Science Is Constantly Evolving
Discover the latest in climate change and evolution education news.
While rereading Ray Ginger’s Six Days or Forever? Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes (1958) recently, I was struck by what even I considered to be a plethora of unusual, obscure, and confabulated words in the book. This isn’t intended as a criticism of the book: it’s highly readable,…
Josh, Steve, and I just returned from spending 8 days with a group of 21 NCSE members on NCSE’s Grand Canyon raft trip. Steve regaled us with the actual geological history of Grand Canyon, and Josh supplemented with a tongue-in-cheek presentation of the creationist view – with me helping a bit…
In order to prepare for a talk about the Scopes trial, I was recently rereading Ray Ginger’s Six Days or Forever? Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes (1958). It isn’t a bad book, although if I were to recommend a single book about the Scopes trial, it would have to be Edward J. Larson’s …
According to the Centers for Disease Control, drug-resistant bacteria cause more than two million infections, and kill at least 23,000 people every year in the United States. At the same time, the development of new antibiotics has slowed to a trickle, partially because pharmaceutical…
Last week, we got into the distinction between natural selection and evolution. In my post, I tried to express the importance of exposing students to other mechanisms of evolution, namely genetic drift, gene flow, and mutation. This week’s misconception is closely related to the erroneous idea…
Last week on Fossil Friday, I presented a fossil sent to me by a Fossil Friday Fan, Dan Phelps! I didn't let him answer in the comments, but he certainly did his best to taunt you. So what was this strange pod-like structure? A sloth zipper, or as NCSE's Glenn Branch suggested, a…
On June 25, 2014, the following scientific study made the cover of the prestigious journal, Nature: “Aspergillomarasmine A overcomes metallo-β-lactamase antibiotic resistance.” Doesn’t exactly sound earth-shattering, does it? But the discovery of a fungal compound that restores the…
This week we have a very special fossil courtesy of Fossil Friday fan Dan Phelps—who also happens to be the president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society. What could it be? Looks like some sort of plant pod to me, or an ancient sloth zipper? No, this is an invertebrate found in what is now…
I’m still happily kibitzing on a dispute between two philosophers, Mary Midgley and Nicholas Everitt. (Look, I don’t give you a hard time about your idea of fun, do I?) You’ll recall that in 2007, Midgley published a pamphlet entitled Intelligent Design Theory and other ideological problems…