Sunday, December 16, 2007

Pseudoscience on the March

The Institute for Creation Research, one of those nutty creationism outfits, wants a license to train science teachers in -- where else? -- Texas.

Okay, let's make this short. Creationism is bogus pseudoscience, and everybody with an IQ in the double digits knows it. If the evidence could support it, scientists -- who can get rich and famous by publishing ground-breaking hypotheses -- would be on it like brown on rice. Sadly for all the grad students who could make their bones on a radical revision of paleobiology, the evidence just isn't there.

But the proponents don't care about evidence, because they think this is really about personal opinion, just like elections for homecoming queen. An ICR spokesperson says "Our students are given both sides. They need to know both sides, and they can draw their own conclusion."

I wonder if they teach both sides of the famous "2+2=6" debate?

But the best part of this isn't that America -- and especially Texas -- is fertile ground for wackjobs who still don't get the whole 'reality-based community" thing. No news there! The best part is not even that the the ICR's application has already been approved by a state advisory group, further reducing the chance that any future Nobelist in the natural sciences will have been educated in the Lone Star State.

No, friends. The best part of this story is that the ICR has applied to train teachers in pseudoscience ... wait for it ... online. Because the only thing less respectable than a certificate in bullshit is a certificate in bullshit that you earned from correspondence classes.

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