The cover story of New Scientist asks, “Was Darwin wrong?”, as if this were surprising news (he was wrong about many things) or as if the discovery of new details would somehow demolish the whole structure of evolutionary theory. I’ll let Larry Moran take care of this one.
It’s a symptom of creationist influence that journals would think that hyping a story that “150 year old theory gets revised!” is newsworthy. And, of course, the creationists are eating it all up.
The way the creationists take these headlines as some kind of support for their views is bothersome.
But I wouldn’t notch all the “Darwin Wrong” headlines we’re seeing at the moment as being down to creationist influence. I think there’s still a large degree of good ole polemicism being used to shift copies. It’s in the nature of journalism, after all.
Sheesh. National Geographic answered this question years ago. And the answer was:
NO.
Moronic dissembler Paul Nelson is hyping this nonsense at Uncommon Descent, unsurprisingly.
There are two problems with the article. One is that too much is being made of the fact that there is almost certainly not a “single tree” of life, a possibility even older than the “problem” of epigenetics. The other is that many journalists seem to have about as static a view of science as creationists have, as if changing science is actually a problem.
Then too, the whole sensationalistic aspect of the media is a large part of it, too, since “overturning Darwin” sounds far more impressive than “tweaking our understanding” of the history of life does.
Regardless, there’s no excuse for this nonsense.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Actually the title seems to be “Darwin Was Wrong” a statement, and of course he was wrong about certain things as you mentioned. (It is an 150 year old falsifiable theory, after all.)But I really hate it when they do this. Usually it is Newsweek or Time just trying to drum up sales. But A science mag? Please!
They’re operating in their own time-honoured tradition of yellow science journalism.
Haha. I loved that edition. It was actually the article that finally made me give up having even a shadow of a doubt. At a certain point, you really can’t beat around the bush anymore.
I’m still waiting for “creationism” to get revised. Every time we hear of a new theory, it quickly gets boiled back down to the same-old same-old “Jesus did it!” rationalization.
Has anyone uncovered startling new evidence revolutionizing the study of “irreducible complexity” or “spontaneous genesis” that we should know about?
When is Intelligent Design ever going to get past the stage of confusing the metaphor (the tree, dammit) with the real thing?
I get tired of these minor corrections in science being ballyhooed as failure for scientific theories. It’s just science upgrading itself, which makes it much stronger.
I have this issue from 2004 at home. I though they did a great job. I haven’t seen the New Scientist piece yet, but it may be a good thing if it is done in the same vein. It could very well have the Jerry Springer effect and bring reach people who wouldn’t normally expose themselves to sound science.
Ha, that was my first thought too. What might not be obvious to others from your comment is the way that NatGeo formatted this. They had the question (and some pretty pictures) on one page, and the next page had nothing but “NO” in huge, bold letters. It was hilarious.
Seeing how in the popular imagination, all things evolution equals Darwin; how about running this little thought experiment. Say that somehow, we were able to to get Charles Darwin from anytime of his life after he released On the Origin of Species, brought him to the present time and showed him everywhere where he was wrong in his speculations. Would he feel that he got proven wrong or would he want to find out all of the information that we now have?
New evidence suggests that Darwin was wrong about the banana.
I’d point out, too, that we hashed out the “whole issue” of the “frightening” prospect that there isn’t a single tree of life going back to the beginning with Paul Nelson a year and a half ago:
pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/07/yet-another-rea.html
At this time I can’t get through to that address, or to Panda’s Thumb in general. What I can say is, that Nelson appeared to be somewhat surprised that we didn’t care if there was a single tree of life or not, and he avoided most of the points we brought up, as typical.
Just because we set him straight there, and he had nothing substantive to offer in return, does not prevent him from telling the same lies at UD today that he told previously. I think the old belief that he was an “honest creationist” is long gone by now.
The fact that YEC Paul Nelson disingenuously “argued” that ID isn’t creationism in Expelled hardly helps his hoped-for reputation for honesty.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
A bit sensational, but it did get the point across to me, a fairly well informed layman, of how much HGT was changing the understanding of evolution/relatedness/descent.
Up until I read this, I did still think that simple descent/species separation was the near exclusive method of gene expression in multicellular life.
Janine:
I’m sure Darwin would be a bit embarrassed about some of the things he got wrong, but, as a good scientist, he would certainly be utterly fascinated at all the information we have now. And would probably be extremely frustrated if he were then sent back to his time, as he would be unable to publish what he now knew, because he would be unable to prove a lot of it. He couldn’t exactly publish things about genes and DNA when DNA hadn’t even been found yet. :)
If Darwin was *right* on everything, then Biology would of staled out 150 years ago.
Obviously this isn’t the case.
I somehow doubt that the details of this story mean anything to evolution deniers.
Considering the level of biological knowledge possessed by the average creationist it wouldn’t surprise me that they assume the tree of life model says we all evolved from trees.
