On Darwins Birthday, Only 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution

vonlost · February 12, 2009, 3:49pm

The 4-in-10 and the Bush clan’s rejection of science has resulted in the high proportion of foreigners in our college science classes. As long as foreigners want to attend our schools, and if our immigration laws allow them to stay, we should have a good chance at surviving in this world.

yawn · February 12, 2009, 3:49pm

Here’s a rather interesting article on evolution as it has applied to humans for the past 10,000 years, and what implications it holds for the human race, as well as its individual races and ethnicities, in the future:

[They</a> Don’t Make Homo Sapiens Like They Used To | Human Evolution | DISCOVER Magazine](<a href=“http://discovermagazine.com/2009/mar/09-they-dont-make-homo-sapiens-like-they-used-to]They”>http://discovermagazine.com/2009/mar/09-they-dont-make-homo-sapiens-like-they-used-to)

Here are the first couple of paragraphs:

For decades the consensus view—among the public as well as the world’s preeminent biologists—has been that human evolution is over. Since modern Homo sapiens emerged 50,000 years ago, “natural selection has almost become irrelevant” to us, the influential Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould proclaimed. “There have been no biological changes. Everything we’ve called culture and civilization we’ve built with the same body and brain.” This view has become so entrenched that it is practically doctrine. Even the founders of evolutionary psychology, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, signed on to the notion that our brains were mostly sculpted during the long period when we were hunter-gatherers and have changed little since. “Our modern skulls house a Stone Age mind,” they wrote in a background piece on the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

So to suggest that humans have undergone an evolutionary makeover from Stone Age times to the present is nothing short of blasphemous. Yet a team of researchers has done just that. They find an abundance of recent adaptive mutations etched in the human genome; even more shocking, these mutations seem to be piling up faster and ever faster, like an avalanche. Over the past 10,000 years, their data show, human evolution has occurred a hundred times more quickly than in any other period in our species’ history.

The new genetic adaptations, some 2,000 in total, are not limited to the well-recognized differences among ethnic groups in superficial traits such as skin and eye color. The mutations relate to the brain, the digestive system, life span, immunity to pathogens, sperm production, and bones—in short, virtually every aspect of our functioning.

Many of these DNA variants are unique to their continent of origin, with provocative implications. “It is likely that human races are evolving away from each other,” says University of Utah anthropologist Henry Harpending, who coauthored a major paper on recent human evolution. “We are getting less alike, not merging into a single mixed humanity.”

Harpending theorizes that the attitudes and customs that distinguish today’s humans from those of the past may be more than just cultural, as historians have widely assumed. “We aren’t the same as people even a thousand or two thousand years ago,” he says. “Almost every trait you look at is under strong genetic influence.”

Not surprisingly, the new findings have raised hackles. Some scientists are alarmed by claims of ethnic differences in temperament and intelligence, fearing that they will inflame racial sensitivities. Other researchers point to limitations in the data. Yet even skeptics now admit that some human traits, at least, are evolving rapidly, challenging yesterday’s hallowed beliefs.

Bones don’t lie. John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin at Madison likes evidence he can put his hands on, so he takes me on a tour of the university’s bone laboratory. There, the energetic 36-year-old anthropologist unlocks a glass case and begins arranging human skulls and other skeletal artifacts—some genuine fossils, others high-quality reproductions—on a counter according to their age. Gesturing toward these relics, which span the past 35,000 years, Hawks says, “You don’t have to look hard to see that teeth are getting smaller, skull size is shrinking, stature is getting smaller.”

These overriding trends are similar in many parts of the world, but other changes, especially over the past 10,000 years, are distinct to specific ethnic groups. “These variations are well known to forensic anthropologists,” Hawks says as he points them out: In Europeans, the cheekbones slant backward, the eye sockets are shaped like aviator glasses, and the nose bridge is high. Asians have cheekbones facing more forward, very round orbits, and a very low nose bridge. Australians have thicker skulls and the biggest teeth, on average, of any population today. “It beats me how leading biologists could look at the fossil record and conclude that human evolution came to a standstill 50,000 years ago,” Hawks says.

By his account, Hawks’s theory of accelerated human evolution owes its genesis to what he could see with his own eyes. But his radical view was also influenced by newly emerging genetic data. Thanks to stunning advances in sequencing and deciphering DNA in recent years, scientists had begun uncovering, one by one, genes that boost evolutionary fitness. These variants, which emerged after the Stone Age, seemed to help populations better combat infectious organisms, survive frigid temperatures, or otherwise adapt to local conditions. And they were popping up with surprising frequency.

