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THEORY-DRIVEN DECEPTION
Copyright 2005 by E.T. McMullen
ABSTRACT
Thomas Kuhn introduced the idea of theory-driven interpretation into scientific discourse. The related idea of theory-driven deception has its examples in science, which can be considered as a type of fraud. Much deception in science, usually creating or twisting data, can be categorized either 1) as having been done for personal gain, or 2) as having an ideological motive. This ideology can be considered broadly as an idea, theory, or even a worldview. Data created or manipulated for ideological purposes are theory-driven. Ernst Haeckel's faked embryos, the Piltdown forgery, and the Peppered Moth fraud involved data created or falsified to support the idea of descent from a common ancestor. What sustained this scientific misconduct over time was this ideological motivation, which is another variant of theory-driven deception.
The well-known story that the peppered moth and industrial melanism constitute "evolution in action" is an example of theory-driven deception both for data manipulation and for what sustained it for over forty years. Another example of the sustaining part of theory-driven deception is the continued claim for the explanatory power of, and the overwhelming evidence for, neo-Darwinism. Among other things, scientists have shown that the fossil record better supports the theory of punctuated equilibrium.
INTRODUCTION
"Desirable scientific conduct" is the editorial in the 4 February 2005, Science. In it, Patrick Bateson notes that researchers tend "to select evidence suiting their own preconceptions." (1) This undesirable conduct is the theme of the editorial. Bateson could have just as well reminded readers that Thomas Kuhn had earlier noted the same thing. At the beginning of his highly influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn describes normal science "as a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education." (2) The "conceptual box" Kuhn refers to is the paradigm or theory with which a researcher interprets his/her data. Kuhn's theory-driven interpretation is similar to Bateson's researcher-selected evidence.
When I first read Kuhn, I accepted his analysis because I had experienced it. I spent over twenty years in science and technology, which included conducting or managing research at three different government laboratories. I recall the temptation to throw out a data-point that did not fit the expected curve - my conceptual box or selected evidence, if you will. For some reason this anomalous point had to be wrong: the equipment was not working rightly during that particular run; there was a calibration error; I had made some mistake, etc. At least I saw the anomaly. Kuhn writes that some phenomena, "indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all." (3) As an aside, this would fit more into Norwood Russell Hanson's idea of theory-driven observation outlined in his Patterns of Discovery. (4)
Kuhn was one step away from introducing and dealing with a related behavior of scientists, that involving theory-driven deception. If he had thought of this idea, he may have stopped short because this topic includes, or relates to, fraud in science. I, too, was one step away from deception with the data point I mentioned earlier that did not fir the curve. To eliminate it without cause would have been deceptive. But worse would have been to create new data altogether - that would have been fraud.
Fraud
Much scientific misconduct appears to be for personal gain - fraud for fame or fortune, if you will. Five fairly recent examples are: a) A jury convicted Thomas Butler of financial wrongdoing on 1 December 2003. It found him guilty on thirteen counts each of mail and wire fraud, and eighteen counts of theft, fraud, and embezzlement. Butler is head of the Texas Tech University Center of Health Sciences and an expert on plague. (5) b) Colleagues became suspicious of graphs in Steven Leadon's published papers, and accused this University of North Carolina geneticist of fabricating or falsifying findings in a major 1998 paper published in Science. An investigating committee confirmed the charges. (6) c) A committee found that Bell Laboratories' Jan Schan "fabricated or falsified data in at least seventeen papers, many of them considered groundbreaking in molecular electronics." d) Victor Ninov, a Bulgarian-born physicist formerly at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, claimed to have created element 118. "However, the feat was found to hinge on cooked data." e) John Darsee, a rising star at Harvard Medical School, "fabricated data in more than 100 papers on genes and heart disease." (7) From these examples and others it seems that deception for personal gain is often detected rather quickly, but not always. Two researchers in Germany were accused of falsifying data in at least thirty-seven publications spanning a period of eight years. (8)
Theory-driven deception
Surveying the whole of the history of science, we can identify another type of fraud, not done for fame or fortune, but for ideological reasons. The most common ideological fraud appears to be data fabrication committed in order to support the idea of descent from a common ancestor. (9) This ideology often sustains the fraudulent evidence, so these deceptions are not necessarily detected and/or discarded quickly. Three examples of data creation are Ernst Haeckel's faked embryos, the Piltdown forgery, and the peppered moth fraud. Two examples of the ideology sustaining scientific misconduct are the peppered moth, and neo-Darwinist claims and the fossil record.
Haeckel's Embryos
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was a major supporter and popularizer of the idea of descent from a common ancestor. In The Descent of Man (1871), Charles Darwin praises him, and references him at least eleven times. Also in his Descent of Man, Darwin notes that there is an "absence of fossil remains serving to connect man with his ape-like progenitors. . . ." (10) In other words, there was a missing link.
Normally a fossil is named after it is discovered, but without any evidence, Haeckel gave a name, Pithecanthropus alalus, (speechless apeman) to the supposed missing link. (11) This shows how convinced he was of the idea's validity. In fact, Haeckel was so sure of the idea of descent from a common ancestor that he played fast and loose with what he presented as "data." Although there are others, I will give only one example of his fraudulent activities, that having to do with embryonic diagrams.
Haeckel argued that during the development of the individual embryo (ontogeny) the evolutionary history of the species (phylogeny) is repeated. The slogan for this hypothesis was "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." It has been called the "biogenetic law" and was hailed as evidence for evolution. (12) One of Haeckel's proofs for his so-called "law" was a diagram of several embryos in different stages of development. However, he selected, arranged, and redrew these embryos to make it look like evolutionary history was retraced as the embryo developed. That is to say, he twisted and created data to fit his hypothesis. He did the same thing in comparing a dog and human embryo. Thus, Haeckel created the impression that there was solid evidence for the idea of descent from a common ancestor.
One of several scientists who exposed Haeckel's redrawing of the embryos was Wilhelm His (1831-1904) in his "Unsere Koperform und das physiologische Problemihrer Entstehung (1874). (13) For example, in the dog/human embryo diagram, Haeckel had redrawn both heads to make them look alike. Also, he doubled the length of the human embryo in order to make both look the same size. Wilhelm His was disgusted at this chicanery. He wrote that one who engages in such blatant deception forfeits all respect. He concluded that Haeckel had eliminated himself from the ranks of serious scientific researchers. (14) Others also criticized Haeckel for creating data or twisting the facts.
Haeckel was an excellent technical draftsman and his diagrams gained a life of their own long after his fabricated data began to be questioned. One reason for this is that Haeckel's works were translated from the German, but those criticizing him (Wilhelm His' book being one) were not translated. Nevertheless, the deception eventually became better known. Nearly a century later, the famous evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson wrote in the first edition of his textbook: "It is now firmly established that ontogeny does not repeat phylogeny."(15) Keith Thomson, Yale University Biology Chairman, sums it up: "The biogenetic law as a proof of evolution is valueless." (16)
Although Haeckel admitted to fakery, he claimed that he had only fudged a few of the diagrams and protested that other biologists were doing the same thing. However, in 1997 Michael Richardson exposed just how extensive Haeckel's deception was in Anatomy and Embryology. Richardson's results, shown in the two pictures at the right, leave no doubt that the data were manufactured on a large scale. (17) Figure One is a comparison of Haeckel's fakes vs. reality. Top row: Haeckel's faked drawings of several different embryos, showing incredible similarity in their early `tailbud' stage. Bottom row: Richardson's photographs of how the embryos really look at the same stage. (From left: Salmo salar, Cryptobranchus allegheniensis, Emys orbicularis, Gallus gallus, Oryctolagus cuniculus, Homo sapiens.) His findings, showing that the embryos of different species are different, were also reported in New Scientist (18) and in Science, where Elizabeth Pennisi quotes him as saying: "It looks like it's turning out to be one of the most famous fakes in biology." (19) In a 1998 letter inScience, Richardson informs us that Haeckel's "oldest 'fish' image is made up of bits and pieces from different animals - some of them mythical." (20)
Figure Two (on the right and below.): More of Richardson's photographs of embryos at the same `tailbud' stage of development and to the same scale, showing the huge differences between various species. (From left: Petromyzon marinus, Acipenser ruthenus, Bufo bufo, Erinaceus eruopaeus, Felis catus, Manis javanica, Canis familiaris.) [Permission for the embryo pictures requested from Springer-Verlag.]