I still like New Scientist most of the time, but their penchant for overblown cover story hype is quite irritating, and their once-or-twice yearly ride completely off the rails with exciting-sounding but extremely dubious crank science (most memorably the so-called “EM Drive” and some quantum water balderdash) even more so. But NS is still generally a more interesting and substantial read than any other available science weekly, so I tolerate these irritations with good grace (or not-so-good grace, as the case may be).
moar funny pictures
nao – it was supposed to be this pix
http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2009/1/4/128755935847610320.jpg
If evilution is true, why are there still elms?!?!?
If evilution is true, why are there still bushes?!?!?
(*snrk*)
Well, there’s a new book out, published by Viking, which doesn’t beat around the bush:
Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.
Coyne is a professor in the department of Ecology & Evolution at the U of Chicago.
“What might not be obvious to others from your comment is the way that NatGeo formatted this.”
Well, I tried to make the letters big with html, but it didn’t work. One of the more knowledgeable hackers around here will have to fill me in.
The existence of Bushes belongs to the domain of theodicy.
The average creationist is a two-dimensional bunny by default…one of their many prombles…they just cannot get the tree of life in their imagery…it is a linear straight line to them not the entangled forest with the dead end off shoots and weird branches to seemingly nowhere but ultimately somewhere!
Tis just the equivalent of 3-D chess played on a 2-D board…just incomprehensible!….and tis so comforting to just be jeebus’s little sunbeams tis all they want…this thinking must be a trap from Satan therefore now’t to do with god…best to stick digits in aural cavities and sing LAH LAH’s to his holy name!
Of course that does not really explain why New Scientist went with this particular headline?…they must know that it would be like poking a rancid wasps nest with a large base ball bat…quote mining and misquoting from this edition will fill many happy deluded hours over at the Discovery institute!
Not very bright methinks…there were other alternatives…or has tabloid journalism rally taken a hold in NS HQ?
Nice bit of sensationalism never hurt circulation now..
As G Felis says, I think this has less to do with the influence of creationism than with the influence of New Scientist’s policy of running sensationalist cover stories to sell copies in newsagents.
I don’t think you can blame this on creationist thinking, I think it’s a common symptom of sensationalist science writing, and New Scientist are frequent offenders.
See the million or so “Was Einstein Wrong?” articles. All of them conclude with “so Einstein wasn’t really wrong, but wouldn’t it be crazy..?”
Same, I assume, with this Darwin article.
This is what really p’s me off with creationists existing. If they didn’t no one would bat an eye lid at such a headline. We’d all just go ‘well duh!’, of course he got some stuff wrong.
However the constant creationist-quotemine-wrongendofstick-realityabusers have got us to the point where sensible rational types feel pressured not to discus things incase it all gets twisted out of shape.
I read this article a few days ago, and thought the headline was one of their most shameful ever. much of the information in this article was meaningful, interesting and enlightening, but the overall sensationalism was pointlessly stupid. I got the feeling it was written by a new journalist, who was more interested in making a name than presenting information. Something that a magazine like New Scientist should be avoiding, so the editor has to share the blame in this case. Normally, I like New Scientist, but this headline was possibly their low point of the year.
Sorry to be OT, but in Texas, the state board of education is questioning common descent.
Whilst I haven’t seen it yet (snail mail in France deserves the name!), I suspect G Felis and Ginger Yellow are correct, it’s just a case of New Scientist‘s occasional derailing or tendency to exaggerate (esp. on the cover). Annoying but not fatal.
Sharon Begley at Newsweek has a piece on evolution that is terrible.
I think it’s that time of the year.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/180103
This is surprising? For people whose epistemology is all based on Revealed Truth, any system of thought depends entirely on the merits of the original revelation. It’s all downhill from there, just as the Disciples are closer to The Ultimate Truth than the Church Founders, who in turn were closer than the later theologians such as Aquinus and Augustine, who in turn … until the present (greatly debased) day.
So, if Darwin was less than infallible and today’s biology is even less Truthful than Darwin’s Revelation on the Beagle, it follows that today’s biology is diminished by every diminution of Darwin.
—
Yeah, I know it’s batshit insane. Remember, these are people who Just Don’t Get It.
Dave Wisker: “When is Intelligent Design ever going to get past the stage of confusing the metaphor (the tree, dammit) with the real thing?”
Exactly what I thought when I saw a piece about this in my newspaper today. I swiftly turned the page in disgust.
There’s no science in Intelligent Design. It’s just words. Since there’s no science being done in regard to their ‘theory’, it will likely ‘stand up’ to the test of time. LOL.
Enjoy.
strangest brew @ 26
I love the typo in your first sentence that came up with the wonderful word “prombles”. Now we need to come up with a definition that is deserving of the wonderfulness of the word. Since the sentence was dealing with creationists, so should the definition.
