Dr. Jenner’s Experiment

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  “March 28th, 1797, I inoculated this girl and carefully rubbed the variolous matter into two slight incisions made upon the left arm. A little inflammation appeared in the usual manner around the parts where the matter was inserted, but so early as the fifth day it vanished entirely without producing any effect on the system.” —Edward Jenner (1749–1823). “The Three Original Publications on Vaccination Against Smallpox.” Portrait of Edward Jenner, painted by James Northcote in either 1803 or 1823

Shattering False Icons: Reforming Biology Teaching

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By Chuck ColsonPublished Date: February 02, 2001

"False facts," wrote Charles Darwin, "are highly injurious to the progress of science." There's an old American saying that makes the same point. It says, "It's not what people don't know that's so dangerous; it's what they know that just ain't so."

Well, I've got some good news and some bad news for you. Generations of students have been taught facts about biology that just ain't so -- they're false facts. For decades, our kids have been soaking up untrustworthy, unreliable information, and their minds (not to mention science itself) have been injured in the process.

That's the bad news.

Read the good news and the rest of the article on the BreakPoint website.

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