Pennisi's Science article explains that Haeckel further blurred differences by neglecting to name most of the species being compared, as if one were representative for an entire group of animals. Richardson and his colleagues note that even closely-related embryos such as those of fish vary quite a bit in their developmental pathway. Others have noticed these dissimilarities. W.W. Ballard wrote: ". . . from very different eggs the embryos of vertebrates pass through cleavage stages of very different appearance, and then through a period of morphogenetic movements showing patterns of migration and temporary structures unique to each class. All then arrive at a pharyngula stage, which is remarkably uniform throughout the subphylum, consisting of similar organ rudiments similarly arranged (though in some respects deformed in respect to habitat and food supply)."In spite of these dissimilarities, as well as Simpson's and Thomson's statements, some have claimed that embryos are evidence for evolution.
Richardson puzzles over the fact that during this revival of Haeckel, "no one has cited any comparative data in support of the idea." It is almost as though the idea "is a biological concept for which no proof is needed." [p92] Realizing that "re-examination of the extent of variation in vertebrate embryos is long overdue," Richardson and his colleagues provide that proof, but it does not support Haeckel's idea. They conclude: "Contrary to recent claims that all vertebrate embryos pass through a stage when they are the same size, we find a greater than 10-fold variation in greatest length at the tailbud stage. " These variations in form are due "to allometry, heterochrony, and differences in body plan and somite number." [p91]
The fact that Haeckel's discredited idea was revived without data may have puzzled Richardson, but it is explained by power of theory-driven interpretation. So is the fact that the human embryo's pharyngeal clefts or arches have often been called gill slits, even though there are no slits. Further, the revival itself is explained by the power of theory-driven deception.
There are also three difficulties here, two of them involving reasoning. First, what is the basis for reasoning that something in the human embryo relates to an adult feature of another species? There is no basis - it is an untested speculation. The human embryo is just that - a human embryo. Embryo features should be given theory-neutral names, and not theory-laden ones like "gill" and "tail."
Some astronomers at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries fell into the trap of naming supposed lines on Mars "canals," a theory-laden term. The canals became the basis for claiming that intelligent beings lived on arid Mars. It was thought that these Martians channeled irrigation water from the poles to the rest of the planet. Astronomers on earth were not foolish enough to think that they were actually observing canals on Mars. The lines they thought they saw were not the canals themselves, but were green strips of vegetation on either side of the canals that resulted from the irrigation water. Perhaps all this speculation could have been avoided if a theory-neutral name had been used instead of "canal." (The picture is Chesley Bonestell's rendition of the "canals.")
The second reasoning difficulty is that the so-called evidence claimed for evolution could just as well be ascribed to a common designer. (This line of reasoning also applies to comparative anatomy claims.) The third difficulty is that bending over backwards to interpret data to match your theory is bad science. Good science is rigorous testing of one's theory, which was not what happened with embryos.
In any event, the above is beside the point of this article. One can debate whether or not embryo stages are evolutionary evidence, but the use of Haeckel's pictures to support descent from a common ancestor during that continuing debate is clearly fraudulent.
The Piltdown Forgery
Both Darwin and Charles Lyell believed that the supposed "missing link" would probably be found in Africa. Unexpectedly, the desired link was not found in far-off Africa, but conveniently right in England. It's large brain capacity clearly set it off from earlier finds. (21)
Arthur Smith Woodward and Charles Dawson formally announced the discovery of Eoanthropus dawsoni, dubbed "The Dawn Man of Piltdown," to the Geological Society at Burlington. This "missing link" was based on a skull (without face) and one side of the lower jaw found in a pleistocene gravel formation at Barkham Manor on Piltdown Common, near Lewes, Sussex. Worked flints were also found associated with the Dawn (or Piltdown) Man, another indication of his human nature.
In a discussion over the missing eye-tooth in Dawn Man's jaw, Woodward predicted what it would be like. Fortuitously, Teilhard de Chardin found the canine tooth and a worked flint the next year, close to where Dawson said the jaw was found. During the following year's digging, workmen found a club-like implement made from bone. This was a very exciting and significant discovery. If real, it would be one of the oldest tools ever found up to that date.
In addition, eighteen fossil mammalian remains were discovered between 1911 and 1914, at or near the Piltdown site. Those animals represented included beaver, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus. Also, there was a type of elephant that Woodard remarked had been found previously only at the Siwalik formation in India.
J.S. Weiner, who was key in exposing the fraud, noted in retrospect just how extraordinary these finds were: "When one considers the thinness of the gravel (average thickness eighteen inches) and the small size of the pit (less than 50 x 10 yards in area), this was a remarkable yield, particularly in view of the extreme rarity of fossils in the Pleistocene river gravels of Sussex." (22) In short, Weiner thought the discovery was too good to be true.
Up to 1915 there were several scientists who were critics of the Piltdown discoveries. In Britain, Reginald Smith and A.S. Kennard both argued (correctly) that the bone club could not have been cut when fresh and was in reality a fossil that had been carved in recent times. However, no experiments were made to see if this criticism were true. Such a test would have not only been an example of good science, but also would have unmasked the deception. Meanwhile in America, Gerrit Miller, Curator of Mammals at the U.S. National Museum, argued that Dawn Man constituted two fossil individuals, one of which was a new form of chimpanzee.
Incredibly and again conveniently, in 1915 Dawson found the brain case and molar of another Dawn Man along with a rhinoceros tooth. This "discovery" was two miles away near Sheffield Park, at an undisclosed location that is still unknown today. The find consequently silenced most of the critics who were scientists. (23) One example was Fairfield Osborn, a leader of American anthropological opinion, who changed his mind in a manner that Weiner described as assuming "the nature of a religious conversion." (24)
Despite reactions in the scientific community such as Osborne's, there were still signs that all was not right. Henry Morris was a local amateur archaeologist who had obtained a Piltdown flint from Dawson. Morris told friends that it was stained and that the Piltdown finds were a forgery. He accurately charged that applying dilute hydrochloric acid to the three Piltdown "palaeoliths" would dissolve the brown stain, leaving a whitish surface. He also claimed that he had overheard a conversation that the Dawn Man's "canine tooth" was imported from France.
There was support for Morris' suspicions. On separate occasions, two widely-traveled military men who were living in the area, Captain Guy St. Barbe and Major R.A. Marriott, DSO, happened upon Dawson staining bones in his office. When they compared notes, they both deduced that Dawn Man was an elaborate deception and that Dawson was "salting the mine." (25) Actually, the only undisputed human characteristic of the Piltdown finds was flat wear on the Dawn Man's molars and canine. In 1916, the dentist examining these teeth, Dr. C.W. Lyne, reported that the wear was too heavy for such an immature canine tooth. But Woodward and others brushed aside his arguments. This was unfortunate because closer examination of all the worn teeth would have revealed scratches from the abrasive used in grinding them down. (26) If one studies the complete story of the Piltdown forgery, down-to-earth dentists and amateurs examined the evidence better and more critically than theory-driven professional scientists. Assuming Woodward was not part of the fraud, then we again see the power of theory-driven observation and/or interpretation.
After Dawson fell ill at the end of 1915 and died on 10 September 1916, his papers were all destroyed. If he had committed forgery, he was mightily driven by Darwinian ideology, but due to the loss of his papers, his exact motives would be hard to prove. (27) (He protrayed by an actor in the picture at the right.) Nevertheless, too many people wanted the Piltdown story to be true and therefore sustained the fraud. Thus, although no new discoveries were made after Dawson's death, Piltdown man remained part of the evolutionary landscape until the middle 1950s. At that time, a variety of events occurred that finally exposed the real truth to the entire world.
The Piltdown area was re-excavated to further examine for fossils, and to clear it for a national monument. However, nothing was found after carefully sieving the tons of soil and gravel. (Of course, nothing had been found for nearly forty years.) The original Piltdown remains were examined with a fluorine analysis method used in France but newly developed in England. It showed that the jaw and teeth did not belong to the crania, and were a younger date. Investigators subsequently determined that the cranium was human and the jaw was from an orangutan.
A closer study of the animal fossils that had been found at the site showed they were not from England. They had been stained to match the Piltdown gravel and planted there to make the site look older than it really was. These and other evidences caused the whole house of cards to collapse. The earliest man was not an Englishman. One person lamented "When I read in the paper that Piltdown man was bogus, I felt as if something had gone out of my life; I had been brought up on Piltdown man!" (28) If this type of person were alive today, the recent discovery of Homo floresiensis, dubbed "The Hobitt," would be equally unsettling. Evolutionary anatomist Fred Spoor of University College London stated that the Flores Hominid "upsets one of our main concepts of human evolution, that brain size has to increase for humans to become clever." (29)
Unfortunately this was not the only famous evolutionary deception to come out of Britain. Coincidentally, as the Piltdown man deception was revealed, another rose to support evolution.
