Science vs religion in the Princeton Guide to Evolution

The Princeton Guide to Evolution is a collection of 107 articles on various aspect of evolution. The editors felt they should address the obvious conflict between evolution/science and religion. There are at least five different approaches they could have taken.

1. An atheist perspective on the incompatibility of evolution/science and religion. Richard Dawkins or Jerry Coyne would be good choices.
2. An atheist perspective on the compatibility of science and religion (the accommodationist view). Michael Ruse or Nick Matzke are obvious choices.
3. A theist view of the incompatibility of evolution and religion. Phillip Johnson could have explained this view but so could a number of other creationists.
4. A theist explanation of the compatibility of evolution/science as long as they stick to their proper magisteria. Francis Collins, Ken Miller, and several other religious scientists could present their case.
5. The editors could have published four articles representing the main viewpoints or commissioned a single article that would have covered all the angles.

The big advantage of an atheist perspective is that it fairly represents the views of a majority of evolutionary biologists. Having a theist write the article would not be as fair. I think we can all agree that option #5 is by far the best choice.

Before reading any further, take a minute to decide what you would do if you were the editors of The Princeton Guide to Evolution.

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Exam questions for 2nd year students in a critical thinking course

Here are the questions on yesterday's exam for students in my course. Students will be graded on their explanations and not so much on the actual answer they give. The idea is to reward critical thinking and that includes the ability to see both sides of an issue and recognize problems with whatever side you choose to defend.

1. Assuming that the technology is safe and effective, should we, or should we not, have laws forbidding the cloning of humans?
   
   
2. What is the best definition of a "gene"? Explain why you choose that definition and give examples of possible "genes" that don’t fit your definition.
   
   
3. Elliott Sober is a highly respected philosopher. He explains that theistic evolution is a reasonable hypothesis because God could easily cause mutations to occur in a way that scientists would not be able to detect. In other words, a specific, directed, mutation would be indistinguishable from a random mutation. Thus, it would appear that evolution was an entirely naturalistic process while, in fact, its direction was being guided by God. Do you think this is a reasonable argument in support of theistic evolution? Why or why not?
   
   
4. In his book, The Myth of Junk DNA, Jonathan Wells writes.
   

   According to intelligent design (ID), it is possible to infer from evidence in nature that some features of the world, and of living things, are better explained by an intelligent cause than by unguided natural processes.

   What sorts of positive arguments do ID proponents use to support this inference from evidence in nature? Are they effective?

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Today is exam day and "You shall not pass"

Today is the day of the final exam in my course on critical thinking and scientific misconceptions.

I thought my students would get a kick out of this photo.

I'm certain that all regular Sandwalk readers know what I'm talking about but just in case there's any new readers who don't get it, here's a short clip from the movie.¹

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1. Note to IDiots and other creationists ... Gandalf is a fictional character, he doesn't exist. There are many fictional characters who appear to be powerful and menacing but that's only in stories and myths.

Is there any reliable scientific evidence that genetically modified food poses a health risk?

I recently had a discussion about the safety of food derived from genetically modified organisms. My opponent, whose identity I will conceal (hi Rachel!), argued that GM foods are unsafe and that there's scientific evidence to back this up. Naturally, this evidence is being concealed by Monsanto and other private companies in the same way that tobacco companies tried to hide the evidence that smoking causes lung cancer.

My position is that I'm not aware of any reliable scientific studies showing that GM foods are dangerous to your health and, furthermore, in a free and open democracy with a free press it seems highly unlikely that such evidence is being suppressed. It seems even more unlikely that scientists would be part of this conspiracy.

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Answering ten questions from the IDiots

On this American Thanksgiving Day, David Klinghoffer gives thanks for Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne [Thank Goodness for Richard Dawkins]. He says ...

... we're also grateful for guys like Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne who provide a rich source of unintended comedy. See, for example, our colleague Dr. Michael Egnor's always entertaining mining of Coyne's writings.*

* Admittedly we'd be even more pleased to have a worthy opponent on the Darwin side of the debate who did not run from a fight every time but answered our best arguments and evidence in a lucid, trenchant and informative style.

Well, I gotta tell you, David, that I'll be eternally grateful to the Discovery Institute for sending us Dr. Michael Egnor. It's the gift that just keeps on giving, and giving, and giving ....

