Readers might be justified in thinking that a response to it may be a fool’s errand. However, amidst all the invective and misdirection there are instances when Sampson calls into question the fundamental accuracy and truthfulness of the article. Those require a reply.

After two paragraphs of tiresome boilerplate of how besieged Christians are in America, he accuses me of visiting the park “cowardly undercover.” I attended the park like any other visitor would. I paid my admission fee, toured the grounds with the tour group, wandering off a few times but never sneaking anywhere. I was never asked why I was visiting. I was not asked to declare any religious affiliation. I was simply asked how many admissions I wished to purchase. My intention was to provide an honest, accurate picture of what any average visitor to the park would experience. This hardly constitutes a form of cowardice or being undercover.

The same paragraph accuses me of being “less than truthful” regarding Hovind, the park’s founder and builder. All statements regarding Mr. Hovind’s interactions with the criminal and civil courts of Florida and Escambia County are a matter of public record and are available both at the county courthouse and on the Internet at the Clerk of the Court’s Web site. All statements about Hovind’s battle with the IRS were taken from media reports readily accessible on the Internet and from wire services. Hovind was arrested for assault on a parishioner. Hovind’s home and office were raided by the IRS. Hovind has spent over two years and countless taxpayer dollars on a quixotic battle with Escambia County officials over a failure to pay a $50 fee. These are verifiable facts and their sources were listed in the article.

The fourth paragraph compounds a simple error by throwing insults, asserting that the boarded up buildings I witnessed along Old Palafox Road were in that condition because of Hurricane Ivan, which struck Pensacola on September 16, 2004. I visited the park in June 2004. Hurricane Ivan was not a factor in the long stream of boarded up businesses that line Old Palafox Road. The park stands out in its surroundings, and it merited the attention given it. Dinosaur Adventure Land (DAL) is surrounded by empty, abandoned commercial properties, many in disrepair. Its neighbors are a “buy-here-pay-here” used car dealership, auto repair shops, and a pawn shop. The owners and operators of DAL know this and are dishonest in this dodge, hiding behind the fig leaf of a natural disaster.

Interestingly, the next paragraph does not dispute the rather small number of visitors to the park as incorrect, but attempts to inflate the numbers as an example of a successful outreach. Sampson goes on to taunt: “How many students are educated everyday from Skeptical Inquirer?” While I am not sure of precise numbers, adding together the circulation of the magazine, the efforts of staff at CSICOP and the Center for Inquiry for education and outreach via television programs, media appearances, and so on, the number of people educated is considerable. However, I am certain of the number of visitors educated at DAL: zero. There is simply no education to be found at the park.

Sampson accuses me of launching ad hominem attacks against Hovind, trying to discredit creationism by discrediting Hovind and not directly addressing creationism’s “science.” He defends Hovind and creationism by posing a hypothetical: “Suppose an algebra teacher was convicted of theft and eventually sent to jail. Does that mean algebra is therefore disproved?” My brief biographical sketch of Hovind did not intend to discredit creationism by association. Creationism is a fiction no matter who its proponent. My intention was to provide a snapshot portrait of the scofflaw who built the park I went on to describe in great detail.

Sampson wrongfully accuses the magazine and myself of fraud, insisting that my description of the park is not true. He states: “Later, Martinez claims to have taken pictures of the Dinosaur Adventure Land grounds. Unsurprisingly he fails to include them in his article, but instead only prints an outdated picture of the early stages of DAL’s creation museum building number 5. If Martinez included pictures of DAL grounds with the claims he’s making, it would be all too clear that he’s purposely painting an inaccurate portrait.”

During my visit in June 2004, I took more than 115 digital and film photographs of Dinosaur Adventure Land. The Skeptical Inquirer chose to run only three of them due to space considerations, more than the number Sampson incorrectly states. The photograph of the Creation Museum Sampson attacks as outdated was taken in June 2004, along with all the other images in the article. The top photograph on page 48 is of the actual pamphlet travelers in Florida’s Panhandle can pick up as an advertisement of the park. Their own advertisement depicts the “Fossil Dig” pit, the science center, the “Circle Swivel Springasaurus,” and the “Dinosaur Hunt.” All these are described accurately in the article.

Sampson is particularly exercised about my depiction of the tour guides at DAL. He states his pride in their ministering to the guests. Their quiet physical intimidation of guests at the park is more of a piece with the sales techniques of used car lots than the ministry. He also misses the point of the passage in which I describe eavesdropping on the conversation of a group of guides. He objected that I appeared to be mocking them for discussing scripture in a Christian park. The point I was making was that here were a group of young men, early in their adult lives, passing time by enthusiastically criticizing another branch of the Christian religion. It was difficult to reconcile all the earlier talk of Jesus and love with the “down-time” religious chauvinism I heard.

Sampson wraps up his indictment of my article by continuing to assert that it is a sloppy hatchet job that distorts the many valuable lessons DAL imparts to its visitors and lies about the contents of the park. He makes these claims despite the fact that he knows the descriptions are correct. He claims that a current and accurate photograph is outdated. He claims that the park’s surroundings are in disrepair due to a hurricane when he knows that the deterioration of these buildings predate the storm.

He keeps up a steady drumbeat of mocking the piece because it does nothing to disprove creationism scientifically. That was never the intention. This magazine has published many other articles by some of the finest scientists in the world effectively demolishing creationism as the pseudoscience it is. It should have been obvious to most readers that this was intended as descriptive reporting, and done in an intentionally deadpan style so that the absurdity of the place would shine through. This piece was carefully researched, reported, and written, and I stand by every word of it.

Sampson perpetrates a shabby sham of a rebuttal to my piece, and distorts what the article actually states and reports. Sampson should have included a link to the actual article on the Skeptical Inquirer Web page so that his visitors could have read the article for themselves. But then Hovind and his Dinosaur Adventure Land have never been about accuracy and honesty.

The story begins with the discovery of a very important document known as the “Littlechild letter.” This letter, written by former Chief Inspector John G. Littlechild to the journalist George R. Sims in 1913, came to light in a small collection of Sims’s correspondence that was bought in 1993 by Stewart Evans, a police officer himself and a leading authority on the Ripper case. Evans recognized its significance immediately. Littlechild, in fact, had been in charge of the Special Branch at Scotland Yard in 1888, the year in which the Ripper killed his victims, and in that capacity, would have worked in close and regular personal contact with men like Chief Inspector Swanson, appointed by Sir Charles Warren to oversee the Ripper inquiry.

The Disquieting Dr. T.

