Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Leaked insider docs from Heartland Institute goal: "dissuading teachers from teaching science" (ps hey Scholarly Kitchen do you support this?)

Yesterday I worried about the deceptive climate change related writings and work of one of the authors at the Scholarly Kitchen blog: Something rotten in the Scholarly Kitchen?

Basically, I wrote about how one of the authors at the Scholarly Kitchen - David Wojick - has been involved in some groups that have taken a decidedly deceptive anti-science stance on the issue of climate change.

I did not translate all of my worries into words because they were not completely formed. One of the reasons for my concern was the feeling that Wojick might be using his position in a apparently scholarly group to boost his authority in some way. Note - he has no apparent record of working on climate science yet he has written about it extensively with attempted authority.

Well, my unformed thoughts have hit me smack in the face today. Alexy Merz pointed me to this article published today:INTERNAL DOCUMENTS: The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax | ThinkProgress

The article quotes internal documents from the "Heartland Institute" discussing the development by one David Wojick of a "global warming curriculum for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as 'a major scientific controversy.' "

And more disturbing, the internal papers imply that they believe Wojick's curricula have great potential for spreading because of his connections to organizations involved in "producing, certifying, and promoting scientific curricula." So, in a way I think it is not a stretch to interpret his involvement in the Scholarly Kitchen as a way to boost his "authority" in academic circles even in the absence of any expertise in climate science.

And then as the evening progressed I found out more detail from the internal documents of the Heartland Institute that are even more disturbing:
Mind you, I generally try to avoid mixing writing about science and politics - and I am pretty open to diverse political points of view. But this is different.  The Heartland Institute and Wojick and others are using the same strategy used by Intelligent Design advocates. They want to "teach the controversy" and they want to make equivalent the thoughts of a few people with actual research by 1000s of scientists. I am all for freedom of speech and think anyone should be able to express their beliefs and opinions in a free and open manner.

The ultimate to me is in this leaked document:
Development of our "Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Classrooms" project. Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective. To counter this we are considering launching an effort to develop alternative materials for K-12 classrooms. We are pursuing a proposal from Dr. David Wojick to produce a global warming curriculum for K-12 schools. Dr. Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain- two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science. We tentatively plan to pay Dr. Wojick $100,000 for 20 modules in 2012, with funding pledged by the Anonymous Donor.
Let me repeat one part:
His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain - two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.



UPDATE 4: More stories
UPDATE 5: 2-15 Kent Anderson, head of The Scholarly Kitchen blog responds and says actions of Wojick are irrelevant to his blog.

@phylogenomics @drs1969 it's an irrelevant topic to this blog. It's not a science blog, it's a publishing blog.

Incredible. So - apparently being paid to deceive about the science behind studies of climate change is not relevant to a blog about publishing which has a big emphasis on peer review and science.

UPDATE 6: 2-15 8 PM More stories

UPDATE 7 with even more links:
Posted by at
Labels: , ,