Emails show Taft's office manipulated Board of Education; suggest ties to larger movement to undermine the integrity and legitimacy of teacher education in Ohio at the service of the extreme Religious Right.

On the heels of George W. Bush's declared support for teaching "intelligent-design" creationism, newly released public records confirm that Governor Bob Taft's office manipulated the Ohio Board of Education during the writing of the state's science standards. Taft's office orchestrated a compromise that resulted in the inclusion of the religious pseudoscience "intelligent-design" in Ohio's 10th-grade public school curriculum, and misrepresented Taft's role in the process.

"I always figured Taft was behind it. But until now, we didn't have any proof. Now we know Taft's office was negotiating directly with creationist board members while preventing his appointees from voting their consciences," said Patricia Princehouse, an evolutionary biologist at Case Western Reserve University, and a founding member of Ohio Citizens for Science.

"GET THIS EVOLVING MONKEY OFF OUR BACK" (Hicks to DeMaria 3/22/02)

Emails to and from Taft's former chief of staff, Brian Hicks (convicted on July 30 of ethics violations), reflect the staff's acknowledgement of the role of the Religious Right, led primarily by OBE members Deborah Owens Fink of Richfield and Rev. Michael Cochran. Fink is a University of Akron Associate Professor of Marketing; Cochran, former Franklin Co. assistant prosecuting attorney, is rector of Christ Church, a parish of the breakaway Episcopal Missionary Church. (see: www.christchurchanglican.org/pages/priests.html)

Hicks' conviction was part of the "Coingate" scandal that has led to the public records release of 35,000 emails by and to the Governor's staff, on all subjects. Hicks is one of the few state staff members close enough to President Bush to earn one of the president's famous nicknames. Bush refers to Hicks as "The Kid." Bush came out in favor of teaching "intelligent-design" creationism in public schools earlier this month while speaking with reporters from his home state of Texas.
(see: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8853604/site/newsweek?rf=technorati
and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/08/02/BL2005080201070.html)

Earlier statements by Ohio "intelligent-design" creationists provide additional confirmation of the political maneuvering that is evident in the Hicks e-mails. Robert Lattimer, a leader of the Ohio ID movement, boasted in a November 2003 speech in Minnesota that

"This is basically a political struggle. ... Science will have very little to do with the arguments on what science standards will look like. Education will have little to do with it. It's basically how the politics will work in a particular state."

"And the Governor was twisting some arms. He appoints 8 of those members, but he has pretty much influence on the whole Board."

GAMING THE SYSTEM IN OHIO

"The question now is how far the corruption reaches. How closely did Taft's office work with creationist activists on the OBE and with out-of-state 'intelligent-design' lobbyists such as Seattle's Discovery Institute and Kansas IDnet to draft the 'intelligent-design' creationist lesson plan that was adopted last year?" commented Gambier scientist Richard Hoppe, CEO of IntelliTrade. "And are the same people who corrupted the K-12 science standards and model curriculum process now corrupting the legitimacy of the OSU educational training process?"

The Cochran-led science standards subcommittee appears to have packed the 2003 writing team with "intelligent-design" creationists, including Glen Needham and Bryan Leonard. Leonard, author of the controversial creationist lesson plan, "A Critical Analysis of Evolution," adopted by the Ohio Board of Education last year, is a student at OSU working toward his PhD in science education while teaching at Hilliard Davidson high school.

A scandal recently erupted over Leonard's dissertation protocol. Testifying at what has come to be known as the Kansas Board of Education's "creationist kangaroo court" in May 2005, Leonard emphasized his status as a doctoral student in science education at The Ohio State University. He described his unpublished research, evidently attempting to encourage Kansas to adopt his lesson plan and teaching approach. In his testimony, Leonard tied the Ohio "Critical Analysis" lesson plan, of which he was primary author, to his dissertation research. Leonard's attempt to use his research to influence public policy in Kansas prompted Ohio scientists to learn more about Leonard's doctoral dissertation. Their inquiries revealed that his committee was stacked with "intelligent-design" creationism supporters and lacked any representation at all from the program in which he was seeking a degree.

It appears that Leonard's oversight committee may have violated OSU rules, and ethics questions have arisen over the validity of the educational experiments he conducted on his students.
(see: www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001127.html
and www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/07/the_dis_west_ge.html)

Conducting experiments on children that contradict the best current knowledge of experts in the field may be injurious to their education. If Leonard has convinced the students that ID is science, then he may have damaged their understanding of scientific inquiry, and perhaps damaged their ability to learn in other areas of science. Leonard's supervisory committee should have been composed of 2 experts in science education (one serving as his advisor), a person from a related area, and an outside person. In fact, his committee included no science education experts, but instead was composed of a technology specialist, 2 creationists, and a professor of French.

"The two senior tenured members of the committee, DiSilvestro and Needham, in fact share a single salient qualification: they have both publicly associated themselves with the 'intelligent-design' creationist movement in Ohio and elsewhere," said Hoppe. Not only were no members of Leonard's dissertation committee specialists in science education, but none were specialists in evolutionary biology either - even though Leonard's dissertation specifically concerns methods of teaching evolutionary biology in public school science classes. Leonard's dissertation defense, originally scheduled for June 6, 2005, was postponed at his advisor's request after the committee composition came to light and a qualified biologist, Dr. Joan Herbers, was appointed to replace the professor of French. OSU has not yet announced what actions will be taken with regard to Mr. Leonard's candidacy.

