Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

American Society of Agronomy — What Happened to Your Online Poll?

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

In a previous post I indicated that the American Society of Agronomy, at the behest of its president James G. Coors, conducted an online poll regarding the teaching of alternatives to evolution in grades K-12 and then, presumably at his behest as well, removed the poll once it became clear that the poll did not constitute an overwhelming endorsement for evolution. Fortunately, a friend of mine found the Google cache of the poll results before they were removed from the website. As of this posting, they can still be found here. I saved this page as an mht file, which can be accessed here. Compare this page with the current ASA page here (which I’ve saved as an mht file here). It will be interesting to see, as attention is now being drawn to this poll, whether it reappears on the site.

Why is this significant? Consider the following numbers: out of 658 ASA members who responded before the poll results were removed, 33% favor teaching evolution only in K-12, 12% favor teaching alternatives (e.g., ID), 10% are unsure, and a full 50% favor teaching evolution as well as alternatives. It’s this last number that’s shocking. If these numbers are representative of the organization as a whole, half of this professional scientific society does not think that conventional evolutionary theory is sufficiently well supported to deserve a monopoly in science education. As this happens more and more across professional scientific societies, evolution’s monopoly over the teaching of biological origins will disintegrate.

Comments
A Marketing Plan for Biology: Part 2 - the Market If you want to read Part 1, follow this link. Before any marketing plan can be development, a little market research is in order. We need to know what we are up against and what are reasonable marketing goals. Normally...Abnormal Interests
April 28, 2005
April
04
Apr
28
28
2005
08:27 PM
8
08
27
PM
PDT
I don't see how any honest, intelligent person who has examined the empirical evidence in support of the of the neo-Darwinian narrative can support teaching it to the exclusion of all else. Therefore I'm not at all surprised by the Agronomy poll. Then again these are basically farmers and they know manure when they see it. Perhaps that's what separates them from generic AAAS members. DaveScot
April 19, 2005
April
04
Apr
19
19
2005
01:08 AM
1
01
08
AM
PDT
Regarding Dembski’s comment about ASA I decided to look at its webpage by myself and instead I found an interesting comment with the next title “Plants Defy Mendel’s Inheritance Laws,” so following the link it resulted on the next part of the mentioned title: “may prompt textbook changes.” Taking into account the results on research it seems a bit intuitive to understand those of the poll. The note starts this way: “Contrary to inheritance laws the scientific world has accepted for more than 100 years, some plants revert to normal traits carried by their grandparents, bypassing genetic abnormalities carried by both parents.” Ooops. Daniel512
April 17, 2005
April
04
Apr
17
17
2005
12:23 PM
12
12
23
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply