Wichi­ta Eagle | 03/09/2005 | BOE evo­lu­tion hear­ings lack cred­i­bil­i­ty:

Intel­li­gent design pro­po­nents make what sounds like a rea­son­able request: Why not allow pub­lic dis­cus­sion and debate of alleged flaws in evo­lu­tion theory?

They charge that evo­lu­tion­ists have clamped down on diverg­ing viewpoints.

This approach sounds rea­son­able, but it’s not.

What the tiny Intel­li­gent Design Net­work and its sup­port­ers are try­ing to do is an end-run around the prop­er are­na for their claims — peer-reviewed papers in estab­lished sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals and oth­er main­stream sci­ence forums.

They’ve not suc­cess­ful­ly made their case in those forums.

Also, there is a false equiv­a­lence inher­ent in the debate for­mat — putting intel­li­gent design pro­po­nents side by side with evo­lu­tion sci­en­tists sug­gests that they have equal cred­i­bil­i­ty in the sci­en­tif­ic community.

That’s not remote­ly accurate.

Why would the state include in its sci­ence stan­dards views that aren’t shared by the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the world’s scientists?

…

Those who care about good sci­ence in our schools should join him in sit­ting out these spu­ri­ous hearings.

Sounds about right. Wichi­ta is get­ting edu­cat­ed on the issue.

Thank them for their ser­vice to the community.