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Textbook Publishers Respond to Texas School Board: "Up yours!"

There are a lot of myths surrounding the influence of the Texas Board of Education on the content of biology textbooks. Most people seem to think that major publishers have watered down or eliminated evolution in response to pressure from the Texas board. There's very little evidence to support that claim.

In any case, the situation has changed as reported by Josh Rosenau on the NCSE website [What’s the Future of Texas Textbook Battles?].

The adoption process ending this week will be the first science textbook adoption in a decade. Creationists on the board opened the door to abuses with the standards they passed in 2009, and lame duck board members after the 2012 elections snuck in ideologically-driven textbook reviewers. This summer, these reviewers attacked evolution and climate change in biology textbooks, looking to influence publishers and the board. The hope was that the board’s influence over purchasing decisions would be powerful enough to compel publishers to undercut the science.

But publishers are stronger now. A 2011 law (passed in response to the absurd process in 2009 and 2010) allows local districts to buy any book they want, whether or not it’s on the board’s approved list. Districts are still going to prefer an approved textbook, but if the board goes too far, local districts can opt for a book not on the list, which means the publishers can walk away from the adoption process rather than weaken their textbooks. This science standards adoption is the first under the new law, a test case for battles to come (especially next year’s social studies textbook adoption).

So far, the publishers are standing strong. Creationists pushed them to water down evolution coverage, but they seem to be finding ways around the reviewers’ suggestions. As Ron Wetherington (who won a Friend of Darwin Award from NCSE in honor of his work on the 2009 standards) told the Dallas Observer "I reviewed the publisher’s response to this. In this particular case, the publisher said, ‘Up yours, we’re not going to change anything.’" We don’t yet know whether the state education agency will accept that response and recommend these textbooks for adoption.

Here's the view from TFN Insider [Important News: Publishers Are Resisting Pressure to Dumb Down Their Biology Textbooks for Texas].

We have now had our first look at changes publishers have submitted in response to objections — many of them attacks on evolution and climate change science — raised by official state review teams evaluating new science textbooks for Texas. And we have very encouraging news:

All 14 publishers are refusing to water down or compromise instruction on evolution and climate change in their proposed new high school biology textbooks.

These publishers deserve our thanks for standing up to pressure from right-wing politicians and activists working to corrupt the science in our children’s textbooks.

Contrast this with the question asked by Paul Waldman a few months ago [The Missing Piece in Coverage of Texas Evolution Controversies].

So here's the missing piece: what about the textbook companies? When this issue is discussed, the publishers are talked about as if they have no agency, no ability to affect the outcome of these events. But they're morally culpable for participating in these farces. If they wanted, they could stand up to the state of Texas. So how can the people who work at a publisher in good conscience agree to write a biology textbook that treats evolution as a wild, unsupported idea? What if the Texas Board of Education demanded that their books discuss the "controversy" about whether the Earth travels around the sun or vice-versa, or the "controversy" about whether earthquakes happen because the turtle on whose back the world sits is scratching an itch, or the "controversy" about whether stars are actually faeries winking at us from up in the sky? Would the publishers say, "OK, if that's what you want, we'll write it and print it"? Someone should ask them where they draw the line on their integrity.

This was gleefully cross-posted to Jerry Coyne's blog website [Textbooks and Texas] where his sycophants jumped all over me for suggesting that publishers were not actually modifying their textbooks in any significant way.

Here's an excerpt from Jerry Coyne's latest post [Creationism on life support at the Texas Board of Education].

This week the Texas Board of Education will consider which biology texts to “recommend” for Texas public-school students. I say “recommend” rather than “adopt” because the rules have changed. The list of approved books, from which all school districts were once required to choose, is now gone, and the Board can only recommend books. Texas school districts can now choose whichever books they want to use, including material from the Internet. That’s a huge bonus to publishers, who used to have to rewrite many of their biology and history books so they’d be acceptable to Texas, largely purging them of evolution and giving a more conservative point of view on American history. Now they won’t have to do that, and publishers are beginning to resist such changes anyway. If all the publishers resisted, Texas wouldn’t have any books to buy!

I still think it's misleading to say that publishers "used to have to rewrite many of their biology ... books so they’d be acceptable to Texas, largely purging them of evolution." I've got copies of Miller & Levine's biology textbooks, for example, and they cover evolution quite well. I could be wrong but I don't think the Texas Board of Education ever rejected a biology textbook. They were all on the list of "approved" textbooks even though they covered evolution.

