New University in Saudi Arabia

I have been meaning to write about this for several days, but with classes settling into a clipping pace and with research/TA duties, posts may be a little more spaced out than usual. Anyway, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has donated $10 billion (that's right, billion with a b) of his own pocket change to create the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology or KAUST for short. (I won't make the obvious pun about the kaust of the university. Oops, I just did.) This endowment is one of the 10 largest ever. It's funding will be similar to that of top schools like Harvard and MIT.

What is amazing about this university is exactly how much effort is being put into making it a great center of learning. Instead of being divided into departments in the traditional way (Chemistry, Math, Biology, English, Drama, etc.), KAUST is divided into interdisciplinary institutes which focus on working with industry and solving important global problems. So far, there are four institutes listed: Resources, Energy and Environment; Biosciences and Bioengineering; Materials Science and Engineering; and Applied Mathematics and Computational Science.

To increase the amount and efficiency of research at the new university, the science faculty will be provided with grants totaling $1 billion over ten years (that's total, not per scientist). This will help the scientists focus on their research instead of continuously digging up money to support their projects.

There is a similar incentive for students. Besides the several scholarships available to undergraduate students, all juniors, seniors, and graduate students will be provided free tuition for the next ten years.

You can seen the layout of the new university here. Hopefully the real campus will be as amazing as the 3D models.

This is an exciting time to be a student in Saudi Arabia. Education is the solution to so many of the world's social problems. Here's hoping it turns out as amazing as it sounds on paper.

You can read some more about his through Scientific American or from Bob Novella at The Rogues Gallery.

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Did Someone Say Texas?

It seems like everyday there is another story about Texas and creationism. Today is no exception. According to Dallas News

The nonprofit Institute for Creation Research in Dallas wants to train future science teachers in Texas and elsewhere using an online curriculum. A state advisory group gave its approval Friday; now the final say rests with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which will consider the request next month.

Thankfully, the well-known champion of evolution Eugenie Scott has a reply

"They teach distorted science," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the California-based National Center for Science Education, which opposes teaching creationism in public schools. "Any student coming out from the ICR with a degree in science would not be competent to teach in Texas public schools."

The institute claims that their teachers will be instructed to teach both sides of the evolution debate leaving it up to the student to decide. While the creationist leanings of the institute may lead most of us to believe that no science is taught at the institute,

[a] group of educators and officials from the state Coordinating Board visited the campus in November and met with faculty members. The group found that the institute offered a standard science education curriculum that would prepare them to take state licensure exams, said Glenda Barron, an associate commissioner of the board.

Dr. Barron said the program was held to the same standards that any other college would have to meet.

"The master's in science education, we see those frequently," she said. "What's different – and what's got everybody's attention – is the name of the institution.

Further investigation revealed that no one on the committee had a background in science leading me to devalue the findings of the committee. Thankfully Texas does not recognize the institution's accreditation, and Eugenie Scott does not see recognition coming easily.

"There's a huge gulf between what the ICR is doing and what they're doing at legitimate institutions like ... [the University of Texas] or Baylor," she said.

The institute says the purpose of its graduate school is to prepare science teachers "to understand the universe within the integrating framework of Biblical creationism using proven scientific data."

The Dallas News aritcle also reproduce a table of information about the institute which I will reproduce here. It is quite interesting to read though.

INSTITUTE FOR CREATION RESEARCH

Offices: In Dallas and Santee, Calif.

Annual budget: $7 million

Faculty members: four full time

Students: more than 50

Degrees: master of science degree in science education with minors in astro/geophysics, biology, geology and general science.

School: The institute runs its own graduate school that offers master's of science education degrees. Its stated mission: to "research, educate and communicate Truth involving the study and promotion of scientific creationism, Biblical creationism, and related fields."

The Institute for Creation Research Graduate School sets out its educational philosophy and beliefs on its Web site, www.icr.org.

On its philosophy: The institute says its administration and faculty are "committed to the tenets of both scientific creationism and Biblical creationism." It says the two "are compatible ... and all genuine facts of science support the Bible."

On public schools: The institute "maintains that scientific creationism should be taught along with the scientific aspects of evolutionism in tax-supported institutions."

SOME TENETS OF SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM

•The physical universe "was supernaturally created by a transcendent personal Creator who alone has existed from eternity."

•Life "was specially and supernaturally created by the Creator."

