John G. West Political Scientist and Cultural Critic
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Austin Statesman Scoops Texas Board Evolution Story

Published at Evolution News
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Kudos to Austin American Statesman reporter Molly Bloom. She apparently stayed for the entire Texas State Board of Education meeting, unlike some of her colleagues in the press. She’s the first reporter I’ve seen who actually reports the fact that the Texas Board voted to revise proposed standards on evolution to require students to analyze and evaluate the key concepts of the theory such as common ancestry and natural selection. Her story, “Third state education board vote mandates teaching students challenges to evolution” gets the basic point right, even though she is still off on the details. She only describes the new evolution standard added at the behest of state board Chair Don McElroy, failing to mention earlier approval of a series of amendments offered by board member Terri Leo to the evolution standards. Still, Ms. Bloom is to be congratulated for covering something the rest of the press thus far has missed.

UPDATE (6:25 pm Pacific Time): The Associated Press has finally gotten the message that something else happened at the Board meeting, but the piece doesn’t seem to be based on independent reporting, because it repeats the same errors as the Statesman piece and only mentions McElroy’s amendment, not the others.

John G. West

Senior Fellow, Managing Director, and Vice President of Discovery Institute
Dr. John G. West is Vice President of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and Managing Director of the Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Formerly the Chair of the Department of Political Science and Geography at Seattle Pacific University, West is an award-winning author and documentary filmmaker who has written or edited 12 books, including Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, and Walt Disney and Live Action: The Disney Studio’s Live-Action Features of the 1950s and 60s. His documentary films include Fire-Maker, Revolutionary, The War on Humans, and (most recently) Human Zoos. West holds a PhD in Government from Claremont Graduate University, and he has been interviewed by media outlets such as CNN, Fox News, Reuters, Time magazine, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post.
Discovery Institute