The Peppered Moth Story
The peppered moth, Biston betularia, was highly touted as an example of neo-Darwinism for more than forty years. According to the story, this moth changed from a light form to a dark one as pollution from the industrial revolution in England darkened tree trunks. Pollutants killed the light-colored lichen on the tree's bark and then covered the trees with soot. Supposedly, birds easily saw the lighter moths resting on the darker bark and ate them. Thus, the overall peppered moth population evolved to a dark form. Later, pollution declined, the tree trunks became lighter, and the reverse occurred. Presumably the birds now easily saw and ate the moth's dark form on the light tree trunks and, as a result, the overall moth population shifted to the lighter color.
In reality, peppered moths do not rest on tree trunks during the day; they hide in the shadows under branches and where the branch joins the tree. (30) So right from the start the entire story is wrong and H.B.D. Kettlewell, the medical doctor and amateur lepidopterist who conducted the research, knew this fact. In nature, the birds do not see the moths on the tree trunks because the moths are not there.
Kettlewell placed these nocturnal moths on the trunks during the day when they were in a cataleptic trance. In this situation they tend to stay where put. (31) Naturally, birds could more easily see them on the tree trunks than in the canopy. In addition, he had never made a study as to whether the peppered moths preferred certain trees to rest in during the day. Instead, he placed them on any tree. This procedure was not good experimental design.
Kettlewell also placed many more moths in a given area than would occur in nature. Again, this was poor experimental design. He put even larger densities on a tree trunk for a photographer to record. One of the films produced from this artificial situation was titled "Evolution in Action." Unfortunately there was nothing natural about the selection that was happening. Every picture of these moths on the trees is misleading - in one way or another they were artificially put there, sometimes as dead moths glued onto the tree trunks.
Another flaw in the experiment's design was that Kettlewell never conducted a study to determine whether there was any selective mortality during the life cycle of the moths - from eggs to pupae, to bats preying on the adults. His premise was that birds were not only a selective force acting on the moths, but also the only one. However, this was what Kettlewell was supposed to be proving by his experiments. Thus he assumed as true what he wanted to prove.
Data Doctoring
Kettlewell began his elaborate research program by raising most of his moths in captivity and then releasing large numbers of them on successive days in the wild. The first releases were at the end of June, 1953. He wanted to recapture a sizeable number of moths to compare them with the releases. But when the initial results in the field were poor and did not fit theoretical expectations, he immediately changed his methodology and adjusted both experiment and data to get the predicted results. (32) In reality, the whole effort was not a test to see if the theory could be falsified, as is the case with a good scientific test. Rather, it turned out to be an elaborate exercise done to demonstrate "evolution in action." (33)
No subsequent scientist has been able to replicate Kettlewell's behavioral experiments. This includes his additional claim "that a significantly large proportion of each form rested on the correct background." (34) Subsequent experiments have shown that the moths have no tendency to choose matching backgrounds. Some researchers concluded that all Kettlewell had done was to create a bird feeder in the woods. It does not really matter if it turns out that the peppered moths are actually evidence for evolution. The point is that, in the absence of any real evidence, the data were doctored in this case.
In retrospect, there were warnings that the peppered moth was a poor example for evolution in action. As early as 1937, E.B. Ford postulated that other factors besides coloration were more important for moths like Biston. (35) Nevertheless Ford, who was Kettlewell's supervisor at Oxford and a terrible bully, was one of the forces driving Kettlewell to falsify his results. In addition Ford, who considered himself the "savior of Darwinism," immediately published the first account of Kettlewell's data without any checks. In this rush into print, Ford additionally overstated and inflated Kettlewell's reported results. (36) At the same time Kettlewell, who was entirely beholden to Ford for his job, was twisting the field data to substantiate his boss' agenda. Thus, both parties were contributing to the fraud.
It may be that what really caused the peppered moth to change color was its diet while in the larval stage - T.R. Sargent and his coworkers have found that this phenomenon applies to a different nocturnal moth. (37) Possibly then, this may have been the real selective force that Kettlewell never checked for. Whatever caused the change, it was not according to the story that was told to the public for forty years.
As noted in the Introduction, philosophers of science have proposed that research is more subjective than thought, and that there exists theory-driven interpretation and observation. But the peppered moth story is not an example of theory-driven observation or interpretation, but of theory-driven deception. Ford and Kettlewell manipulated the results to fit the theory. No doubt one motive was personal ambition, but was it the primary one? I think not, especially for Ford, the self-proclaimed "savior of Darwinism."
Yet a larger question remains: Why were Ford and Kettlewell given a "pass" by their peers? Why weren't they questioned about their poor experimental design and unwarranted assumptions? And why weren't their research results examined closer, as were those in five of the cases mentioned in the section on fraud?
Why the Story Lived On
Even though the peppered moth never changed into anything else, and nothing was known about how it supposedly evolved, it became a cherished icon of Darwin's idea of the origin of species by modification and natural selection. The story appeared in textbooks, teaching films, and venues popularizing science. (38) One reason for this promotion is that previously well-endorsed examples for evolution were falling by the wayside. One such model involved fruit flies. Studies of fruit fly mutations led only to dead ends, not evolutionary advances where new genetic information was generated. For example, the four-wing fruit fly had no muscles attached to its wings. All the research on fruit flies revealed nothing about where they came from and how they were supposed to have evolved. However, these studies do indicate that there are limits to variability. This result undercuts the idea that fish in the sea can turn into amphibians, that amphibians evolve into reptiles, reptiles to mammals, and mammals back to sea again as whales.
Other false icons of evolution that faded were resistant bacteria and finch beaks. Bacteria that had developed antibiotic resistance did not survive against the original strain when the antibiotic was removed. The resistant variety had information in their DNA that enabled them to fight off the antibiotic, but in the absence of the antibiotic, this variety did not need the extra information and so were not as efficient as the original strain. Also, they still remained bacteria. Adaption might be a better description for what is happening rather than evolution.
According to biophysicist Lee Spetner: Some bacteria have built into them at the outset a resistance to some antibiotics. The resistance comes from an enzyme that alters the drug to make it inactive. This type of resistance does not build up through mutation. [Spetner L: Not by Chance! Brooklyn NY: The Judaica Press, 1997/1998.] Two articles in Scientific American also address this issue. The first is: "Many bacteria possessed resistance genes even before commercial antibiotics came into use. Scientists do not know exactly why these genes evolved and were maintained. [Levy SB: The Challenge of Antibiotic Resistance. Scientific American, p35, March 1998.] The second article supports this: "The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations exposed to these man-made compounds. [Ayala FJ: The Mechanisms of Evolution. Scientific American, 239:64,1978.]
It is true that the beaks of Darwin's finches (pictured on the right.)in the Galapagos Islands did change during a drought, but then they changed back after the drought ended. (39) These finches did not evolve into anything else despite the environmental stress, and again further supports other observations there are limits to variability. Paleontologist David Raup concluded: "Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information. (40)
Second and third reasons for the overall decline in evidence supporting evolution, and hence the increased popularity of the peppered moth story include the related charges 1) that natural selection/survival of the fittest is a tautology (41) and 2) that the idea of descent from a common ancestor is untestable and therefore is not scientific. That Darwinism is based on a tautology is an idea that has been around for some time. The charge was repeated in the 1970's by Norman Macbeth. (42)and Tom Bethell. (43) Richard Lewontin of Harvard discussed it in an article in Nature, specifically mentioning Ford unflatteringly. (44) The tautology is that "those organisms that leave most offspring leave most offspring." (45)
If true, then the tautology explains why evolutionary theory is untestable and has no predictive power. When Stephen Jay Gould argued against Bethell, he admitted that: "Much of what passes for evolutionary theory is as vacuous as Bethell claims" and that "Bethell's criticism applies to much of the technical literature in evolutionary theory, . . .." (46) Gould argued for a strict definition to avoid the tautology.
The famous philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper listed the theory of natural selection as unscientific because it was not testable and since "the explanatory power of a tautology is obviously zero." As a result, he received much criticism and finally did "recant." However, his "recantation" was that: "The theory of natural selection may be so formulated that it is far from tautological. In this case it is not only testable, but it turns out to be not strictly universally true." (47) All this posed a dilemma for evolutionists. Stated one way, their theory was untestable and therefore unscientific, (capability of falsification being a definition of scientific). Stated another way, evolutionary theory is testable, capable of falsification, but fails the test. The approach taken was to ignore the dilemma and concentrate on the peppered moth.
