Over at Ars Technica, John Timmer has an excellent review of the anti-evolution movement’s latest high school textbook, Explore Evolution. Following the Dover, PA trial that in 2005 stacked precedent against teaching Intelligent Design theory, this book emerged to slip through the legal cracks.
This avoidance of science plays out in countless ways, some of which we’ll discuss in detail, but it’s worth pointing out that it starts with the book’s subtitle, “The arguments for and against neo-Darwinism.” During the roughly 20 years I was directly involved in biology research, I’d never come across the term “Darwinism.” To confirm that this wasn’t my imagination, however, I turned to PubMed, which archives information about, and abstracts from, over 18 million publications.
Searching for “neo-darwinism” netted 30 references; “neodarwinism” another five. Trying “neodarwinian” and “neo-darwinian” pulled out a whopping 96 references. The term appears to have no significant presence in scientific communications. In contrast, searching for “evolution” pulled out 226,476 papers, while the more specific “selective pressure” 21,553. If this book is all about science, why not use the terminology actual scientists do?
More here.