•All plants and animals were "created functionally complete from the beginning and did not evolve from some other kind of organism."

•Evolution since creation is "limited to 'horizontal' changes (variations) within the kinds, or 'downward' changes (e.g., harmful mutations, extinctions).

•Humans "were specially created in fully human form from the start."

SOME TENETS OF BIBLICAL CREATIONISM

•The creator of the universe is a triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

•The universe was created "in the six literal days of the Creation Week" described in Genesis.

•All human beings descended from Adam and Eve.

Last time I checked, science does not allow for supernatural explanations to natural phenomena. I don't see how the state of Texas will let this one slide through, but we will see. Texas has been doing a terrible job separating its science from its religion but maybe as of late, but perhaps the recent media spotlight will burn some sense into those in charge.

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Encouraging Skeptical Minds

I know some of you have read this already, but it's such a great story I couldn't help but put it up. In this week's Swift, Randi posts an article about a great teacher. I hope neither he nor Life minds me reproducing it in full.

From reader Ted Smith comes this excellent article written by David Owen and published in Life Magazine, in October, 1990:

The Best Teacher I Ever Had

Mr. Whitson taught sixth-grade science. On the first day of class, he gave us a lecture about a creature called the cattywampus, an ill-adapted nocturnal animal that was wiped out during the Ice Age. He passed around a skull as he talked. We all took notes and later had a quiz.

When he returned my paper, I was shocked. There was a big red X through each of my answers. I had failed. There had to be some mistake! I had written down exactly what Mr. Whitson said. Then I realized that everyone in the class had failed. What had happened?

Very simple, Mr. Whitson explained. He had made up all that stuff about the cattywampus. There had never been such an animal. The information in our notes was, therefore, incorrect. Did we expect credit for incorrect answers?

Needless to say, we were outraged. What kind of test was this? And what kind of teacher?

We should have figured it out, Mr. Whitson said. After all, at the very moment he was passing around the Cattywampus skull (in truth, a cat’s), hadn’t he been telling us that no trace of the animal remained? He had described its amazing night vision, the color of its fur and any number of other facts he couldn’t have known. He had given the animal a ridiculous name, and we still hadn’t been suspicious. The zeroes on our papers would be recorded in his grade book, he said. And they were.

Mr. Whitson said he hoped we would learn something from this experience: teachers and textbooks are not infallible. In fact, no one is. He told us not to let our minds go to sleep, and to speak up if we ever thought he or the textbook was wrong.

Every class was an adventure with Mr. Whitson. I can still remember some science periods almost from beginning to end. One day he told us that his Volkswagen was a living organism. It took us two full days to put together a refutation he would accept. He didn’t let us off the hook until we had proved not only that we knew what an organism was but also that we had the fortitude to stand up for the truth.

We carried our brand-new skepticism into all our classes. This caused problems for the other teachers, who weren’t used to being challenged. Our history teacher would be lecturing about something, and then there would be clearings of the throat and someone would say, "Cattywampus."

If I’m ever asked to propose a solution to the crisis in our schools, it will be Mr. Whitson. I haven’t made any great scientific discoveries, but Mr. Whitson’s class gave me and my classmates something just as important: the courage to look people in the eye and tell them they are wrong. He also showed us that you can have fun doing it.

Not everyone sees the value in this. I once told an elementary school teacher about Mr. Whitson. The teacher was appalled. "He shouldn’t have tricked you like that," he said. I looked the teacher right in the eye and told him he was wrong.

Ted – and David Owen, if he’s still around – I’ve been fortunate enough to have had several Mr. Whitsons in my life. Mr. Henderson – I don’t think any of us knew his first name, and we students were always similarly addressed by him, as by all of our teachers, as "Mr. Zwinge," or whatever was called for – was one of those teachers. He delighted in giving us mathematical puzzles just before he dismissed a class, and thoroughly expected us to have an answer when we sat down to class the following day. Mr. Tovell, who taught us physics, would mischievously sketch out a somewhat plausible perpetual-motion machine on the blackboard, then ask us to return the next day to explain why we thought the machine would – or would not – work. These were problems that stimulated our imaginations, made us eager to get to the next class, and I feel sure are not the sort of thing that modern teachers become involved with. Our history teacher was a Mr. Grow, who would occasionally drop in an obviously false comment or two while giving us an account of some event with which he hoped we’d become familiar. And, occasionally he fooled us all and then was able to show us how he had done this to our young minds.

