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Botany

Darwin Is Alive and Well at Down House
June 7, 2005
Chris Darwin, that is – the great, great grandson of Charles, and his fellow descendants Erasmus, Sarah, Allegra, Randal Keynes, and Leo Darwin Vogel.  The family members are retracing his footsteps in the fields around his old house by inventorying the plants, reports the BBC News.  The survey will help show if the flowering plants […]
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Uncategorized

Another Darwinian Assumption Overturned: Results “Too Radical”
June 7, 2005
Evolutionists are stunned at a study in comparative genomics performed by University of Chicago researchers that overturns a common belief about natural selection.  EurekAlert summarizes the finding: “The new data show that if more mutations show up at a gene, that gene tends to accept a higher percentage of those mutations.”  This means that mutations […]
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Darwin and Evolution

He’s Ba-a-a-ck: Lamarck Puts Pressure on Darwin – and ID, Too?
June 3, 2005
To historians of evolutionary theory, Lamarck is a 19th-century loser.  His hypothesis of “inheritance of acquired characteristics,” according to high school textbooks and common knowledge, was debunked by experiment, and overturned when Darwin proposed natural selection as a mechanism for evolution.  Why, then, does Massimo Pugliucci (Dept. of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New […]
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Uncategorized

Darwinists Excuse Prejudice as a Hard-wired, Common-Sense Evolutionary Adaptation
May 27, 2005
This week’s Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week comes from an Arizona State evo-psych press release echoed on News-Medical.net and EurekAlert: “Contrary to what most people believe, the tendency to be prejudiced is a form of common sense, hard-wired into the human brain through evolution as an adaptive response to protect our prehistoric ancestors from […]
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Education

Battlefield Dispatches
May 24, 2005
Reports from the evolution wars continue to come in.  Here are more recent stories about the conflicts over the teaching of evolution and intelligent design: The race card:  Fiona Morgan on Salon.com trashes those who try to link Darwin to racism.  The cartoon shows Darwin with a dunce cap sitting in the corner, but Morgan […]
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Uncategorized

Weird Jellyfish Eyes: Are They Missing Links?
May 13, 2005
“Missing Link?” asks the cover of Nature May 12, next to what looks like an alien head with a giant eye staring out.  The article by Nilsson et al.1 suggests that the box jellyfish has optical sensors that could represent primitive eyes that evolved before the more advanced eyes of vertebrates.  Most of us don’t […]
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Education

World Press Eyes Kansas Evolution Battle
May 5, 2005
The “Un-Scopes” trial of the decade is underway in Kansas, and the world press is watching.  Unlike the 1925 Scopes trial, this time evolution is the leader and intelligent design is the contender: actually, not even that – the leaders of the ID movement are not asking for ID to be taught, but only for […]
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Fossils

Missing Link Fish Story
May 3, 2005
Once upon a time, 450 million years ago, scavenger fish without teeth or bones roamed the shallow icy waters of Africa which was undergoing an Ice Age.  Slowly, over millions of years, they gained teeth and other structures characteristic of more advanced fish.  Then, a few thousand years ago, a lake in the (now continental […]
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Uncategorized

Is a Darwinian Tree Visible in the Genes?
April 30, 2005
Current Biology1 has an article on the status of searching for Darwin’s “tree of life” via comparative genomics.  The expected simple picture has become complex and difficult to decipher: The traditional view of animal evolution is one of gradually increasing complexity.  The earliest-branching flatworms lack the body cavity known as a coelom, which is a […]
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Darwin and Evolution

The Origin of Specious Ideas: Did Darwin Explain Speciation?
April 29, 2005
Even though Darwin’s best seller was titled On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, Albert and Schluter in Current Biology1 claim his title was deceptive: “Darwin’s book is about adaptation and the origin of varieties and has surprisingly little to say about selection and ‘the origin of species – that mystery of mysteries’.”  Is […]
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Uncategorized

Evolutionary Psychology “Wrong in Almost Every Detail”
April 28, 2005
Seems like Darwinism can’t get anything right about the human psyche.  Sharon Begley, writing in the Wall Street Journal, discussed David J. Buller’s new book, Adapting Minds (MIT Press, 2005), and found it “the most persuasive critique of evo psych I have encountered.”  Buller details why evolutionary psychology, despite its bravado, fails to explain rape, […]
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Intelligent Design

Nature Alerts Researchers to Threat of Intelligent Design Movement
April 27, 2005
It can’t be ignored anymore, reported Nature in two articles this week.  Geoff Brumfiel1 asked academic researchers, “Who has designs on your students’ minds?”  He reported on the rise of IDEA Clubs (Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness, such as the first one at UC San Diego), highlighting the story of Salvador Cordova’s prospering IDEA club […]
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Education

Evolutionists Plan Secret Weapon for Kansas Debate
April 21, 2005
Pro-evolution scientists have changed their mind and decided to join the hearings about the Kansas science standards, but haven’t released a list of witnesses.  Those in favor of the new standards, which call for critical thinking about evolution, have published a complete list.     On March 31, Geoff Brumfiel in Nature1 reported, “Biologists snub […]
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Education

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Academic Bill of Rights?
April 13, 2005
Why would Nature claim that academic freedom is a threat to academic freedom?  In the April 7 issue,1 Emma Marris titled her news item, “Professors bristle as states act to mould lecture content – Academics are fighting right-wing ‘bills of rights’.”  The academic freedom the professors want is their own freedom to control lecture content, […]
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Intelligent Design

Whose Side Is Unenlightened?
April 12, 2005
Here’s an opportunity for readers to compare arguments on both sides of the debate about origins and the nature of science.  Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief of Science, wrote an editorial last week that claims the sunrise of the intelligent design movement threatens “twilight for the Enlightenment.”1  He wrote that the “retrogression to the pre-Darwinian zoologist William […]
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