Hi Mr Jack,
Here's the skinny: Schwartz essentially discards all of the molecular data and simply looks at morphology. ...
When I saw the title of this thread I had a feeling that it would be about Schwartz ...
This is, frankly, both unjustified and bad science.
Cherry picking evidence and only using evidence that supports your preferred concept is always bot wrong and bad science. I've read Schwartz's book (
"Sudden Origins" by Jeffery H Schwartz), and also let my dad (taught biology at UofMich) read it, and he had the same opinion.
quote:
Chapter 12 is where he goes off the deep end. Specifically he equates the loss of a fully evolved HOX gene complex together with the cascade of orchestrated elements needed for the production and assembly of features ... to the development of that HOX gene by one mutation. He specifically dismisses the argument Dawkins makes on eye evolution and ignores the evidence of intermediates. He suggests that eyes evolved fully developed, because when you destroy one specific HOX gene in a population that any homozygous individual is sightless -- no eye and no eye socket. He goes on to propose that other "novel" features are likewise developed whole by single HOX mutations.
Frankly, I would not give this book away, certainly not to anyone looking for honest information.
Also see comments Dr Schwartz made on
Message 38 and
Message 40, another thread that takes another of his books apart.
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : linky
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