PRESS RELEASE For immediate release July 7, 2003	TEXAS CITIZENS FOR SCIENCE P.O. Box 13022 Odessa, TX 79768-3022
PRESS CONFERENCE: 12:00 Noon, July 9, 2003 Main Floor Lobby, William B. Travis Bldg. 1701 North Congress Ave. Austin, TX 78701	CONTACT: Dr. Steven Schafersman, President Midland, TX Phone: 432-352-2265 www.txscience.org

The first textbook adoption hearing before the State Board of Education for 2003 is scheduled at 1:00 p.m. on July 9 in the Texas Education Agency Building in Austin. This year, Biology textbooks will be up for adoption in their 8-year cycle. Forty-one citizens will address the Board, followed by responses from eight publishers. Many of these speakers will discuss the biology textbooks submitted for adoption, and this will include religious fundamentalists and creationists who object to the coverage of the topics of evolution and the origin of life in the new textbooks.

Members of the new Texas Citizens for Science will also be attending to defend the textbooks and their treatment of evolution and the origin of life. This is necessary in a state in which politically-elected members of the State Board of Education have the power to review a textbook's content--including science books--and reject it from state adoption unless the publisher agrees to make changes that reflect the political, ideological, and religious viewpoints of the majority of Board members. Theoretically, State Board members can only correct a book for "factual errors," but this has not prevented them from rejected scientifically-accurate textbooks for bogus "errors" that the Board makes up from thin air. Over a dozen publishers were forced to withdraw excellent environmental science books because they refused to comply with the Board's extortion and censorship.

Now it is the turn of the biology book publishers. The biology textbooks were written to satisfy the Texas Essentials of Knowledge and Skills (TEKS); thus, they all contain an adequate to superior scientific coverage of evolution and the origin of life. The Discovery Institute, a Seattle, Washington, creationist think-tank has submitted a misguided, misleading, and scientifically-fraudulent document that purports to be an analysis of the biology books' for treatment of four examples of evolution, and it faults them all. The document is superficially convincing to individuals who lack a firm understanding of the evidence for evolution. In fact, the Discovery Institute document itself is based on a scientifically-discredited, anti-evolutionist book, Icons of Evolution by creationist Jonathan Wells, that has been revealed by scientists to be filled with factual errors, errors of omission, specious illogical arguments, and a misrepresentative treatment of science in order to popularize creationism and force it into the public school classroom.

It is suspected that some of the State Board members will attempt to use the DI document to force biology textbook publishers to either remove scientifically-accurate evolutionary material or insert various unscientific items--such as bogus "weaknesses" about evolution--to dumb-down the text and intimidate teachers to not teach State Board-identified controversial material.

The Discovery Institute tried to accomplish similar goals in recent years in Kansas and Ohio, and the Kansas Citizens for Science and Ohio Citizens for Science formed to oppose them and eventually allow legitimate science to prevail. The same will happen in Texas.

Also speaking at the press conference will be Dr. David Hillis, Professor of Biology at the University of Texas at Austin, and Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education.