Another reason for the peppered moth story becoming an unquestioned evolutionary icon was resistance from the creationists. Creationists had tended to be low-key, that is, until the Darwin Centennial in 1959. The triumphalism accompanying the celebration spurred them to increased resistance and to take high-visibility action. An example is Henry Morris, who is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Rice University who received his Ph.D. in hydraulic engineering from the University of Minnesota. He was Head of the Civil Engineering Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute during the time of the Darwin Centennial. His response was to co-author the influential The Genesis Flood, and to found the Institute for Creation Research in California.
Morris and Duane Gish, who earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, challenged biologists to creation-evolution debates throughout the United States. These were well-attended and brought the issue into the public arena. (I witnessed one in Florida in the early 1980's.) Overconfident biologists did not come off well in the debates. This was because they mostly had evidence for change within a species, but presented little that was testable demonstrating the origin of life or descent from a common ancestor. As a consequence, today most biologists refuse invitations to debate descent from a common ancestor. (48)
The above reasons reveal to some degree why research undercutting the peppered moth story was ignored. Yet research exposing the fraud continued to be published. Jim Bishop wrote in 1972 that additional selective forces were needed to explain the situation with the peppered moth. (49) Then there was an excellent 1975 study by David Lees and Robert Creed, pointing out problems with Kettlewell's results and containing great pictures of both colors of moths on tree trunks. (50) Bishop teamed with Laurence Cook to express their doubts in a 1975 article in Scientific American. (51) Later there was an excellent summary report, "Exploding the Myth of the Melanic Moth," in the 1986-7 New Scientist. (52) These findings and reports tended not to be heeded and, as a result, many evolutionists and their popularizers continued to put themselves and gradualistic evolution out on a limb. For example, University of Massachusetts biologist Theodore Sargent helped a NOVA documentary on the subject by gluing dead moths on trees for the cameras. Commenting on the textbooks and films about the peppered moth, he said "There have been a lot of fraudulent photographs." (53)
Meanwhile, Jerry Coyne of the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, reported that in forty years of research, exactly two moths have been seen resting on tree trunks. He said his own reaction to these revelations "resembles the dismay attending my discovery, at the age of six, that it was my father and not Santa Claus who brought presents on Christmas Eve." (54)
Sustaining a Deception
To give an example of sustaining the peppered moth deception, I offer my own experience in this area. In the late 1980's I was teaching a history of science class at a Big Ten University. I was explaining that Darwin had presented no real evidence for his idea of descent from a common ancestor with modification through natural selection. (55) I also said that Darwinism had gone into an eclipse by the end of the nineteenth century. (56) I offhandedly mentioned that even though it had been revived as neo-Darwinism in the twentieth century, there still was hardly any evidence for descent from a common ancestor. (57) Immediately a biology major raised her hand and countered that the peppered moth is proof of evolution. I had read "Exploding the myth of the melanic moth" in the New Scientist and was not about to concede the point. Seeing that I held my ground, she replied "Anyway, that is what they say in [the] Biology [Department]."
I went to the library, made a copy of the New Scientist article, and gave it to the biology major. However, it didn't seem to make much of an impression on her. Was this research that she did not want to hear? Or was it that the pressure from her biology professors was too great? I suppose I could have sent one to the Biology Department, but would it have done any good? Any good scientist would have already known about the deception. Furthermore, I had received an application form from some of these biologists. They wanted other faculty to join "committees of correspondence" to defend evolution against the attacks of the creationists. (58) They were not seeking new or better research - they were seeking advocates and supporters in their battle against creationists.
If we were dealing with pure science (that is, the collection of data, and the formulation and testing of ideas about nature), then biologists would be cautious in teaching their students about descent from a common ancestor, and especially that the peppered moth story is evolution in action. But here they left the realm of science. Recall that the crux of the story is that birds eat those moths that visually stand out as they rest on tree trunks. However, as we have learned, the peppered moth prefers to rest high up in the tree canopy. This preference was known to Kettlewell at least by 1958. (59) Mikkola wrote about it in separate articles in 1979 (60) and 1984. (61) Moreover, Sir Cyril Clarke reported in 1985 that all he and his coworkers had found in twenty-five years of observations is where the peppered moths do not spend the day: on the tree trunks. (62)
In addition to these realities, it had been assumed that birds see like us, but we have learned that they do not. They have an ultraviolet capability that we do not have, and they may see colors better as well. (63) Additionally, simplifying assumptions were made to make mathematical calculations easier, but it turns out these cannot be made for the peppered moth. (64)
Surely, as research scientists, the biologists where I had been teaching stayed current and knew all of the above as well as other similar results. Yet they continued to teach the peppered moth story to their students as an example of evolution in action. Unhappily, they were not alone. For instance, the evolution story of the peppered moth can be found in the 1991 edition of George Gaylord Simpson's textbook, (65) or in Raven and Johnson's Biology, 4th edition (1996).
Why the uncritical attitude toward fraudulent data? And why, knowing it to be false, teach it as true? The explanation is that it was ideological fraud where evolution is the particular ideology that they wanted to be true. (66)
Neo-Darwinism
The November 2004 National Geographic's cover story was on evolution: "Was Darwin Wrong?"(Pictured at the right.) A student in one of my courses brought it in and showed it to me. Two things came to mind immediately. The first one was an earlier article in the November 1999 issue of National Geographic: "Feathers for T. Rex?" Although much-touted, it was based on a fraudulent fossil. This fossil is yet another example of theory-driven deception.
The personnel at National Geographic should have known better. They went ahead with publication even after Nature and Science turned down their "research." Also, against agreements to the contrary, they paid $80,000 for a black-market fossil smuggled out of China. Then they proceeded to call it Archaeoraptor liaoningensis without going through the accepted channels for naming a bird. Since they published it, that name is now taken and cannot be used for anything else. No wonder, when the full story broke, that the press had a field day. Articles bore titles like "The Piltdown Chicken: Scientists Eat Crow Over So-called Missing Link," and "Dinosaur-bird link smashed in fossil flap."
The second thought that came to mind concerning "Was Darwin Wrong?" was a 10 March 1995 article in Science: "Did Darwin Get It All Right?" In it, we are told that paleontologist Alan Cheetham was a student of the renowned evolutionary paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson. Cheetham had learned that a species changes gradually, through millions of years of natural selection by Darwin's survival of the fittest, "until it became so different that it constituted a new species." But he reluctantly came to the conclusion that his research, the most extensive up to that time, provided no evidence for what he had learned from Simpson. Rather, these results fit the theory of punctuated equilibrium, in which new species appear abruptly and then hardly change.(67)
Before going to punctuated equilibrium, let me mention a few more things about the 2004 National Geographic article. First, the article claims that Darwin was right, and that the evidence is overwhelming. However the data cited are almost all from present-day studies. These are illustrated with the usual high-quality pictures. But the photos are of Darwin's finches with different beaks, widely diverse types of pigeons, and so on. I have already commented, and will continue to do so, on this approach, where finches and pigeons remain finches and pigeons. They show the limitations to biological change, and really should be called adaptation, not evolution. The photograph of a "whale fossil" is of a reconstruction, a topic that I will address later.
Punctuated Equilibrium
Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History and Stephen J. Gould of Harvard University first proposed punctuated equilibrium in 1972. Since then, they have been in a battle royal with the neo-Darwinists who claim we descended from a common ancestor gradually by modification and natural selection. However, as with the National Geographic article, all the evidences neo-Darwinists can muster are mostly modern studies with living beings. These evidences show modification and natural selection, but not that we descended from a common ancestor. In order to claim that modern studies show descent from a common ancestor, evolutionists make two assumptions. First, they assume that there are no limits to variation, which appears to be false, if the fossil record and DNA studies are any indication. The second assumption is that present processes are the same as in the past, i.e., uniformitarianism, but there is no proof for this.
Darwin was more honest than his disciples. He wrote that adaptions observed today and the "mere existence of individual variability and of some few well-marked varieties, though necessary as the foundation for the work, helps us but little in understanding how species arise in nature" (68) Note Darwin's statement that modern research on variation "helps us but little." Eldredge wrote similarly: "One of the cornerstones of the theory of punctuated equilbria . . . was the recognition of this tremendous stability (we called it stasis) that reflects the more typical, actual evolutionary history of species rather than the extrapolations of processes studied over days, months, and years by evolutionary biologists working with modern organisms. The studies themselves are fine: The problem lies in understanding how the evolutionary process actually works through geological time." (69) We would need a time machine to know for sure about our origins, but, lacking that, the next best thing is the fossil record.
