Author Archives: JanetKRay.com

Science Education: 100 Years After Scopes

May 25, 2025 By in Butler Act, Cy-Fair ISD, Joe Mendi, Scopes Monkey Trial Leave a comment

One hundred years ago come July, a trial in little Dayton, Tennessee captured the world’s attention. 

It was hot as blazes, so the whole show moved outdoors. The atmosphere was far more fairground than hallowed ground: little girls played with monkey dolls and vendors hawked sodas and souvenirs.

A chimpanzee named Joe Mendi, smartly dressed in a three-piece suit and a fedora, sipped a Coca-Cola at the local drugstore. 

The Scopes Monkey Trial was a set-up from the beginning. It was a carefully planned publicity event – an alliance between the civic leaders of Dayton and the American Civil Liberties Union. 

Dayton wanted the publicity; the ACLU wanted a case that could be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. 

High School teacher John Scopes was easily convicted, but not for teaching evolution. Scopes was convicted of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, a law forbidding the teaching of human evolution. The case was overturned in a lower court, so it never made it to SCOTUS.

And here we are, in the Year of Our Lord 2025, one hundred years later… 

State lawmakers and state and local school boards across the nation routinely introduce science education initiatives unsupported by actual scientists, or actual science evidence, for that matter. 

Not to be outdone, a local school board in Texas went a step further and banned chapters within adopted science texts. Nothing to see here in chapter 7, kids. Close your eyes and flip to Chapter 8. 

OBSERVATION #1: no one is wearing a “Science is Dumb” t-shirt. We all want to be on Team Science. 

Occasionally, the anti-science effort is overt: teachers must include intelligent design creationism along with lessons about evolution; or, in the case of West Virginia, the Bible must be recognized as an accurate resource for teaching natural history.

Usually, however, the anti-science initiatives are more subtle. Usually, anti-science initiatives are cloaked in science-y language.

The science-y sounding initiatives demand that “both sides” of a science issue be taught and/or “strengths and weaknesses” of a science theory must be discussed. 

No one, however, actually wants to teach “both sides” of photosynthesis. No one wants to critique the water cycle. 

No one. Something else is going on.

OBSERVATION #2: Grandstanding is a thing. 

Anti-science bills often never reach the floor for a vote. These bills usually die in committee or die without action on the governor’s desk.

Oklahoma, Minnesota, West Virginia, New Jersey, and North Dakota – all had anti-science bills eliminated by inaction.

Is it avoidance of being on record? 

A vote for an anti-science measure invites experts to inundate you with actual facts. And in states like Oklahoma and Texas, a vote supporting science likely means you’ll be primaried or defeated.

Sometimes, anti-science still wins:

  • Science chapters within adopted textbooks are still banned in the enormous Cy-Fair ISD in Texas.
  • Tennessee’s 21st century “monkey law” has been on the books since 2012.

I’ll say the quiet part out loud. The science we want to debate is evolution.

Where’s Joe Mendi when you need him? 

We also don’t like vaccines. And we really don’t like climate science. 

One hundred years ago, the Scopes trial wasn’t about evidence. In fact, no scientist testified, and no evidence was admitted into testimony.

John Scopes was convicted because evolution was a front in a culture war. 

And one hundred years later, opposition to evolution, climate science, and vaccine science is not about evidence.

It’s still a culture war. 

Beachballs and Chainsaws

April 30, 2025 By in DOGE, Francis Collins, National Institutes of Health, NIH 2 Comments

It was only the size of a beachball, but the impact was a tidal wave.

In 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, and America was caught flat-footed. 

Embarrassed but determined to regain science supremacy, the US poured over a billion dollars into new textbooks and science education. 

In the following decade, we put humans on the moon, and this time, Americans burst with pride. The moon landing was only the beginning – we not only led the world in space exploration, but also in science and medicine.

Fast-forward to 2025. The DOGE guy “took a chainsaw to bureaucracy,” and that included the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world: America’s National Institutes of Health. 

Immediately, 1300 NIH employees were fired. Two billion dollars in research was cancelled, including child cancer research – an inconvenient truth for those who put a child with cancer on display at a joint address to Congress. 

A one dollar limit was placed on research supplies.

Heart disease and stroke have been reduced by 75% over the last forty years, due to research done at NIH.

Do you know someone who relies on insulin or statin drugs? Ninety-nine percent of FDA approved drugs were developed through the NIH.

The chainsaw stopped three to four year clinical trials immediately. All previous years in the studies – wasted. People dependent on the trial medicines? Who cares. 

