Science Journal Publishes Articles about Adventist Higher Education
by Adventist Today News Team
The latest issue of the journal Reports of the National Center for Science Education released on line last week features two articles about the recent controversy at La Sierra University and the history of education about evolution in Adventist colleges and universities. Both articles were written by a scientist who taught at Loma Linda University from 1969 through 1986, T. Joe Willey.
“Faulty Survey Discredits Biology at La Sierra University” is a 13-page article which reports on the controversy of the last several years about how evolution should be presented in biology classes. The author asserts that “the initial results” of a survey of students provided “no clear indication that the professors discredited Adventist” doctrine and “a subcommittee … ‘revised’ the data summary in a way that made the state of affairs … more threatening to Adventist doctrine on origins than it actually was.” It includes a detailed description of the survey instrument and the data it produced.
The second article is entitled “’A Wall Unto Them on Their Right Hand and on Their Left’: Adventist Education in the Midst of a Sea of Science.” It provides a history of how universities and colleges operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church have taught science and related to accrediting agencies over the years.
The journal is published by the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California, and affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The center describes itself as “defending the teaching of evolution and climate science.”
Willey earned a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, in neuroscience. He was later a postdoctoral fellow at New York University in Buffalo with Nobel laureate Sir John Eccles. The journal can be accessed at https://reports.ncse.com.