Stromatolite Fossils
Stromatolites are the fossils of the oldest living life forms we know - thought to be upwards of 3.5 billion years old or perhaps even older. Some scientists thought this early life evolved eventually into us. (My fossil of it is above and at the right.) However, the algae that formed stromatolites were first found in the 1950's in Shark Bay, Australia. The big surprise was that they had not evolved - they were unchanged, still forming the characteristic laminar sedimentary rock structures found all over the world.
When climate conditions changed, this early cyanobacteria did not change, but slowly died out, only to survive only in a few hospitable habitats. (The picture is one at Shark Bay.) They are living fossils. Eldredge and Steven M. Stanley report on these in their book by the same name. I will add only a few more to their list.
Living Fossils
The algae that form the stromatolites are not the only living fossils. Other bacteria have been reported found 50 million years old in the 28 June 2002 Science (296:2376), 125 million years old in Science News(147:308), and even 250 million years old in Science News (155:373). Cycads are thought to have lived up to 225 million years ago, with no pre-cycad found in the fossil record.
The fossils of the coelacanth go back 375 million years. Some scientists dubbed it "old four legs," and thought it to be our ancestor, similar to what they thought about the bacteria that form the stromatolites. But in 1938 a coelacanth was caught southeast of South Africa. The next one was caught northwest of Madagascar in 1952. In 1998 one was found off Sulawesi, Indonesia, 7000 miles away! Coelacanths have moved from being our ancestors to being our neighbors.
I could mention many more living fossils, from horseshoe crabs to bats, but the point is the same as with the algae making the stromatolites. They hardly change over long periods of time. These evidences from the fossil record falsify neo-Darwinism, show that their are limits to variability, and support either punctuated equilibrium or intelligent design. Yet, these are not the only evidences.
Increasing Diversity and Complexity?
Neo-Darwinism predicts that life began simply, uncomplicated and undifferentiated. It then became more complex, intricate, complicated and diverse. Does the fossil record generate the ice-cream cone of increasing diversity and complexity often depicted in cladograms and "Tree of Life" or "Family Tree" diagrams? Is neo-Darwinism the best explanation for observed biological diversity? Unhappily for neo-Darwinists, the evidence from the fossil record is just the opposite of what is predicted.
Early Complexity and Diversity
Trilobites appear abruptly in the Cambrian period with eyes fully adapted and corrected for spherical aberration. (70) They are complex - able to molt, and when attacked, to curl up in a ball like a pill bug does today. There are a great many fossil trilobites - one day a random check found more than 400 for sale on e-Bay. Yet, is spite of this abundance, there is no record of a pre-trilobite. This is true of all Cambrian fossils, and there is no mistake or "imperfection"(as Darwin would say) in the fossil record. D.E.G. Briggs and his colleagues report that: "the appearance of diverse shelly fossils near the base of the Cambrian remains abrupt and not simply an artifact of inadequate preservation." There are a great variety of trilobites, but when they finally disappear from the fossil record, these "butterflies of the sea" still had the three-lobed body plan. These data better fit the theory of punctuated equilibrium than neo-Darwinism. (71)
The same thing is true of mammals. An article in Science reports that "A massive database compiled by postdoc John Alroy at the University of Arizona . . . was the first to document an equilibrium in mammals with hard statistics, joins a growing number of studies showing that such steady states can persist for long stretches of time . . . Paleontologists have praised the work too, because it proves what some have long suspected: That the pattern of increasing mammalian diversity through time, which appeared in some older analyses, was an artifact." (72) Once again, there is no cone of increasing diversity.
Some DNA studies may go against the speculation of increasing diversity. Keith Thomson writes that "It has long been known that most advanced ray-finned fishes have very small amounts of DNA in their cells compared with more primitive fishes. Some amphibians have very large amounts of DNA per cell, up to 205 picograms in the mud puppy Necturus and 192 in Amphiuma, while more advanced amphibians like the frog Rana and the midwife toadXenopus have smaller amounts (15 and 6.3 picograms, respectively). The most advanced tetrapods - birds and mammals - have smaller DNA values (7 picograms in the laboratory mouse)." (73) There are several ways to interpret these data, so I do not want to be dogmatic here, and I only offer it for consideration. After all, we can not measure the amount of DNA in a fossil. Nevertheless, there is no correlation between amounts of DNA and the growth of the "Tree of Life."
The Cambrian Explosion of Life
In a popular book, Stephen Jay Gould reports that "the Burgess Shale also contains some twenty to thirty kinds of arthropods that cannot be placed in any modern group . . . all fit into four major groups; one quarry in British Columbia, representing the first explosion of multicellular life, reveals more than twenty additional arthropod designs . . . " (74) This evidence is the opposite of the ice-cream cone or family tree of increasing diversity and complexity. From the research, the ice-cream cone or tree of life should be turned upside down!
More examples of the above can be given, but I will just give two more. Sea lilies (above and right)lived up to 570 million years ago in the Cambrian Period. Today, 5,000 species are extinct, and only 80 deepwater species survive. The nautiloids are similar. Of the 17,000 species, only five or six deep water species remain. (One is at the left.) Again, these results are the opposite of increasing diversity. Life today is amazingly diverse, yet it was wonderfully more diverse in the past!
The Lack of Transitional Forms
Darwin predicted that "by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed." (75) The opposite case is most apparent when looking for the supposed transition from fish to amphibians. One 14" to 15" layer in Fossil Lake, Wyoming contains millions of fossil fish. (76)
All the fossil fish discovered to date no doubt total into the billions. Again, a random one-day check on e-Bay showed hundreds for sale. One piece of rock contained 118 fish from a mass kill similar to that at Fossil Lake. The picture at the right depicts a fossil that shows a mass kill.
If Darwin were right, there should be billions of fossil fish with legs in various stages of development. However, there is not one! This is to be expected. There is no information for legs contained in fish DNA. So a shuffle of DNA could generate many different types of fish, but none with legs. This is also another example in the fossil record of the limits of variation. As an aside, the loss of DNA explains blind cave fish, but then this is devolution, not evolution.
Whales
Against the lack of billions of legless fishes, neo-Darwinists point to a few fossils they claim are transitions between land animals and whales. These are thought to have legs. Never mind that they could be new extinct species (and about 90% of known species are extinct), Darwin predicted these. He wrote "I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale." (77) To some, this sounds like pure fantasy, but all have to agree, it is pure Darwin.
This "whale of a tale" about fossil whales with legs has the the makings for a great example of theory-driven interpretation. For instance, the cover of the 22 April 1983 issue of Science shows an animal with web-like feet chasing fish. This depicted Pakicetus as reconstructed from a few fragments of skull and jaw bones found in Pakistan. (78) However, many more Pakicetus bones were found years later. These show Pakicetus had no web-like feet and the reconstructed picture (on the right) in Naturelooks to me more like a big shrew with coyote-like legs. (79) Was this really just a new species? Not to evolutionists. Theory-driven interpretation of the new information now takes Pakicetus out of the water and creates a walking whale! [Illustration by Carl Buell, and taken from http://www.neoucom.edu/Depts/Anat/Pakicetid.html.]
Islamic anti-evolutionist Harun Yahya is specifically named in the English-language edition of National Geographic's "Was Darwin Wrong?" In an extensive reply, he makes the following comments about whales: "There are complex arrangements in the design of the whale eye and its communication systems, no examples of which are to be found in terrestrial mammals. Land mammals have eyelids to protect against dust and impact. Whales, on the other hand, have a hard layer to protect against a different danger, the pressure under the sea. Moreover, the refractive index in the design of the whale eye makes it possible for a killer whale to leap up and catch a fish six metres above the water level in an amusement park with considerable accuracy. In addition, whales' eyes are on either side of the head, unlike terrestrial mammals, thus protecting them from the current. They possess lungs capable of storing high levels of oxygen for protracted dives and an ear membrane designed to protect them from high pressure." (http://www.harunyahya.com/articles/70nationalg_geographic.html)
Evolutionists do not explain how this land animal developed sonar. Often there is little or no light where whales hunt their prey. "Whales compensate for this inability to see underwater by using another method of seeing called echolocation, or sonar. Sound travels four times faster in water than in air, and much farther. Whales send out powerful clicks or pings that they produce in air sacs in their foreheads." In echolocation, whales send out higher frequencies to gain information about nearby smaller objects. On the other hand, they use a low frequency signal for distant or large objects; and in water, lower frequencies travel farther than high frequencies.
