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"Christianity Today", October 11

Books & Culture Corner: Weird Science?
A Darwinian debate continues.
By Jonathan Wells | posted 11/11/2002

Last week, we posted a letter from scientists
Kevin Padian and Alan Gishlick in response to a
piece by Jonathan Wells in the September/October
issue of Books & Culture, dealing with the
notorious peppered moth experiments. This week, we
have given Wells an opportunity to
respond. At stake are fundamental questions about
truthfulness in debate—matters on which
there should be consensus among all parties to the
debate over Darwin's legacy.

In Of Moths and Men, Judith Hooper charges that
defenders of the peppered myth have
"marginalized" and "demonized" scientists who
challenge them. Here Kevin Padian and Alan Gishlick
obligingly prove her charge beyond a reasonable
doubt.

According to the myth, light-colored peppered
moths resting on pollution-darkened tree trunks
are preferentially eaten by birds; the resulting
natural selection explains why better-camouflaged
dark moths became more common during the
industrial revolution. The myth was largely exploded
in the 1980s, however, when scientists discovered
that peppered moths don't normally rest on
tree trunks. Yet many biology textbooks still
illustrate natural selection with staged photos of
moths on tree trunks—usually made by pinning or
gluing dead moths in place. The New York
Times recently featured such photos as a
now-classic example of "scientific fakery" (October 15,
2002).

Yet Padian and Gishlick continue to defend the
discredited myth, claiming that a quarter of
peppered moths rest on tree trunks and insisting
that their claim is "based directly on the
scientific literature."

A 1998 book by peppered moth expert Michael
Majerus reported that between 1964 and 1996,
scientists spotted 47 peppered moths resting in
the wild, including 12 on tree trunks. Padian and
Gishlick simply divided 12 by 47 to obtain their
statistic. Yet many thousands of peppered moths
lived and died during that period, and the fact
that so few were found resting anywhere led
experts to conclude that most of them hide under
horizontal branches high up in the trees, where
they can't be seen. Majerus himself concluded that
"peppered moths do not naturally rest in
exposed positions on tree trunks."

Now, 12 divided by thousands is not a quarter. As
I pointed out in my review of Hooper's book,
the statistic is bogus.

But Padian and Gishlick don't stop there—and
here's where the fun begins. They liken me to the
protagonist of the film The Talented Mr. Ripley,
who lies about being a Princetonian as he
ruthlessly climbs the social ladder and even
commits murder. What's fascinating (and revealing) is
what Padian and Gishlick omit from the quotation
from their review of my book when they cite it
in their letter to Books & Culture. The ellipsis
stands for: "Its author, Jonathan Wells, appears to
come from an unusually strong academic background,
but the truth is more complex." They go on
to claim that during my post-doctoral research
appointment at Berkeley "[Wells] seems to have
performed no experiments" and "no peer-reviewed
publications resulted from Wells's 5-year stint."

Since doing research as a "post-doc" is part of
the process scientists go through to become fully
credentialed, Padian and Gishlick are implying
that I (like Mr. Ripley) have lied about my academic
credentials—a serious charge indeed.

In response to their charge, a Berkeley professor
wrote to them pointing out that during my
post-doc I performed experiments in her lab and
co-authored two peer-reviewed publications. 
She asked Padian and Gishlick to retract their
false and defamatory claim, but they refused to do
so. Books & Culture readers who are interested in
this controversy can read their review of my
book and my response, "Critics Rave Over Icons of
Evolution."

Ultimately, however, character assassination
cannot take the place of logic and evidence. This is
well illustrated by Padian and Gishlick's parting
shot, in which they warn readers of Books &
Culture of my "confessed religious mission against
evolution." In other words: "Jonathan Wells is
religiously motivated; therefore, peppered moths
do rest on tree trunks." QED.

Jonathan Wells, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow
Discovery Institute, Seattle

Copyright © 2002 Christianity Today.
Oryginal: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/144/11.0.html

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