Preventing Children From Hearing The Controversies Over Evolution

by tristero

It’s true, and I’m not joking. I mean it. There are scientifically valid controversies over evolution . Furthermore, scientists believe these controversies shouldn’t be taught to students! Again, I am not making this up. From the article:

Is there room for the real controversies in the classroom of public schools? Maybe, but I’m not in any way convinced.

And he’s not alone. Here’s the well-respected evolution-promoter, PZ Myers

One other point Timmer brings up at the end: should the real scientific controversies be part of the public high school curriculum? He thinks not, and I agree…

Apparently, they think they can keep the controversial truth hidden. But I will not let them! Here, from John Timmer’s article, is one of those “real” evolution controversies they, in their infinite wisdom, wish our children never to hear:

There, researchers argued over a variety of topics, starting with the very beginning, namely the relationship among the three main branches of life.

Russ Doolittle presented an analysis based on individual folds in proteins that clearly resolved the Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes, while a distant relative, Ford Doolittle, argued that the prevalence of horizontal gene transfer at the bacterial level made any such trees questionable, or at best uninformative. Meanwhile, Thomas Cavalier-Smith argued forcefully that gene-based trees miss out on significant evolutionary events, such as the transition that gave the Archaea a radically different membrane chemistry. Almost anyone who touched on the subject (and there were several speakers that did) gave a confused picture of what the genome of a Eukaryote looked like before it first took a mitochondrion on board.

These are areas of real controversy…

Our children deserve to know the truth. Who cares if they don’t know enough biology to know what “individual folds in proteins” could possibly mean? How difficult is to understand what a protein fold is? It’s just like origami, like we used to do in 3rd grade, right? Our high schoolers are perfectly capable of getting it. And they also need to know about this “very real controversy” in evolution so they can express their opinion about it and feel good, even if they haven’t a clue what horizontal gene transfer could be.

Just as they are capable of noticing the huge whopper of a mistake all these so-called experts are making. Trees are plants, and bacteria are not. Of course the trees are “questionable!” A two year old could figure that one out but somehow it got past all these so-called big brains. It wouldn’t get past your typical tenth – ok, typical eleventh grader, believe you me.

And that is another problem with hiding controversies, my friends. These researchers stand to benefit from a high school student’s insight into their problem, insight they can’t get today. Clearly, depriving science of opportunities to discuss controversies slows down its inexorable progress towards Truth.

Teach the controversy, scientists! Stop trying to hide it.