State lawmakers attack climate change, evolution

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The teaching of evolution has been under attack for decades, but few are aware of the extent of the campaign. Each year, at least a half-dozen states seem to introduce legislation intended to undermine science education standards by allowing or requiring nonscientific ideas to be taught alongside a standard biology curriculum. In recent years, these have taken the form of the so-called "academic freedom" bills, which allow teachers to bring in outside materials that undercut standard science textbooks. Many of these bills are now placing climate change beside evolution as a target for special criticism, and there are signs that climatology may become an independent target for state legislators.

We're only partway through February, and the National Center for Science Education has already been tracking two bills related to education in the biological sciences. The first, from Mississippi, would "require that the lesson have equal instruction from educational materials that present arguments from both protagonists and antagonists of the theory of evolution." It died in committee earlier this month.

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