Date published: 2008/09/16
The BBC says:
Professor Michael Reiss has quit as director of education at the Royal Society following the controversy over his recent comments on creationism.
Last week Prof Reiss - a Church of England minister - said creationism should be discussed in science lessons if pupils raised the issue.
...
Prof Reiss, speaking at the British Association Festival of Science at the University of Liverpool, estimated that about one in 10 children was from a family which supported a creationist rather than evolutionary viewpoint.He said his experience had led him to believe it was more effective to include discussion about creationism alongside scientific theories such as the Big Bang and evolution - rather than simply giving the impression that such children were wrong.
Reacting to his stepping down, Lord Robert Winston, professor of science and society at Imperial College London, said: "I fear that in this action the Royal Society may have only diminished itself.
"This is not a good day for the reputation of science or scientists.
"This individual was arguing that we should engage with and address public misconceptions about science - something that the Royal Society should applaud."
Winston is wrong. Reiss had to go. The Royal Society would have been much more diminished if they had let him stay. Of course there is nothing wrong with addressing "public misconceptions about science". But there is everything wrong with including a "discussion about creationism alongside scientific theories such as the Big Bang and evolution" just because an allegedly substantive minority (or even if a majority) of children have been brainwashed by their parents to believe nonsense. Unless the phrase "discussion about creationism" means "trashing creationism as a scientific theory", which was fairly evidently not Reiss' intent. (So it's perhaps worth discussing in schools what a scientific theory is and why creationism and its cousin intelligent design are not scientific theories but just religious sentiment.)
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