Forum on Public Policy Is Science To Blame For The Intelligent Design Debate?

The current debate in the United States regarding intelligent design (ID) has been viewed by many scientists as a curious sideshow. We cannot understand how anyone could be deceived into thinking that ID belongs in the scientific realm. It has no testable, falsifiable hypotheses and so is not science. We argue here that the ID debate is only a symptom of a larger and possibly dangerous ignorance of the scientific process among the general public. We suggest this ignorance results from a combination of factors, primarily the rapid growth of information among the sciences and misguided science curricula throughout the U.S. educational system. The overwhelming amount and kind of information combined with an educational system that focuses on content at the expense of conveying the methods by which content information is gathered is troublesome. Debates similar to evolution-ID are developing with regard to topics in public health, food and water supplies, and global climate change and related issues. Failure to enact education reform designed to enhance the scientific literacy of the public will result in more debates of this nature