Last night: “Science should be taught in science class.”—Sarah Palin

August 2005: “Science class is for science”—The Education Gadfly

Some are pushing for the government to apply Title IX to science education. John Tierney wrote on Tuesday an article about this; he offers more on his blog.

You’ll find sweeping assertions of discrimination in academia against female scientists if you read the executive summary of the National Academy of Sciences’ 2006 report, which was issued by a committee led by Donna Shalala. But if you look in the report for evidence of bias, you find studies showing that female graduate students in general (and those without children in particular) are as likely as men to finish their studies, and that they’re as likely to have mentors and assistantship support.

Brian Greene, a Columbia professor who wrote two top-selling popularizations of physics, pens a passionate call for American students to rekindle their love affair with science in Sunday’s New York Times.

Update: Wow—it’s currently the most emailed article on nytimes.com. Must have hit a nerve.

Kudos to Bill Nye the Science Guy—perhaps the nation’s best-known and most effective science teacher—for putting his green lessons into action. According to yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, he lives in a “retrofitted, eco-friendly, 1,300-square-foot, 1939 stucco home in Los Angeles.” (And, of course, he drives a Prius and rides his bike a lot.)

This isn’t a comment on the politics of environmentalism—though Fordham will be celebrating Earth Day tomorrow—but on teachers being good role models. Because it’s great when history teachers love to visit historical sites; when English teachers devour the latest National Book Award winners; when drivers ed teachers don’t drink and drive; when civic teachers... vote. You get the idea. Let’s face it: there’s almost nothing more discouraging than a gym teacher with a beer gut. So to Bill Nye, we say: this Bud’s for you.

The Discovery Institute’s David Klinghoffer defends the link—made by the new Ben Stein movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—between Nazis and Darwinism. I wish I could write on this with more authority, but the D.C. advanced screening of Expelled was canceled.

I just don’t get it, though. Klinghoffer’s piece points out how Hitler used evolution and Darwinism in his propaganda and his personal thought. But nowhere does Klinghoffer discuss why inclusion of such historical instances is at all appropriate in a film that purports to investigate how evolution is taught in modern-day American science classes.

I think it’s safe to say that Expelled is inaccurately juxtaposing Nazis with those who defend teaching evolution in public schools. The New York Times reviewer wrote that Expelled is “[o]ne of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time,” and I’m inclined to believe her.

Today, on Morning Edition, NPR profiled 16-year-old Kristen Byrnes, who doesn’t believe that global warming is caused by humans. Her website (”the official site of the Kristen Byrnes Science Foundation”) is available here. NPR reported that Kristen is getting a lot of publicity for her efforts; she has even received a letter from Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

“Dear Kristen,” the letter begins. “Thank you so much for your letter and e-mail and for your kind words. I appreciate your help in the fight against global warming alarmism. You are a common sense young lady and an inspiration to me. I want you to keep up the good work. We are winning.”

Dear Senator Inhofe: Please stop encouraging ambitious but scientifically clueless young people like Kristen Byrnes to blindly challenge the authority of those who have spent decades researching the minutiae of climate change. We already have enough trouble from senators. We appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

The logistical problems with the “Academic Freedom Act,” which is traipsing merrily through the Florida legislature, are legion. The pope’s U.S. visit highlights the logical difficulties that accompany the logistical ones, most prominent among them the continued inability of many to distinguish between the realms of science and religion.

The “intelligent design” proponents (who, by the way, love Florida’s Academic Freedom bill) receive the most press coverage for trying to slip religion and philosophy into science’s corridors. But those on the opposite side, people such as Richard Dawkins, have been just as vocal in their promotion of science as dispositive—i.e., the final, universal theory of all reality. Dawkins, an Oxford scientist, has written that, because of Darwin, religion “is now completely superseded by science.” His notion is true if he’s speaking about, for example, k-12 science standards or science curricula. He wasn’t, though.

Benedict XVI could bring some sanity and clarity to the evolution debate that has so roiled school districts across the United States. To do injustice to his thought by paring it down to its barest form, Benedict (like his predecessor) believes that scientific evidence for evolution is convincing, but that it does not contain the answers to life’s deeper questions. He believes that religion and science are different and separate, and that each can best inform the other when their distinctions are respected.

To bring it back to k-12, science teachers should teach the scientific consensus on evolution without worrying about academic freedom acts that encourage them to muddle the minds of their charges by inserting all types of vague “challenges” to evolutionary theory into their lessons. And science should acknowledge that its impressive discoveries are nonetheless limited, that they do not give us an overarching theory of existence or living.

That such a transparently logical approach is always, it seems, under attack leaves one nonplussed. Perhaps a few papal words on the matter this week would help.

Periodically, a new album from DBLF Studios, features 119 songs, one for each of the elements on the periodic table, as well as a bonus track called “DBLFesium.” And yes, each song is actually about the element it’s named after. For instance, here’s a sampling of the lyrics from track no. 16, “Sulphur”:

The lake of fire, yep that’s me
I’m what gives the yellow to your pee
As an explosive I’m no conservative
I’m wine and fruit’s preservative
Metastable but I rapidly crystallize
I give the colors to Jupiter’s skies
Naturally found in volcanic eruptions
Stable in polymer chain constructions

Listen to samples, read the lyrics, and order the CD/MP3s here.