World Around Us

World Around Us

The World Around Us “virtual museum” website – An analysis

Here I describe the nature of the site and give an overview of its logic, rhetoric, and intellectual quality. I add as an appendix, keyed to the site itself, a frame by frame content analysis, for completeness and reference purposes, and to justify the strength of the opinions I have expressed.

This is a Creationist (indeed, in part at least, a Young Earth Creationist) site. Any student who uses this as a resource will be completely misled. Any teacher using it will be in violation of guidelines, and at risk of career damage.

This site continues the post-Dover phase of Creationist activity, as exemplified by Truth in Science, Explore Evolution, and C4ID. It is characterised by anonymity (we are not even told who wrote the text, deniability (the religious agenda is not stated, and the site claims merely to be offering suggestions for consideration), and a mixture of turgid post-modern philosophising, straw man arguments, distortions of established science, and presentation of fringe science as mainstream. The overall purpose is to undermine confidence in established cosmology, geology, physics, and biological science, and to invite consideration of the crypto-Creationist alternative. The graphics chosen to illustrate this self-styled virtual museum are selected to further its agenda, are widely available elsewhere, and are nowhere adequately explained. The reading list is a collection of polemical works spanning the range of Creationist and anti-evolutionary positions. There is no way in which visiting this site is likely to further anyone’s understanding or knowledge of science.

The process of deception begins with the site’s name; The World Around Us is the name given to a section of the official Northern Ireland curriculum. (Much as Explore Evolution mimics the name of a major US National Science Foundation educational initiative.) Like Truth in Science and Explore Evolution, the site quotes selectively from the UK national curriculum about the importance of learning from evidence. The conclusions of scientific investigations are then misdescribed as assumptions, and the use of naturalistic explanation is misdescribed as a philosophical self-limitation, rather than as an empirically justified methodology. A false contrast is drawn between the methods of history and those of science as currently practised. It is claimed, in a clumsy attempt to establish a toehold for supernatural design in the historical sciences, that history answers “why?” questions. This it does not, except in the trivial sense that human action and motivation is part of the subject matter. (In this sense, the social and psychological sciences also answer “why?” questions). The existence of marginal disagreements, or even the agreed existence of limitations and the need for precautions, is presented as evidence of fundamental problems. All this lays the ground work for the eventual baseless claim that present-day cosmology, geology and evolutionary biology are in a state of crisis, and ripe for a paradigm change.

The site claims to “draw on mainstream science”, but does this only in the sense that Loch Ness monster hunters draw on mainstream zoology. It uses the familiar rhetorical methods of Creationist pseudoscience, including false dichotomy, misrepresentation of the conclusions of scientific papers, distortion of the record of the subject’s development, resurrection of long resolved controversies, and failure to distinguish between peer-reviewed scientific research reports, opinion pieces in bona fide scientific journals, and the purely Creationist literature. There are signs of careless editing of the text, and of the pasting in of much older material. In biology, evidence of minor change is highlighted as not being evidence of major change (as if anyone ever said it was), while the evidence of major change is suppressed. In geology, on the other hand, the occurrence of rapid “catastrophic” episodes is explicitly described as evidence against the gradualism of anything in between. The constancy of radioactive decay rates is described as a questionable assumption, in deplorable ignorance of the way that these rates follow inexorably from fundamental physical laws. (As it happens, my favourite exposition of our reasons for trusting radiometric dates, http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html is entitled Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective. Wiens is incidentally concerned with the theological as well as the scientific shortcomings of Creationism, but such matters are beyond the scope of BCSE.)

To sum up, this site is indeed a museum. A museum of horrors.

Professor Paul S. Braterman, MA, DPhil, DSc

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Appendix

Note: the material quoted here is the copyright intellectual property of Genesis Agendum, and is reproduced here only as necessary for critical analysis. Readers should use the links provided as appropriate to access the actual site.

Note also that this catalogue of errors does not claim to be exhaustive. An exhaustive exposition would run to considerably greater length.