—
Playing devil’s advocate on the main topic: Maybe New Scientist’s cover story ain’t so bad. If it causes a few people who aren’t normally exposed to science to pick it up and read it, perhaps some of them will actually start thinking rather than not.
New Scientist has a penchant for hype, exaggeration, and in my experience, outright fabrication.
Given the work that New Scientist has done over the years to promote science and to document global warming I think they have earned the right to put whatever they want on the cover.
They beat all the other science magazines hands down and continually criticise stupid governments like the Bush administration.
Very few magazines take editorial opinion to the level they do.
Darwin was right, and the Texas State Board of Education voted to stick with him today, 7 creationists to 8 others.
Darwin had huge assists from Texas Citizens for Science and the indefatigable Steve Schafersman, Texas Freedom Network, and Genie Scott and the Better-than-300 at the National Center for Science Education.
It’s sweet, still.
As of this moment, I don’t have details on the voting.
[Hey, P.Z.: Is this a faster way to get news to you than gmail?]
Current issue of National Geograhpic:
What Darwin Didn’t Know
+ his first clues
+ evolution now
So, some fodder for the creationist/ID types in that cover headline too. Although the phrasing definitely leans towards assuming a general “Darwin knew a whole bunch but…” stance. The subtlety might be lost on some though.
Clearly Darwin was wrong, at least that’s what my Intro Bio students (at a state honors college in the South) think. I just tallied the results from an Evolution Survey that I gave to them a couple of weeks ago. I downloaded the survey from the web.) Either the public education in our state is even worse than I had imagined, or our admissions office is admitting way too many homeschoolers! Methinks it’s going to be a long semester….
TRUE/FALSE Question
48%/52% Evolution is a scientific fact.
92%/8% Evolution is something you should either believe in, or not believe in.
32%/68% Evolution is a process that involved the origin of life.
92%/8% Evolution is primarily concerned with the origin of humans.
48%/52% According to evolution, people came from monkeys a long time ago.
20%/80% Evolution was first proposed and explained by Charles Darwin.
84%/16% Evolution is the same as “Natural Selection.”
96%/4% Evolution is something that happened only in the past; it is not happening now.
84%/16% Evolution is something that happens to individual organisms.
56%/44% Evolution is a totally random process, or a series of “accidents.”
100%/0% Evolution was developed in order to destroy or undermine religion.
88%/12% Evolution tells us that there is no God.
36%/64% Evolution can be compatible with all the world’s major religions.
28%/72% Evolution simply means “change.”
40%/60% “Evolution is only a theory.”
92%/8% There is actually very little evidence for evolution.
80%/8% One indication that evolution has not occurred is the total absence of “transitional organisms” (those with traits intermediate between two different groups).
68%/32% Fossils provide many problems which evolution cannot explain.
4%/96% Most biological and medical and agricultural research assumes evolution is real.
52%/48% Evolution theory has been tested many times, and has always been supported by the evidence.
84%/16% Dinosaurs lived during the time of early humans.
16%/84% Evolution involves individuals changing in order to adapt to their environment.
92%/8% There is actually considerable observable evidence against evolution.
28%/72% Science can properly infer what has happened in the past, based on evidence.
40%/60% The formation of complex structures, like the eye, can be readily explained by evolution.
Geral pointed out what I was going to about Newsweek having a similar article about acquired traits being passed on – basically equating epigenetics and new information about environmental influence in the womb on embryonic development to Lamarckism.
It’s sick how uninformed “Science writers” are.
oh, duh, it’s the previous post by Myers…ignore the tired woman in the corner *hides*
If all one ever read was the hype of headlines of scientific journals or articals they would get an amazing amount of disinformation.
Consider this one from Scientific American
And this one from New Scientist
One orchid fossil was found and now some scientist claims that orchids may have once ruled the world. OMG. He must need funding for more research.
If you give creationists an inch, they take a mile. It was naive of New Scientist to throw out that headline.
I like that mag, and hope they haven’t damaged themselves.
Posted by: Owlmirror | January 22, 2009 4:31 PM
” ‘If evilution is true, why are there still elms?!?!?’
If evilution is true, why are there still bushes?!?!?
(*snrk*)”
If evilution is true why are there still creationists?
Yeah. They are a bunch of evil SOBs who rearly have more that an eight grade education.
Yeah. Maybe we should exterminate them.
@42
That’s a depressing survey, and this response in particular needles at me. On top of all the gross misunderstanding of the science behind evolution, we have to contend with the notion that it’s a vast conspiracy piloted by evil, godless scientists. What. The. Fuck.
Also, many of those responses seem contradictory. So 48% think Evolution is fact, yet 92% feel that it is simply a matter of optional “belief?” Methinks some of your students haven’t reflected sufficiently on their own beliefs.
Randy, your point is what? You don’t like science? We know that already.
“True/False
92%/8% There is actually very little evidence for evolution.
…
52%/48% Evolution theory has been tested many times, and has always been supported by the evidence.”
