(via Pharyngula via Think Progress)

I have just learned a disturbing truth about An Inconvenient Truth. Remember the Al Gore-starring documentary, that got five stars for accuracy, and that I raved about on the Mindcast? The National Science Teachers Association, or NSTA, was offered 50,000 free DVDs of this documentary. Absolutely free, at no profit to anyone except perhaps the post office. What a deal! How do you think the NSTA would respond to such a deal? Think again.

In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other “special interests” might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn’t want to offer “political” endorsement of the film; and they saw “little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members” in accepting the free DVDs.

Notice: Little “benefit to NSTA or its members,” no mention of the students there. Why are they concerned about the effects on the NSTA and not the students?

Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place “unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.” One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.

Say it ain’t so!

NSTA’s list of corporate donors also includes Shell Oil and the American Petroleum Institute (API), which funds NSTA’s Web site on the science of energy. There, students can find a section called “Running on Oil” and read a page that touts the industry’s environmental track record — citing improvements mostly attributable to laws that the companies fought tooth and nail, by the way — but makes only vague references to spills or pollution. NSTA has distributed a video produced by API called “You Can’t Be Cool Without Fuel,” a shameless pitch for oil dependence.

Damn right! You can’t be cool without fuel! Yeah man, word up, we need these fossil fuels up in the hiz-ouse. And the API is totally trustworthy…

An API memo leaked to the media as long ago as 1998 succinctly explains why the association is angling to infiltrate the classroom: “Informing teachers/students about uncertainties in climate science will begin to erect barriers against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future.”

In the world of the NSTA, you see, getting free DVDs of An Inconvenient Truth would be a political endorsement, whereas getting your funding and energy science content from Exxon and the API, teaching kids that you can’t be cool without fuel, is definitely NOT a political endorsement. No similarity there. Nope. Hey, look over there!

See? C’mon, guy. We’re just trying to help out those who declared war on the Kyoto protocol, we don’t want to get political. We’re just looking for survival, here, we need the money from the oil companies otherwise we can’t indoctrinate teach our kids about the right answer to controversial issues in politics science.

They must think that we’re idiots if they expect us to believe that.

Unfortunately, the NSTA may be stuck in an akward position. They probably mulled over the offer, and decided that if they were to oppose their donors, they would run the risk of losing some of their funding and free educational materials. In the end, they reasoned, the kids would lose out on more than they would have gained by accepting the videos. Another example of how sound reason leads to an unsound conclusion. The problem, here, is that they are dependant upon the resources given to them by these companies, and so they have inadvertantly become pawns in the games played by these industries. The article also mentions that they receive forestry information from paper companies, and genetic engineering information from Monsanto. I would probably agree with much of what is in the genetic engineering information given to them, however, there’s a conflict of interest involved and Monsanto shouldn’t have the power to decide what materials our kids learn or not.

Most of the information that the companies would provide is factual, however, they have the power to omit crucial bits of inconvenient information, thus skewing education.

So what are we to do?

Sara Robinson has a good idea. Let’s tell them what we think.

Memo to the Christian Coalition: The NSTA is for sale. For a mere million bucks a year, I’ll bet you could get them on board with Intelligent Design, too.

Memo to parents: It might be time to find out if your kids’ science teachers are members of this group, and have a word with them about it. If you — or the teachers — want to complain directly to the NSTA, the complaint form is here. They need to hear from everyone who still thinks that scientific truth shouldn’t be auctioned off to the highest donor.

Here’s what I sent in to the executive office:

I am saddened to hear that the NSTA turned down the free DVDs of An Inconvenient Truth, on the basis that it might upset some of your special interests. Getting good science out to kids should never run into “political” problems, and you can’t condense global warming down into a mere political controversy. Yes, there’s a controversy about it, but the controversy within the scientific community is over the extent, the impact, and the rate at which it is happening, not whether or not it is happening or whether or not we are impacting the climate.

An Inconvenient Truth got 5 stars for accuracy from climate scientists, and having seen it myself, the only problems I found with it were mere word choices here and there. By turning down free DVDs of this film, you’re throwing away a good piece of work, and for what?

Now the public knows that the NSTA can be bought and sold, I’m surprised that the anti-evolutionists haven’t put you in their pockets as well.

