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Museums Answer Critics of Evolution
Judy Diamond, curator of public programs at the University of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln, used a National Science Foundation grant to develop an evolution exhibition for display at six museums in the Midwest. The program includes training for docents and staff.
"We not only go over the kinds of questions, concerns and issues that they might face, but also some insights into how people think about these issues," Diamond said.
  Jim Baine, a docent at the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, N.Y., is among volunteers nationwide at science museums who have received classroom instruction in how to answer questions about evolution. "This is not a defensive reaction," says Warren D. Allmon, who developed the workshop, but an attempt to correct "misinformation." (Kevin Rivoli - AP) |
In Kansas -- where the debate is loudest -- museum officials said growing opposition to Charles Darwin's theory has required more staff training. At the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays, museum workers find brochures left behind at least once a month promoting creationism over evolution.
John H. Calvert, a managing director of the Intelligent Design Network, said any improved dialogue is welcome because "the problem with museum exhibits is what they don't say . . . only one side of the science is presented. No other possibilities are allowed to compete."
The nation's leading natural history museums, including the Smithsonian Institution and Chicago's Field Museum, have not found it necessary to offer special training to staff and volunteers, officials said.
"People are entitled to think what they want to think. We tell our explainers they are not there to debate visitors," said Steve Reichl, a spokesman for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which has a major exhibit on Darwin that runs through May.
At the Ithaca museum, volunteers take a six-week paleontology course before working on the museum floor. The guide instructs volunteers that when they encounter evolution critics, they should emphasize that science museums live by the rules of science.
If challenged, Allmon instructs guides to listen respectfully, be firm and clear in their answers, and not to become defensive.
If a confrontation erupts, the guidebook gives docents several ways to end the conversation, including telling the visitor: "This is a place to talk about science, not philosophy, religion or politics."