Wow, they can’t even give consistent answers.
How could Darwin be “wrong about the tree of life”? That’s an ancient bit of Christian symbolism, and not what Darwin presented. On the Origin of Species has one very diagrammatic diagram showing branching speciation from two starting points – nothing there about what’s going on at the roots. Of course Häckel did a nice picture of the tree, but you’d think that the New Scientist might grasp the fact that he wasn’t Darwin.
Dear Coenocyte,
those results you quote are alarming indeed, though I take it you’re in the “wrong” part of the country to expect a whole lot better. I imagine your class size was 25, based on all of the divisions being 4%?
For the non-USians like myself, what year of education is it that are you teaching Intro Bio to? (Or if this is ambiguous, the age of your students will suffice.)
I tend to think this sensationalist New Scientist cover stating “Darwin was wrong” is utterly blatant stupidity, coming as it does in the Darwin sesqui- and bicentenary: it is a free gift for the “creotards” who will no doubt brandish their copies with glee, without reading the actual article behind the front cover, and claim such tripe predictable as, e.g. “See? Even New Scientist agrees with us that Darwin was wrong”…
Wonderful way for shooting yourself in the foot.
As PZ’s link to Larry Moran’s blog shows, the cover title doesn’t even appear to be a nuanced representation of the argument of the article, which I gather suggests that the metaphor of “the tree of life” isn’t entirely correct: in some instances, Moran prefers alternative metaphors such as a “net” or “web”.
So what, is it such a surprise that a metaphor should be partially (or even entirely) wrong?
It is no surprise at all to find a metaphorical description to be inadequate and trumped by the actual complexity of reality, unless you are trapped in a completely literalist view of the world. (Hello to all you “fundies” reading this blog.)
The proposition that “Darwin was wrong” is at least as true as the less controversial statements that “Newton was wrong”, or “Ptolemy was wrong”, but that hasn’t been newsworthy for an equally long time. And you wouldn’t expect to see those on the front cover of a serious magazine.
In summary, this cover by New Scientist will probably be a wonderful own goal.
(The poster previously posting as PML. I’m feeling in a rather malevolent mood today, hence the pseudonym.)
This has nothing to do with influence of creationists. You occasionally see headlines of the form “Einstein was wrong” also about minor physics issues. The reporters aren’t doing that because they are being influenced by anti-relativity cranks. They are doing that because it sounds interesting and sells well.
Hi Joshua,
I assume you were replying to my comment immediately before yours? Regardless of whether controversial headlines help sell newspapers, I wasn’t suggesting the cover was “to do with influence of creationists”. I’m suggesting that the cover is politically ill-advised, besides being foolish and vacuous.
The creationists who visit here often give themselves away by calling scientists “Darwinists”, which is terminologically a fail, since modern evolutionary biology is obviously post-Darwinian, i.e. science doesn’t stand still, duh. Giving them a mantra that “Darwin was wrong” on the cover of New Scientist might help sell magazines, but it is also a free gift for them to spread their wilful ignorance.
We reject as false the choice between Darwin being 100% right and complete, and ID/Creationism being even 1% correct. It is a bogus wager based on a misapprehension of logic and of the way science is performed.
That being said, the cover of NS might help sell some copies, but isn’t helping the public understanding of evolution. It’s a damn shame.
Nerd of Redhead said:
That would be stereotyping on your part. You couldn’t be more wrong about me.
Then why are you always snarky when science disproves pseudoscience? Shouldn’t that say something about you? If you were pro-science, you would be cheering.
“They beat all the other science magazines hands down and continually criticise stupid governments like the Bush administration.”
I totally agree (at least among UK magazines – I rarely get the chance to read US ones). But they don’t do science (or their own reputation among scientists) any favours with their covers and occasional silly stories.
Yes that’s why you should never go by just the headlines nor three paragraph snippets. Suggesting that the title of that article is only backed by the three paragraphs below it and not by any other science isn’t really very intellectually honest Randy.
Sorry meant to quote this also
Glen wrote
I have to believe that Nelson’s grandfather Byron, creationist though he was, would be ashamed of Paul. Byron at least showed some signs of being able to learn from experience.
(And I had no trouble getting to Glen’s linked PT post of a hear and a half ago.)
You are mostly right.
Darwinism was demolished in Darwin’s own day when Mivart asked “How can natural selection have been involved with a structure which had not yet appeared.”
My vote for most ill-informed comment of the night
Coenocyte @ 42
Those are very poorly phrased questions! I wouldn’t be able to answer half of them without clarification.
BS
BlindSquirrel @ 66
I agree about rewording the questions. I downloaded them from a site at Indiana University, and thought I would run them by my students to see what kind of responses I would get. I already knew that a number of my students were creationists, but I was still surprised at the answers.
I think that they will be spending Darwin’s birthday taking a killer exam on evolution!
