On Friday, Times Educational Supplement Scotland reported Truth in Science’s distribution of DVDs in Scotland. The story was picked up by BBC Radio Scotland who interviewed a Scottish supporter of intelligent design.

An international survey into the relevance of science education provided the cover article of TESS on the 2 February. It found a general problem that currently “most secondary pupils are neither interested nor motivated by science”. The TESS article continued:

In another key finding, pupils showed a significant lack of trust in what scientists had to say – which the authors described as "a wake-up call" to the profession to debate scientific controversies in more carefully measured and objective terms.

The debate about the future direction of the science curriculum comes as The TESS reveals that the organisation Truth in Science is lobbying science teachers across all Scottish secondary schools to include its "intelligent design" materials in their teaching.

The organisation argues against wholesale acceptance of "neo-Darwinist" theories based on natural selection, claiming instead that "science can identify features of the natural world that are best explained by an intelligent cause".

A spokesman for the Scottish executive said that the survey “provides a useful ‘snapshot’ of the attitudes of young people towards science. The Scottish Executive has provided funding to allow the report’s authors to work with the Scottish Science Centres Network to provide advice when developing new workshops, and activities to make science exciting for their visitors.”

The work of Truth in Science was reported the same day on BBC Radio Scotland’s programme ‘Newsdrive’. Scottish education consultant Dr Alastair Noble explained what intelligent design is and why he supports the use of the DVD “Where does the Evidence Lead?” in the classroom. A recording can be heard here, 43 minutes into the programme (available until 9 February).

Yesterday’s Heaven and Earth Show on BBC One reported and debated the teaching of intelligent design in schools.

Dr Alastair Noble explained:

Intelligent design’s hardly a new idea: it’s been around for millennia. It goes back as far as the Greeks and it really is the idea that we live in a designed universe.

The constants in the universe are very finely tuned to make life possible: that looks designed.

Living things have very complex systems that enable them to operate: that looks designed.

But most of all the coded information in DNA looks as if it’s designed.

Former Education Secretary David Blunkett said that ID as “just a much more sophisticated version of creationism.”

Professor Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust claimed: “intelligent design is a religious belief, it isn’t a scientific theory”

Simon Barrow, of the think-tank Ekklesia dismissed ID as a “mistaken religious ideas” and “a political and religious problem”.

Dr Noble responded: “the difference between intelligent design and creationism is that they have very difference starting points. I would want to insist that the starting point for intelligent design is scientific observation.”

An upcoming University of London debate: “Intelligent Design and Evolution have the same status as scientific theories” is commented on at ID in the UK. Professor Steve Fuller will speak for the motion and Professor Lewis Wolpert against.

Meanwhile, anti-ID activists report their successes and failures in lobbying Parliament both in Westminster (one, two, three, four, five) and Edinburgh (one).

David Anderson keeps up his ongoing exposé of the so-called British Centre for Science Education. He also seems to be turning attention to his alma mater’s Professor for the Public Understanding of Science. Like a true rationalist, he starts by asking the question Does Richard Dawkins exist?

Pagan Prattle finds it strange that the Sunday Times reported Truth in Science as welcoming the government decision to teach intelligent design in religious education classes. We though it was strange as well, as we've made it very clear that we would like to see intelligent design in science classes, not RE.

And finally, “I think Truth in Science is the best ID website/blogsite anywhere. The Brits always do that sort of thing best.” That’s the opinion of Canadian journalist Denyse O’Leary on Post-darwinist!

Yesterday’s issue of the journal Nature revealed a new twist in the controversy over the origin of animals. The “oldest known animal fossils” have been reidentified as fossilised giant bacteria.

The animal fossil record is a conundrum to Darwinists. All of the main animal groups are found fossilised in Cambrian rocks, but there is little evidence for their ancestors in lower strata. As fossil expert Philip Donoghue put it in a commentary yesterday: “the degree to which animal evolutionary history extends beyong the Cambrian is a controversy rich in speculation but sparse in evidence.” If yesterday’s reidentification is correct, then the evidence has just become sparser.

In 1998 tiny fossils from southern China were identified as fossil animal embryos, providing evidence for the existence of animals before the Cambrian ‘explosion’. Now it seems that they might not be animals after all, but giant bacteria, similar to species still alive today in seafloor sediments along the Nambian coast. These giant bacteria species are able to control phosphate mineral precipitation and, correspondingly, the fossils are found preserved in calcium phosphate.

The reidentification is still controversial as some aspects of the fossils appear to be different to giant bacteria species today. If anything, the modern species might appear less complex than the fossils, with smaller sized clusters forming, and sometimes an absence of an enveloping membrane. Some of the fossils also seem to contain nuclei, which seems incompatible with them being bacteria.

Problems remain to be resolved, but “No matter” writes Dr Donoghue, “Such quibbles do not diminish the central message of the author’s report, which is that, like all other theories about Precambrian animals, the classification of these fossils is far from resolved, even at the kingdom level.”

As he wrote in the commentary's opening sentence, “The origin of the animals is almost as mysterious as the origin of life itself.”