New book supports importance of teaching evolution

The National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine have released Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a book designed to give the public a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the current scientific understanding of evolution and its importance in the science classroom. Recent advances in science and medicine, along with an abundance of observations and experiments over the past 150 years, have reinforced evolution’s role as the central organizing principle of modern biology, said the committee that wrote the book. UC Irvine biologists Francisco Ayala (pictured) and Michael Clegg served on the committee. Ayala, committee chair, also wrote an editorial on the subject that appears this week in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.