Glenn Branch is deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit organization that defends the integrity of American science education against ideological interference. He is the author of numerous articles on evolution education and climate education, and obstacles to them, in such publications as Scientific American, American Educator, The American Biology Teacher, and the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, and the co-editor, with Eugenie C. Scott, of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for Our Schools (2006). He received the Evolution Education Award for 2020 from the National Association of Biology Teachers.

This essay originally appeared on Righting America on December 26, 2023, and is republished with permission.

Lionel Dahmer, the father of the notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer – the "Milwaukee Monster" who killed and dismembered 17 men and boys (mostly African Americans) – died on December 5, 2023. Lionel was the author of A Father's Story, a memoir of his son's youth first published in 1994. According to the obituary in The New York Times, "Mr. Dahmer described himself in his book as ‘almost totally analytical'—a chemist, comforted by the scientific predictability of his work, whose emotional life resembled a ‘broad, flat plain.'" But in fact, Lionel underwent a conversion experience in 1989 that affected not only his conception of the relation between religion and science, but also how his son is remembered.

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A slightly late Merry Kitzmas to all! The 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board case, where “Intelligent Design” went on trial (Matzke 2006) is now 18 years old. Amazingly, 18 years is the same number of years as between the 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard Supreme Court decision and Kitzmiller. I would say that the prominence of antievolutionism has receded in the latter 18 years, compared to numerous other culture wars, real wars, and challenges to the fundamentals of science-informed liberal democracy that have dominated the news in recent years.

In that sense, Kitzmiller has definitely had a positive impact. However, we should keep in mind that Alabama still has a warning label in its textbooks (see this story by Trisha Crain, 2023, al.com), several “critical analysis” antievolution policies remain on the books (Matzke 2015), for example the Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008 (NCSE 2023), and keeps evolving (Matzke 2015), Creation-museum-boosting young-earth creationist Mike Johnson is Speaker of the US House and third in line to the Presidency, the Texas Board of Education is still blocking textbooks with coverage of evolution and climate change that they don’t like, etc. As Rob Pennock always says, “stay vigilant!”

Longtime PT readers may recall some interesting scientific publications that came out of the Kitzmiller case, mostly reviewing the relevant science. Examples include the evolutionary origin of the immune system (Bottaro, Inlay, and Matzke 2006, Nature Immunology; see also posts at PT and NCSE), the evolutionary origin of complex adaptations (Scott and Matzke 2007, PNAS; PT post), or tracking the “evolution” of antievolution bills (Matzke 2016, Science; PT post; free online Supplemental Data). Another was on the evolution of the bacterial flagellum (Pallen & Matzke, 2006, Nature Reviews Microbiology; PT post), which I think crossed over into novel research on the origin of a complex adaptation, even though the article was mostly assembling previous findings into a coherent scenario. I have maintained an interest in the evolution of the flagellum, and I would like to present some new research that, in a roundabout way, derives from the flagellum work and from Kitzmiller.

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Photograph by C. Joseph Long.

Photography contest, Honorable Mention.

Almost literally, as I was finishing the book The Snowflake: Winter’s Frozen Artistry, by Kenneth Libbrecht and Rachel Wing, I heard this report on NPR: Professor Libbrecht had discovered and photographed what, as far as anyone knows, is the largest single-crystal snowflake ever discovered – approximately 10 mm across. The snowflake was evidently larger than the field of view of Prof Libbrecht’s microscope and had to be photographed in 4 quadrants, which were later digitally stitched together. The snowflake has been accepted in the Guinness Book of World Records.

As for the book by Libbrecht and Wing, it is short, wastes hardly a word, and was a pleasure to read. It is not a technical book, nor is it a children’s book, yet I kept thinking that much of the early chapters would be an excellent way to stimulate an interest in science in, say, medium-sized children. As of this writing, you may get the Kindle edition of the book for approximately $3, US. I read it on a Kindle Paperwhite, which gives a small, black-and-white image, so I had to look at some of the images on a computer monitor in order to get full color and resolution. The formatting on the Kindle was not wonderful, but it was manageable. More below the fold.

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