In his letter, Inspector Littlechild writes: “. . . amongst the suspects, and to my mind a very likely one, was a Dr. T. . . . He was an American quack named Tumblety and was at one time a frequent visitor to London and on these occasions constantly brought under the notice of police, there being a large dossier concerning him at Scotland Yard. Although a 'Sycopathia Sexualis’ [sic] subject he was not known as a 'Sadist' (which the murderer unquestionably was) but his feelings toward women were remarkable and bitter in the extreme, a fact on record. Tumblety was arrested at the time of the murders in connection with unnatural offenses and charged at Marlborough Street, remanded on bail, jumped his bail, and got away to Boulogne, France. He shortly left Boulogne and was never heard of afterwards. It was believed he committed suicide but it is certain that at that time, the 'Ripper' murders came to an end.”

Francis J. Tumblety was in fact in London during that fatal autumn of 1888 and on November 16 was brought before the Marlborough Street Police Court charged with homosexual offenses. He posted bail and was ordered to appear at the Central Criminal Court, but he violated bail, fled to France, and there, under the alias Frank Townsend, boarded a steamer bound for New York.

Tumblety was a well-known suspect in 1888, but somehow his existence was missed by researchers until the surfacing of this letter.

As with all of the suspects in the case, there is no concrete evidence pointing to Tumblety, but the plethora of circumstantial evidence, as well as the letter and opinion of such a high-ranking officer, makes Tumblety the most plausible new suspect.

Very little information has been ascertained about Tumblety’s beginnings, and I will draw on the excellent work done at www.casebook.org (and based on Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey’s Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer) to draw a profile of the suspect.

Francis J. Tumblety, Jack the Ripper suspect.

His birthplace is the first of many mysteries surrounding him. He was possibly a Canadian, the son of an emigrated Irishman, born around 1833, the youngest of eleven children. His family soon moved to Rochester, New York, where neighbors and acquaintances thought him “a dirty, awkward, ignorant, uncared- for, good-for-nothing boy . . . utterly devoid of education.” He was also known to peddle pornographic literature on the canal boats of Rochester. At some point in his adolescence, he also began working at a small drugstore run by a Dr. Lispenard, who is said to have “carried on a medical business of a disreputable kind.”

Around 1850, Tumblety left Rochester, perhaps for Detroit, where he started his own practice as an Indian herb doctor. He was arrested in 1857 for attempting to abort the pregnancy of a local prostitute. It was alleged that he sold her a bottle of pills and liquid for the purpose, but after some legal haggling, Tumblety was released.

Around 1860, he left Montréal for Saint John, Nova Scotia. In September of that year, he again found trouble when a patient of his named James Portmore died while taking medicine prescribed by Tumblety. In his typical brazen fashion, Tumblety showed up at the coroner’s inquest and questioned Portmore’s widow himself as to the cause of death. The ruse didn't work, however, and Tumblety made a last-ditch attempt at freedom by fleeing the town for Calais, Maine.

It was at this time that Tumblety’s alleged hatred for women became most pronounced, as seen in the testimony of a Colonel Dunham, who was one night invited to dinner by Tumblety: “Someone asked why he had not invited some women to his dinner. His face instantly became as black as a thunder-cloud. He had a pack of cards in his hand, but he laid them down and said, almost savagely, 'No, Colonel, I don't know any such cattle, and if I did I would, as your friend, sooner give you a dose of quick poison than take you into such danger.' He then broke into a homily on the sin and folly of dissipation [promiscuity], fiercely denounced all women and especially fallen women.

“He then invited us into his office where he illustrated his lecture so to speak. One side of this room was entirely occupied with cases, outwardly resembling wardrobes. When the doors were opened quite a museum was revealed-tiers of shelves with glass jars and cases, some round and others square, filled with all sorts of anatomical specimens. The 'doctor' placed on a table a dozen or more jars containing, as he said, the matrices (uteri) of every class of women. Nearly a half of one of these cases was occupied exclusively with these specimens. . . . When he was asked why he hated women, he said that when quite a young man he fell desperately in love with a pretty girl, rather his senior, who promised to reciprocate his affection. After a brief courtship he married her. The honeymoon was not over when he noticed a disposition on the part of his wife to flirt with other men. He remonstrated, she kissed him, called him a dear jealous fool-and he believed her. Happening one day to pass in a cab through the worst part of the town he saw his wife and a man enter a gloomy- looking house. Then he learned that before her marriage his wife had been an inmate of that and many similar houses. Then he gave up all womankind.”

If any of this account is to be taken at face value, it certainly contains various elements that may have contributed to the making of a murderer.

Pursued by Scotland Yard

After a series of brushes with the law (including his being arrested in connecting with the Lincoln assassination) Tumblety wisely decided to leave America for London in the late 1860s. In the years that followed, he continued to travel across both America and Europe, returned to Liverpool in June of 1888, and once again found himself at odds with the police. He was arrested on November 7, 1888, on charges of homosexual activities.

Most interestingly, Tumblety was then charged on suspicion of the Whitechapel murders on November 12, but as we have seen, he fled to France before a trial could be held. New York officials knew of his impending arrival and had the ports watched for the suspect but to no avail. It was reported that Scotland Yard men had followed Tumblety across the Atlantic, and it is known that Inspector Andrews did follow a suspect to New York City around this time.

New York City’s Chief Inspector Byrnes soon discovered that Tumblety was lodging at 79 East Tenth Street at the home of a Mrs. McNamara, and he had him under surveillance for some days following. Byrnes could not arrest Tumblety because, in his own words, “there is no proof of his complicity in the Whitechapel murders, and the crime for which he was under bond in London is not extraditable.”

Fear and suspicion rose until, on December 5, Tumblety disappeared from his lodgings once again, eluding the New York City police, who were watching him closely. Interest gradually waned as the years dragged on, and Tumblety next appeared in Rochester in 1893, where he lived with his sister for a time. He died a decade later in 1903 in St. Louis as a man of considerable wealth and was buried in Rochester, New York.

Facts and Doubts

In conclusion, Evans and Gainey outline fifteen reasons why they believe Tumblety should be considered a top suspect in the Whitechapel murders. Among them:

• Tumblety fits many requirements of what we now know as the “serial-killer profile.” He had a supposed hatred of women and prostitutes (based on the abortion with the prostitute, his alleged failed marriage to an ex-prostitute, his collection of uteri, etc.).
• Tumblety was in London at the time.
• Tumblety may have had some anatomical knowledge, as can be inferred from his collection of wombs, his “medical” practice, and his short-term work with Dr. Lispenard in Rochester.
• He was arrested in the midst of the Autumn of Terror on suspicion of having committed the murders.
• There were no more murders after he fled England on November 24.
• Chief Inspector Littlechild, a top name in Scotland Yard, believed him a “very likely suspect,” and Littlechild was not alone in his convictions.

