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General Science / Is evidence against evolution all nonsense?
« on: 17/11/2006 03:29:27 »
Polish "Scientist" Maciej Giertych wrote into Nature after their story about Polish MPs trying to get Creationism in schools. He talks about evolution and current recent evidence against it. Is he talking mince? His correspondence is below.
Creationism, evolution:nothing has been proved
SIR — In your News story “Polish scientists fight creationism” (Nature 443, 890–891; 2006), you incorrectly state that I have called for the “inclusion of creationism in Polish biology curricula”. As well as being a member of the European Parliament, I am a scientist
— a population geneticist with a degree from Oxford University and a PhD from the University of Toronto — and I am critical of the theory of evolution as a scientist, with no religious connotation. It is the media that prefer to consider my comments as religiously inspired, rather than to report my stated position accurately.
I believe that, as a result of media bias, there seems to be total ignorance of new scientific evidence against the theory of evolution. Such evidence includes race formation (microevolution), which is not a small step in macroevolution because it is a step towards a reduction of genetic information and not towards its increase. It also includes formation of geological strata sideways rather than vertically, archaeological and palaeontological evidence that dinosaurs coexisted with humans, a major worldwide catastrophe in historical times, and so on.
We know that information exists in biology, and is transferred over generations through the DNA/RNA/protein system. We do not know its origin, but we know it exists, can be spoiled by mutations, but never improves itself spontaneously. No positive mutations have ever been demonstrated — adaptations to antibiotics or herbicides are equivalent to immunological adaptation to diseases, and not a creation of a new function. We keep on searching for natural explanations of everything in nature. If we have no explanations we should say so, and not claim that an unproven theory is a fact.
Maciej Giertych
Institute of Dendrology,
Polish Academy of Sciences,
62-035 Kórnik, Poland
Creationism, evolution:nothing has been proved
SIR — In your News story “Polish scientists fight creationism” (Nature 443, 890–891; 2006), you incorrectly state that I have called for the “inclusion of creationism in Polish biology curricula”. As well as being a member of the European Parliament, I am a scientist
— a population geneticist with a degree from Oxford University and a PhD from the University of Toronto — and I am critical of the theory of evolution as a scientist, with no religious connotation. It is the media that prefer to consider my comments as religiously inspired, rather than to report my stated position accurately.
I believe that, as a result of media bias, there seems to be total ignorance of new scientific evidence against the theory of evolution. Such evidence includes race formation (microevolution), which is not a small step in macroevolution because it is a step towards a reduction of genetic information and not towards its increase. It also includes formation of geological strata sideways rather than vertically, archaeological and palaeontological evidence that dinosaurs coexisted with humans, a major worldwide catastrophe in historical times, and so on.
We know that information exists in biology, and is transferred over generations through the DNA/RNA/protein system. We do not know its origin, but we know it exists, can be spoiled by mutations, but never improves itself spontaneously. No positive mutations have ever been demonstrated — adaptations to antibiotics or herbicides are equivalent to immunological adaptation to diseases, and not a creation of a new function. We keep on searching for natural explanations of everything in nature. If we have no explanations we should say so, and not claim that an unproven theory is a fact.
Maciej Giertych
Institute of Dendrology,
Polish Academy of Sciences,
62-035 Kórnik, Poland