The Scopes Monkey Trial could be up for a 21st century replay in Kansas.

Sometime this spring, three members of the Kansas Board of Education plan to hear testimony from proponents of evolution and intelligent design, in a trial-like hearing with a court reporter and cross-examination of witnesses.

The result could change how science is taught in Kansas schools.

“Nothing’s on trial, except maybe evolution,” said Kathy Martin, one of the three board members — all conservative — who will hear the evidence.

Steve Case, a Kansas University research professor, has been asked to provide 10 scientific witnesses to make the case for evolution. He has resisted, saying that the proposed hearing would be more about rhetorical style than scientific substance.

“I think there’s potential in an oral hearing for a big marketing-type event,” Case said. “That’s what the Scopes Monkey Trial was. It was set up by the business community in Dayton (Tenn.) to attract tourism. It wasn’t set up to decide national issues, and it didn’t very effectively.”

Case has asked, instead, that the subcommittee solicit papers from the Kansas higher education community to provide answers on the topic.

Intelligent design proponents, however, want a full-blown debate.

“The last thing a Darwinist wants is to have debate over this issue,” said Intelligent Design Network president John Calvert, who advises conservative members of the state board. “There is a scientific controversy, and the other side will say there is no controversy.”

Defense Attorneys Dudley Field Malone, from left, John K. Neal and Clarence Darrow faced William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes trial in July 1925.

In fact, some evolution proponents are suggesting that scientists shouldn’t participate in what they say will be an unfair hearing.

“The deck is completely stacked,” said Liz Craig, a spokeswoman for Kansas Citizens for Science. “I don’t believe anybody’s going to participate on Calvert’s terms, because it’s just ridiculous.”

Continued controversy

The Scopes Monkey Trial took place in 1925 in Dayton, Tenn., where high school teacher John Scopes was charged with violating state law by teaching evolution in the classroom.

Scopes was found guilty — a conviction later overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court on a technicality. And the battle never really went away.

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“I don’t think anybody in 1925 imagined the controversy would capture this much attention 80 years later,” said Douglas Linder, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who has written about the Scopes trial. “It keeps popping up in various forms.”

Last week, the Kansas State Board of Education voted 6-4 to create the three-member subcommittee to discuss a report from a minority faction of the board’s science standards committee. That report proposed teaching evolution and allowing the discussion of intelligent design, which is the idea that the Earth’s biological complexity could not have come to exist without the intervention of a higher being.

The new committee bypasses the board’s standard process for curriculum development.

The proposed 10-day hearing on the subject — a precise date hasn’t been determined — would feature 10 proponents of evolution and 10 advocates of intelligent design. Case and Bill Harris, an intelligent design proponent who teaches nutritional biochemistry at UMKC, would select the witnesses and cross-examine the opposition.

Steve Abrams, chairman of the state board and a member of the subcommittee, said a court reporter would be hired to create transcripts of the hearing. After the hearing, the subcommittee will make a curriculum recommendation to the broader board.

‘Back and forth’

“This is for scientists to have discussion back and forth,” Abrams said. “I understand that this is not something that can be done in short sound bites. But I’m hopeful we can have some true, real understanding come out of it.”

Case, however, expressed concern.

“There is no standard for qualifications for the people who are talking,” Case said. “The only qualification appears to be you have a strong opinion.”

Martin said that’s why Case and Harris have been asked to round up the witnesses for the hearing.

“We consider them scientists,” she said. “We hope they would know people in the field.”

Craig, meanwhile, criticized the proposal to have 10 witnesses from each side. There are vastly more scientific proponents of evolution, she said, than of intelligent design.

“If you put 10 scientists up there and 10 supporters of intelligent design up there, it makes it look to the public like it’s equal,” she said.

Abrams has, so far, resisted Case’s suggestion to skip hearings and solicit papers.

There are “papers all over the place,” Abrams said. “There’s not been a forum to allow scientists to question scientists.”

Resistance among scientists may change the plans of the subcommittee. But Martin said she hopes the hearing could convert a few skeptics of intelligent design.

“Maybe the public — or the press — will realize there are scientists who have doubts about evolution, that there’s an authentic reason for having this discussion,” she said.

Case, who chairs the board’s science standards revisions committee, said he would rather not participate.

“Our mission is to serve the kids of Kansas,” he said. “A big show trial, show hearing, to decide national issues probably doesn’t serve the students.”