As convincing as all this appears, however, there are other historians who do not agree with these conclusions. First of all, although Tumblety’s homosexuality could at that time be seen as a strong element of suspicion (Littlechild wrote in his letter: “It is very strange how those given to 'Contrary sexual instinct' and 'degenerates’ are given to cruelty, even Wilde used to like to be punched about”), today things are seen differently. From what is known of serial killers today, Tumblety’s tendencies might exclude him as a suspect; homosexual serial killers, in fact, are concerned singularly with male victims and would be uninterested in female prostitutes. And, according to as noted a Ripper authority as Philip Sugden, Tumblety was fifty-six years old in 1888, far older than any of the men reportedly seen in the company of the victims, and he also seems to have been a man of much greater physical stature than the Ripper. As for evidence, there was never anything of substance that could connect Tumblety with any of the murders.

So it may be that Tumblety had nothing to do with the killings in Whitechapel. Or he may very well have been the actual killer, and new evidence may surface in the future. In truth, however, we have to deal with the fact that after a century of final solutions, the answer to the killer’s true identity may never come to light, and Jack the Ripper could forever remain a mystery.

References

• Evans, Stewart, and Paul Gainey. 1996. Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer. New York: Kodansha America.
• Rumbelow, Donald. 1988. The Complete Jack the Ripper. London: Penguin Books.
• Sudgen, Philip. 2002. The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. New York: Carrol and Graff Publishers.

You'll recall that this all started more than three years earlier, when The New York Times reported on October 2, 2001, that researchers at prestigious Columbia University Medical Center in New York had made an astonishing discovery: faith healing actually works. Physicians used meticulous scientific methods to demonstrate that distant Christian prayers from the United States, Canada, and Australia increased the success rate of infertility treatments in Korea by 100 percent.

The media touted the astounding results, but to some readers it sounded preposterous. Within weeks of the “miraculous” study’s publication it became clear that something was indeed very wrong. The Journal of Reproductive Medicine (JRM), which published the study (K.Y. Cha, D.P. Wirth, and R.A. Lobo, “Does prayer influence the success of in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer?” 46:781-787, 2001), not only refused to publish letters critical of it, they refused to even acknowledge their receipt. As months went by the JRM steadfastly refused to respond to e-mails, calls, or letters about the study.

The JRM editors were not the only ones remaining silent. The study’s authors also refused to respond to questions about their apparently miraculous results. In December 2001 an investigation of Columbia University by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) revealed that the study’s lead author, Dr. Rogerio Lobo, first learned of the study six to twelve months after the study was completed. Professor Lobo subsequently denied having anything to do with the study’s design or conduct and claimed to have provided only editorial assistance. A year later study co-author Daniel Wirth was indicted by a federal grand jury on felony fraud charges involving various criminal activities.

The following significant events have occurred since my SI article was published. I comment accordingly.

Study co-author Daniel Wirth

On November 22, 2004, study co-author Daniel Wirth was sentenced to five years in prison followed by three years of supervised release (parole). At the conclusion of his sentencing hearing Mr. Wirth was taken into United States Marshal custody pending his transfer to a federal prison.

The Journal of Reproductive Medicine and co-author Dr. Kwang Cha

The following “Erratum” was buried on the very last page of the October 2004 issue of the JRM:

Erratum

In the article “Does Prayer Influence the Success of in Vitro Fertilization-Embryo Transfer? Report of a Masked, Randomized Trial,” by Kwang Y.Cha, MD, Daniel P. Wirth, JD, MS, and Rogerio A. Lobo, MD (2001;46:781-787), Dr. Lobo is listed as an author of the article and has requested that his name be deleted, as his name appears in error. He was not directly involved in conducting the research reported in the article; he was involved principally in redaction of the manuscript for stylistic and syntactic purposes. This alteration is in keeping with JRM authorship requirements.

How does one’s name appear, “in error” on a publication? Apparently everyone who reviewed the manuscript and everyone who reviewed the galley proofs, including the authors, peer-reviewers, and editors, did not notice this “error.” On the other hand, perhaps this is not so surprising since these same individuals did not notice that the study lacked any type of informed consent and claimed results that defy the laws of physics and several other fundamental scientific principles!

In November 2004, after three years of ignoring letters critical of the Cha/Wirth/Lobo study, the JRM took the unprecedented step of publishing a 1,000-word letter from Dr. Cha defending his absurd study. Thus, to the utter amazement of many readers, JRM allowed Dr. Cha to unilaterally present his side of the story unencumbered by critical comments from concerned physicians and scientists. The readers of JRM were thus partially informed of the controversy surrounding the study but only to convince them that any criticisms they may have read about in newspapers were unwarranted.

Among the highlights of Dr. Cha’s published letter is the statement that “It is regrettable that co-author Daniel P. Wirth has been accused of fraud. . . .” Cha also refers to “this alleged crime.” This implies that, regrettably, Mr. Wirth may have been falsely accused. Nothing could be further from the truth. Six months before Cha’s letter was published Mr. Wirth had pleaded guilty to all crimes contained in a forty-six-page federal indictment thus admitting to a twenty-year history of criminal fraudulent activities. Dr. Cha went on to defend the study’s convoluted study design by stating that Mr. Wirth felt it was the best design to use. This is nothing more than an argument from authority-"It’s fine because the authority says it’s fine.” However, in this case the authority is a convicted felon with a degree in parapsychology (ghostbusting) and a long history of publishing bizarre studies!

Finally, Dr. Cha repeatedly stated that it would have been “impossible” for Mr. Wirth to have influenced the outcome of this study and that “There is no reason to think that Mr. Wirth would have been motivated not to organize prayer groups when such groups are his area of interest.” How does the fact that Mr. Wirth has an interest in prayer groups prove that he did anything at all? The federal indictment makes it clear that Mr. Wirth was perpetrating several criminal schemes involving millions of dollars at the time the Cha/Wirth/Lobo study was allegedly conducted. In the midst of this criminal activity are we to believe that Mr. Wirth took the extensive time and effort needed to meticulously organize and manage several levels of prayer groups in three nations? Does Dr. Cha seriously believe that the idea that Mr. Wirth did not do so is impossible? Perhaps this explains why Dr. Cha will not answer questions about the study.

