Creationism, homeschooling and the expansion of ignorance (with an extended prefatory riff on the Conservapedia-Lenski affair)
Posted by 3Dsound at Monday, July 07, 2008 6:40 AM and is filed under Curriculum,Education,Andrew Schlafly,Evolution,Conservapedia,Richard Lenski,christian fundamentalism,war on science,Creationism 
Fundamentalism
No intelligence allowed: Melissa Nann Burke (16-May-08), Home-schoolers learn to argue against evolution [article available for sale online], York Daily Record [York, Pennsylvania] (accessed from Google cache on 05-
Dr. Richard Lenski is a Distinguished Professor of microbial ecology at Michigan State University and a Fellow of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He recently served as the senior author on a paper reporting on evolution in a bacterium. That paper riled the creationist sensitivities of Andrew Schlafly and his followers at the Conservapedia, who generated a stir about the paper and about Richard Lenski himself, which has been reported widely and which I've written about here.
What I see as shocking in the Conservapedia's challenge to Lenski's research is the superficiality of the Conservapedia critique; the Conservapedia's bad-faith disinterest in evidence, argument, and scientific research and publication standards that counter the Conservapedia's critique; the Conservapedia's casual denigration of Lenski personally; and the Conservapedia's apparent intent to escalate the confrontation.
It's a confrontation fanned by many Conservapedia contributors. The following quotations are a sample from what's been said on the four wiki "talk" pages, where Conservapedia contributors have discussed Lenski and his paper:
Conservapedia Talk: Main Page
•"Incredibly rude to Andy. Lenski is another liberal scientist who forgets that our taxes fund his research [regarding Lenski's second response to Andrew Schlafly]" Goodman 23:14, 24 June 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Main Page, accessed 07-Jul-08]
•"The average length of peer review for PNAS, based on a sample, is over 120 days. Yet Lenski's paper was accepted after no more than 14 days in peer review. That sharp contrast speaks volumes about the bias in the so-called peer review process at PNAS." Aschlafly 19:32, 28 June 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Main Page, accessed 07-Jul-08]
Conservapedia Talk: Lenski Dialog/archive 1
•"You really go out of your way to defend a guy who's clearly a fraudulent hack. Even if he released his so called "raw data" it would just be a huge load of numbers no one is going to take the time to analyze. If it took him years and years to do this experiment he can be pretty sure no one is going to waste that much time trying to replicate it, so everyone can assume he's right and the atheist Darwinists can pretend they've proved evolution, even when we know it's impossible. Do you believe everything you read? If someone claimed they had a mountain of evidence that Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster had a baby, I suppose you'd believe that too if it were published somewhere?" TonyT 14:36, 15 June 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Lenski Dialog/archive1, accessed 07-Jul-08] •"Prof. Lenski claims that these bacteria "evolved" novel traits and that these were preceded by the evolution of "potentiated genotypes", from which the traits could be "reëvolved" using preserved colonies from those generations. But how are we to know if these traits weren't "potentiated" by the Creator when He designed the bacteria thousands of years ago, such that they would eventually reveal themselves when the time was right? The only way this can be settled is if we have access to the genetic sequences of the bacteria colonies so that we can apply CSI techniques and determine if these "potentiated genotypes" originated through blind chance or intelligence. But with the physical specimens in the hands of Darwinists, who claim they will get around to the sequencing at some unspecifed future time, how can we trust that this data will be forthcoming and forthright? Thus, Prof. Lenski et al. should supply Conservapedia, as stewards, with samples of the preserved E. coli colonies so that the data can be accessible to unbiased researchers outside of the hegemony of the Darwinian academia, even if it won't be put to immediate examination by Mr. Schlafly. This is simply about keeping tax-payer-funded scientists honest." Dr. Richard Paley 20:03, 18 June 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Lenski Dialog/archive1, accessed 07-Jul-08]
•"Only by allowing unbiased conservative scientists access to samples of the bacteria colonies can we assure that we aren't witnessing another Piltdown hoax, as the Darwinian community has a reputation for perpetrating them." Dr. Richard Paley 10:50, 19 June 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Lenski Dialog/archive1, accessed 07-Jul-08]
•"[Y]ou're engaging in bullying if you maintain that Lenski plans to release his raw data soon for independent, public review. I asked him last Friday to release it, and his reply declined to do so. I asked him again yesterday, and he predictably has not replied. It now seems to me to be likely that the peer reviewers for his paper did not even see the raw data. I think it's likely that only Lenski and his grad student have seen the raw data underlying that paper (note its footnote). Don't pretend that Lenski welcomes independent review of the data." Aschlafly 15:15, 19 June 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Lenski Dialog/archive1, accessed 07-Jul-08]
