The person who has come under the most fire since the nation has started to adopt the science of reading has been Lucy Calkins. Her Balanced Literacy approach has been adopted across the United States. Proponents of Science of Reading have brought to light the negation of phonics from reading in support of using context clues and non-phonetic strategies for discovering unknown words they come across in reading.

The episode of the podcast posted above, starts by saying some alarming numbers indicating the percentages of students who are not reading on level in large communities which led to the mass exodus of schools from the Balanced Literacy approach. 

In response, Lucy Calkins launched the website Rebalancing Literacy On the home page of her website, she claims her goal of her website is to start a healthy conversation that can blend Balanced Literacy and Science of Reading. She posts many research and media articles addressing the concerns of teachers and parents as we shift through the "Reading Wars" as she calls it.

In the article Myths about the Science of Reading the author explains how research of reading strategies works comparing it to the study of new medication. It addresses that the research shows overall students are struggling but it does not address how some of the strategies are successful in conjunction with the scientific strategies that have been studied.

In the article What Really Matters in Teaching Phonics Today, the author brings up the fact that at one point the US government presented the "Reading First" curriculum that was phonics based. It showed no improvement in the national reading scores. However, there are questions in how that metric was analyzed.

References

National Research Council. (2002). Scientific research in education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Shanahan, T. (2020). What constitutes a science of reading instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S235-S247.

Stanovich, P. J. , & Stanovich, K. E. (2003). Using research and reason in education. Washington, DC: National Institute of Literacy.