Texas: Houston Chronicle Endorses Laura Ewing

The Houston Chronicle endorsed Laura Ewing for the District 7 State Board of Education race. There’s an additional bit quoted from the recent press conference of a coalition of scientists in Texas who are challenging the SBOE on the religious antievolution leanings of many of the board:

The question facing the board, in the first overhaul of the science curriculum in more than a decade, is whether the curriculum will continue to include teaching the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories, including evolution. It sounds reasonable. But a coalition of Texas scientists says the “strengths and weaknesses” provision is simply an excuse to expose students to “supernatural and fringe explanations” instead of traditional scientific principles. Sahotra Sarkar, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas, stated the case for the coalition: “We should teach students 21st-century science, not some watered-down version with phony arguments that nonscientists disingenuously call ‘weaknesses,’ ” she told the board recently. “Calling ‘intelligent design’ arguments a weakness of evolution is like calling alchemy a weakness of chemistry, or astrology a weakness of astronomy.”

The Houston Chronicle should note that Dr. Sarkar is male, not female as they state above.