What on earth were you thinking when you produced a garish cover proclaiming that "Darwin was wrong" (24 January)?
First, it's false, and second, it's inflammatory. And, as you surely know, many readers will interpret the cover not as being about Darwin, the historical figure, but about evolution.
Nothing in the article showed that the concept of the tree of life is unsound; only that it is more complicated than was realised before the advent of molecular genetics. It is still true that all of life arose from "a few forms or... one", as Darwin concluded in The Origin of Species. It is still true that it diversified by descent with modification via natural selection and other factors.
Of course there's a tree; it's just more of a banyan than an oak at its single-celled-organism base. The problem of horizontal gene-transfer in most non-bacterial species is not serious enough to obscure the branches we find by sequencing their DNA.
The accompanying editorial makes it clear that you knew perfectly well that your cover was handing the creationists a golden opportunity to mislead school boards, students and the general public about the status of evolutionary biology. Indeed, within hours of publication members of the Texas State Board of Education were citing the article as evidence that teachers needed to teach creationist-inspired "weaknesses of evolution", claiming: "Darwin's tree of life is wrong".
You have made a lot of extra, unpleasant work for the scientists whose work you should be explaining to the general public. We all now have to try to correct all the misapprehensions your cover has engendered.
• Find a longer version of this letter online.
- From issue 2696 of New Scientist magazine, page 24. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
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Have your say
Darwin Was Right
Thu Feb 19 17:48:20 GMT 2009 by Tyler Druden
Well, I guess that told you. Your next cover would almost seem to write itself...
Invest In Progress
Thu Feb 19 18:03:04 GMT 2009 by Felix
Well, I hope the cover at least sold a few extra copies. Please put the revenue to good use, perhaps by paying someone to write an extra-special-good article that helps educate readers (parents of school students) about the misconceptions of 'weaknesses'.
Of course there are explanatory gaps, as in all scientific theories. ToE doesn't have remarkably large gaps, nor are they mysterious. They're getting less and smaller. And, most importantly, there has been no alternative proposed, neither in method or as hypothesis.
Right On!
Thu Feb 19 18:03:09 GMT 2009 by Cris Cooper
These guys got it spot on. Please take care not to amplify misunderstandings and play in to the hands of anti-scientific pressure groups in future. I hope you are listening NS!
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