Adrian,
Quite familier with Wells book and it is a good one.
I am curious what you meant by
(applies to physics texts as well).
Bert Massie
Adrian Teo wrote:
>
>
> 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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