Taken together, the skeletal and genetic evidence convinced Hawks that the ruling “static” view of recent human evolution was not only wrong but also quite possibly the opposite of the truth. He discussed his ideas with Harpending, his former postdoc adviser at the University of Utah, and Gregory Cochran, a physicist and adjunct professor of anthropology there. They both agreed with Hawks’s interpretation. But why, they wondered, might evolution be picking up speed? What could be fueling the trend?

Then one day, as Hawks and Cochran mulled over the matter in a phone conversation, inspiration struck. “At exactly the same moment, both of us realized, gee, there’s a lot more people on the planet in recent times,” Hawks recalls. “In a large population you don’t have to wait so long for the rare mutation that boosts brain function or does something else desirable.”

The three scientists reviewed the demographic data. Ten thousand years ago, there were fewer than 10 million people on earth. That figure soared to 200 million by the time of the Roman Empire. Since around 1500 the global population has been rising exponentially, with the total now surpassing 6.7 billion. Since mutations are the fodder on which natural selection acts, it stands to reason that evolution might happen more quickly as our numbers surge. “What we were proposing was nothing new to animal breeders of the 19th century,” Cochran notes. “Darwin himself emphasized the importance of maintaining a large herd for selecting favorable traits.”

The logic behind the notion was undeniably simple, but at first glance it seemed counterintuitive. The genomes of any two individuals on the planet are more than 99.5 percent the same. Put another way, less than 0.5 percent of our DNA varies across the globe. That is often taken to mean that we have not evolved much recently, Cochran says, “but keep in mind that the human and chimp genomes differ by only about 1 to 2 percent—and nobody would call that a minor difference. None of this conflicts with the idea that human evolution might be accelerating.”

I recommend reading the whole thing. It’s only five pages, so it’s much shorter than a book. :)

SlitheyTove · February 12, 2009, 3:50pm

AuburnMathTutor, what do you think about continental drift?

A scientific theory does not need to be able to predict the future to be a valid and useful theory. Take gravity. Give me two objects with non-zero mass in an isolated system, and I can tell you precisely where they will be at any point of time past or future. Give me three objects, and the problem becomes impossible to solve.

tetrahedr0n · February 12, 2009, 3:57pm

I’d also like to address this line of thought. You mentioned that you can observe the effects of gravity by dropping a ball on the ground. However, can you observe the effect of the pull of the sun on the earth? If not, perhaps you should take gravity less seriously. This is a similar observation request to that of watching a “fish evolving into a mammal.”

edad · February 12, 2009, 4:05pm

Reading discussions like this is extremely discouraging. I am old enough to remember the post-Sputnik era. For you youngsters, let me remind you of the story. We felt that the US was technologically advanced and yet the USSR beat us by launching a satellite before we were able. This was a major event in the space race and cold war relations. As part of the response, the US government took a look at our science programs. An obscure agency, the National Science Foundation, was give resources to develop research and education programs. “New” math and “new” science education programs were developed. The programs including serious funding with textbooks and teacher training.

It is really sad to see that when it comes to science and technology we are still as dumb as bricks.

cartera45 · February 12, 2009, 4:08pm

In the same Science Friday I mentioned earlier, there was a story about whale fossils found in Pakistan that seem to represent whales on the verge of land/sea habitation. The baby was positioned head first - like animals born on land but it was clear that they spent most of their time in the sea. The researcher, from the University of Michigan, said that the discovery had been made in 2000. It has taken this long for the work to be done - both scientifically and politically.

bluebayou · February 12, 2009, 4:39pm

In contrast to the OP, all I can say is: So What?

K-12 education in this country is poor, and K12 science education is even worse. I would surmise that an even greater percentage of common folks don’t believe in Algebra, either.

vonlost · February 12, 2009, 4:53pm

Al Gebra is a terrorist movement which has reportedly infiltrated American schools, carrying weapons of math instruction. It began at the undergraduate level and has spread to secondary schools, according to former US Attorney General John Ashcroft. Favored targets are said to include homomorphics and people living in polynomial relationships. Academics dismiss the Ashcroft’s accusations as pandering to the lowest common denominator of anti-Arab prejudice. They are known to go by such names as “Mathematical Equations” and “Algebra”.

Sources reveal that al-Gebra uses use secret code names like ‘x’ and ‘y’ and refer to themselves as ‘unknowns’, and the CIA has determined they belong to an axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. Field agents are evaluating rumored links with ring-leaders in the French defunctional Axiom Directe group.

