Book Reviews What biology textbooks never told you about evolution atmosphere could have produced the A review of chemical building blocks of life. Icons of Evolution: Science The hypothesis remained untested or Myth? Why much of until 1953, when University of Chi- what we teach about evolu- cago graduate student Stanley Miller tion is wrong reported an experiment in which meth- by Jonathan Wells ane, ammonia, hydrogen and water Regnery Publishing, Inc., (thought to be the components of the Washington, 2000. ‘primitive’ atmosphere) were mixed in a closed glass apparatus. The water was heated and the gases circulated Royal Truman past a high-voltage electric spark to Oxygen, deliberately removed from simulate lightning. This provided the Miller’s apparatus, destroys amino ac- energy to break the chemical bonds of ids. But geological evidence indicates Why do many believe evolution- the compounds present, and the result- oxygen was always present on earth.1–7 ary theory is true? One is bombarded ing free radicals combined to form a It is produced by photolysis of water constantly with claims that all scientists mixture of simple organic compounds, vapour in the atmosphere, where hy- believe in evolution; that science has including trace quantities of some drogen escapes gravitation and oxygen demonstrated it; that evolution is based amino acids. thereby increases in concentration. on empirical science. Many might re- Crucial to the success of the ex- Currently, the most probable early member ‘proofs’, which Dr Wells calls periment was Miller’s water trap in atmosphere is deemed by evolution- ‘Icons of Evolution’, learned in school which the amino acids generated could ists to have consisted of water, carbon or from popular science articles. The dissolve and thus be protected from dioxide, nitrogen and hydrogen, a very ten most common ‘icons’ used to back subsequent destructive contact with different composition than used by up evolution are reviewed and showed the spark. But on the hypothesized Miller. Hydrogen would have been to be either fraudulent or irrelevant as primordial Earth with no oxygen present in small concentrations at evolutionary evidence. Amazingly, (and therefore no ozone), the prod- most, because it could escape Earth’s Wells documents that even some lead- ucts would have been exposed to gravity; ammonia and methane would ing biology professors were unaware destructive ultraviolet rays. This is have been destroyed by ultraviolet they were teaching nonsense. Had so even if they reached the oceans, light. In 1983, Miller reported that if these false ‘icons’ never existed, per- because UV radiation can penetrate carbon monoxide is added to the more haps evolutionary doctrine would not tens of metres of water. realistic mixture, plus a large propor- have taken such a hold. Per se, this experiment does not tion of free hydrogen, then only gly- Wells is a man with indisputable pose difficulties to the creationist. cine, the simplest amino acid, could be intellectual gifts who does not bow to With the most astute intelligent guid- produced, and in trace amounts only. intimidation. Having been opposed to ance, such an experimental set-up, The experts know the experiments serving with the American armed forces which generates a multitude of inter- provide no support for an abiogenesis in Vietnam, he chose jail rather than fering organic acids and bases (plus model. But nevertheless, biology compromise his convictions. He then racemic and biologically useless textbooks and popular magazines like went on to earn a doctorate in theology amino acids) cannot produce a single National Geographic continue to mis- (Yale) and a second doctorate in mo- biologically relevant protein strand. lead the public into thinking that the lecular and cell biology (Berkeley). To claim this experiment as evidence Miller-Urey experiment is evidence for for evolution would be akin to allow- evolution.8 Wells concludes by citing Icon 1: The Miller-Urey experiment ing water to flow over a bed of coal, one chemist’s acknowledgement that and upon identifying a little ink-like such publications are teaching ‘my- Wells sets the scene for this chapter substance, claiming the Encyclopaedia thology rather than science’ (p. 27). by describing the 1920s Oparin/Hal- Britannica was produced by natural, dane idea that lightning in the primitive random processes. Icon 2: Darwin’s tree of life TJ 15(2) 2001 17 Book Reviews ized ancestors are allegedly hundreds of millions of years old, essentially identical to those alive, and yet many have left no fossil evidence during this supposed vast interval. The lack of evolutionary change, in spite of a constantly changing physical and eco- logical environment, is glaring. Phylogenic trees based on DNA comparison contradict those derived from rRNA analysis. Protein phy- logenies have merely added to the confusion. ‘A 1996 study using 88 protein sequences grouped rabbits with primates instead of rodents; a 1998 analysis of 13 genes in 19 animal species placed sea urchins among the