Science Is Constantly Evolving
Discover the latest in climate change and evolution education news.
With a brief filed (PDF) in Ohio's Fifth District Court of Appeals, John Freshwater is appealing a court's ruling to uphold his termination as a middle school science teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio. It is the latest twist in a long saga that began in 2008, when a local family accused Freshwater of…
The superintendent of the school system in Hart County, Kentucky, is complaining about the emphasis on evolution in the state's new end-of-course test for biology, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader (December 13, 2011). In a November 21, 2011, letter to state education commissioner Terry…
Evolution "ranks alongside pornography and terrorism as topics that the Turkish government's controversial new Internet filtering scheme keeps out of the hands of children," according to a post on the ScienceInsider blog (December 9, 2011). The Hürriyet Daily News (December 8, 2011) reported that…
NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of Richard Dawkins's book for children The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True (Free Press, 2011). The preview consists in the bulk of chapter 3 — "Why are there so many different kinds of animals?" — in which Dawkins, after discussing…
Steve JonesWriting in The Telegraph (December 3, 2011), the geneticist Steve Jones reflects on his experience in teaching university students who reject evolution — and refuse even to learn about it — because of their religious objections. "At University College London we have…
"A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has opted to let a jury decide whether NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory discriminated against a former employee who claims he was fired for discussing intelligent design," according to the Pasadena Star-News (November 30, 2011). The initial complaint, filed on…
The presence of a creationist group on a list of charitable organizations approved to receive donations from state employees is under challenge, according to the Austin American-Statesman (November 30, 2011). David Hillis, a professor of biology at the University of Texas, Austin, was surprised to…
Lynn Margulis The eminent biologist Lynn Margulis died on November 22, 2011, at the age of 73, according to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Born Lynn Alexander in Chicago on March 5, 1938, she enrolled in the University of Chicago at the age of fourteen. She received…
Evolution: Education and Outreach — the new journal aspiring to promote accurate understanding and comprehensive teaching of evolutionary theory for a wide audience — will be freely available through December 31, 2011, thanks to the generosity of its publisher, Springer. Edited by Niles Eldredge (…