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Oops! MOOCs Didn't Work Out So Good for Sebastian Thrun

From Tressie McMillan Cottom at tressiemc [The Audacity: Thrun Learns A Lesson and Students Pay].

Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity, one of the most high-profile private sector attempts to "disrupt" higher education discovered inequality this week. Thrun has spent the last three years dangling the shiny bauble of his elite academic pedigree and messianic vision of the future of higher education before investors and politicos. He promised nothing short of radically transforming higher education for the future by delivering taped classroom lessons of elite professors through massive open online courses. So what went wrong?

After low performance rates, low student satisfaction and faculty revolt, Thrun announced this week that he has given up on MOOCs as a vision for higher education disruption. The "godfather of free online education" says that the racially, economically diverse students at SJSU [San Jose State University], "were students from difficult neighborhoods, without good access to computers, and with all kinds of challenges in their lives…[for them] this medium is not a good fit." It seems disruption is hard when poor people insist on existing.

Thrun's goal was to market lectures by "elite" professors at places like Sanford¹. His new company, Udacity, was going to make tons of money by selling lists of successful students to private companies who are looking for talent. Guess what? It turns out that there are lots of disadvantaged students in introductory courses at SJSU who don't learn from lectures given by elite Stanford professors. Who would have guessed?

In case you've forgotten the hype that Sebastian Thrun created when he formed Udacity, read: Sebastian Thrun Will Change Education. And watch the video.

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1. My position on this is that the professors at Harvard and Stanford are not necessarily the best teachers. In my field of biochemistry, for example, we have direct evidence that professors at MIT do a horrible job of teaching biochemistry [Where Are the Best University Teachers?]. In my experience, the best biochemistry teachers are often located at small colleges where they pay attention to the latest pedagogical literature and actually read the textbooks they use in class.

Another Example of IDiot Reasoning

My philosopher friend, Chris DiCarlo, and I are trying to teach our students how to think critically. We use the evolution/creation debate as an example of how to make valid arguments (and how not to make them). Two of the important points we emphasize are that you should try to avoid the strawman fallacy and you should try very hard not to misrepresent your opponent's point of view. (These are related.)

I tell my students that it's important to understand what your opponents are arguing—you must try and walk in their shoes, so to speak. This is crucial. You may decide that their arguments are completely wrong and ridiculous but you must make sure you interpret them correctly or you are guilty of several sins.

You might recall that I recently posted a comment about David Evans, Executive Director of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) [David Evans Says, "Teach What the Vast Majority of Scientists Affirm as Settled Science"]. I liked the idea that we should teach what the "vast majority of scientists affirm as settled science." When it comes to teaching, you have to make a decision about what is good science and what is bad science and it seems reasonable to NSTA (and to me) that the consensus among the experts is a good criterion to use. If you read the comments in that post you'll see that it's not always easy to decided what that consensus is, but that's not the main point.

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David Evans Says, "Teach What the Vast Majority of Scientists Affirm as Settled Science"

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) is responsible for The Adaptation Assessment Probe that I criticized last week. It's a remarkably poor question on adaptation—expecially considering that it was designed by teachers.

David Evans¹ is the Executive Director of NSTA and he has written about the recent attempts to insert creationism into textbooks in Texas [In Texas, Standing Up for Science]. He says one very good thing in these two paragraphs.

There are many ways that humans come to know, experience, understand and appreciate the world in which we live. Consider, for example, the different realms of religion, science and art. We can all appreciate the beauty of a sunset without understanding that its beauty comes from the energy of a thermonuclear reaction and the refraction of its light in the atmosphere. Likewise, understanding the scientific processes of the sunset does not prevent one from capturing its beauty on canvas or making a spiritual connection.

There are countless differing opinions about how best to educate our children, but presenting non-scientific or religious ideas in science class or in science textbooks is simply wrong and blurs the line about what is and what is not science. This will only confuse and mislead students and does nothing to improve the quality of science education and everything to weaken it. Decisions about what counts as science should not be a popularity contest. No matter how many people object, public schools must teach what the vast majority of scientists affirm as settled science.

I like the way he expresses the idea that we "must teach what the vast majority of scientists affirm as settled science." This avoids getting into definitions about what counts as science. It avoids the "methodological naturalism" trap. Well done!

The next paragraph isn't quite as good. It could have been a lot better. All he had to do was leave out the little phrase that I underline and enclose in brackets. It would not change the meaning but it would properly reflect "what the vast majority of scientists accept as settled science."

Texas students deserve the best science education possible, as do students everywhere. This means teaching them sound science, including evolution [by natural selection] as a major unifying concept in science. It is firmly established as one of the most important and robust principles in science, and is the best and most complete scientific explanation we have for how life on Earth has changed and continues to change. Furthermore, the very foundation of science is grounded in, and based upon, evidence. Classrooms will use the textbooks Texas adopts for years (the last science textbook adoption was a decade ago). Compromising the integrity of science for a whole generation of students to satisfy a few vocal ideologues is simply not acceptable.

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1. From the website: "Evans holds a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania. He studied for his teaching certification at Villanova University."

The Adaptation Assessment Probe

I'm taking a MOOC on evolution that's designed for educators [Evolution: A Course for Educators]. One of the things that was covered in the first lecture was a test on "adpatation" taken from a book called "Uncovering Student Ideas in Science, Volume 4: 25 New Formative Assessment Probes. The book is published by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA).

Let's take the test ...

Adaptation

Three friends were arguing about what would happen if a population of rabbits from a warm, southern climate were moved to a cold, northern climate.¹ This is what they said:

Bernie: "I think all of the rabbits will try to adapt to the change."

Leo: "I think most of the rabbits will try to adapt to the change."

Phoebe: "I think few or none of the rabbits will try to adapt to the change."

Which person do you most agree with and why? Explain your ideas about adaptation.

I agree with Bernie. I think all the rabbits will try to adapt to the colder weather by finding warmer, more cozy, burrows and by cutting down on their activity during the cold nights. I think they will adapt by eating more. If hair growth is related to temperature, as it is in some mammals, then the rabbits will adapt by growing thicker coats.

Let's see how I did.

Oops! That's not the "right" answer. The correct answer is what Phoebe said. Here's what they say on the website ...

The best answer is Phoebe's: "I think few or none of the rabbits will try to adapt to the change." The key word here is try. Biological adaptation involves genetic variation that allows some individuals to survive a particular change, such as a change in the environment, better than others.

I didn't read the question carefully. I didn't notice that what they were asking about was not just "adaptation" but "adaptation by natural selection." Silly me.

We turned our clocks back one hour last weekend and I'm still adapting adjusting to the change.

If this is the kind of nonsense that the National Science Teachers Association thinks is important then it's no wonder that evolution education is in trouble.

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1. Not a good test for Australian students! :-)

I Just Signed Up for an Evolution MOOC!

I'm not a big fan of MOOCs but I just couldn't resist a course called "Evolution: A Course for Educators". The instructors are two Ph.D. employees from the American Museum of Natural History in New York (USA). As you probably know, the American Museum of Natural History is very proud of its tradition in education. Here's what they say on their website.

The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational and cultural institutions. Since its founding in 1869, the Museum has advanced its global mission to discover, interpret, and disseminate information about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe through a wide-ranging program of scientific research, education, and exhibition.

This is a course for educators and that's right up my alley. You may want to sign up as well. Here's the description and the video.

How are all of the species living on Earth today related? How does understanding evolutionary science contribute to our well-being? In this course, participants will learn about evolutionary relationships, population genetics, and natural and artificial selection. Participants will explore evolutionary science and learn how to integrate it into their classrooms.

....

The AMNH course Evolution: A Course for Educators provides an overview of biological evolution for educators. Informed by the recently released Next Generation Science Standards, the course explores the history of evolutionary theory and the evidence that supports it. We will learn about patterns of human evolution and societal implications of modern evolutionary biology, and how scientists determine relatedness among living and extinct organisms. Course participants will bring their understanding of course themes - along with content resources, discussion questions, and assignments - into their own teaching.

It's a bit disturbing that the Next Generation Science Standards don't mention random genetic drift, Neutral Theory, speciation, or population genetics [Natural Selection and Evolution] but the course promises to cover population genetics and I assume that it will also cover all mechanisms of evolution since it's being taught by an evolutionary biologist (Joel Cracraft).

