I strongly disagree with Gregg. This is about public education in the broad sense, and not solely the education of students. It seems to me that there is a deliberate effort by creationists to spread misinformation and disinformation about evolution, both in print and on the web, in order to influence not just students but also potential voters. Their intent is to alter the way that science is perceived by the public as a whole, and thereby to achieve their goal of undermining and then supplanting valid scientific theories with their own hand-picked alternatives. This is unfortunately becoming a clash between faith and reason which is counter-productive and does not need to occur.
Please be aware that the Catholic Church is about to discuss the issue of evolution, and that a vocal Cardinal has already begun to lambast what he calls scientism; see the 31 August article on this issue in the NY Times. Val Smith University of Kansas >Approved-By: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/10.1.4.030702.0 >Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 07:56:08 -0700 >Reply-To: Gregg Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sender: "Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news" ><[email protected]> >From: Gregg Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Re: Google and peppered moths >X-To: Leslie Mertz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: [email protected] >List-Help: <http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?LIST=ECOLOG-L>, > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ECOLOG-L> >List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >List-Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >List-Owner: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >List-Archive: <http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?LIST=ECOLOG-L> >X-Bayes-Prob: 0.5000 (Score 0) >X-Spam-Score: 0.00 () [Tag at 3.80] >X-CanItPRO-Stream: default >X-Canit-Stats-ID: 83146102 - 506ddb81b018 >X-Scanned-By: CanIt (www . roaringpenguin . com) on 129.237.35.132 >X-OriginalArrivalTime: 01 Sep 2006 15:18:57.0379 (UTC) >FILETIME=[F1BADB30:01C6CDD9] > >Better to teach the students to think. Better to teach the students to >critically analyze. Better to teach the students science. Then there would >be no need to build hundreds of web pages, print thousands of articles. > >Gregg Miller > >On 9/1/06 6:07 AM, "Leslie Mertz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Something is wrong here. When I typed "peppered moths" into Google, > > up popped a listing of pages claiming to expose the famed study as > > faulty science. Anyone with an understanding of natural selection and > > evolution can quickly see through the pages' creationist > > underpinnings and find the myriad mistakes in their claims. To the > > many people who are still forming opinions about the topics, however, > > the sheer number of these web pages -- even though they are mainly > > repeats of the same purposely erroneous information -- may lead them > > to the wrong conclusion. This includes college students, who will > > "google" just about anything and everything. Perhaps we need to use > > the same tactics to ensure that the scientifically accurate story is > > told. > > > > ======================= > > Leslie Mertz, Ph.D. > > educator > > Wayne State University Val H. Smith Professor Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Kansas Lawrence, KS 66045 785-864-4565 FAX: 785-864-5321 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
