# Project Steve **Domain:** Science Education / Public Communication / Evolution **Doc Type:** Canonical Campaign Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Project Steve** is an NCSE parody of creationist lists of scientists presented as evidence against evolution. Its signatories support a statement affirming evolution and must be named Steve or a recognized variant, honoring Stephen Jay Gould. ## Epistemic Function The project does not establish evolution by vote. Its point is to expose how easily lists of credentialed dissenters can misrepresent the distribution of expert opinion. By restricting eligible signers to roughly one percent of common first names, it demonstrates that even an intentionally tiny pool can produce a large pro-evolution list. [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] places Project Steve within the Bay Area's institutional defense of evolutionary literacy. [[articles/STEVE|STEVE]] develops the wider cultural argument. ## Machine-Intelligence Context Project Steve is a lesson in evidence aggregation. Counts, credentials and testimonials require a sampling model; otherwise social proof can masquerade as scientific inference. ## Sources / Provenance - NCSE, Project Steve: https://ncse.ngo/project-steve - NCSE, “Twenty years of Project Steve”: https://ncse.ngo/twenty-years-project-steve ## See Also [[wiki/The National Center for Science Education|The National Center for Science Education]], [[wiki/Steven Pinker|Steven Pinker]], [[wiki/Stephen Hawking|Stephen Hawking]], [[wiki/Public Mythology|Public Mythology]]