John Scopes lost the Scopes Monkey Trial, but many have incorrectly perceived it as a victory for evolution, science, and rationalism. It did put a spotlight on fundamentalism, holding it up to ridicule and leading to widespread rejection of its anti-science stance. The Scopes Monkey Trial also opened the door to wider dissemination of fundamentalists' ideas, leading more people to give them serious consideration. Ultimately, anti-evolution forces were stronger and more successful as a result.
Purging Science & Evolution from Science Books
Fundamentalists' anti-science and anti-evolution stance, especially their opposition to teaching evolution in public schools, not only remained in force through much of the country but even intensified. J.V. Grabiner and P.D. Miller demonstrated in 1982 in an article in "Nature" that references to Darwin and evolution in science texts plummeted after the Scopes Monkey Trial. Some texts eliminated all references while other books that retained such references eliminated the index entries.
The text that John Scopes himself used, "A Civic Biology," contained only three pages on evolution in the 1914 edition; renamed "New Civic Biology" in 1926, nearly all explicit references to evolution were removed entirely. Grabiner and Miller even argued that you could effectively date science texts as being written after rather than before 1925 simply by looking in the index and seeing if evolution is missing.
Were these changes a direct consequence of the Scopes trial? No, not exactly — what happened is that fundamentalists saw the trial as a call to arms, and it was a call they responded to enthusiastically. They rallied across the country and worked to ensure that local schools would not adopt texts that said much about evolution; publishers responded by seeking to preserve their bottom line and eliminate offensive passages.
So publishers didn't stop including evolution in science books because John Scopes lost his trial; however, they did downplay or removing evolution in science books because Christian fundamentalists became even more radicalized and much more vocal activists about what happens in public schools. This had negative consequences not only for science, but for all subjects because all texts were subjected to ever greater scrutiny from people who saw the role of public schools not to educate children, but to reinforce traditional, orthodox ideologies about Christianity, white supremacy, patriarchy, American exceptionalism, etc.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, fundamentalists were largely successful in purging evolution from science classes, although they were not able to accomplish much when it came to having creationism introduced as a replacement. Because of this, a generation or so of children grew up learning very little about evolution and evolutionary theory, ill-preparing them for the scientific and technological changes which would come through the middle and latter-half of the 20th century.
Restoration of Science in Science Classes
The pendulum did not begin to move back towards teaching science and facts until the Cold War, when the United States saw the launch of the Sputnik artificial satellite as a sign that the Soviet Union was gaining scientific superiority. As a result, there was a massive effort to update and improve science education across all disciplines and at every level. This included biology, which meant that evolutionary theory was given a greater role in both science texts and classroom discussion.
Fundamentalists did not sit quietly and allow such events to proceed unchecked. They were already horrified at the image of a godless, communist nation outperforming the United States in any fashion, but when their children brought home the new science texts in which evolution (believed to be a factor in encouraging godless communism) played a prominent role, things went from bad to worse.
For scientists and secularists, the increased emphasis on evolution was part of the solution to the problem; for fundamentalists, it was simply brining the problem home to America where it could fester and cause America to become just as godless and immoral as the Soviet Union. It was, in essence, putting salt on an open wound —- and fundamentalists reacted accordingly, throwing themselves into the fight against both communism abroad and at home (where "the fight against communism" was defined broadly enough to include anything that might encourage communism, thus including atheism and evolution).
Modernizing the Anti-Science Agenda
At first, their work involved more laws outlawing the teaching of evolution, but this tactic ultimately failed because the courts were unwilling to let stand laws which were obviously passed in order to preserve a particular religious orthodoxy. What's more, scientists were able to easily demonstrate that evolutionary theory was as valid a part of modern science as anything else that was already being taught, thus undermining arguments that teaching evolution was somehow incompatible with the mission of public schools or science courses. The Supreme Court's 1968 decision in Epperson v. Arkansas put the final nail in the coffin for anti-evolution laws across the country.
The next step in the fight against evolution was to have an alternative introduced alongside, and this played a role in the development of "creation science" and Intelligent Design, the "scientific" forms of religious creationism. The Supreme Court invalidated the teaching of religious creationism in public schools in the 1987 decision of Edwards v. Aguillard, so it was hoped that a "scientific" creationism would have better luck.
This led to many proposals for "Balanced Treatment," which require more than just evolutionary theory to be taught in science classes. Ultimately, though, there courts have rejected the teaching of any form of creationism as if it were legitimate science, including the most recent incarnation Intelligent Design. Creationism can legitimately be explained and discussed in other classes, like history, but it cannot be presented as legitimate science because it is ultimately a religious and political ideology masquerading as science.