The NIH is decimated.

An MD scientist at NIH (for now) says morale is grim: “We feel fear.”

Currently, seventy-five percent of American scientists are considering leaving the US. Europe, Australia, and China are thrilled – they’ve already ramped up recruitment. 

Francis Collins, a world-renown geneticist, medical doctor, researcher, and, by the way, an unapologetic person of faith, was until recently the long-time head of the NIH. 

Dr. Collins called the situation “untenable” and retired in February 2025.

It is worth your time to watch this recent “60 Minutes” story featuring Dr. Collins. Regardless of your stance on the chainsaw approach, you need to know.

Vive la France and Team Science!

April 6, 2025 By in Greg Abbott, measles, smallpox, vaccine denial, vaccines Leave a comment

It was the Age of Reason, a time of Enlightenment, and a Golden Age of Science – and King Louis XVI of France was here for all of it. 

The young king’s father, Louis the XV, had recently died after smallpox swept through the golden halls of Versailles. Fifty people were infected, eleven (including Louis XV) died.

Smallpox was disfiguring and deadly, and greatly feared. The only prevention was a medical treatment called “inoculation.” Inoculation was popular in most of Europe and in the Middle East, but the French were holdouts.

Inoculation meant taking pus from an actual smallpox lesion and injecting it under the skin of a healthy patient. Ideally, the patient would develop a few smallpox blisters, feel crummy for a few days, and recover with full immunity to smallpox.

The procedure came with risk – a few inoculated patients contracted smallpox, but not at the 30% fatality rate of a full-blown infection. 

But Louis XVI was on Team Science, and he wanted to encourage his people to do the same.

The king, along with his two brothers and a sister-in-law underwent inoculation. In other words, the entire line of succession.

Daily health bulletins were publicly posted, documenting the King’s inoculation experience:

“The king had a good night. Fever continues and is moderate. Local smallpox.”

“The king had slightly more fever with slight nausea. The king, as well as the princes and princess, continue to walk in the gardens.”

The reports continued for three more days, until the king was fever-free and the blisters dried out. 

The king’s example made an impact. The people took up the banner and fashionable ladies sported pink-spotted “inoculation ribbons” pinned to their hats.

Oh, for a time when heads of state encouraged science and public health. Oh, for a time when leaders led by example.

Our leaders continue to downplay the surging measles outbreak – 500 cases in Texas alone. Yet, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has yet to say the words “vaccination” or “measles” in his responses to the ever-growing and spreading outbreak.

A Texas state representative recently filed a bill eliminating vaccination requirements for public school children. 

At the national level, our leaders recently cut funding and personnel supporting vaccination for uninsured children through a network of sixty providers.

In Dallas County, cuts meant the cancellation of 50 community vaccination events – many in areas with low vaccination rates.

“It’s catastrophic,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers.

And while we’re cutting funding for vaccinations, our national leaders decided to fund new “research” looking at autism and the MMR vaccine, despite six decades of evidence that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. 

Louis XVI eventually lost his head in the bloody French Revolution, taking the fall for the excesses of his father and grandfather, but he stood up for what was right and true in science. 

Oh, for leaders who stand up for science.

Oh, for leaders who stand up for public health.

Happy April Fool’s Day from the Monotremes!

April 1, 2025 By in platypus Leave a comment

In addition to liberty, freedom, and the 4th of July, the American Revolution resulted in another, lesser-known consequence of the victory.

No longer able to transport British prisoners to their American colonies, the Brits decided that the Land Down Under would suffice.

John Hunter, formally of His Majesty’s Navy, was the governor in charge. Hunter was fascinated by Australian plants and animals, so peculiar and unknown to an Englishman.

To Hunter, the native flora and fauna were far more interesting than squelching the illegal alcohol trafficking co-run by prisoners and military officers.

Hunter spent an entire day watching an Aboriginal hunter track the most peculiar animal he’d ever seen. Eventually, Hunter captured one of the critters himself, pickled it (likely in some of that illegal alcohol), and sent it back to England’s most famous zoologist, George Shaw.

Shaw thought he’d been punked – and with good reason: “science” hoaxes weren’t unheard of in the day. An 18th century English woman gained fame by giving birth to rabbits, and only stopped birthing bunnies when she was placed under constant supervision.

After Shaw determined that the creature was legit and not a sewn-together fraud, he set about to study it.

