For his second claim—that Gryphaea did not increase in coiling during its evolution—I have reexamined all the published data and concluded that while Gryphaea did increase in body size, its degree of adult coiling remained constant. Ironically, this means that later Gryphaea were actually more loosely coiled than earlier specimens of the same body size, for coiling increases with growth, and if a larger adult descendant will reach the same intensity of coiling as its smaller adult ancestor, then the descendant’s shell must be more loosely coiled when it is still a juvenile of the same size as an ancestral adult. (I have reprinted all major papers from the great Gryphaea debate in a volume entitled: The Evolution of Gryphaea, Arno Press, 1980.)
If Trueman’s edifice toppled so easily, why was his “fact” accepted so readily in the first place? One might suspect that the overcoiling of Gryphaea had received lengthy and complex documentation, however unreliable it proved to be, and that Trueman simply snowed potential critics. Not at all. The original evidence was flimsy almost beyond belief. In his 1922 paper, Trueman showed how most large adult Gryphaea avoid calamitous overcoiling by decreasing the tightness of their spiral late in growth.
Trueman’s claim for overcoiling was based on a single specimen, the “type” (or name-bearing) specimen of the species Gryphaea incurva. I examined this specimen at the British Museum in 1971. At first glance, the coiled valve does seem to press hard upon the flat valve. But the specimen was found in very fine-grained muds of the same color as the shell itself. A bit of probing revealed—and X-ray photographs later confirmed—that the supposed “lock” upon the flat valve had not been formed by the coiled valve itself, but by mud that wedged its way into the space between flat and coiled valve—the space that allowed the shell to open—after the animal’s death.
If telegony and overcoiling are false “facts,” why did each command prestige and inspire no attempt at refutation for so long? I believe, first of all, that the reputation of false facts is bolstered by the naïve belief that facts are bits of unsullied information extracted from nature by an objective process of pure observation or by scientific inference. But facts arise in contexts of expectation, and both the eye and the mind are notoriously fallible instruments. (Anyone who thinks that claims for direct observation possess some special, irrefutable status should read Elizabeth Loftis’s chilling book on eyewitness testimony.) Paleontologists, accepting the reality of orthogenesis, were primed to believe in Gryphaea’s overcoiling; telegony seemed reasonable until Weismann challenged it seventy years later. Secondly, facts achieve an almost immortal status once they pass from primary documentation into secondary sources, particularly textbooks. No publication is quite so conservative as a textbook; errors are copied from generation to generation and seem to gain support by sheer repetition. No one goes back to discover the fragility of original arguments.
I am not trying to convey the message that all knowledge is relative and that facts can never achieve universal approbation—quite the reverse. Rather, we have to distinguish between the kinds of factual claims that can achieve acceptance and those that must remain in limbo. The most troublesome facts are single cases—the offspring of Lord Morton’s mare, the overcoiling of one Gryphaea. We must, as William Bateson advised, “treasure our exceptions.” But we must also be aware that single cases are fragile, and that sturdy facts are pervasive patterns in nature, not individual peculiarities. Most “classic stories” in science are wrong.
The need to distinguish sturdy fact (pervasive pattern) from shaky factual claim (single cases with dubious documentation) has never been more evident to me than in the current debate between evolutionists and so-called “scientific creationists.” The fact of evolution is as sturdy as any claim in science. Its sturdiness resides in a pervasive pattern detected by several disciplines—for example, the age of the earth and life as affirmed by astronomy and geology, and the pattern of imperfections in organisms that record a history of physical descent.
Against this pattern, creationists employ a destructive, shotgun approach. They present no testable alternative but fire a volley of rhetorical criticism in the form of unconnected, shaky factual claims—a potpourri (literally, a rotten pot, in this case) of nonsense that beguiles many people because it masquerades in the guise of fact and trades upon the false prestige of supposedly pure observation.
The individual claims are easy enough to refute with a bit of research. Creationists themselves have been forced to retreat from the more embarrassing items. Noted creationist Henry Morris, for example, has often cited the supposed footprints of dinosaurs and humans together in rocks of the Paluxy River of Texas. But creationist Leonard Brand attributes some of the “human” prints to erosion and others to a three-toed dinosaur. He also adds: “We do know that there was a fellow during the Depression who carved tracks.”
