Massachusetts's House Bill 491, sponsored by Kenneth I. Gordon (D-District 21), would, if enacted, require that the state's science standards "include only peer-reviewed and age-appropriate subject matter," where "peer-reviewed subject matter" is defined as "conducted in compliance with accepted scientific methods." Introduced on January 9, 2023, the bill was referred to the Joint Committee on Education.
Gordon introduced the identical House Bill 607 in 2021 and the identical House Bill 471 in 2019. During a 2019 hearing in the Joint Committee on Education, as NCSE previously reported, Gordon explained that HB 471 would keep climate change denial out of the science classroom, and a science journalist testifying in favor of the bill cited the threat of other types of "science denialism" as reasons to pass the bill. In the event, neither of the previous bills passed.