The creature had fur like a mammal, but no nipples. Its babies simply licked milk off the mom’s fur. It had a duck-like beak, but no teeth. And curiously, the Aborigines claimed the creature laid eggs. What’s more, those eggs were laid through a single, all-purpose opening for waste, reproduction, and egg-laying.

The platypus, found only in Australia, is a member of an ancient lineage of mammals called monotremes (“one opening”).

In the days before dinosaurs, a lineage of egg-laying animals split into two major branches: the reptiles on one side and a lineage that eventually led to the mammals on the other.

The platypus and its monotreme kin, the echidnas, have changed very little since the split.

Monotremes retain several “basal” traits – traits like those found in mammals very near the “base” of the family tree. Monotremes lay eggs through a single opening like their reptile cousins but produce milk and have fur like mammals.

I have no idea if Shaw received that first platypus on April 1, but it would have been a great Fools-Day discovery.

Happy April Fools Day from the enigmatic platypus!

(and btw, this is an Easter egg for my new book . . .!)

Bad Air and the New HHS Secretary

February 14, 2025 By in germ theory, miasma, rfk-jr 4 Comments

From inhaling the odour of beef the butcher’s wife obtains her obesity (Professor H Booth, writing in the Builder, July 1844)

Ancient Greeks and Romans believed it. Folks in the Middle Ages, too. And in the 19th century, most medical professionals still swore by it: disease is caused by bad air.

Disease-causing bad air was called “miasma”, and for centuries, miasma explained illness. Well, sometimes it was the alignment of the stars and planets, but stinky air was the most common culprit.

Foul air was the cause of all sorts of sickness, from plague to deadly childbed fever.

Some, however, had other ideas. In 1847, Hungarian obstetrician Ignac Semmelweis insisted that doctors in his hospital wash their hands before delivering babies – and what do you know? Cases of childbed fever plummeted.

In Victorian London, physician John Snow insisted that it was infected water, not bad air that was responsible for a deadly cholera outbreak.

Semmelweis and Snow were pioneers in the development of one of the foundational principles of modern science: germ theory.

Germ theory says that pathogens – microscopic organisms – cause disease, not bad air.

This week, the Senate confirmed RFK Jr. to lead our nation’s health programs. He’s not a health care professional, an epidemiologist, or a scientist of any sort.

You’re probably aware of RFK Jr’s opposition to vaccine science and maybe his beliefs that 5G networks can control your behavior or that AIDS is not caused by HIV.

But you might not know that RFK Jr. doesn’t believe in germ theory. What’s more, he is a believer in miasma as the cause of disease.

Hello? The 1500s are calling. They’d like their HHS Secretary back, please.

“Germ theory aficionados blame disease on microscopic pathogens,” says RFK Jr. in his book The Real Anthony Fauci (2021).

Imagine that.

There’s a whole section in his book titled “Miasma vs. Germ Theory.”

It’s not life-saving vaccines and antibiotics that revolutionized medicine, says RFK Jr. It’s sanitation.

When a child dies from measles “germ theory proponents blame the virus,” he says, and not malnutrition. When RFK Jr. visited Samoa during a 2019 deadly measles outbreak, he urged vitamin A treatments, not vaccination.

Underlying malnutrition impairs the ability to fight disease, of course. But it is pathogens that cause disease. No matter how healthy you are, untreated rabies will kill you.

John Snow for HHS!

Looking Through the Telescope, Part 2: Climate and Religion

December 10, 2024 By in climate, Galileo 3 Comments
Looking Through the Telescope, Part 2: Climate and Religion

Four moons landed Galileo in trouble. 

The seventeenth century Church assumed that the earth was the center of All There Is. But here comes Galileo with his fancy new telescope and visual evidence of four moons orbiting Jupiter. 

Galileo set his telescope up in public and invited critics to look for themselves. 

But opposition to Galileo was never about the evidence. Opposition was so much NOT about the evidence that some people simply refused to look through the telescope. Hard pass, they said. I’m good, they said. Nothing to see here.

It’s easy to be judgy about the scientific positions of 17th century folk. After all, doctors still believed that disease was caused by an imbalance of bile, blood, and phlegm. What a sick person really needs is a good bloodletting! 

In the Year of Our Lord 2024, religious beliefs still obscure the telescope for many people, and climate science always makes the top three in religion-rooted denial. 

A new study found that the more strongly a person believes “God is in control of the earth”, the LESS likely they are to (1) believe that climate change is a real problem, (2) attribute climate change to human activity, and (3) support policies addressing climate change. 

