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Kansas museums starting to see impact from evolution controversy
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/12714724.htm

LAWRENCE, Kan. - The dispute over science standards used in teaching Kansas
children is beginning to make its impact felt at some of the state's
museums.

Jerry Choate, director of the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays,
says that about once a month workers find brochures in the restrooms that
promote creationism over evolution.

In addition, guides at the museum increasingly find themselves confronted by
people angry about exhibits using evolution to explain the history of
dinosaurs and fossils.

"It's happening more than it used to," said Choate. "A person or group will
come in and confront one of the guides with rapid-fire questions for which
the person is not qualified to respond."

John Calvert, a leader of forces that want the Kansas State Board of
Education to require criticism of evolution in the classroom, said the
museum encounters are part of a rising tide of opposition to Charles
Darwin's theory.

"I think you're finding that wherever there's a discussion of evolution
going on, you'll find people raising their questions," said Calvert, a
retired Lake Quivira attorney who helped found the Intelligent Design
Network. Intelligent design holds that some features of the natural world
are so well-ordered and complex that they're best explained by an
intelligent cause.

Evolution - which says that natural chemical processes could have created
the basic building blocks of life on Earth, that all life had a common
ancestor and that man and apes shared a common ancestor - is about to get
increased focus at both the Sternberg museum in Hays and the University of
Kansas Museum of Natural History. In November, the university museum in
Lawrence will host the traveling exhibit "Explore Evolution," which shows
how evolution influences scientific research. And next year the Sternberg
museum unveils a new exhibition on evolution.

Jordan Yochim, the assistant director at the University of Kansas museum,
said the exhibit isn't intended as commentary about the debate that's been
going on in the state.

"It really is just coincidental that we have an exhibit when the issue here
is hot in Kansas," Yochim said.

While officials at the two museums say the controversy hasn't changed the
way they present information, they've noticed more people arrive ready to
criticize what they see.

"We get groups in quite frequently - they're mainly interested in the
dinosaur floor - to tell a different kind of story," Yochim said.

At the Sternberg, guides are being given more training to handle situations
in which they are challenged.

"If a person is not receptive to what you have say, you don't need to talk
to them," Choate said.

Calvert doesn't like that approach.

"Museums aren't focused on education," he said. "They're focused on
indoctrination."

The University of Kansas museum is one of six across the Midwest that helped
sponsor the exhibit due to go on display at Lawrence in November. It will
look at the way evolutionary theory is used in current research, such as
explaining changes in HIV, the adaptation of Galapagos finches and genetic
ties between humans and chimpanzees.

"It's like with any information," countered Yochim. "It's up to a
well-educated citizenry to make good use for it, and museums are no
different. We can't force visitors to think a certain way."

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