Those were teachers…!

I wish I had been taught by teachers like that. If any of us go on to teach (anything more than labs), we should use this lesson.

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Comer on Science Friday

Earlier I mentioned that Chris Comer, former Texas science education administrator and current victim of creationist bigotry, would be featured on Science Friday. Well, she was, but it was disappointingly short. Only 12 minutes long, in fact. She wasn't even able to tell half the story she wanted to before the timer ran out. Sad.

Anyway, there were a few thoughts I had.

• Comer sent out her email about the Barbara Forrest talk at 9:49. It somehow made its way to the local Bush appointee and self-appointed thought police, Lizzette Reynolds, who sent an email to Comer's boss demanding she be fired. Comer's boss talked to her at 11:21. It took only about an hour and a half for this to go down.


• Previous reports had used the word "resigned." From Comer's story, she was fired. Completely blindsided, in fact. Her boss called her in for a meeting, and when she showed up that morning her computer password didn't work.


• Prior to this incident, Comer had felt she was going to be a target. She could see the rising tide of creationism and knew her bosses would want to get rid of her.


• The last time there was a biology book adoption in Texas, the director of education and flaming creationist, Don McLeroy, invited both the entire board of the Discovery Institute and also Euginie Scott of the NCSE to speak. That's awfully noble of him; he was actually following the "Teach the Controversy" mantra the DI pushes. Oh, but he let every single DI board member speak first, so that Eugenie Scott didn't speak until 2 am. Doesn't really sound like he wanted her side to be heard at all, only his own.

That seems to be all. Not a lot of new info, but some more detail.

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Chris Comer in Her Own Words, and Also the Words of Barbara Forrest

Anyone reading the site lately will know I've been following the Chris Comer case (1, 2, 3). In short: Comer, the director of science education in Texas, forwarded an email to her officemates about a talk given by intelligent design investigator and critic Barbara Forrest. Comer runs afoul of Texas' new policy of friendliness towards religious pseudoscience and she is forced to resign.

Well, Barbara Forrest being the powerhouse who not only wrote Creationism's Trojan Horse, the book about the intelligent design wedge strategy (high on my Christmas list), but also provided the Of Pandas and People evidence in Kitzmiller v. Dover, she could not sit idly by while Chris Comer was taking hits on her behalf. Forrest released a statement (PDF) through the NCSE in which she points out that the creationists seem to be making the points in her book for her.

The incident now involving Ms. Comer exemplifies perfectly the reason my co-author Paul R. Gross and I felt that our book, Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, had to be written. (www.creationismstrojanhorse.com) By forcing Ms. Comer to resign, the [Texas Education Agency] seems to have confirmed our contention that the ID creationist movement—a religious movement with absolutely no standing in the scientific world—is being advanced by means of power politics.

She also isn't shy about letting Texas know exactly what's coming their way.

Texans should now prepare themselves for an attempt by the [cdesign proponentists] (and/or newly recruited supporters) to influence the upcoming review of state science standards. In order to be ready, the good citizens of Texas who value their public schools and the U.S. Constitution must familiarize themselves with the ID code terms they are likely to hear, all of which signal the ID movement’s attack on the teaching of evolution. ID supporters will declare that they certainly do not favor eliminating evolution or teaching intelligent design, but rather that they simply want children to hear “both sides” of the “controversy” and to learn to “critically analyze” evolutionary theory, so that they can understand the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, and all of this will be for the sake of “fairness” and “academic freedom.”

For further reading, she provides a document explaining those code terms (PDF). I recommend them both, along with anything else written by Forrest.

And, as I teased in the title, we have Chris Comer herself weighing in on the subject...

Tomorrow! Oh, snap! Anyway, she's going to be on Science Friday tomorrow. So even though I don't listen to the show regularly because their podcasts download strangely, I'll be all over this segment like a fat kid on cake.

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No New Info on Chris Comer, but Publicity is Good

The New York Times ran an editorial today about the Chris Comer case. It's nothing we haven't heard (or blogged about) before, but hopefully this case stays in the public eye. Vigilance might keep the Texas board of education from doing something that would ultimately hurt the education of their children.

The article has no info on the author, by the way. I'll pick up a copy of today's paper and report back if there's anything there that isn't online.

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UPDATE: Editorials are produced by the editorial board. I am a moron for not having realized that before.