"Many species have a fat deposit in the forehead called the melon. These whales change the shape of their melon to direct or focus the outgoing sonar waves. The melon transmits these sound waves while their oil-filled lower jaws receive and carry the returning sounds to the inner ear. As the whale approaches its target, it sweeps its head back and forth and saturates the area with clicks. When the signal returns to the whale, it computes the location, distance, direction of movement, speed, shape and texture of the object. Many of the sounds used in echolocation are high-pitched and inaudible to the human ear." [The Royal Museum of British Columbia, http://www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/programs/whales/t-activity-8.html]
This sophisticated underwater method of seeing could not have come about by chance. How did the sender, a variable-focusing and variable-directional fat deposit, and the receiver, an oil-filled jaw, co-evolve at the same time, especially on a land animal?
Georgiacetus
There is a famous fossil whale, Georgiacetus vogtlensis, on permanent display in Georgia. Its present fame rests on the theory-driven interpretation that it is a transition from land animals to whales. A reconstruction of the whale is what museum visitors actually see . The display fossil has legs, even though the real fossil was found without any appendages such as flippers or legs. Evolutionary theory dictates the whale should have legs, and so they have been added! Now, I have no problem with this reconstruction, because a card in the nearby display case states that the fossil was found without legs. My problem is with the theory-driven deception in the teacher's guide accompanying a temporary exhibit on evolution. It is titled:
Teacher's Exhibit Companion to:
Evolution
February 12 - May 8, 2005
This booklet includes information about the basics of
teaching evolution and lesson
plans to help you introduce the
concept to your students.
On page 20 of this booklet for teachers is a chapter titled: Fossil Evidence for Evolution, which explains transitional fossils. At the bottom of this page is a drawing of the reconstructed skeleton and next to it the caption:"This skeleton ofGeorgiacetus vogtlensis, on display . . ., shows an intermediary whale fossil that is 42 million years old. Notice that Georgiacetus has legs like land-dwelling mammals." (The emphasis is mine.)
But the legs are not on the original fossil, and the teacher's guide does not call attention to this important fact. I am bothered that school children could be led by their teachers to the reconstructed fossil and being told to look for themselves and see that the whale has legs. Before their eyes is proof that evolution actually happens. Except that it is not proof. We don't know what was attached to the actual skeleton. In spite of this, another card in the display case states that one reason the whale is a transitional fossil is due to the legs. More theory-driven deception.
Neo-Darwinism Rules?!
The Georgia museum temporary exhibit on evolution is well done as far as presentation technique is concerned. However, the content is another matter entirely. First, it is only about neo-Darwinism, although this is not spelled out. There is one mention of punctuated equilibrium in a brief description of Stephen J. Gould, and that is it. All the familiar "evidence" is present: There is the Family Tree diagram, a picture of Pakicetus, images of embryos with arguments that could have come straight from Haeckel, and so on. The aquarium with blind cave fish is really an example of devolution. All this supposedly supports evolution, but we have already seen this is not the case.
The exhibit's presentation of human evolution is well done, visually. But, it neglects to say that Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-founder along with Darwin of evolution by natural selection, did not accept human evolution. Wallace was not a Christian - he reasoned that man has greater capabilities and abilities than could have occurred due to natural selection. Eldredge and Ian Tattersall discuss this in their book, the Myths of Human Evolution. (80)
Did Humans Evolve?
The question is whether Wallace is right. Do we have abilities far beyond what we need - and therefore they cannot be from evolution by natural selection? Let us start with Jerome Kagan of Harvard University. He is "a near-legendary figure in the field of child development" and "one of psychology's most erudite and rigorous experimentalists." (81)
Kagan argues that there is no non-human animal model for human pride, shame, and guilt. Similarly, we are concerned with right and wrong and have a desire to feel virtuous; this is unique and discontinuous with animals. For example, "Not even the cleverest ape could be conditioned to be angry upon seeing one animal steal food from another."
In his book, Three Seductive Ideas (1988), Kagan points out that humans do things for reasons, entertain ideas about the significance of their experiences, and are aware of the long-term consequences of their actions. Their moral sense places humans in a special category.
Harvard University anthropologist Maryellen Ruvolo finds that human DNA has far more genetic similarity within our species than in common chimpanzees, who are thought to be our closest ancestors. The situation is the same for the apes. The genetic sequences from two humans who are from widely separated continents "appear more alike than do sequences from two lowland gorillas from the same forest in West Africa." Ruvolo says "It's a mystery none of us can explain." (82)
Also not explained by evolution is the origin of speech. Philip Lieberman of Brown University sums up the activity in this area: "If you want a consensus, you won't get it." The origin of language remains "a mystery with all the fingerprints wiped off," says Terrence Deacon, a brain scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Bernard Comrie, a linguist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, reports that "we've been finding much more noncorrespondence between linguistic trees and biological trees . . . " Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford gives one reason for this noncorrespondence: "Genetically, Ethiopians fit well with other Africans, but their language is more akin to that of Middle Easterners." (83)
Besides DNA differences, uniqueness in language and moral sense, as well as other categories, humans excel mammals, and stand alone among primates, when it comes to distance running. University of Utah biomechanics expert Dennis Bramble and Harvard physical anthropologist Daniel Lieberman argue that "the human body is exquisitely adapted for endurance running. . . . It may come as a surprise to hear that humans excel in running. Obviously, a leopard can leave us in the dust in a short sprint. But over longer distances leopards and most other mammals flag." Lieberman says that "Most mammals can't sustain a gallop over 10 to 15 minutes." Humans, on the other hand, can continue running for hours while using relatively little energy. Humans are phenomenal endurance runners, in terms of speed, cost, and distance. You can actually outrun a pony easily." And yet, he points out, "no other primates out there endurance run." Why is this? It is because our bodies are so different from those of other apes and mammals. All told, humans are unique. [Ziner C: Faster Than a Hyena? Running May Make Humans Special, Science 306:1283, 2004.]
To summarize: It would seem that the Psalmist is correct in that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made."
Some times scientists pressure each other to suppress evidence that would support the Creationists' position or intelligent design. This happened with Stephen J. Gould, even though he was an atheist. I have seen or read about other instances of this from time to time. One example is from a meeting of paleoanthropologists in Paris, 13-16 September 2004: "Tempers flared last week in a sweltering salon at the French Academy of Sciences here as scientists hotly debated the attributes of anthropology's most famous thighbone, the 6-million-year-old femur of an ancient Kenyan hominid called Orrorin tugenensis.
"Paleontologist Brigitte Senut of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris proposed that Orrorin's gait was more humanlike than that of the 2- to 4-million-year-old australopithecines. If so, australopithecines would be bumped off the direct line to humans - a dramatic revision of our prehistory.
"But paleoanthropologist Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, immediately attacked this view of Orrorin. He called Senut's displacement of australopithecines "une position creationniste," because it suggests that Orrorin's femur was quite modern 6 million years ago, rather than evolving in stages. Senut declared indignantly that she is not a creationist." [Gibbons A: Oldest Human Femur Wades Into Controversy, Science 305:1885, 2004.]
The Textbook Stickers
I suppose the Georgia museum exhibit was in response to the 2002 Cobb County biology textbook stickers. That is because the poster in the exhibit attacking this disclaimer is titled: "What is Wrong With This Sticker?" The poster explains that evolution is both a fact and a theory. The authors accomplish this contradiction by actually using two different definitions of evolution. They do not say so in the poster, but one of their definitions of evolution is descent with modification, while the other one is descent from a common ancestor. Additionally, they use poor definitions of both fact and theory. Normally, scientists are careful to make careful definitions of what they are talking about. This is true for philosophers of science too. But this exhibit goes in the opposite direction, which is really unfortunate. This not only reflects poorly on the curators, but also provides more support for the charge of theory-driven deception.
The poster attacking the Cobb County disclaimer also implies that this sticker refers to the "origin of life," but the wording plainly states "origin of living things." There is nothing unusual about this wording instead of "origin of species." "Origin of living things" is the same language used by the National Academy of Sciences in its definition of biological evolution. (84) The attack is using the "strawman technique" where a weak argument or wrong words are attributed to one's opponent so he/she can be easily discredited.
Finally, the attack on the Cobb County textbook sticker claims that "It falsely implies that, there is something wrong with this particular scientific theory." The fact at least one hundred scientists signed a published statement questioning the theory would indeed give people the impression that something is wrong with the theory. The statement reads:
"WE ARE SKEPTICAL OF CLAIMS FOR THE ABILITY OF RANDOM MUTATION AND NATURAL SELECTION TO ACCOUNT FOR THE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE. CAREFUL EXAMINATION OF THE EVIDENCE FOR DARWINIAN THEORY SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED."