Disappointing to say the least, but not the most disconcerting finding . . .

Those who were told that only God is in control of earth’s future, were less likely to request (when offered) climate-related evidence from NOAA. A peek in the telescope? No thank you. 

This last finding tracks with the contemporary melding of evangelicalism and right-leaning politics, both of which are predictors of negative environmental attitudes. 

Here’s former Trump staffer and SBC activist William Wolfe: “At the end of the day . . . we know that God has given us everything in creation to be used for our good and His glory. And yes, that includes plastic straws and big trucks. . . This world will be brought to an end when God decides that it is time, and not a moment before.”

Then there’s Tim Walberg (R-MI): “I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us. And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take care of it.”

Politicians and pastors speak with authority, but seldom with expertise. 

People of faith in a modern scientific world need to speak with evidence-informed voices. 

Don’t be afraid to look. 

LINKS:

Kane, J.V., Perry, S.L. Belief in divine (versus human) control of earth affects perceived threat of climate change. npj Clim. Action 3, 78 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-024-00163-9

Preston, Jesse L., Shin, Faith. Opposing effects of Spirituality and Religious Fundamentalism on environmental attitudes. Journal of Environmental Psychology (Vol. 80) 2022. 

Pew Research (November 14, 2022) Highly religious Americans are less concerned about climate change, less convinced human activity is causing warmer temperatures.

GALILEO, A TELESCOPE, AND TEXAS STUDENTS

November 24, 2024 By in Cy Fair ISD, Galileo Tags: , Leave a comment

Galileo didn’t invent the telescope, but he built the best one in his day. 

Galileo turned his fancy new telescope toward Jupiter and made a shocking discovery: four moons! Four moons orbit the giant planet! It was the seventeenth century equivalent of headline-making-break in-news. 

Today, Jupiter has 95 officially recognized moons, so why all the excitement about four?

Those four moons landed Galileo in big trouble with the Church. 

The official position of the Church was an earth-centered universe: all stars, all moons, all planets orbit the earth. After all, the Bible clearly says that the earth is fixed and cannot be moved. And, more importantly, if earth is not the center of it all, then humans are not the center of God’s attention . . . and Christian theology falls apart.

Galileo set his telescope up in public and invited critics to look for themselves. See the evidence with your own two eyes, he said. 

But opposition to Galileo was never about the evidence. Opposition was so much NOT about the evidence that some people simply refused to look through the telescope.

Hard pass, they said. I’m good, they said. Nothing to see here.

This past spring, the board of the third largest school district in Texas, Cy-Fair ISD in the Houston area, voted overwhelmingly to ban thirteen chapters in approved science textbooks for the 2024-2025 school year. 

The banned chapters cover topics deemed “controversial” by the board: climate change, vaccines, and human impact on the earth and its ecosystems. 

No science teachers or science administrators were involved in the decision. 

State Representative Jon Rosenthal has kids in Cy-Fair. Here’s Rosenthal: “They’re choosing to not prepare them for the possibility of entering the scientific community or even understanding some of the stuff that drives our modern science and medical profession now.”

The textbooks can be used, but we must pretend the banned chapters aren’t there. Nothing to see here – just ignore that evidence. 

The Sci-Fair school board simply refuses to look through the telescope.

 And sadly, the students aren’t allowed to look, either.

NUMBER ONE

November 17, 2024 By in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., vaccine denial, vaccines Tags: , 2 Comments

In a perfect world, there would be no mistakes. But the world is not perfect, and mistakes – sometimes deadly – happen.

In mid-2018, two nurses in the island country of Samoa accidently reconstituted the measles vaccine with a muscle relaxant instead of water. Two infants died.

The Samoan government paused vaccinations to investigate the deaths. Within weeks, the error was discovered. But in a country with a measles vaccination rate already lower than recommended for herd immunity, parental fear spells disaster. 

That sound you hear? 

That’s the anti-vaccine cavalry riding in, led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 

In 2019, RFK Jr. arrived in Samoa with his anti-vaccine message, embracing local anti-vaccine proponents. Months of parental fears stoked by RFK’s antivaccine message led to disaster: vaccination rates plummeted.

Three months after RFK’s visit, Samoa experienced a devastating measles outbreak. The government took action – mandating shutdowns and vaccinations. 

In 2019, there were almost 3,000 measles cases reported in Samoa. Thirty-nine people died, thirty-five of them children. 

RFK Jr. never updated his antivax website, Children’s Health Defense, regarding the cause of the original deaths. RFK Jr. denies his influence on the deadly outbreak.

