Why teach evolution? – NCSE – YouTube – NatCen4ScienceEd

With a hat tip to the Richard Dawkins net for this one …. if you are in any way involved in teaching science, then these folks can help you. At the recent NSTA conference, Steve Newton talked about the central role evolution must play in science education, why biology teachers are hesitant to teach evolution, … Read more

TED – Reach out now and “Be Inspired”

The TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) conference is all about disseminating “ideas worth spreading.” and so every year since about 1990, the once-only 1984 conference has been happening every year. Ah, so its just another techi conference? Nope not at all, this is something truly special. The ticket price is $6,000 and even to attend … Read more

Response to comments on Science and Creationism

I’ve received an interesting comment within a posting here about “Irreducible complexity explained“. It deserves a bit of thought and a carefully considered response, so I thought I’d post my reply here, its too long to be just a comment reply, and may be of interest to others.

The commenter basically raises four points, so I propose to consider each in turn.

1) We have to take a lot on trust from academia. The assertion that peer review indicated acceptability and not necessarily accuracy muddies things.

Peer-reviewers simply consider if a submitted papers claim is supported by the data in it, ensure its appropriate for the journal, and that the study has used proper controls to account for other possible explanations. Its only one small part of the overall process.

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Unleashing change – We can all become skeptics

Bill Davidow, a high-technology industry executive and a venture investor, has written an Opinion piece in todays “Christian Science Monitor”. In it he suggests that the Internet will change our physical space in quite a dramatic way … Today, an even bigger change is afoot. The Internet is about to change our physical space. And … Read more

Beautiful science

The BBC has an Audio slide show you might like to check out. Colourful and visually stunning – but also important in our understanding of scientific advances – the winners of this year’s Wellcome Image Awards range from a close up look at a bloody sticking-plaster, to the striking shades of a ruby-tailed wasp viewed … Read more

Bill Nye Says Nay To Anti-Evolution

The following article comes from The National Center for Science Education. In it Bill Nye, The Science Guy, has a few words to say about Creationism, here it is … Prompted by Michael B. Berkman and Eric Plutzer’s recent column in Science deploring “a pervasive reluctance of teachers to forthrightly explain evolutionary biology,” Popular Mechanics … Read more