CRUMBLING ICONS
By Mark Hartwig

About 10 years ago, I came across a delightful article in the Italian
journal, Rivista di Biologia. Titled "Be Cautious, Mr Bates," the article
challenged the Darwinian explanation of how the Viceroy butterfly came to
look  so much like the Monarch.
     The most interesting part  of the article was the way the authors
chided biology professors for presenting  speculative ideas as facts.
     "Many generations have  listened passively to these presentations,"
they noted. "We feel obligated,  however, to warn our readers that these
peaceful days are coming to an end and  that we must prepare for strife."
     Why? One reason  was an organization called Students for Origins
Research (SOR). "The members of  this organization support creationism,"
the authors said, "but they are not  naďve fundamentalists such as those
in the Scopes case in 1925. These people  have been educated (or coached)
in the weaknesses of Darwinism. ... They are  preparing themselves for
classroom debate."
     They  urged their readers to "avoid the usual practice of leading all
discussions in  such a way as to glorify Darwinian theory. With SOR
students lurking in the  class, frail scenarios will no longer be
passively accepted."
     As director of SOR at the time, I got a  laugh out the article. With
a part-time volunteer staff of less than a dozen  graduate and
undergraduate students, and a scruffy tabloid journal that went out  twice
a year, we were hardly the kind of threat that the article  implied.
     The authors were right about one thing,  however: skepticism is on
the rise in college biology classrooms. Books like  Phillip Johnson's
Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, William Dembski's  Intelligent
Design and Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box have encouraged  countless
students to speak out. As a consequence, noted one observer, biology
professors across the country "are finding students coming to class with
mental  defenses prepared so they will not be 'brainwashed' into accepting
evolutionary theory."
     That skepticism is about to get another  boost from a new book by
Berkeley-educated biologist Jonathan Wells. Titled  Icons of Evolution:
Science or Myth, this book shows that much of what  introductory textbooks
teach about evolution is demonstrably wrong. Worse yet,  it documents the
fact that evolutionary biologists have known it for  years.

MORE THAN MISPRINTS
Icons was born out  of Jonathan Wells' own experience as a student.
      "During my years as a physical science undergraduate and biology
graduate  student at the University of California, Berkeley, I believed
almost everything  I read in my textbooks," Wells recounts. "I knew that
the books contained a few  misprints and minor factual errors, and I was
skeptical of philosophical claims  that went beyond the evidence, but I
thought that most of what I was being  taught was substantially true."
     But then he made a  troubling discovery.
     "As I was finishing my Ph.D. in  cell and developmental biology," he
writes, "I noticed that all of my textbooks  dealing with evolutionary
biology contained a blatant misrepresentation."
     The texts contained drawings of embryos that  supposedly provide
compelling evidence of evolution.
      But there was a problem, says Wells: "As an embryologist, I knew
they were  false."
     Although he didn't stir up a ruckus, the  discovery weighed on his
mind. He began to notice that other illustrations were  also
wrong-important illustrations depicting evidence that Darwinists have long
touted as "proof" of evolution. These pictures included such perennial
favorites  as Haeckel's embryos, peppered moths, the evolutionary "tree of
life," Darwin's  finches, the ape-to-man transition and others.
     These  images-and their accompanying evolutionary stories-are so
widely used in  textbooks that some have been called "icons of evolution."
In his book, Wells  examines 10 of the most common icons, showing that
each of them seriously  misrepresents the truth-either by presenting
assumptions as observed facts,  concealing raging scientific controversies
or directly contradicting  well-established scientific evidence.

