Texas scientists are doing their best to push yet another camel’s nose back out of the tent. More than 800 of them have signed a statement opposing the Texas State Board of Education‘s long-standing requirement that students be taught both the ’strengths and weaknesses’ of scientific theories—one of those deceptively innocuous and reasonable-sounding phrases that could easily force teachers to present creationism as the intellectual equal of evolution. (AP)

Both the statement and the brand-new organization formed to draft it — the 21st Century Science Coalition — were triggered by the board’s ongoing deliberations over Texas’s new science curriculum standards. Because the Texas textbook market is so huge, the board’s vote, expected next spring, will affect science curricula nationwide. The board is evenly split on whether or not to keep the ‘weaknesses’ language. But its chair, dentist Don McLeroy, is definitely in the keeper camp: “I look at evolution as still a hypothesis with weaknesses,” he has declared on several occasions. (For background, see this New York Times story from June.)

The 840 scientist-signatories beg to differ, arguing that 21st-century Texas students deserve, well, a 21st-century education. They want the ‘strength and weaknesses’ language expunged. “[E]volution is an easily observable phenomenon that has been documented beyond any reasonable doubt,” their statement declares.

Board of Education — over to you.