[EAS]The Fruits of Science

[pjk]

Subject:   The Fruits of Science

(from
WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 24 Nov 00   Washington, DC)


BOOK REVIEW: "ICONS OF EVOLUTION" BY JONATHON WELLS.  There
are lots of unscientific books out there, but only a few of them
are truly anti-science; this one qualifies.  Wells seems
particularly incensed by Dobzhansky's 1937 observation that
nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. 
Nonsense, says Wells, it all makes perfect sense once you realize
that a supernatural intelligence decides everything.  Who are we
to ask why this intelligence chose to trick us with false clues?  
Genes, we learn, aren't the whole story.  "If our developmental
genes are similar to those of other animals," he puffs "why don't
we give birth to fruit flies instead of human beings?"  (Clearly,
we do give birth to fruits.)  Wells also frets over a conspiracy,
led by a "small faction in the National Academy" who have
"exploited the Academy's reputation to propagate Darwinian
dogma".  But he's confident that scientists will retaliate once
they "realize what is being done in their names."  Yawn.