Times Education Supplement Scotland here; http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6064306

“The museum presents ... evidence from mainstream science rather than offers answers or solutions but suggests the evidence points to a paradigm crisis in evolutionary theory.” The “presents evidence” is the latest trick in Creationist deniability. So is the vagueness of “suggests” and “a paradigm crisis”. “prepared by a group”, none of whom are identified.

"beyond the purely materialistic philosophies which can influence interpretation ... They are not alone in questioning Darwinian philosophies..."; Note confusion between methodology and philosophy, and the use of Darwin’s name to describe the state of science over a century after his death.

Homepage at http://www.worldaroundus.org.uk/

Like Truth in Science, quotes National Curriculum about the importance of learning from evidence.

Throughout, the choice of reference materials is eccentric, even when not clearly driven by bias. For instance, the only reference given on the page entitled Knowledge gain, which describes the laws of gravity and of stratigraphy, is to Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s Archaeology from the Earth, published in 1954. There are extensive quotations from the 19th century literature, often with a gap until much more recent work, suggesting reworking of material from badly outdated originals.

http://www.worldaroundus.org.uk/orientation-gallery/ refers to present-day biology as “neo-Darwinism”, which is a bit like calling present-day chemistry '“neo-Daltonism”'. It damns Darwin with faint praise, claims that “all is not well with a number of aspects of evolutionary theory” and that “This might be considered a paradigm crisis (see Paradigm Crisis Gallery)” (might it? Who by?), links to Further Resources & Acknowledgements, described as offering “additional reading, including a textbook, and web sources”, and to “ a summary of the working methods of science and history (see Knowledge Gallery)"

Also shown, thumbnails for The voyage of HMS Beagle, Development of Darwin’s theory, and Looking for the evidence. This last is subtitled with a quotation from Darwin about the incompleteness [in 1859] of the fossil record.

The promised “textbook” at Further Resources is Explore Evolution, a Creationist tract that we analyse in detail elsewhere (see http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/images%20for%20blog/EE%20Exposed.pdf . This is listed as “mainstream” along with works by Michael Behe (Intelligent Design advocate, Discovery Institute fellow), William Dembski (Old World Creationist, biblical infallibilist, professor at South-western Baptist Theologically Seminary, Discovery Institute fellow), Steve Fuller (who argues that scientific consensus is a social construction and that, therefore, Intelligent Design deserves parity of esteem with mainstream science), James Le Fanu (a doctor in general practice, whose Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves, invokes theology to explain biological complexity), Stephen C Meyer (Vice President of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture), Richard Milton (journalist, who believes in telekinesis and the luminiferous ether; the work cited is called Shattering the Myths of Darwinism), David Swift (Evolution Under the Microscope: a Scientific Critique of the Theory of Evolution, published by Leighton Academic Press, which was set up for that specific purpose), Vij Sodera (a Young Earth Creationist whose book, subtitled The Evolution Myth, appears to have been self published in Bognor) and Jonathan Wells (Discovery Institute fellow, who undertook the study of biology in order to destroy evolution science, on orders from the Rev Sung Myun Moon).

I do not see how anyone, whatever their own views, could possibly regard this list of authors, which I give here in full, as “mainstream”.

The other books listed on this page as including “a religious dimension” are by Stuart Burgess, Paul Garner, and Norman Nevin (all biblical Young Earth Creationists), and John Lennox (a mathematician advocate of Intelligent Design). The web resources listed link to Truth in Science (already exposed by us as a Creationist organisation), Paul Garner (already mentioned), and the Access Research Network, which is closely connected to the Discovery Institute.

The voyage of HMS Beagle contains two innocuous paragraphs, and a photograph of Darwin taken many years after his return.

The slightly longer page on Development of Darwin’s theory requires no special comment.

