Texas Education Board Flags Biology Textbook Over Evolution Concerns The Texas Board of Education on Friday delayed final approval of a widely used biology textbook because of concerns raised by one reviewer that it presents evolution as fact rather than theory. The monthslong textbook review process in Texas has been controversial because a number of people selected this year to evaluate publishers" submissions do not accept evolution or climate change as scientific truth. On Friday, the state board, which includes several members who hold creationist views, voted to recommend 14 textbooks in biology and environmental science. But its approval of "Biology," a highly regarded textbook by Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, and Joseph S. Levine, a science journalist, and published by Pearson Education, was contingent upon an expert panel determining whether any corrections are warranted. Until the panel rules on the alleged errors, Pearson will not be able to market its book as approved by the board to school districts in Texas. "It's just a shame that quality textbooks still have to jump through ridiculous hoops that have no basis in science," said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which monitors the activities of far-right organizations. Ms. Miller (no relation to the Pearson textbook author) said she nevertheless gave Friday's vote "two opposable thumbs up" because the board "adopted all of the science books and the publishers made no effort to water down evolution or climate science in those books." Three members of the state school board - Barbara Cargill, the Republican chairwoman appointed by Gov. Rick Perry; Martha Dominguez, a Democrat from El Paso; and Sue Melton-Malone, a Republican from Waco - will select experts for the final review panel for the Pearson textbook. The board voted that the experts must have at least a Ph.D. in a "related field of study" and could not have served on the original review panel for the book. The alleged errors that will be reviewed by the new expert panel were cited by Ide P. Trotter, a chemical engineer and financial adviser who is listed as a "Darwin Skeptic" on the website of the Creation Science Hall of Fame and was on a textbook review panel that evaluated Dr. Miller and Mr. Levine's "Biology" last summer. Mr. Trotter raised numerous questions about the book's sections on evolution. "I think I did a pretty good review, modestly speaking," said Mr. Trotter, speaking from his home in Duncanville, a suburb of Dallas. He said Dr. Miller and Mr. Levine's textbook "gives a misleading impression that we have a fairly close understanding of how random processes could lead to us." He added, "If it were honest, it would say this is how we are looking at it, and these are the complexities that we don't understand." Susan M. Aspey, a spokeswoman for Pearson, said that the publisher "is proud of the work we've done with educators and scientists to create effective materials for the state of Texas." Ronald Wetherington, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Southern Methodist University who has already looked over Mr. Trotter's complaints, described them as "non sequiturs and irrelevant." "It was simply a morass of pseudoscientific objections," Dr. Wetherington said. Joshua Rosenau, programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit group that defends the teaching of evolution and climate change, said he hoped the Texas school board members would select scientists with mainstream views. "Tomorrow morning, you could walk five minutes up to campus and knock on any five doors in the biology department," Mr. Rosenau said, referring to the University of Texas at Austin. "And in five minutes they would say these aren't errors," he said of Mr. Trotter's list. Separately, the board also directed Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the publisher of an environmental science textbook, to make minor changes to its sections on climate change. A spokeswoman for Houghton Mifflin said the publisher had already responded to the change requests. "We stood by the integrity of our content," the company said in an emailed statement, "and made no material changes to instruction or point of view."