chordates; and another 1998 study based on 12 proteins put cows closer to whales than to horses’ (p. 51). Examples of molecular sequences incompatible with evo- lutionary theories are well known to creationists and anti-Darwinists.10 For example, antigen receptor proteins of Schematic diagram of the Stanley Miller’s famous experiment where water vapour, methane, sharks and the llama/camel family ammonia and hydrogen gas was passed through a spark. The resultant chemicals were col- have the same unusual single chain lected and showed trace amounts of both left and right-handed amino acids. structure, so this must be explained away as ‘convergence’.11 primitive’ specimens: Nevertheless, a 1999 booklet pub- Darwin believed characteristics ‘already have the basic ordinal lished by the National Academy of acquired during an organism’s lifetime characteristics, and in no case is Sciences (USA) claims: could be passed on to offspring, a an approximately continuous se- ‘As the ability to sequence … DNA concept proposed by Jean de Lamarck. quence from one order to another has improved, it has also become Species would vary over vast periods known. In most cases the break is possible to use genes to recon- of time until the divergence became so sharp and the gap is so large that struct the evolutionary history of great enough to produce new species. the origin of the order is speculative organisms … . The evidence for 9 Separate phyla would eventually de- and much disputed.’ evolution from molecular biology velop from a common ancestor. Plenty of suitable sedimen- is overwhelming and is growing Wells points out a large number of tary deposits (i.e. in which organisms quickly.’12 inconsistencies between the Darwinian could have been preserved as fossils) Wells, however, shows such ‘tree of life’ and the fossil record. exist within the late Precambrian and claims are without foundation. Fossils from the Burgess Shale in Cambrian strata. One cannot argue the However, this chapter has a major Canada; the Sirious Passet in northern ancestors might have not possessed shortcoming. Not in what it says, Greenland; and the Chengjiang in preserved hard parts. In Africa and but in what is left unsaid. Wells is southern China, dated as geologically Australia, geologists have discovered content to show that the ‘Cambrian contemporary, display a bewildering sediments, dated by evolutionary con- explosion’ in the fossil record con- range of complex, fully developed ventions at over three billion years old, tradicts the Darwinian ‘tree of life’. organisms with no earlier ancestors. which contain fossilized single-celled Though he emphasizes that ‘paradox’ Uniformitarian dating places this Cam- organisms. The lack of intermediates repeatedly, Wells does not point out brian Explosion at around 530 million where these should have been found that the standard idea about the fossil years ago, and it lasted a maximum of lies in stark conflict with evolutionary record—i.e. that it is akin to a ‘tape- 5–10 million years. Furthermore, in predictions. recording’ of millions of years—needs all 32 mammal orders, even the ‘most Another difficulty is the existence to be re-evaluated. (In reality, the of ‘living fossils’. Some of the fossil- 18 TJ 15(2) 2001 Book Reviews fossil record is far better explained by from a common ancestor. As an ex- biologist, provided a series of drawings a global Flood and some of its after- ample, which conveniently demonstrated just effects which buried a world of plants ‘In salamanders, development of this. These pictures appear even today and animals, in a time sequence which the digits proceeds in the opposite in graduate-level biology textbooks, did not involve millions of years.) This direction, from head to tail. The such as American Academy of Science is a deficiency, and Wells’ apparent ac- difference is so striking that some president Bruce Alberts’ Molecular commodation of ‘millions of years’ is biologists have argued that the evo- Biology of the Cell, with no statement gleefully exploited by sceptics in their lutionary history of salamanders that this evidence is a well-established mocking reviews of Wells’ book.13 must have been different from all blatant fraud, a shameless fake. Even other vertebrates, including frogs’ Darwin, who called this his ‘strongest Icon 3: Homology in vertebrate (p. 72). single class of facts’, was duped. limbs De Beer adds, Photographs of the embryos Hae- ‘Because homology implies com- ckel selected demonstrate virtually no In this chapter, Wells exposes the munity of descent from … a com- resemblance with his drawings. Ad- circular reasoning error in textbooks mon ancestor it might be thought ditionally, Haeckel did not draw the which define homology as similarity that genetics would provide the key first stage of growth, where closest re- due to common ancestry, and then to the problem of homology. This semblance was predicted, but selected claim that homology is evidence for is where the worst shock of all is precisely the stages where five (out of common ancestry.