Evolution and evidence

Evolution is exceptionally successful as the scientific explanation of observed changes over time in the living world, but its public acceptance has always been another matter. And the situation may be getting worse.

A Gallup poll of American adults in November 2004 found that only 35 percent said that in their opinion the theory of evolution is well-supported (another 35 percent said it was not well-supported and 29 percent said they didn't know). To another question, on the origin of human beings, 45 percent said they believe God created humans in their present form, counter to all anthropological and other evidence that humans, like all other living things, have evolved from ancestral forms. Evolutions enormous scientific success has not permeated into the public consciousness.

In his elegant lead essay in this issue, "One Longsome Argument," Dennis Trumble considers the many reasons why that is so (one, of course, is that creation-by-design beliefs are instilled at an early age by well-meaning parents and then endlessly reinforced by religious institutions) and points out that few of us understand the basic workings of science well enough to appreciate "how feeble the arguments against evolution really are." Writes Trumble, "Creationists of every stripe have come to rely on an assortment of pseudoscientific arguments" to legitimize their beliefs, "hoping against hope that the extensive tapestry woven by seven generations of scientists might somehow dissolve with the tug of a few loose threads." He addresses some of the confused arguments they make, including several of the common misconceptions invoked by Intelligent Design advocates about how the physical world really works. And he shows how advances in many areas of modern science have continued to tighten "the weave of evolutionary theory."

The second article in our "Evolution and Evidence" section concerns a very specific piece of textbook evidence for evolution that has been much under attack, the case of the peppered moths. Matt Young and Ian Musgrave examine the recent claim by journalist Judith Hooper that key data from the 1950s by evolutionary researcher Bernard Kettlewell were faked or manipulated. With their own mathematical model and quantitative analysis, Young and Musgrave demonstrate that variations in Kettlewell's data fall within normal experimental variation. That and the fact that you can recapture more moths when you release more show, they write, that "there is no foundation for assuming that Kettlewell's data were manipulated.... The peppered moth properly remains a valid paradigm--no, an icon--of evolution."

We realize there are other creationist criticisms of the peppered moth evidence, most notably by Jonathan Wells in his book Icons of Evolution? Those criticisms have already been answered. One good set of rebuttals, by Man D. Gishlick of the National Center for Science Evolution, is posted on NCSE's excellent Web site at www.ncseweb.org/icons/icon6moths/html. Gishlick's analysis is subtitled, "Why much of what Jonathan Wells writes about evolution is wrong." I highly recommend it as well.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group