No room for doubt about evolution

SCMP April 23, 2012

I was shocked by the misinformation in Geoffrey Allen's letter ("Evolution is still just a conjecture", April 11).

Mr Allen claimed that "now Darwinian evolution is still a conjecture (not a theory)", "many eminent scientists have grave misgivings about the whole subject of macro-evolution" and "some of the world's greatest physicists are realising that even the number of years back to the big bang are not sufficient to explain away Darwin's conjecture".

Evolution, now both an established fact and a theory well supported by so much evidence, is closed to reasonable doubt like gravitation or relativity.

Today, 130 years after Charles Darwin's death, magazines like Nature and Science continue to report new findings, new fossils, new DNA evidence and new information that further confirms evolution, and tells us more about the history of life on earth.

We can quote hundreds of articles supporting macro-evolution and the latest findings about how cells evolved, debunking Mr Allen's claim.

The Interacademy Panel, a global network of 104 world's science academies, representing the overwhelming majority of leading scientists, issued a statement in 2006 affirming the fact of evolution and supporting the teaching of the subject.

I challenge Mr Allen to name just one or two articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals or any practising evolutionary biologists that support his claims.

Virginia Yue, Hong Kong Concern Group for Science Education