Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics
Professor of Astronomy
Director, Center for Education and Research
in Cosmology and Astrophysics
Best Selling Author of The Physics of Star Trek
Physics Department
Case Western Reserve University
Science Under Attack,
From the White House to the Classroom:
Public Policy, Science Education,
and the Emperor's New Clothes
Abstract
Science is currently under attack on many fronts, and scientists need to play a part in helping defend science.
The popular debate about the teaching of intelligent design in public schools presents a perplexing quandary for
scientists and policy makers. How do scientists take part in a national debate that has been essentially
manufactured by a marketing campaign to appear to be a scientific controversy, but which bears little or
no contact with the scientific enterprise? Behind much of this campaign is the notion that by leaving out
the explicit consideration of a deity in scientific explorations the scientific enterprise is itself somehow
either inconsistent or immoral. Neither is true. How should educators and policy makers respond to public
misconceptions such as this, however, when those misconceptions are held by a majority of the public? At the
same time, these developments are taking place in the context of a larger distrust of science, and efforts
by various groups to restrict the flow of information, control government access of scientists etc. I will
describe some of these problems as well, and argue that scientists need to become vocal evangelists for
science on many fronts. I will also argue that when it comes to public education as it relates to the
process and progress of science, popular opinion is an inappropriate guide for policy and pedagogy. Finally,
I shall touch on the situation in Ohio and Kansas, both the similarities and differences.
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