How to handle creationism (British style)

The UK Education Minister has the right idea. After the pseudoscientific group “‘Truth’ in Science” mailed out teaching plans for creationism to schools in England, it took them a while, but the government has now spoken out loudly and clearly against their nonsense.

The government has already stated that the Truth in Science materials should not be used in science lessons. On November 1, the education minister, Jim Knight, wrote: “Neither intelligent design nor creationism are recognised scientific theories and they are not included in the science curriculum. The Truth in Science information pack is therefore not an appropriate resource to support the science curriculum.” The Department for Education said it was working with the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the public body that oversees the national curriculum, to communicate this message directly to schools.

It really is that simple.

Sean Henry, this one is for you

The angry young anti-evolutionist who made that ill-informed video has been complaining in the comments about how rude we all are, and saying that he’s got other, more substantive gripes about evolution that he hasn’t told us about yet.

Well, here’s his chance. Mr Henry can instruct us in what he considers the most damning evidence against evolution, and you all can correct him in an informative, constructive fashion.

I will be enforcing very strict commenting rules here. Be polite or your comments will be axed on sight. No complaining, either; give the young gentleman a chance to state his position. We’ll see if he can put together a coherent argument.

(I am serious, people. Shut your gobs unless you’ve got something instructive to say.)

Minnesota on our minds

Hmmm…there are a couple of regional links that have popped up recently.

The science is in: the Tripoli Six are innocent

Go read Effect Measure on the recent events in the case of the Tripoli Six. This is the story of a team of health care workers who were blamed for an outbreak of HIV among young patients at a Libyan hospital—they’ve been tried in a kangaroo court and face very unpleasant prospects.

Now, in a powerful reply to the Libyan accusations, Nature has published the results of a detailed analysis of the viruses afflicting the children, and the story is clear: the cause of the outbreak was the poor hygiene present at the hospital before the six workers arrived. Here are the major conclusions of the paper:

In 1998, outbreaks of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection were reported in children attending Al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi, Libya. Here we use molecular phylogenetic techniques to analyse new virus sequences from these outbreaks. We find that the HIV-1 and HCV strains were already circulating and prevalent in this hospital and its environs before the arrival in March 1998 of the foreign medical staff (five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor) who stand accused of transmitting the HIV strain to the children.

The strains present were also traceable to North Africa and at least one was prevalent in Egypt. They also found that the timing was off: the outbreak had begun before the workers had arrived.

We found that, irrespective of which model was used, the estimated date of the most common recent ancestor for each cluster pre-dated March 1998, sometimes by many years. In most analyses, the probability that the clusters from the Al-Fateh Hospital originated after that time was almost zero. For the three HCV clusters, the percentage of lineages already present before March 1998 was about 70%; the equivalent percentage for the HIV-1 cluster was estimated at about 40%.

Apparently, the scientific evidence which would have exonerated the accused was not allowed in the court. The Gaddafi government continues to live up to its reputation.

Just what we needed…

Hey, Minnesotans—anyone want to tune in to KKMS Christian radio right now? I’m about to be tied up in class stuff for a while, so I’ll say more later—it seems we have a new creationist group mobilizing in the state.

I caught a few bits of the radio show (that hurt—it’s a fundagelical radio station), and I’ve also heard from a few readers. There is apparently a billboard in a very prominent place at 12th and Washington along 35W, the freeway that cuts through the center of Minneapolis. This, apparently, is the whole raison d’etre for the organization, to throw up billboards. The founder of the group, Julie Haberle, says God talked to her and told her she needs to do billboards to refute evolution. These billboards just direct people to her website, which she explains she built by taking snippets from Ken Ham and others and putting them together—it shows. There’s nothing there but the tired old creationist nonsense we’ve seen so often.

There is quote mining, lots and lots of quote mining. There are also flatly wrong assertions from “five time Nobel nominee” Henry “Fritz” Schaeffer, Behe, Phillip Johnson, and other DI figureheads. The creationist crap is straight from the bunghole of Answers in Genesis, and it’s all garbage.

One other curious thing about the website is that every page has a nautilus shell logo on it…which reminded me of a certain other site. I suspect there is some aping of the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education going on, although of course they are doing so poorly.

The question I have about all this is where the money is coming from—billboards aren’t cheap, especially in such prime locations. She didn’t say. She said they were an official non-profit, they received donations, and that the billboard companies had given them a very good deal, and she specifically mentioned Clear Channel as being very helpful, and that their media exposure is completely free. She also said she hopes to build this little anti-evolution organization up, and then pass it on to someone like D. James Kennedy or James Dobson.

Most of her radio conversation was rampant idiocy. Would you believe Answers in Genesis is very technical, so she had to dumb down their material for the website? That there are no “transitory fossils”? That because we haven’t grown wings, evolution didn’t happen? Hey, if that doesn’t persuade you, why are fish still trying to get out of the water? And why are there still monkeys?

Really. She said that. I had no idea fish were trying to get out of the water.

One reader wrote in to tell me that this woman is “scary stupid”. I have to agree.

One measure of the dishonest depths to which creationists will sink is their willingness to put words in the mouths of dead men. Haberle claimed that Carl Sagan knew the “mathematical statistics” were against life appearing on earth and that’s why he was looking for life on other planets—because he was sure that’s where we had to come from, since it was impossible for us to have evolved.

She lied.

Why don’t we ask Carl to tell us what he thinks? It’ll help wash away the unsavory taste of those freakish cretins, too.

Another day, another ignorant pundit

Today, it’s Peter Hitchens’ turn to make a mealy-mouthed appeal for an unearned respect for Intelligent Design creationism. This one is another generic whine, begging that people be fair and give some version of equal time to an underdog heterodoxy…creationism. After all, the only possible reason scientists could accept the idea of evolution is because they’ve mysteriously and unfairly acquired a dominant position, and this brand of pundit doesn’t stop to consider why it’s so popular. I think it’s a kind of projection: they’ve acquired this unearned position of authority, so they can’t imagine that any other idea could have gotten to where it is on merit.

[Read more…]

Oooh, shiny

The 2006 Weblog Awards

I get a badge!

There’s a bit of chagrin involved in being nominated for one of these Weblog Awards, since if you look at the finalists in “Best Blog”, you’ll see Malkin, LGF, Power Line, InstaPundit, and The Corner listed…you have to figure, whoa, standards are awfully low here.

However, I am not nominated for Best Blog! I am in the Best Science Blog category. This makes me feel much better, because my fellow nominees are all a fine bunch of deserving people.

Pharyngula
John Hawks Anthropology Weblog
RealClimate
Deltoid
Good Math, Bad Math
Mixing Memory
The Panda’s Thumb
In the Pipeline
Bad Astronomy Blog
SciGuy

The next hurdle is the voting, which starts tomorrow. They’ve got a strange voting scheme over there, in which you get to vote every day or something, so it may still end up weird, and who knows, Michelle Malkin might win my category anyway.