Michael Reiss resigns from Royal Society

Michael Reiss, the Royal Society’s Director of Education who caused a stir recently by seeming to promote the teaching of creationism, has resigned today.

Today, the society’s officers decided that he would have to go to protect its reputation, and Professor Reiss agreed to step down.

It said in a statement: “Some of Professor Michael Reiss’s recent comments, on the issue of creationism in schools, while speaking as the Royal Society’s director of education, were open to misinterpretation. While it was not his intention, this has led to damage to the Society’s reputation.

I guess the bottom line is this: if you are going to speak on a controversial topic behalf of the Royal Society, you had better be pretty darned clear in what you say.

There certainly has been quite a widespread and active movement among leading scientists to get rid of him. According to the New Scientist:

Nobel prize winner Richard Roberts at the New England Biolabs in Ipswich, Massachusetts, has written a letter to Royal Society president, Martin Rees, supported by fellow Nobel laureates John Sulston and Harry Kroto, demanding “that Professor Reiss step down, or be asked to step down, as soon as possible”.

“We gather Professor Reiss is a clergyman, which in itself is very worrisome,” the letter says. “Who on earth thought that he would be an appropriate Director of Education, who could be expected to answer questions about the differences between science and religion in a scientific, reasoned way?”