Truth in Science

That this House shares the concerns of the British Centre for Science Education that the literature being sent to every school in the United Kingdom by the creationist religious group Truth in Science is full of scientific mistakes and fails to disclose the group's creationist beliefs and objectives; and urges all schools to treat this literature with extreme caution.

It has now been signed by eight other MPs.

To identify the scientific mistakes of the materials that TiS sent to schools we visited the website of the British Centre for Science Education (the BCSE is a relaunch of the "Blackshadow" group, and still uses their URL).

Surprisingly, we discovered that the BCSE has not yet reviewed the materials we sent to schools. Here is an extract from their site, taken today:

The Material Distributed to Heads of Science Departments

At this stage we have not reviewed the resource material sent to heads of science departments. The initial feedback is that the material has been professionally put together and, in terms of presentation, is of high quality.

It seems that the BCSE is briefing MPs with claims against TiS that it has not substantiated. We are concerned that busy MPs are taking these claims at face value.

We are willing to do all we can to correct any statements in TiS materials that can be shown, with convincing evidence, to be genuine scientific mistakes. However we cannot respond to unsubstantiated allegations.