Education: Royal Society's Director of Education steps down over creationist remarks

Darkfrog submitted, created time 2 months 1 week (www.nature.com)

The Royal Society's Director of Education seems to have been forced to step down. Michael Reiss, who is both a professor at England's Institute of Education and an Anglican priest, stepped down the other day after a speech in which he advocated "engage in dialogue with the creationist views some children express in science classes" [Nature's words] re-raised old questions about whether priests should be appointed to such positions at all.

Frankly, I think it is perfectly possible for a priest to serve in such a capacity

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Slip-eyed flatfish found!

Darkfrog submitted, created time 4 months 3 weeks (www.nature.com)

Although young flatfish have one eye on each side of their heads, the adult flatfish sports both on one side. This allows the fish to lie on the sea floor looking up and still retain its depth perception. This ocular migration has puzzled gradual evolutionists. If the trait evolved gradually over many generations, then why aren't there fossils showing fish with partially migrated eyes?

Well today's Nature posts the discovery of two such fish fossils, blowing a giant raspberry at both creationists and sudden-jump evolutionists alike.

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Evolution and historical continguency caught on tape! E. coli amass traits over time.

Darkfrog submitted, created time 5 months 2 weeks (www.pnas.org)

Historical contingency is a new phrase for me. I gather that it means "the idea that a given new mutation cannot create a new trait unless certain other, related mutations have already taken place." Anyway, it's been observed, repeatedly, in a laboratory setting.

Researchers split some identical E. coli into twelve colonies and gave them a glucose-poor medium that contained citrate, which E. coli cannot ordinarily process. Eventaully, around generation 32,000 some of the E. coli gained the ability to use citrate as food

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Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab

sea-maid submitted, created time 5 months 2 weeks (www.newscientist.com)

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

Ordinarily E. coli cannot process citrate. In fact, this trait is one of the things that researchers use to distinguish E. coli from other species. This team separated E. coli into twelve separate cultures and allowed it to divide. No matter how they replayed things, only extracts from the one citrate-plus culture ever re-developed citrate processing abilities

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Darwin Papers Debut on Internet

Sue Wu submitted, created time 7 months 1 week (blog.wired.com)

The complete works of Charles Darwin -- a god among scientists and the bane of every creationist’s existence – are finally available for anyone, anywhere to read. And it only took 126 years and another scientific revolution to make it happen.

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Pro-separation student granted scholarship by ACLU

Darkfrog submitted, created time 8 months 4 hours (www.aclu.org)

This isn't science news, per se, but it ties in with another article that I recommended here several months back: (http://www.discover8.com/article/Teacher_Gets_Religious_Student_Gets_Death_Threats_0)

Last year, Matthew LaClair had a teacher who was promoting creationism and denouncing evolution and the big bang in his public school constitutional law class. (For my non-US buds out here, separation of church and state is a very important concept in the US

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A detailed and studious defense of Darwin

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (www.sciam.com)

I've just met too many bright, intelligent people who didn't think the way I do. Try though I might, I just can't make myself believe that everyone who thinks evolution is hooey is a brainwashed buffoon. The ones who say that science supports a creationist position, however, need a courteous and well-thought-out reality check. Click the above to read one. It's a systematic set of responses to fifteen of the biggest innocent and not-so-innocent critiques of evolution and natural selection.

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