Science Museums Without Science

Molly Ivins once said that reading the morning paper is sometimes like finding Fidel Castro in your refrigerator. You don’t really know what to think.

There was one such article in the New York Times recently about how a number of IMAX theaters, many located in southern states, are refusing to show a handful of films. It appears that the films deemed inappropriate, including Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, Cosmic Voyage and Galapagos, all have one thing in common – they all mention evolution. As such, they have become targets for the Christian-right jihad against anything which does not fall into line with their theology.

While such idiotic bloviating against the world at large is not surprising coming from this crowd, the truly stunning part of the story is that most of the spineless theaters are located in science museums, including ones in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas.

One museum in Fort Worth pulled Volcanoes after “some people said it was blasphemous,” according to marketing director Carol Murray. One viewer even called it “anti-creationist propaganda.” (In a victory for common sense, the museum quickly reversed itself in the face of public outrage and announced it would show Volcanoes after all.)

Not surprisingly, the museums all publicly deny that fundamentalist Christian reaction was any factor in their decisions. But Richard Lutz, a Rutgers University oceanographer who was chief scientist for Volcanoes, said he was privately told by a number of theaters that they would refuse to show the film “literally for fear of the reaction of the audience.”

Call me naïve, but I was always under the impression that museums, especially science museums, are supposed to educate the public, not kowtow to ignorance and willful blindness. What’s next? Will museums remove exhibits on dinosaur fossils or Cro-Magnons because they don’t jibe with Genesis? What about models showing the Sun instead of the Earth at the center of the solar system? And let’s not even get started on that whole “Big Bang" sacrilege.

This is the 21st century, eight decades after John Scopes was thrown in jail for teaching evolution to his high-school science class, but you’d never know it. I never thought we’d see American science museums rejecting proven science when it offends the religious right. No wonder American students routinely score way behind students from other countries on math and science subjects. We’re teaching them that facts are facts only if they don’t upset the pious fools among us. It would be a great joke were it not so infuriating.