Icons of Evolution is a book by Jonathan Wells, an advocate of the pseudoscientific intelligent design argument for the existence of God and fellow of the Discovery Institute, in which Wells criticizes the paradigm of evolution by attacking how it is taught. The book includes a 2002 video companion.[1] In 2000, Wells summarized the book's contents in an article in the American Spectator.[2] Several of the scientists whose work is sourced in the book have written rebuttals to Wells, stating that they were quoted out of context, that their work has been misrepresented, or that it does not imply Wells's conclusions.[3][4]
Representatives of majority views in the scientific community have criticized the book and regard it as pseudoscientific, at the extreme of the struggle against evolutionary science.[5] It was criticised for its claims that schoolchildren are deliberately misled, and its conclusions as to the evidential status of the theory of evolution, which is considered by scientists to be the central unifying paradigm of biology.[6] Kevin Padian and Alan D. Gishlick wrote a review in Quarterly Review of Biology which said: "In our view, regardless of Wells's religious or philosophical background, his Icons of Evolution can scarcely be considered a work of scholarly integrity."[7]
Gishlick wrote a more detailed critique for the National Center for Science Education in his article "Icon of Evolution? Why much of what Jonathan Wells writes about evolution is wrong."[8] Nick Matzke reviewed Wells' work in the talk.origins article Icon of Obfuscation,[9] and Wells responded with A Response to Published Reviews (2002).[10]
^Icons of Evolution? Alan D. Gishlick. National Center for Science Education
^Survival of the Fakest Archived 2006-12-05 at the Wayback Machine, Jonathan Wells, 2000 (A reprint from the American Spectator)
^Quoting Bruce Grant, Professor of Biology at College of William and Mary:
But should we blame Ms Rider for her outrage upon learning that moths were glued to trees? No. Instead I blame Dr Wells, who wrote the article she cites as her source of information. While he has done no work on industrial mechanism, he has written [an] opinion about that work. To one outside the field, he passes as a scholar, complete with Ph.D. Unfortunately, Dr Wells is intellectually dishonest. . . . He lavishly dresses his essays in quotations from experts (including some from me) which are generally taken out of context, and he systematically omits relevant details to make our conclusions seem ill founded, flawed, or fraudulent.
in Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross. Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. 2004, page 111
^Quoting Jerry Coyne, Professor of Biology at University of Chicago:
Creationists such as Jonathan Wells claim that my criticism of these experiments casts strong doubt on Darwinism. But this characterization is false. ... My call for additional research on the moths has been wrongly characterized by creationists as revealing some fatal flaw in the theory of evolution. ... It is a classic creationist tactic (as exemplified in Wells's book, "Icons of Evolution") to assert that healthy scientific debate is really a sign that evolutionists are either committing fraud or buttressing a crumbling theory.
Letter to the editor Archived 2013-01-16 at the Wayback Machine Jerry Coyne. Pratt Tribune. December 2000. Also available from the Pratt Tribune's pay archive Archived 2003-10-11 at the Wayback Machine.
^Library journal, Volume 131, Issues 12-15. 2006. p. 45. Libraries with larger budgets may want to purchase books that represent viewpoints at the extremes of this struggle, including such intelligent design tracts as … Jonathan Wells's Icons of Evolution … For example we may be obligated to our patrons to make available works that embody ideas fundamental to significant cultural undercurrents such as "intelligent design" but not to burden budgets and minds with every other form of pseudoscience.
^Coyne, Jerry (April 12, 2001). "Creationism by Stealth". Nature. 410 (6830): 745–6. Bibcode:2001Natur.410..745C. doi:10.1038/35071144. S2CID 205015816.
^Alan D. Gishlick, Kevin Padian (March 2002). "The Talented Mr. Wells". 77 (1). Quarterly Review of Biology. doi:10.1086/339201. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Icon of Evolution? Why much of what Jonathan Wells writes about evolution is wrong by Alan D. Gishlick (PDF here)
^Icon of Obfuscation: Jonathan Wells' book Icons of Evolution and why most of what it teaches about evolution is wrong by Nick Matzke. TalkOrigins Archive
^A Response to Published Reviews by Jonathan Wells, 2002
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