Looking for the evidence shows Creationist debating tactics at their most obvious. Archaeopteryx is discounted on the grounds that it is a bird, no other reptile-bird intermediates being mentioned. Haeckel’s drawings of embryos are dismissed as “fraudulent”, and no other developmental evidence is presented. A section on “the evolution of man” concludes “the different number and structure of chromosomes and the gene gain and loss which, as Demuth et al state, ‘represents a large number of genetic differences separating humans from our closest relatives". [Reference to Delmuth, PLoS 2006]” but immediately goes on to say, as if this followed from the work quoted, “Darwinian evolution of man and apes from a common ancestor remains unproven”, an assertion that Delmuth and his colleagues would regard as absurd. No reference is made to the (2 October 2009, free download) special number of Science devoted to Ardipithecus Ramidus and its implications for this very topic, although the section refers to websites as retrieved in June 2010. It is difficult to believe that the authors had simply not noticed this development. The final section on this page, entitled “Contemporary Evolution”, concerns the peppered moth. Perhaps, given the history of this subject, we should be grateful that the site does acknowledge the reality of industrial melanism and its reversal, but this does not justify the peroration “But it is not possible from this evidence to extrapolate a Darwinian theory of evolution involving changing body plans or a common ancestor to all life.” (Emphasis added. Indeed, the peppered moth evidence does not show our common ancestry with apes, let alone with toadstools, all of which is well established but by other evidence. So what?)

The Knowledge Gallery begins with a set of generalisations, including “Hypotheses and theories in science and history do not constitute proof and may therefore be revised as additional knowledge becomes available” (how does this differ from any other kind of knowledge?), and “Unlike history, science only admits material evidence. Many scientists therefore avoid any interpretation of evidence in terms of aesthetics or the metaphysical.” One wonders what is meant here by non-material evidence, and why, in the study of history, it would be permissible.

The first page in this Gallery is Knowledge gain. This refers to observed facts, and laws, correctly defined here as formalisations of regularities inferred from facts, with the law of gravity, and the law of superposition in geology and archaeology, as examples. However, it concludes “But facts and laws do not explain why things exist or behave in a certain manner.” Indeed they could not, since, as defined here, they are purely descriptive.

Knowledge gain in science (four short paragraphs, no references) cites as an example of a hypothesis confirmed the fact that litmus paper turns red in acid.

Knowledge gain in the historical sciences states ;

This lays the ground work for later attacks on our scientific knowledge about the past, by incorrectly asserting that what are actually a posteriori outcomes of observation, are no more than a priori assumptions. We infer from observations that temperature conditions were fairly similar to today’s three billion years ago, but that oxygen concentrations were very different. We crosscheck the reliability of written or verbal records, and the honesty and motivation of those who left them. It is not an assumption, but true by definition, that artefacts are the result of the behaviour that caused them. And any analysis or discussion of an event is, in the relevant sense, a simulation, of whose limitations we must be aware.

There follows an unremarkable discussion of the Tunguska explosion, and the still unresolved question of what caused it.

The building blocks of knowledge chooses as an example of a paradigm shift the emergence of plate tectonics as the current paradigm in Earth Sciences. This page is unexceptionable, but rather old-fashioned. For example it states that '“Until recently' it was generally believed that the map of the world had changed little and the mountain ranges formed from a cooling and contraction of the earth’s surface” (emphasis added), and the only references are to Kuhn (first edition, 1962, although the second, enlarged edition appeared in 1970), and to Arthur Holmes’s 1993 textbook. Some archaic language here and elsewhere (e.g. “an hypothesis”) suggests deep recycling.

The next page, Interpretation in science & the historical sciences: some limitations, gives the first clear evidence of the site’s real agenda. A sketch of the human knee joint is juxtaposed to a sketch of a Stone Age hand axe, in a panel that illustrates the following remarkable statement:

This account deliberately confuses two completely different things; trying to work out facts about the motivation of those involved in making it (a proper subject for historical research, but involving no appeal to the supernatural), and the claim that “questions of ‘why?’ and ‘wherefore?’ ” may legitimately be asked in history, but not in science, about the events themselves. Such questions have no more place in historical scholarship than a similar claim would have in science, and for much the same reasons.

