Welcome to Truth in Science, an organisation promoting good science education in the UK. Our current focus is on the origin of life and its diversity.

For many years, much of what has been taught in school science lessons about the origin of the living world has been dogmatic and imbalanced. The theory of Darwinian evolution has been presented as scientifically uncontroversial and the only credible explanation of origins. Nevertheless, you only have to read recent editions of academic and popular science journals to realise that there is a battle raging over this very issue.

Until recently, the National Curriculum advocated that pupils should be taught how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence. There is now a change of emphasis and the current National Curriculum for key stage 4 in its section entitled “Data, evidence, theories and explanations” suggests:

Pupils should be taught: (a) how scientific data can be collected and analysed; (b) how interpretation of data, using creative thought, provides evidence to test ideas and develop theories; (c) how explanations of many phenomena can be developed using theories, models and ideas; and (d) that there are some questions that science cannot currently answer, and that science cannot address.

We believe that a critical examination of Darwinism and the controversy that surrounds it will enable students to fulfil some of these objectives. Nevertheless, many schools are reluctant to teach this controversy. This is partly because most popular school textbooks present Darwinism as the only scientific theory of origins and give little coverage to alternative theories, sometimes misrepresenting them.

GCSE Science Specifications in September 2007 gave a fresh opportunity to reconsider what is taught about origins in science lessons. These specifications place an emphasis on students understanding 'How Science Works'. This concept is explained as follows by the Edexcel Examination Board:

How Science Works is primarily about helping students to engage with and challenge the science they meet in everyday life. Students need to adopt a critical, questioning frame of mind, going ‘behind the scenes’ to understand the workings of science and how it impacts on society and their lives. 

We consider that it is time for students to be permitted to adopt a more critical approach to Darwinism in science lessons. They should be exposed to the fact that there is a modern controversy over Darwin's theory of evolution and the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and that this has considerable social, spiritual, moral and ethical implications. Truth in Science promotes the critical examination of Darwinism in schools, as an important component of science education.