FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, February 24, 2004, 6:00 p.m.

Texas Citizens for Science Criticizes Continuing Efforts of Public Education Officials to Censor Evolution Content Despite Adoption of Biology Textbooks in November, 2003

PRESS CONFERENCE: Thursday, February 26, 8:30 a.m., Main Floor Lobby, William B. Travis Building, 1701 North Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas

Contact:
Steven Schafersman, Ph.D.
President, Texas Citizens for Science
432-352-2265, info@txscience.org, http://www.txscience.org/

Copies of all documents, memos, letters, and news reports about this continuing issue are available on the TCS website at http://www.txscience.org/adoption.php

In December, 2003, State Board of Education member Don McLeroy and Texas Education Agency Chief Deputy Commissioner Robert Scott ordered the TEA Textbook Division to tell biology textbook publishers that they must review and respond to alleged "factual errors" put forward by two creationist organizations, the Gablers of Longview, Texas, and the Discovery Institute of Seattle, Washington. These so-called "errors" are precisely the same items identified last year as alleged "weaknesses" of evolution. Dozens of Texas scientists and university professors testified to the State Board that these "weaknesses" were bogus--unfair and deceptive misrepresentations of what modern science knows to be true. The State Board agreed, voting 11-4 to adopt the biology textbooks WITHOUT the changes demanded by the Discovery Institute.

That should have decided the issue, but during the last two months, without public knowledge or accountability, and without oversight by the other State Board members, Don McLeroy and Robert Scott forced publishers to address the same "weaknesses," now re-named "errors," a second time under the guise of "error correction," a normal part of the textbook adoption process. In an unprecedented move, Mr. McLeroy himself wrote to the publishers, telling them that their "cooperation" was "required." These actions are an abuse of the process, since they are designed to intimidate and bully publishers, force them to play a duplicitous game of chicken, make them wonder if their books will be adopted if they refuse to make the anti-scientific changes, and implicitly threaten them with financial losses if they don't play along. These are exactly the same extortionist methods used for years by previous State Boards to make publishers censor their textbooks in ways favorable to the religious, political, and socials agendas of Board members.

I am happy to state that the publishers courageously refused to censor their books and damage their scientific integrity. But such semi-legal extortion and harassment is reprehensible in other ways: it gives Texas a very bad reputation as a state opposed to science, forces publishers to qualify the language in their books in ways that weaken them, and gives a signal to teachers to further diminish Texas students' science education by omitting or watering-down evolution. But the most odious thing about this incident is that a small number of individuals, acting on their own, hijacked the state's textbook adoption machinery to use as their own private tool to censor books to reflect their own political and religious bias. This activity is educationally misguided, improper, and possibly illegal; Mr. McLeroy has already been sued for a similar incident. TCS is asking for the resignation of these individuals, since they are putting their own creationist and political beliefs above those of science students in Texas, and making a mockery of Governor Rick Perry's Master Science Teacher Initiative.

Last week, two dozen Nobel laureates and 40 other leading scientists criticized the Bush administration for "misrepresenting and suppressing scientific knowledge." This is what is occurring in Texas under a few ultra-right wing public education officials. Scientists, science educators, and citizens have had to organize to protect scientific knowledge, so far successfully. TCS is requesting that the State Board and Commissioner of Education publicly go on record supporting teaching science, including evolution, fully and accurately in Texas.