The Texas State Board of Education’s wingnut side also picked up the ball and ran with Lawson.
All it would take is just one toad, in one dung pile, to hatch one egg, laid by one rooster. Then I could stop all this thinking and go off and get stoned.
lol
With apologies to Aaronc who posted on a forum at http://www.livescience.com. His analogy of the Theory of Evolution to the Theory of Flight was too good for me to resist posting it here:
“Most science teachers, even in Texas, know that evolution is far better supported than any other theory for biological speciation. It’s good that these teachers will not be forced by the school boards to misrepresent the overwhelming evidence in favor of evolutionary theory.
I like to use the example of the “Theory of Aerodynamic Flight”. Aerodynamics is after all, “just a THEORY”, which many people will take to mean that there is significant doubt about whether we understand why airplanes are able to fly. If we apply the same standards that creationists use to attack evolution then this *theory*, which one might call Orville-and-Wilburism, is only about 100 years old, and is only one of many competing theories.
Other viable theories that the “good-old-boy, scientific establishment” has squashed include Peter-Panism, in which you have to “believe you can fly” and have some magic pixie dust. After all, every pilot flying a plane has to “believe he can fly” or he would never try to leave the ground. Yet Orville-and-Wilburism is taught, almost exclusively, in every Flight school and Aeronautical Engineering program across the country and indeed around the world.
I guess this just goes to show how vast the conspiracy is to support Orville-and-Wilburism, while attempting to deny a fair hearing to alternative points of view, just because they might invoke explanations that involve supernatural elements, like magic pixie dust. Here we go again with philosophical naturalism (aka atheistic a-pixie-ism) as the only, narrow explanation that is being allowed to be taught, with respect to flight.
After all, if Aerodynamics is true then how do angels fly higher than an few tens of thousands of feet in the Earth’s atmosphere, or indeed into outer space, where wings would be effectively useless! Therefore the theory of aerodynamics (oops, I mean Orville-and-Wilburism) is a direct attack on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, (as well as the Greek, Roman, and Hindu pantheons among others) which all have winged-messengers of the gods.
Of course, the Theory of Aerodynamic Flight is not a perfect analogy to something like Evolution, but it’s good enough to illustrate at least some of the specious attacks that bible literalists often use against evolution and other scientific principles which they feel threaten their beliefs.”
nick nick bobick @ #37
Obviously New Scientist wants to win the Templeton prize. Good thing is that with this cover they helped me decide whether I should renew my subscription or not. Of course not.
Cowcakes @ 71:
No, you’re using the old term for it. It’s now the Theory of Mental Levitation, where the ability to fly can be inferred from the ability to imagine doing it.
What’s a good alternative to New Scientist?
I’ve always liked their articles when I came across them online, so this article and learning about their previous dabblings in pseudoscience is disheartening. :/
Todd Oakley has also written a rebuttal to the New Scientist article. He wrote a paper in Biology Direct together with Michael Rose, who is quoted in the NS article:
Rose’s comments are a bit strange, because they deal with this explicitly in the Biology Direct paper, which has the peer review published together with it.
Darwinism with it’s “struggle for live” is the same naturalistic nonsense as marxism with it’s “class struggle”. Sometimes there is such “struggle”, but it has nothing to do with creative evolution. Natural selection is a conservative force which only removes extremities. Those who believe in “natural selection & random mutation” neodarwinian drivel are pretty mislead. Pathetic neodarwinian blogs like “Pharyngula” do not change the reality.
@doesn’t at #77
We heard you once. Stop reposting the same nonsense. Or are you having ASS(Attention Seeking Syndrome)?
I always thought flying was about learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
TeleMan #79:
That’s just Raelian/Adamsism. It is plain ridiculous to assume that man was taught to fly by aliens. Peter-panism is implicit in the revealed works of JM Barrie, who was (of course) a True Scotsman.
Ian @ 75: If you can bear buying a magazine half of which you won’t understand, I’d go right for something like Science or Nature. About half of each issue is general readable science news. The other half, unfortunately for the casual reader, is hardcore science (from a broad gamut of disciplines, so no one will follow *everything* in any issue of either).
And I’ll add my voice to the crowd saying that really, this is nothing to do with the creationist pseudodebate, and is a long running and well documented habit of NS to make EVERY! NEWS! STORY! EARTH! SHATTERINGLY! SENSATIONAL!
…it’s the same old story : dog bites man, or “Darwin was right!” is not news.
A lifelong reader of NS, I have to agree with many above that their journalistic standards (and those of their reviewers) have been slipping over the last few years.
Examples have been a long article on “alternative medicine” which went soft on it, a reviewer of “Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon”
http://www.amazon.com/Madame-Blavatskys-Baboon-History-Spiritualism/dp/0805210245
who thought the author laid it on a bit thick, and an article about Giordano Bruno which seemed to imply that he had it coming…
doesnt #77 – Darwin’s concept of the “struggle for existence” (not “struggle for live” – doesn’t home teaching include spelling?) was rightly attributed by him to the good creationist A. P. de Candolle’s idea of “Nature’s war”. Makes me wonder why today’s creationists are so afraid of the facts of life..
Graham Lawton here.
Yes, the evil, know-nothing science journalist who is responsible for this FILTH!
Can I make a suggestion?
If you want to comment about an article in a magazine, it’s usually a good idea to read it first.
Judging from these comments, a lot of you haven’t bothered. Obviously it’s a lot easier to jump to conclusions based on the coverline of the magazines, then work yourselves up into a huffy and self-righteous lather (and oh my, the blogosphere is the perfect medum for huffy self-righteousness!), than to actually sit down, read, and think.
I’m up for a reasonable discussion of the ideas in the article. So come on, do me a favour – stop shooting from the hip and let’s talk.
Alternativelty, let’s all just slag each other off some more, it’s such fun!
Hi guys, a New Scientist journo here (not the one who wrote the piece we’re all discussing). Just wanted to reply to a couple of points:
Several of you reckon we shouldn’t have gone with the headline/coverline because it would blatantly be picked up by the creationists. No doubt they will pick it up, but I submit that that would happen no matter what we wrote.
As an example, when we ran the story about Lenski’s E. coli bacteria evolving in the lab last year, which was as much of a “evolution is true, suck it up” story as you could think of, it still brought out the creationist idiots in force and they managed to cover the internet with nitwit misinterpretations of it (which we rebutted in a blog).
It simply doesn’t matter what you say; anything about evolution brings them out and will get twisted somehow. I don’t think we should allow ourselves to be cowed by them, any more than we should bow before “climate skeptics” or flat-Earthers. If we can’t say that Darwin was wrong on certain points when he definitely was, they’ve already won.
I’ve no idea what Peter is talking about when he says we implied that Giordano Bruno got what was coming: we did review a book about him last year, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926700.900-review-igiordano-bruno-philosopherheretici-by-ingrid-d-rowland.html, but didn’t say anything of the sort.
I can’t recall us saying nice things about alternative medicine. Perhaps you mean our 2008 interview with Edzard Ernst, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826531.400-interview-the-complementary-medicine-detective.html, who is a professor of alternative medicine – but who insists that the only measure of a medicine is that it pass proper clinical testing, and got himself slammed by homeopaths for saying so!
And here is our review of Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15320676.700-specialist-books–stuffed-guru.html. It calls her a “spiritual tat merchant” in the first sentence.
BTW PZ, if you’re going to blog about something it probably makes sense to get your basic facts straight. The cover of New Scientist doesn’t say “Was Darwin Wrong?”. It says “Darwin was wrong: cutting down the tree of life”.
I know bloggers don’t generally worry about old-school media concepts like checking their facts, but that was a bad un, old boy. Kind of makes me wonder whether I can trust anything you say. Pharyngula used to be pretty good, but lately it’s been overhyping everything, getting stuff wrong and sensationalising its criticism of the science media. I’m going to stop reading it and go to sandwalk instead. ;)
(Actually I like your blog, though the thing you wrote for Focus was boring. I haven’t actually read it but one of my colleagues said it was, and that’s good enough for me)
Ah, that makes it all better. Your article wasn’t speculating about whether Darwin was wrong, it flatly stated in simple language and big print and no qualifiers right on the cover that Darwin was wrong.
I guess I really do have to stop overhyping everything and criticizing the science media.
I just got my February 2009 National Geographic, and the cover story is “What Darwin didn’t know”. Looks like that meme is going viral.
Graham,
I read a write-up on RichardDawkins.net, which referred to the write-up on Sandwalk (read that, too), after which I read the whole article. Then PZ posted on it. Then I made a comment on the thread, which I stand by:
The ‘tree of life’ is still a valuable metaphor when talking about multicellular eukaryotes, although incomplete. You know damn well that the teach the controversy/strengths-and-weaknesses/pseudo academic freedom/bible-walloping xtian codswallopers will hold up a copy of your magazine at the next academic standards meeting, and say “see, science says that Darwin got it wrong!”
But, anyway, you’ve got magazines to sell. Have a happy fucking monkey.
PZ, you say “Your article wasn’t speculating about whether Darwin was wrong, it flatly stated in simple language and big print and no qualifiers right on the cover”
Not really. Let me try again.
My article is inside the magazine, with the headline “Uprooting Darwin’s tree”
The front cover of the magazine (which is not my article – as a critic of the science media you must understand that, surely?) says
“Darwin was wrong: cutting down the tree of life”.
That second beat looks like a qualifier to me. But if you just ignore it maybe it’ll go away.
