A word of caution
In her recent column, Lynn Schuessler praised Dallastown High School for it's long tradition of outstanding science fair participation and lamented that Dover High School has no fair. She implied that Dover's putative lack of enthusiasm for science fairs is of a piece with its attempt to insert mention of the existence of alternatives to Darwinian evolution into the biology curriculum a couple of years ago and that their fondness for Intelligent Design and the seeming disinterest in science fairs does not bode well for the scientific literacy of Dover's students.
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What readers should understand is that the impetus for conducting a science fair comes from the school's science department, not its school board. The science department at Dover, if newspaper reports were accurate, was overwhelmingly opposed to their board's attempt to insert mention of Intelligent Design in their biology curriculum.
On the other hand, the majority of the members of the science department at Dallastown, for most of the 48 years in which they've held their fair, have been either sympathetic to ID or at least not opposed to it.
So, on the one hand we have a department comprised of many teachers sympathetic to ID sustaining for nearly half a century an activity which fosters scientific thinking and research and on the other we have a department which appeared to share Ms Schuessler's disdain for ID and which, perhaps for very good reasons, chooses not to have a fair.
This is in no way intended as a criticism of Dover's science department, which I'm sure is excellent. Rather, it's intended as a word of caution not to think that support for ID somehow signals a contempt for science, or is a symptom of science illiteracy.
Richard L. Cleary
Dallastown
Bravo. Thanks for this reminder....so many writers have this presumption that those who are interested or supportive of the ID research program and the philosophy of science questions that hover around that, are not good scientists. It is ill-informed at best, bigotry at worst. You've made a good point here, that interest in ID does not necessarily entail a contempt for good science.
Here's what the Lehigh colleagues of ID proponent and the Dover School Board's expert witness Professor William Behe have to say:
www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/news/evolution.htm
Department Position on Evolution and "Intelligent Design"
The faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences is committed to the highest standards of scientific integrity and academic function. This commitment carries with it unwavering support for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. It also demands the utmost respect for the scientific method, integrity in the conduct of research, and recognition that the validity of any scientific model comes only as a result of rational hypothesis testing, sound experimentation, and findings that can be replicated by others.
The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of "intelligent design." While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific.
Oops! William Behe was a classmate of mine. Michael Behe is the professor who would be run off South Mountain if he weren't tenured.
Well, Jeff, if you're right when you say that "Michael Behe is the professor who would be run off South Mountain if he weren't tenured." it pretty much makes this claim by the Lehigh science faculty - "This commitment carries with it unwavering support for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas" - an exercise in hypocritical mendacity, doesn't it.
If Professor Behe were not tenured, he would be likely be dismissed from the Biology faculty for his unscientific embrace of the essentially religious or philosophical doctrine of ID, which was not created by scientists but by right-wingers who used it as a "wedge issue" for political purposes. His real scientific work in cell biology is what makes him credible, but his whoring for the ID ideologues is what makes him incredible.