Canada no longer safe from the influences of the religious right...

[acroyear]

So this guy at McGill University (Montreal) tries to get a research grant ($40,000 CAN) from the Ottawa-based Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to study whether or not the rising popularity of the "ID" concept in America is having a negative effect on science education and acceptance in Canada.  They rejected it.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council's letter to McGill professor Brian Alters:

"The committee found that the candidates were qualified. However, it judged the proposal did not adequately substantiate the premise that the popularizing of Intelligent Design Theory had detrimental effects on Canadian students, teachers, parents and policymakers. Nor did the committee consider that there was adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of Evolution, and not Intelligent Design theory, was correct. It was not convinced, therefore, that research based on these assumptions would yield objective results. In addition, the committee found that the research plans were insufficiently elaborated to allow for an informed evaluation of their merit. In view of its reservations the committee recommended that no award be made." (from the Ottawa Citizen)

Yes, a supposedly "science" group actually said that.  Appearantly in order to prove that ID has a detrimental effect, he has to go back and re-prove the last 150 years of evidence for evoultion to these people as if no scientist has ever done so.

Still, there is a bright side (mentioned in this week's Nature)

Philip Sadler, a board member of the centre and director of science education at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is more philosophical. "If he was trying to answer the question as to whether all this popularization had had an impact, he just saved the government $40,000," says Sadler. "He found the evidence without doing the study."

As PZ Meyers titled his commentary, "Sorry, Canada. We didn't know it was that contagious.".

Comments

[motherwell.livejournal.com]

What happened to all those liberals and leftists who ran away to Canada to get away from US fascism and imperialism? Did they simply not register to vote in Canada? Or have they since run further away, like to Iceland?

[caseylane.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this link?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/science/05cnd-fossil.html?ei=5094&en=fe3427d67e965e46&hp=&ex=1144296000&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1144270915-dF0SGTr3sxR0uDdrdy3Txg

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

the science blogs were all over it 2 days ago.

cool. almost makes me want to go for a swim.

about the only reason its not "great" news (as far as attention spans go) is that really all it did was confirm an easily predictable theory based on creatures from the other two time frames (385MA and 345MA - you'd think that something like this would show up around 360MA and guess what!).

on the bright side, by not being a big surprise (like, say, the large carnivorous (though not a "carnivore" in the Order sense) mammal found during the late Jurassic), it doesn't give the creationists any fodder to work from ("look! see! they didn't see this coming! it shows they have no idea and creationism happened here!"). slime.