Science Snippet - Study of ID and Evolution

This article originally appeared in the SSA eMpirical No. 20 - June 2007.

Can study of intelligent design actually lead to more belief in evolution? Andi Weiss Bartczak, Ph.D. sends us this Science Snippet from BioScience magazine.


There was a study published in the November 25, 2005 issue of BioScience which tracked college students exposed to both evolution and "intelligent design" texts versus students exposed only to a text on the evolution of sex and human nature.

During the fall semester of 2003, 103 first year biology majors at Central Washington University in Ellensburg were divided into four sections. Two sections learned arguments for both intelligent design (ID) and evolution, with readings from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker, and Icons of Evolution by ID proponent Jonathan Wells. The other two read only Matt Ridley's The Red Queen, about the evolution of sex and human nature.

At the end of the semester, 66 of the students agreed to take an anonymous survey in which they classified their beliefs before and after the course into six categories, ranging from biblical literalism to atheistic evolutionism. Biologist Steven Verhey reports in the November 2005 issue of BioScience that 61% of the respondents exposed to both ID and evolution indicated a change of mind, as opposed to 21% in the control sections. The great majority of shifters moved toward evolution.

This article originally appeared in the SSA eMpirical No. 20 - June 2007.