Sean Carroll

The current edition of The New Criterion carries a lengthy reviewof The Edge of Evolution (subscription required) by the biochemist Paul Gross. Unfortunately, although he is commendably civil and kindly praises my writing and speaking abilities, Gross offers little of actual substance other than to declare the book’s arguments wrong. He quotes Ken Miller saying that the malaria calculations are wrong, and alludes to Sean Carroll’s declaration that, why, there is a vast number of (unspecified) papers showing how protein binding sites can evolve. For rejoinders to those claims, I refer readers to my comments on this blog concerning Carroll’s and Miller’s reviews.

Science has published a letter by myself responding to Sean Carroll’s earlier review of The Edge of Evolution. In my letter I note that: In his unfavorable review of my book, The Edge of Evolution, Sean Carroll writes that “Behe’s chief error is minimizing the power of natural selection to act cumulatively,” and implies that I fail to discuss “pyrimethamine resistance in malarial parasites … –a notable omission given Behe’s extensive discussion of malarial drug resistance. But, I demurred, I did write about pyrimethamine. Carroll admitted in Science right after my published letter that, well, yes, I did discuss pyrimethamine resistance, but his real concern was that I didn’t give it the spin he wanted: Behe did indeed discuss pyrimethamine resistance on pages 75 and 76 Read More ›