Everyone’s probably seen it already, but Jay Mathews has written an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post about teaching ID in schools titled Who’s Afraid of Intelligent Design?.
Mathews, who is not an ID advocate, argues that we should teach ID and have public school children debate the issue in order to liven-up biology class. I made a good sized post last week about why this is not a good idea in response to a similar argument put forth by Brad Plumer on Political Animal.
Since my last post was generic enough to cover most of Mathews’ claims as well, I won’t go into detail and repeat everything I wrote previously. But there are a few things I would like to address, just to make things clear.
First of all, Mathews writes:
Drop in on an average biology class and you will find the same slow, deadening march of memorization that I endured at 15. Why not enliven this with a student debate on contrasting theories?
Putting aside the issue of why biology class needs to be livened-up (I found biology class quite interesting without being taught pseudoscience, but I guess that’s why Mathews and I have chosen different career paths), the problem is that there is no theory of ID. ID polemics consist almost exclusively of criticisms against evolution. So instead of teaching contrasting theories, we’ll be teaching one theory, and then we’ll be teaching the arguments from people who hate that theory. If these arguments were sound, then I’d have no problem with that. Unfortunately, most of these arguments are not sound, and I for one will never concede that we should teach false or invalid claims as if they were legitimate.
So what exactly does Mathews think should be taught? He gives us an idea with a couple of examples from those other science classes down the hall:
And why stop with biology? Physics teachers could ask students to explain why a perpetual-motion machine won’t work. Earth science teachers could show why the steady-state theory of the universe lost out to the Big Bang…
This sort of naivet is breathtaking. Physics students should already be able to explain to their teachers why perpetual motion machines won’t work, otherwise the teacher has done a lousy job. But what Mathews is proposing is the equivalent of teaching students that perpetual motion machines actually do work, that there is some major disagreement within the scientific community in this regard, and that the students should have a debate about the validity of perpetual motion. By the time the class is over, a large fraction of students won’t know what to think.
As for the Big Bang vs. steady-state theory, again, the proper analogy would be to teach steady-state as if it were legitimate, not simply to show why it’s wrong. That’s probably not what Mathews has in mind. What he seems to have in mind is already being done — students are routinely taught why older theories have been displaced by newer ones. In my high school biology class, I was taught that scientists once assumed that individual species were created separately, and that this view was later overtaken by an evolutionary point of view. And we were, of course, taught about the evidence that led scientists to accept the new theory.
That would seem to satisfy Mathews’ criterion, so what’s the problem? Unfortunately, I think he’s pretty much clueless about what the ID people actually want taught, to say nothing of their broader agenda. The following paragraph is strongly indicative of this:
The intelligent-design folks say theirs is not a religious doctrine. They may be lying, and are just softening up the teaching of evolution for an eventual pro-Genesis assault. But they passed one of my tests. They answered Gould’s favorite question: If you are real scientists, then what evidence would disprove your hypothesis? [John] West indicated that any discovery of precursors of the animal body plans that appeared in the Cambrian period 500 million years ago would cast doubt on the thesis that those plans, in defiance of Darwin, evolved without a universal common ancestor.
Mathews swallowed that one hook, line, and sinker, and probably ate the fishing pole for good measure. There is no way that finding precursors of animal body plans could falsify the idea that some Intelligent Designer designed some feature of living things at some unspecified point in time. Once again, this is an argument against evolution, not evidence for ID. The argument could be wrong, but it wouldn’t mean that ID was wrong. In fact, at least one leading ID advocate, Michael Behe, believes that the evidence supports universal common ancestry. For some strange reason, the evidence for common ancestry hasn’t falsified ID according to Michael Behe, even though it would according to John West. Start to see the problem?
Creationists have come up with lots of arguments in the past that later research showed were dead wrong. I would include the Cambrian explosion arguments among them, as new finds keep making the original argument from ignorance less and less tenable. But none of this falsifies ID, nor could it ever make the ID advocates give up their crusade. If you follow them enough, it’s obvious that nothing will make them give up, at least not until culture has been thoroughly renewed. Unfortunately, Mathews is advocating that we teach something about which he apparently knows little, cooked-up by an extremist movement about which he apparently knows even less.
48 Comments
Matt Inlay · 23 March 2005
A quick lesson on the unfalsifiability of ID. Imagine a series of numbers, letters, and symbols on a piece of paper. Is there any combination of characters that would be inconsistent with intelligent design? No. No matter what you see on that piece of paper, an intelligent agent could have put it there. We may not understand why the IDer put whatever combination down, but that doesn't mean that an IDer didn't put it down. It's the same thing in nature. There is no possible discovery out there that would be inconsistent with Intelligent Design. No fossil, no molecular sequence, nothing. In contrast, there are tons of things that would falsify evolution. If there was a single gene that was completely identical between mice and rats, evolution would not be able to explain it. If a griffon, pegasus, or any chimeric animal was discovered, with half its genetic sequence from birds and the other half from mammals, evolution would be dumbstruck.