Columbia University and co-author Dr. Rogerio Lobo

Soon after publication of the SI critique of the study, Columbia University assembled a team of physicians and scientists to investigate the situation. However, on December 1, 2004, Columbia released a statement saying that the medical school “supports Dr. Rogerio Lobo’s decision to remove his name” from the paper. This move had already been announced by the JRM and seemed like a reasonable first step. However, to the surprise of many scientists, the university simultaneously announced that Dr. Lobo’s decision would put an end to the investigation of the study by the medical school’s Committee on the Conduct of Science. This unprecedented move implied that the controversy surrounding the ridiculous study involved only questions of authorship. This, of course, is absolutely not true. The real issue is that the study was absurd, flawed, possibly fraudulent, and claimed to document mysterious supernatural and/or paranormal events. Removing one author’s name from the paper resolved nothing. In any case, this maneuver did not successfully distance Columbia from the scandal because co-author Kwang Cha was also at Columbia when the study was published; in fact, he was head of the now defunct Cha/Columbia Infertility Center.

In the final analysis it is not the behavior of Mr. Wirth but that of individuals at Columbia University and the JRM that have seriously damaged the reputation of science and evidence-based medicine. Peer-review systems at both institutions have completely failed. As we enter the fourth year of this saga it is becoming apparent that some individuals will never admit their mistakes. In any case, the former Cha/Wirth/Lobo miracle study is now the Cha/Wirth miracle study. Dr. Cha will not answer questions about the scandal and Mr. Wirth has just been sentenced to five years in federal prison. Their ludicrous “study” will remain in the peer-reviewed Journal of Reproductive Medicine, will remain indexed in Pubmed-MEDLINE, and will continue to be cited as valid scientific evidence for the power of supernatural faith healing. This is a scientific atrocity.

Many observers of the science press have noted an increasing tendency for both news releases and printed stories to exaggerate the uniqueness and significance of new research. The writer of a news release does this to increase the probability that the media will cover the story, and the media reporter will go along with this hyperbole or perhaps expand it further to get the story approved for publication by editors or other gatekeepers.

The field of impacts (and impact hazards) is not immune to these trends. In my NASA-supported Web page http://impact.arc.nasa.gov, I try to apply a filter to reduce the noise level in media reports, which would otherwise overwhelm much of the real science.

This is not intended as a general criticism of science reporting. There are many excellent science journalists who understand the issues and provide well-reasoned discussions of context for news stories. Overall, the reporting by science journalists of impact-related stories has been excellent. But a hyperbolic headline added without their knowledge can sometimes catch even the best writers.

Background on Asteroids and Impacts

In his excellent book Mysteries of Terra Firma (Free Press, 2001), geologist James Powell discusses three revolutions in our understanding of Earth history. The first, responding primarily to the discovery of radioactivity at the end of the nineteenth century, was the concept of deep time-measurement of the age of Earth and dating of the primary geological and evolutionary events in its history. The second revolution dealt with the discovery of plate tectonics, first suggested (as “continental drift”) but subsequently rejected early in the twentieth century. Plate tectonics was accepted only in the 1960s (when a wide range of strong new evidence was obtained) and has become the fundamental theory for understanding the dynamics and history of the Earth’s crust. The third revolution was the space-age recognition of the role of cosmic impacts on geology and evolution.

Scientists are still exploring many implications of this third revolution. Space exploration missions to other worlds and careful scrutiny of impact landforms on Earth have revealed that cratering is a universal process in the solar system. The pioneering work by Walter Alvarez and colleagues on the end-Cretaceous mass extinction further showed that cosmic impacts can have profound influences on the evolution of life. Whether other mass extinctions are also due to impacts remains an open question.

My own interest in impacts includes the contemporary danger from asteroids colliding with Earth. Although the probabilities are low, a devastating impact capable of killing hundreds of millions of people could happen at any time. The NASA Spaceguard program, which seeks to find any threatening asteroid in time to mitigate the impact (preferably by deflecting the asteroid away from Earth), is one response to a growing awareness of the impact problem.

Did the KT Impact Cause the Extinction of the Dinosaurs?

The KT (Cretaceous/Tertiary, 65 million years ago) extinction is by now an old story, but sometimes the news media still report dramatically opposed conclusions as if a major debate existed to this day. Certainly the issue was contentious when impact extinction was first proposed by the Alvarez team twenty-five years ago, but a scientific consensus had emerged by the early 1990s. This progress of the Alvarez theory, increasingly supported by new evidence (such as the discovery of the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico), has been chronicled in several excellent books, such as Night Comes to the Cretaceous by James Powell, T. Rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter Alvarez, The End of the Dinosaurs by Charles Frankel, and When Life Nearly Died by Michael Benton.

In spite of the scientific consensus, there was substantial media coverage in 2004 of alternative hypotheses of dinosaur extinction. Major stories have arisen from the work of paleontologist Gerta Keller at Princeton, who has been challenging the impact theory for more than two decades. Recently she has decided that impacts may indeed be implicated, but probably not the Chicxulub impact (just off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula, the impact most earth scientists think is primarily responsible). One hypothesis she has suggested is that while the 100-million-megaton energy Chicxulub impact was insufficient to kill the dinosaurs, a smaller impact 300,000 years later may have done so. Princeton University frequently issues news releases on her work, and sometimes the publicity gets out of hand, with bold headlines such as “KT Mass Extinction Debate Wide Open and in Full Swing,” “The Space Rock Was Framed: Asteroid Cleared in Dinosaurs’ Death,” and “Asteroid Couldn't Have Wiped Out Dinos.”

One characteristic of media hype is to suggest that all science dealing with the KT extinction is about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are popular. But dinosaur fossils, which are relatively rare, do not define the mass extinction boundary, which is precisely marked in the marine fossil record by changes in single-celled protists, as well as by the global layer of extraterrestrial material and shocked quartz from the impact.

On the other hand, some scientists discuss the dinosaur extinction without reference to the simultaneous global mass extinction in which more than half of all biological families were lost. This attitude is reflected in the remark by paleontologist David Penny that “We agree completely with the geophysicists that an extraterrestrial impact marks the end of the Cretaceous. But after twenty-five years [scientists] have still not provided a single piece of evidence that this was the primary reason for the decline of the dinosaurs.” [1]

Most scientists consider it to be exceedingly unlikely that the dinosaur extinction was unrelated to the global KT event. In addition to the coincidence in time and increasing evidence that the dinosaur extinction was abrupt, we think we understand how the Chicxulub impact killed large land animals by a combination of brief global firestorm followed by months of cold. Neglecting this relationship is one fatal flaw in this year’s widely reported hypothesis that dinosaurs went extinct because of disparity in the numbers of males and females born. Perhaps in this case the publicity was stimulated by the word sex, as in the Washington Times headline “Why Dinosaurs Died-It’s All about Sex.”

An Impact-caused Extinction 250 Million Years Ago?

