In September 2005, Ken Miller, a Brown University biologist, took the witness stand during a lawsuit known as Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. The plaintiffs, a group of parents in Dover, Pennsylvania, objected to “intelligent design” being required to be presented as an scientific alternative to evolution. Miller, the first expert witness called by the plaintiffs, showed that the key claims made by advocates of intelligent design are false. The plaintiffs won the case, and the people of Dover voted out the members of the Dover board of education who had pushed through the intelligent design requirements.

Continue reading “Smoke and Mirrors, Whales and Lampreys: A Guest Post by Ken Miller”

I’ve been reading some new blogs, and thought I’d share a few of them–

Culture Dish by science writer Rebecca Skloot, just moved to scienceblogs.com

monkey’s uncle by Stanford anthropologist James Holland Jones.

Sex, Drugs, and Rockin’ Venom by Brian Fry, who studies the evolution of snake venom. I wrote two pieces for the New York Times about Fry (here and here). But reading his blog, I feel like I’m just getting to know him.

These, and many more, are listed in the blog roll. Anybody reading any particular good new blogs about science?

Continue reading “More Favorite Wastes of Time”

Ah, the things you learn from creationists…

If you’ve ever read about intelligent design (a k a “the progeny of creationism”), you’ve probably encountered their favorite buzz words, “irreducible complexity.” If you take a piece out of a complex biological system (like the cascade of blood-clotting proteins) and it fails to work, this is taken as evidence that the system could not have evolved. After all, without all the pieces in place, it couldn’t work.

Continue reading “Oh No! I’ve Seen the Impossible! My Eyes!”