Several weeks ago, my college hosted a “distinguished lecture” by the noted science writer Shawn Otto titled “The War on Science” (the title of his latest book). I was unable to attend the lecture due to a previous engagement, but while I was perusing Otto’s book in the library, it became clear that I didn’t miss anything too important. With his book bearing a Foreword by Lawrence Krauss and a jacket endorsement by Bill Nye, we can easily guess where Otto is coming from. Though I was not interested in reading the whole book, I was curious whether Otto had anything to say about intelligent design as part of the war on science. A quick look at the Index didn’t disappoint. Otto indeed considers anti-evolutionism as an important part of an overall war on science, yet in a way so ill-informed that it devolves almost to the level of self-parody. 

Just Getting Warmed Up

To start, Otto boils down the controversy over evolution to those who accept the science and those who are beholden to a literal reading of the Bible. For Otto, there are no positions worth considering between these two extremes. For an example of the Bible-believing creationist, he cites neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Otto’s favorite target (though he also takes aim at former U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann). Otto criticizes Carson for holding that the Big Bang had to have a divine cause, while ignoring that Francis Collins, who I assume Otto would hold in high esteem, has argued the very same position. But he is just getting warmed up. 

Otto calls evolution the most fundamental principle in biology, claiming that without it there would be no biology or modern medicine. In fact, he goes so far as to declare, “Without the theory of evolution, there would be no modern medicine, antibiotics, virology, or pharmaceuticals. The medicines Ben Carson prescribed to keep his patients from dying from infections after he operated on them would not exist” (213). 

A Medical Breakthrough

Perhaps Otto is unaware that the smallpox vaccine, a medical breakthrough which saved countless millions of lives, was developed in 1796, thirteen years prior to Darwin’s birth and 63 years prior to the publication of the Origin of Species. As Jonathan Wells pointed out in the final chapter of Icons of Evolution, most of biology including medical research gets along quite well without engaging with evolutionary theory. And if evolutionary theory is so fundamental to medical research, why has no evolutionary biologist ever won a Noble Prize in physiology or medicine? Otto’s view of the fundamental importance of evolution to biology and medicine is an overstatement of epic proportions. 

So what is Otto’s evidence for the truth of this most fundamental principle of biology? Nothing more than the evolution of bacterial resistance to antibiotics and pesticide resistance among insects. He has virtually nothing to say about how undirected evolutionary processes could create new complex forms of life, with one possible exception that truly demonstrates his ignorance about these matters.

Darwin’s Biggest Error

Otto is extremely impressed by an experiment done in the 1930s by Russian geneticist Dmitri Belyaev. Belyaev wanted to see if through selective breeding he could turn wild Russian silver foxes into tame domesticated animals within a human life span. He apparently succeeded, a result Otto characterizes as “amazing.” But there is nothing at all amazing about it. Like Darwin before him, Otto makes the crucial error of conflating intelligently directed selective breeding with undirected natural selection. Belyaev’s experiment has virtually nothing to do with evolution. Otto simply repeats Darwin’s biggest error. 

So does Otto take a position on intelligent design specifically? Yes and no. He is mostly concerned with creationists like Ben Carson. But he notes that creationists often refer to the writings of Michael Behe who Otto calls a “biochemist, creationist, and author of Darwin’s Black Box.” Well, at least he got two out of three correct (Behe is no creationist in the sense that Otto uses the word). Otto then makes mention of Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity, but talks only about the eye while ignoring the bacterial flagellum, blood clotting cascade, or any of the other biochemical systems that Behe actually discusses. 

According to Otto, the eye is not irreducibly complex: “We can show with considerable evidence exactly how the eye evolved, and is continuing to do so” (220). But alas, Otto produces none of this alleged evidence and ignores the fact that complex eyes arose independently in many different lineages, an example of convergent evolution that even Simon Conway Morris sees as a challenge to Darwinism. 

Otherwise Engaged

To his credit, Otto has absorbed well the talking points of the biological establishment. But he clearly has done none of his own research into the scientific case against Darwinism. There is no war being waged against science in the intelligent design community; only a war against bad science. One can only imagine how scientifically ill-informed the rest of Otto’s book must be. I’m just glad I had a good reason to miss his “distinguished” lecture.