We've all heard the so-called "loser's mantra." Perhaps it was sourly voiced by someone on the losing end of a competition. Or maybe it came from someone looking to encourage sportsmanship in overly-competitive participants. Although the saying it is often disparaged, there really is something to admire in the sentiment.
It is important how you play the game.
When it comes to REAL science, playing the game involves proposing and testing scientific hypotheses. It involves publishing the results of those tests for other scientists to critically analyze. This is all done in an attempt to determine the best scientific explanation for the natural phenomenon under scrutiny.
In Texas, Board of Education Chairman Dr. Don McLeroy likes to talk about "letting the best scientific explanation win." He recently wrote a letter to the Waco Tribune in which he overtly appealed to the reader's sense of fair play:
Okay, let's do that. Let's "use evidence to construct testable explanations" and "let the best scientific explanation win."
If those are the rules of the game, are there any objective measures that could be used to determine the current score?
Unfortunately for anti-evolutionists, the answer is a resounding "YES!"
Ironically, Texas biology professors Daniel Bolnick, R.E. Duhrkopf, Ben Pierece, Sahotra Sarkar, and David Hillis pointed to the scoreboard in the same edition of the Waco Tribune in which Dr. McLeroy's letter appeared.
Unfortunately, evolution opponents are uninterested in updating the standards to reflect this expanded knowledge. They instead want standards that divert class time from this well-established scientific discipline to cover thoroughly discredited arguments about "weaknesses" of evolution.
That requirement would allow the state board to reject any science textbook that did not include such phony arguments.
Our children's textbooks would then reflect the personal beliefs of state board members, not scientific consensus.
More than 100,000 published biological research studies demonstrate the fact of evolutionary change.
Many experimental studies demonstrate that natural selection and related processes can produce observed evolutionary changes.
In contrast, no scientific evidence exists showing that species were created separately or that natural processes can't account for observed evolution.
There is virtually universal support among research biologists for the overwhelming scientific evidence behind evolution. The job of high school teachers is to present this consensus view of science.
Regardless, evolution opponents continue to promote worn-out arguments based on demonstrably false information.
So, instead of facing the fact that the anti-evolution movement has consistenly been trounced on the only scientific playing field that really matters, Dr. McLeroy wants to pretend that the game is just starting.
In other words, Dr. McLeroy is asking all of us to ignore the score while he declares a do-over and a change of venue.
In the process, it seems to me that Dr. McLeroy has just coined the new loser's mantra:
posted by Jeremy Mohn
