Dave Ussery has a good review of Wells' book at:
http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/dave/IconsReview.html
Jim Hofmann
-----Original Message-----
From: Adrian Teo
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: 4/10/2001 11:31 AM
Subject: Jonathan Well's Icons of Evolution
Jonathan Wells, Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, presented at
Whitworth College on his new book, Icons of Evolution, last night. I
thought it was a polished presentation, and he did not go into the ID
argument at all. His point was that the majority of evolutionary biology
textbooks used discredited examples to support the Darwinian claims of
common descent and modification. For example, the widely used peppered
moths example to illustrate natural selection is based on doctored
photos and the mistaken understanding that those moths actually rested
on the tree trunks. The so-called Darwin's finches used as examples of
speciation was based on extrapolation of data, and in actual fact, the
data showed no net evolutionary changes, but rather, minor variations.
He also talked about the well-known (among biologists but apparently
still in textbooks) Haeckel drawings of embryos in different stages of
development. Archaeopteryx was another example of misinformation. Wells
made the claim that many professional biologists are not even aware of
these problems because they have been trained with these textbook
examples as well and never thought to question them. I am wondering if
these perceptions of Wells are accurate, and if so, this is a major
problem. Can ASA do something about this? Should publishers be persuaded
to be more careful with what they put out?
One parent asked a very good question of what she could do, given that
the school district spent thousands of dollars on these textbooks and
that some science teachers have been quite reluctant to admit nor see
the errors in these books (applies to physics texts as well). Wells did
not really have an answer for her.
Adrian.
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