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Museums answer evolution challenges


Staff members handle doubts of creationists

By Cornelia Dean
The New York Times
Posted October 9 2005


      ITHACA, N.Y. · Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was
volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth when a group of seven or
eight creationists confronted her, eager to challenge exhibits on evolution.

      They peppered Durkee with questions about topics including techniques
for dating fossils and the second law of thermodynamics, their queries
coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.


After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she
recalled. "My mouth was dry."

That encounter and others like it gave impetus for a training session at the
museum in August. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members
crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren
D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of
science on religious grounds.

Similar efforts are under way or planned throughout the United States as
science museums and other institutions struggle to contend with challenges
to the theory of evolution that they say are growing common and sometimes
aggressive.

One company, called B.C. Tours "because we are biblically correct," even
offers escorted visits to the Denver Museum of Science and Nature.
Participants hear creationists' explanations for the exhibitions.

Officials like Judy Diamond, curator of public programs at the University of
Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln, are trying to meet such challenges
head-on.

Diamond is working on evolution exhibitions financed by the National Science
Foundation that will go on long-term display at six museums of natural
history. The program includes training for docents and staff members.

"The goal is to understand the controversies, so that people are better able
to handle them as they come up," she said. "Museums, as a field, have
recognized we need to take a more proactive role in evolution education."

Allmon, who directs the Paleontological Research Institution, an affiliate
of Cornell University, began the training session here in September with
statistics from Gallup Polls: 54 percent of Americans do not believe that
human beings evolved from earlier species, and although almost half believe
that Darwin has been proved right, slightly more disagree.

"Just telling them they are wrong is not going to be effective," he said.

Instead, he told the volunteers that when they encounter religious
fundamentalists, they should emphasize that science museums live by the
rules of science. They seek answers in nature to questions about nature.
They look for explanations that can be tested by experiment and observation
in the material world. And, they understand that all scientific knowledge is
provisional -- capable of being overturned when better answers are
discovered.

"Is it against all religion?" he asked. "No. But it is against some
religions."

Allmon says that even trained scientists like Durkee can benefit from
explicit advice about dealing with religious challenges to science
exhibitions.

"There is an art, a script that is very, very helpful," he said.

A pamphlet handed out at the training session provides information on the
scientific method, the theory of evolution and other basic information. It
offers suggestions on replying to frequently raised challenges like, "Is
there lots of evidence against evolution?" (The answer begins, simply,
"No.")

When talking to visitors about evolution, the pamphlet advises, "don't avoid
using the word." Rehearse answers to frequently asked questions, because
"you'll be more comfortable when you sound like you know what you're talking
about."

Allmon told his audience to "be firm and clear, not defensive." The pamphlet
says that if all else fails and docents find themselves in an unpleasant
confrontation, they can excuse themselves by saying, "I have to go to the
restroom."

Eugenie C. Scott, who directs the National Center for Science Education and
is conducting training sessions for Diamond's program, said that within the
past year or so efforts to train museum personnel and volunteers on
evolution and related topics had substantially increased. "This seems to be
a cottage industry now," Scott said.

At the Denver science museum, the staffers and docents often encounter
groups from B.C. Tours, which for 15 years has offered tours of the museum
based on literal readings of the Bible. The group embraces young-Earth
creationism, the view that Earth and its plants, animals and people were
created in a matter of days only a few thousand years ago.

"We present both sides from an objective perspective and let the students
decide for themselves," said Rusty Carter, an operator of the group.

Carter praised the museum, saying it had been "very professional and
accommodating, even though they do not support us." A typical group might
have 30 or 40 people, he added.

Kirk Johnson, a paleontologist and the chief curator at the museum, was
philosophical about the group. "It's interesting to walk along with them,"
he said.

Participants pay the admission fee and have as much right as anyone to be in
the museum, Johnson said, but sometimes "we have to restrain our docents
from interacting with them."

Scott, who trained as a physical anthropologist, said that in training
docents she emphasized "how the public understands or misunderstands
evolution and some of the misconceptions they come in with." She hopes to
combat the idea that people must choose between science and faith -- "that
you are either a good Christian creationist or an evil atheist
evolutionist."

"It's your job," she told docents, "not to slam the door in the face of a
believer."

Sarah Fiorello, an environmental educator at the Finger Lakes State Parks
Region who participated in the Ithaca training session in August, said she
was now prepared to take the same approach. When she describes the region's
geological history on tours of its gorges, visitors often object -- as even
a member of her family once did -- that "it does not say that in the Bible."

Now, she said, she will tell them, "The landscape tells a story based on
geological events, based on science."

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