Unintelligent

President Bush thinks the pseudo-scientific ''intelligent design" notion of life's creation should be taught in the public schools alongside evolution. In a press conference in California Monday, the president explained, ''I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought."

The best educational use of intelligent design would be to expose students to a good example of what science is not.

Proponents of the idea that life is so complex that it could not have developed without the guiding hand of an intelligent designer -- presumably a divine being -- often say that evolution is no more than a ''theory," so why not give intelligent design equal billing? This betrays a misunderstanding of the very term ''scientific theory."

As any child who ever entered a science fair once knew, but may have forgotten, a hypothesis about an observed phenomenon becomes scientific theory only after rigorous testing -- experiments that can be replicated with the same results each time. In its 1999 report ''Science and Creationism," the National Academy of Sciences drew a clear distinction. Scientific theories ''are understandings that develop from extensive observation, experimentation, and creative reflection. They incorporate a large body of scientific facts, laws, tested hypotheses, and logical inferences." In this regard, the report noted, ''evolution is one of the strongest and most useful scientific theories we have."

By contrast, intelligent design is an explanation that cannot be tested or based on empirical evidence. Almost by definition it is based on belief. To introduce it into a public school science curriculum is to turn the very nature of science on its head.

Indeed, Michael Behe, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University and a leading proponent of intelligent design, wrote in The New York Times this winter that intelligent design is a valid theory because it cannot be proved not to exist. ''In the absence of any convincing nondesign explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life," he wrote. But the absence of disproof is hardly proof.

The trend toward insinuating creationism -- dressed up as intelligent design or not -- into the public schools is as robust as it is alarming. School boards are debating whether to mandate alternative creation sciences in at least 15 states. American high schoolers do badly enough on international science tests without the president casting doubt on the core theory of biology.

If Bush wants to introduce students to a range of ideas on the origins of life, he should recommend a course in comparative religions. But he should leave the teaching of science to those who are committed to the word's Latin root: scientia, knowledge.