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Downward Spiral

The New York Times has run a story on the Chris Comer Texas ID issue. From the article:

Ms. Comer said state education officials seemed uneasy lately over the required evolution curriculum. It had always been part of her job to answer letter-writers inquiring about evolution instruction, she said, and she always replied that the State Board of Education supported the teaching of evolution in Texas schools.

But several months ago, in response to an inquiry letter, Ms. Comer said she was instructed to strike her usual statement about the board’s support for teaching evolution...

Pitiful.

The article also says that her resignation-under-pressure "is a prelude to an expected battle early next year over rewriting the state’s science education standards, which include the teaching of evolution."

What do you think? Is Texas going to go the way of Kansas and Dover? Will there be another trial shooting down the Constitutionality of teaching creationism in public school science classes, as in Edwards v Aguillard? When will all this evolution denial end?

-via Pharyngula

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More about Texas

Recently, those in charge of reviewing math textbooks in Texas found over 109,000 (109,263 to be exact) errors in the textbooks ready for fall distribution. This article states that this was only five times the number of errors last year. The reason for the high number this year was that one publisher company (Houghton Mifflin Co.) contributed more than 86,000 (almost 80% of the total) errors. You might ask, what is the punishment for submitting such trash to be passed off as learning materials? It turns out that the textbook companies have until the spring to correct the errors. If errors are found after that, the publishing company is fined $5,000 per error. That's right. $5,000 per error! So if State Board of Education had not reviewed these books before letting them into the classroom, the would have been an overall fine of $546,315,000 which is more than I carry in my wallet.

Let us now turn to the source of these errors. While there were plenty of computational errors (4+7=10, etc) and answers printed in the student editions that were only meant for the teacher's editions, there were also many severe grammatical mistakes in the Spanish versions of the textbooks due to mistranslation. Now, as a company, how do you let your employees make tens of thousands of mistakes and still manage to survive? I will address this issue in a later post. I believe there are some shenanigans involving the major textbook publishing companies that will take some careful research. Needless to say, the textbook companies have a very strong influence on the education of our children so kudos to the Texas board of education for being so diligent.

The publishing companies involved have until the spring to clean up their textbooks before they will be rechecked and fines assessed. After this process last year, there was only one $5,000 fine. Hopefully there will be none this year.

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Texas Education Ebbs Towards Creationism

Chris Comer, the director of science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency, has resigned due to pressure over an email she wrote. The email promoted a talk to be given by Southeastern Louisiana University philosophy of science professor Barbera Forrest, whom some of you may remember from the Dover intelligent design trial. Barbera was the key to demonstrating the evolution of creationism, so to speak, by finding the missing link: the cdesign proponentsists.

This email, it seems, violated a policy of the TEA, namely remaining neutral between evolution and creationism. Excuse me? The director of science education must remain neutral between science and not science? Sending an email announcing a talk by a supporter of good science education sounds like something well within the purview of a director of science in an educational agency. The content of the email itself must have been far more offensive than we know, right?

...Fortunately we can test that. Via Pharyngula we have the content of the very email right here.

To: Glenn Branch
From: Glenn Branch
Subject: Barbara Forrest in Austin 11/2
Cc:
Bcc: [redacted]

Dear Austin-area friends of NCSE,

I thought that you might like to know that Barbara Forrest will be speaking on "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse" in Austin on November 2, 2007. Her talk, sponsored by the Center for Inquiry Austin, begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Monarch Event Center, Suite 3100, 6406 North IH-35 in Austin. The cost is $6; free to friends of the Center.

In her talk, Forrest will provide a detailed report on her expert testimony in the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board trial as well as an overview of the history of the "intelligent design" movement. Forrest is a Professor of Philosophy in the Department of History and Political Science at Southeastern Louisiana University; she is also a member of NCSE's board of directors.

For further details, visit:
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/austin/events/barbara_forrest_inside_creationisms_trojan_horse_lecture/

Sincerely,
Glenn Branch
Deputy Director
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509

Wow. Powerful stuff. I can see why that's a firing offense.

For further reading, see a comprehensive article by the Texas Citizens for Science, the first article on the subject I read from Pharyngula, and also Steve Novella wrote a bit about this.

I'll be sure to keep my eye on this case; I have a feeling that it's far from over.

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On a slightly related note, here's a fun poll.

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