Science Is Constantly Evolving
Discover the latest in climate change and evolution education news.
Last Friday evening, I moderated a discussion at Chapman University. Speaking on the panel were Eugenie C. Scott, recently retired executive director of the National Center for Science Education, Ben Santer, research scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and member of NCSE’s…
(In 2012, I was asked to write a Darwin Day post for Alternet. Since it’s no longer available on-line, I think that it’s okay for me to publish it again here at the Science League of America blog in 2014. This is the version I submitted; there were a few edits, including the substitution of a…
Over at The Atlantic recently (February 8, 2014), reacting to the Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate, Noah Berlatsky offered to set the controversy in historical perspective, writing, “The ferocity of the debate makes it difficult to remember that, at one point not so long ago in geological time”—…
At its February 10, 2014, meeting, the South Carolina Education Oversight Committee approved a new set of science standards for South Carolina — with the exception of a clause involving the phrase "natural selection." According to the Charleston Post and Courier (February 10, 2014),…
Last week on Fossil Friday, I gave you a fossil that looked more like embroidery. But in fact, it was a sea creature from the Jurassic—Saccocoma pectinata, aka, a floating crinoid. The commenters very quickly picked this one out right away. One person even correctly…
What neighborhood? Mine? Yours? I’m actually referring to both of our neighborhoods and a good deal more. I’m talking about the Solar System, and not just out to Neptune or Pluto but a thousand times farther–out to the Oort cloud of would-be comets.How many would-be comets are lolling about in the…
This week's Fossil Friday is so delicate and lovely, it looks almost like I drew it on parchment. But no, these squiggles were left by a sea creature during the late Jurassic. It was found more recently in modern day Germany. There are many relatives of this fellow around today, but…
With the recent debate between Bill Nye "The Science Guy" and Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis attracting as many as three million viewers, it is likely that interest in creationism/evolution debates will skyrocket. Writing in The Scientist (February 7, 2014), NCSE's Ann Reid and Glenn…