I think it does not serve the purposes of science to become partisan. Just as few people take time to understand science, few scientists take time to understand ethics. And becoming partisan is a two-way street — the more science injects itself into politics, the more politics will inject itself into science. There is already enough money flowing into science to promote research toward proprietary commercial or political ends. We should be reversing that flow, but making science a political tool will certainly increase it. Right now we have bad politics and good science.

Making science more political will not make good politics, but it will make for bad science.

The answer has to be clear and nonpartisan communication of science.

I don't see any evidence that the Wedge has anything to do with this. First, the Wedge has had little-to-no influence on the education curriculum. And while we may be plugged into the debate, the average person is not. In fact, a poll from 2003 found that only 18% felt "very familiar" with the concept of ID and a full 45% were "not familiar" with it. Second, the question is about human evolution and this topic receives very little attention from people like Behe and Dembski. Third, the trend is simply putting people in the "unwilling to make a judgment" category and it draws from both sides.