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Religion & Law

: Thoughts in a Haystack

Still Wrong

By John Pieret

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Oh, look! New Scientist is reporting on the last minute insertion of creationist nonsense into the Texas science standards:

The previous text invited students to: "evaluate a variety of fossil types, transitional fossils, fossil lineages, and significant fossil deposits with regard to their appearance, completeness and rate and diversity of evolution".
The altered text, introduced by creationist member Barbara Cargill, slipped the phrase "proposed transitional fossils" into the text, implying unwarranted doubt about whether transitional fossils are genuinely evolutionary staging posts as species changed. ...
Secondly, Cargill scrapped the final clause altogether, replacing it with an invitation for students to "assess the arguments for and against universal common descent in the light of this fossil evidence".
In other words, she sought to stimulate unwarranted debate about common descent, the idea that all life arose through evolution.
"This change is by far the most unscientific revision, and is completely unacceptable," says Schafersman. "There are no good arguments in modern science 'against universal common descent', which has been accepted by biologists for over 130 years, so the phrase is asking for something that authors and publishers cannot honestly supply."
In essence, says Schafersman, "the added phrase supports an anti-evolution intent which is not scientific."

But, strangely, there is no mention of the article that Cargill cited in support of her change in the language -- the one "in which a European scientist disputed Darwin?s 'tree of life' showing common ancestors for all living things" -- namely, New Scientist's own "Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life," which has been roundly criticized for its sensationalistic approach to science:

Graham Lawton Was Wrong
Darwin Was Wrong?
Why's Graham so Glum: Lawton Critiqued
Was Darwin Wrong?
Darwin was wrong...ish
Explaining New Scientist cover
New Scientist takes the hype road
Darwin: The Genius of evolution
The Trouble With Science Journalism
Speaking of media mangling...
New Scientist take the hype road
It's such a fine line between stupid and clever

Of trees of life and straw men

Ironically, a sidebar to the New Scientist article ends:

"We've just annihilated the tree of life. It's not a tree any more, it's a different topology entirely," says Syvanen. "What would Darwin have made of that?"

Darwin's dead. The more immediate concern is what creationists would -- and did -- make of it: a weapon against science. I suppose, if we must speculate about Darwin's reaction, his words to Wallace, on finding out that the latter thought that the human brain could not have been the product of natural selection, might suffice as a hint: "I hope you have not murdered too completely your own and my child."
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Bloglist "borrowed" from Adrian Thysse at Evolving Complexity.
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Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on January 26, 2009 (boomark / email).