Wells and Haeckel’s Embryos

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(This is a rather long response to a chapter in Jonathan Wells’ dreadful and most unscholarly book, Icons of Evolution)

The story of Haeckel’s embryos is different in an important way from that of the other chapters in Jonathan Wells’ book. As the other authors show, Wells has distorted ideas that are fundamentally true in order to make his point: all his rhetoric to the contrary, Archaeopteryx is a transitional fossil, peppered moths and Darwin’s finches do tell us significant things about evolution, four-winged flies do tell us significant things about developmental pathways, and so forth. In those parts of the book, Wells has to try and cover up a truth by misconstruing and misrepresenting it.

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Sagan joins the fray

The NYT has a nice article on Carl Sagan’s new posthumous book—it was put together by his widow, Ann Druyan, and she makes a few good points:

In the wake of Sept. 11 and the attacks on the teaching of evolution in this country, she said, a tacit truce between science and religion that has existed since the time of Galileo started breaking down. “A lot of scientists were mad as hell, and they weren’t going to take it anymore,” Ms. Druyan said over lunch recently.

I’ll say. It was a stupid truce, anyway, entirely to the benefit of the old guardians of mythology.

Scientists contributing to the moral decline of the universe, again

Uh-oh. Those evil scientists are up to no good again, blindly making discoveries and creating inventions without any thought to the long-term consequences. Dynamite, nerve gas, the atom bomb, the hydrogen bomb…what’s next? What new horror will they unleash on humanity?

Scientists are close to coming up with a vaccine against Chlamydia. The bastards.

Notice the trend? Develop better hygiene to end childbed fever, anesthetics to dull the pain of childbirth, cures for venereal diseases, the recent vaccine against human papilloma virus, and now this. It’s like they don’t think women deserve to suffer. You know this will only lead to licentiousness, rampant freedom, and orgies. Come on, fellow scientists, think. Do you really believe this kind of behavior will make the world a better place?

Just you wait. Someone will try to stop them.

No more microcephalics

Zimmer describes some of the more recent work on Flores Man — people are still arguing over whether the fossil is of a peculiarly abnormal human with microcephaly, or whether there was a species of ‘miniaturized’ Homo living on the islands of the Pacific. Trying to establish common characteristics of microcephalics is an interesting project, but it doesn’t answer the question. We need more fossils! Among the good news Carl mentions is the report that more excavations will be underway this year.

The Beagle Project

Here’s a sweet idea: rebuild Darwin’s ship, the Beagle in time for the bicentennial of Darwin’s birth in 2009 (and also the 150 year mark for publication of the Origin).

2009 is the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth, an event which will be celebrated throughout the world. The Beagle Project will rebuild a working replica of HMS Beagle in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales. It will provide the striking icon of Darwin’s achievement around which the celebrations will coalesce, and which is already attracting the attention of TV and film companies on both sides of the Atlantic.

The replica Beagle will recreate the 1831-36 circumnavigation with international crews of aspiring young scientists aboard, following the same course and making similar landfalls to those made by HMS Beagle when Darwin was aboard. The crew will take part in modern sampling, observation and experiments in a range of disciplines: biology, geology, oceanography, physics and meteorology. Their work will be followed in labs and classrooms worldwide through an interactive website. They will also compare the climate and wildlife observations made by Darwin and the crew of the Beagle in the 1830s with conditions today.

They’ve got plans, they’re looking for support, and of course they have a blog.