An Interview With Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director Of The National Center For Science Education

This afternoon, we sat down, by phone, with Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education to talk about a few things related to the proposed science standards being considered by the State Board of Education.

Here is some of our interview with Dr. Scott.

Q: A lot of people may wonder why this–the controversy over “strengths and limitations”–is a big deal. How would imposing a curriculum standard that requires the teaching of “strengths and limitations” of evolution harm Texas students?

A: It doesn’t reflect how scientists actually look at things. This is like saying if we don’t know what Lincoln had for lunch on March 26, 1860, we don’t know anything about Lincoln. Sure there are things we don’t know about gravatation, but that doesn’t make it a weak theory. This is all code for a creationist attack on evolution, but this evolves from creationists because they’ve learned they can’t just straight up teach creationism. So what they try to do is bring in creationism through the back door by passing it off as critical thinking.

Now, ‘strength and weakness’ is not a term of ours [the scientific community], but to [SBOE Chair Don] McLeroy, it means it is a way to teach evolution so students will disregard it–so students will think it is a lousy theory.

When you frame it like there are all these weaknesses and, of course, weaknesses or limitations aren’t the terms you use when talk to scientists about explanations. They are taking terms that are familiar to the public and manipulating them to discredit evolution. You don’t hear scientists talking about the strength and weaknesses of cell theory. ‘Strength and weakness’ are words that the public understands and it communicates that you are really being fair. But, if you go to a scientist, and say, ‘tell me about the weaknesses of evolution,’ they will look at you blankly. Go to McLeroy and say it, and he’ll haul out a list of very familiar creationist arguments. So, it is an old line in a new battle.

They are repackaging the same, old, discredited creationist arguments. To McLeroy, this is language that means there are strengths and weaknesses in evolution and therefore it didn’t take place and students should disregard it.

‘Strengths and weaknesses’ is nonsensical to a scientist. Clearly, we are testing theories all the time. We are testing evolution all the time; it is not like there is some dogma here. But, the point that seems to be getting missed, especially by McLeroy, is that high school biology teachers and students aren’t expected to be on the cutting edge of scientific discovery. The job of a high school science teacher is to communicate the consensus view of science to young learners. If you want to challenge whether living things have common ancestors, you do that to a university scientists or professor, or do it in the scientific literature, not in the op-ed pages.

Q: Are there states you are aware of with similar standards to what Texas is considering adopting now?

A: Ohio had similar language–”critical analysis of evolution,” that opened the door for intelligent design. They dropped that language after intelligent design creationism was declared unconstitutional in a lawsuit.

Q: One thing that those of us in Texas talk or hear a lot about in the context of this debate is that it has the potential to shape or impact what students across the country are learning. Because Texas is such a large textbook market, doesn’t this effect the quality of science education at the secondary level across the nation?
A: Well, that might be changing to the detriment of Texas, but yes. We are very concerned about Texas textbook adoption, clearly, because the national textbook publishers don’t want to be producing a Texas text, a Nebrask book, a Minnesota version. They want to do one book and make it good enough to have everyone buy it.

But they do have to put up with pressures from different states, which is one reason why they are such doorstops. It’s been very imporatant to good science education nationally that the standards of Texas and the standards to publishers, what is called the ‘proclamation,’ be good. First come the standards, then comes the proclamation, then publishers write a book and it comes back to be reviewed. The books they write are either rejected or accepted by Texas. The Board is a 500-lb gorilla. We are at the very first step of this cascade. It is very important to get good TEKS because that will determine the proclamation which will determine what textbook publishers write and waht they write determines what people in Texas and other states have as instructional material for their kids.

Q: You said that may be changing, though?

A: The reason why I say this may be changing to detriment of Texas is because there is much more opportunity in the publishing industry because of digital layout for modular publications. In other words, it is possible to produce a textbook for the Texas market that nobody else would want to have because it is bad science. That is serious for you guys because if the [state] board says to the publishers, ‘you’ve got to put in a lot of bad science to sell books in Texas,’ the publishers might say, ‘well, we have to sell books in Texas,’ and put out a book with a lot of crappy science and that is the Texas edition. They’ll sell it here and nobody else will want it because it is crappy science.

That puts Texas students at a competitive disadvantage. The Texas science community–science professors–are unified, as we saw [with the study released yesterday]. We don’t argue over whether evolution took place, but this is what McLeroy wants to pretend to students is going on in the scientific community. He wants teachers to pretend to students that scientists argue over whether evolution happened. We argue how evolution happened–that’s good science–and that is not a weakness to us. To McLeroy, if scientists argue over whether dinosaurs are warm blooded or cold blooded, that is a weakness. That is just good, healthy science.

Q: What comments do you have about the proposed science standards that the state board released Monday?

A: The September draft is a lot better than the November draft. There were odd things that happened between those two drafts. The November draft was supposed to bet written taking into account the considerations of the six scientific reviewers.

The change from wording of process skill (c)(3)(a) [this refers to the "strengths and limitations" language--VL]…the original draft from 1998 that was modified. The original draft from 1998 had strengths and weaknesses. They had gone to language [in the September draft] which really reflected what scientists do. The September draft for (c)(3)(a) properly expresses a critical thinking standard. (c)(3)(a) in the September version is a pedagogically solid critical thinking standard. In the November revision, we went back to language which doesn’t really reflect how we should be looking at science and tosses in “strengths and limitations” which we know from experience has been applied only to evolution–of all theories–and has been specifically used to weaken coverage of evolution. The fairest thing to say is that the November draft really doesn’t express the will of the Committee. The full committee was not a participant in that wording.

Q: The average person may read about this on my blog, or in their newspaper, and wonder, “so, what is the big deal?” They may wonder what all the fuss is about, and why evolution is such a big deal and why they should be so concerned about how it is taught in public school science courses or even why the science standards should matter to them. What would you say to help them understand that more clearly?

A:In Texas, you just passed a major bond initiative for cancer research, right? You can’t do that kind of research without good biological science. You can’t have good biological science unless people understand evolution.

The clearest example is infectious diseases. Microorganisms evolve defenses to the medication used to combat them. Look at the problem with multiple strains of antibiotic resistant tuberculosis. AIDS is another example, although it is a virus. Viruses evolve also. Everything evolves.

Q: What are other examples, perhaps outside the medical world?

A: Texas is a big agricultural state. Evolution is key to understanding the development of new crop. All the crops that we use and depend on–corn, wheat, rice and so forth–have histories. They evolved from different grasses–most of them. If we’re going to combat insects and fungi that affect our domesticated plants and animals, we’d better know about the evolutionary history of the predator-prey relations.