Biologist John Trimmer published a scathing review of the ID book Explore Evolution on ARS. I found it fascinating. Enjoy.
Ars book reviews typically focus on works for the general public that we consider significant and insightful. But today we're making an exception: the work in question is meant for school children, and it's an atrociously bad book. So why review it? Because, unfortunately, it may well turn out to be very significant. The leading lights of the Intelligent Design Movement, the Discovery Institute, have written this textbook on evolution, and they are doing everything they can to make sure it gets into schools.
In response to a column I wrote a few months back, one of the authors of the text, called Explore Evolution, kindly sent me a copy. What follows is not a comprehensive examination of the information contained in the text (which would require more text than EE itself), but rather a summary of the history and politics that make the book significant, and my own perspective as a biologist on how that context produced a text that's wildly inappropriate for use in a science classroom.
This doesn't mean that I won't mention the scientific evidence that's referenced in EE, but I generally won't delve into it in extensive detail. For the most part, extensive details aren't actually essential to understanding the problems with EE. So, with that caveat, we'll do as the Discovery Institute has, and start with the politics.
Read more: A biologist reviews an evolution textbook from the ID camp
I know there are people out there who read books like Explore Evolution and think it somehow represents science. It feels like a lie.
Hat tip Richard