Subsequent panels refer to “Interpreting through a worldview” (chosen example, Kossina’s interpretation of German prehistory and its use by the Nazis), “Interpreting within the current paradigm” (chosen example, the initial rejection of Wegener’s theory of continental drift), and finally “Interpretation and the ‘reinforcement syndrome’ “. This panel uses the same term for the convergence of different lines of evidence, and for publication bias. Presumably this is in order to undermine the very powerful arguments from the convergence of geological and biochemical evidence in our present understanding of the history of life on Earth.

The next Gallery, WAU - Reorientation Gallery, at http://www.worldaroundus.org.uk/reorientation-gallery/, really gets down to business. The introductory page states

Notice how this echoes the faulty theory of knowledge about the past developed in earlier sections. Note also that at least three of these four statements are not assumptions at all, but conclusions from the evidence. The one apparent exception (the second statement) is actually a tautology; life, however it came into existence, must either have arisen (through whatever sequence of processes) from material present on earth, or have arrived from space. It is not clear what is meant by “an [sic] materialistic and evolutionary standpoint”, unless it means relying on actual evidence.

The page Big Bang theory reports, as if still current, a controversy about quasars that raged in the 1980s, and notes (also correctly) that current investigations of the microwave background could lead to reassessment of the role of dark energy. It states quite incorrectly that a highly technical 2006 paper about the fine detail of the cosmic microwave background was casting doubt on its scientifically agreed origin (it was actually casting doubt on a postulated gravitational correction, but are the ostensive target audience for this site, secondary school teachers and their pupils, supposed to be able to work this out?). This is standard Creationist technique. A technical discussion within the agreed framework of a theory is misrepresented as evidence that the theory itself is under attack. Finally, it uses selective quotations, and opinion pieces from non-reviewed blogs, to incorrectly claim that there is widespread dissent from the expanding universe consensus.

The page on the Origin of Life gives a superficial description of some work in the area, before concluding, quite correctly, that “Despite laboratory and field simulations it has not been possible to generate life; neither has evidence of life been found elsewhere as a result of NASA’s space programme or the examination of meteorites.” This is an argument that falls between the straw man and the premature. Claims of signs of life on Mars aroused temporary excitement, but never achieved general acceptance. We are approaching, but have not yet reached, the point where we could examine the atmospheres of exoplanets for signs of life. I do not imagine (do the authors of this page imagine?) that scientists studying possible origins of life seriously hope to repeat in the laboratory a process that in nature took an unknown number of tens of millions of years.

The page, A universal common ancestor, sets the stage for the main agenda. It presents, as if it were the latest word, Darwin’s reason for suggesting common ancestry. It mis-describes homology as resemblance (the difference is crucial in evaluating the fossil record). It asserts, completely incorrectly, that the existence of gaps in the fossil record gives grounds to question the principle of superposition (which simply states that in general, more recent rocks lie on top of older deposits). Finally, in another trademark piece of misrepresentation, the “prevailing view that... the process of life does not lend itself to patterns expressed by simple tree-forms”, because of increasing evidence of greater interconnectedness between the various domains of life is used to “throw into question the theory of a universal common ancestor”, in order to lay the ground for a doctrine of separate Creation, the very opposite of what the newly prevailing view implies.

“What is biological evolution?“ is disgraceful. It admits “microevolution”, citing blind cave fish and Galapagos finches as examples, and admits the reality of speciation, but goes on to say that “evolutionary trees … assume that organisms are related by descent to a common ancestor” (emphasis added), again misrepresenting the outcome as an input. Statements of opinion are presented as fact, and opposing opinions suppressed. Thus the page states as facts that “the information contained in DNA … are [sic] not a matter of chance and necessity”, on the basis of one much-contested theoretical paper, and that “despite the popular view, evolutionary theory contributes little experimental biology”, an opinion expressed in a letter to a journal editor that drew a massive dissenting response, not mentioned here.

The page on Deep time is, if possible, even worse. Uniformitarianism is represented by a paper from 1805; variable rates of deposition by a paper from 1948; and for a discussion of the balance between uniformitarian and catastrophist viewpoints, the reader is referred to an essay by Stephen Jay Gould (name unaccountably truncated to Stephen Jay) from 1975. From this, we are invited to conclude that “The move towards catastrophic interpretations of the geological record raises fundamental questions about the timescale required for these events to have taken place.” We are not told which geologists would subscribe to this statement, for very good reason that there are none such.

