What this movie will ultimately do is polarize the issue. This has been done before, and taken to court for teaching standards and more, and again and again we’ll see science prevail. Why? Because truth ultimately prevails. The things we need to keep watching out for are things like secret voting sessions in school boards (I live in Florida. They know the best way to win the debate is to not have one). Thus far we’ve survived it, but we always seem to be on the cusp of retardation.

We at nasa do outreach, but we kinda do it badly. Personally I think our outreach is modeled toward politicians (which is necessary), and then adapted for kids occasionally. It always comes off as some 1950’s “atomic cafe” style PSA about moon landings or some other thing they’ve already had beaten into them by their parents, who all work at the space center anyway. Even our own state has lousy support for the space program, never mind the rest of the country.

I would love to do more. I’m a multi-disciplinary kind of guy who loves everything from electron valence shell physics to little plastic army men. I connect with kids well when it’s on subject, but I’m in no position to speak for nasa in any way. And while I’ve done a few school talks on my own time, they were invites from teacher friends, and I have no idea how to seek out opportunities to do such things more frequently.

Which brings me to my big giant complaint about education right now. When I went through school (which really wasn’t that long ago at all) I was given sciences in the form of gospel- as in “we know the big stuff, it’s all solved before 1925 or so, and everything now is just putting it together or little bickering” When I got out I discovered great debate over almost every aspect of science. There were more than 9 big things in the solar system, the universe is bigger, no smaller, no bigger than we think it is, with more energy than we assumed, and that matter/energy are not so clearly defined. These sorts of things, the places where our research and attempts at understanding the very basics of the universe, macro and micro, are pushing back and forth in endless “aa hah!” moments. These are the things that would have sparked me to the sciences much, much earlier. That and I didn’t learn to write a research paper till after I was out of college. I mean I was given assignments to write them, but I’d never really seen a proper one. It’s terrible. Really terrible. I had no idea what peer reviewed was really about. The “research” papers I did during my education were busy work. Educational babysitting.

That said, how can we expect these kids to understand the total lack of science in ID if they don’t have a clue what peer reviewed research is?

PS: There was a short while in my early college days then I played assistant at an asteroid hunting telescope. Florida kinda sucks for such things, but we found a few. Now I hear FIT is opening up a new scope to do the same, but of course better suited to florida’s murky skies. Know your science, love it.

I should have added a lot to what I do with students. Lots of lessons are actual scientific research. “My” students have discovered asteroids. They’ve measured asteroid positions. They’ve contributed real, peer-reviewed science at a high-school age. They learn about things like centroiding and error in measurement, statistical significance, and other important concepts from working with astronomical images. (We characterize the signal of a star in an image in terms of its standard deviation.) Randy Olson simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The innovation is out there; he (and others) simply refuse to recognize it.

As for evolution being “just a theory,” indeed. It is “just a theory.” The hypothesis that taking a gunshot wound to the head can kill you is also “just a theory.” And both are about equally well-supported as being true. I am, shall we say, a proponent of educating people about what “theory” means in a scientific context.

The entire science education industry needs to grow a pair and decry ID for what it is: Creationism in a cheap suit. What’s more, teachers need to tell their students WHY creationism and ID are improper scientific theories. You know how many times I hear “It’s just a theory?” about evolution? It drives me insane! Yes, it’s “just a theory,” but it’s supported by countless studies in multiple fields. It’s never been DISproven, and that’s what science is. Science is all about falsification. In a way, we’re all looking for ways to disprove the theory, but it stands the rigors of science and comes out the winner.

That’s what people don’t understand, and that’s what is not being communicated effectively. Also, Olsen is a tool.