Ed Darrell · 23 March 2005
I didn't bother to write to the letters to the editor column, but I did write to Mathews pointing out that we have already discovered the precursors to the Cambrian critters -- and West clearly hasn't changed his mind.
I also invited Mathews to come down to Dallas to see the full Discovery Institute Dog and Pony Show this weekend. It's being held at the University of Texas at Dallas -- sponsored by a local Christian group.
Mr. Inlay's concise criticism of ID is spot on.
Steve Reuland · 23 March 2005
Thanks Ed; you or someone else should feel free to post information about the precursors to Cambrian critters. I knew they were out there, but it occurred to me that I didn't know enough to talk about them without some thorough background research, which I didn't have the time for.
Joe Shelby · 23 March 2005
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/13/6947 is one such site, from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Ed Darrell · 23 March 2005
You know, the other thing that I would have thought a smart and experienced guy like Mathews would be up-to-date on is how science is introduced into the classrooms.
Judge William Overton spelled it out for creationists and ID advocates back in the Arkansas decision in 1982. If there is real science there, no school board action is necessary, no legislature need rule on it -- the textbook publishers fall all over each other trying to get it into the books. So the gauntlet that is thrown down to the ID advocates is, do some real science and write it up; get it published and show how it advances knowledge.
Kenneth Miller was absolutely correct earlier this year when he noted that ID 'has failed to win any adherents in the marketplace of ideas,' and now turns to the political process to get a government handout to do what it cannot do on its own, scientifically.
The classroom is exactly the wrong place for such a debate to take place. It would be tantamount to saying we'll let 9th grade kids in health class determine exactly what sort of sex education they should get, and whether kids need to worry about sexually-transmitted diseases -- and we'll let that decision stand for U.S. policy.
In each example of a classroom debate that Mathews offers, the real-world policy issues have already been determined -- except in intelligent design. Kids using the arguments of the scholars and policy-makers who made the decisions is one thing. Kids taking the place of those scholars and policy-makers is something else.
Dave S. · 23 March 2005
Steve Reuland · 23 March 2005
Yikes, I just realized that I misspelled Mathews' name in about ten different places. Problem fixed.
Bill Schwennicke · 23 March 2005
If biologly classes were to spend time on alternates to evolution, then how about having Bible classes spending time on alternates to Christianity. There are hundreds of millions of belivers in Islam, so that seems like a legitimate subject. It might at the least liven things up.
Greg · 23 March 2005
A fossil homo sapien skeleton encrusted with fossil trilobites would be a nifty falsification. Especially if one trilobite were, say, stuck up inside the skull where it looked as if it were eating the brains.
Look, if God wanted to call evolution into question, all he had to do was leave real gaps. Nothing between lemurs and modern humans, for example. As things stand, I give you the chimp--dead giveaway that either there is no god, or that God is quite comfortable with us inferring that he created via evolution. And by creating in such a way as to make his existence appear unnecessary, perhaps God was just trying to protect his privacy. I can respect that.
Michael Finley · 23 March 2005
Chris Thompson · 23 March 2005
Mathews should look at this paper:
Chen JY, Bottjer DJ, Oliveri P, Dornbos SQ, Gao F, Ruffins S, Chi H, Li CW, Davidson EH. (2004)
Small bilaterian fossils from 40 to 55 million years before the cambrian.
Science. 305(5681):218-22.
Abstract: Ten phosphatized specimens of a small (<180 micrometers) animal displaying clear bilaterian features have been recovered from the Doushantuo Formation, China, dating from 40 to 55 million years before the Cambrian. Seen in sections, this animal (Vernanimalcula guizhouena gen. et sp. nov.) had paired coeloms extending the length of the gut; paired external pits that could be sense organs; bilateral, anterior-posterior organization; a ventrally directed anterior mouth with thick walled pharynx; and a triploblastic structure. The structural complexity is that of an adult rather than a larval form. These fossils provide the first evidence confirming the phylogenetic inference that Bilateria arose well before the Cambrian.
There's some controversy about these fossils, but the argument is beyond my qualifications. The URL for the comments from dissenting paleontologists is here
And Chen's response is here
I'd be curious to hear from someone who is qualified what they think of these fossils and they debate over their interpretation.
Greg · 23 March 2005
A fossil homo sapien skeleton encrusted with fossil trilobites would be a nifty falsification. Especially if one trilobite were, say, stuck up inside the skull where it looked as if it were eating the brains.
