From the 25 November 2005 issue of Science, Random Samples section:


The demand by intelligent design (ID) proponents to teach the scientific "controversy" about evolution riles most scientists. But a new study suggests that including ID materials in biology classes may help open minds to evolution.

During the fall of 2003, 103 freshman biology majors at Central Washington University in Ellensburg were divided into four sections. Two, taught by biologist Steven Verhey, learned arguments for both ID and evolution, with readings from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker and Icons of Evolution by ID proponent Jonathan Wells. The other two read only Matt Ridley's The Red Queen, about the evolution of sex and human nature.

At the end of the semester, 66 of the students agreed to take an anonymous survey in which they classified their beliefs before and after the course into six categories, ranging from biblical literalism to atheistic evolutionism. Verhey reports in the November issue of BioScience that 61% of the respondents exposed to both ID and evolution indicated a change of mind, as opposed to 21% in the control sections. The great majority of shifters moved toward evolution. For example, four of six in the experimental group who identified themselves as biblical literalists moved in the "rationalist" direction, Verhey reports.

The study provides "powerful evidence" that directly engaging students' beliefs, rather than ignoring them, may be an effective way to teach evolution, writes biologist Craig Nelson of Indiana University, Bloomington, in an accompanying editorial. But he agrees with evolutionary geneticist Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago that this strategy wouldn't be appropriate for high school students, who, says Coyne, "are not intellectually equipped to deal with such [a] controversy."