Videos are no substitute for good science curriculum materials, but if the NSTA is going to act as a servant of the oil industry, then my confidence in the NSTA’s ability to positively influence the science curricula of children has been eroded.

“You can’t be cool without fuel” - You have already waded into political endorsement and you must think that the public is stupid if you expect us to believe that you are trying to avoid political endorsement entirely. The NSTA has admitted that it has a conflict of interest - which is unacceptable.

I’ve heard some good things about the NSTA, but this rejection and the reasons given show that your organization has problems deciding between the survival of your orgnization and good science education of the children that your organization is supposed to be concerned with.

I’m a radio science journalist and I hope you reconsider your decision. If not, I hope the NSTA experiences a change in leadership in the near future.

In the meantime, I hope that they find a way to distribute those DVDs to classrooms without the NSTA’s help.

Sometimes the madness in this world comes from the most unlikely of places - the very people you expect to be trying to help the spread of reason. Thanks for reading Monday Madness.

UPDATE 12/3: The NSTA has released a statement in response to the article about the DVD rejection. But in this case, it’s not what is put in, but what is left out that matters. An excerpt:

Let me specifically address the programs outlined in the op-ed: ExxonMobil has been a long-time sponsor of the national network we call Building a Presence for Science. In this project we have identified a “point of contact” for science in over 40,000 school buildings. Originally conceived to provide a copy of the National Science Education Standards to each school, NSTA now regularly sends these points of contact useful information on science education that they share with teachers in their buildings. Not once has ExxonMobil asked to use this network for their own purposes.

But Exxon can pull money out at any time, can’t they?

The Shell Oil Company funds national research science experts to present at our national conference, where they speak directly to science teachers about their field of research. NSTA chooses the scientists, invites the scientists, and hosts the scientists at these conferences. In addition, the Shell Oil Company sponsors the Shell Science Teaching award for K-12 science teachers who have had a positive impact on their students, school, and community through exemplary classroom teaching. This award program is administered by NSTA and the recipients are chosen by science teachers selected by NSTA.

Well, let’s look at the list of scientists, then. Maybe Shell just loves the scientists that you select for your conferences.

The partnership with API, which ended 5 years ago, led to the creation of a simulation, done entirely by NSTA, on energy usage. The video in question, “You Can’t Be Cool Without Fuel” was not on our website.

Read: Yes we distributed it, but not through our website. Why can’t they be more up-front about this? This response was the shortest of them all, and it leaves more questions than answers. Why did the API partnership end? How many videos did they distribute?

Global warming is a very important science/societal issue. NSTA has always supported sound environmental science education. We regret this current controversy surrounding our decision not to mass distribute the DVD to our members, and we are working to promote the availability of the film.

Oh no, did they say Sound Science? Say it aint so. Still, the letter that NSTA sent to Laurie David doesn’t sound so bad, it sounds like they want to help. I expected that the NSTA might publish their correspondence to exonerate themselves. Wait, this letter is dated November 30th, and the Science a la Joe Camel article came out on the 26th! This letter is more of an effort to clean up after bad press. Publish the original correspondence! You know, the one where you said: accepting the DVDs would place

“unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.”

But they did respond to that line:

During initial discussions about the filmmakers’ request among other NSTA staff, including development and marketing staff, several preliminary ideas were raised. One such idea was the potential impact on NSTA’s fundraising efforts. An NSTA employee mistakenly included these preliminary ideas, including the reference to the “capital campaign,” in an e-mail exchange sent to the film’s producer.

Rrrriiight. It could just as easily have been that you forgot to tell the employee to explicitly not include these reasons. Or that you didn’t expect anything to be said. Besides, if the discussions initiated, then isn’t it past the preliminary idea stage? Am I picking apart the words too much? Maybe.
The NSTA does some good stuff, and we must not lose sight of that. However, this is a pretty big blemish, and they’ve dug themselves a little deeper. They now invited Al Gore to speak for their organization, after turning down 50,000 free copies of his film. That, of course, is no political endorsement. It’s damage control. Still if Gore speaks for the NSTA, let’s hope they pay his honorarium with Shell dollars.

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