Look, if God wanted to call evolution into question, all he had to do was leave real gaps. Nothing between lemurs and modern humans, for example. As things stand, I give you the chimp--dead giveaway that either there is no god, or that God is quite comfortable with us inferring that he created via evolution. And by creating in such a way as to make his existence appear unnecessary, perhaps God was just trying to protect his privacy. I can respect that.
Dan S. · 23 March 2005
I was not impressed with Matthews' article at all. It's great that he had a good history teacher, but
1) comparing the Articles of the Confederation with the Constitution, or even having students take different sides in historical debates, or whatever, is a bit different from, say, having administrators read a short statement about how all the Founding Fathers were driven by Judeo-Christian values and devout faith to found a Christian nation, and look at all these faked or out of context quotes to prove it!
2) Ladendorff obviously didn't spend as much time on critical thinking as he should have . . .
and 3) when he says "Many students, like me, find it hard to understand evolutionary theory," it's clear he isn't doing it for effect.
Why are these people so frickin'naive?? Is it that all their friends think like them, so they don't realize what a can of worms they'd be opening? Do they really not understand that this is different from, say, teaching about perpetual motion in that (besides the reasons listed above) only a few crackpots care all that much about perpetual motion, while lots of folks have a little more invested in this issue?
I think we need little fact sheets of some sort explaining what ID is and what its proponents want. I mean, we know the movement as a whole doesn't give a rat's posterior about anything except hammering the wedge in a little harder, but most people don't . . .
The sad thing is that good science teaching nowadays can be very cool. Not to say that lots of kids aren't sitting through droning memorization, but it can be much better without this sort of nonsense?
"Like me, Campbell reveres the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill, who said good ideas should be questioned lest they degenerate into dogma. "
Ok, we can start questioning history. Oh, not the cool get engaged with history progressive teaching thing, but questioning the idea, the practice of history. It's just bunk, after all. Henry Ford said so. I'll trade you two Holocaust deniers for a neoConfederate revisionist - sound good?
Scott Davidson · 23 March 2005
Michael Rathbun · 23 March 2005
Michael Rathbun · 23 March 2005
Michael Rathbun · 23 March 2005
OK, multiple posting is apparently a server load problem. Post submitted, long delay, connection times out, multiple page refreshes show post not showing up, so author resubmits. Live & learn.
Matt Inlay · 23 March 2005
Buridan · 23 March 2005
Apologies for the multiple trackbacks. My software indicated that they never got through. Also, there appears to be a very long lag between pings and appearance (at least 45 minutes).
Steve Reuland · 23 March 2005
It's still possible that selection could keep two genes perfectly conserved, even at the redunant third base sites if there were some reason why certain codons were better than others. It's extremely unlikely given what we know, but not totally impossible. I agree it would not be easy to explain though.
Scott Davidson · 23 March 2005
Hmmm... Design intent
What about warranties? Or are we no longer covered?
What about legal fall back for bad design?
:)
Michael Rathbun · 23 March 2005
Great White Wonder · 23 March 2005
Nic George · 23 March 2005
Bill Schwennicke wrote: "If biologly classes were to spend time on alternates to evolution, then how about having Bible classes spending time on alternates to Christianity. There are hundreds of millions of belivers in Islam, so that seems like a legitimate subject. It might at the least liven things up."
Ooooo, I like that suggestion! We could (if it wasn't so potentially offensive to religion) start some type of "Teach the Controversy" parody based on that idea. In the same vein as Project Steve it would help to raise awareness of IDists methods.
"Morning Kids, welcome to religious education class 101. The Bible says God created the world in seven days, but did you know there are many top scholars from other religions that disagree. The Bible has trouble explaining some thing that other religions don't. You need to critically analyze Christianity . . . ."
Les Lane · 23 March 2005
Victor Zammit is far more interesting than ID. Not only that, he's far more intuitive to teenagers. Comparing him to Victor Dammit would really get teenagers going. If you're tempted to use a pseudoscience foil in class why go with anything so dreary as ID?
Henry J · 23 March 2005
Re "precursors of the animal body plans that appeared in the Cambrian period 500 million years ago"
Even if there weren't as yet pre-Cambrian fossils, why should anybody assume that developments in that time period would be qualitatively any different than developments in the 500 million years following that period?
Henry
Salvador T. Cordova · 23 March 2005
jonas · 24 March 2005
Bill and Nic,
the funny thing is, in some countries having RE as a subject in state schools, the basics on a wide range of religions are taught and discussed there as a matter of course and proselyzing in class is a big no-no (can get a teacher suspended) - and mind you, this is explicitely christian RE, not some comparative course.
