Response

Michael J. Behe did not challenge a single piece of evolutionary biology in my article. Rather, he decided to go after the messenger of the data. So, let me respond to his note by first thanking him for questioning the title of my paper. During the 1980s, when a group of biologists were trying to convince other scientists of the need to include embryology in evolutionary theory, I would often state that developmental biology was the 'black box' of evolutionary theory — the missing set of connections between the genotype and the phenotype. Embryologists had been using this phrase to describe the relationship between embryology and evolutionary biology at least since Viktor Hamburger's critique of the Modern Synthesis in 1980 (Ref. 1). So, I had every right to use it here. Indeed, I had also described (in a 1998 web site) Haeckel's oversimplified picture of comparative embryonic development as “an icon of evolution”. When Jonathan Wells published his Icons of Evolution2 four years later, I thought that I must be in the business of supplying book titles to creationists.

Second, Behe states that I misrepresent his arguments, but that I am free to do so if I wish. No, I am not free to do so, at least not as a scientist. Behe argues that his book is about biochemistry, not the creation of species, and that he addresses the “biochemical challenge to evolution”. Although Behe uses the term 'black box' to describe the biochemistry of the cell (about which Darwin, like anyone else in 1859, was completely ignorant), he makes some direct statements about DNA and cell metabolism. These statements are outdated and misrepresent what science knows about genes and cellular metabolism. In the index of his book, the entry “DNA/intelligent design” can be found. There, a caricature of molecular evolution can be seen, concluded by the statement “Like selective breeding, the method has the advantages of microevolution, but also its disadvantages. Simple biochemical activities can be produced, but not the complicated systems we have discussed in this book”3. First, as Kenneth Miller4,5 and others have shown, the complicated systems he pronounces as “irreducibly complex” can and have been explained by science, and second, new models of molecular evolution have produced ways of getting novel pathways even beyond those mentioned in Behe's book.

Third, Behe states that the public needs to be aware of what science knows and does not know about evolution. I could not agree more, which is why I would like to see his book classified as science fiction. When a scientist's evidence is directly refuted, the scientist has the obligation to either explain away the contradictory data or to cease making the claim. The claims made in Behe's book have been repeatedly contradicted, yet Behe continues to tell the public his false news without any mention that there are scientists who claim to have completely refuted them. (Should one want to hear the claims and refutation, there are several places. In addition to the above-mentioned citations4,5, I would suggest visiting the Counterbalance Foundation web site6 and listening to the lectures that Behe7 and Miller8 made at the Interpreting Evolution Symposium sponsored by the Templeton Foundation. I do not think it is possible to be more 'balanced' than that.) Yes, the public should be informed about what science has to say about evolution, but the science should be accurate, supported by evidence and not the wishful thinking of people who refuse to believe data that are contrary to their published fancies. Moreover, the debate should be about the science, and Behe's letter offers not a single piece of evidence that is contrary to the evolutionary ideas published in my article.