The creationists on Leonard's committee are Robert DiSilvestro, a nutritional biochemist and activist with the Kansas Intelligent Design Network, and Glen Needham, an entomologist once criticized publicly by an OSU colleague for requiring students to interpret the Bible in a biology class. Needham was one of the creationists placed on the Board of Education lesson writing committee while the science standards subcommittee was chaired by Rev. Cochran.
(see: John Wenzel Letter to the Editor, Columbus Dispatch, March 5, 2004)

"A PERCEIVED HIGHER POWER"

"I can only assume that the ODE folks have marching orders by a perceived higher power. It is clear that the lesson is vacuous and that they hope it may squeak through unnoticed." These were OSU Professor Steve Rissing's comments after witnessing the Department of Education's official vetting of the creationist lesson plan in December 2003. As an official reviewer for the controversial lesson plan, he had submitted a formal evaluation of it in October, and was dismayed to see his assessment "dismissed out of hand" by the review committee.

Rissing's review of the lesson plan had been very clear. He indicated that the lesson presented "no data...that are anomalous to evolution" but rather, "the religious belief of Intelligent Design Creationism is presented to students dressed up in a very cheap pseudo-scientific tuxedo." Rissing pointed out that there were "no scoring guidelines for the understanding of evolution." There were only "guidelines for students gullibility to 'evidences' on an 'Intelligent Design Creator'" and for "student prosecutorial ability at debating" - a skill more appropriate in politics or the pulpit than in a science course.

Of course, the creationist lesson plan did not squeak through unnoticed. A motion to delete it from the curriculum was narrowly defeated 10-7 in March 2004. The curriculum finally passed the OBE by a margin of 13-4 under the leadership of Taft appointee Jennifer Sheets of Pomeroy, with all but one of the governor-appointed OBE members supporting the creationist lesson plan, despite heavy opposition by leading scientific organizations including the National Academy of Sciences. More than 50 scientists gave testimony at the January, February, and March 2004 OBE meetings. Some scientists were quite outspoken. Dr. Hoppe called the draft model lesson plan "trash science," "a snow job," and "a bizarre caricature of science."
(see: http://science2.marion.ohio-state.edu/ohioscience/Controversy_Guide.html)

"LET ME KNOW IF I NEED TO CALL ANYONE" (Hicks to Ross, 11/20/02)

"The saddest and most telling thing is that nowhere in the emails do we see anyone asking what Ohio students really need to know about science," commented Rissing, former head of the Introductory Biology Program at OSU, and a member of the Advisory Committee for the K-12 science standards, 2001-02. Emails from March 2002 reveal that the pro-science sentiment the Ohio public expressed that same month demonstrated to many in the governor's office that the science standards should not be corrupted by compromise. (800 people attended the OBE hearing on "intelligent-design" in Columbus on March 11, 2002, and the public event sponsored by Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, "Evolution & God: Why Intelligent Design Isn't Science," drew an audience of over 2500 on March 2.) But the Taft-appointed OBE president, Jennifer Sheets, pushed for compromised standards anyway. Even though Taft's staff drafted a statement in support of the uncorrupted science standards (as handed in by the writing team), he declined to issue the statement.

Taft's silence empowered Fink, who had been pushing to include ID since at least March 2000, to continue her push for pseudoscience. To bolster her case, she organized a letter-writing and phone campaign in August 2002, leading Taft's advisor Elizabeth Ross to remark, "I do believe the Religious Right is angry."

After Taft's re-election in November 2002, OBE members thought they would finally be free to vote for good science, but Fink again did an end run around the process. She called on Taft's office to pressure Board of Education members who were standing up for quality education, warning that she "worked night and day before" and "will do so again" in order to "bring the state down on the board and it will look very bad for the gov" (Ross to Hicks 11/20/02). Ross wrote to Hicks that Fink had told her "Martha and Sam were ring leaders behind this and had to be called off." Hicks came to Fink's aid, instructing Ross to "call Wick, Craig and Sloemer (sic)" and telling her, "Let me know if I need to call anyone." (Hicks to Ross, 11/20/02)

One of the people Hicks and Ross had to subdue was Cincinnati OBE member GR "Sam" Schloemer. Schloemer was new to the Board, having been appointed by Taft to fill the remainder of the term of a departing OBE member. (He was elected to his own four-year term in November 2002.) He was eager to get along well with other OBE members and had faith that Taft would not sell out on teaching sound science. By January 2004, however, Schloemer went public, releasing a copy of a letter to Taft in which he "called for the resignation or removal of Mike Cochran as Co-chair of the Standards Committee." Schloemer emphasized that Rev. Cochran "is a proponent of Intelligent Design. I do not believe he can be objective about this matter."

Because of the spin and pressure exerted by the Religious Right, many OBE members have felt pressured during this controversy to make clear that they are people of faith and not atheists. Schloemer, a devout Catholic, explained, "Most people who have a relationship with God will not disagree with the concept of an Intelligent Designer, but will strongly disagree when it is incorporated into a science curriculum." To illustrate this, Schloemer added, "As a senior at Elder High School in the fall of 1952, our class discussed evolution, accepting God as the creator and designer of life and the universe, giving it structure and order." But Schloemer emphasized, "This teaching was part of my religion class, not my biology class."

Taft did not back Schloemer's efforts to safeguard the education of Ohio's children. The "intelligent-design" creationism fiasco has damaged Taft's ability to lead among businessmen in science and technology-related fields. Hoppe, CEO of Intellitrade, Inc., a trading firm that uses evolutionary algorithms to model market systems and guide investments, observed, "No wonder his Third Frontier project failed. You can't expect science to work for you if you won't stand up for the integrity of the scientific process."

Contacts:

Ohio Citizens for Science:
Richard Hoppe: 740-427-4218, rbhoppe@itrac.com
Patricia Princehouse: 440-478-5292, evolution@case.edu
Steve Rissing: 614-688-4989, rissing.2@osu.edu

Resources:
www.pandasthumb.org
www.ncseweb.org
www.ohioscience.org