•"It's unscientific for others to repeat as true an unverified claim based on concealed data. I wonder if PNAS violated its own stated policies by publishing Lenski's paper, and I'm going to email its Editor-in-Chief to request an explanation." Aschlafly 11:19, 20 June 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Lenski Dialog/archive1, accessed 07-Jul-08]
Conservapedia Talk: Lenski Dialog
•"Unfortunately, there are essentially no real scientists left. Peer review is almost never done with the amount of scrutiny Aschlafly discusses. Reviewers, even for journals with long submission-to-publication times, do not request the original data. When original data are requested, it is by researchers who want to continue the work and write publications of their own on the subject. There just aren't incentives to do thorough reviews... Most professors are self-centered, and would see true peer review as impinging on their personal freedom. "Who has time," they think, "to transcribe lab notebooks? I've got more papers to publish!" I bet the majority would even resist your request to Lenski. This liberal attitude towards truth is what leads to claptrap like Particle/wave duality theory and the theory of cosmic microwave background radiation." Drochld 09:19, 28 June 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Lenski Dialog, accessed 07-Jul-08]
•"People withhold data from public scrutiny for one obvious reason: to prevent the public (including experts) from scrutinizing their work. Feigning offense has nothing to do with it." Aschlafly 09:53, 1 July 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Lenski Dialog, accessed 07-Jul-08]
•"We've been extremely specific about which data are being withheld. See Richard Lenski. And I found Lenski to be quite clear that he's not going to release his underlying data for public review, even though it was publicly funded. Perhaps you think Lenski is perfect and there is no chance of flaws in his work that the public might discover when the underlying data are released, but such a position is obviously absurd." Aschlafly 09:35, 3 July 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Lenski Dialog, accessed 07-Jul-08]
Conservapedia Talk: Richard Lenski
•"I added additional bibliographic information about Lenski's professional awards and they are reversed as 'meaningless edits'?" Argon 13:43, 30 June 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Richard Lenski, accessed 07-Jul-08]I have to wonder where such a reflexively adversarial view of science and scientists comes from. And frankly, I truly don't know. But one of the ways it's maintained is through homeschooling.
•"Is Lenski an actual professor? I know there are plenty of people who exaggerate their status and pretend they're something they're not. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he's one of them, given what we know of him so far. Have we seen his credentials?" TonyT 08:26, 1 July 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Richard Lenski, accessed 07-Jul-08]
•"Can we be more clear about 'data' and 'samples'? The point is whether anyone but his cronies has tried to replicate his results, or even to check whether his data and methods are sound. Peer review is not enough; that just means his article is worth publication; it doesn't mean he has discovered something which now automatically goes into the standard biology textbooks." Ed Poor 16:17, 2 July 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Richard Lenski, accessed 07-Jul-08]
•"It's clear to me that Lenski won't release his data to anyone independent. I'm not even sure Lenski has any meaningful data to support his claims." Aschlafly 16:27, 2 July 2008 (EDT) [Talk:Richard Lenski, accessed 07-Jul-08]
You know homeschooling: it's the choice in education for fundamentalist conservatives who aren't able to set-up their own publicly-funded charter school. Such advocates of homeschooling often make large statements about the deficiencies, limitations and agendas in the public-education system, but then they pat themselves on the back, when they establish schooling arrangements that doggedly embody a fundamentalist set of biases.
I'm being hard on fundamentalist homeschoolers because they do their children no favor, when they supplant science for creationism. That was the verdict of Judge Jones in the famous evolution case from 2005, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. (For an excellent, multi-part overview of that case, see the Sensuous Curmudgeon and the Curmudgeon’s first article in the series Kitzmiller v. Dover: Is ID science? – published June 23, 2008.)
To understand one of the ways that homeschoolers instill science illiteracy (and hostility towards science and scientists) in their children, I've referenced, above, and reproduced below (with highlighting) a news report profilling the work of Mike Snavely of Jonestown, Pennsylvania. Snavely's work includes the presentation of a creationist seminar to homeschooled kids and Christianist audiences.
Andrew Schlafly is known to be an advocate of and a participant in homeschooling, but to my knowledge, Snavely is not affiliated wtih Shlafly or with the Conservapedia.