More at [Urban</a> Dictionary, February 12: retro-cringe](<a href=“http://www.urbandictionary.com%5DUrban”>http://www.urbandictionary.com)

molliebatmit · February 12, 2009, 6:25pm

This isn’t true, unless you happen to be unwilling to work with bacteria. It is possible to study bacterial evolution in a lab setting quite productively – a scientist at Michigan State, Richard Lenski, has been running a set of bacterial evolution experiments in his lab for the past 20 years, representing over 45,000 generations of bacteria. His lab site is [url=<a href=“http://myxo.css.msu.edu/index.html]here[/url”>http://myxo.css.msu.edu/index.html]here[/url</a>].

There are also scientists who measure rates of evolutionary change in natural populations over the course of many years, although of course they tend to study things like birds and mammals, who do not go through 45,000 generations in 20 years.

Other scientists measure evolutionary change through changes in DNA sequence. If you compare the sequences of two species, you can calculate how long ago their last common ancestor was alive. It involves a lot of computational effort, but is getting easier as more and more living organisms have their complete genomes published (and dead ones, too – woolly mammoths and Neandertals have both been sequenced).

xSteven · February 12, 2009, 6:26pm

Any christian that believes evolution, in my opinion, is silly. EVOLUTION DIRECTLY CONTRASTS WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS. They don’t mesh!!

(I’m very pro-evolution, btw.)

soxfan1 · February 12, 2009, 6:34pm

There is a definite rivalry between Christians and evolution. Because evolution has not been proven, the missing link has not been found. It is unprofessional to press issues like this saying it’s fact. Same with the theory of God. obviously that has not been proven. But education is supposed to explain the facts. Since neither is fact, Public schools in the least should teach both evolution and creationism. Obviously, if it’s a private institution they have the choice of teaching what they believe. But to say evolution is fact and that it’s uneducated to disbelieve in it, certainly shows a lack of education in itself

xSteven · February 12, 2009, 6:36pm

^ Yeah, because evolution certainly doesn’t have as much scientific evidence as a magical genie like bewitched twitching her nose to fabricate objects.

soxfan1 · February 12, 2009, 6:41pm

No one knows which one is true, we’ll never know until we’re dead. However, religion is what this country is founded on, so you might want to take your head out of the science book xsteven and read a history book

xSteven · February 12, 2009, 6:42pm

Yeah, history books definitely give proof for creationism.

vonlost · February 12, 2009, 6:44pm

Much of science has to do with evidence. There is a preponderance of evidence for evolution, but none for religion. Yes, more seem to believe in religion than evolution, but it’s not because of presence or lack of evidence, respectively.

soxfan1 · February 12, 2009, 6:48pm

Alright well since you’re clearly uneducated, we broke off of england to form out own RELIGIOUS beliefs in God and the fact that he created us. I’m not an extremely religious person but I am skeptical for the educational system to teach something that has still not been proven, and not offer the other side that they have been teaching since this country has been founded.

Mike41691 · February 12, 2009, 6:49pm

You might want to, umm, brush up on your U.S. history a bit.

And why should public schools teach creationism? Evolution is a product of science, a conclusion determined from piles and piles of evidence. Creationism is something a book written hundreds of years ago says, with no evidence. What class would you teach creationism in? And more importantly, if creationism in the Judeo-Christian sense, why not all versions of creationism? Every creation story from every civilization, that would be a great use of time in science class. Hell, you could even throw the FSM in there.

vonlost · February 12, 2009, 7:15pm

“Same with the theory of God. obviously that has not been proven.”

“the fact that he created us”

You can’t have it both ways.

“However, religion is what this country is founded on”

The founding fathers did their best to prevent this. England showed them what a mistake it is to found a country on religion. See the first amendment.

Allmusic · February 12, 2009, 8:05pm

The “So What?” to #47, is it show the lack of education in our country, since the less educated are more likely to believe creationism malarky; the results of these surveys also reflect the pervasiveness of Christian belief in the US.

Americans are much more likely to reject evolution than any other Western country:

[Evolution</a> Less Accepted in U.S. Than Other Western Countries, Study Finds](<a href=“National Geographic”>National Geographic)

intparent · February 12, 2009, 9:20pm

Post #48 about Al Gebera, :D

cartera45, I also heard that Science Friday broadcast (anyone interested can get it free via the Apple Itunes store podcast).

Anyone who doesn’t believe in evolution can just skip their flu shots every year going forward. There certainly is no reputable scientific theory other than evolution that I have heard for changes in the flu virus. We might “natural select” our way out of a population that doesn’t believe in evolution that way!

On Darwins Birthday, Only 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution

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On Darwins Birthday, Only 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution