The Introduction is laden with errors not only about evolution or biology. It fundamentally skews students’ understandings of what science is and how it is practiced. The definitions of evolution it provides are badly flawed, misleading students about the state of evolutionary biology. To advance a bogus creationist model, Explore Evolution must redefine science, ignore key evolutionary mechanisms and misrepresent professional scientists. Explore Evolution refers to research requiring background that high school students will not have, and misrepresents the nature of science by pretending that the classroom is where scientific debates ought to be resolved.

p. 3: "[I]n the historical sciences, neither side can directly verify its claims."

Philosophers of science dispute Explore Evolution’s claimed distinction between two kinds of science, and do not hold historical claims to be any less testable than others. These falsehoods open the door to creationist attacks on evolution.

p. 5: "The best explanation will be the one that explains more of the evidence than any other."

This view of science is rejected by scientists and philosophers, occurring only in creationist writings. This redefinition leaves an opening for subsequent erroneous claims and claims about the supernatural. To be scientifically useful, a hypothesis must be more than explanatory or verifiable, it must make predictions which lead us to new observations. Explore Evolution omits the means by which scientists actually evaluate scientific explanations.

p. 8: "…three major uses of 'evolution.'"

These definitions are just different consequences of the same idea. Change between generations (#1) inevitably produces a pattern of common descent (#2). Change over time leads to biological novelty (#3).

p. 8: "[Evolution] usually refers to the mechanism of natural selection."

Students cannot "explore evolution" without discussing mechanisms like neutral drift, gene flow, mutation, and recombination. Explore Evolution never presents a full range of mechanisms, a lapse which blocks inquiry and exploration.

p. 8: "…all modern life forms emerged and developed from the first one-celled organism."

Neo-Creationist Orchard: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, Vol. 2. pp. 345-360.

The tree of life as envisioned by many evolutionary biologists: W. Ford Doolittle (2000) Scientific American, 282:90-95.

Evolution does not speak to the number of origins of life. Scientists cited by Explore Evolution actually propose that there was a period when early life swapped genes so frequently as to form a common ancestral population of cells, from which all modern lineages split.

p. 9: "[Scientists disagree whether] natural selection [can] produce fundamentally new organisms."

Explore Evolution ignores many mechanisms, and offers no means for distinguishing "fundamentally new" traits. Evolution does not predict that any trait would spring forth, fully formed and without precedent. The existence of gradual change is a key prediction of evolution, and Explore Evolution is remiss in suggesting otherwise.

p. 10: "According to these scientists, the history of life should not be presented as a single tree, but as a series of parallel lines representing an orchard of distinct trees."

Multiple trees of life, totally independent of one another is a creationist concept, and bears no relationship with current scientific thinking. The tree of life envisioned by scientists cited to support this claim is very different (as shown in the figures).

Major Flaws:

Nature of Science: High school biology classes form the foundation of a student's understanding of how science works, not just of how the living world works. Explore Evolution badly misrepresents the way science is practiced.

Evolution: It is unacceptable that Explore Evolution misdefines evolution, and unacceptable that basic evolutionary mechanisms are ignored entirely. This mishandling of the central concept that the book claims to explore should disqualify it from use in any classroom.