The Devil in Dover: An Insider's Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-Town America

by Lauri Lebo

Book Overview

"A brilliant account" of the controversial 2005 legal battle between evolution and creationism in public education "by a first-rate journalist" (Howard Zinn).

In 2004, the School Board of Dover, Pennsylvania, decided to require its ninth-grade biology students to learn intelligent design-a pseudoscientific theory positing evidence of an intelligent creator. In a case that recalled the infamous 1925 Scopes "monkey" trial, eleven parents...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 159558451X
• ISBN13: 9781595584519
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Journalists' Dilemma - How to Give Balanced Coverage To Unbalanced Views

The lead attorney and the lead defendant appeared disinterested during the infamous Dover trial. Attorney Thompson didn't brighten up until his daily exit from the courtroom, when he became alive - playing to the press about how successful that day was. Defendant Bonsell just smirked most of the time - a higher power had already told him he was right. Thompson was willing to accept this defeat for the ultimate fight where his side would be vindicated - The Supreme Court. Unfortunately for him, the voters in Dover kicked out the defendant school board. There's no way the new board would appeal the decision. The author, a journalist with a local newspaper, made friends with witnesses and participants on both sides. A Dover home town girl, her fundamentalist father's biggest worry was whether she was going to go to heaven. Several times each week, they managed superficial talk about the trial, each favoring a different side. Meanwhile, she was torn between an assumed journalist's creed - that both sides be presented - versus this situation, where one side carried all the logic and the other was full of deceit and misrepresentation. She asked herself whether a journalist should have to grant intelligent design equal status with evolution when only 1-2% of mainstream scientists consider ID to be a science. Was it fair for her boss at the newspaper to pressure her to change her daily news stories about the trial when the obvious truth was, the plantiffs had a convincing case and the defendants - those who weren't just deluded - were lying? This is a gripping story about the modern version of the Scopes trial with a personal touch by the author. Her dad died while the trial played itself out, never getting the satisfaction of seeing his (mostly) agnostic children see the "truth." DB

Pointed, endearing, and dead-on accurate

As a local Pennsylvanian reporter who covered the Dover trial, Lebo was an ideal person to write this book. She already knew many of the people involved in the trial (on both sides) and was able to give each "character" a personal background that made the story even more compelling. Equally important is the fact that Lebo considers in the book what it means to be objective, both in science and in journalism. She argues that in science objectivity is not simply "presenting both sides," and neither should it be in journalism. Presenting two sides of an issue is not balance if A) there are more sides than that, or B) it gives the impression that both sides are equally right, and equally represented. In the case of evolution, this mistake is made all of the time. The whole "teach the controversy" premise appeals to our sense of fair play by demanding that dissenting voices be heard-- no matter how wrong and rare those voices may be. But just like you can't vote on the sex of a rabbit, you can't vote on whether evolutionary theory is accurate or not. Lebo's editor put pressure on her to make the ID proponents look better when covering the trial for the sake of "objectivity," but in fact doing so would have required her to be dishonest about what was happening. In actual fact, members of the Dover school board lied on the stand. Their "expert" testimony was absolutely shredded by the prosecuting attorneys, and Judge Jones referred in his decision to the "breathtaking inanity" of the decision to try and insert Intelligent Design into a science class in the first place. Of course it's interesting for journalists to record in their stories that there are people who think that evolution is wrong, and shouldn't be taught in schools. But there should be no requirement to present these people as having scientific authority, because they do not. The media is a great tug of war, but when it comes to science much reporting simply falls on its face because of the pretense of "presenting both sides." Lebo, thank goodness, does not fall for this trap, and she eloquently explains why-- even while playing out the story of the Dover trial, and making the reader fully understand what kind of people it took for this whole event to happen.

reporting at its best

This is a powerful and wonderfully-told story--but in many ways it's a very sad story. Lebo points out that Pennsylvania has one of the strongest religious freedom constitutional guarantees in the country. This states (in part) "no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience, and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship." After the decision, the right and the Christian right--or rather, I should say, those who like to call themselves the Christian right--bitterly assailed the judge as an "activist" working against the constitution, and the plaintiffs and much of the media for being anti-God. Lebo was a local person: she knew many of the people. She has integrity, which as she relates, often worked to her detriment in the trial. Her boss seemed very concerned at times: he wanted Lebo's reporting to make it seem as if the drama that was playing out in the courtroom was going equally well for both sides, when clearly such was not the case. Maybe the sports section would have had a headline "Penn State Slips Past Dover State 92-0", although the Dover trial was not quite that lopsided [63-3 is more realistic, perhaps]. Lebo describes her father, a fundamentalist, who often makes the same joke about the ACLU being the "American Communist Lawyers Union", a minister who believes that anyone who does not accept the entire Bible literally cannot ever be called a Christian, and others on both sides. Many of the plaintiffs showed great courage--vituperative attacks on their children at school, death threats, and the like. So what you get is a very personal view of the case--something virtually impossible for an outsider to achieve. There's a lot of disillusionment for Lebo--seeing reporters she knows and respects accused of lying about what was said at school board meetings and threatened with jail--defamation by supposedly Christian people who claimed the Bible as their guide, but who showed no hesitation in committing perjury for their cause. Lebo remembers asking herself plaintively "How can they lie like that in Christ's name?" When videotape contradicts sworn testimony, you have a problem, as Judge Jones certainly did. There's a wealth of detail about the testimony on both sides, and the view of the community is compelling reading. A fine book, powerfully told!

At home in Dover

I received my copy of Lauri Lebo's "The Devil in Dover" last night, and I am sorry that I have finished it. It was a fast read. Lebo's work stands out among the other books written about the Dover Panda Trial for the strongly personal nature of the book. This stems from both her familiarity with all the Dover locals, but even more personally, agnostic Lebo uses the trial as a mirror to her personal relationship to her fundamentalist father and doing so illuminates both. After the trial was over and the news vans packed off to the next story, Lebo stayed because Dover is her home, and "The Devil in Dover" is as much her story as any other participants. If you are more interested in a book that places intelligent design and the Dover trial in the context of America's struggle over creationism and science, Edward Humes, "Monkey Girl" (2007 New York: Harper Collins) will probably be more to your liking. And Matthew Chapman's 2007 book, "40 Days and 40 Nights" (New York: Harper Collins), has a clearer focus on the legal machinations. But neither of them can come close to Lebo's understanding of the Dover school board's character, the plaintiff parents or the citizens of Dover.