Was the end-Permian mass extinction caused by an impact? No one knows, even though the PT event (Permian/Triassic, 252.6 million years ago, a newly published, more precise date for the prime extinction) was the greatest of all mass extinctions, with more than 90 percent of families becoming extinct. The past year has seen several new scientific results, many associated with claims and counter-claims concerning the submarine Bedout impact (or non-impact) structure that might (or might not) be the “smoking gun” crater. Also widely reported have been evidence of extraterrestrial material (but not iridium or shocked quartz, so far) at the PT boundary, and recent indications that the PT extinction may have been two sharp events separated by several million years.

I have no quarrel with the media coverage of these issues, except where news releases claim that the question has been definitively solved. There is no consensus concerning the cause of the PT extinction, and hence every reason to follow the debates as they happen. For example, I will be interested in results from a blind test for evidence of an impact that is being conducted by a team of scientists using new samples from China, where an excellent cross- section of PT rocks is accessible.

Meteorites and Fires

Meteorites do not cause fires. Yet it is common to find news reports that a bright meteor fell and started a fire. Often the existence of a fire is quoted as evidence that the meteor struck the ground (thus making it a meteorite).

In 2003, the old idea that both the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and another conflagration more than a hundred miles north in Wisconsin were started by hot stones falling from the sky was revived. This coincidence seems striking, with two of the most destructive fires in U.S. history happening at the same time-but the coincidence might also be related to extreme dryness and high winds across the upper Midwest.

In the cases where we have been able to estimate the surface temperature of just-fallen meteorites (such as where they land on snow or ice), the data indicate that they are cool. Nor should this be surprising: the violent heating of the stone’s surface by atmospheric friction lasts only a few seconds, followed by several minutes of free-fall through the cold stratosphere. I follow the rule of thumb that if a meteor or meteorite is reported to have started a fire, the claim is probably mistaken. These are “meteorwrongs,” not meteorites.

The Recent Impact Rate

A common assertion in the tabloid press and on some Web sites is that we are at great risk from impacts, because impacts happen much more frequently than the scientists claim. Usually the argument is related to supposed evidence for recent large impacts.

One report (from The Guardian, on August 19, 2004) concerned huge craters under the Antarctic ice sheet said to be caused by an asteroid as big as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, but striking about 780,000 years ago. The newspaper reported that an asteroid measuring three to seven miles across broke up in the atmosphere with five large pieces creating multiple craters over an area measuring 1,300 by 2,400 miles. Supposedly this impact caused a reversal in Earth’s magnetic field (a highly suspect claim) but little other damage. Obviously the description of this event is inconsistent with what is known about cosmic impacts, yet this “discovery” was reported seriously.

The “Sirente crater,” a lake near Abruzzi, Italy, has also been widely speculated to be an impact from the Roman period. If this were true, Sirente would be one of the most recent craters on Earth, falling right next door to the capital of the Roman Empire. However, no meteoritic material has yet been recovered from the lake. In 2004, an article in Tumbling Stone magazine suggests that this is an anthropogenic feature and not the result of an impact.

The Web site of Astronomy magazine published a report in October 2004 on identification of a field of meteorites and impact craters near Lake Chiemsee in southeastern Bavaria, Germany. This crater field, which falls within an ellipse 58 by 27 km, is said to hold at least eighty-one impact craters ranging from 3 to 370 meters in size. The authors, using historical and archeological evidence, conclude that an asteroid or comet fragment exploded above southeastern Germany in the Celtic-Roman period, probably around 200 b.c. They estimate that the projectile had a diameter of about 1 km. Since the authors are primarily amateur scientists and their work has not been published in a refereed journal, it is difficult for me to judge these conclusions, in terms of either the identification of impact craters or their probable date of formation. Another report, discussed below, suggests that there are many very dark, unseen comets that constitute a previously unrecognized threat.

In assessing the reliability of such stories, we should note that even one of these recent mega-impacts is unexpected from known impact rates, which are based on both astronomical observations and the long-term cratering history of Earth and Moon. (These impact rates might be off by a factor of two, but certainly not by a factor of ten or more.) For example, the Lake Chiemsee impactor is claimed to have been about 1 km in diameter and to have struck within the past 2,500 years, whereas on average an asteroid or comet this large hits Earth only once in about 500,000 years. While any one impact might be true (as a statistical fluke), it is hard to believe that several of these stories are correct. I remain skeptical.

Super-dark “Stealth” Comets

A new report in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society by W.M. Napier, J.T. Wickramasinghe, and N.C. Wickramasinghe is titled “Extreme albedo comets and the impact hazard.” Based on a dynamical argument, they conclude that there should be more than 1,000 times more Halley-type comets than are actually observed. They therefore suggest that the comets become invisible, and that the impactor population is dominated by bodies too dark to be seen with current astronomical surveys.

One should be skeptical of a theoretical result that has no data to support it. One should be even more skeptical if it seems inconsistent with the data we do have, resolved (in this case) only by postulating a new class of “invisible” comets. But further, the idea that our astronomical surveys might miss huge numbers of such “stealth” objects is largely beside the point. We know about the low comet cratering rates from the dearth of small craters on Jupiter’s Galilean satellites, especially Europa. From this perspective it seems clear that there is not a large population of stealth comets to worry us.

Proposed Rain of Mini-comets

In the late 1980s, the proposal of a tremendous flux of tiny comets (each no bigger than a bus) was widely discussed in the science media. The discoverer was a well-respected space scientist from the University of Iowa, Lou Frank, who was attempting to interpret very small, transient dark patches in NASA spacecraft images of Earth’s atmosphere. Frank hit upon the idea that these dark spots were due to bursts of water vapor liberated in the upper atmosphere by disintegrating small comets, a hypothesis that he advocated at meetings of the American Geophysical Union, in published papers, and directly to many science journalists.

In spite of the excellent reputation of their advocate and invocation of NASA satellite data, an intense rain of such mini-comets was quickly recognized by most scientists as inconsistent with a wide range of other observations. The numbers of impactors proposed by Frank were a million times higher than the known flux of objects with their proposed mass. They would have to be so black that they were invisible to telescopes. Since their atmospheric impacts were also not being seen as meteors or flashes of light, they must also carry little energy. (The absence of a flash was later confirmed when data were released from sensitive surveillance satellites that constantly scan Earth from above.) They also evidently did not make craters when they struck the Moon. Finally, the amount of water vapor they would dump in the upper atmosphere was inconsistent with the known dry conditions in the stratosphere.