Yet each time we explode one creationist “fact,” two more are invented to take its place. Hercules finally killed the Lernaean Hydra, a beast with similar tendencies toward proliferation after partial destruction. We can deprive creationism of all intellectual respectability (though not, alas, of some popular appeal) by remembering that sturdy facts are built from widespread patterns and that coherence in structure is the sign of strong arguments and theories. Unconnected, individual items remain shaky until they form a pattern or attain a confidence in individual documentation that neither telegony nor overcoiling—not to mention any creationist claim—ever achieved.
If shaky factual claims were always easy to dislodge, this column could end on a purely optimistic note. But telegony lasted for seventy years, and the ghost of William Jennings Bryan again stalks our nation. If I end with measured optimism, however, I do so in urging that we focus upon the second phrase of what may be Darwin’s most famous statement (from the Descent of Man): “False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes delight in proving their falseness.”
Bibliography
Adams, M. B. 1978. Nikolay Ivanovich Vavilov. Dictionary of Scientific Biography 15:505–13. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Adler, J. 1976. The sensing of chemicals by bacteria. Scientific American 234 (4):40–47.
Agassiz, E. C. 1895. Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin.
Agassiz, L. 1874. Evolution and permanence of type. Atlantic Monthly.
Agassiz, L. 1885. Geological sketches. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin (reprint of essays, mostly from the 1860s).
Alcock, J. 1975. Animal behavior, an evolutionary approach. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.
Alvarez, L. W.; W. Alvarez; F. Asaro; and H. V. Michel. 1980. Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. Science 208:1095–1108.
Aristotle. 1960 ed. Organon (Posterior analytics) translated by H. Tredennick. Loeb Classical Library Number 391. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Aristotle. 1965 ed. Historia animalium, 3 volumes, translated by A. L. Peck. Loeb Classical Library Numbers 437–439. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Barash, D.P. 1976. Male response to apparent female adultery in the mountain bluebird: an evolutionary interpretation. American Naturalist 110:1097–1101.
Bard, J. B. L. 1977. A unity underlying the different zebra striping patterns. Journal of Zoology (London) 183:527–39.
Bateson, W. 1894. Materials for the study of variation. London: MacMillan.
Bennett, D. K. 1980. Stripes do not a zebra make. Systematic Zoology 29:272–87.
Berg, H.C. 1975. How bacteria swim. Scientific American 229 (6): 24–37.
Berg, H. C., and R. A. Anderson. 1973. Bacteria swim by rotating their flagellar filaments. Nature 245:380–92.
Boule, M. 1921. Les hommes fossiles. Paris: Masson.
Britten, R. J., and E. H. Davidson. 1971. Repetitive and non-repetitive DNA sequences and a speculation on the origins of evolutionary novelty. Quarterly Revie
w of Biology 46:111–33.
Buckland, W. 1836. Geology and mineralogy considered with reference to natural theology. 1841 ed. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard.
Bulliet, R. W. 1975. The camel and the wheel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Burkhardt, R. W., Jr. 1979. Closing the door on Lord Morton’s mare: the rise and fall of telegony. Studies in the History of Biology 3:1–21.
Chase, A. 1977. The legacy of Malthus. New York: A. Knopf.
Costello, P. 1981. Teilhard and the Piltdown hoax. Antiquity 45:58–59.
Crick, F. 1981. Life itself. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Cuénot, C. 1965. Teilhard de Chardin, a biographical study. Baltimore: Helicon.
Cuvier, G. 1812. Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles des quadrupèdes, 4 volumes. Paris: Deterville.
Cuvier, G. 1817. Essays on the theory of the earth. With geological illustrations, by Professor Jameson. Edinburgh.
Darwin, C. 1842. The structure and distribution of coral reefs. London: Smith, Elder.
Darwin, C. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection. London: John Murray.
Darwin, C. 1862. On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilized by insects. London: John Murray.
Darwin, C. 1871. The descent of man and selection in relation to sex. London: John Murray.
Darwin, C. 1881. The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms. London: John Murray.
Davies, G. L. 1969. The earth in decay, a history of British geomorphology 1578–1878. New York: American Elsevier.
