Science Faculty At Texas Universities Reject Anti-Evolution Arguments, Survey Finds

A new statewide survey conducted by the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund shows that science faculty at both public and private universities in Texas reject anti-evolution arguments.

In a conference call with Texas bloggers Monday afternoon, Dr. Raymond Eve, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Arlington, who conducted the survey for TFN, outlined its results and highlighted five key findings contained in a report released today outlining the results of the study:

1. Texas scientists (97.7 percent) overwhelmingly reject “intelligent design” as valid science.

2. Texas science faculty (95 percent) want only evolution taught in science classrooms.

3. Scientists reject teaching the so-called “weaknesses” of evolution, with 94 percent saying that those arguments are not valid scientific objections to evolution.

4. Science faculty believe that emphasizing “weaknesses” of evolution would substantially harm students’ college readiness (79.6 percent) and ability to compete for 21st-century jobs (72 percent).

5. Scientists (91 percent) strongly believe that support for evolution is compatible with religious faith.

The survey was released just as the State Board of Education prepares to vote on new science curriculum standards for public schools early next year.

In the conference call, Dr. Eve told bloggers a bit about the methodology of the survey, which was quite interesting. It was particularly interesting that the return rate on the surveys was 45 percent. From the report:

In late fall 2007 and early spring of 2008, a lengthy survey (59 questions – some open-ended) was sent to 1,019 individual biology and biological anthropology faculty members from all 35 public universities plus the 15 largest private institutions in Texas. In the end 464 survey recipients submitted completed questionnaires. This represents better than a 45% response rate – almost unheard of for the remote return of a lengthy questionnaire of this type. The diversity of the response was also surprisingly robust, with respondents participating from 49 different institutions. Presumably this high response rate reflects the sense of eagerness and importance that the respondents attached to expressing their actual opinions on this issue. The overwhelming response rate provides the first unambiguous finding of this survey: we can now say with certainty that scientists are extremely invested in the issue of creationism/intelligent design generally and in the political debate over science standards in the state of Texas specifically. [Emphasis added]

This paragraph is very telling, as well:

It is no exaggeration to say that Texas colleges and universities have a world-class science faculty and boast some of the most respected science educators found anywhere. These scientists should be an invaluable resource in crafting curriculum standards that prepare Texas schoolchildren for college and for the jobs of tomorrow. But is anyone listening? The State Board of Education would do well to heed the advice from these professors. The science education of a generation of students hangs in the balance.

If, for some reason, the wingnuts on the State Board of Education think that the science faculty at Texas’ colleges and universities are as conservative in their beliefs as they are when it comes to rejecting sound science, they should think again:

The response to this survey unequivocally establishes that nearly all qualified scientists in Texas colleges and universities firmly support the current mainstream consensus on the validity of evolutionary processes and
reject intelligent design as representing a scientifically credible alternative.

And, if you happen to be wondering about that small percentage of science educators at Texas’ universities that do favor creationism or intelligent design, then this may explain them a bit better. From the report:

What can we say about the small minority of Texas science faculty (2%) who
evidence some measure of support for intelligent design/creationism? (For
purposes of this analysis, intelligent design/creationist supporters are all respondents who indicated either “Modern evolutionary biology is right about the common ancestry of all extant organisms, but it is necessary to supplement it by invoking periodic intervention by an intelligent designer” or “Modern evolutionary biology is mostly wrong. Life arose through multiple creation events by an intelligent designer, although evolution by natural selection played a limited role.”)

The educational profile of this group is revealing. Ten supporters of intelligent design/creationism responded to the question, “Have you taught a course that included a substantial block of material on human evolution?”. Of the ten, seven persons replied “no,” as compared to three who replied “yes.” So we readily see that most intelligent design supporters identified in this survey do not teach courses that address evolution. Even more strikingly, no person in the subsample of those supporting intelligent design reported teaching graduate students about human evolution within the past five years.

(Another way of phrasing this last point is to say that there was no person out of the total sample of 464 respondents who said they both supported intelligent design and had taught graduate students within the past five years.) We are therefore safe in concluding that the already thin support for teaching intelligent design vanishes to essentially zero when looking at established Texas biology and biological anthropology faculty who teach at the graduate level. [Emphasis added]

Now, some comments from the folks at TFN:

“This survey leaves no doubt that the political crusade against evolution and other attempts to dumb down our public school science curriculum are deeply misguided,” TFN Education Fund President Kathy Miller said today. “Texas scientists are clearly worried that failing to provide a 21st-century science education in our public schools will harm our children’s chances to succeed in college and the jobs of the future.”

And, for those State Board of Tinfoil Hat Nutters disciples who will try to discredit the scientist (as they often do with studies like this), Dr. Eve isn’t just a sociology professor. He’s spent decades studying this precise kind of trend:

Dr. Eve has studied creationism for more than two decades. He is a co-author/editor of Cult Archaeology and Creationism: Understanding Pseudoscientific Beliefs about the Past. He is also co-author of The Creationist Movement in Modern America. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on creationism, intelligent design and evolution; generally these adopt the viewpoints taken by either social movements theory and/or relationships to science literacy. He has written about how the rise of the new science of chaos and complexity theory offers a naturalisitic alternative to the concept of “irreducible complexity” that resides at the heart of intelligent design. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in social movements; science, knowledge and technology studies; science and religion; and socialization and social control. He is the author of current entries in the World Book Encyclopedia on “creationism” and “intelligent design.”

Too, back in 1988 Dr. Eve and a colleague conducted a study about high school biology teachers that made a lot of news. This is from a Chicago Tribune article we found on Lexis (sorry, no link):

A high percentage of high school biology teachers profess superstitious beliefs, and about a quarter of them think some races of people are inherently more intelligent than others, according to a survey.

Also, about 19 percent of the teachers believe dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, according to the national survey by two researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington.

To say that TFN found someone who is preeminent in this field would be an understatement.

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