Although many scientists assumed that the dark spots were just noise in the spacecraft detector, they were unable to work with the raw data to verify this speculation. The media story persisted, aided by NASA news releases supporting the mini-comets. While they shook their heads in wonderment, few of Frank’s colleagues wanted to challenge him personally. His advocacy of mini-comets became an obsession-he even wrote a book called The Big Splash to market his ideas directly to the public. There seemed to be no polite way to make the story go away. One scientist tried, however, to counter with humor, when he proposed that the mini-comets be called Louis A. Frank Objects, or LAFOs.

Impact News in Great Britain

Based on the large sampling of press reports from both sides of the Atlantic collected by anthropologist Benny Peiser of Liverpool John Moores University, there seem to be significant differences in the press treatment of impact science stories between the United States and the United Kingdom. Many British science reporters like to play such stories for their humorous possibilities, as opposed to the straight science reporting that is standard in America. Ridiculing the “boffins” seems to be a popular way to treat scientific controversy. Another approach is to start off a story in a hyperbolic vein, only tempering the initial overstatements several paragraphs down. For example, an opening assertion might be made that an asteroid is on a collision course with Earth, but a few paragraphs later it is revealed the the probability of the impact is only one in 100,000. My impression is that the British reading public does not take this very seriously, and that their news reporting in general is intended to be more entertaining. A problem can occur, however, when such stories are picked up in other countries, where this tongue-in-cheek tone might be taken seriously. Let the reader beware.

Space science research dealing with impacts often makes a good story, especially when it is controversial. The public is likely to find science more interesting if they realize that research is carried out by real people working in a competitive environment. The controversy is very real in some cases, such as finding the cause (or causes) of the great PT mass extinction. In other cases, such as the KT mass extinction and the contemporary rate of impacts on Earth, a consensus exists based on multiple lines of evidence. While there are still many media-worthy stories, we should be skeptical of reports that the consensus has been overthrown by a single new result.

As Carl Sagan often said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” A similar admonition might be that before revolutionary theories are widely publicized, they need to be given a reality check. This is best done by the scientists deciding whether to issue a news release. But if the scientists are not self-policing, the burden falls upon the journalists to filter the signal from the noise, or upon the skeptical attitude of the reader.

Notes:

1. This quote is from a perceptive article ("In Extinction Debate, Dinosaurs and Science Writers are the Losers”) by Rob Britt at Space.com, 14 October 2004; see here.

Charles Darwin liked to describe the origin of species as “one long argument,” but his extensive treatise in support of biological evolution now seems painfully brief compared to the argument that has followed in its wake. Indeed, never in the history of science has a more prolonged and passionate debate dogged the heels of a theory so thoroughly researched and repeatedly validated. And the end is nowhere in sight. Despite all evidence to the contrary, a large portion of the world’s population continues to cling to the belief that human beings are fundamentally different from all other life forms and that our origins are unique. It’s a lovely sentiment to be sure, but how is it that so many people continue to be drawn to this thoroughly discredited notion?

Like most mystic mindsets, creationist beliefs are normally instilled at an early age, nurtured by well-meaning parents and sustained by religious organizations whose vested leaders are traditionally loath to amend church doctrine in the face of emergent scientific facts. Though seemingly antithetic to the inquisitive nature of our species, the rote acceptance of received wisdom has been a hallmark of human culture almost from the get-go, arising initially as a benign behavioral adaptation geared to promote the rapid transfer of communal survival skills to our young hominid forebears. It was only with the advent of modern civilization that this age-old habit finally began to outlive its usefulness and yield serious negative consequences-most notably by granting gratuitous momentum to all kinds of ill-conceived notions about how the world is “supposed” to work. Today, this surge of ideological inertia remains a surprisingly powerful force, pushing beliefs as impossibly anachronistic as geocentrism and flat-Earth cosmology past the ramparts of the enlightenment to foul the fringes of modern thought.

Fortunately, unlike the veiled forces that impart momentum to particles of mass, the impulse that propels incongruous ideas from one generation to the next is fairly transparent at its base. After all, youngsters imprinted with self-flattering beliefs are understandably reluctant to amend them later in life owing to the special status and privileges they bestow. And once someone has grown accustomed to the hollow pleasures of this egocentric world view, it’s easy to see how these inflated beliefs would come to be shielded from the prickly barbs of reason by a panoply of family, friends and other like-minded folks, all of whom harbor the same inscrutable notions (mystery loves company).

Although this perpetual pattern of natal indoctrination and communal reassurance does not begin to encompass the full psychosocial breadth of this phenomenon-especially where adult converts are concerned-it does go a long way toward explaining the inordinate longevity of creationist mythology and why so many intelligent, well-educated, and otherwise rational people appear unable to step back and examine certain beliefs with a critical eye. Because creationist beliefs are both deeply rooted and profoundly comforting, it isn't hard to understand why certain people feel compelled to enlist any and all means at their disposal to discredit Darwin’s theory. Nor is it difficult to imagine the sense of frustration they must feel when repeatedly told by scientists that their arguments are fundamentally flawed.

Problem is, most folks-including many of the more learned among us-don't understand the basic workings of science well enough to appreciate how feeble the arguments against evolution really are. If they did, they would realize that the scientific process is not about gathering data to prove a favored hypothesis but instead involves the testing of ideas against the totality of real-world observations. Creationists turned amateur scientists almost always fail to grasp this essential scientific precept and so unwittingly launch from false premises all kinds of pseudoscientific arguments in support of special creation. In fact, if there’s one reason why creationist critiques are so consistently misguided it’s that adherents generally presuppose that special creation is true and then sift the evidence for clues to support that supposition-a recipe for self-deception that stands in stark contrast to the scientific method, which mandates that fresh hypotheses be derived from all available evidence.

Were this fundamental misconception to be extinguished in a sudden wave of scientific literacy, the illusory evidence that thinking creationists use to anchor their beliefs would be swept away in an instant, leaving precious little demand for the writings of creation “scientists.” As it is, however, an ungodly amount of literature is being published by the sectarian faithful in a spirited attempt to preserve mankind’s privileged place in the grand scheme of things. Whether knowingly or not, creationists of every stripe have come to rely on an assortment of pseudoscientific arguments to legitimize their efforts to unravel the fabric of evolutionary theory, hoping against hope that the extensive tapestry woven by seven generations of scientists might somehow dissolve with the tug of a few loose threads. Unfortunately, as the weave of evolutionary theory has continued to tighten and expand, the number and variety of confused arguments in defense of creationism and intelligent design have only risen to keep pace.