WRONG FROM  THE START
Among the most blatantly false icons are the embryo drawings that
attracted Wells' attention. The pictures were drawn in the 1800s by German
zoologist Ernst Haeckel (pronounced heckle), an enthusiastic supporter of
Darwin's theory of evolution.
     Haeckel proposed that  the development of an organism's embryo replays
the evolutionary history of that  organism's species. He believed that as
new organs or structures evolved, these  features were tacked onto the end
of an organism's embryonic development. As a  result, we can virtually see
the organism's evolutionary history in the embryo's  development. At the
beginning of its development, the embryo looks like its  earliest
ancestor. But as it develops and more recent features appear, it
resembles later ancestors-until it finally reaches the point where it
resembles  its own species. Haeckel called this the biogenetic  law.
     On the basis of this law, he reasoned that the  embryos of various
organisms should look virtually identical early in  development, but grow
increasingly different over time-reflecting their  evolutionary descent
from a common ancestor. And when he made drawings of the  embryos of
several backboned animals, this is exactly what his drawings  showed.
     Unfortunately, Haeckel had more enthusiasm  for his theory than for
reality, and faked many of his  drawings.
     "In some cases," Wells says, "Haeckel used  the same woodcut to print
embryos that were supposedly from different classes  [of animals]. In
others, he doctored his drawings to make the embryos look more  alike than
they really were. His contemporaries repeatedly criticized him for  these
misrepresentations, and charges of fraud abounded in his  lifetime."
     In addition to doctoring his drawings,  Haeckel also misrepresented
the embryos' development. The stage of development  that Haeckel called
the "first" stage actually occurs about midway through the  embryos'
development. And although the embryos at this midway stage look faintly
similar (if you squint hard and step back a bit), embryos at the earlier
stages  differ greatly.
     Thus, instead of starting out  virtually identical and then diverging,
the embryos differ from the very  beginning. About midway through
development they converge to a vague similarity.  Then they diverge again
to their final forms.
     Wells  points out that biologists have known this for over a century.
In 1894, for  example, embryologist Adam Sedgwick rejected the idea that
embryos start out  similar and diverge over time, stating that this view
is "not in accordance with  the facts of development."
     Sedgwick noted that he  could distinguish between a chicken and a
duck as early as the second day of  development.
     "Every embryologist knows that [early  differences] exist and could
bring forward innumerable instances of them," he  said. "I need only say
with regard to them that a species is distinct and  distinguishable from
its allies from the very earliest stages all through  development"
(emphasis in the original).
     Sedgwick's  observations are confirmed by modern embryology.
     In  spite of this, Wells found that Haeckel's drawings are almost
universally touted  in biology textbooks as powerful evidence for
evolution. This is even the case  in some advanced college texts written
by eminent  scientists.
     Haeckel's drawings appear, for example,  in the latest edition of
Molecular Biology of the Cell, written by National  Academy of Sciences
president and distinguished cell biologist Bruce Alberts and  his
colleagues. The text states that "early developmental stages of animals
whose adult forms appear radically different are often surprisingly
similar,"  and that Darwinian evolution explains why "embryos of different
species so often  resemble each other in their early stages and, as they
develop, seem sometimes  to replay the steps of evolution."

PEPPERED  MYTH
Perhaps the biggest surprise in Wells' book is what he reveals about one
of the Darwinism's most sacred icons: the peppered  moth.
     If you've taken a biology class in the last 30  years, you've probably
seen photos of tree trunks with peppered moths resting on  them. And you
have no doubt been told that these moths are a prime example of "evolution
in action," demonstrating the power of natural selection to change a
creature's physical characteristics.
     What you  haven't been told, however, is that there is a problem with
both the photos and  the story behind them.
     The story begins in the  woodlands of England during the early 1800s.
At that time the vast majority  peppered moths were whitish with black
speckles. Although some peppered moths  were colored coal-black, they were
very rare at that  time.
     As the industrial revolution took root during  the 19th century,
however, scientists noticed that moth populations near  heavily-polluted
cities had become mostly dark-colored. Scientists dubbed this  shift
industrial melanism and began to speculate about its  cause.
     In 1896, British biologist J.W. Tutt   suggested that industrial
melanism was caused by natural selection. He noted  that in unpolluted
woodlands, where tree trunks were covered with lichens,  light-colored
moths would be much better camouflaged than dark ones. As a  result,
predatory birds would spot and eat far more dark moths than light  ones.
     In industrialized areas, however, where  airborne pollution had killed
off the lichens and darkened the trees, the  situation would be reversed.
The dark moths would be better camouflaged, and the  birds would catch
more light-colored moths.
     This  eventually became the accepted view, and was apparently
confirmed by studies  conducted in the early 1950s by British biologist
Bernard  Kettlewell.
     In these studies, Kettlewell marked  several hundred moths of both
colors and released them during the daytime onto  tree trunks. For the
next several nights he set out traps to recapture as many  moths as
possible. He then compared the percentage of light-colored moths he'd
recaptured with the percentage of dark ones. This told him which type of
moth  survived better.
     As Kettlewell expected, the  recapture rate for dark-colored moths in
polluted areas was about twice that for  light-colored moths. In
unpolluted areas the opposite was true. This was such  ringing
confirmation of natural selection that Kettlewell called his findings
"Darwin's missing evidence." Other studies in the 1960s and 1970s seemed
to back  him up.
     Of course, critics have long pointed out  that changes in the relative
size of moth populations tell us nothing about how  such things as moths
originated in the first place.
      But in the 1980s another problem emerged. Researchers discovered
that peppered  moths almost never rest on tree trunks. Instead, they
apparently rest on the  undersides of small horizontal branches in the
tree  canopy.
     By releasing moths onto tree trunks during  the day, Kettlewell had
created an artificial situation. "Peppered moths are  night-fliers, and
normally find resting places on trees before dawn," Wells  says. When
released during the day, in illumination bright enough for human  eyes,
such moths can be expected to choose their resting places as quickly as
possible-often in the wrong place. "The moths that Kettlewell released in
the  daytime remained exposed, becoming easy prey for predatory  birds."
     This undermines the credibility of  Kettlewell's studies, as well as
later studies by others, which used dead  specimens glued or pinned to
tree trunks.
     It also  undermines the credibility of the photos displayed in so
many textbooks. Since  tree trunks are such an unusual resting place,
Wells says, "pictures of peppered  moths on tree trunks must be staged.
Some are made using dead specimens that are  glued or pinned to the trunk,
while others use live specimens that are manually  placed in desired
positions. Since peppered moths are quite torpid in daylight,  they remain
where they are put."
     These methods have  also been used for television documentaries. One
biologist admitted to a  Washington Times reporter in 1999 that he had
once glued dead specimens to a  tree trunk for a TV documentary on
peppered moths.
      "Staged photos may have been reasonable when biologists thought they
were  simulating the normal resting places of peppered moths," Wells
concedes. "By the  late 1980s, however, the practice should have stopped."

