Experts to submit papers on evolution

Conservatives back off having public debate

Topeka ? The battle over evolution will be fought on paper.

A committee of conservative Kansas State Board of Education members Tuesday backed off a plan to preside over a public debate between advocates of evolution and advocates of intelligent design, which critics had said would constitute a second Scopes Monkey Trial.

Instead, the three-member panel decided to have the experts address in writing eight questions (listed on page 3B) that deal with the definition of science, evidence concerning evolution and evidence that can falsify evolution.

“I like the written debate because it is going to put it in black and white,” board member Connie Morris said during a teleconference with Chairman Steve Abrams and board member Kathy Martin.

Abrams proposed the idea of a paper debate and the questions to be addressed.

The board agreed to forward the idea and questions to leaders of evolution and intelligent design camps, who serve on a science standards committee, to get their input before making a final decision.

Supporters of evolution said the process was a “fiasco.”

“There is no scientific substance to any of this,” said Harry McDonald, president of Kansas Citizens for Science.

“It’s all just a big sham. And even though they are trying to restructure it so they don’t get accused of having Scopes the Second, whether it’s in writing or an oral performance, that is what they have. If they constitute the jury, the jury is rigged.”

The 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial was where a high school teacher, John Scopes, was charged with violating the law in Tennessee by teaching evolution in the classroom. Scopes was found guilty — a conviction later overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court on a technicality.

Ed Judd, a retired teacher who taught biology at Lawrence High School, said the debate over evolution was an “embarrassment to Kansas.”

“It’s like the Scopes trial revisited, and it’s unbelievable that it is happening” said Judd, who listened to the teleconference.

But he said he thought the idea of having a written debate instead of oral presentations was an improvement.

“It couldn’t be worse,” he said.

In Kansas, conservatives, who hold a 6-4 majority on the board, opened up the process “to investigate the merits” of competing theories on the origin of life.

Abrams said the process was needed to gather more information before the board in June enacts science standards that will be used as the basis for statewide science testing in public schools.

1. Discuss your understanding of the definition of science, particularly with reference to the majority and minority definitions.2. Discuss your understanding of a hypothesis and theory, particularly with regard to evolution and how an individual hypothesis and theory is used and supported and what happens when competing hypotheses and theories are at odds.3. Discuss the idea that the best scientific inquiry is performed in the fashion of empirical science, that is, observable, measurable, testable, repeatable and falsifiable.4. Discuss the scientific evidence concerning the idea that natural selection and/or mutations produce speciation.5. Discuss the scientific evidence concerning the idea that there is a common biological ancestor.6. Discuss the scientific evidence concerning the idea of what can falsify the Theory of Biological Evolution, particularly how radiometric dating and the fossil record interacts with the idea of falsification.7. Discuss the idea that students (after moving from concrete thinking and being able to think in the abstract) should be able to explain, in scientific terms, the philosophy of science and various theories of science, as well as various scientific criticisms.8. U.S. education, particularly with regard to mathematics and science, has been criticized for being a mile wide and an inch deep and thus not promoting critical thinking and/or problem-solving skills. With regard to science education, is this a valid concern? Discuss the idea of how teachers need to or need not address this situation.