Author: Michael Cranford (mikec@sail.labs.tek.com) Title: Should Forrest Mims have been hi

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Author: Michael Cranford (mikec@sail.labs.tek.com)
 Title: Should Forrest Mims have been hired by Scientific American?
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  What follows are selected excerpts from an open letter by Forrest M. Mims
III to Daniel Jimenez (this was written in May, 1991).  I have not made any
changes (not even spelling corrections) to the text.


    [ ... ]     The reaction of various skeptics to all this
    has been quite interesting.  One spent  minutes trying to
    convince me that whales evolved from "cow-like creatures" (his
    words).  Yet he could identify absolutely no fossils that
    demonstrate any such transition.  (Yes, I am aware of the recent
    finds in Egypt; no they aren't cow-whales.)  Living aside my
    views and questions, often skeptics are unable to give a
    straight answer to Charles Darwin's own doubts and questions
    about evolution expressed in "The Origin of Species."  (Could
    that be because they have not read the book?)  Sometimes they
    become rather disturbed when I remind them that Marx, Hitler and
    assorted white supremacists were great admirers of Darwin.  Marx
    asked Darwin if he could dedicate his famous book to him, but
    Darwin wisely declined.
        Incidentally, Darwin was surrounded by servants and lived
    off inherited wealth and allowances his entire life he was an
    abolitionist (and argued against slavery with Captain Fitzroy
    while aboard the HMS Beagle), but he was very comfortable with
    the racist views of his class-conscious England. Among the very
    first entries in his diary on his arrival in Brazil aboard the
    Beagle is this passage:
        "This war of extirmination [sic], although arrived on with
    the most shocking barbarity, will certainly produce great
    benefits.  It will at once throw open four or five hundred miles
    in length of fine country fo the produce of cattle...women who
    appear over twenty years are massacred in cold blood [because, he
    was told] they breed so."
        This certainly gives new meaning to he phrase "survival of
    the fittest."  Want to find out more about Darwin?  This
    quotation can be found in Charles Darwin, a new book by John
    Bowlby (W.W.Norton Company, New York, 544 pages with many
    photographs, drawings and maps, 1991).  I recently reviewed this
    and another book about Darwin for The Philadelphia Inquirer.  For
    some reason all but the last 14 words of this quote have been cut
    from my edition of Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle.
        So far most of the skeptics I've encountered have apparently
    been armchair scientists.  They seem to be worried more about God
    than anything else.  It's no wonder that some of them seem so
    threatened by and become so emotional over the evolution-
    creation debate, especially when I tell them I used to accept
    Darwinian evolution until I began studying fossils in museums as
    a young adult.  To the best of my knowledge, I've yet to be
    questioned by a skeptic who has actually collected a fossil in
    the field; few have even bothered to read "The Origin of Species."


    [ ... ]  They simply have no answer for questions like these:
        1. From what did the insect evolve? (All fossil insects are
    clearly insects.)
        2. From where did the wing evolve? (There is absolutely no
    fossil record of the supposed evolution of any form of wing.)
        3. From what did the bat evolve? (The first fossil bats are
    quite clearly bats.)
        4. How did the feather evolve? (There's no fossil evidence of
    any kind for feather evolution.  Some poorly informed skeptics
    dredge up the silly idea about "frayed scales," not realizing
    that old canard was long ago rejected.)
        5. From what did trilobites evolve--to say anything of all
    the other fantastic creatures in the Burgess shale and the even
    greater assortment found recently in southern China? (The
    Cambrian explosion is often termed the greatest riddle of
    "evolution.")
        6. Why has evolutionary biology been companied by some of
    the most blatant cases of scientific fraud ever perpetrated and
    many of the most famous personality rifts in science? (This is
    personal--in the sixth grade I was taught that Piltdown man was a
    legitimate fossil and human ancestor.  Later I learned that the
    fraud had been uncovered when I was much younger, but Piltdown
    man was still in the biology books and the teacher didn't know
    any better!)
        7. Why are reconstructions of fossil hominids always black?
    (Tom Gray, co-discoverer of the Australopithecine
    anthropomorphized by the name "Lucy" once showed me some plaster
    casts of this famous fossil.  They provided no clue whatsoever to
    the skin color of the creature which they once supported.)

    [ ... ]     On the other hand, we find a very small group of
    rather insecure folk who seem threatened by someone who has
    written about and practiced science for more than two decades.
    Why?  Because I don't believe they are cousins of butterflies and
    bumble bees.  For the sin of failing to subscribe to their
    philosophy, they would deprive me of my living and censor my
    works--without ever having searched any of my books or articles!
    How they can pronounce judgement when they ow nothing about my
    work and then classify themselves as objective seekers of truth,
    which is what a scientist is supposed to be, is beyond me.
    Will they next censor the 49 Jewish physicians in New York who
    published a statement about their advocacy of creationism? Will
    they purge the textbooks of the writings of the hundred of famous
    scientists over the centuries who believed in a Creator God?  In
    view of what has happened during past episodes of blacklisting
    and censorship over religious, political and scientific beliefs,
    these people must be taken very seriously. If they are not
    confronted and exposed as censors and blacklisters, their name
    calling, as history has clearly demonstrated, can eventually
    escalate into something much worse than simply losing a position.
    [ ... ]


  Note that Mims resorts to a number of standard creationist tactics in an
effort to "prove" his point :

  1. He wants a fossil of a "cow-whale" when evolution doesn't predict
  that one exists (straw man argument) while ignoring the overwhelming
  evidence that biological evolution has in fact occurred.

  2. He suggests that doubts about evolution in "Origin of the Species"
  are applicable today (over a century of evidence in favor of evolution
  has been collected since Darwin's time).

  3. He suggests that Darwin was a white supremacist (a strange statement
  from someone who was raised in the southern part of the U.S. (Texas).
  Also note that he objects to the black fossil hominid reconstructions!

  4. He repeatedly suggests that skeptics haven't even read "Origin of
  the Species" yet he clearly misattributes a statement made by a sailor
  (that Darwin was quoting) to Darwin in an effort to smear Darwin as a
  racist.  Creationists have become famous quite for misquoting.

  5. He claims to have once accepted evolution until he studied fossils
  yet he seems unaware of the massive evidence in favor of evolution.
  Why are there are no paleontologists, who essentially "live and breathe
  fossils", who agree with him.

  6. He fails to note that cases of scientific fraud in evolutionary biology
  were in fact discovered by evolutionary scientists and not creationists.

  7. He complains about the poor quality of biology textbooks and teachers
  while ignoring the glaring fact that creationists in Texas and California
  have been the leaders in the systematic removal of evolutionary biology
  from pre-college science textbooks.

  8. When did the scientific community decide that science should be defined
  by 49 Jewish physicians?  How many physicians, of any ethnic or religious
  group, would it take to "prove" that the earth is flat and located at the
  center of the universe and should science be a slave to this "proof"?

  9. He tries to rewrite history by suggesting that members of the scientific
  community are engaged in censoring ideas and textbooks like past events but
  fails to note which groups of people were (and are now) engaged in these
  activities (see number 7 above).

  Etc, etc. (The rest is left as an exercise for the student).


P.S.

  The "name" of the Australopithecine (Lucy) actually came from the Beatles
song.  Martin Gardner (a theist who accepts evolution) has stated that Mims
is "guilty of the sin of willful ignorance".