Yesterday, a New York Times article entitled “Opting out in the debate on Evolution,” described the abstention of many in the scientific community from recent hearings by the Kansas State Board of Education. The article’s author, Cornelia Dean, quotes Eugenie Scott, of the National Center for Science Education, as saying, “We on the science side of things strong-armed the Kansas hearings because we realized this was not a scientific exchange, it was a political show trial.”

Many of those who refuse to participate argue that the debate is not won over scientific content, but instead pits the science-based theory of evolution versus the faith-based idea of intelligent design, which stipulates that the only way to explain the complexity we see on Earth lies in the existence of an intelligent agent. Although the advocates of intelligent design might disagree, I would find the arguments of evolution’s backers, which deny classification of intelligent design as a science, quite convincing. One example can be found in an article by Dr. Kenneth Miller, here.

What is laudable in this case is the recognition by scientists that the arena of debate in Kansas is not a scientific one, and the conclusion this leads to, which is that there is less reason for scientists to participate. While the outcome of the Kansas State Board of Education hearings will unfortunately play out in science classrooms, which are locales that are ostentatiously devoted to science, those scientists who refuse to participate have done well in avoiding the debate since it does not involve a scientifically pertinent question. Instead, the argument is one of those who value scientific explanations versus those who value explanations based on other ideologies and values. Since the debate did not center on the validity of the science (as defined by most of the scientific community, but not those who want to teach intelligent design), and since many people thought the hearing was a “show trial” with a foregone conclusion of teaching intelligent design alongside evolution (which is how it ended), scientists planning on arguing the merits of evolutionary theory did well to stay home. As Eugenie Scott says of the issue, “We are never going to solve it by throwing science at it.”

The lesson to be taken from this might be that some debates, even some with considerable scientific content, may not be on issues where more scientific evidence or better explanation of the science will help policy formulation. Scientists in other fields might do well to recognize cases where scientific debate is not being used to move an issue forward.