A reader sent me a link to this horrid anti-evolution guest column in the MetroWest Daily News (I presume this is a suburban branch of the Boston Herald). It's appallingly bad, but so typical of the creationist strategy: fast and furious falsehood flinging, and the presumption no one will have the initiative or the ability to crosscheck the claims. It's also all stated in a pompous, self-satisfied style, as if the author knows more about biology than all those biologists out there…yet as becomes quickly obvious, the man knows nothing about genetics.

Well, I know a little about biology and genetics, and I'm willing to rip his dishonest essay apart, and there's always Mark Isaak's Index to Creationist Claims, which is a wonderful resource that makes it easy to tear into articles like this. It always surprises me, though, how unimaginative creationists are—it's always the same old bogus nonsense, repeated over and over again, with such oblivious confidence. Everything in Marty Pomeroy's essay has already been refuted.

First, here's the complete opinion piece.

Rescue science from evolutionists
By Marty Pomeroy / Guest Columnist
Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Those who think the "Intelligent Design" advocates are a bunch of religious whackos show that they have simply not looked into the issues being raised before the Kansas Board of Education.

Regarding evolution, there is much that classical evolutionary theory answers well, and much that it does not answer well.

Evolutionary theory proposes that there are two fundamental engines behind the advancement of species. The first engine is mutation, genetic change that can be passed on. This produces some difference in an organism that can be passed to its offspring, so the mutation must be present in reproductive cells.

The second engine is natural selection. This "selects" mutations that happen to be somehow "beneficial." The next generation has statistically more of the "chosen" genetic material because the gene provides some reproductive advantage. So those creatures with this gene produce more offspring, whether because of more aggressive mating behavior, resistance to disease, longer life -- anything that allows a species with this gene to reproduce more than those without it.

The theory goes that these two engines, over time, have produced all the biological diversity we see around us. Both these engines are absolutely necessary for evolution and work together. A simplistic summary would say that mutations provide the opportunity for advancement, and natural selection "chooses out" certain genes.

So what does evolutionary theory explain well? The concept of natural selection has become so well established by the weight of evidence that anyone who would try to argue against it will be shown foolish. It is impossible to ignore the variation of species over geographical areas, and the recognition that these variations have become established as adaptations to their environment by natural selection.

And where is the problem? It is in the concept of beneficial mutation. Natural selection is powerless if there is no new genetic material to work with. But that's where, in evolutionary circles, we instantly move from science to faith. In fact, there is no evidence for the existence of beneficial mutations in complex organisms.

With all the biologists observing life on this earth, there is not, at present, even a single example of a variation in a species that is replacing its peers due to some genetic advantage. Secondly, with all the bombardment of fruit flies with X-rays over the last 100 years, no new species of fruit flies has come about which is replacing the ones that have been around for ages. Lastly, looking in the fossil record, you cannot show any two species that have come from a common ancestor.

Now before anyone blows a gasket, it is obvious that mutations happen. Cancer typically results from mutations we do not want. Also at the viral level, changes (mutations) happen regularly. But the leap in complexity from virus to sexually reproductive mammal is too many orders of magnitude to make bold assumptions. In complex organisms, we simply don't have any examples of this taking place, and the fruit flies are still fruit flies.

The Sickle Cell Anemia gene in the malaria belt is sometimes used as an evolutionary example. It is an excellent example of natural selection taking a broken gene and, due to special circumstances (resistance to malaria,) selecting it out. But the sickle cell gene is not replacing the gene for normal red blood cells in general. When fully expressed, it is clearly not beneficial.

So beneficial genetic mutation lacks any scientific examples in higher species. This is one of the two foundational engines of evolution, and there is no science to back it.

Now this is not to say that Intelligent Design is the New Science. Rather, just like what is already being taught, it is an interpretation which, when applied to available data, provides an interesting perspective.

Still, those who despise Intelligent Design (like Bonnie Erbe) reject it less because they know much about it and more because they are fighting for their own faith in gradual naturalism and religiously refuse to consider evolution's glaring weaknesses (or because they simply dislike Republicans and their current supporters.)

So teach natural selection. But regarding the means for the advancement of species, we already teach one belief that is completely unsubstantiated. Why not teach two? They explain advancement differently based on differing assumptions (beliefs,) and both present interesting views of the data available. This would truly improve science education by separating facts from the interpretations which can so easily become dogma.

Note that Mr Pomeroy makes several strong claims here, all stated with extravagant confidence, and all completely false. They are trivially false, and easily checked against the resources at the talk.origins archive, which link to the scientific literature. Mr Pomeroy is claiming the absence of evidence from the scientific literature for certain phenomena, so it is fairly easy to refute him by finding just one counterexample; my links below generally point to whole lists of counterexamples.

• "In fact, there is no evidence for the existence of beneficial mutations in complex organisms" and "So beneficial genetic mutation lacks any scientific examples in higher species"
  
  This is false. Mr Pomeroy mentions sickle cell anemia, but then mangles the story; that is a beneficial mutation in a specific context, the presence of high rates of malaria. It is his misfortune that he doesn't comprehend that evolutionary novelties aren't absolute good or evil; their function is relative and dependent on the environment. The Talk.Origins archive explains this, and there is a specific FAQ on known beneficial mutations. Even twenty-five years ago I did simple experiments in a cell biology lab to find mutant strains of bacteria that were resistant to antibiotics. Seriously, it happens every day, and it's easy to detect.
  There is also a good list of such mutations in a range of species, but Mr Pomeroy makes a peculiar demand for examples in "higher" species—would a list of beneficial mutations in humans do? I should mention that there is no qualitative difference between the DNA of E. coli and a human, and in fact, we share many of the same genes, so demanding examples in one but not the other is a bit strange.
  
