Australian research suggests that smoking causes depression. A politically incorrect research study would be titled: depression as a cause for smoking. I don’t suppose there are any research dollars available to support that presupposition? With research funding controlled by various lobby groups, it seems doubtful.
As reported by the Austin American Statesman and Texas Freedom Network, the religous right have nominated several evolution deniers to a curriculum review panel.
“It’s simply stunning that any state board members would even consider appointing authors of an anti-evolution textbook to a panel of scientists,” she said. “Are they coming here to help write good science standards or to drum up a market for their lousy textbook?”
The textbook, Explore Evolution, is intended for secondary schools and colleges, according to its U.S. distributor, the anti-evolution Discovery Institute in Seattle. Because of that, the State Board of Education could consider it for the state’s approved list of science textbooks in 2011.
The decisions made by the curriculum review panel may well affect what is taught to our daughter in biology class here in Texas.
According to the Pastafarianism belief system there is an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster, who created the entire universe “after drinking heavily.” The Monster’s intoxication was supposedly the cause for a flawed earth. According to The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster global warming is due to a lack of pirates.
In the interest of “balanced” education, the Texas Board of Education should also incorporate Spaghetti Monster beliefs into science and social studies classes.
New legal threat to teaching evolution in the US
…The new legislation is the latest manoeuvre in a long-running war to challenge the validity of Darwinian evolution as an accepted scientific fact in American classrooms…
…The act is designed to slip ID in “through the back door”, says Forrest, who is a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University and an expert in the history of creationism. She adds that the bill’s language, which names evolution along with global warming, the origins of life and human cloning as worthy of “open and objective discussion”, is an attempt to misrepresent evolution as scientifically controversial…
Slashdot: Louisiana Passes Intelligent Design Law
Young Australian Skeptics