Freeman of Speech: Science convention ditches La. for ‘Mormon country’

"Viewing present-day organisms as products of evolution provides the most productive framework for investigating and understanding their structure and function. As such, evolution is a unifying concept for science and provides the foundation for understanding nature."


If only these words were found in Louisiana's school board policy.


Instead, a product of anti-scientific religious orthodoxy inadvertently caused the snubbing of New Orleans in favor of Mormon country.


The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology moved its 2011 annual meeting from New Orleans to Salt Lake City, citing the Louisiana Science Education Act as the reason for the diversion. New Orleans hosted the meeting twice before Hurricane Katrina, but the group, in a letter to Gov. Bobby Jindal, "could not support New Orleans as our meeting venue because of the official position of the state in weakening science education and
specifically attacking evolution in science curricula."


"Utah, in contrast, passed a resolution that states that evolution is central to any science curriculum," Richard Satterlie, president of the SICB, said in the letter.


As Trojan Horse legislation paves the way for the teaching of creationism and intelligent design, the Science and Education Act permits the use of external materials to supplant students' science textbooks to promote, as it claims, an open and objective discussion of scientific studies including — but not limited to — evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.


Among those who clamored for Jindal to veto the act — one of many across the country written under the false guise of "academic freedom," but the only one actually signed into law — was the      American Association for the Advancement of Science, claiming the bill "disingenuously implies that particular theories, including evolution, are controversial among scientists," as well as the Editorial Board of The New York Times, which said the bill would "have the pernicious effect of implying that evolution is only weakly supported and that there are valid competing scientific theories when there are not."


The most notable dissenter, though, was Jindal's own teacher when he was pre-med at Brown University.

Arthur Landry sent the governor a message through the Louisiana Coalition for Science, saying, "Gov. Jindal was a good student in my class when he was thinking about becoming a doctor, and I hope he doesn't do anything that would hold back the next generation of Louisiana's doctors."


Sorry, Professor Landry. He did.


Louisiana should have passed this lesson in science more than 20 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court, deciding Edwards v. Aguillard, struck down the Creationism Act, which banned the teaching of evolution in Louisiana unless creationism was also taught.


In its ruling, the Court correctly held "a law intended to maximize the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of science instruction would encourage the teaching of all scientific theories about human origins. Instead, this act has the distinctly different purpose of discrediting evolution by counterbalancing its teaching at every turn with the teaching of creationism."


There is a section in this bill preventing discrimination or promotion of any religion or non-religion, making this the crucial language that helped the bill become law. But creationism and intelligent design only come from belief systems, lacking the trial, error and analysis found in scientific studies.


By rehashing the "it's just a theory" defense, Jindal and our legislature have codified a false controversy. Our state government has now, at the same time, betrayed the economic interests of New Orleans by perpetuating the myth of a dilemma among scientists.


But at least we don't believe Jesus was American.


Eric Freeman, Jr. is a 22-year-old political science junior from New Orleans.




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Contact Eric Freeman Jr. at efreeman@lsureveille.com