Dawkins, R. 1976. The selfish gene. New York: Oxford University Press.
Doolittle, W. F., and C. Sapienza. 1980. Selfish genes, the phenotype paradigm, and geome evolution. Nature 284:-601–603.
Eldredge, N., and S. J. Gould. 1972. Punctuated equilibria: An alternative to phyletic gradualism. In: T. J. M. Schopf, ed., Models in Paleobiology. San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper and Co., pp. 82–115.
Fabre, J. H. 1901. Insect life. London: MacMillan.
Fabre, J. H. 1918. The wonders of instinct. London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd.
Geikie, A. 1905. The founders of geology. London: MacMillan.
Ghiselin, M. 1974. The economy of nature and the evolution of sex. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ginger, R. 1958. Six days or forever? Boston: Beacon Press.
Gish, D. T. 1979. Evolution? The fossils say no! San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers.
Goddard, H. H. 1913. The Binet tests in relation to immigration. Journal of Psycho-Asthenics 18:105–107.
Goddard, H. H. 1917. Mental tests and the immigrant. Journal of Delinquency 2:243–77.
Goldschmidt, R. 1940. The material basis of evolution. New Haven: Yale University Press (reprinted 1982, with introduction by S. J. Gould).
Gould, S. J. 1972. Allometric fallacies and the evolution of Gryphaea: A new interpretation based on White’s criterion of geometric similarity. In: T. Dobzhansky, et al., eds., Evolutionary Biology, volume 6, pp. 91–118.
Gould, S. J. 1977. Ever Since Darwin. New York: W. W. Norton.
Gould, S. J. 1980. The Panda’s Thumb. New York: W. W. Norton.
Gould, S. J., and R. C. Lewontin. 1979. The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London B205:581–98.
Gould, S. J., and Elisabeth S. Vrba. 1982. Exaptation—a missing term in the science of form. Paleobiology 8 (1): 4–15.
Grabiner, J. V., and P. D. Miller. 1974. Effects of the Scopes Trial. Science 185:832–37.
Hallam, A. 1959. On the supposed evolution of Gryphaea in the Lias. Geological Magazine 96:99–108.
Hampé, A. 1959. Contribution à l’étude du développement et de la régulation des déficiences et des excédents dans la patte de l’embryon de poulet. Archives d’anatomie et de microscopie morphologique 48:345–478.
Harrison Matthews, L. 1939. Reproduction in the spotted hyena Crocuta crocuta (Erxleben). Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society, Series B 230:1–78.
Harrison Matthews, L. 1981. Piltdown man—the missing links. Serialized weekly in New Scientist, April 30–July 2. Hutton, J. 1788. Theory of the earth; or an investigation of the laws observable in the composition, dissolution, and restoration of land upon the globe. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1:209–304.
Hutton, J. 1795. Theory of the earth, with proofs and illustrations. Edinburgh.
Huxley, J. 1942. Evolution, the modern synthesis. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Huxley, T. H. 1893. Evolution and ethics in Evolution and ethics and other essays. Volume 9 (published 1894) of T. H. Huxley’s Collected Essays. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
Jarvis, E. 1842. Statistics of insanity in the United States. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 27:116–21 and 281–82.
Jarvis, E. 1844. Insanity among the colored population of the free states. American Journal of the Medical Sciences, New Series 7:71–83.
Kirby, W., and W. Spence. 1856. An introduction to entomology (7th ed.). London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green.
Kollar, E. J., and C. Fisher. 1980. Tooth induction in chick epithelium: expression of quiescent genes for enamel synthesis. Science 207:993–95.
Kruuk, H. 1972. The spotted hyena. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lewis, E. B. 1978. A gene controlling segmentation in Drosophila. Nature 276:565–70.
Lukas, M. 1981a. Teilhard and the Piltdown hoax: A playful prank gone too far? Or a deliberate scientific forgery? Or, as it now appears, nothing at all? America, May 23, 424–27.
Lukas, M. 1981b. Gould and Teilhard’s “fatal error.” Teilhard Newsletter 14:4–6.
Lurie, E. 1960. Louis Agassiz, a life in science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lyell, C. 1830–1833. Principles of geology, 3 volumes. London: John Murray.
