They state:
For 2 decades, the survey has included two true-false statements: “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” and “The universe began with a huge explosion.” Two expert panels assembled last year by NSF have suggested qualifying those statements with the phrases “According to evolutionary theory” and “According to astronomers.” The board has decided to ask NSF to give the new versions of the questions to half the respondents on its next survey and to analyze the results.
The change infuriates Jon Miller, a science literacy expert at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and architect of the original questionnaire, which is now used by several countries. “If you are altering the questions in that way, you are doing it for religious reasons,” he says. “We don't make statements like, ‘According to some economists, we had a recession’ or ‘According to the weatherman, we had a tsunami.’”
Yes we do! Economics is at best a set of political philosophies shrouded in pseudo mathematics. Now I do not want to malign weathermen but they do not call tsunamis either, but that is a nit.
Now evolution can be shown through experiments, analysis, historical data, and on and on. I do a bit of it myself every time I dump daylilies on the hillside. You see the picture above is the result of natural selection, a few hybrids take over and reproduce stronger each time, filling up the hill side, so that centuries from now someone will ask where this new species cam from. Me! Now I am not a god or anything of the sort, I just facilitated a process of natural selection. And in a single decade we see the best coming out. Amazing.
Never see this with an economist, just look at the deficit debate! Perhaps we should just throw them out on the mountain side and see who survives! Frankly I would have used another example, even an alchemist!
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