Good Science, Bad Science and Ugly Evolution
Lawrence Lerner is a skeptic and a retired professor of condensed matter physics. His recent report, supposedly on US State science teaching, has grabbed news headlines for its grades of all 50 state curricula. One would think that an assessment of ‘good science’ and ‘bad science’ would assess real science like physics, chemistry, experimental biology, etc., on how effectively their important concepts were learnt by the student. But no, these ‘science teaching’ grades are based solely on how favourably each state deals with biological evolution in the curriculum guide. Ten states scored ‘A’, meaning (in Lerner’s opinion) ‘Treatment of evolution is very good or excellent’; the grades drop as evolution is treated less dogmatically, while one state (Kansas) received an ‘F-’ for allegedly ‘removing all references to biological evolution’. As documented below, Lerner’s report contains much in the way of rhetoric and logical fallacies and li