Group Weighs in for Kansas
Seattle-based group supports the new guidelines
By: Melodee Hall Blobaum
The Kansas City Star
July 8, 2006
Original Article
SCIENCE STANDARDS: Seattle-based group supports the new guidelines
Critics say the effort is election-related, but backers say it is strictly public relations.
A Seattle-based group is launching a public relations campaign to defend science standards adopted in November by the Kansas Board of Education.
Those standards encourage students to look at both the theory of evolution and criticism of it, and changes the definition of science from the search for natural explanations to a search for more adequate explanations.
Critics say the standards include Intelligent Design terminology and many of its arguments against evolution.
The new campaign, dubbed “Stand Up for Science, Stand Up for Kansas,” includes a Web site with an online petition, e-mail campaign, radio advertising and free screenings of the documentary “Icons of Evolution.”
“What we’re trying to do is counter a campaign of misinformation which is widely distorting what the standards say and do,” said John West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle.
West said the campaign is in response to criticism of the standards by Kansas Citizens for Science, including a letter that group sent to Kansas school superintendents in June and a fact sheet posted on its Web site.
He denied that the Stand up for Science campaign had anything to do with state board elections this summer and fall.
Four of the seats held by the board’s conservative six-member majority are up for election. Three of those incumbents are running for re-election; a fourth isn’t but has a son-in-law in the race.
A fifth seat up for election is held by a moderate Democrat who faces a primary challenger who supports the standards.
“We don’t get involved in election campaigns,” West said. “We’re responding to Kansas Citizens for Science, doing the same sort of public education effort.”
Jack Krebs, president of Kansas Citizens for Science, said West’s claims were disingenuous. With most of the challengers saying they would throw out the new standards, Krebs said, “everybody knows it’s critical who wins.”
“They wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t crunch time.”
West declined to say how much his group was spending on the Stand Up for Science campaign.
The Web site was launched Friday, and West said he expected the initial e-mails to go out next week.
People from around the nation are welcome to sign the petition, West said.
“One of the claims being made by the other side is that Kansas is a pariah in the nation because they adopted the standards,” he said. “We want to demonstrate what is well-attested: the vast majority of Americans support the education effort that the Kansas Board of Education adopted.”
Krebs, however, said the online petition’s purpose is to come up with numbers that say a certain percent of the public supports the Discovery Institute’s point of view.
“That’s not the way science is done,” he said. “It’s public relations.”
Though people signing the online petition must submit a home and e-mail address, Discovery Institute spokesman Robert Crowther said the e-mail addresses will not be shared outside the institute’s Center for Science and Culture.
No decisions have been made about submitting the petitions officially in Kansas, Crowther said.
The radio campaign is expected to begin in the next two to four weeks.
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On the Web
•Discovery Institute campaign: www.standupforscience.com
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