(My comment about you overhyping everything was ironic, btw. But blogs are a poor medium for irony, so let’s resume sniping. Blogs are good for that)
Or maybe you could tell me whether you’ve read the article, and we could discuss the subsance of the piece
If we can’t say that Darwin was wrong on certain points when he definitely was, they’ve already won. – Michael Marshall
The point is, it’s not news that Darwin was wrong about a good many things, notably mechanisms of heredity and IAC. The cover story panders to the creationist eyewash that regards Darwin as a rival authority to the Bible, and modern evolutionary biologists treat his ideas as dogma.
I’ve read both the cover, and the article. The article is not, as far as I can judge, plain wrong at any point, but is clearly straining every muscle to be controversial, playing up the extent to which the metaphor of a “tree of life” has been shown to be inaccurate for multicellular organisms; and playing down the significance of multicellular organisms themselves. As far as the former is concerned, AFAIK none of the discoveries of HGT in animals, plants or fungi have made it difficult, let alone impossible, to continue construction of nested taxonomies based entirely on descent (with minor adjustments for hybridization); the suggestion that tunicates are chimeras looks highly speculative. As far as the latter goes, the article points up that the vast majority of individual organisms are microbes. True – but why count this, rather than number of living cells (most eukaryotic cells belong to multicellular organisms) or biomass (most biomass consists of multicellular eukaryotes)? Then there are the vague statements about how abandoning the “tree of life” metaphor is just part of a coming revolution in biology – without specifying why this is needed (except that life is “more complicated” that we realised – HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!!!1111eleven!!one!!). altogether, a good example of why I did not renew my NS subscription: an article hyping a supposed scientific revolution, further hyped on the cover.
Oh noes everbodee! The thugs from New Sensationalist are here to smack us down! Seriously, you write for the science world’s equivalent of the Daily Mail. I stopped reading your magazine at around 17 years old, even then it was obvious what an overhyped rag it is.
RE post 89
Ennui, I don’t know what “having a f**king monkey” means but I suspect it’s unpleasant so I won’t wish one on you.
As for public understanding. Well, the cover is designed to sell the magazine. If we run very straight, sober covers, we sell fewer mags, we get fewer clicks and nobody blogs about us, so fewer people read what we produce. Now, I’d argue that this week’s cover has got us a lot of attention, and as a result lots of people wil read my story. Many will learn something about evolution. Public understanding will increase. So which way do you want it?
Or look at it this way. Nature is a very educational read. Many people could learn a lot from it. It’s widely available and really quite entertaining and accessible. But very few members of the public read it. Why? They don’t sell themselves.
And yes, the ToL is still quite useful in places. I say as much in the article.
As for public understanding. Well, the cover is designed to sell the magazine. If we run very straight, sober covers, we sell fewer mags, we get fewer clicks and nobody blogs about us, so fewer people read what we produce. – Graham Lawton
I understand pictures of naked women, or of celebrities, also sell magazines – pictures of naked celebrities even more so. When can we expect the first “scientist’s rear of the year” contest in NS?
Misleading articles such as yours, and luridly misleading cover stories, increase public misunderstanding of science.
There is not a word in Charles Robert Darwin’s opus minimus that ever had anything to do with its title, not a word. – Charles Robert Darwin
If you’re going to tell lies, try to make them amusing and/or original ones.
Guys –
I think you are over-reacting a little bit here.
I’m not an evolutionary biologist, but it seems to me that this is simply another example of an “attention-grab” cover.
Maybe it’s shocking to everyone else, but I am simply yawning at this. Of course a magazine, newspaper, or other source that relies on circulation to support itself is going to take the opportunity to have a compelling cover story.
PZ, I can see where you’re coming from, however, your fear here is that because the cover of a famous science magazine says “Darwin was wrong” that it will empower more christian fundamentalists to assert that there is some sort of “science” behind creationism.
While it’s true that some may bleat and find this as some sort of messed up vindication for their ridiculous beliefs, I really don’t think it deserves such sharp criticism. Nor do I think it has anything to do with creationist influence… I think it’s more like that Simpsons episode where a bunch of scientists are at a seminar, and the professor says “Pi equals exactly three!” and everyone immediately shuts up, gasps, and pays attention… I think that’s the effect they’re looking for, and NOT to pander to the fundamentalists.
Graham Lawton,
Exactly. But why stop there. Surely posting in large letters “Naked Pictures of Jessica Alba” would make you sell even more copies.
See here :
What the hell?!
Thanks new scientist. Im in Texas trying to convince people of Nature Magazines point that natural selection is a FACT. And then New Scientist comes along and give the IDiots fodder for their stupidity
SciAm publishing article about UFOs, New Scientist calling Darwin wrong. We had deal popular science publications! We had a deal!
To be absolutely fair, the article is quite informative, and while I am always suspicious when a journalist uses fairly controversial quotes from individual scientists (who knows if they have some sort of agenda, or not), the only thing that we can really complain about is the hype-driven front cover (so what’s new?), and a few small aspects of the article, of which I am not in a position to judge properly.
