Scientists hit back at Dover video - York Daily Record

Scientists hit back at Dover video - York Daily Record: "By LAURI LEBO
Daily Record/Sunday News
Friday, October 14, 2005
At the end of the 2004 school year, Bill Buckingham, then a member of the Dover Area School Board, wanted science teachers to know about what he suspected were flaws in evolutionary theory.

So he asked an administrator to give the teachers a videotape produced by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, according to court testimony Wednesday.

The pro-intelligent-design organization touts as one of its leading resources 'Icons of Evolution,' a book written by one of its senior fellows, Jonathan Wells.

The tape has featured prominently in the school board's First Amendment battle over intelligent design, which resumes today in U.S. Middle District Court in Harrisburg. The teachers watched it, as they were instructed. But that didn't keep them from opposing the school board's decision to include the concept of intelligent design in the district's biology curriculum.

The videotape, based on Wells' book of the same name, points to what it says is the 'growing scientific controversy over Darwin,' raising questions about Galapagos finches, among other 'false icons' used to teach children about evolution.

But while Buckingham may have considered the work illustrative of gaps in evolutionary theory, scientists say it is inaccurate and misleading."