Jerry Coyne

In my last post I reported that University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who had critiqued (http://tinyurl.com/2fjenlt) my recent Quarterly Review of Biology article (http://tinyurl.com/25c422s) concerning laboratory evolution studies of the last four decades and what they show us about evolution, had asked several other prominent scientists for comments (http://tinyurl.com/2cyetm7). I replied (http://tinyurl.com/4lq8sre) to those of experimental evolutionary biologist John Bull. In a subsequent post Coyne discussed (http://tinyurl.com/4tqoq7c) a recent paper (http://tinyurl.com/4shw456) by the group of fellow University of Chicago biologist Manyuan Long on gene duplication in fruitflies. After a bit of delay due to the holidays, I will comment on that here. Try as one might to keep Darwinists focused on the data, some can’t help reverting to Read More ›

At his blog (http://tinyurl.com/2cyetm7) University of Chicago professor of evolutionary biology Jerry Coyne has commented on my reply (http://tinyurl.com/383zqm7) to his analysis ((http://tinyurl.com/2fjenlt) of my new review (http://tinyurl.com/25c422s) in the Quarterly Review of Biology. This time he has involved two other prominent scientists in the conversation. I’ll discuss the comments of one of them in this post and the other in a second post. The first one is University of Texas professor of molecular biology James J. Bull, who works on the laboratory evolution of bacterial viruses (phages). I reviewed a number of Bull’s fascinating papers in the recent QRB publication. Coyne solicited Prof. Bull’s comments and put them up on his blog (http://tinyurl.com/2cyetm7). Bull says several nice things about Read More ›

Dear Readers, In a long book review in The New Republic, University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne calls Brown University cell biologist Ken Miller a creationist. No surprise there — “creationist” has a lot of negative emotional resonance in many intellectual circles, so it makes a fellow’s rhetorical task a lot easier if he can tag his intellectual opponent with the label. (Kind of like calling someone a “communist” back in the 1950s.) No need for the hapless “creationist” to be a Biblical literalist, or to believe in a young earth, or to be politically or socially conservative, or have any other attribute the general public thinks of when they hear the “C” word. For Coyne, one just has to think that Read More ›