Great Science Doesn’t Stand Still

“Great science doesn’t stand still. It picks up and carries ideas and findings way beyond the wildest hopes of its founders.” — Michael Ruse, one of our favorite Darwin defenders and author of the forthcoming Science and Spirituality. Get a double dose of Ruse by checking out his take on What Darwin Got Wrong [...]

What articles get shared?

The New York Times reports on a Penn-Wharton School study of what makes an article get shared most, or go “viral.” The results are surprising and refreshing. Apparently, you guys like science! Read it!>>

Science and Money

Where does the buck stop? The NYT TierneyLab looks at science and money, along with all of the attendant “conflicts of interest” between sound science and the money tied up in it. Read here >>

Seismologist on Haitian Quakes

In a Scientific American article today, author and seismologist Robert Yeats expressed sadness, but little surprise, over the devastation in Haiti. He is currently writing a book for us: Active Faults of the World.
Read the interivew here>>

Science for Science Teachers

Michael Ruse

In 1981, the State of Arkansas passed into law a bill that demanded that if evolution was taught in state-supported schools, then something called “Creation Science” — aka the book of Genesis read literally — had also to be taught. This happened during the interregnum between Bill Clinton’s first time in the governor’s mansion and when he regained it two years later. The bill was debated for all of half an hour by the legislature and signed by the then-governor, a man as unqualified for the post as he was surprised at getting it.

Obviously this law violated the First Amendment separation of church and state, and so the ACLU swung into action to get it declared unconstitutional. After a two-week trial, the federal judge ruled precisely that and so that was the end of the Arkansas “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Scient Act,” as it was called. I was one of the witnesses for the plaintiff, called in to testify on the history and philosophy of science, showing that whereas evolutionary theory is science, creation science is not science but religion.