The purpose of the course is to train the next generation of high school (and university) teachers. One of the instructors, David Randle, is an expect on education. We all know that teachers need to be updated on modern evolutionary theory.

It starts next Monday. I'll let you know how I'm doing when I write the first test.

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The Khan Academy and AAMC Teach Evolution in Preparation for the MCAT

Ross Firestone is a 2nd year MD/PhD student at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is one of the winners of the MCAT Video Competition. Apparently the Khan Academy and the Association of American Medical Colleges were impressed with his presentations on evolution. You can see all six videos at Evolution and population dynamics.

I'm posting the first one on Evolution and Natural Selection. It's all about natural selection but it's a very strange kind of natural selection. The organisms are parthenogenic and each individual is genetically programed to have a certain probability of reproducing. One type has a 50% probability of reproducing and another type has only a 25% probability of reproducing. These probabilities seem to be independent of any competition between them. Each successful individual produces four offspring. After some time the number of one type remains constant (25% probability) but the number of the other type (50% probability) doubles with each generation. This is natural selection according to Ross Firestone.

"Naturally," I was disappointed that natural selection was the only mechanism mentioned. There's nothing about random genetic drift in this video and nothing about the stochastic nature of natural selection. But my face lit up when I saw that there was another video on "Alternative Selection: Learn about driving forces of evolution other than natural selection." This could almost make up for screwing up the description of natural selection.

Alas, the second video is even worse. The "alternatives" are group selection and artificial selection. It gets even more worse. The example of group selection is the grandmother hypothesis. According to Ross Firestone, the fact that grandmothers help their grandchildren survive is group selection.

The video on "Bottlenecks and the environment" is also quite interesting. I didn't know that that the peppered moth story is an example of a bottleneck. Did you?


I think these videos are horrible—so horrible, in fact, that the Khan Academy should take them down. What do you think?

Are you wondering why a 2nd year med student feels so confident that he knows enough about evolution to teach it to pre-med students? Me too.

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The Khan Academy and AAMC Teach the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology in Preparation for the MCAT

Here's a presentation by Tracy Kovach, a 3rd year medical student at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Sandwalk readers will be familiar with my view of Basic Concepts: The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology and the widespread misunderstanding of Crick's original idea. It won't be a surprise to learn that a 3rd year medical student is repeating the old DNA to RNA to protein mantra.

I suppose that's excusable, especially since that's what is likely to be tested on the MCAT. I wonder if students who take my course, or similar courses that correctly teach the Central Dogma, will be at a disadvantage on the MCAT?

The video is posted on the Khan Academy website at: Central dogma of molecular biology. What I found so astonishing about the video presentation is that Tracy Kovach spends so much time explaining how to remember "transcription" and "translation" and get them in the right order. Recall that this video is for students who are about to graduate from university and apply to medical school. I expect high school students to have mastered the terms "transcription" and "translation." I'm pretty sure that students in my undergraduate class would be insulted if I showed them this video. They would be able to describe the biochemistry of transcription and translation in considerable detail.


There are people who think that the Central Dogma is misunderstood to an even greater extent than I claim. They say that the Central Dogma is widely interpreted to mean that the only role of DNA information is to make RNA which makes protein. In other words, they fear that belief in that version of the Central Dogma rules out any other role for DNA. This is the view of John Mattick. He says that the Central Dogma has been overthrown by the discovery of genes that make functional RNA but not protein.

I wonder if students actually think that this is what the Central Dogma means? Watch the first few minutes of the video and give me your opinion. Is this what she is saying?

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The Khan Academy and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Team Up to Teach Evolution and Biochemistry for the New MCAT

Theme

Better BiochemistryStudents have to write an exam called the MCAT in order to get into American Medical Schools (Canadians students also write the MCAT). The exam is created and marked by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The format of the exam is changing in 2015 to include more biochemistry and molecular biology. This means that "pre-med" students will likely be taking more biochemistry and molecular biology courses.

Most American schools teach to the MCAT in their biochemistry and molecular biology courses because there are large numbers of wannna-be doctors in their class. The biochemistry lecturers feel that it's their duty to prep the pre-med students to pass the MCAT. This has a devastating effect on American biochemistry courses [Better Biochemistry: Teaching to the MCAT?] [Better Biochemistry: Teaching ATP Hydrolysis for the MCAT]. It is inconsistent with the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBM) goals of developing concept-driven courses that focus on fundamental principles [Fundamental Concepts in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology ].

