January 20, 2012

• Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District

  In 2004, the Dover area school district had one high school, the Dover Area High school. It had a school board of nine members. By 2002, two of the members were William Buckingham and Alan Bonsell, two young-earth creationists.
  
  In 2004, Buckingham protested to Biology, Dover Area High School's biology textbook, written by Kenneth R. Miller (not the same as Kenneth P. Miller, known for testifying against gays in Perry v. Schwarzenegger). He said it was "laced with Darwinism". On October 18th, the school board voted 6-3 to required teachers to read a statement to biology students, which is reproduced here.
  
  

  The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin's theory of evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

  Because Darwin's Theory is a theory, it is still being tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

  Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students to see if they would like to explore this view in an effort to gain an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves.

  As is true with any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families. As a standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on standards-based assessments.

  Eleven parents protested and filed suit. Their case was taken up by the ACLU, while the defendants (Dover schools district and board members) were represented by the Thomas More Law Center. The trial began on September 26th, 2005, and lasted until November 4th.

  The trial began with plaintiffs' opening statement, given by Eric Rothschild, who argued that intelligent design is not science. Then, the defense's opening statement was given by Patrick Gillen, who argued that the board was not motivated by religion, and that intelligent design did not serve any religious agenda. We shall now cover some interesting aspects of the case.

  Is Intelligent Design Religion?

  The plaintiffs argued that it served to promote creationism under a new name, and the defendants argued that it was only to encourage critical thinking and better science. It turned out that the book they'd recommended, Of Pandas and People, had earlier version which referred to creationism. It was shown that newer versions were near-identical to earlier drafts, but with the word "creationism" replaced with "intelligent design", and that the change happened shortly after a 1993 case that ruled teaching creationism unconstitutional. And although Buckingham and Bonsell insisted that intelligent design was not religious, the writings of leading intelligent design advocates was considered, and it was found that they treated it as a religious argument and took the proposed designer to be the Christian deity. One document from the Discovery Institute (the source of all that "Teach the Controversy" nonsense), specifically stated its goal to replace science with "theistic and Christian science". Judge John Jones (a conservative republican who was nominated by George W. Bush), found in its history and content that intelligent design was religion, and that this was "readily apparent to any objective observer".
  
  Buckingham's and Bonsell's Motives

  In the defense's opening statement, Gillen presented Bonsell as a scientifically curious individual, who knew of 300 or so scientists who were skeptical of evolution. It is true that at that time, A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism had around 300 signatures. (As of November 2010, it had collected 846 signatures. In comparison, Project Steve, which collects signatures of evolution-supporting scientists named Steve (or some variant thereof), has reached 1,185 signers. A Scientific Support for Darwinism collected 7,733 signatures in only four days.) However, the board ignored the opinions of Dover Area High School's science teachers, who universally opposed intelligent design. At the trial, it came out that the teachers had wanted to purchase the newest edition of Biology, a standard biology textbook. Buckingham had refused to approve the purchase of Biology unless Of Pandas and People was also purchased, and the teachers agreed so that they would have a biology book.

  The judge was annoyed to discover that of the board members who had voted in favor of the directing students to intelligent design, none of them were learned about the subject, nor had they consulted any scientific organizations.
  One board member, Cleaver, referred to it as "intelligence design". In his 139-page decision, he wrote that "despite this collective failure to understand the concept of ID, which six Board members nonetheless felt was appropriate to add to ninth grade biology class to improve science education, the Board never heard from any person or organization with scientific expertise about the curriculum change, save for consistent but unwelcome advices from the District’s science teachers who uniformly opposed the change. (29:109 (Buckingham)). In disregarding the teachers’ views, the Board ignored undeviating opposition to the curriculum change by the one resource with scientific expertise immediately at its disposal."

  A particularly memorable section of the judge's decision highlights the board's behavior in the months leading up to the resolution. "First, Casey Brown testified that following her opposition to the curriculum change on October 18, 2004, Buckingham called her an atheist and Bonsell told her that she would go to hell. Second, Angie Yingling was coerced into voting for the curriculum change by Board members accusing her of being an atheist and un-Christian. In addition, both Bryan Rehm and Fred Callahan have been confronted in similarly hostile ways, as have teachers in the DASD." After the vote passing the resolution, both Casey and Jeff Brown, board members who'd opposed it, resigned in protest. Casey Brown's resignation speech is referenced in the decision:

  There has been a slow but steady marginalization of some board members. Our opinions are no longer valued or listened to. Our contributions have been minimized or not acknowledged at all. A measure of that is the fact that I myself have been twice asked within the past year if I was "born again." No one has, nor should have the right, to ask that of a fellow board member. An individual’s religious beliefs should have no impact on his or her ability to serve as a school board director, nor should a person’s beliefs be used as a yardstick to measure the value of that service. However, it has become increasingly evident that it is the direction the board has now chosen to go, holding a certain religious belief is of paramount importance.

  Citing their religious motivations and their failure to consult scientific materials (or learn the basic tenets of intelligent design), Judge Jones ruled that the defendants held no secular motive for introducing the change in curriculum.

  The Teachers' Protest

  You have indicated that students may ‘opt-out’ of this portion of the class and that they will be excused and monitored by an administrator. We respectfully exercise our right to ‘opt-out’ of the statement portion of the class. We will relinquish the classroom to an administrator and we will monitor our own students. This request is based upon our considered opinion that reading the statement violates our responsibilities as professional educators as set forth in the Code of Professional Practice and Conduct for Educators.
  
  INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE.
  INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT BIOLOGY.
  INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT AN ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC THEORY.
  
  I believe that if I as the classroom teacher read the required statement, my students will inevitably (and understandably) believe that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory, perhaps on par with the theory of evolution. That is not true. To refer the students to ‘Of Pandas and People’ as if it is a scientific resource breaches my ethical obligation to provide them with scientific knowledge that is supported by recognized scientific proof or theory.

  My favorite part of this great big tale is the unequivocal and immediate action taken by the teachers of Dover Area High School, who unanimously refused to read the prepared statement, citing the Code of Professional Practice and Conduct for Educators, which required that teachers may not "knowingly and intentionally misrepresent subject matter or curriculum". They sent a very vehement letter to the board, complete with all caps section. An administrator read the statement to students instead.

  Judge Rules Intelligent Design Is Not Science

  After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980s; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. …It is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research. Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena.

  Commentary

  I've become quite fond of judges, who time and again must serve as the last defense between law and the tyranny of the majority. I also totally gave up near the end. Blogging about anything that has a Wikipedia page is just a great big exercise in futility, when Wikipedia says everything better. But if I just posted a link, most people wouldn't follow it. I tried to distill it, but it still ended up being wayyyyy too tl:dr. Bleh.

  I'm going to backdate this, so that the next update can come out as scheduled. I guess it's an important case to have in wobster-blog canon.

  • 11:59 pm
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