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Home » Creationism and the Law » Major Cases » Kitzmiller v. Dover: Intelligent Design on Trial » Padian's Expert Testimony

Background, Copyright and Reproduction Information

  • August 31st, 2008

Background (by Nick Matzke)


Kevin Padian testified on Friday, October 14, 2005, in the courtroom of Judge John Jones III, located in the federal courthouse in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This was Day 9 of the 21-day Kitzmiller v. Dover case. Kitzmiller was a district-level court case, held in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The complaint was filed on December 14, 2004, and the decision was issued on December 20, 2005. Padian was one of six expert witnesses who testified for the victorious plaintiffs. For more information on the Kitzmiller case, including transcripts, legal filings, and the decision, see the relevant pages at NCSE and TalkOrigins.org. The original PDF transcripts are available in the transcripts directory of the NCSE Kitzmiller documents archive.

The courtroom transcript was taken by Lori A. Shuey in the morning and Wesley J. Armstrong in the afternoon. In addition to Padian, the major speaker is Vic Walczak of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, who conducted the direct examination of Padian for the plaintiffs. Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center conducted the cross-examination for the defense.

Padian's slides were introduced into evidence in the case as plaintiffs' exhibit P-855. The slides were assembled by Padian and the graduate students in his lab (see Acknowledgements). The captions for the slides were added by me in early 2007. New scientific developments that took place after the October 2005 trial are noted in some captions. Any errors that remain in the captions are mine. A few slides received minor corrections, and in a few cases graphics from an unknown source were replaced with similar public domain graphics (e.g. the dolphin). The original court transcript was spellchecked to correct typos and phonetic spellings of technical terms, but some errors may remain in this version. We have decided not to attempt other corrections, e.g. grammar and punctuation -- this would be a very large job, and would move the text further from the original court transcript. There will be inevitable difficulties in any written transcript of a spoken conversation. In most cases a confusing sentence will make sense if you imagine someone speaking it rather than writing it. Please send corrections and comments to me at matzke(AT)ncseweb.org.

-- Nick Matzke, National Center for Science Education



Copyright and Reproduction Information

Notes on copyright: All slides are copyright 2005 by Kevin Padian and reproduced with permission. However, many of the slides contain images from copyrighted sources; see individual slides for references and, where possible, permissions (primarily journals and museum specimens). Many slides also contain fair use material, such as small graphics of book covers, or quotes from exhibit material that is receiving academic criticism during the court testimony; the citation information is typically given within the slide.

Notes on reproduction: The slide material produced by Kevin Padian and his lab may be reproduced on the web and in presentations (e.g. Powerpoint) and handouts, for nonprofit or educational purposes, as long as Kevin Padian and the NCSE-hosted webpage are acknowledged. Contact NCSE if you are interested in reproduction for a printed publication (higher-resolution versions of the slides are available). However, for copyrighted material held by others we have only acquired permission for reproduction on the NCSE website. Further reproduction of those materials should fit within the parameters of academic fair use, or the individual copyright holders should be contacted. Many of the images come from sources that grant blanket permission for nonprofit educational reproduction, e.g. Wikipedia (under e.g. a Creative Commons license), the public domain (e.g., U.S. government websites), the websites of whale evolution researchers Thewissen and Gingerich, or journal articles from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (see the PNAS Rights and Permissions page). The journal Nature typically auto-grants permission for nonprofit educational reproduction of images; obtaining this permission requires that the user register on Nature's permissions website and fill out a web form for each image. Other sources should be contacted via their permissions departments, e.g. Science or Wiley.