News & Views item - August 2006

 

 

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Printers -- Evolutionary Biology Vanished from the List of Acceptable Fields of Study for Recipients of US Federal Education Grants for Low-Income University Students. (August 25, 2006)

    The New York Times' Cornelia Dean reports

 Lawrence Krauss

The omission is inadvertent, said Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, which administers the grants. “There is no explanation for it being left off the list,” Ms. McLane said. “It has always been an eligible major.”

 

Another spokeswoman, Samara Yudof, said evolutionary biology would be restored to the list, but as of last night it was still missing.

Ms Dean goes on to say "that the omission occurred at all is worrying scientists concerned about threats to the teaching of evolution." and related that Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University, told her that he learned about it from someone at the US Department of Education, who got in touch with him after his essay on the necessity of teaching evolution appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 15. Dr. Krauss would not name his source, who he said was concerned about being publicly identified as having drawn attention to the matter.

 

The grants are awarded under the National Smart Grant program, established this year by the US Congress. (Smart stands for Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent.) they provide $4,000 grants to third- or fourth-year, low-income university students majoring in physical, life or computer sciences; mathematics; technology; engineering; or foreign languages deemed “critical” to national security.

Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, said people at the Education Department had described the omission as “a clerical mistake.” But it is “odd,” he said, because applying the subject codes “is a fairly mechanical task. It is not supposed to be the subject of any kind of deliberation.”

“I am not at all certain that the omission of this particular major is unintentional,” he added. “But I have to take them at their word.”

Steven W. Rissing, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University told Ms Dean, "It’s just awfully coincidental," given the furore over challenges by the religious right to the teaching of evolution in public schools. "This is not just some kind of nicety," he said. "We are doing a terrible disservice to our students if this is yet another example of making sure science doesn’t offend anyone."

 

Professor Krauss probably summed up the views of most scientists whether within or outside the life sciences, saying, "Removing that one major is not going to make the nation stupid, but if this really was removed, specifically removed, then I see it as part of a pattern to put ideology over knowledge. And, especially in the Department of Education, that should be abhorred."