The Times has a nice edi­to­r­i­al on The Evo­lu­tion of Cre­ation­ism, includ­ing this nice quote:

The state sci­ence stan­dards in Kansas are up for revi­sion this year, and a com­mit­tee of sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors has pro­posed stan­dards that enshrine evo­lu­tion as a cen­tral con­cept of mod­ern biol­o­gy. The ruckus comes about because a com­mit­tee minor­i­ty, led by intel­li­gent-design pro­po­nents, has issued its own pro­pos­als call­ing for more empha­sis on the lim­i­ta­tions of evo­lu­tion the­o­ry and the evi­dence sup­pos­ed­ly con­tra­dict­ing it. The minor­i­ty even seeks to change the def­i­n­i­tion of sci­ence in a way that appears to leave room for super­nat­ur­al expla­na­tions of the ori­gin and evo­lu­tion of life, not just nat­ur­al expla­na­tions, the usu­al domain of science.

The fact that all this is wild­ly inap­pro­pri­ate for a pub­lic school cur­ricu­lum does not in any way sug­gest that teach­ers are being forced to take sides against those who feel that the evo­lu­tion of human­i­ty, in one way or anoth­er, was the work of an all-pow­er­ful deity. Many empir­i­cal sci­en­tists believe just that, but also under­stand that the­o­ries about how God inter­acts with the world are beyond the scope of their discipline.

The Kansas board, which held one-sided hear­ings this month that were boy­cotted by main­stream sci­en­tists on the grounds that the out­come was pre­or­dained, is expect­ed to vote on the stan­dards this summer.

The edi­to­r­i­al page seems to under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing in Kansas bet­ter than Jodi Wilgo­ren, their reporter cov­er­ing the hear­ings. It’s the lit­tle things, but the edi­to­r­i­al takes the impli­ca­tions of Wilgo­ren’s glos­sary to its log­i­cal implication.

And that last quot­ed sen­tence is exact­ly why the boy­cott worked. No one can report on the event with­out say­ing that main­stream sci­en­tists saw the out­come as preordained.

Nice­ly done.