Science is neither left-wing nor right-wing

On the eve of tomorrow’s primaries for the Texas State Board of Education, Mr. Don McLeroy yet again provides a choice quotation in an Associated Press wire story (emphasis added):

“There is nothing conservative about what we did in English. Nothing conservative about what we did in science,” McLeroy said of the board’s record. “It just shows how left things get with the uncritical examination of evolution.”

McLeroy’s tying of science and politics is disingenuous and dangerous. The data don’t vary with political beliefs. Science is about reality, not left or right wing politics.

Science is among the most conservative disciplines practiced by human beings. It demands scholarship and credit of past achievements. It realizes the tenuous nature of new discoveries, and tries over and over again to maintain practices and processes that have yielded real progress.

I guess McLeroy is right: what they did to science standards was not conservative. Everyone, please meet Mr. Don McLeory – radical liberal.

Such complete confidence combined with real misunderstanding I’ve come to expect from Mr. McLeory. I didn’t expect his opponent, Tom Ratliff, to say this:

Ratliff, his opponent, said he concedes that McLeroy never tried foisting his creationism beliefs into textbooks(.)

Seriously? Did he follow the same science standards adoption process that I did? I know Mr. Ratliff is in the same political party as McLeroy, but still, he’s glossing over McLeroy’s involvement way too much.