Graham Lawton certainly does have a point, in that most people here probably haven’t read the article, when they really should have. It is only natural that someone who has spent a fair bit of time writing an article is mildly pissed off when people are criticizing something that they (clearly) haven’t even read.
But then, PZ was also correct when he said in the other post about journalism that (I’m paraphrasing), “they don’t have to deal with the consequences of their attempts to sell more magazines”.
But in the end, this is little more than a storm in a tea cup. Michael Marshall is absolutely right when he says, “It simply doesn’t matter what you say; anything about evolution brings them out and will get twisted somehow.” Just look at what they did with that paper a couple of weeks ago. A passing mention of “latent evolutionary potential”, and they jumped all over it proclaiming that it vindicated the “theory” of “front-loading”. One of the authors had to come to this site and explain (although PZ had already done an excellent write-up) that it had nothing to do with ID. Of course, over at uncommon descent, anyone who attempted to correct their blatant misrepresentation had their comments blocked.
It’s a good article, Graham, and I learned from it, which is really the point. I believe that headline writers are the real problem. But, if it means that the public will be exposed to more science (and if it didn’t, it wouldn’t happen), I can live with that.
Damian, a science magazine the “Was Darwin Wrong” on the cover is more than a storm in a teacup in my humble (so to speak) opinion.
I feel it is more like chumming the waters.
I understand what you are saying, Darth Wader (nice name by the way!), and I agree with you about the cover, but I just feel a little sorry for Graham Lawton in all of this, as he has actually produced a fairly informative article, which no-one is really talking about.
Michael Marshall @ 85
Dealing with Madame Blavatsky first: thanks for the link to the article, which surely confirms exactly my point. The last sentence:
“But in the end …. he” (i.e the author – my comment) “protests too much and one is reminded that ……. counterfeits exist because there is real gold.”
I read the book, and it’s virtually nothing but facts which speak for themselves, with little or no comment. In those circumstances to say the author “protests too much” is off the mark. And what the devil did the reviewer mean with the “counterfeits…..”? He seems to be implying that there is such a thing as genuine spiritualism.
With the other two points, I’m handicapped because I don’t have access to the archives (I’ve always shared a subscription).
The alternative medicine article was not the interview you linked to: it was an issue (I just can’t do better than “a couple of years ago” I’m afraid) with dealt with it in a big way, with several articles devoted to the topic, and a summary which was at best equivocal on AM.
Once again the Giordano Bruno article is not the review you linked to, and it lies some time back. To say that the author implied that he had it coming may be bit unfair, but IIRC, the article was very dismissive of him. I realise that the “martyr for science” line is now seen as whiggish history, but to present the Vatican’s line (which also suffers from a dearth of original supporting material) as the current take on Bruno is striving too hard to be accommodating.
I’m not dropping NS by the way: I still find it pretty stimulating.
Michael Marshall @85 does have a point, I have to say – even if they entitled the article ‘Darwin Was Not Wrong At All, No Sirree’, there would be some creationist somewhere proclaiming that New Scientist wrote an article saying that Darwin was wrong, and somehow justifying it in his own mind as not lying. Having said that, though, by entitling it like they did, they may as well have posted an open letter to every creationist site/forums/whatever asking them to take that article and splash it about as New Scientist proclaiming evolution was a load of bull, even though simply reading the article makes it clear it’s not.
Dear Bew Scientist journalists, did you read #68 on this blog and follow the links? ” Rep. Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, who supported the weaknesses requirement, said there have been “significant challenges” to evolution theory. She cited a recent news article in which a European scientist disputed Darwin’s “tree of life” showing common ancestors for all living things.”
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/012309dntexevolution.1d0cd401.html
Now, to increase your sales in Texas do you propose to bring out a “strengths and weaknesses” school textbook supplement for use there, or perhaps a “Darwin was wrong about common descent” special issue?
Surely this horizontal gene transfer must be an abomination. It’s positively promiscuous. What with organisms swapping genes with organisms outside their own species.
I can only conclude that this ‘intelligent designer’ is one sick puppy.
Unless these genetic high-jinks are a result of the fall and when Jesus returns he will be instituting a chastity movement for all the bacteria and archaea.
Graham was kind enough to mention me in his comments at Sandwalk; I posted a reply at my blog and linked back to here.
Why’s Graham so glum?
http://ecographica.blogspot.com/2009/01/whys-graham-so-glum-lawton-critiqued.html
For all the comments about the New Scientist article they are surely outweighed (at least in the US) by big positive articles in the Smithsonian and National Geographic magazines.
Smithsonian ranks Darwin up there with Lincoln who was born on the same day.
Chris P
Pope Maledictus @55, my comment wasnn’t in response to your comment above it but in response to PZ’s statement in the original blog post that “It’s a symptom of creationist influence that journals would think that hyping a story that `150 year old theory gets revised!’ is newsworthy.” That’s the claim I was objecting to.