Citizens, teachers, and scientists for a scientifically literate Georgia.

What we are

GeorgiaScience.org is the organization's public hub for science education, scientific literacy, and critical thinking. We provide clear, evidence-based resources for students, educators, and communities who value reliable science and informed decision making.

Our mission

Our mission is to strengthen scientific understanding, support high-quality STEM education, and help Georgians engage thoughtfully with evidence and with the world around them.

We are literacy-forward. Scientific literacy, the ability to evaluate evidence, reason carefully, and make informed decisions, is the outcome we work toward. Integrity in science education is one of the means by which that literacy is built.

By integrity in science education, we mean fidelity in how science is taught: that what reaches students and the public is accurate, current, evidence-based, and free from distortion. This is not about policing science. It is about teaching it well and honestly, so that genuine understanding can follow. A scientifically literate Georgia depends on science education that has integrity.

Who we serve

• Students seeking clarification on scientific topics and reliable resources.
• Educators looking for high-quality, vetted classroom materials and STEM support.
• Communities and individuals who want trustworthy information, upcoming events, and ways to engage thoughtfully with science in Georgia.

What belongs here

• Curated links to reputable national science and science-education organizations, selected for relevance to Georgia.
• Georgia-specific resources: state standards, local institutions, programs, and initiatives.
• Local science news: scholarships, discoveries, events, and policies affecting science education across Georgia.
• Plain-language explainers and critical-thinking and media-literacy resources.

What does not

• Partisan political advocacy unrelated to science education.
• Unvetted or low-quality sources. Every linked resource should meet the same evidence and integrity standard we promote.
• Content that overstates certainty or blurs evidence with speculation.

Where this came from

Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science Education was founded in response to the warning stickers that the Cobb County Board of Education voted unanimously to place in biology textbooks on March 28, 2002. The stickers read: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." They followed a petition of roughly 2,300 signatures organized by a parent who identified as a six-day biblical creationist, asking the board for a disclaimer and for the inclusion of alternate theories of the origin of life.

The sticker's central claim was a category error. That populations change over time and share common ancestry is an observation supported by converging lines of evidence. Evolutionary theory is the framework that explains how it happens. Setting "theory" against "fact" treats those as rivals rather than as different kinds of claim, and the framing works only on a reader who takes "theory" to mean "guess."

Parents sued. On January 13, 2005, federal district judge Clarence Cooper ruled in Selman v. Cobb County School District that the stickers were unconstitutional, finding that "the informed, reasonable observer would understand the School Board to be endorsing the viewpoint of Christian fundamentalists and creationists that evolution is a problematic theory lacking an adequate foundation." What began as a local petition had by then drawn national attention. On appeal, briefs supporting the school district were filed by the Alliance Defense Fund and others, and the Discovery Institute publicly urged the Eleventh Circuit to overturn the decision, while the National Center for Science Education and seven other organizations filed in support of the parents. The Eleventh Circuit vacated the ruling on evidentiary grounds in May 2006, and the district settled rather than retry the case. The settlement of December 19, 2006 bars the board in perpetuity from restoring any similar disclaimer, from acting to hinder the teaching of evolution, and from placing statements about "creationism, creation science, intelligent design, or any other religious view" in its textbooks.

The pressure was not confined to Cobb County. In early 2004 the state school superintendent proposed replacing the word "evolution" in Georgia's science curriculum with "biological changes over time." After objection from science teachers, university faculty, Governor Sonny Perdue, and former President Jimmy Carter, the proposal was withdrawn within about a week, and the Board of Education adopted a curriculum that kept the word and stated that "molecular evidence substantiates the anatomical evidence for evolution."

The organization described itself at the time as parents, clergy members, K-12 faculty, higher education faculty, and other concerned citizens, and it stated its purpose as promoting scientific literacy and excellence in science education. GCISE was among the organizations that joined the amicus curiae brief in Selman. The organization also described having worked to return the word evolution to the state science curriculum and to restore concepts including the age of the Earth, plate tectonics, and the Big Bang. That second account comes from GCISE's own description of its work rather than from an independent source, and we report it as such.

The corporation itself did not survive. It was incorporated in Georgia in February 2003 and administratively dissolved by the state in May 2008, after annual registrations stopped being filed. The group continued informally for several years after that, and its website went quiet following 2013.

The domain and the work later passed to the current curator. GeorgiaScience.org continues that effort. It is not a revival of the 2003 corporation, which cannot be reinstated, and it does not claim to be the same legal entity. That is the same purpose this site works toward today.

The people who built it

Credit belongs to people who did the work long before this site existed. The following is drawn from GCISE's own published pages and from what these individuals have said publicly about their own roles.

• Sarah Pallas, Ph.D. Co-founder, member, and the organization's webmaster, and a member of its Media Advisory Panel. She was Professor of Neuroscience and Biology at Georgia State University during her involvement and is now on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
• Mark Farmer, Ph.D. Member and Media Advisory Panel member, then Professor and Chair of Cell Biology at the University of Georgia.
• Jeffrey Selman. Lead plaintiff in Selman v. Cobb County School District and, by his own account, a member of the GCISE advisory board.
• Carlos Moreno, Ph.D., Wes McCoy, Ph.D., and Ron Matson, Ph.D. Chair, Vice-Chair, and Secretary respectively, as listed on the organization's site in 2013.

Many others contributed as members, as teachers, and as citizens who showed up. The record we have is partial, and we would rather say so than imply it is complete. If you were involved and we have your role wrong or missing, please tell us.

Who curates this site

GeorgiaScience.org is curated by Reginald Finley, Ph.D., who teaches biology, human anatomy and physiology, health sciences, and scientific literacy as adjunct faculty at Franklin University.

What drew him to this work was health misinformation: watching accurate information about the human body lose ground to confident claims that were simply easier to repeat. Generative AI has since made that problem faster and more fluent, which is the subject of his book AI-Epistemic Resilience: A Framework for Knowledge Integrity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (2026). He also founded the Finley Robotics Initiative, a nonprofit expanding AI and robotics access for underserved students. He lives in Newnan, Georgia.

Curator is the accurate word for the job. This site does not conduct original research or issue findings. It selects, verifies, and organizes the work of others, and it says where everything came from so readers can check.