From the Texas Citizens for Science:
In an email message to its friends, the Institute for Creation Research proposes The Disjunctive Duality of Science Distinction, a new argument to support its effort to obtain Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board approval for its masters degree program in science education. The argument is actually an old one. It posits that two types of science exist, “experimental” science and “forensic, historical, or orgins” science. Only the first is real science, while the second–which, needless to say, includes evolutionary biology–is not a reliable science. Texas Citizens for Science posts the ICR message and provides a brief refutation of the argument.
This is in Texas. If the state of Texas were to acknowledge that forensic science is not reliable, they’d have to free all those prisoners waiting on death row, right?
My first assumption was that they include themselves in the second category, but wait, no, these people might have the rocks to argue themselves as part of the “experimental” mode. I speak from an historical reference.
Granted, there are few experiments done in macroevolutionary disciplines such as paleontology because of time-scale issues, but you would have to take an extremely narrow view of evolutionary biology to claim that it is not an experimental science.Evolutionary genetics, evolutionary physiology, evolutionary ecology, virology, etc. are all experimental disciplines that encompass and contribute significantly to the field of evolutionary biology.