Interview with Glenn Branch Interview with Glenn Branch 1 Heslley Machado Silva 1Centro Universitário de Formiga (UNIFOR-MG) Glenn Branch is the deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, where his work involves organizing resistance to attempts to undermine the teaching of socially but not scientifically controversial topics, such as evolution and climate change. He received the Evolution Education Award for 2020 from the National Association of Biology Teachers. He has written extensively about evolution and climate education, and threats to them, for scholarly journals, reference works, and popular magazines: his “The latest face of creationism,” written with Eugenie C. Scott, was translated as “Manobras mais recentes do criacionismo,” Scientific American Brasil 2009; 81: 82– 89. With Scott, he edited Not In Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong For Our Schools (2006). Branch is currently also coordinating NCSE’s survey research program, which recently produced a major publication: Eric Plutzer, Glenn Branch, and Ann Reid, “Teaching evolution in U.S. public schools: A continuing Photograph: Bob Melton challenge,” Evolution: Education and Outreach 2020; 13(14). 6| P á g i n a Conexão Ci. | Formiga/MG | Vol. 15 | Nº 4 |p. 6-5 | 2020 Interview with Glenn Branch 1. Tell us a little about the role of the [intelligent design] cannot uncouple itself from its National Center for Science Education, the non- creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.” The governmental organization (NGO) in the USA intelligent design movement never really recovered where you work. What is its scope? from the blow. In the wake of Kitzmiller v. Dover, attacks on evolution in public education have NCSE was founded in the early 1980s, to serve increasingly eschewed calling for creationism to be as a national resource for grassroots organizations taught, instead favoring the strategy of belittling resisting the attempts to impose creation science— evolution. then the trendy form of creationism—in the public school system. NCSE continues to help people facing 3. Your organization has faced a similar challenges to evolution education, at the state, district, issue in relation to climate change. Tell us a little and school level. In 2012, NCSE added climate more about this form of scientific denialism. In change, like evolution a socially controversial topic in your opinion, why does it persist despite all the the United States, to its portfolio. Additional projects contrary evidence? currently under way include conducting research on evolution and climate change education; preparing and Climate change deniers vary. Some deny any disseminating model lesson plans on evolution, recent change in global climate at all; some climate change, and the nature of science; and aiding acknowledge that it’s real, but deny that human informal science education, especially in so-called activity is responsible; some acknowledge that it’s real science deserts, to develop relevant exhibits and and that it’s us, but deny that it will have significant activities. NCSE mainly focuses on the United States, effects on the world and our society; and some but we sometimes, when the need arises, collaborate acknowledge that it’s real, it’s us, and it’s bad, but with people abroad, including in Canada, the United deny that action can be taken to reduce, mitigate, and Kingdom, and Brazil. adapt to its impact. When NCSE first became involved with climate change, the first two forms of denial 2. You have been very active against the seemed to be the most prevalent; owing in part to the teaching of the latest incarnation of creationism, increasingly visible disruptions caused by climate intelligent design, in science classes. Tell us a little change, denialism seems to be shifting toward the less about the victories and difficulties of this battle. extreme forms. As with evolution denial, climate change denial The main victory was in 2005—exactly fifteen seems to be motivated by ideological, rather than years and three days ago, as I write—in a legal case scientific, concerns. Religious views appear only to called Kitzmiller v. Dover. In October 2004, the play a minor role in climate change denial, however. school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, voted to adopt a Rather, political and economic views—sometimes policy requiring students in the schools to “be made dubbed “free-market fundamentalism”—are the aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of drivers. International cooperation and government other theories of evolution including, but not limited regulation are generally acknowledged to be necessary to, intelligent design.” (I should explain that in the for a successful response to climate change; these United States, decisions about curriculum and provoke fears, among climate change deniers, of a instruction in primary and secondary education are one-world government and a massive redistribution of largely in the hands of local, rather than state or wealth, which are then transmuted into denial of the federal, government.) Eleven concerned parents filed underlying science. suit in federal court. The basic issue before the court was whether the 4. Brazil and the United States are policy endorsed a religious view, in violation of the currently experiencing the growth of science denial U.S. Constitution. The trial thus centered on questions movements. Give us some explanations why two such as: Are intelligent design and the idea that there countries so different in several aspects are are “gaps/problems” in evolution religious views? confronted with this phenomenon in a similar way. What was the board’s primary purpose in adopting the policy? And because the board’s defense was that the Well, not all science denial movements are policy was intended to promote science education, growing. Judging from public opinion surveys in the there was a further question: Is intelligent design United States, both evolution denial and climate science? NCSE helped to prepare the legal team change denial seem to have waned somewhat over the representing the parents, as well as their expert last couple of decades, although their levels remain witnesses (including three members of NCSE’s board high in comparison to those in much of the rest of the of directors), to answer these questions. developed world. (According to a recent multinational The judge presiding over the case concluded that survey by the Pew Research Center, by the way, it was “abundantly clear” that the policy was Brazilians were more likely than Americans to accept unconstitutional, adding, “In making this anthropogenic climate change but less likely to accept determination, we have addressed the seminal evolution.) And, for a lot of science denial movements, question of whether [intelligent design] is science. We public opinion survey data over time simply isn’t have concluded that it is not, and moreover that 7| P á g i n a Conexão Ci. | Formiga/MG | Vol. 15 | Nº 4 |p. 6-9 | 2020 Interview with Glenn Branch available, so it’s hard to know whether they are really effective in communicating about climate science with growing or merely increasing in visibility. fellow evangelical Christians. And I believe that it’s unhelpful to think that A handy document summarizing the current state there’s a single phenomenon — a war on science or a of the science of misinformation and its debunking is conspiracy against science, as various recent authors The Debunking Handbook 2020, freely available on- have described it — here. There are ways in which line at different forms of science denial are similar, of course. https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/debun By definition, they all involve denying principles of king-handbook-2020/ in English, German, Italian, and science that are widely accepted by the scientific Turkish editions — and a version in Brazilian community on the basis of overwhelming evidence, Portuguese is under preparation as I write! and they tend to converge on the same rhetoric for doing so. But different science denial movements vary 6. There has never been so much so much in their motivations, doctrines, tactics, scientific knowledge produced as there is today. strategies, and audiences that it’s hard to arrive at How do you think we can bring this kind of informative generalizations about science denial as a knowledge to the population and stop the whole. The title of a well-known paper from 1995 dissemination of and belief in fake news? hints at the problem: “Why Creationists Don’t Go to There are two questions there, and there isn’t a Psychic Fairs.” simple answer to either of them, but I’ll say a little It would be fair, though, to conclude that a about both. number of science denial movements have been To get scientific researchers to communicate disproportionately influential in the United States, with the public more often and more effectively, it’s primarily as the result of developments in national probably not enough to appeal to their public spirit: politics. In broad strokes, the Republican party in incentives and resources are necessary. NCSE has particular embraced evolution denial when it engulfed been experimenting in a small way with helping to evangelical Christianity in the 1960s and climate fund graduate students to do outreach in informal change denial when it was captured by the fossil fuel science education environments, especially to industry in the 1990s. The attitudes toward science in underserved communities. In this model, just as general engendered by these embraces, coupled with a graduate students are funded to do research or to teach, populist and anti-elitist strategy appealing to the they can also be trained in, and funded to do, outreach. increasingly rural and less educated base of the party, It’s too early to say yet whether this will ultimately be now makes the party hospitable to a wide (but not a successful model, but we can imagine a future in unlimited) variety of forms of science denial.