Kansas is at it again...

[acroyear]

from a Usenet posting in talk.origins:

In case anybody is interested, there is a website at http://www.kansasscience2005.com/ that has an early draft of proposed revisions to the Kansas state science standards.

In particular see http://www.kansasscience2005.com/ProposedRevisions_KSstandards.pdf which deals with evolution, ID, and the definitions of science and methodological naturalism starting on page 3.

to summarize, basically, they've decided that since Science doesn't acknowledge their beliefs, then they'll just redefine the word science itself.  their new definition of science now allows for non-causal conclusions, meaning intelligent design and other non-provable (more importantly, non-falsifiable) explanations can be included.

on top of that, there's a whole bunch more BS about how the "evidence against evolution" (there is none, but the students will have no clue how to know that) and "teaching the controversy" (there is none, except at the sociology level, which is out of scope of ANY high school biology class) will become required learning.

i give it 5 years when not a single university in this country will accept a Kansas student for ANY science-related degree program.

i feel extremely sorry for those students of Kansas who actually thought they might have become doctors or such, 'cause they'll never get into a program as long as their view of science is so totally screwed up by the ignorant bastards responsible for their welfare.

still, these are the same people so ruled by their unchanging *beliefs* that they still believe Wal-Marts haven't destroyed their communities yet.

naturally, the documents overstress the "theory, not fact" crap, which so far has held up as unconstitutional in the south, but we'll have to wait on the appeals for how wide-spread that judgement goes.

update: Kansas hasn't actually voted on these; these documents are just proposed recomendations to try to sneak intelligent design, creationism, and bogus anti-evolutionary "evidence" into the system. of course, with the current kansas board, its just possible that they might be listening...

Comments

Re: you asked for it 3...

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

Random responses:

My major point was that the Kansas document does not specifically promote creationism, but rather emphasizes that biological evolution is a theory. It emphasizes that theories are based on interpretations of data, that the interpretations may be flawed, and that it is important in science to remain open-minded. In particular the document suggests that student develop the ability to conceive of multiple explanations for their data (see #4 on page 11 of the report). The document says that students should learn to be critical of their data and their interpretations. This is GOOD SCIENCE.

Generally, good science is involved with creating a hypothesis based on data, then trying to DISPROVE that hypothesis. There is no ability to prove a hypothesis.

Just as a good scientist should attack his/her own theories, they should also be critical of their data. Often there is data that initially seems to refute or support a hypothesis, but the data itself can be flawed. Unexpected sources of variability (e.g., unmeasured changes in temperature or humidity), faulty equipment, etc. may not be discovered until critical examination. A good theory DOES NOT HAVE TO EXPLAIN ALL THE EVIDENCE because the evidence itself may be flawed.

The document does mention chemical evolution and cosmological evolution (pages 18 and 21).

Breeding is not the same as evolution, though it could (in theory) lead to faster evolution. Evolution results in the creation of new species due to mutation. Breeding exploits the inherent variability in a species. All dog breeds are still the same species, in spite of 5000 years of breeding.

In defense of my comments on the whims of science: It is an unfortunate truth of the scientific community that scientists are humans. Human scientists are prone to having pet theories, finding ways to explain away non-supportive data while exagerating the importance of supportive data. They blind themselves to alternative interpretations, and yes, the charismatic members of the scientific community are often the ones who get funding, and present their data/interpretations in a convincing manner. This is why much research for cancer cures and prevention is probably crap -- well-presented theories from many years ago are still believed even though there is evidence against them. Is this bad science? Yes, but it is also the reality of modern science.

An important political and social reason (rather than scientific) reason for presenting evolution as theory rather than fact is that it refutes some religious beliefs. This is as strongly prohibited by the first amendment as pushing those same beliefs.

Re: you asked for it 3...

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

the document does not state that all of science is full of theories which may be wrong.

the document *singles out evolution* -- that has already been established by multiple courts (the cobb county case being only the latest) as being a point of view of a specific religion and as such, singling out evolution from all other theories of science including mechanics, chemistry, electricity and magnatism, continental drift and plate techtonics, spectroscopy, etc etc, IS promoting a religion's particular views and as such is a violation of church and state.

and BAD science.

as for the charisma? well, there's some truth to that, but that's where the scientific process gets to be self-correcting. maybe an american might be pushing some rediculous study that nicely supports the current right-wing view that global warming is garbage. but scientists in PLENTY of other countries can post the opposite.

in that global-ice-age story, the scientists involved in supporting particular sets of data to counter the conventional wisdom each came from different countries, and even different universities within the same country. there was no conspiracy, no colusion, just each one addressing an argument and showing that the data makes the alternative possible -- when each of the alternatives became possible, the theory became good science and not just a whim.

but if at any point the data said the whim was impossible, the true scientist would, like Hawking himself did, shrug his shoulders, admit the mistake, and move on.

that's science. full of humans, yes, but with a methodology that helps take account for that.

when politics gets involved, its no longer science, and true scientists recognize that for what it is even though the general public doesn't.

there's reasons that science publishes through peer-reviewed journals first, and not straight to book (as the ID'ers do) or straight to mainstream periodicals (the way over-anxious, stock-market-dependent drug companies do). its to filter out the junk before it gets public and misleads people into doing the wrong thing.