One popular approach enlisted by creation “scientists” is the classic all-or-nothing argument wherein proponents claim that nothing in science can be known with confidence until every last detail is described with absolute certainty. Appealing largely to those unschooled in the scientific method, critics point to such nonissues as gaps in the fossil record, poorly understood aspects of gene function, and the mystery of life’s origins as reasons to view evolutionary theory as speculative or provisional. What they fail to appreciate is that scientific theories are built solely upon evidence that is actually available for study and so cannot be refuted by speculation regarding those clues that remain hidden. As long as a theory remains consistent with observed phenomena and yields valid predictions, it must be considered a viable explanation regardless of what remains to be discovered. Thus, it is entirely irrelevant that gaps in the fossil record exist, but vitally important that those fossils that do exist make sense in the context of evolution. A single hominid fossil found among the trilobites of the Burgess Shale, for instance, would immediately throw Darwin’s theory into doubt. Likewise, the fact that certain aspects of molecular genetics remain to be fully described in no way negates the fact that the substantial amount that is known about gene function is entirely consistent with evolution as we understand it today.

Yet despite the proverbial admonition against doing so, many still view the absence of evidence as evidence of absence and remain all too eager to fill this fictional void with the narrative of their choosing. Indeed, this particular brand of argumentum ad ignorantiam has long been a mainstay for creationists looking to wedge their cosmology between the narrowing gaps of scientific knowledge (an increasingly difficult task). But issues of legitimacy aside, because this fallacy has sired so many specious claims over the years it seems only fitting that the mother of all such “arguments to ignorance” should stem from the granddaddy of all biological data gaps: the evolution of single-celled life forms.

Because no physical body of evidence exists to document the beginning of life on Earth, this information gap has proven to be a wildly popular (albeit wholly inappropriate) foil for those seeking to discredit evolutionary theory. In truth, the origin of life is an issue entirely separate from the origin of species, rendering this otherwise important question utterly irrelevant as far as the veracity of natural selection is concerned. Whether the first primitive life form arose from known physical processes or was somehow willed into being through means beyond our understanding, evidence that all life on Earth descended from simple primordial beings remains just as compelling, and the myth of independent creation just as untenable.

But even this slender refuge for creationist sentiment has now begun to evaporate under the light of modern scientific scrutiny, for although Earth’s original life forms left no physical evidence for scientists to examine, credible hypotheses regarding the spontaneous formation and assembly of self-replicating molecules have been proposed and tested nonetheless. Laboratory experiments and astronomic observations suggest that key organic compounds were present in abundance shortly following Earth’s formation and that natural chemical affinities and mineral scaffolds may have acted in concert to produce the simplest of biochemical copying machines. In 1953, Stanley Miller became the first to demonstrate that amino acids and other organic molecules could have formed through chemical means in prebiotic oceans capped with an atmosphere of ammonia, methane, and hydrogen gas. Although geochemists now question Miller’s assumptions regarding the reducing power of the prebiotic atmosphere (Bada 2003), reducing environments may well have existed in isolated pockets on the embryotic Earth (near volcanic vents for instance). Moreover, many of these same organic compounds have been found to exist among interstellar dust clouds and meteorites, suggesting that life’s building blocks may have been delivered to Earth on the backs of icy comets and carbonaceous asteroids.

Based on these and other findings, biochemists have proposed several plausible mechanisms by which these compounds may have coalesced of their own accord into the precursors of life. Experiments confirm that layered mineral deposits can attract, concentrate, and link organic molecules and that certain clays may function as scaffolding for assembling the molecular components of RNA (Hazen 2001). Crystalline templates have also been proposed as possible means of primitive protein assembly, their mirror-image surface structure accounting for the curious predominance of “left-handed” amino acids found in all creatures living today. These and other minerals have also been shown to facilitate the sequence of chemical transformations needed to spark life, acting as sheltered containers (feldspar), catalysts (magnetite), and iron sulfide reactants (pyrite). What’s more, a complex mixture of organic compounds formed within simulated interstellar ices has recently been observed to spontaneously form cell-like vessels when immersed in water (Dworkin 2001), providing yet another viable mechanism by which particles awash in a dilute prebiotic soup might have assembled themselves into crude cells.

Although the precise sequence of events will never be known with absolute certainty, these and similar experiments strongly suggest that the earliest terrestrial life forms arose spontaneously and in accordance with the known laws of nature. In short, everything we have come to understand about our world suggests that living creatures are a natural consequence of the laws that govern the physical universe-no more anomalous than the matter they comprise or the space they occupy. Yet despite all efforts to disseminate this hard-earned knowledge, a broad swath of creationist sentiment lingers on, fueled by well-worn arguments ranging from the philosophical and dogmatic to the confused and plain disingenuous. The great majority of these objections, however, quickly collapse under even the most cursory examination.

Many of the “scientific” arguments for intelligent design, for instance, invoke common misconceptions about how the physical world really works, as in the classic “watchmaker” argument wherein nature is assumed to act randomly and possess no organizational tendencies. Given this false premise, it is a simple matter to show that complex molecular structures could never have formed by chance alone any more than a factory whirlwind could assemble a Mercedes Benz from its component parts. But anyone with a basic understanding of chemistry knows full well that such analogies do not apply to atoms and molecules. If the physical sciences have taught us nothing else, it’s that the world of the very small is surprisingly counterintuitive. Processes in the realm of the microscopic simply do not behave as one might expect based on our experience living on the macroscopic plane. Electric charges, energy barriers, and nuclear forces all dominate the realm of the minuscule and compel individual atoms to form stable chemical bonds with neighboring elements, blindly building molecular structures of every possible type and complexity that the laws of physical chemistry will allow.

Objects large enough to arouse our naked senses, on the other hand, behave quite differently. Because they exhibit no special affinity for one another, the scattered components of a disassembled watch will never coalesce of their own accord-the odds against such haphazard assemblies are simply too long. Nature, however, does not act without organizational tendencies nor are living organisms randomly assembled. There is now ample reason to believe that simple unicellular life forms arose through processes endemic to the life-friendly universe we occupy and that more sophisticated beings slowly emerged from these modest beginnings. Indeed, all complex organisms on Earth (including humans) begin life as single cells that multiply, differentiate, and ultimately mature to assume the form of its parent-all in strict accordance with the natural laws of biochemistry.

The contention that evolution somehow violates the second law of thermodynamics is another popular fiction that has endured through widespread confusion over a fundamental physical concept-in this case, thermodynamic entropy. Couched in the plainest possible terms, the second law simply states that energy tends to spread from areas where it is concentrated to areas where it is not. Although it is not widely recognized, this phenomenon is an integral part of our everyday experience and shapes our commonsense expectations. Because energy always flows from where it is concentrated to where it is more diffuse, we expect, say, a warm bottle of GewŸrztraminer to chill when lowered into a bucket of ice water. In this instance, thermal energy will flow from the tepid wine to the surrounding fluid until both reach a common temperature and an energetic balance is achieved. Like the ice bucket and its contents, self-contained systems receiving no external energy will always experience a net increase in the diffusion of thermal energy, or a rise in thermodynamic entropy, resulting in lower energy gradients and less potential to do work.