The Khan Academy is taking advantage of the new MCAT in 2015 by posting a series of videos on basic biochemistry and evolution. The content is approved by the AAMC in order to make sure it is suitable for MCAT preparation. Here's what they say on their website [Khan Academy MCAT].

This collection is being developed for the revised MCAT® exam that will first be administered in spring 2015. Videos will be added to the collection through fall 2014. All content in this collection has been created under the direction of the Khan Academy and has been reviewed under the direction of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). All materials are categorized according to the pre-health competencies tested by the MCAT²⁰¹⁵ exam; however, the content in this collection is not intended to prescribe a program of study for the MCAT²⁰¹⁵ exam. The content is also included in the Pre-health Collection within MedEdPORTAL’s iCollaborative sponsored by the AAMC: www.mededportal.org/pre-health *MCAT® is a program of the AAMC and related trademarks owned by the Association include Medical College Admission Test, MCAT, and MCAT²⁰¹⁵. For more information about the MCAT exam visit : www.aamc.org/mcat2015.

So, how did the Khan Academy prepare the videos? They set up an MCAT Video Competition and picked the best ones. You can read about the winners at MCAT Video Competition Winners. It's an eclectic mix of people but 11 out of 15 winners are medical school students or graduate students. Keep in mind that teaching introductory subjects like evolution and biochemistry is hard and Teachers Have to Know Their Subject.

I'm going to look at the videos on evolution prepared by a second year MD/PhD student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and videos on biochemistry prepared by a second year MD student at Harvard Medical School and a third year med student at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Medical students are very bright and very confident of their abilities. We'll see if these students learned enough in their undergraduate courses to be able to create accurate videos that will help university graduates pass the MCAT.

Before looking at some specific examples, let me make a general comment on Khan Academy videos. I've looked at quite a few of them over the years and every single one I've seen is a "kindergarten-level" video. What I mean by that is that the level of the presentation is barely suitable for students beginning high school and in some cases they really are pitched at the level my three-year old granddaughter could understand in a year or two. They certainly aren't up to the level of any university course that I've ever taught.

These MCAT videos are no exception. But they are intended for students who are about to graduate from university. Most of these students will be getting a science degree. The mini courses are intended for students who are about to write the MCAT exam and this should represent the level of knowledge expected of medical students. As a general rule, the students who are preparing for the MCAT have achieved high grades in their biology and chemistry courses and in their biochemistry and molecular biology courses. They wouldn't be considering medical school if they weren't in the top 25% of their class.

Why are the videos pitched at such a low level of education? Is this truly representative of the quality of university education in American universities? Check them out for yourself at: Biomolecules.

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Teachers Have to Know Their Subject

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The top three criteria for good teaching are: (1) accuracy, (2) accuracy, and (3) accuracy. Everything else is in fourth place or lower and that includes style. If what you're teaching is not accurate then nothing else matters.

It is hard to teach an introductory science course. You have to go back to basics and make sure that what you cover all the fundamental principles and concepts and that ain't easy. That's why the best teachers in introductory courses are often senior professors and lecturers with plenty of experience behind them. They have learned what's important and what's not and they can tell the difference between wheat and chaff.

PZ Myers puts it very well in a blog post defending teachers [Teaching is so easy, anyone can do it!].

One of the first things you learn when you start teaching is that you have to know the content inside and out — it’s simply not enough to know the bare minimum that you expect the students to master, because as a teacher, you need to push just a bit farther to get them up there. You need to be able to lead them to knowledge, and you need to be able to point off in the distance to all the cool stuff they can learn if they continue. How can you inspire if you’re not drinking deeply from the Pierian Spring yourself?

Keep this in mind next time we discuss teaching evolution and biochemistry. Teachers have to be experts and it takes a lot of work to make sure you know your content. If what you're teaching is not correct then you are not a good teacher no matter what the student evaluations say. And it's not only a question of accuracy—as PZ points out, you need to be more than a few steps ahead of your students in order to inspire them to do better.

