History of the Scopes Trial and the Controversy over the Teaching of Evolution in Schools July 20, 2005

a late afternoon WSPA Seminar on the "History of the Scopes Trial and the Controversy over the Teaching of Evolution in the Schools."

Eighty years ago this month, John Thomas Scopes went on trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for violating a state law prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic candidate for president, served on the prosecution team; Clarence Seward Darrow led Scopes's defense. Scopes was convicted. A year later, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed Scopes's conviction on a technicality but upheld the statute. The controversy over teaching evolution continues to the present day.

The speaker at our seminar will be Marcel LaFollette, who has been conducting research on the Scopes trial and its aftermath. Dr. LaFollette is an independent historian, author of Stealing into Print: Fraud, Plagiarism, and Misconduct in Scientific Publishing, and former
chair of the AAAS Committee on Public Understanding of Science & Technology. During her research on journalists' coverage of the Scopes
trial, she has uncovered many previously unknown aspects of the trial. She has also discovered in the Smithsonian Institution Archives a collection of unpublished and long forgotten photographs of the trial.

Her talk will be illustrated with these photographs, which have just been restored and will be shown here for the first time outside the
Smithsonian.

There will also be a discussant providing some perspective on the theory of evolution, its place in science education, and the recent controversies about these matters in Kansas; Georgia; Dover,
Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.

This seminar is sponsored by the Washington Science Policy Alliance (WSPA), a coalition of science policy organizations in the Washington,
DC, area. For information about the Alliance and to sign up for the WSPA mailing list and receive invitations to future seminars, please
visit http://www.aaas.org/spp/wspa/ and complete the form you will find there.
There is no cost for this seminar or the reception. Please reply to [email protected] by 5 p.m. on Monday, July 18. DO NOT USE YOUR REPLY
FUNCTION. Attendance will be limited by the capacity of the auditorium; first-come first-served. If you are unable to attend, please cancel.