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Tom Bethell

Farewell to Tom Bethell (1936–2021), one of the earliest modern Darwin skeptics

Laszlo Bencze, writes to say, “I am very saddened to hear of Tom Bethell’s death. Not only was he pivotal in my turning away from Darwinism due to his 1976 Harper’s article which I clipped from the magazine and still have but we also became friends during one of his visits to California." Read More ›

Replication failures of Darwinian sexual selection openly discussed at The Scientist

It’s as if evolutionary biologists are beginning to take some of the problems of Darwinism seriously enough to discuss them openly, as failures in research. In this case, the failure of claims for sexual selection (females drive evolution by choosing the fittest mates) are openly publicized. In the past five years, meta-analyses and reviews have generated more evidence of bias in ecology and evolutionary biology research. For example, biases have been found in the literature on ideas such as feather color affecting mate choice in blue tits and black bib sizes indicating male dominance in house sparrows. As with zebra finch leg bands, such biases don’t necessarily invalidate the hypotheses themselves, but undermine the strength of evidence for them, leaving Read More ›