Here is an effort to research what tools are needed by teachers to effectively educate students about human evolution. They’re crowdfunding to get the needed materials for the study. Consider chipping in if you can. What are essential factors that make for an effective teacher delivery of a cutting-edge human evolution lab? It is often difficult […]

Is teaching evolution still an issue here in Florida? It’s been quite a while since there have been any newsworthy mentions of opposition to evolution here. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t still lurking under the surface, ready to burst out at any time. My evidence? Voting guides issued by various “family” and “values” organizations […]

There are no man-made signs deep in the Grand Canyon. If you want to know where to find Elves Chasm or how severe the next set of Colorado River rapids are, you better have a good guidebook with you or be under the care of expert navigators. There are no picnic tables. You have to […]

Back on April 25 I posted about a guest columnist in the Gainesville Sun railing against evolution, He’s itching for a fight. The writer’s main point was that past debates at the University of Florida between creationists and scientists over evolution allegedly came down heavily in favor of the creationists. The supposed victories were so decisive […]

I’m very honored and excited to be selected as one of two teacher scholarship winners, receiving an all-expenses-paid eight-day raft trip through the Grand Canyon, hosted by the National Center for Science Education this summer! Is that just pure awesome or what?! NCSE news release: Congratulations to the 2016 NCSE Grand Canyon Teacher Scholarship winners! “This […]

There is some very sad news from over the weekend. Sir Harry Kroto, Nobel Prize winning chemist teaching at Florida State University, passed away Saturday. I worked with him briefly through Florida Citizens for Science. During the big fight over evolution in the state standards back in 2008, Kroto personally helped in many different ways. I […]

I was in a documentary film called Filthy Dreamers, which was about censorship on college campuses here in Florida back in the 1920s. I’m in the film because the focus of that censorship was the teaching of evolution, something I happen to know a bit about. There’s some cool news about the film recently: Student […]

Andrew Scholberg, a freelance writer and member of St. Augustine Catholic Church in Gainesville, wrote a guest column for the Gainesville Sun entitled Gainesville’s evolution vs. creation saga. In it he laments the absence of any good evolution vs. creationism debate at the University of Florida since the 1980s. Back in the 80s, he writes, […]

The Florida legislative session is mercifully over and the instructional materials bills Florida Citizens for Science has been tracking are history. These ill-conceived bills would have changed the way textbooks and other educational tools are reviewed and selected, handing entirely too much power to well meaning but non-expert parents and not so well meaning, ideologically driven […]

I have genuine difficulty understanding a person who looks down on science and yet has no problem benefiting from it. A letter-to-the-editor writer in today’s Daytona Beach News-Journal did exactly that – denigrate science while praising its products – in response to my column published Sunday. He writes: THE VAGUE SIDE OF SCIENCE Science. It […]