The next Gallery, Paradigm Crisis, really gets down to business. This gallery states as fact that “With the advance of knowledge a widening gap has appeared between the evidence and the accepted interpretation of the world around us. Thomas Kuhn called such a situation a paradigm crisis,” and justifies this assertion as follows:

This argument sounded much more convincing 30 years ago. We now know that the “Cambrian explosion” stretched over a much longer time period, that some of the drastic differences in morphology were artefacts of misinterpretation, and that indirect evidence for large organisms (e.g. from mud burrows) goes back further than the bodily fossil record.

This wilfully ignores the results of laboratory experiments, some of which are admitted even by Michael Behe to display the evolution of new functional units in bacteria exposed to novel constraints.

This conclusion is rejected by virtually the entire scientific community, and is based on bait-and-switch with the word “irreducible” (I discuss this, along with the previous claim, in some detail at http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/MichaelBeheInBritain )

Of course some rock formation processes are catastrophic. This has been apparent since Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79.

This is a non sequitur based on the previous statement, and echoes a similarly baseless assertion from the page Deep time, discussed above.

Total nonsense. It has been known since 1928 that radioactive decay rates are predictable consequences of such fundamental constants as Planck’s constant, the electron mass, and the numerical sizes of nuclear and electrostatic forces, alterations to any of which would have completely changed the laws of physics and chemistry. Yet we know from their composition and structure that the oldest rocks on earth were laid down in accordance with the same laws of nature that apply today.

The Fossil Record starts by quoting Darwin concerning the imperfection of the fossil record in his time, contrasts this with the present richness of the record, and infers from this that “The evidence suggests that arguments based on the imperfection of the geological record to justify the absence of intermediate varieties and ‘missing links’ is ill-founded.” Fair enough, except for the fact that nowadays, the standard rebuttal of a “missing link” argument is not an appeal to the imperfection of the record, but the demonstration of the existence of intermediates, such as the 20 or so currently recognised intermediates between apes and modern humans.

The next section discusses punctuated equilibrium, and shamelessly quotes Prof Steve Jones’s reference to what he called “the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against the theory of evolution,” while suppressing his response to this objection. Prof Jones is, of course, justly renowned for his eloquent attacks on the Creationist positions that this website exists to promote.

Three uncontroversial further sections on the KT boundary, other assorted dramatic events, and the evolution of the horse lead to the conclusion that “The evidence from the fossil record, accumulated over centuries, is of the sudden appearance of life in the geological record, of the maintenance of the basic body forms in both animals and plants to the present day but with the extinction of some and the adaptation of others in the catastrophic environmental conditions to which life was subjected.” The “sudden appearance” is discussed above. Basic body forms have indeed been maintained, but only in the most general sense, the sense in which we share our basic body form with sea squirts.

The page on Information is everything we have now learned to expect. We start with a 1977 vintage quotation that “at present, science seems incapable of solving” the problem of the origin of biological information. A brief description of biological complexity builds up to the claim (false, as already discussed) that “while existing genetic information may be duplicated, mutations have not been shown to produce new information”. This section culminates with a 1985 quotation from the biochemist Michael Denton, describing evolution as a “myth”, although since 1998 at least he has regarded it as a cosmic necessity.

Satire falls silent.

The page on Design contributes additional rhetorical tricks. We have the unsupported assertion

We are clearly meant to infer that the reason intelligence is not invoked in contemporary science is the result of philosophical prejudice. We are not told what going “beyond a purely materialistic paradigm” could possibly entail. We have a quotation from Francis Crick, no less, presented (by distortion of context) as support for a concept of “specified complexity” completely alien to his thinking, and treated to brief discussions of “specified complexity” in DNA and “irreducible complexity” in (yes, you guessed it) the bacterial flagellum. Surprisingly (or would this be too obvious a giveaway?) we are not given the names of those most notoriously associated with these two deeply discredited concepts.

