Furor breathes new life into aging ‘Pandas’

Furor breathes new life into aging ‘Pandas’
Book used in Dover a dated look at intelligent design concept
By LAURI LEBO
Daily Record/Sunday News
Sunday, March 13, 2005


Until a group of residents donated 58 copies of “Of Pandas and People” to Dover Area High School, the controversial textbook had faded to the background of the national debate over intelligent design.
The first textbook on the subject, “Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins,” hasn’t been updated since 1993, and other publications have moved to the forefront of the intelligent-design movement.

The book’s assertions have divided the Dover community and promise to be a central issue in the May primary. Last week, 18 people, evenly split on the subject, formally entered the race for Dover school board.

Intelligent design’s supporters say they want to expose students to alternatives to the theory of evolution. But scientists, including the author of the textbook used in Dover biology classes, say “Pandas” is outdated, full of flaws and lacking a position on basic biological principals such as the age of the Earth.

At issue is whether the concept of intelligent design — the idea that life is too complex to have evolved solely through natural selection and therefore must have been created by an intelligent designer — is a legitimate scientific theory or simply the latest incarnation of creation science.

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s education requirement that “creation science” must be taught in science class. Because it is based on biblical texts, the court ruled, it does not have a “clear secular purpose” and therefore violates the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

“Pandas,” written by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, was released two years after the Supreme Court’s blow to creation science. The book’s copyright is held by the Texas-based Foundation for Thought and Ethics. Incorporated in 1980, the foundation states its purpose as both “religious and educational” and seeks to make “known the Christian gospel and understanding of the Bible and the light it sheds on the academic and social issues of our day.”

But “Pandas” was in the works before the Supreme Court decision, said Jon Buell, the foundation’s president, and he disputes the accusation that the book is revamped creationism.

The connection is merely a strategy mainstream scientists use to discredit intelligent design, Buell said.

The word “God” is never used in the book. Instead, “Pandas” suggests Earth is created by an “intelligent agent,” a “personal agent” and a “master intellect.”

Its critics say “Pandas” steers clear of almost all reference to the Earth’s age in order to hold up to First Amendment challenges and to avoid alienating biblical creationists.

The book’s only reference on Earth’s age is this: “Some take the view that the earth’s history can be compressed into a framework of thousands of years, while others adhere to the standard old earth chronology.”

Michael Behe, a Lehigh University biochemist who wrote one of the chapters in “Pandas,” said he is unconcerned that the age of the Earth is not covered because it is covered in students’ primary biology books.

But Kenneth Miller, who co-authored with Joseph Levine “Biology,” the best-selling biology textbook in the country and the one used in Dover, is one of the most vocal critics of “Pandas.” He said the book’s hedging on the age of Earth is like teaching U.S. history but refusing to tell students the dates of the Revolutionary War.



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The debate that led to the Dover Area School Board’s decision to insert intelligent design into its science curriculum started with a mother’s concern that the 1998 version of the district’s biology book was out of date.

As board members in June debated the merits of the teacher-recommended textbook “Biology,” the board’s curriculum chairman said he wanted a book that combined creationism with evolution.

“Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross,” Bill Buckingham said at a June public meeting. “Can’t someone take a stand for him?”

Buckingham fought to have “Pandas” included in the curriculum as a “companion text” to the textbook “Biology,” published by Prentice Hall. But before the board could vote on Buckingham’s proposal to buy “Pandas,” 58 copies were donated by residents — whose names the district will not release — and several copies are now housed in the high-school library on the reference shelf. The remaining books are kept in a storage room. As of Friday, 10 people had checked out copies from the library.

Eleven parents who filed suit in December over Dover’s intelligent-design requirement have not asked “Pandas” to be banished from the school, but the federal lawsuit states the book should not be in the science classrooms.



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Even Buell doesn’t recommend the book.

“If they would have contacted me, I would not have encouraged the people in Dover to use it because of other tools that are more up-to-date,” he said. “The idea of intelligent design and the evidence that supports it has gotten extraordinarily more strong than when it was originally printed.”

As for the criticisms that the book misrepresents the theory of evolution, Buell disagreed. He said the main point is valid — that the theory of evolution’s basic principal of life evolving through natural selection and genetic mutation isn’t possible.

“The authors and we feel those are the most powerful arguments,” he said.

John West of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which is now at the forefront of the intelligent-design movement, said his organization didn’t have anything to do with “Pandas” and had little to say about it.