SPEAK NO EVIL
The obvious question  raised by these revelations is why? Why is this
stuff still in textbooks? Why  haven't scientists put up a fuss?
     One reason is that  many biologists simply don't know about the
errors. "Most biologists work in  fields far removed from evolutionary
biology," Wells says. "Most of what they  know about evolution, they
learned from biology textbooks and the same magazine  articles and
television documentaries that are seen by the general  public."
     Other biologists, Wells says, "are aware of  difficulties with a
particular icon because it distorts the evidence in their  own field. ...
But they may feel that this is just an isolated problem,  especially when
they are assured that Darwin's theory of evolution is supported  by
overwhelming evidence from other fields. If they believe in the
fundamental correctness of Darwinian evolution, they may set aside their
misgivings about  the particular icon they know something about."
     Some  lapses, however, are more difficult to account for. Such is the
case with  Harvard paleontologist and science historian Stephen Jay Gould.
In his writings,  Gould has expressed an ongoing concern for the quality
of science education in  America. For example, when the Kansas state board
of education voted in August  1999 to de-emphasize some of the more
speculative aspects of evolution in the  state's science education
standards, Gould responded with a broadside published  in Time.
     "As patriotic Americans," Gould wrote, "we  should cringe in
embarrassment that, at the dawn of a new, technological  millennium, a
jurisdiction in our heartland has opted to suppress one of the  greatest
triumphs of human discovery."
      Unfortunately, however, Gould's patriotism apparently does not extend
to  confronting textbook publishers over such fraudulent material as
Haeckel's  embryos. Although Gould has known about Haeckel's fraud for
over twenty years --  he wrote and published a book on Haeckel's ideas in
1977 -- it wasn't until  biochemist Michael Behe exposed the problem in
the August 13, 1999, New York  Times that Gould decided to speak out.
     In the  March 2000 issue of Natural History, Gould blasted textbooks
writers for the  "mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of
these drawings in a large  number, if not a majority, of modern
textbooks." He also blamed "creationists"  like Behe for capitalizing on
the error.
     But who's  more at fault here: the mindless recyclers, or the scholar
who kept silent until  a "creationist" blew the whistle?

A ROYAL  PAIN
With the publication of Icons, prominent Darwinists are bracing for
trouble. Speaking at the University of California, San Diego, Eugenie
Scott,  director of the National Center for Science Education, held up a
copy of the  book and told her listeners that every one of them should be
aware of  it.
     "This book will be a royal pain in the fanny,"  she said.
     Other Darwinists have made similar  remarks.
     That's really too bad. Rather than circling  the wagons, shouldn't
scientists and educators be more concerned about the  facts? Wouldn't it
be better to simply admit the errors-even if means conceding  points to
the "other side?"
     You'd think so. But  until that happens, classroom skepticism will
only grow worse.
     And those SOR students will have a heyday.

Oryginal: http://www.boundless.org/2000/departments/pages/a0000367.html