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Misrepresentations of Evolution in Textbooks: Definition of Evolution According to Kevin Padian

Kevin Padian is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and Curator of Paleontology at the University of California Museum of Paleontology. He is also President of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE).

He wrote an article for Evolution: Education and Outreach in which he describes misrepresentations of evolution in textbooks (Padian, 2013). Since he is a prominent leader in the fight against creationism, we need to pay attention when he tells us how evolution should be taught in public schools.

Before examining some of those "misconceptions," let's review some earlier papers in Evolution: Education and Outreach. The very first issue contained an article by John N. Thompson where he defined evolution as ...

Evolution is quite simply heritable change in the genetic structure of a population. There is nothing in this or any similar standard definition of evolution that requires that genetic change in the average size, shape, or any other trait be maintained for a hundred, a thousand, or a million years before it can truly be called evolution. (Thompson, 2007)

Unfortunately, Thompson is under the mistaken impression that natural selection is the only significant mechanism of evolution but that's not the point. The point it that he, and many others, see evolution as a continuous and ongoing process that includes the minor fluctuations that Kevin Padian dismisses.

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ASBMB Promotes Concept Driven Teaching Strategies in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

The latest issue of BAMBED (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education) contains a series of articles on "Foundational Concepts and Assessment Tools for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Educators." The goal is to get teachers to change their way of teaching undergraduate courses in biochemistry and molecular biology.

The first paper is an introduction to "Promoting Concept Driven Teaching Strategies in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology" (Mattos et al, 2013). The authors point out that ASBMB (American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) has been advocating concept driven teaching strategies for over a decade. What they don't mention is that this advocacy has been remarkably unsuccessful The majority of biochemistry and molecular biology courses are still taught in a memorize-regurgitate format. Most American courses are taught to the MCAT. Understanding concepts won't get you a good grade on the MCAT.

The idea of teaching fundamental concepts is useful if biochemistry and molecular biology are foundational courses designed as prerequisites for more advanced study. That's not how biochemistry is seen in most America colleges. Students usually don't take the course until their junior year and many don't take it until they are seniors! These courses are not generally seen as prerequisites for other courses in the biological sciences.

That's not how it works in Canada where biochemistry is a second year course and it is a prerequisite for many third year and fourth year courses. The importance of concept driven teaching should be more obvious in Canada. It isn't, in my experience. That doesn't mean we don't talk about it—or course we do. We all think that teaching concepts is a great idea. Problem is, we don't do it in our introductory courses.

This is one of the reasons why MOOCs are seen as a viable alternative to in-class biochemistry courses. You can spew out facts for multiple choice exams just as easily on a video as you do in a classroom. If, instead, we were actually teaching a concept driven course using a student-centered approach, then MOOCs would seem ridiculous.

Mattos et al. (2013) report that ASBMB developed a three pronged approach ...

1. Building a network of scientists and educators focused on using and disseminating evidence-based teaching best practices.
2. Fostering both an understanding of the use of appropriate assessment, and the creation of a network of educators focused on defining the foundational concepts of the discipline, identifying key cross-disciplinary principles, and incorporating the appropriate skills necessary for students to succeed in the practice of science into the curriculum and assessment of student outcomes.
3. Promoting best practices in the education of our students by providing appropriate teaching and assessment resources for faculty.

They applied for, and received, a grant from the National Science Foundation (USA) to address these challenges. The results of those studies are ready to be published.

The next paper in this BAMBED issue describes the foundational concepts that all biochemistry & molecular biology instructors have to teach. Can you guess what they are before I post the answer? Put your best guesses in the comments.

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Mattos, C., Johnson, M., White, H., Sears, D., Bailey, C. and Bell, E. (2013) Introduction: Promoting concept driven teaching strategies in biochemistry and molecular biology. Biochem. Mol. Biol. Educ. 41:287–288. [doi: 10.1002/bmb.20726]

Biologist Sean Carroll in Toronto

Biologist Sean Carroll of evo-devo fame was in Toronto last Friday as part of the 2013 Science Festival. I had a chance to talk to him in the afternoon at an event organized by the Centre for Inquiry. There were about a dozen people there.

Sean is the Vice President for Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Washington DC (USA). We talked a lot about science education. One of the issues he brought up was The Clergy Letter Project. According to Sean, this is an important example of co-operation between scientists and religious leaders to support the teaching of evolution in American public schools.