Behe, author of the pro-intelligent design book “Darwin’s Black Box,” thinks, for the most part, the book accomplishes what it sets out to do — namely, getting the message out “that there are other ways of approaching biology.”

Behe wrote the book’s chapter on blood clotting, in which he states that any one of the many components needed to stop bleeding on its own is like “a steering wheel that is not connected to the car.”

He said the entire concept of intelligent design is essentially a debate over random versus directed processes.

“Darwin’s idea of random mutations is, I think, at the heart of the big brouhaha,” Behe said.

But Miller said it’s not true, even though the book may try to make it look that way.

“The book is just a shambles,” said Miller, a Brown University biology professor. He said to his knowledge, “Pandas” has never been used as part of any curriculum in the country.

While students in Dover are not required to use “Pandas,” Miller said, it’s a poor choice even as a voluntary reference manual. “One of the criticisms raised by educators is that this is simply not appropriate for the high-school level,” Miller said.

Rather, Miller said he recommends “Pandas” to graduate students. “If they can recognize why this book is so wrong, they know their biology,” he said. “If you’re a high-school student, you’re not going to be able to see the flaws in this.”



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The mainstream scientific community raises a list of complaints, such as:

· The book includes a graphic listing examples of “living fossils,” which includes the horseshoe crab, alligator and aardvark. It raises the question, “Why has an organism like the shark not changed for 150 million years?”

The obvious answer, scientists say, is that it didn’t need to.

According to Darwin’s theory, if a living organism possesses traits necessary to survive in its environment, it will pass on its genes to the next generation. If its environment changes and the living organism does not survive to sexual maturity, those genes will not get passed on.

Also, Miller said, while it is true that sharklike animals existed long ago, they are a different species than sharks today. It’s disingenuous to say they have not evolved, he said.

· “Pandas” misrepresents paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould’s observations.

The book raises questions about whether punctuated equilibrium — the idea that evolution tends to be characterized by long periods of virtual standstill punctuated by episodes of very fast development — contradicts Darwin’s theory of slow, gradual change.

But the idea that punctuated equilibrium is “an admission of weakness in evolutionary theory was always baffling to Stephen Gould,” said Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, which defends the teaching of evolution in public schools.

At issue is “Pandas’” argument that the fossil record is missing evidence of transitional organisms. It states, “... fossil forms first appear in the rock record with their distinctive features intact, and apparently fully functional, rather than gradually developing.”

But the National Academy of Sciences, in its 1999 booklet, “Science and Creationism,” states: “So many intermediate forms have been discovered between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, and along the primate lines of descent that it often is difficult to identify categorically when the transition occurs from one to another particular species.”

· In the chapter on “Biochemical Similarities,” the book points out that biochemical analysis of the bullfrog and the horse show that they are the same distance on the evolutionary ladder from the carp.

The book says this shows a flaw in Darwinism because the bullfrog should be more closely related to the fish.

But Miller said that’s an inaccurate interpretation of Darwinism.

“Are these guys intentionally distorting this to mislead readers?” he said. “Or do they just not get it?”

He said present-day amphibians are as far removed from the ancestors of the carp as horses and humans.

“It’s clear that the people who wrote ‘Pandas’ don’t understand that evolution is branching through time,” he said.

· Perhaps the most glaring proof the book is outdated, scientists say, is on the subject of whales.

In “Pandas’” chapter on “Gaps and Groupings in the Fossil Record,” the writer states, “the absence of unambiguous transitional fossils is illustrated by the fossil record of whales.”

Scientists have long theorized that whales evolved from land mammals, but “Pandas” argues that mammals and whales are so different, there should be many transitional fossils. But none have been found, the book states.

But since the book came out in 1993, scientists have found three of those intermediate fossils or “missing links.”

“We have whales with legs, we have whales with feet, we have amphibious forms that look like weird seals,” Scott said. “We’ve got all these wonderful transitional morphologies, most of which were not described at the time even when the second version of ‘Pandas’ came out.”

· Another omission, Miller said, is on the subject of extinction.

Throughout evolutionary history, new organisms appear and disappear all the time in the fossil record. “If they were perfectly intricately designed organisms,” Miller asks, “why do they die?”

For example, there have been 22 documented species of elephants that have roamed the Earth. “If all 22 species were intelligently designed, why does he need 22 tries for two successful elephants?” Miller asked.

Darwin’s evolutionary theory explains it “quite nicely,” Miller said: In the struggle for existence, some will perish.

http://ydr.com/story/doverbiology/61359/