RFK Jr. sometimes tries to back away from his antivax hot takes, like when he said Ann Frank had more freedom than people under vaccine mandates. Still, in a CNN interview just a year ago, RFK Jr. bragged about telling random parents with a baby “better not get him vaccinated,” in order to “save” the child. 

RFK Jr. has a long history of promoting health-related conspiracies:

HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. MMR vaccine causes autism. Chemtrails. Drinking raw milk is harmless. Chemicals in water are causing kids to be trans. COVID-19 was ethnically targeted to avoid infecting Jewish and Chinese people. 5G high speed internet harvests our data and controls our behavior. Fluoride in the water supply is harmful.

RFK Jr. is not a doctor or any type of healthcare professional, an epidemiologist, or a public health policy expert. 

I don’t know if RFK Jr. will be confirmed to lead Health and Human Services, but I DO know this: 

He was the number one choice of the president-elect.

First in line.

Only the best people, he promised. Only the best. 

Science Literacy in Popular Media

July 22, 2024 By in Candace Owens, science literacy 1 Comment

Candace Owens is a conservative political commentator with her own newly launched podcast. Owens’ pod ranked 4th on Spotify this week and has been as high as 3rd. Only Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson ranked higher. 

Donald Trump called Owens “a very smart thinker.”

Candace Owens has the ears of a lot of people, to say the least.

A few weeks ago, Owens weighed in on a science topic, one that most people would consider settled:

“I’m not a flat earther. I’m not a round earther. Actually, what I am is, I am somebody who has left the cult of science.”

What. 

Owens continued: “science, what it is actually, if you think about it, is a pagan faith.” 

So here we are. Science is a cult, science is a religion, says the pundit with a giant megaphone. Science is not a practice of evidence, data, and peer-review, but a matter of opinion and belief, according to Owens. 

Reality: a science fact is true whether I believe it or not. I can think the earth is flat or I can doubt the earth is “round”, but that does not change the fact: the earth is a sphere.

I fear for science literacy. 

Spiritualizing the Eclipse

April 11, 2024 By in eclipse, moon Tags: , , , , Leave a comment
Spiritualizing the Eclipse

Total Eclipse Day 2024 has been on my phone calendar since I witnessed the 2017 total eclipse in Nashville, where a mean little cloud decided to park itself over our viewing spot just ten seconds before totality. Still, it was an amazing experience, and I counted the days to April 8, 2024.

I had much better luck in Dallas, despite more looming clouds.

Anticipation as the moon’s path crept across the sun. Totality. TOTALITY. Minutes of solemn darkness. A gorgeous corona and a sighting of a brilliantly red flare. Laying on the ground, absorbing it all.

I felt the immensity of the universe. I witnessed, first-hand, the movement of celestial bodies, usually just an academic/intellectual given, but rarely seen in such dramatic fashion.

It was ethereal. It was beautiful. It was emotional. Spiritual, even. 

As the midday dawn turned back to day, I loved reading the socials and seeing the eclipse through the emotions of fellow humans, reflecting on beauty and immensity and their smallness in the universe.

Aside from the few (but inevitable) end-times or moral-decay-warning interpretations of the eclipse, many found a religious message in the event:

“The perfect distance between the earth, moon, and sun is the result of a divine, perfect plan for creation.” 

“The moon, any closer or further away would not stay in position. It all points to the Creator.”

And here’s where the science educator in me bristles, puts on a dinosaur dress, and fires up the Magic School Bus.

That is simply not correct. 

The moon was far, far closer to earth in the past. At the time of the moon’s formation, it was only 14,000 miles from earth. The moon that obscured the sun on Eclipse Day is 240,000 miles from us. And the moon continues to retreat – at the rate of 1.5 inches every year. 

The Apollo astronauts left mirrors on the surface of the moon. We can calculate the rate of retreat by firing lasers at the mirrors and timing the return trips. 

So much for a singular “perfect” distance between earth and moon, established by a divine, perfect plan. 

Why, then, is our moon inching away from us? Was it something we said?

The moon’s gravity tugs on the earth’s oceans as it makes its orbit. We feel this “tug” in the form of rising and falling tides. But – the earth’s gravity likewise pulls on the moon, speeding up the moon’s orbit. This bit of increased speed powers the moon’s retreat. 

Stand in awe of the universe: it’s awe-some. But we walk on shaky ground when we attempt to find “proofs” of God in what we don’t understand or what is not yet known.