The Record of the Rocks maintains an outdated distinction between uniformitarianism and catastrophism, the former being represented by Playfair (1802) and Lyell (1830). Standing tree fossils are misdescribed as evidence for catastrophic deposition. At one and the same time, it is suggested that the present consensus relies on rigid uniformitarianism, and that the importance of episodes of much more rapid change is already recognised. (This is oddly reminiscent of the argument that the theory of punctuated equilibrium undermines longer term overall gradualism in evolution.) Authentic radiometric studies (ironically; see the following page) are correctly described as establishing large-scale movements of sediments between 1000 million and 250 million years before present. From this, the authors argue that “an objective review of the evdence [sic] is long overdue.” I would have thought that every single paper in geology, including the ones cited on this page, was part of such an ongoing objective review.

Finally, if you can bear it, we come to Dating. This starts out by asserting, as if established fact, that “Catastrophism has replaced uniformitarianism.” (this either/or absurdity is discussed in the preceding paragraph). It then asks “Is there evidence to continue to support a long chronology?” (No prizes for guessing the answer offered), and it is further claimed that “There are indications that the rock and fossil record support a short chronology.” Untrue.

Yes, as in all areas, but only when work is performed incompetently.

The basis has been established for a century, was anchored to fundamental physical theory 70 years ago, and is automatically reviewed by crosschecking in every multi-nucleus study.

Only in the Young Earth Creationist alternative universe.

To details. Here I give chapter and verse, because this page made me more angry than any of the others, perhaps because of my familiarity with the subject matter and friendships with many of the individuals working in the area. Throughout, this page lays heavy stress on well-known sources of error, in order to suggest that these are weaknesses in principle. It states (no reference) that Siccar point is “an example of the lack of erosion between the deposition of layers”. The reverse is true, quite dramatically so. The underlying layer has been tilted through almost 90°, while being eroded to establish a new horizon crossing the existing strata, before the upper layer was deposited. A good observational and computational study (correctly referenced) of sorting during deposition of individual layers is misrepresented as evidence that such layers could have been formed in a single step; again, the reverse of reality. An excellent brief review (Nature, 2005, 435:1171) of how multiple radiometric dating methods can distinguish between the original formation of 800 million year old rock, and rapid metamorphic changes some 400 million years later, is described as evidence for the site’s thesis that geological processes in general are rapid. A paper (J. Chem. Ed., 2005, 82, 1094) cited as evidence against relying on radiometric dating actually refers to its “amazing degree of accuracy”, provided specified precautions are taken. Baumgartner’s Abstract (AGU Fall meeting, 2003, Abstract V32C-1045) is correctly described as showing unexpectedly high levels of carbon-14 in coal. (Such work has been repeated, and the carbon-14 is now uncontroversially assigned to modern bacteria living on the coal). The page also incorrectly states that this Abstract includes his claim of carbon-14 in diamonds. This claim, which has been published only in the Creationist literature, is fully critiqued at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/carbon-kb.htm. We are told that the presence of radiogenic helium in zircons is evidence against their antiquity, although it is known that this argument is based on a completely unsound extrapolation from surface laboratory conditions to in-depth burial at high pressure. We are also told that the presence of polonium halos contradicts established dating, even though this claim was refuted in 1988, with the demonstration (see e.g. J. Geol. Educ., 1988, 36, 161) that such halos were only to be expected in rock, because of the diffusion of radon which eventually decays by way of polonium. G. Brent Dalrymple’s offhand description of the halos as “a very tiny mystery” is roped into service as evidence that a mystery really exists, in clear and direct opposition to Dalrymple’s intent. Dalrymple, incidentally, was one of the leading expert witnesses (Stephen Jay Gould, whose name is repeatedly taken in vain on this site, was another) in the historical landmark case McLean vs Arkansas, 1985, which to the satisfaction of all reasonable people (though not the anonymous authors of this site) established that self-styled “Creation Science” lacked all credibility. And yes, remove the mask and what this site is peddling is unregenerate Creation Science.