New Scientist - Again

The latest round in the New Scientist cover 'story' is the editorial by New Scientist. PZ Myers thinks it goes some way to defuse the situation, which surprises me, because I don't think it does.

Here's the disclaimer editorial in full (it can be found here)

"THERE is nothing new to be discovered in physics." So said Lord Kelvin in 1900, shortly before the intellectual firestorm ignited by relativity and quantum mechanics proved him comprehensively wrong.

If anyone now thinks that biology is sorted, they are going to be proved wrong too. The more that genomics, bioinformatics and many other newer disciplines reveal about life, the more obvious it becomes that our present understanding is not up to the job. We now gaze on a biological world of mind-boggling complexity that exposes the shortcomings of familiar, tidy concepts such as species, gene and organism.

A particularly pertinent example is provided in this week's cover story - the uprooting of the tree of life which Darwin used as an organising principle and which has been a central tenet of biology ever since (see "Axing Darwin's tree"). Most biologists now accept that the tree is not a fact of nature - it is something we impose on nature in an attempt to make the task of understanding it more tractable. Other important bits of biology - notably development, ageing and sex - are similarly turning out to be much more involved than we ever imagined. As evolutionary biologist Michael Rose at the University of California, Irvine, told us: "The complexity of biology is comparable to quantum mechanics."

Biology has been here before. Although Darwin himself, with the help of Alfred Russel Wallace, triggered a revolution in the mid-1800s, there was a second revolution in the 1930s and 1940s when Ronald Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, Sewall Wright and others incorporated Mendelian genetics and placed evolution on a firm mathematical foundation.

As we celebrate the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, we await a third revolution that will see biology changed and strengthened. None of this should give succour to creationists, whose blinkered universe is doubtless already buzzing with the news that "New Scientist has announced Darwin was wrong". Expect to find excerpts ripped out of context and presented as evidence that biologists are deserting the theory of evolution en masse. They are not.

Nor will the new work do anything to diminish the standing of Darwin himself. When it came to gravitation and the laws of motion, Isaac Newton didn't see the whole picture either, but he remains one of science's giants. In the same way, Darwin's ideas will prove influential for decades to come.

So here's to the impending revolution in biology. Come Darwin's 300th anniversary there will be even more to celebrate."

This indicates that New Scientist knew exactly what damage the cover could do, but instead of stopping the damage, went after the money, and used the editorial to cover their backsides when the inevitable excrement hit the spinning blades.

This editorial is simply New Scientist saying, "Don't call us a goose just because we laid a golden egg for creationists. Look at the pretty words."

But it even fails that, for two reasons.

1) Creationists are not going to read the editorial. The people in the audience when the cover is shown, will not read the editorial. The school boards to whom the cover will be shown as evidence that evolution is wrong, will not read the editorial.

PZ thinks that this paragraph may work:

"As we celebrate the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, we await a third revolution that will see biology changed and strengthened. None of this should give succour to creationists, whose blinkered universe is doubtless already buzzing with the news that "New Scientist has announced Darwin was wrong". Expect to find excerpts ripped out of context and presented as evidence that biologists are deserting the theory of evolution en masse. They are not."

Somehow I don't think a creationist presenter will wait politely while someone interrupts the presentation to read out these 72 words. 72 words. Against 1 picture.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, 72 doesn't quite seen enough, does it.

2) The editorial hands some more golden eggs to IDiots!

Lets see how an IDiot would read this:

"If anyone now thinks that biology is sorted, they are going to be proved wrong too. The more that genomics, bioinformatics and many other newer disciplines reveal about life, the more obvious it becomes that our present understanding is not up to the job. We now gaze on a biological world of mind-boggling complexity that exposes the shortcomings of familiar, tidy concepts such as species, gene and organism."

A particularly pertinent example is provided in this week's cover story - the uprooting of the tree of life which Darwin used as an organising principle and which has been a central tenet of biology ever since (see "Axing Darwin's tree"). Most biologists now accept that the tree is not a fact of nature - it is something we impose on nature in an attempt to make the task of understanding it more tractable. Other important bits of biology - notably development, ageing and sex - are similarly turning out to be much more involved than we ever imagined. As evolutionary biologist Michael Rose at the University of California, Irvine, told us: "The complexity of biology is comparable to quantum mechanics."

"See", they'll say,"New Scientist agrees that life is too complex for Darwinism to explain. It must have been designed."

New Scientist, you're a goose!