Darwin Takes the Fifth
What Really Happened at the Kansas Evolution Hearings
by Edward Sisson
Last May, I had the pleasure of participating in the Kansas State Board of Education’s “evolution” hearings. Readers may recall that I contributed an essay, “Darwin or Lose,” to the “Darwin’s Last Stand?” issue (July/August 2004), in which I discussed how the use of courtroom-style litigation tactics by spokesmen for “mainstream science” has deformed the scientific debate over the origin of life and its diversification into the vast array of different species we see today. The hearings gave me an opportunity to see first-hand the use of such tactics.
High-Profile Hearings
The teaching of evolution became a high-profile issue in Kansas in 1999, when the board removed evolution from the curriculum. Later, a new majority on the board voted to put evolution back into the curriculum, and now another new majority is considering including in the curriculum scientific criticisms of evolution.
The board organized the hearings to take testimony for and against the scientific validity of two assertions: (1) that natural chemical processes alone are the cause of the origination of life (“chemical evolution”), and (2) that Darwinian “natural selection” alone, without any intelligent guidance or control, is the cause of the subsequent diversification of forms of life.
It scheduled six days of testimony—three for the challengers to evolution, followed by three for its defenders. No objections would be allowed to interrupt the testimony, and each person who spoke would be subject to cross-examination by counsel for the other side. Following cross-examination, the three members of the board conducting the hearings would ask questions.
Two of the individuals most responsible for the hearings, Bill Harris and John Calvert, offered 23 witnesses to testify over their three days, challenging the scientific basis for chemical evolution and natural selection. Harris, professor of medicine at the University of Missouri/Kansas City, and Calvert, a lawyer, are the co-founders of the nonprofit Intelligent Design Network, a group that provides scientific and legal resources to state and local education agencies in support of the teaching of problems with the theory of evolution.
The witnesses included seventeen Ph.D.’s: Ten university science professors (including Harris), five other science Ph.D.’s who have published books on evolution and intelligent design, and two university philosophy professors. The other six witnesses were two masters’ degree holders, three high-school biology teachers, and Calvert himself, who would provide the legal argument for why it is lawful to teach criticisms of chemical evolution and natural selection.
Mainstream Boycott
Harris and Calvert asked me to help prepare their witnesses for cross-examination, and to prepare to cross-examine the opposition witnesses, but when the board scheduled the hearings, an advocacy group called Kansas Citizens for Science (KCFS) promptly called for a boycott. A nonprofit whose directors include scientists and laypersons, KCFS had been prominent in opposing the board’s 1999 decision to remove evolution from the curriculum. “Scientific merit is not established through public discourse and debate,” their resolution stated, “but rather, internally, through a consensus of those with the specialized background necessary to make such judgment.”
Edward Sisson is a partner at a large Washington-based international law firm, specializing in litigation arising out of multi-million-dollar corporate acquisitions. He also maintains an extensive pro bono practice in the areas of international democracy, human rights, and the arts. His law degree is from Georgetown University and his bachelor (of science) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ?Darwin or Lose? is a shortened and revised version of his ?Teaching the Flaws in Neo-Darwinism,? which appeared in Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing, edited by William Dembski (ISI Books, 2004).
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