"Natural divisions" (2005)

Natural divisions. From the following article: Intelligent design: Who has designs on your students' minds?
> <font face="Times New Roman">Geoff Brumfiel<font>
> <font face="Times New Roman">Nature 434, 1062-1065 (28 April 2005) <font>
> <font face="Times New Roman">doi: 10.10384341062a

From the very beginning, the purpose of Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) clubs has been to facilitate debate, says Casey Luskin, who founded the first IDEA club (see picture, below) at the University of California, San Diego, in 1999.

"We want to inform everyone about all sides of the issue, so we actually invite Darwinists to the clubs to talk about natural selection," says Luskin, who now runs the IDEA Center, a small non-profit organization in San Diego that helps set up new groups on US campuses.

Evolution advocates say that researchers should be careful about how they respond to such overtures. If the request is for a public debate with an intelligent-design advocate, the best answer is 'no', argues Robert Pennock, a philosopher of science at Michigan State University in East Lansing. "A public debate is an artificial setting for getting into scientific issues," he says. "There's no way in that format to thoroughly give a scientific response, especially to a lay audience."

"A formal debate is not how we do science," agrees Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California. "But I think it's appropriate for scientists to meet with students and educate them about what the real science is saying."

That's what Victor Hutchison and his colleagues in the zoology department at the University of Oklahoma in Norman have been doing for the past few years. "We will not agree to debate the creationists publicly," he says. "But we encourage faculty members and graduate students to attend their meetings and challenge them in the discussion."

And intelligent-design supporters on campus are tolerant, more or less, of the scientists' presence. "When people remain civil, the questions that scientists ask can be illuminating," says Russell Hunter, a senior philosophy major and head of the IDEA chapter at Oklahoma. But, he adds, when scientists become too confrontational, it can have the opposite effect. "When somebody comes and gets into a yelling match, it just reinforces the beliefs of members who see the opposition as part of a political movement to make sure religion doesn't gain any ground in America," he says.