NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott was invited to debate Ray Comfort, a creationist in the news recently for his plans to distribute copies of the Origin of Species with his own introduction, on the God & Country blog of U.S. News & World Report.

NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott takes aim at creationist Ray Comfort's distorted views on evolution in a special debate taking place on the U.S. News & World Report site. The debate centers on Comfort's 54-page introduction to a "special" edition of Darwin's On the Origin of Species that will be given away on college campuses across America, starting November 19.

Norman Levitt

Norman Levitt, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Rutgers University and a fierce critic of pseudoscience, died on October 23, 2009, in New York City, according to the obituary in eSkeptic (October 26, 2009).

NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott is on the revamped and expanded Board of Advisers of Scientific American, announced in the magazine's November 2009 issue.

Kevin Padian

Kevin Padian discusses — and debunks — "Ten Myths about Charles Darwin" in the October 2009 issue of BioScience. "Charles Darwin is one of the most revered (and at times reviled) figures in Western history. A great many 'facts' about him and his ideas are the stuff of textbook myths, others are inaccuracies spread by antievolutionists, and still others are conventional historical mistakes long corrected but still repeated," he writes.

At last, the latest iteration of NCSE's pioneering experimental steveometry apparatus — the Project Steve t-shirt — is available for order! The names of the first 1099 signatories to Project Steve are printed in white on a quality cotton/poly black t-shirt, along with the slogan, "Over 1000 scientists named Steve agree.

NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott will receive the Fellows' Medal, the highest honor of the California Academy of Sciences, in a ceremony in San Francisco on October 13, 2009.

Brian Alters

NCSE is delighted to congratulate Brian Alters, a member of NCSE's board of directors, on receiving the prestigious McNeil Medal for the Public Awareness of Science from the Royal Society of Canada, in recognition of "his world-famous work on the promotion of education about evolution."

Selected content from volume 29, number 3, of Reports of the National Center for Science Education is now available on NCSE's website.

In a guest post at The Panda's Thumb blog, NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott reviewed the new film about Darwin, Creation, describing it as "a thoughtful, well-made film that will change many views of Darwin held by the public — for the good."