In many ways, words are a scientist's enemy. They lack the precision of numbers, and their potential ambiguity makes them ill suited to describe or help predict physical phenomena. Opponents of science can also use words to confuse matters when it comes to scientific education.
In the nationwide attack on science teaching in public schools, the latest battleground is Ohio, and the newest weapon is careful wording that appears to accept evolution as the basis of our modern understanding of biology, but that at the same time appears to distinguish evolution from other pillars of modern science.
For the first time in the 77 years following the Scopes trial in Tennessee, the word "evolution" appears in the science standards proposed by Ohio's State Board of Education, meaning that public-school students will finally be guaranteed the opportunity to learn about that cornerstone of modern biology. Unfortunately, however, the specifics of the proposed language present a great danger to science education, not just in Ohio but throughout the United States.
An apparently innocuous phrase suggests that students learn "how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." On the surface, that is not an unreasonable expectation; similar language could usefully be applied to any scientific theory. However, the language appears only in the section of the standards associated with evolution. Its absence elsewhere suggests that evolutionary theory alone is the subject of controversy among scientists.
It is important to stress that there is no such controversy about evolution. In a recent electronic survey of the more than 10 million articles that have appeared in over 20 major science journals during the past 12 years, Leslie C. Lane, a biologist at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, found 115,000 articles that used the keyword "evolution," and most of those articles referred to biological evolution. "Intelligent design," often promoted by religious groups as the alternative to evolution, appeared as a keyword in 88 articles. All but 11 of those were engineering articles (where one certainly hopes that intelligent design exists); of the remaining 11, eight were critical of the scientific basis of the intelligent-design alternative in biology. The remaining three articles were not in research journals.
It is clear that evolution is as central to modern biology as Newton's laws are to physics. In fact, the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science passed a resolution in October stating that "the contemporary theory of biological evolution is one of the most robust products of scientific inquiry" (the resolution continued that the lack of evidence for the "so-called 'intelligent-design theory' makes it improper to include as part of science education"). But despite that absence of controversy, the ambiguous language in Ohio's proposed science standards gives the national movement against science education precisely the opening it wants.
In 1997, the creationist author and law professor Phillip E. Johnson explained what he called a "wedge strategy" to bring God back into the classroom: "My idea is to clear a space by legitimating the issue, by exhausting the other side, by using up all their ridicule." Part of the strategy is to avoid explicit mention of religion, but to attack the "materialism" associated with mainstream science in general, and evolution in particular. To further his goals, Johnson helped create a religious think tank, the Center for Science and Culture. (The original, more politically charged name was the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture.)
A document claiming to describe the center's mission of a "wedge strategy" lists two specific goals: "to defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies" and "to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God." It proposed beginning specific actions, including attacking science teaching in public schools, by 2003. Weekly wedge updates on the Web (see http://www.arn.org) describe progress toward achieving those goals.
Right on schedule, this year two representatives of the Center for Science and Culture, including its director, Stephen C. Meyer, appeared before Ohio's Board of Education, to debate (with me and Kenneth Miller, a biologist from Brown University) the merits of evolution versus those of intelligent design. During the debate, Meyer did not mention God or the wedge strategy. Instead, he suggested an apparent compromise that he called "teaching the controversy" -- that is, requiring teachers to discuss what he argued is a growing controversy among scientists over evolutionary theory.
Groups like Meyer's are touting Ohio's proposed language as just what they asked for. Indeed, Phillip Johnson descended on Ohio for a whirlwind tour. "Ohio is not a minor state," he told one large audience. Referring to the brief removal of evolution from the science curriculum in another state, he pointed out that "Kansas took a similar step, but it was not as well planned. And Kansas is a marginal state -- not one the Eastern establishment pays much attention to." He added that Ohio's decision "is a victory in the battle to free science classes from the grip of Charles Darwin," an Ohio newspaper reported.
If the current language about evolution remains in the final Ohio standards, the wedge strategy may succeed a year ahead of schedule. When other states next review their science standards, intelligent-design proponents would point to the Ohio language as evidence that evolution is controversial. It would then be only a short step to requesting equal time for alternatives that challenge the traditional scientific method, like intelligent design. Indeed, the statements by Johnson underscore the fact that the issue goes beyond Ohio.
The seductiveness of the wedge strategy is that it seems to be based on an appeal to fairness, which resonates particularly well in the United States. Unfortunately, however, science is not fair, and communicating that fact is a vital part of teaching what science is all about. Ideas that do not stand the test of experiment, or that make no useful predictions that can be empirically tested, are either discarded or fall by the wayside.
Nor is science democratic. Ideas are not selected by a popular vote. Some people in Ohio and elsewhere have argued that evolution should be singled out in high-school standards because of the strong public reaction to the issue. It is true that evolution pushes many popular buttons. However, it is the business of science-standards committees and state boards of education to help promote scientific literacy, based on sound scientific scholarship, and not to cave in to political, religious, or other popular pressures.
When ambiguous language muddies the water, as the language of the proposed Ohio standards does, the best solution is to remove the words. There is still time to act in Ohio. The Board of Education will make its final decision on the proposed standards in early December.
For the good of students in Ohio, and for students in other states that will soon be the focus of wedge-strategy lobbyists, one hopes that good sense will reign. If the wedge remains, then good science teaching throughout the country may be threatened by the singular power of bad language.
Lawrence M. Krauss is a professor of physics and astronomy, and chairman of the physics department, at Case Western Reserve University. His most recent book is Atom: An Odyssey From the Big Bang to Life on Earth -- and Beyond (Little, Brown, 2001).
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