THE EDITOR:

The National Centre for Science Education in the U.S. has recently announced that there are now 700 scientists named Steve who have publicly agreed: Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry.

Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence.

It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to “intelligent design,” to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation’s public schools.

Project Steve is intended, of course, as a parody of the creationist practice of amassing lists of scientists who “reject evolution” or “doubt Darwinism.”

“Steve” was selected in honour of the late Stephen Jay Gould.

Among the 700 signatories are the physicist Stephen W. Hawking, the linguist Steven Pinker, the geneticist Steve Jones and all of the eligible Nobel laureates (both Steven Weinberg and Steven Chu).

I suppose some of your readers will call these scientists “pseudo- intellectuals.”

Bob Lane

Nanaimo