This is a very good reason to question Darwinian theory and probably why the Federal judge in the ACLU suit over the stickers did not call for expert testimony. Another good reason to question the idea of descent from a common ancestor is that the best examples of theory-driven deception involve evolution. Now why would that be?
DISCUSSION
Not long after the beginning of the twentieth century, Thomas Hunt Morgan, who received the Nobel Prize for his genetic research, observed that "Biologists have many doubts which they do not publish. The claims of the opponents that Darwinism has become a dogma contains more truth than the nominal follower of the schools finds pleasant to hear." (85)
In the middle of the century, Edwin G. Conklin (1863-1952), then a professor of biology at Princeton, admitted: "The concept of organic evolution is very highly prized by biologists, for many of whom it is an object of genuinely religious devotion, because they regard it as a supreme integrative principle. This is probably the reason why severe methodological criticism employed in other departments of biology has not yet been brought to bear on evolutionary speculation." (86)
Both the dogma that Morgan had noted over one hundred years ago, and the religious devotion and uncritical attitude that Conklin reported concerning descent from a common ancestor is still with us, but if anything, it has grown. This dogmatic attitude and associated belief system go a long way toward explaining how both the Piltdown Man and the peppered moth deceptions could continue for forty to fifty years. It is also why one will still read or hear that the former was a "hoax" and/or that the latter is "flawed science." But in both cases, data were created and/or twisted, probably more than we know since Ford destroyed his papers and Kettlewell's field notes have disappeared. (87) Recall that this is similar to the situation with Dawson and Woodward, where their papers are unavailable for scrutiny. Just the same, what we can reconstruct is sufficient, not only concerning both initial deceptions, but also why they lasted so long. What sustained these famous frauds of science was devotion to evolutionary ideology.
This paper began with a quote from a Science editorial, "Desirable Scientific Conduct." How appropriate to conclude with the end of that editorial: "Desirable modes of scientific conduct require considerable self-awareness as well as a reaffirmation of the old virtues of honesty, scepticism, and integrity."
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1. Bateson, P: Desirable Scientific Conduct. Science: 307:645, 2005.
2. Kuhn TS: "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." Second Ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p5, 1970.
3. Ibid, p24.
4. Hanson RN: "Patterns of Discovery." London: Cambridge University Press, 1965.
5. Enserink M and Malakoff D: The trials of Thomas Butler. Science 302:2054-63, 2003.
6. Retraction. Science 300:1657, 2003.
7. Scientific Hall of Shame. Popular Science, p32, 2003.
8. Koenig R: Panel Calls Falsification in German Case 'Unprecedented.' Science 277:894, 1997.
9. I am using this term as a definition for evolution, which is from Darwin's "Origin of Species." Of course, "Descent from a common ancestor with modification through natural selection" would be the definition of Darwinism. Darwin C: "On the Origin of Species." A Facsimile of the First Edition. Cambridge, MA, pp458-9, 1964.
10. .Darwin C: "The Descent of Man." The Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 49. Chicago: Encyclopoedia Britannica, Inc., p336, 1952. On this same page is also Darwin's belief that the "civilized races of man," hopefully including the Caucasian, "will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world."
11. Gould SJ: "Ever Since Darwin." New York: W.W. Norton & Company, p210, 1977.
12. Ibid, p217.
13. Coleman W: "Biology in the Nineteenth Century." New York: Cambridge University Press, p54, 1977. Reprinted 1979, 1982, 1984. First published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1971.
14. Taylor IT: "In the Minds of Men," 3rd ed. Toronto: Tee Publishing, p276, 1992.
15. Simpson GC, Pittendrigh CS, and Tiffany LH: "Life, An Introduction to Biology." New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, p352, 1957.
16. Thomson KS: American Scientist, pp273-275, May/June 1988.
17. Richardson M, et al: There is no highly conserved stage in the vertebrates: Implications for current theories of evolution and development. Anatomy and Embryology 196(2):91-106, 1997.
18. Embryonic Fraud Lives On. New Scientist 155:23, 1997.
19. Pennisi E: Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered. Science 277:1435, 1997.
20. Richardson MK: Haeckel's Embryos, Continued. Science 281:1289, 1998.
21. Eldredge N and Tattersall I: "The Myths of Human Evolution." New York: Columbia University Press, p79, 1982.
22. Weiner JS: "The Piltdown Forgery." New York: Dover Publications, Inc., pp62-3, 1980. (This is an abridged version of that originally published by Oxford University Press, 1955.)
23. Ibid, pp2-11 and 27.
24. Ibid, p12.
25. Ibid, pp154-166.
26. Ibid, pp31-32.
27. This is not to say that Dawson was the deceiver. Other suspects, especially Woodward, who tightly controlled access to the original Piltdown fossils, are discussed by Cremo MA and Thompson RL: "Forbidden Archeology." San Diego: Bhaktivedanta Institute, pp520-5, 1993.
28. Weiner: "The Piltdown Forgery." pv.
29. Balter M: Small but smart? Flores hominid shows signs of advanced brain. Science 307:1386-1389, 2005. .
30. Cherfas J: Exploding the myth of the melanic moth. New Scientist 112: 25, 1986/7.
31. Hooper J: "Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale." New York: W.W. Norton & Co., p114, 2002.
32. Ibid, p255.
33. Majerus M: a Cambridge University expert on the moth, as quoted in Robert Matthew's Scientists pick holes in Darwin moth theory. Electronic Telegraph, Sunday, 14 March 1999.
34. Kettlewell HBD: Darwin's missing evidence. Scientific American 200: 48-53, 1959, p52.
35. Ford EB: Problems of heredity in the Lepidoptera. Biological Review 12: 461-503, 1937.
36. Hooper: "Of Moths and Men," pp103, 112, 120, 121, and 159.
37. Sargent TR, et. al., in Hecht MK, et. al: Evolutionary Biology, 30: 299-322, 1998.
38. Kettlewell helped Oxford University personnel develop a short movie clip on the peppered moth story and a slide/audiotape set, "The Experimental Study of Evolution," with the alternate title, "Evolution by Observation and Experiment." The clip was also incorporated into a teaching video (1967) by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS), Boulder, Colorado, supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. I saw this video, but apparently it was also in a film version. Called a BSCS Single Topic Film and titled "The Peppered Moth, A Population Study," it presents Kettlewell's data and pictures of light and dark moths on tree trunks. The lesson includes a teachers' guide and ends by asking the students "How has Evolution occurred in this Moth Species?" The teachers' guide gives what the students should conclude: "This phenomenon . . . is an example of evolutionary change actually witnessed by man."
39. Gibbs and Grout: Oscillating selection on Darwin's finches. Nature 327:511, 1987.
40. Raup DM: Conflicts between Darwin and paleontology. Field Museum of Nat Hist Bulletin 50:25, 1979.
41. In its briefest form the tautology is that the survivors survive. In other words, a species survives because it is the fittest, and that it is the fittest because it survives. Thus, the criterion for measuring fitness involves circular reasoning.
42. Macbeth N: "Darwin Retried, An Appeal to Reason." New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., pp62-66, 1971. Macbeth includes quotes from J.B.S. Haldane (1935), Ernst Mayr (1963) and George Gaylord Simpson (1964).
43. Bethell T: Darwin's mistake. Harper's Magazine, February 1976.
44. Lewontin RC: Testing the theory of natural selection. Nature 236:24, 1972.
45. Popper KR: Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind; this was the First Darwin Lecture, delivered at Darwin College, Cambridge, in 1977, and was published in Dialectica 32, 1978. This reference is taken from "Popper Selections." New Jersey: Princeton University Press, p242, 1985.
46. Gould SJ: "Ever Since Darwin," pp40 and 42.
47. Popper: "Popper Selections." p244.
48. One reason I went into science as a career was the idea that it might have all the answers. In time, I learned that this was not so. And so, as a professing agnostic, I rejected evolution. This is similar to British philosopher Anthony Flew's recent rejection of atheism in favor of intelligent design. Flew was a signer of Humanist Manifesto II, but now says that "it is impossible for evolution to account for the fact that one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica." As a known anti-evolutionist on campus, a few years ago I was asked to debate evolution with someone from the Biology Department. My one and only stipulation was that we define evolution as decent from a common ancestor. This definition takes away all the claimed "overwhelming evidence" for evolution. The biologist declined to debate. Do I have a bias in this controversy? Am I just as guilty of theory-driven interpretation as some others? No - I had no agenda when I rejected evolution. I do have a motive for writing this though. This is part of the on-campus debate that I never had with the biologist.