Lysenko, T. D. 1954. Agrobiology, essays on problems of genetics, plant breeding and seed growing. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House (reprints all articles quoted in essay on Vavilov).
Marsh, O. C. 1892. Recent polydactyle horses. American Journal of Science 43:339–55.
Marshall, L. G.; S. D. Webb; J. J. Sepkoski, Jr.; and D. M. Raup. Mammalian evolution and the great American interchange. Science 215:1351–57.
McPhee, J. 1981. Basin and range. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Mivart, St. G. 1871. On the genesis of species. London: MacMillan.
Moon, T. J.; P. B. Mann; and J. H. Otto. 1956. Modern Biology. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Nelkin, D. 1977. Science textbook controversies and the politics of equal time. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Nelson, J. B. 1968. Galápagos: Islands of birds. London.
Nelson, J. B. 1978. The Sulidae—gannets and boobies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ohno, S. 1970. Evolution by gene duplication. New York: Springer
Oliver, J. H., Jr. 1962. A mite parasitic in the cocoons of earthworms. Journal of Parasitology 48:120–23.
Orgel, L. E., and F. H. C. Crick. 1980. Selfish DNA: the ultimate parasite. Nature 284:604–7.
Ouweneel, W. J. 1976. Developmental genetics of homoeosis. Advances in Genetics 18:179–248.
Pearson, K., and M. Moul. 1925. The problem of alien immigration into Great Britain, illustrated by an examination of Russian and Polish Jewish children. Annals of Eugenics 1:5–127.
Pietsch, T. W. 1976. Dimorphism, parasitism, and sex: reproductive strategies among deep sea ceratioid anglerfishes. Copeia No. 4:781–93.
Quinn, T. C., and G. B. Craig, Jr. 1971. Phenogenetics of the homeotic mutant proboscipedia in Aedes albopictus. Journal of Heredity 62:1–12.
Racey, P. A., and J. D. Skinner. 1979. Endocrine aspects of sexual mimicry in spotted hyenas Crocuta crocuta. Journal of Zoology, London 187:315–26.
Ralls, K. 1976. Mammals in which females are larger
than males. Quarterly Review of Biology 51: 245–76.
Raup, D. M. 1979. Size of the Permo-Triassic bottleneck and its evolutionary implications. Science 206:217–18.
Raup, D. M., and J. J. Sepkosi, Jr. 1982. Mass extinctions in the marine fossil record. Science 215:1501–3.
Regan, C. T. 1925. Dwarfed males parasitic on the females in oceanic anglerfishes (Pediculati: Ceratioidea). Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B 97:386–400.
Regan, C. T. 1926. The pediculate fishes of the suborder Ceratioidea. Dana Reports, Volume 2.
Schmitz-Moormann, K. (ed.). 1960-. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin—l’oeuvre scientifique (a facsimile edition of Teilhard’s scientific works in 14 volumes). Olten and Freiburg im Breisgau: Walter-Verlag.
Schmitz-Moormann, K. 1981. Teilhard and the Piltdown hoax. Teilhard Newsletter 14:2–4.
Scopes, J. 1967. Center of the storm. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Simmons, K. E. L. 1970. Ecological determinants of breeding adaptations and social behavior in two fish-eating birds. In: J. H. Crook (ed.), Social behavior in birds and mammals. London: Academic Press.
Stanton, W. 1960. The leopard’s spots: scientific attitudes towards race in America 1815–1859. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Steno, N. 1669. De solido intra solidum naturaliter contento dissertationis prodromus. Translated by J. G. Winter, 1916, as The prodromus of Nicolaus Steno’s dissertation. New York: Macmillan.
Stenzel, H. B. 1971. Oysters. Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology Part N, Volume 3, Mollusca 6, Bivalvia. Geological Society of America and the University of Kansas.
Struhl, G. 1981. A gene product required for correct initiation of segmental determination in Drosophila. Nature 293:36–41.
Tamm, S. 1978. Relations between membrane movements and cytoplasmic structures during rotational motility of a termite flagellate. Abstracts, Cold Spring Harbor Cytoskeleton Meetings, p. 89.
Teilhard de Chardin, P. 1920. Le cas de l’homme de Piltdown. Revues des questions scientifiques 27:149–55.