The National Center for Science Education, Inc.
	Sponsor of the Committees of Correspondence
Officers and Directors Robert J. Schadewald, President John R. Cole, Past President Jack B. Friedman, Sec.-Treas. Frederick Edwords, Director Kevin Padian, Director Alvin G. Lazen, Director Robert M. West, Director Laurie Godfrey, Director Ronnie J. Hastings, Director Eugenie C. Scott, Executive Director Supporters Francisco J. Ayala, UC/Irvine Stephen G. Brush, U. MD Johnnetta B. Cole, Spelman Bruce Collier, U. Alberta Joel Cracraft, U. IL Robert S. Dietz, AZ State U. Richard E. Dickerson, UCLA James D. Ebert, Chesapeake Inst. of Johns Hopkins Niles Eldredge, A.M.N.H. Milton Fingerman, Tulane Douglas J. Futuyma, SUNY/SB James A. Gavin, U. MO Stephen J. Gould, Harvard Donald Homig, Harvard Duane E. Jeffrey, Brigham Young Donald Johanson, Inst. Hum. Origins Thomas H. Jukes, UC/Berkeley Patricia Kelley, U. MS Philip Kitcher, UCSD Richard C. Lewontin, Harvard Paul MacCready, Aerovironment, Inc. Kenneth Miller, Brown John A. Moore, UC/Riverside David Morrison, NASA/Ames Dorothy Nelkin, Cornell William S. Pollitzer, U. NC Joseph E. Rall, N.I.H. Michael Ruse, U. Guelph Carl Sagan, Cornell James W. Skehan, S.J., Weston Observatory Frank Sonleitner, U. OK Tim D. White, UC/Berkeley A nonprofit, tax exempt corporation. Affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Science Teachers Association Executive Director Eugenie C. Scott Ph.D 2530 San Pablo Avenue. Ste. D Berkeley, CA 94702-2013 510-843-3393	November, 1992 Dear Fellow AGU Member, I am writing you to tell you about an organization that all scientists should belong to and support. The National Center for Science Education, Inc., is a small, nonprofit organization of scientists and educators that defends the integrity of what all of us take for granted: rational science education. At the heart, of the problem is the fundamentalists' opposition to the theory of evolution. I know it's hard to believe that evolution can still be a problem in 1992, but the opposition to evolution throughout the US and Canada has actually increased during the last year. For example: In Massachusetts, the Institute for Creation Research drew 4,000 enthusiastic citizens to a "Back to Genesis" rally. In Michigan, one of these seminars drew 6,000 people, and In California, another drew 7,000. Subsequently, area teachers began receiving leaflets and calls from local parents encouraging them to introduce this "new science of creationism" into the curriculum. In Ohio, an elementary school teacher read her students Dinosaurs, Those Terrible Lizards by creationist Duane Gish. An enraged parent wrote NCSE, "This book even goes so far as to say that the Bible talks about dragons and it could be that Corythosaurus, Lambeosaurs, and Parasaurolophus could use their hollow bony structures to contain and mix chemicals such that fire and smoke would come pouring out of their nostrils. Needless to say, I am appalled." If you think that the proponents of creationism are concerned only about biological evolution, I have more bad news. The creationists insist that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, that the geomagnetic field has never reversed, that the velocity of light was much higher in the past, and that the theory of plate tectonics is wrong. For example, In Washington state, a student came home from school last spring and told her mother about the guest speaker in science class. The "Dr.", a physicist, talked about the "new information not yet in our science books" about how the earth is only a few thousand years old, and how dinosaurs and people lived together as "proven" by their footprints being found together in Texas. The parent complained to the school board, which expressed surprise that anyone should object. [page 2] In Pennsylvania, a college professor working with high school teachers wrote NCSE that "...some of the teachers had been told directly by their principals or superintendents that they cannot teach evolution in their classes." The NCSE Executive Director, Dr. Eugenie C. Scott, has told me that some teachers in our state of California have told her directly that their principals have forbidden them to teach evolution, because it is "too controversial." Nationally, CBS network broadcast a television show, "Secrets of the Bible," that claimed that scientific evidence exists to support the literal interpretation of the Genesis creation story. This program, broadcast to millions of viewers, promoted the idea that (again) dinosaurs and people lived at the same time, and that Noah's Flood was an historical event. The list could go on and on. Even though evolution has won in the Supreme Court, it faces stiff opposition at the grassroots level. The movement called "scientific creationism" is composed of Biblical literalists who claim to have scientific evidence that the world was created all at one time, exactly as we see it today, only a few thousand years ago. Needless to say, there is no science behind this claim, but the public understanding of science is so dismal that such claims are widely believed. Some of our colleagues think that the scientific creationism movement can be ignored, but I think they are wrong. Anti-evolutionism has much popular support. Creationists in the past have lobbied congress for equal funding in NSF for creationist research, and beyond that, have so cast a chill over government funding agencies that the "e-word" is avoided in abstracts to be perused by congressional aides. The movement is beginning to affect some college classes, too, as members of Genesis Clubs enter classrooms with disruptive (and difficult to answer) questions. How would you answer a student who announced in your class that the, Second Law of Thermodynamics doesn't permit evolution? Or that the presence of Polonium halos in granite demonstrates that granite had to have formed suddenly (i.e., was specially created)? Of course, it isn't the quality of the science presented by these scientists that matters, it's the broad acceptance of these claims by a scientifically illiterate public. But problems at the college level are dwarfed by those at the high school and junior high level. Many pre-college teachers don't have the background to teach science let alone teach it well. Far too many high school science teachers across the country refuse to teach evolution because it is a controversial subject. Others, worse yet, actually teach students that evolution never happened — that the universe as we know it was created just as it says in Genesis, with a literal Flood explaining the Grand Canyon and the fossil record.