Regrettably, this same term has also come to be used in a statistical context involving the distribution of particles placed in random motion within a closed system-a situation that has bred a great deal of confusion. Unlike thermodynamic entropy, which defines energy distributions, “logical” entropy describes the probability that randomly distributed particles will assume a certain configuration or organized pattern. Ordered systems with low entropy values may appear to the casual observer to contain discernable patterns whereas high entropy systems seem more disorganized. Gas molecules distributed within an enclosure, for example, are said to exhibit greater entropy when they are scattered than when they are grouped together. Why? Because although every possible pattern of molecules has an equal chance of occurring, there are a great many more ways to define a diffuse pattern than any given clumped arrangement and, as physicist Richard Feynman was keen to observe, logical entropy is simply “the logarithm of that number of ways.”

Despite the fact that thermodynamic and logical entropy are wholly independent concepts, many laymen-and a few scientists who really should know better-have nonetheless come to confuse and intermingle the two, transforming the second law of thermodynamics into a fictitious “law of disorder” that ostensibly explains why all material things decay and fall apart. In truth this has nothing to do with the second law of thermodynamics and even misuses the concept of logical entropy in that it attempts to explain large-scale phenomena. There is, in fact, no such universal mandate of decay that precludes the spontaneous formation of complex assemblages. Just because all complex systems will eventually break down as energy throughout the cosmos becomes evenly distributed doesn't mean that some interesting patterns can't take shape in the meantime.

Those who argue this point from a purely energetic standpoint are somewhat less confused but just as easily refuted. The fact that the amount of energy available to do work must always decrease in a closed system would indeed be a serious impediment to the evolution of life if our planet were isolated from all external energy sources, but one need look no further than our companion star to see that such is not the case. Energy is constantly being delivered to the thin shell of our biosphere both from above, in the form of sunlight, and below, via heat generated by Earth’s radioactive core, providing ample energy to fuel the assembly of structured molecules. Moreover, while it is true that the overall entropy of an isolated system cannot decrease, the entropy of certain parts of a system can, and often do, spontaneously decrease at the expense of even greater increases in adjacent regions, as with the formation of crystalline salts and snowflakes. Besides that, millions of chemical compounds including water, cholesterol, and DNA actually carry less energy than the elements they contain (possessing “negative energies of formation” in scientific parlance). In these cases, the second law of thermodynamics actually favors the impromptu formation of complex structured molecules due to their tendency to disperse energy as they coalesce.

Another threadbare canard spread by the creationist camp is that biological evolution is still not widely accepted within the scientific community-a ruse for which competing evolutionary hypotheses are offered up as evidence. The truth of the matter is quite the opposite. The fact that biologists support alternate hypotheses regarding specific evolutionary mechanisms no more challenges the reality of evolution than Einstein’s relativistic views threatened the existence of gravity. Whether evolution proceeds in fits and starts as envisioned by the punctuated equilibrium model or progresses with more stately regularity, each competing hypothesis simply seeks to explain a certain aspect of evolution in a plausible way. The overarching framework of evolution itself, however, remains astonishingly consistent with the huge body of evidence accumulated to date. Far from being the object of scientific debate, the evolution of species is actually no more, and no less, than the collection of observed facts that these hypotheses are meant to explain. Gene flow, frequency dependence, and punctuated equilibrium are but three possible mechanisms put forward to explain the nature of this overarching phenomenon. Which, if any, of these hypotheses survive the test of time bears no influence on whether modern species are the product of biological evolution-the evidence in this regard, now comprising countless independent observations, is simply overwhelming. It is only the processes that drive the phenomenon of evolution that remain the object of scientific scrutiny.

Unencumbered by the rules of scientific inquiry, others proclaim with total aplomb that evolution can never be truly validated until major speciation events (the transformation of land mammals into whales for instance) are observed directly. In this case, what is ignored is the important fact that reliable scientific evidence is not limited to firsthand experience of real-time events but includes all forms of physical clues. The folly of this argument becomes evident when one considers that knowledge of galaxy formation, stellar composition, and subatomic particles would be impossible if researchers were to adopt similar rules of evidence across the whole of science. But why stop at the boundaries of academia? Imagine for a moment the chaos that would ensue within the criminal justice system if such an unreasonable burden of proof were placed on prosecutors! Indeed, as many jurors would no doubt attest, it is often the physical evidence that proves most compelling in a court of law, eclipsing even eyewitness accounts that can be tainted by errors of interpretation or outright deceit.

Beliefs maintained through the narrow interpretation of isolated facts or held in default against evidence not readily understood can be called any number of things, but “scientific” is certainly not one of them. As these few examples illustrate, the myriad approaches adopted by creation “scientists” in their attempts to undermine evolutionary theory are indeed quite creative but hardly scientific. As has been demonstrated time and again, evidence carefully sifted can be enlisted to endorse practically any supposition so long as the preponderance of contrary clues are ignored and the rules of sound scientific practice are suspended. It is precisely this brand of exclusionary thinking that enables young-Earth devotees to dismiss mountains of physical evidence while defending their assertions with such flawed assumptions as constant population growth and the linear decay of Earth’s magnetic field (both demonstrably false). Likewise, partisans who claim that evolutionary processes have never actually been observed inexplicably dismiss the scientific literature where such observations have been reported in abundance. In truth, physical adaptations to environmental pressures have been documented in hundreds of modern species from bacteria and fruit flies to birds, squirrels, and stickleback fish (Pennisi 2000). Even Darwin’s own finches have been caught in the act of adaptation thanks to decades of meticulous study spearheaded by Princeton biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant.

A full accounting of the ways in which the scientific method has been manipulated to promote creationist sentiment would doubtless occupy many volumes, but in no instance has a legitimate scientific case ever been made to countermand the notion that, as Darwin phrased it: “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

References:

1. Bada, Jeffrey L., and Antonio Lazcano. 2003. Prebiotic soup-revisiting the Miller experiment. Science 300:745-746.
2. Dworkin, Jason P., David W. Deamer, Scott A. Sandford, and Louis J. Allamandola. 2001. Self-assembling amphiphilic molecules: Synthesis in simulated interstellar/precometary ices. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98(3): 815-819.
3. Hazen, Robert M. 2001. Life’s rocky start. Scientific American April: 77-85.
4. Pennisi, Elizabeth. 2000. Nature steers a predicable course. Science 278: 207-208.