The big difference to 'balanced' biology courses of course is, that RE or a philosophy course obviously are the subjects where one discusses different belief systems. So, if somebody wanted to move ID into the curriculum, RE/philosophy could be be the place to teach about its anti-naturalist foundation, sociology/politics the place to analyze its popular appeal and political strategies, but it would still have to stay out of science classes, as long as it does not demonstrate considerable scientific merit in its own right. Not surprisingly, I am not holding my breath for this to happen.
Dave S. · 24 March 2005
frank schmidt · 24 March 2005
Alas, people, we are making an elementary mistake here. Individual protein sequences will be identical between rat and mouse if the proteins are under strong selection. A prime example is given by the histones, where, for example, there are identical H2A sequences among rat, mouse, and human, and, for good measure, chickens.
The reason for this is obvious: histones are under strong selection, and the probablility of even a neutral mutation is low. Just as evolutionary theory would predict.
Dan S. · 24 March 2005
This particular bad idea has shown up in a number of places. It has the appeal of being a moderate, between the two positions stance (even though it isn't) as well as sounding like an edgy, exciting, brave proposal (again, even though it isn't). How do we best reveal it for the really bad idea that it is?
In an email to Mathews which will doubtless be deservedly ignored, I characterized this particular and common brand of naivete as being like a person who is happily opening up a can of yummy peanuts despite the fact that everyone's yelling that it's really one of those joke snakes-in-a-can, about to pop up into his face.
There really should be a convenient fact sheet about this mess.
Great White Wonder · 24 March 2005
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/24/schiavo/index.html
Judge Moore and other fundamentalist types should take a deep sniff of the air around the Terry Schiavo case. The evidence that Michael Schiavo is a murderous cretin -- as many evangelicals would have you believe -- is nearly non-existent, but is still much better than the evidence that evolutionary biologists are deluded frauds trying to foist a "secular humanist" agenda on impressionable children.
I found it very interesting to watch commentators on Faux News shill their tiny brains out for fake self-promoting "Nobel Prize nominees" who claim to have the ability to "heal" Terry Schiavo. Yes, they shilled their worthless guts out but at the end of the day very few Americans were persuaded.
You see, Americans are not as dumb as many fundamentalists, conservative evangelical types, appeasement-promoting "liberals", and the ultra-weird charlatans at the Discovery Institute would like us to believe.
Russell · 24 March 2005
Michael Rathbun · 24 March 2005
Henry J · 24 March 2005
If somebody did find evidence that pointed to some form of ID, would that make the ID advocates happy? I doubt it. I predict that if that were to happen, it would more than likely point to a model they wouldn't like any more than the evolution they argue against now.
Henry
Glen Davidson · 24 March 2005
frank schmidt · 24 March 2005
Russell · 24 March 2005
I wasn't really trying to be nitpicky. Your point is a good one. It's good to bear that in mind when devious creationists use data like cytochrome C sequences to "prove" molecular phylogenies disagree with morphologically based taxonomies.
steve · 24 March 2005
Michael Rathbun · 24 March 2005
Great White Wonder · 24 March 2005
Michael Rathbun · 24 March 2005
Ed Darrell · 25 March 2005
Ben · 25 March 2005
You see, Americans are not as dumb as many fundamentalists, conservative evangelical types, appeasement-promoting "liberals", and the ultra-weird charlatans at the Discovery Institute would like us to believe.
The strange thing is, they're driving a wedge through the middle of their own wedge and hence undermining a large portion of their base. I was under the impression that, apart from the theocrats, most conservative Republicans were diametrically opposed to such Big Government legislation. Hopefully this will spell an end to the illusion that Bush is on their side (and indeed on the side of a hefty slice of the Constitution, for that matter).
Sherman Dorn · 26 March 2005
Part of what I wrote in an e-mail to Mathews (including an encouragement to read this entry and respond to it):
Yes, teachers should teach controversies. But they need to teach plausible controversies in context. In history, we have the advantage of setting the debate either in the past (role-playing) or in the present (historiography), plus the fact that many of the current debates are both lively questions and ones of deep political import. I strongly suspect that there are similar controversies in biology, though I am not competent to identify ones that are both salient and instructionally useful. Evolution-ID is not a scientific debate at the moment. A good European historian will allow plenty of discussion on the factors that shaped the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust, but she or he doesn't have to let students debate whether the Holocaust really happened.
Buridan · 26 March 2005
Sherman Dorn · 27 March 2005
Stuart Weinstein · 8 April 2005
I particularly liked this remark from Matthews..
"And why stop with biology? Physics teachers could ask students to explain why a perpetual-motion machine won't work. Earth science teachers could show why the steady-state theory of the universe lost out to the Big Bang . . . "
Funny, but as a geophysicist I never considered cosmology a part of the geosciences. Not that it isn't a fascinating subject..
What is it with journalists?