49. Bishop JA: An experimental study of the cline of industrial melanism in Biston betularia (L) (Lepidoptera) between urban Liverpool and rural north Wales. J Animal Ecology 41:209-43, 1972. From Hooper, "Of Moths and Men," p217.
50. Lees DR and Creed ER: Industrial melanism in Biston Betularia: the role of selective predation. Journal of Animal Ecology 44: 67-83, 1975.
51. Bishop JA and Cook LM: Moths, melanism, and clean air. Scientific American 232:90-9, 1975.
52. A recent book is Majerus J: "Melanism: Evolution in Action." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
53. Witham L: Darwinism icons disputed. The Washington Times, 17 January 1999, pD8.
54. Coyne JA: Not black and white. Nature 396: 35-36, 1998, p35.
55. In his "Origin of Species," Charles Darwin honestly begins the last chapter, Recapitulation and Conclusion, with "As this whole volume is one long argument, . . .." In a letter he explains "When we descend to details, we can prove that no one species has changed; nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory [of evolution]." Darwin C: "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin." Vol. 2. Darwin F, ed. New York: D. Appleton and Co., p210, 1898. Also see Gale BG: "Evolution Without Evidence: Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species." Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982.
56. Bowler PJ: "The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades around 1900." Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.
57. Here are a few examples of why I said what I did at that time.
A. "There is no fossil record establishing historical continuity of structure for most characters that might be used to assess relationships among phyla." Field, KG, et al: Molecular phylogeny of the animal kingdom. Science 239: 748, Feb. 1988.
B. Evolutionists believe that amphibians evolved into reptiles, with either Diadectes or Seymouria as the claimed transition. Actually, by the evolutionist's own time scale, this "transition" occurs 35 million years (m.y.) after the earliest reptile, Hylonomus (a cotylosaur). A parent cannot appear 35 million years after its child! The scattered locations of these fossils also present problems for the evolutionist. See Stanley, SM: "Earth and Life Through Time." New York: W.H. Freeman and Co., pp411-415, 1986. See also Dot, RH Jr. and Batten, RL: "Evolution of the Earth," 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, p311, 1976.
C. "And let us dispose of a common misconception. The complete transmutation of even one animal species into a different species has never been directly observed either in the laboratory or in the field." Kenyon DH (Professor of Biology, San Francisco State University), affidavit presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, No. 85-1513, Brief of Appellants, prepared under the direction of William J. Guste, Jr., Attorney General of the State of Louisiana, October 1985, pA-16.
D. "The fact that all the individual species must be stationed at the extreme periphery of such logic [evolutionary] trees merely emphasized the fact that the order of nature betrays no hint of natural evolutionary sequential arrangements, revealing species to be related as sisters or cousins but never as ancestors and descendants as is required by evolution." [emphasis in original] Denton, M: "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis." London: Barnett Books, p132, 1985.
E. ". . . there are no intermediate forms between finned and limbed creatures in the fossil collections of the world." Taylor, GR: "The Great Evolution Mystery." New York: Harper and Row, p60, 1983.
F. ". . . the gradual morphological transitions between presumed ancestors and descendants, anticipated by most biologists, are missing." Schindel, DE (Curator of Invertebrate Fossils, Peabody Museum of Natural History): The gaps in the fossil record. Nature, 297: 282, May 1982.
G. "Gaps at a lower taxonomic level, species and genera, are practically universal in the fossil record of the mammal-like reptiles. In no single adequately documented case is it possible to trace a transition, species by species, from one genus to another." Kemp, TS: "Mammal-like Reptiles and the Origin of Mammals." New York: Academic Press, p319, 1982.
H. "Modern apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They have no yesterday, no fossil record. And the true origin of modern humans - of upright, naked, tool-making, big-brained beings - is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, an equally mysterious matter." Watson, L: The Water People. Science Digest, p44, May 1982.
I. "At any rate, modern gorillas, orangs and chimpanzees spring out of nowhere, as it were. They are here today; they have no yesterday, unless one is able to find faint foreshadowings of it in the dryopithecids." Johanson, D. and Edey, M: "Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind." New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981; reprint ed., New York: Warner Books, p363, 1982.
J. It is true that the skeletal features of some amphibians and some reptiles are similar. However, huge differences exist in their soft internal organs, such as their circulatory and reproductive systems. For example, no evolutionary scheme has ever been given for the development of the many unique innovations of the reptile's egg. See Denton, pp218-219.
K. "But I believe in natural selection, not because I can prove in any single case that it has changed one species into another, but because it groups and explains well, it seems to me, a lot of facts in classification, embryology [Haeckel?] . . . [etc.]." Darwin C in a letter to a grandson reported in Vernet G: "L'Evolution du Monde Vivaut." Plon, Paris, 1950. Quoted in Grasse PP:
"Evolution of Living Organisms." New York: Academic Press, pp5-6, 1977.
L. "This whole volume is one long argument." Darwin:"Origin of Species," p459.
58. I still have the application form. The stated purpose "is to keep all members informed on matters concerning evolution and on the Creationist movement."
59. Kettlewell HBD: The importance of the micro-environment to evolutionary trends in the Lepidoptera. Entomologist 91: 214-224, 1958; and Darwin's Missing Evidence, p49.
60. Mikkola K: Resting site selection of Oliga and Biston moths (Lepidopera: Noctuidae and Geometridae). Acta Entologica Fennici 45: 81-87, 1979.
61. Mikkola K: On the selective force acting in the industrial of Biston and Oliga moths (Lepidoptera: Geometridae and Noctuidae). Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society 21: 409-421, 1984.
62. Clarke CA, et. al: Evolution in reverse: clean air and the peppered moth. Ibid, 26: 189-199, 1985.
63. Majerus: "Melanism: Evolution in Action," p126.
64. Ibid, pp116-117.
65. Beck WS, Liem KF, and Simpson GG: "Life: An Introduction to Biology," 3rd ed. New York: Harper Collins, 1991.
66. One could argue that the peppered moth is an example of natural selection. This is true isf they are placed artificially on tree trunks as Kettlewell did, but then the selection is not natural. Besides the literature of that time states "evolution in action," not "natural selection in action."
67. Did Darwin Get It All Right? Science 267:1421, 1995.
68. Darwin: "Origin of Species," first edition, p60.
69. Eldredge N: "The Miner's Canary." NY: Prentice Hall Press, p120, 1991.
70. Levi-Setti R: "Trilobites." Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp29-74, 1975/1993.
71. Briggs DEG et al: "The Fossils of the Burgess Shale." Washington, DC: The Smithsonian Press, p40, 1994.
72. Culotta E: Ninety Ways to Be a Mammal. Science 266:1161, 1994
73. Thomson K: "Living Fossil." NY: WW Norton & Company, p183, 1991.
74. Gould SJ: "Wonderful Life." NY: WW Norton and Co, p25,1989.
75. Darwin: "Origin of Species," first edition, p172.
76. Jackson RW: "The Fish of Fossil Lake, the Story of Fossil Butte National Monument." Jensen, Utah: Dinosaur Nature Association, p10, 1980. Published in cooperation with the National Park Service.
77. Darwin: "On the Origin of Species," p184.
78. Gingerich P, Wells NA, Russell DE and Shah SMI: Origin of Whales in Epicontinental Remnant Seas: New Evidence from the Early Eocene of Pakistan. Science 220:403-406, 1983.
79. Thewissen JGM, Williams EM, Roe LJ and Hussain ST: Skeletons of Terrestrial Cetaceans and the Relationship of Whales to Artiodactyls. Nature 413:277-281, 2001.
80. Eldredge and Tattersall: "The Myths of Human Evolution."
81. Shweder RA: Humans Really are Different. Science 283:798, 1999.
82. Human Evolution. The Mystery of Humanity's Missing Mutations. Science 267:35, 1995.
83. Pennisi E: Evolution of Language. Science 303:1316-1323, 2004.
84. National Academy of Sciences: "Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science." Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, p55, 1984.
85. Quoted in Dwight TA: "Thoughts of a Catholic Antomist." New York: Longmans, p43, 1912.
86. Conklin EG: "Man Real and Ideal." New York: Schriber, p147, 1943. Quoted by Macbeth: "Darwin Retried." Op. cit. pp126-7.
87. Hooper: "Of Moths and Men," p296.
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