Working together to address challenges to the teaching of evolution.

Evolution has been used by some to persuade people in this country that they must accept either science or their personal faith, creating false divisions. The supposed “controversy” surrounding evolution and related topics also has compelled a growing number of scientific and professional societies to begin working together to improve the public's understanding about this subject in particular and about the nature, processes, and limits of science more generally. These 39 associations represent all disciplines: physics, chemistry, earth and space sciences, biomedical sciences, biological sciences, anthropology, social sciences, and psychology. Some 2.5 years ago, representatives of several of these disciplinary organizations, together with others representing teachers, civic groups, industry, and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), formed a coalition whose purpose is to collaborate on confronting challenges to the teaching of evolution and related issues (e.g., the Big Bang, the age of the ancient Earth). The coalition has jointly sponsored audience research to find out how best to dispel those divisions. This coalition sees the situation with evolution as indicative of a larger problem with the public's perception of broad areas of science. Recently, bills have been introduced in the legislatures of at least five states calling for “critical analysis” of “controversial” topics such as evolution, global warming, and human cloning.1 However, as with any scientific conjecture, data are required and the coalition worked with the same research organization in Washington, DC, that the NAS had commissioned for its audience research on Science, Evolution, and Creationism (National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, 2008 ; also see Labov and Pope, 2008 ). Together, the partners in this effort designed a survey and the research organization collected those data. Based on the results of this study, a paper was prepared and published simultaneously in the January 2008 issue of FASEB Journal and in some of the coalition societies' own journals and newsletters.2 Why is a description of these activities of the coalition worthy of space in this journal? Don't scientists collaborate all the time? Individually they usually do. But when it comes to scientific societies or associations, disciplinary boundaries can occur, especially when the disciplines are so diverse and funding is tight. However, many disciplines have long faced challenges related to the teaching of evolution. Topics under attack have included teaching about the Big Bang and scientific explanations for the origins of the universe, that the age of the Earth is billions rather than thousands of years old, and that the molecules of life could have arisen through natural chemical processes. There also have been increasingly strident calls from a highly organized and amply financed movement (e.g., Wilgoren, 2005 ) for including nonscientific “alternatives,” such as intelligent design creationism in public school science classes. Collectively, these challenges convinced the organizations in this Coalition of Scientific Societies almost three years ago that more coordinated efforts and effective communication approaches were needed to address them. Furthermore, they felt that working together would be more effective than individual societies moving along nonintersecting, parallel paths. Thus, they agreed (not without some arguments and mild tension) upon strategies for designing and conducting surveys that would examine in greater detail what American voters understand about evolution specifically and about science more broadly. The results from this research prompted the coalition to jointly publish the results, to continue to meet regularly, and to agree to work together on collaborative activities in the future. The 1925 Scopes “monkey trial” in Tennessee exposed the deep-seated feelings and visceral rejection by many about the teaching of evolution. That trial and many subsequent events in this ongoing saga also highlighted the kinds of misunderstandings that people have about the issue based on their religious upbringing. Laws banning the teaching of evolution in public schools remained in place in many states and school districts for another 40 years until the U.S. Supreme Court struck them down as unconstitutional in 1968 in the Epperson v. Arkansas decision.3 In response to Epperson v. Arkansas, creationists have developed new and skillful strategies, including intelligent design, teach the controversy, alternatives to evolution, and most recently the academic freedom campaigns. Stickers disclaiming evolution as “a simple unproven theory” have been inserted into biology textbooks (and subsequently challenged in court) in several states. School board members, administrators, and parents have pressured teachers to avoid teaching evolution, something easily done because teachers cannot cover all required topics in biology during the school year anyway. Antievolution directives or statements couched as “critical analysis” have been introduced in many states' science education standards and adopted in some. A very large and concerted effort by the well-funded Seattle-based Discovery Institute helped propel the concept of intelligent design/creationism into view nationwide.4 Scientific and professional societies based in the nation's capital area have long realized that those who continually attempt to introduce nonscientific alternatives to evolution in science classrooms are very skillful in their use of words and phrases and in their overall efforts in communicating with the public. Resolutions defending the teaching of evolution5 and other efforts carried out by individual organizations to fight these antievolution campaigns have been limited by low funding and by the constraints of discipline-specific expertise and communication methods not well suited to audiences outside the scientific community. Importantly, professional societies and organizations increasingly have realized that these individual efforts have not produced detectable changes in the public's view about evolution, as evidenced by 40 years of polling by organizations such as Gallup6 and more recently the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.7 In response, representatives from the American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, American Institute of Biological Sciences, National Science Teachers Association, and NAS convened a meeting of the organizations' education/public affairs/policy staff. They discussed how scientific and professional societies might better coordinate their efforts and resources to become more effective in educating the American public about evolution and the deleterious results to science education when evolution is omitted. Additional disciplinary societies were invited to join, and currently there are 39 scientific, professional, and civic groups on the list of members (Table 1). Table 1. Current member organizations of the Coalition of Scientific Societies When the coalition first convened, in 2005, participants asked the following questions: Did the polls available at the time (Gallup, CBS News, Pew Research Center, and others [see Labov (2005) ]) accurately describe the American public's opinions on teaching evolution in public schools and their acceptance of creationism as an “alternate”? Could the general public explain what “evolution” actually means? How could the scientific community (both individual scientists and scientific organizations) become more effective in helping the public to understand concepts of evolution as well as the nature, processes, and limits of science, so the public would be less likely to be misled by skillful (mis)use of words by those who promote the teaching of nonscientific alternatives? The coalition needed to understand what the public is willing to accept about evolution if these issues were framed scientifically rather than in terms of personal belief versus evolution. Member societies also were interested in understanding more effective ways to deliver messages about science and evolution to the general public without compromising the scientific integrity of that information. By pooling the coalition's resources coupled with funds authorized by the NAS, a research firm was hired to conduct surveys using questionnaires that were developed in part with input from the initial 20 contributing societies.