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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (409910)	8/24/2008 11:30:42 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 1575514

“Mickey evolved,” he said. “And Mickey gets cuter because Walt Disney makes more money that way. That is ‘selection.’ ” I'm amazed at the use of Mickey Mouse's "evolution" in the classroom. Mickey Mouse is drawn by intelligent cartoonists. To simulate natural selection, they pretended to be birds picking light-colored moths off tree bark newly darkened by soot. Another amazing thing. The peppered moth story has been thoroughly debunked as bogus science: If you got any exposure to evolution in school, it is quite likely that you saw the evolutionists' prime example of survival of the fittest, the peppered moth, _Biston betularia_. These were a visual hit; moths came in light colored and dark colored (melanic) forms. The light colored were hard to see on natural trees covered in lichen, and the melanic ones were hard to see on trees darkened by decades of soot from the British version of the Industrial Revolution. Research in the 1950s showed that as the trees darkened, so did the moths; predator birds couldn't see the melanic forms as well, so their race prospered, produced progeny, and overtook the typical light colored ones. (There is an important subtext to this manifestation, that of human degradation of the environment.) The great problem with the theory of evolution by natural selection is that it describes changes over thousands of years, but the moths' changes over decades was an example of rapid environmental change that proved Darwin right. The problem was that they did no such thing. There were quiet objections to the research as it was being done, but it was such a hit that only in the past few years have biologists seriously cried foul by showing its many flaws. Now a clear and informative book, _Of Moths and Men: The Untold Story of Science and the Peppered Moth_ (Norton) by Judith Hooper tells the story of the personalities involved, how the mistakes came to be made, how they were eventually uncovered, and what the outcome of the affair was. In 1953, Bernard Kettlewell started the experiments to give numbers to the speculation that melanic moths were being naturally selected. He was a brilliant amateur moth expert, a tall, loud man, full of boisterous enthusiasm for his work, but the loudness hid deep insecurity. This was seized upon by the villain in this piece is E. B. "Henry" Ford, a misogynic and overbearing dandy who personified a type of Oxford academic. He was known for grabbing moths and eating them, for he said that was the only way to test its palatability. He strongly believed in classic Darwinism, and took Kettlewell under his wing as he realized that the experiments were a perfect field demonstration of Darwin's ideas, a demonstration that had been lacking. He leaned on Kettlewell for more results, and got them, and made them the centerpiece of his own book. When Kettlewell later took his own life, Ford unkindly pronounced him a coward. Ford and Kettlewell initially heaped scorn on anyone who challenged their work, and there were few challenges. The most formidable challenge came from American lepidopterist Ted Sargent who showed in the 1970's that Kettlewell's work had serious problems. The debunking didn't take, because the peppered moth was too entrenched. It has only been in the past five years that there has been serious and accepted opposition to evolution's shining example. Not letting the peppered moth go are the creationists, who are delighted with this story. "If this is the best the evolutionists can do," they seem to say, "Darwin must have been wrong all along." It is not so simple, of course. Those who worked on debunking the peppered moth story are all evolutionists, as is almost every single biologist in the world. There are religious objections to evolution, but although its details may be subject to argument, it is as well founded as any other scientific theory. Hooper's lesson is decidedly not that evolution is somehow science called into question. It is instead that scientists are humans, that without proper supervision and checking and repeat experiments by others, they may see just what they want to see, and they may play power games that advance themselves rather than scientific truth. Hooper tells of science derailed by very human failings. Her descriptions of the personalities involved and the history of their interactions are detailed and entertaining. It may have taken too long in this spectacular case, but it is the duty of scientists, rather than religious enthusiasts, to steer research right when it goes wrong. amazon.com Bottom line - the peppered moth story made sense supeficially and was and is still used as in textbooks as an illustration of evolutionary theory. The problems with the peppered moth story are that Kettlewell glued moths to the sides of trees (where they don't normally go) and observed birds eating them - heck, the birds learned to follow Kettlewell around knowing he'd be gluing food to the sides of trees. But this was unnatural. In real life, moths are almost never eaten by birds because moths are nocturnal and birds aren't. Their main predator of moths are bats who find them by echo location and can't even tell the difference between peppered and black moths.