Snavely doesn't have training in biology or in any other field of science, but he does have a degree from a Bible college, and he claims to have spoken with specialists in evolution and to have read books about it. Based on that limited exposure to evolution information, Snavely preaches to kids on the arguments they can use in opposing evolution science. Snavely has also written a textbook for use by homeschoolers, Creation or Evolution: A Home-Study Curriculum. I haven't seen the book, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't direct kids to Talk Origins.
Predictably, Snavely's anti-science preaching leaves the kids who are exposed to it confused, as evidenced by one eighth-grader, who the news report quotes as saying, "I've always looked at evolution skeptically... Creation is probably one of the most attacked parts of our faith and that's the basis of all life. If you can be able to defend how life started and know it's true, that's pretty powerful." When you lack the ability to distinguish between faith and reason, the Lenski affair – and spectacles of ignorance like it – become inevitable.
Home-schoolers Learn to Argue Against Evolution
About 13 percent of Americans say they believe in evolution, and 11-year-old Nathan Tasker was feeling ready to take them on last week.
He attended a seminar at the convention of the Christian Homeschool Association of Pennsylvania that taught him how to defend his belief in biblical creation and Noah's flood.
While his and other home-schoolers' parents shopped for curricula and sat in workshops, he and 200 other home-schoolers heard a lecture critiquing the evidence for evolution.
Convention organizers said parents could use the seminar to count as instructional hours under state home-schooling standards.
"I'm one of the kind of people that likes facts," said Nathan, a fifth-grader who is home schooled in Conewago Township, Adams County.
"I like seeing all the evidence, like the different layers (of sedimentary rock) caused by the flood."
The presenter, Mike Snavely of Jonestown, Lebanon County, drew the rapt attention of the teens and preteens at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg.
"People say, 'I don't believe in evolution.' But they don't know why," Snavely said in an interview. "They ask me how to answer a co-worker who says we evolved through random mutations."
Snavely's seminar arms them with answers, he said.
He questions the significance of the fossil record and observations of natural selection, which scientists say support Darwin's theory that life on Earth evolved from a common ancestor more than 4 billion years.
Evolutionary scientists say there are no credible scientific critiques of evolution – no more than there are credible alternatives to the theory of gravity. While its details are debated, evolution is unassailable in scientific circles.
The American public thinks differently. Gallup polls have shown nearly half of U.S. adults don't believe evolution, and a third are unhappy schools teach it.
Conservative Christians who reject evolution have tried over the last decade to push alternatives to evolution into the curricula or remove it entirely.
Dover Area school board officials lost a court battle in 2005 over their attempt to introduce ninth-grade students to an alternative to evolution. A federal judge said intelligent design was a religious idea that may not be mentioned in public-school classrooms.
Snavely has a Bible college degree but no formal training in the sciences. (Creation is not science, he said.) Since the mid-1990s, he's presented his seminars at churches, Christian schools, summer camps and military bases.
He said he learned what he knows from talking with experts, some of whom belong to the small camp of scientists who find evolution implausible.
Snavely spent an hour Friday explaining his skepticism for the basics of evolution. He read from a biology textbook and highlighted the verbs and qualifiers that he said cast doubt on Darwin's theory.
"'Most scientists today believe that life could have risen from non-living matter,'" he read.
"One of the things that galls me about evolution is not just that it's taught but that it's taught as fact. Look at these words: 'may have,' 'could have,' 'probably,' 'possibly.' Do these sound like knowledge words? No, they sound like guessing words."
Science is among 14-year-old Hannah Bernhart's favorite classes. Before Snavely's seminar, she had already studied evolution to better understand what "our opponents" believe, said the ninth-grader from Elizabethtown.
She knows some Christians view the Bible differently and accept evolution. That's confusing to her because the Bible clearly says God created man in his present form, she said.
"I believe the reason most people believe in evolution is they don't want to believe the Bible," she said.
Eighth-grader Nate Brown, 14, of Gardners, Adams County, shook his head in disgust as Snavely explained the many questions evolutionary scientists can't answer about how life began.
"I've always looked at evolution skeptically," Nate said.
"Creation is probably one of the most attacked parts of our faith and that's the basis of all life. If you can be able to defend how life started and know it's true, that's pretty powerful."
