The Science Times section of today's (Sept 3) New York Times has a wonderful three-column article about Dr Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), which for over a quarter century has been on the front lines defending public school biology education and fending off the fundamentalist creationists. The NCSE this year has added defending climate science to its agenda. Scott is a long time member of ARL's national advisory board.
ARL has long been involved in the fight to defend the inclusion of evolution in public school biology teachng. It was ARL that came up with the idea of getting Nobel laureate scientists to sign an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court in the 1987 Louisiana creationism case, Edwards v Aguillard. We had 72 laureates on the brief. The following year we repeated the strategy in a Missouri abortion rights case, Webster v Reproductive Health Services, when we hastily got 12 Nobel laureates in biology (including DNA co-discovered Francis Crick) and 155 other distinguished scientists to sign an amicus brief showing that human personhood made no sense until after 28-32 weeks of gestation.
Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty (arlinc.org)
No comments:
Post a Comment