Science fares poorly in the media. Most news outlets devote little attention to scientific topics, and if they do have a website with a science section, it is likely to be filled with technology and medical reporting, rather than scientific discoveries. When scientific topics are reported, they are consistently misunderstood and spiced-up with such sensationalism that the original significance is contorted beyond all recognition.
Such misreporting has happened again--this time involving Charles Darwin and evolution.
A recent paper in the journal Biology Letters, "Links between global taxonomic diversity, ecological diversity and the expansion of vertebrates on land," by Sarda Sahney, Michael Benton, and Paul Ferry, has caused quite a stir.
The normally-staid BBC wrote of this paper,
Charles Darwin may have been wrong when he argued that competition was the major driving force of evolution.
A Huffington Post piece repeated much of the original BBC article, but felt the need to shout its headline in capital letters:
Darwin May Have Been WRONG, New Study Argues.
AOL News added:
Was Darwin Wrong? An Alternative Theory Emerges
With such sensationalist headlines, readers might get the impression that this new study has single-handedly overthrown one of the best-documented scientific theories in history. Creationists will no doubt pass out copies of these articles at school board meetings as final proof against evolution, just as the Discovery Institute trumpeted an inflammatory New Scientist cover article ("Darwin was Wrong") to the Texas School Board during one of its 2009 meetings. Those who attack evolution will be heartened by these articles and believe that a challenge to evolution has finally been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
The reality is, of course, quite different.
These reporters really should have 1) talked to the authors, 2) read the Biology Letters paper, and 3) familiarized themselves with what Darwin wrote. When I talked to lead author Sarda Sahney, of the University of Bristol, she told me unequivocally:
We are not in any way suggesting Darwin was wrong.
Reporters could have learned this from the Biology Letters paper itself. This paper discusses the role of the "expansion and contraction of occupied ecospace" in animal diversity, arguing that on the large scale, ecospace should be considered a prime factor. A press release for the paper noted that when examining large-scale changes in biodiversity, the data suggest:
Animals diversified by expanding into empty ecological roles rather than by direct competition with each other.
This paper does not argue that Darwin's conception of small-scale competition within species is incorrect. It does not argue that new species arising out of accumulating changes is a flawed concept. It does not argue Darwin was wrong.
Mass extinctions in Earth's past have provided opportunities for the large-scale, dramatic ecospace expansions discussed in this paper. But we can also understand this idea with an analogy to a more familiar topic: Darwin's famous Galápagos finches. These birds occupy small, parched islands, on which perennial drought severely limits vegetation. This creates a situation of scarcity in which even small differences in beaks may confer significant advantages. As the pioneering work of Peter and Rosemary Grant shows, competition on a month-by-month, year-by-year scale shapes the evolution of these birds even today.
Now imagine that a new volcanic island erupts in the Galápagos chain. Suddenly an expanse of new, un-colonized land is available; new food sources will grow there. How will this new land affect finch diversification? That's the kind of question being addressed here.
This Biology Letters paper explores expansions and contractions of ecospace--not questions about whether evolution is wrong. This paper suggests a refinement of the details of how evolution happens. Refinements are part of the process of science, and should not be mistaken for attacks.
Those who do attack evolution--from young earth creationists at Answers in Genesis to intelligent design creationists at the Discovery Institute--do so for reasons outside of science. Answers in Genesis, which runs the Creation Museum in Kentucky, tries to link evolution with abortion, racism, and genocide. The Discovery Institute opposes evolution as part of their broader culture war on "materialism." By defeating evolution, they hope (in the DI's words) to undo the "destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies" of materialist philosophy. Clearly, these motivations are not about science.
Some did get this story right. Michael Reilly at Discovery News refrained from hyperbole and reported this article as perhaps "one facet of natural selection that [Darwin] didn't immediately foresee." Jerry Coyne, a professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, wrote an informative critique of the Biology Letters paper and concluded:
It's bizarre to see every modern discovery through a lens of either supporting or refuting [Darwin's] ideas. If we did that, every paper in genetics could be sold to science journalists as showing that Darwin was wrong about inheritance!
News outlets need to take greater responsibility for the way they report science stories. Once misguided, sensationalist headlines such as these start to spread, this poisonous misinformation--despite all the hard work and research of scientists--becomes a tool for those who reject science.
John Farrell: Bad Faith (in Science): Darwin as All-Purpose Boogey Man?
Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D.: Creationists Destroy Creationism with Their Own Words
Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D.: USA Today: Decrying Scientific Ignorance While Endorsing Creationism?
Dr. Denis Alexander: How Evolution Gets Used and Abused in the Science-Religion Debate
A more relevant paper published by the elite National Academy of Sciences argues that Darwinism is no better than creationism as a scientific theory. See the 2010 paper: "The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity" by Michael Lynch.
Also visit the Wiki entry on "neutral theory of molecular evolution" where Kimural, Jukes, and King demonstrate the majority of molecular evolution, and thus all of evolution is non-Darwinian.
To quote Michael Lynch:
"Most biologists are so convinced that all aspects of biodiversity arise from adaptive processes that virtually no attention is given to the null hypothesis of neutral evolution, despite the availability of methods to do so (32–34). Such religious adherence to the adaptationist paradigm has been criticized as being devoid of intellectual merit (35), …. "
Devoid of intellectual merit? "Brainless" theory is a better description of Darwinism
So, contra your finches example the paper's point is more like:
Finch beaks remain in an evolutionary dead end until volcanoes create new islands. Then a new variety of finch beaks show up as finches populate the new living space.
Or in the words of the paper's abstract:
Throughout geological time, patterns of global diversity of tetrapod families show 97 per cent correlation with ecological modes.
Sarda Sahney in her interview repeatedly referenced Darwin's contention that evolution was driven by 'survival of the fittest'. Darwin didn't use the phrase. Moreover, Sarda misused the term to mean to mean strongest rather best fit within the environment. Later, in her interviews, she made statements that her new 'theory' (and that of her research team members) replaces Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' with 'available living space' and that this notion is more consistent with observations. What interpretation is a newspaper to draw other than a new theory is replacing an old one?
Yes, the media can be blamed for an unforgivable ignorance about science. And yes, still others for promoting an anti-science agenda, the Calgary Herald being a case in point.
However, some blame can be laid at the feet of the researchers for talking up their findings with the media in an effort to promote the importance of their work (beyond its standing in the scientific community) and get their picture in the paper. They were successful at both.
Any of the above scientific publications ought to be aware of this cultural bias when they post a title like, "Darwin Was Wrong", and understand that the vast majority of people will NOT read the article, but will instead get the headline stuck in their consciousness and later confirmed by their more preferred echo chamber media outlets.
Cultural sensitivity is indeed cumbersome for scientific publications to balance. But if science journalists wish to do some service to humanity by spreading truth and reason in the face of fear, distortion, faith, and ditto-ism, they simply must shape up their act.
With great pleasure, # 35.
Genesis(book) and Darwin's theory are two different things. While Genesis speaks of the beginning in the religious context, Darwin do not speak of our beginnings except for his theory how we evolve not how we came into existence, thus he created a "scientific" theory. So please stop bashing the Bible as if you know anything about it.
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2010/08/natural_selection_vs_opportuni.php
Wait, did I just argue that I'm God?