Discovery Institute

The Discovery Institute (DI) is a politically conservative non-profit think tank based in Seattle, Washington, that advocates the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design (ID). It was founded in 1991 as a non-profit offshoot of the Hudson Institute. Its "Teach the Controversy" campaign aims to permit the teaching of anti-evolution, intelligent-design beliefs in United States public high school science courses in place of accepted scientific theories, positing that a scientific controversy exists over these subjects when in fact there is none. The institute was cofounded in 1991 by Bruce Kerry Chapman and George Franklin Gilder as a non-profit educational foundation and think tank. It was started as a branch organization of the Hudson Institute, an Indianapolis-based conservative think tank. It is named after the Royal Navy ship HMS Discovery in which George Vancouver explored Puget Sound in 1792. The organization was incorporated in 1991. Discovery Institute Press is the institute's publishing arm and has published intelligent design books by its fellows including David Berlinski's Deniable Darwin & Other Essays (2010), Jonathan Wells' The Myth of Junk DNA (2011) and an edited volume titled Signature Of Controversy, which contains apologetics in defense of the institute's Center for Science and Culture director Stephen C. Meyer. The Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity (PSSI), formally registered as PSSI International Inc., is a United States 501(c)(3) nonprofit anti-evolution organization, based in Clearwater, Florida, promoting the pseudoscience of intelligent design associated with the Discovery Institute. While in the past, the organization sponsored events promoting intelligent design and fundamentalist Christianity, it is currently largely inactive. The PSSI was established in early 2006 by Rich Akin. Geoffrey Simmons, Discovery Institute fellow, is one of the directors of the PSSI. The PSSI created a public list of medical professionals who dissent from Darwinism.

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Teach the Controversy

The "teach the controversy" campaign of the Discovery Institute seeks to promote the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (a variant of traditional creationism) as part of its attempts to discredit the teaching of evolution in United States public high school science courses. Scientific organizations (including the American Association for the Advancement of Science) point out that the institute claims that there is a scientific controversy where in fact none exists.

Objections to evolution

Objections to evolution have been raised since evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution (the idea that species arose through descent with modification from a single common ancestor in a process driven by natural selection) initially met opposition from scientists with different theories, but eventually came to receive overwhelming acceptance in the scientific community.

Academic freedom

Academic freedom is a moral and legal concept expressing the conviction that the freedom of inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts (including those that are inconvenient to external political groups or to authorities) without fear of repression, job loss, or imprisonment.

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