I understand the politics but I find it ironic that scientists seek out religious leaders to support the teaching of evolution in the public schools. These same scientists are the first ones to trot out the US Constitution whenever Christian fundamentalists try to teach creationism. You can't have it both ways. Either religious leaders have no say in what is taught in science classes or they do.

Sean Carrol gave a talk in the evening to an audience of about one thousand. His subject was Jacques Monod and the role of chance. Coincidentally, that's also the subject of his latest book, Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize.

Sean emphasized the role of chance and accident in evolution, picking up on Monod's seminal work Chance and Necessity. From studying biology you reach the inescapable conclusion that life is the product of blind chance. It has no meaning or purpose. Monod was not the first person to recognize this but he's the one who made the best case back in 1971.

After his talk I reminded Sean that this conclusion puts science in conflict with almost all religious beliefs making it difficult for clergy to support the correct teaching of science and religion in the public schools.

"Hey, what can you do!" he said, just as someone took our picture.¹

I have a signed copy of his book.

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1. Not really. We were actually discussing something else.

2013 Toronto Science Festival

The University of Toronto is sponsoring a "science" festival with three talks tomorrow and Saturday. You have to buy tickets at: tickets.

There's two technology talks and one science talk. I'm going to the only science talk at the science festival. There are a bunch of other things going on, see the entire program.

Friday, Sept. 27th 7pm– "Human Exploration of Space: 50 Years and Counting": Space Shuttle veteran and first Canadian on board the International Space Station, Julie Payette

“High achiever” barely begins to describe Julie Payette. Masters degree in engineering, pilot, IBM engineer, Officer of the Order of Canada, singer with symphonies in Montreal, Toronto, and Switzerland, conversant in six languages, and now Director of the Montreal Science Centre. Oh, did we mention she was orbiting the Earth, using a giant robot arm to build a space station by the time she was 35? Julie will kick off the festival by sharing her unique insights into the past, present, and future of human space exploration.

Friday, Sept. 27th 8pm– "Brave Genius: Jacques Monod, Chance, and our Place in the Universe": Evolutionary biologist and “evo devo” pioneer, Sean Carroll

Biologist and Nobel Laureate Jacques Monod once remarked that “the most important results of science have been to change the relationship of man to the universe, or the way he sees himself in the universe.” Discoveries in molecular biology, evolutionary biology, and geology over the past half-century have profoundly reshaped our picture of human origins, and revealed the enormous role of chance in the fate of life on Earth. Join evolutionary biologist Sean Carroll as he chronicles some of those discoveries through Monod’s eyes, whose own ascent from struggling graduate student to leader within the French Resistance, co-founder of molecular biology, and emergence as a public figure and leading voice of science involved a great deal of chance, and courage.

Saturday, Sept. 28th 7pm– "Postcards from Mars": Mars rover imaging scientist, Jim Bell

Don’t worry if your application to live on Mars was rejected. You can still visit the Red Planet through the spectacular imagery captured by a trio of Mars Rovers—Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity. Planetary scientist Jim Bell was instrumental in developing cameras and processing images from the three robotic explorers and in his talk “Postcards from Mars”, he’ll share his favorite vistas of our planetary neighbour with you. Through the beauty of these photographs, you’ll see why Bell can be described as a scientist, an explorer and a nature photographer.

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On Preparing Students for the 21st Century

Yesterday I attended a meeting organized by the Ontario Ministry of Education. The theme was From Great to Excellent: The Next Phase in Ontario's Education Strategy. The idea was to promote widespread consultation before the Ontario government releases its new plan for education reform next year.

I was attending on behalf of my friend Chris DiCarlo who had to be out of town. He (and I) are promoting the concept of critical thinking; specifically, the idea that it needs to be explicitly taught in a high school philosophy course.

The Minister of Education (Liz Sandals) and several of the senior members of her ministry were there. They told us that today's students are facing unprecedented changes and that the Ontario education system has to change in order to cope. They were mostly thinking about technological change and the possibility that today's students would have new types of jobs and careers.

I'm certain that we can improve our education system but I'm not sure it's helpful, or even correct, to focus on the idea that the next generation will have to cope with situations we never faced in the past. If we could show that our existing education system did a pretty good job of preparing students for change then maybe we should turn our attention to problems other than job training and technological innovation?

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