  
• "With all the biologists observing life on this earth, there is not, at present, even a single example of a variation in a species that is replacing its peers due to some genetic advantage."
  
  We have observed new species. But again, Mr Pomeroy inserts a peculiar restriction—that it be an example of a variation replacing its peers. I don't think he understands biology very well, because that makes the job even easier. I did a quick search of the literature, and found this example:
  Stolz U, Velez S, Wood KV, Wood M, Feder JL (2003) Darwinian natural selection for orange bioluminescent color in a Jamaican click beetle. PNAS 100(25):14955-9.
  The paper describes a particular color variant that is undergoing a selective sweep in Jamaica, a new allele that arose on the east side of the island and is spreading westward.
  This stuff is not difficult to find, if you know your way around the biological literature. Apparently, Mr Pomeroy does not.
  
  
• "Secondly, with all the bombardment of fruit flies with X-rays over the last 100 years, no new species of fruit flies has come about which is replacing the ones that have been around for ages."
  
  Rhagoletis pomonella, the apple maggot fly. This is a serious pest that is currently undergoing speciation, with strains that are shifting from their native host, the hawthorne, to apples. I didn't even have to dig into the laboratory literature—this is happening naturally.
  
  
• "Lastly, looking in the fossil record, you cannot show any two species that have come from a common ancestor."
  
  Ah, the hoary old "there are no transitional fossils" claim. Of course we can, and we have molecular evidence in addition to the fossil evidence. We can show linkage in the same way that paternity tests can reveal the relationship between a child and a presumed parent.
  

Mr Pomeroy made an accusation in his article that he applied to opponents of intelligent design creationism, but which applies more accurately to himself and his fellow apologists for creationism: of evolution, they "reject it less because they know much about it and more because they are fighting for their own faith". He is clearly ignorant of the biology he is describing.

Note the creationist pattern, though. Mr Pomeroy makes bold, confident assertions, each one dead wrong. If the average person were face-to-face with him, what could you say? It's not instantaneous to pull up references to refute such bald lies, and even here on the web where I can leisurely click on the talk.origins site and find orderly stacks of evidence, it takes time…time Pomeroy would use to move on to another lie.

So what do we do?

One counter-strategy is to reduce our position to a set of sound bites. That is not one of our strengths, sad to say: what the side of biology has is vast depth, and it always hurts to abandon that rich and complex resource and reduce it to simplistic assertions. But it's this simple: evolutionary biology has the mechanisms, the observations, the evidence, and the experiments that show that species are related to one another and diverged by the slow acquisition of genetic differences. When someone tells you that no new species have been observed, that mutations can never benefit an organism, and that there have been no transitional forms between species, he's flouting the facts and is simply lying.

Another is to slam the promulgators of such nonsense as Pomeroy's. That essay was a parade of ignorance; Marty Pomeroy has destroyed his own credibility on the subject of evolutionary biology. That is a point that should be hammered in every time he takes pen to paper in the future. Marty Pomeroy has no knowledge of biology and has a history of making stuff up about the subject, and his opinion on evolution should have no weight.

One other thing we have to do is take this message home to the media. Certain right-wing weblogs are fond of the idea that their role is to fact-check the "MSM" (mainstream media) (ironically enough, that's from a site that has also peddled the anti-evolution snake oil), so let's do it. Send short letters to newspapers that publish creationist tripe, and don't let this BS slide by. For instance, you can send letters to the MetroWest Daily News at mdnletters@cnc.com. Tell 'em what you think, in a polite way. Here's mine:

I was surprised to see the guest column by Marty Pomeroy ("Rescue science from evolutionists" on 25 May 2005) in your paper. You see, I'm a biologist by profession, and all the things that Marty Pomeroy declared were not in the scientific literature, such as evidence of beneficial mutations, replacement of alleles in populations, or transitional forms, actually ARE extensively documented in the scientific literature. It was rather like reading an article in which someone confidently asserts that not only are penguins nonexistent, but that no one has ever photographed or captured one. It's a silly claim that can be refuted by simply showing the person a photograph or taking them to the zoo, so this kind of thing is most disconcerting to see published in the 20th 21st Century, in a nation that should be well known for its scientific accomplishments.

Mr Pomeroy is obviously not at all familiar with the scientific literature despite his bold declarations about what is not in it. I suggest that he try reading an introductory text in population genetics, or that he browse through a few issues of Nature or PNAS or any of the many journals at his local university library. Barring that, I've provided a summary of the evidence that counters each of his claims at http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/marty_pomeroy.

And please, readers of the MetroWest Daily News, do not take anti-scientific crackpottery like that of Mr Pomeroy seriously.

Write your own, leave them in the comments here. One thing we might want to think about is developing a library of pithy rejoinders to complement Isaak's wonderful index; we've got the data, but what we also need are strong, short statements that make the emotional and rhetorical case.

And I know I'm a long-winded SOB, so I'm not the best to compose them.