The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has just posted its list of testifiers for today’s public hearing before the Texas Board of Education on the revised Texas science standards. Testifiers are supposed to alternate between those who support and those who oppose requiring students to examine the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories. There are a number of strange things about the list, but the strangest thing of all has to be the listed viewpoints of the two people signed up to testify from the evolution-only National Center for Science Education (NCSE) — Josh Rosenau and Eugenie Scott. Both are listed as favoring the inclusion of “strengths and weaknesses” in the Texas science standards! That’s news to me. While I’d certainly be delighted to see the NCSE support genuine science education on evolution rather than the teaching of one-sided dogma, I very much doubt Scott and Rosenau have suddenly changed their position. Did Rosenau and Scott misrepresent their positions in an attempt to get a better slot to speak? Or did they simply misunderstand what they were being asked? Or were TEA officials so oblivious that they somehow didn’t know that the NCSE is the leading national group opposing the teaching of strengths and weaknesses in Texas? It will be interesting to find out the truth. Another strange thing: We’ve been getting numerous reports from people who really do favor teaching strengths and weaknesses that they’ve been relegated to the bottom of the list despite the fact that they registered just a few minutes after registration opened and were previously told they were high up in the list. It also appears that at least some of the people classified as “other” on the list are in fact speaking against “strengths and weaknesses.” The sum result is to skew the list of testifiers in favor of those who oppose the teaching of strengths and weaknesses.