Over on Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne asks “What would disprove evolution?”. The basic idea of his article is to a) summarize what is claimed by “the theory of evolution” (a phrase I dislike nearly as much as “Darwinism”), and b) what observations could falsify it.
I see, with rather alarming frequency, a major fallacy creeping in to discussions of human evolutionary history and how one may infer details about it. Specifically, there is a tendency to examine the traits of one or a few non-human species and to draw conclusions about the origin of human traits purely from these [...]
Because I might end up with something as silly as when chemists write about evolutionary biology.
Could ‘Advanced’ Dinosaurs Rule Other Planets?
New scientific research raises the possibility that advanced versions of T. rex and other dinosaurs — monstrous creatures with the intelligence and cunning of humans — may be the life forms [...]
Hold on to your hats folks, another major shake-up of evolutionary theory!
A new hypothesis posed by a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, associate professor and colleagues could be a game changer in the evolution arena. The hypothesis suggests some species are surviving by discarding genes and depending on other species to play their hand.
It has been a common tactic among creationists to attempt to discredit scientific ideas by linking them to the horrific actions of the likes of Hitler and the Nazis. The scientific merits of a theory do not rest on its societal implications, of course, but there is also the issue that the Nazis did [...]
I enjoyed Jerry Coyne’s book Why Evolution is True (though I don’t care for the title — Why Evolution is a Scientific Fact would have been much more accurate). The one complaint I had was that Coyne is a serious Darwinian (up to an including calling evolution “Darwinism”). That is, he interprets pretty much [...]
In case you haven’t been following the series of posts by evolutionary biologist Dr. Arlin Stoltzfus posted on Sandwalk, here is a list hosted at his own site:
The Curious Disconnect: Introduction (March 19, 2010). The Mutationism Myth 1. The Monk’s Lost Code and the Great Confusion (March 29, 2010) describes how the mutationism [...]
If I were to put together a respectful, short, easy to follow resource of major evolutionary concepts that science writers could consult whenever they wrote a piece involving evolutionary aspects, would they use it? Would my friends in the science writer world promote it, refer colleagues to it, send authors who get things wrong [...]
This story appeared on Science Daily, based on a press release from CNRS in France:
Segmentation Is the Secret Behind the Extraordinary Diversification of Animals
ScienceDaily (July 27, 2010) — Segmentation, the repetition of identical anatomical units, seems to be the secret behind the diversity and longevity of the largest and most common animal [...]