PZ Myers. 2004 Jun 18. "...in the light of evolution.". <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/in_the_light_of_evolution/>. Accessed 2008 Dec 04.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Friday, June 18, 2004
"...in the light of evolution."
Michael Harris has figured out who the mysterious Penn State professor was in my previous post, the one mentioned by Bob Hazen:Let's have students discuss the Pennsylvania State professor who found that his own biology colleagues admitted that they would not have done their own biology research any differently even if they had believed that evolution was wrong.
It's a guy named Philip Skell. There's an article that mentions this...'observation'...in an article by the creationist Jerry Bergman, which is full of nonsense claiming that evolution is not really important in biology after all.
The renown carbene chemist, Professor emeritus Dr. Philip Skell of Pennsylvania State University, did a survey of his colleagues that were “engaged in non-historical biology research, related to their ongoing research projects” and found that the “Darwinist researchers” he interviewed in answer to the question “Would you have done the work any differently if you believed Darwin's theory was wrong?” found that the answers “for the large number” of those persons he questioned, “differing only in the amount of hemming and hawing” was “in my work it would have made no difference,” and some added they thought it would for others (2003. p. 1). Of interest is Molecular, Cell and Development Biology majors at Yale University graduate school will no longer be required to take courses on evolution (Hartman, 2003).
It doesn't seem to have been much of a survey; it's cited as a personal communication, and it sounds like the old geezer just pestered a few of his colleagues with stupid questions. I mean, "Darwinist researchers"? Dead giveaway that this is an ignorant creationist. And the question is just absurd—we already know a good chunk of Darwin's old theoretical work was wrong (he lacked a theory of genetics, for one thing.)
Note also that the article on Yale's evolution requirement is all about an administrative decision to split an existing department into two, and the article is full of quotes from professors who are concerned that this will make it more difficult for students to get that essential background in evolutionary biology.
Bergman's article also contains another beautiful example of creationist quote mining. Bergman quotes Adam Wilkins of the review journal BioEssays, seemingly dismissing evolution.
My review agrees with Adam S. Wilkins, as published in the journal BioEssays, who flips Dobzhansky’s quote completely upside down. In Wilkin’s wordsThe subject of evolution occupies a special, and paradoxical, place within biology as a whole. While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky’s dictum that ‘nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution’, most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas. ‘Evolution’ would appear to be the indispensible unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one (2000, p. 1051, emphasis Bergman's).
Anyone familiar with Wilkins or BioEssays, a journal which regularly publishes some of the more interesting evo-devo papers around, will suspect that something is fishy here. There is. Let's look at the very next paragraph:
Yet, the marginality of evolutionary biology may be changing. More and more issues in biology, from diverse questions about human nature to the vulnerability of ecosystems, are increasingly seen as reflecting evolutionary events. A spate of popular books on evolution testifies to the development. If we are to fully understand these matters, however, we need to understand the processes of evolution that, ultimately, underlie them.
And this is in an introduction to an entire issue of the journal dedicated to evolutionary processes—and Bergman wants to use it to argue that biologists don't consider evolution important?
Here's the table of contents from that issue. Again, does this sound like a bunch of people who think evolution isn't particularly important to biology?
Bergman's, and Hazen's, whole point is bogus. Yes, I can go into my lab right now, make up some solutions, run a pH meter, collect embryos, use a microscope, etc., without once using the principles of evolutionary biology. Likewise, I can do a lot of the day-to-day stuff of the lab without even thinking about developmental biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, or physiology; that does not imply that these disciplines are not central to how life works. We don't need evolutionary biology...except whenever we want to think about how these narrow, esoteric little experiments we do fit into the grander picture of life on earth. You know, biology.
Wilkins, AS (2000) Evolutionary processes: a special issue. BioEssays, 22(12):1051-1052.
- Nice examples of fallacies of composition
- Darwinian evolution invades design.
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Isn't it frustrating to realize that 30 years from now, you'll be teaching a class including some students who had genetic work done on them in the womb, and will still arguing with people who don't believe in evolution?
And how much more frustrating that Americans in general are sliding backwards... fewer people seem to believe in evolution now than 20 years ago before the Magic Fairies In The Sky crowd took control of so many school boards.#: Posted by on 06/18 at 11:23 AM -
I can't slice up a Thanksgiving turkey without seeing common descent. Intelligent design? I suppose cancer cells and a few internal parasites might look designed, but I can't find one single vertebrate that isn't an accumulation of compromises. Where are the unique solutions? Could a God possibly be so bereft of imagination?
The idea that you have to defend evolution from a group of people that think (although these days they try not to admit it) that Samson caught 300 foxes, tied them together in pairs by the tails, and then set them on fire so that in their agony they would burn down the crops of his enemies, is just nuts!#: Posted by on 06/18 at 12:28 PM -
Covington states...
...fewer people seem to believe in evolution now than 20 years ago...
Actually, the National Science Foundation's 2001 Public Attitudes and Public Understanding of Science and Technology survey showed that for the first time, a majority (53%) of respondents answered "true" to the statement, "human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals".
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind02/c7/c7s1.htm#c7s1l4a#: Posted by on 06/18 at 04:28 PM -
Generally speaking, I'd trust Billy Joel to park my car before I'd trust a creationist to give an accurate representation of what an evolutionary scientist writes.
#: Posted by on 06/18 at 05:26 PM
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Thanks Jason for the link. It sure doesn't feel that way here in suburbia. You don't think of upstate New York as the Bible belt, but I'm always amazed at the responses I get when I mention evolution. Having been brought up in a creationist household all those many years ago, I don't bother defending evolution with these people, I argue the Bible with them. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. It's amazing how many have never actually read that stone age book either.
#: Posted by on 06/18 at 07:26 PM
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I use evolutionary concepts constantly in my work. And I'm just a lousy protein chemist. The new advent of whole genome sequencing and bioinformatics makes it not only possible, but absolutely necessary. Sure, you can do a multiple sequence alignment without understanding evolution, but no creationist would have ever come up with the idea, nor would they have the slightest idea what to do with one.
#: Posted by Steve Reuland on 06/18 at 07:42 PM