Fake evolutionary science in school textbooks is ‘disgraceful’ ‘appalling’ and ‘evil’ says Jonathan Wells
Reviewing Dr. Jonathan Wells’s Zombie Science: More Icons of Evolution for Salvo Magazine, Denyse O’Leary asked the question (the title of the new post on Evolution News): “Why Do Biology Textbooks Retain Discredited Evolutionary Icons?” The answer to Wells is “disgraceful,” “appalling,” even “evil.”
O’Leary recounts that “About fifteen years ago, I read Jonathan Wells’s Icons of Evolution (2000). The sheer brazenness of the outdated information that continued to be paraded in decades of textbooks dealing with evolution was striking — even to a longtime textbook editor (now retired) like me.”
She explains on the basis of past professional experience: “The textbook publishing industry depends on a simple set of facts:
- Parents are required by law to present their children to the local public school system unless they can afford other legally acceptable arrangements.
- Homeowners and businesses are required to fund the public system.
- The system needs textbooks.
- Textbook authors, usually successful teachers, are well rewarded.
Thus, the opportunities for soft corruption (stale, dated content that lingers year after year) are vast and inevitable. Some such stuff is doubtless defended by pressure groups, anxious to retain a discredited icon that supports their cause.”
photo/ Gerd Altmann via pixabay
Wells is willing to go farther than calling it “soft corruption.”
“’Disquieting’ is too mild. I would say ‘disgraceful,’ ‘appalling,’ even ‘evil,’” Wells said when asked “Why is it so easy for Darwinians to get away with disquieting misrepresentations in textbooks?”
“Every time we have tried to correct textbook misrepresentations, school boards or textbook adoption committees are bombarded by experts from the scientific establishment who assure them the textbooks are fine. Why does the scientific establishment go along with this? Most scientists ignore the issue and just want to be left alone to do their research.”
Wells is very clear on his beliefs in microevolution, changes and then states: “I do have an empirical objection to macroevolution because, as a biologist, I do not see sufficient evidence for believing in ‘transformism’—the idea that one species can transform into another. Even different species of fruit flies are so different, chromosomally and otherwise, that I see no empirical reason to believe they descended biologically from a common ancestor.”
Intolerance…authoritarian…controlling: all characteristics of the public school system’s approach to teaching outdated information on evolution. Even Wikipedia describes intelligent design and the beliefs of Wells as a “pseudoscientific argument.”
The Center for Science and Culture is based out of Seattle, Washington.
This 2005 photo provided by the journal Science
