The Guardian doesn’t seem to be letting up: Having already published a critique of Darwinism, they continue question Darwin. Here’s a letter they published, critiquing his sexual selection theory:
The question isn’t whether or not we need a new theory of evolution (The long read, 28 June); it’s why it has taken so long to bring the old one into the 21st century. Anchor bias, the difficulty of dislodging the first thing we learn about a topic, makes it challenging for biologists to accept and evaluate experimental data that doesn’t play by Darwin’s rules.
Natural selection had many fathers, including Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus. But sexual selection is exclusively Darwin’s, and is the theory most in need of a second look. The failure to update the theory of sexual selection by incorporating recent genetic breakthroughs and viewing the process through a female lens has left us with a seriously flawed theory of human evolution.
Heather Remoff, “How Charles Darwin got sexual selection wrong” at The Guardian (July 8, 2022)
Heather Remoff is the author of What’s Sex Got To Do With It? (2022).
She seems like another witness to the fact that one can question Darwin today without getting cancelled.
Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne is, of course, not pleased: In the end, Remoff is tilting at two windmills that have already fallen. Her attack on Darwin is wrongheaded since Darwin’s correctness is not the issue in Buranyi’s piece and because female preference was already a crucial part of Darwin’s theory. And her claim that it was only the “female lens”, used recently, that helped us understand sexual selection, is also misleading. Female preference has been considered by evolutionists since 1871.Her attack on Darwin is wrongheaded since Darwin’s correctness is not the issue in Buranyi’s piece and because female preference was already a crucial part of Darwin’s theory. And her claim that it was only the “female lens”, used recently, that helped us understand sexual selection, is also misleading. Female preference has been considered by evolutionists since 1871.”
The ground is shifting under his feet.