatsky-s-history-lesson-part-2-0015388 

* Steve Newton pondering a bevy of questions from creationists:
http://ncse.com/blog/2014/02/you-can-t-get-their-sic-from-here-what-buzzfeed-s-questions-0015381 

And much more besides!

For The Science League of America, visit:
http://ncse.com/blog 

Thanks for reading. And don't forget to visit NCSE's website --
http://ncse.com -- where you can always find the latest news on 
evolution and climate education and threats to them.

--
Sincerely,

Glenn Branch
Deputy Director
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509
510-601-7203 x305
fax: 510-601-7204
800-290-6006
branch@ncse.com 
http://ncse.com 

Check out NCSE's new blog, Science League of America:
http://ncse.com/blog 

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http://reports.ncse.com 

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