Textbook Case of Junk Science - FrontPage: ""A study commissioned by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in 2001 found 500 pages of scientific error in 12 middle-school textbooks used by 85 percent of the students in the country. One misstates Newton's first law of motion. Another says humans can't hear elephants. Another confuses 'gravity' with 'gravitational acceleration.' Another shows the equator running through the United States. Individual scientists draft segments of these books, but reviewing the final product is sometimes left to multicultural committees who have no expertise in science. 'Thousands of teachers are saddled with error-filled physical science textbooks,' wrote John Hubisz, a physics professor at North Carolina State University at Raleigh and the author of the report. 'Political correctness is often more important than scientific accuracy. Middle-school text publishers now employ more people to censor books than they do to check facts.' "