Over the weekend, The New York Times published an article about the Heartland Institute’s number-one climate-change-denying scientist, Willie Soon. The article detailed Soon's previously undisclosed conflict of interest involving receiving money from the fossil fuel industry for…
Full disclosure: I ran the four-part (newly renamed!) natural selection misconception diagnostic because my idea well had run dry. I was hoping that by retreading some old misconception tropes, I would get inspired. Imagine my delight, then, when Larry Moran gave me an idea for this post in the…
NCSE is seeking to hire two summer interns — one full-time, one part-time — to work on science education activism projects, with a particular focus on climate change education. This is a unique opportunity for someone with a science background to learn about science advocacy to support one of…
Photo by Adam via Flickr “Dam!” “Dam!” “Dam!” No. I’m not swearing: I’m describing my Facebook feed this week. What was once filled with delightful photos of babies and cookie recipes from my friends in the Boston area (where I went to graduate school) now has shifted over the past month to…
“I has told you five or six times,” he said, “and the third will be the last.” The BFG, from Roald Dahl’s book of the same name The recent outbreak of measles—once eradicated in the United States—is a cause of deep concern and frustration to anyone who trusts the process by which…
The Discovery Institute is usually a reliable source of humorous “breathtaking inanity,” and this Darwin Day I wasn’t disappointed by its seasonal contribution to the festivities. Well, I was disappointed for my own sake, since yet again I did not win the Discovery Institute’s “Censor of…
It wasn’t that long ago that I took to this blog to nominate the Wall Street Journal’s Nicholas Wade for having “the worst idea ever” about evolution education, namely to somehow appease creationists with the ol’ “don’t worry, evolution is just a theory” trick. To be honest, I…
If you followed along in the comments to Part 1 and Part 2, you will have noticed that a few readers, particularly John Harshman, brought up a very good point: that the “Evolution Misconceptions Diagnostic” should really be called the “Natural Selection Misconceptions Diagnostic.” As Harshman…
NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of Anthony D. Barnosky's Dodging Extinction: Power, Food, Money, and the Future of Life on Earth (University of California Press, 2014). The preview consists of the preface and chapter 1, "The Last Ones Standing." Barnosky writes, "just as we…