Well, the fact is that Schalfly is foaming at the mouth crazy as are some others at Conservapedia. Richard Lenski's final reply clearly put Andy's fragile pride in jeopardy and he's been on a quest to find anything disparaging to say about Richard. If you check the page histories, you'll see that my mention that Lenski was elected to the National Academy of Sciences or had twice earned paper of the year awards were quickly removed. Sometimes the reason cited was "to remove liberal bias" or to remove honors given with political motivation (NAS memberships? MacArthur 'Genius' Grants?).
At this point, you can see in the talk dialogs that Andy no longer discusses or even tries to support his hyperbolic claims. Nope. Now, anyone who objects simply can't see the 'truth' which, Andy says is a pity because they must not have open minds. He writes:
"Gerlach, the most obvious lesson from this page is how a few, yourself included, seem determined to defend a flawed paper no matter what the truth brings. You have free will to reject whatever you want, but you're only hurting yourself by that approach. People who do open their minds are amazed by the insights and happiness it brings.--Aschlafly 21:54, 16 July 2008 (EDT)"
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Our credentials -- whether they are elevated, like Lenski's, or more modest -- provide a snapshot of who we are. They merit inclusion in a biography. That the Conservapedia fights against such inclusion tells us what we know -- that the Conservapedia operates by its own, partisan rules.
Argon, as a participant in the Lenski dialogue, what do you see as the next step in this affair?
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I appreciate that you identify my as a participant rather than a contributor to that Wiki, particularly because almost all my edits to the main pages have been undone. In addition to deletions of Lenksi's professional accomplishments, another section that was removed referred to Schlafly's claim that Lenski didn't provide information about the concentration of glucose used in the cultures. When I pointed out that this information was not only available on Lenski's web pages but also clearly described *on the very first page of the actual paper*, that section was quietly removed by Andy with the note that said something like "least important point removed for clarity".
I think this dust-up has just about played itself out. For the near future, I will likely encourage Andy to broadcast his perceived truths as broadly as possible. I'd also recommend he mail any letters to the PNAS journal under the Conservapedia and Eagle Forum letterhead. It's important that we correct organizations get full credit for their work. Then I'll go on vacation, maybe catch a fish or two, and hopefully by the time I get back there will even more fun things to read. I find it fascinating to review Lenski's second reply to Andy, and see how determined Schlafly appears to prove Lenksi's predictions, almost to the letter.
As an aside: I do agree that some homeschooling curriculums promote really peculiar and flat-out wrong ideas. But not all. Many homeschoolers do not fall into the "fundamentalists with fragile worldview" pattern and these others can do a good job of teaching their kids.
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I'm dubious of homeschooling's merit, aside from cases of unusual logistics (illness, rural location).
My post refers to certain fundamentalists. But in reality, the notion of a suburban family choosing to homeschool their child strikes me as indulgent and unjustified.
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I believe that the percentage of Americans who attend public school, as opposed to private school or homeschool, is around ninety percent. Yet almost half of American adults believe in creationism, according to Gallup. Presumably, most of these adults are products of the public school system. That fact alone strikes me as sufficient justification for homeschooling.
Homeschooling is one of these topics that everyone likes to bat around without really knowing much about it--oh, those homeschoolers are so ignorant/isolationist/elitist/etc.
According to a 1999 U.S. Department of Education report, only 38% of homeschooling parents listed religion as one of their reasons for homeschooling. I suspect that percentage is even smaller today, as homeschooling has become increasingly mainstream. According to that same report, only 17% of homeschooled children came from families with an income over $75,000 (as compared with 19% of mainstream schoolchildren).
Homeschoolers pay taxes to support the public school system, yet they consume none of its resources. The homeschoolers I know--several of whom are former public school teachers-- are committed to producing thoughtful, well-educated, responsible citizens who play well with others (my homeschool group includes about 200 families, or 400 children).
Good sources for the (non-fundamentalist) justifications for homeschooling include John Taylor Gatto's "Dumbing Us Down," David Guterson's "Family Matters," and the books of John Holt and David Albert.
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Thanks, Liz, for taking the time to share your first-hand experience.
My article focused on the religiously motivated homeschooler, rather than on the entire homeschooling population. And I stand by my critique of those with a religious motivation.
Having said that, you are correct to infer that I am dubious of homeschooling's rationales and merit. I can't help but feel that parents committed to homeschooling should allow their ax to rust and invest their considerable energies in the public school system. But then, my family's experience in the public schools (where my daughter qualifies for an IEP) has been breathtakingly positive. I believe in the public schools.
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