Oakland, California, April 15, 2008 -- Millions of dollars have been spent promoting Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed to fundamentalist church groups, but that money would have been better spent on fact checkers. www.ExpelledExposed.com, a website launched today by the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), reveals the truth behind the creationist movie's misrepresentations.

"Creationists have been making the same arguments for decades," says Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education. "They've gotten better at marketing these claims, but they're no more valid now than during the Scopes trial of the 1920s. Creationists have been predicting the death of evolution for over a century, yet it is constantly affirmed by evidence from fields Darwin could never have imagined." Given the damning assessment at www.ExpelledExposed.com, Scott adds, "Perhaps the filmmakers should have spent more time hitting the books, instead of beating up on hardworking scientists."

Throughout the movie, Ben Stein claims that "Big Science" represses intelligent design to advance an atheistic agenda, but Peter Hess, from NCSE's Faith Outreach Project, doesn't buy it. "There are many successful evolutionary biologists who are also people of faith," he observes, "and a host of people of faith who regard intelligent design as a misconceived and harmful rejection of science. In attempting to pit Christianity against science, Expelled misrepresents both." "We reviewed public records and reports on the intelligent design promoters who were supposedly discriminated against, and we discovered that the claims that they lost their jobs over intelligent design are unsupported," explains Josh Rosenau, a biologist at NCSE. "That said, professors who aren't making advances in their field, editors who disregard their journal's established practices, and lecturers who repeat creationist falsehoods shouldn't be surprised if they have trouble holding jobs. These people weren't expelled; they flunked out." www.ExpelledExposed.com contains information about the "martyrs" from Expelled, and also of real scientists who successfully challenged established science. "The difference," NCSE researcher Carrie Sager observes, "is that real scientists back their challenges with experimental results. Results are what changed minds, forced textbook revisions, and earned Nobel Prizes."

More insidious are the movie's attempts to link evolution to the Holocaust. Susan Spath, a historian of science at NCSE, comments: "The implication that Darwin led to Nazism and the Holocaust is an irresponsible misrepresentation of a terrible history. Hitler abused many things, including science, and Expelled is wrong to shift blame off his shoulders and onto evolution." www.ExpelledExposed.com quotes the Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman, who described similar claims in a previous creationist movie as "an outrageous and shoddy attempt ... to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust."

The National Center for Science Education is a non-profit organization dedicated to defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools. The NCSE maintains its archive of source material on the history of creationism at its Oakland, California, headquarters. On the web at www.ncseweb.org. www.ExpelledExposed.com is a resource for journalists, teachers, and curious moviegoers who want the full story behind Expelled.

Contacts:
Eugenie C. Scott, scott@ncseweb.org, 800-290-6006
Josh Rosenau, rosenau@ncseweb.org, 800-290-6006
Susan Spath, spath@ncseweb.org, 800-290-6006
Carrie Sager, sager@ncseweb.org, 800-290-6006

SOME CAUTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
You may (very likely) be challenged by your students with assertions made in the film. This is less likely if your students have already learned about the rules and limits of science, and have an accurate understanding of evolution, along with a fair amount of experience discussing some of the more common misconceptions of both. Check out the many excellent lessons on the ENSI site, which do all of these. But if the challenges come, be prepared by calmly providing the link to Expelled Exposed, where many of the assertions made in the film are exposed for what they are... misrepresentations and distortions. After they check out that source, and still have questions about those rebuttals, they can follow the links provided at the Expelled Exposed site. Avoid engaging in open arguments during class time, you could well come across as being defensive and as irrationally tied to evolution as anti-evolutionists are to their beliefs.

Some examples of the many assertions made in the movie have been pointed out by Dr. Andrew Petto: "It seems to me that the fundamental problem with the film (and ID in particular) is the misrepresentation of basic evolutionary concepts. They call evolution "Darwinism" (which it is NOT), they say it is all about random mutation and natural selection (which it is NOT), they argue that "intelligence" is never considered in science as an explanation because it is non-MATERIALISTIC (except intelligence IS considered because it is NATURAL, but supernatural or extra natural intelligence is not used); and so on. In other words, the film (as the ID party line) is full of distortions of evolution."

Some teachers may be tempted to encourage their students to see the movie and to critique it (perhaps for extra credit). Even if they are well prepared by having studied evolution in your class, they may still miss subtle but critically important strategies used in the film, so students may still come away feeling that evolution is a weak idea, or that ID and creationism are more compelling. One important point that you should stress (before or after they see the film) is to ask them "What empirical peer-reviewed studies have been published by those who claim that evolution is scientifically flawed, or that support intelligent design or creation science?" The fact is, that there have been no such studies. And that clearly puts those anti-evolution claims into a different category than the scientific positions. Prof. Petto proudly pointed out how one of his former students stood up to challenge two philosophers who were presenting the ID party line. His basic comment: "Put up or shut up! If you guys want a seat at the table of science, then do some science. Let's see the results." Don't let this critical distinction between science and non-science go unnoticed.

There are a few other issues that may be raised, and teachers should be prepared to know about. Dr. Petto mentions, "for example, the idea that evolution somehow leads to evil things. For the most part, these evil things are distortions and misapplications of evolutionary science (eugenics, sterilization programs, Nazism), but what is MORE important is that they are not new. They are things that people have done, do, and probably will continue to do to each other. The only difference is that evolution was used as an excuse for these things in the 20th century. However, human history is full of these things --- including people using the Bible to justify slavery, subjugation of women, genocide of nonbelievers, conquest of the New World, and so on --- and most of human history comes LONG before evolution was proposed by Darwin. In fact, King David fractured at least 5 of the 10 commandments in the Bible before he died, and I am pretty sure he wasn't reading Darwin. So, yes, people used evolution as an *excuse* for these terrible things that they did, but they have always used their fundamental texts as excuses for doing these things throughout history. It is not evolution that causes this, it is human nature (unfortunately)."

Larry Flammer
ENSI webmaster