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From the National Center for Science Education, October 13, 2005
In the Kansas City Star (October 9, 2005), Jason Gertzen and Diane
Stafford report that Kansas's reputation as a state officially
hostile to evolution education is having discernible effects on
recruitment efforts at universities and in the burgeoning
biotechnology industry. "Some business leaders and economic
development recruiters in the region say ... the region has acquired
an 'anti-science' label in some key professions, fueled by the
evolution debate in Kansas and efforts in Kansas and Missouri to
impose restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research," they
write. For example:
* "We have become a bit of a punch line ... We just
tend to get lumped in there as the stereotypical conservative,
backward-thinking area," said Blake Schreck, the president of the
Lenexa Chamber of Commerce.
* When I go to national meetings, people start to buzz
about Kansas and 'intelligent design.' When people begin to laugh at
you, that is worse than if they disagree with you, and that is what
is beginning to happen," said James L. Spigarelli, the president and
chief executive officer of the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas
City.
* "People can't believe we'd go backward and lose our
standing in the scientific world. ... scientists like to be around
other scientists. If the feeling they get is that in this community
they can't explore, they can't be curious, maybe they won't come
here," said Thomas Giarla, the former president of JRH Biosciences
(now SAFC Biosciences).
Gertzen and Stafford acknowledge that the previous debacle over
evolution in Kansas in 1999 appeared to have little economic effect,
"perhaps because a slate of newly elected board members quickly
reversed the previous board's action. As a result, many in the
science community at the time wrote it off as a temporary blip."
While it is difficult to compile economic data to prove that the
region's economy would suffer from the state board of education's
expected decision to adopt a set of science standards in which
evolution is systematically impugned, they reported a Kansas City
economist as characterizing the idea as not far-fetched.
Martin
--
Martin Weiss, Ph.D
Vice President, Science
New York Hall of Science
47-01 111 th Street
Corona, New York 11368
718 699 0005 x 356
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