Today, Don McLeroy passionately defended his attempt to inject his own misunderstandings of evolution into Biology classrooms in Texas.
One of McLeroy's fellow Board members made the motion to strike standard rule 7B, the nonsensical amendment that McLeroy proposed in January.
With this prospect looming, McLeroy made the following appeal:
(Video via Texas Freedom Network)
In the middle of his plea, McLeroy deflected the accusation of quote mining, saying:
"People are trying to say I'm speaking out of context about stasis."
He then immediately went on to confirm that accusation by quoting Stephen Jay Gould out of context (again). Apparently, McLeroy is not only arguing about stasis, he is trying to model it.
This situation is not that complicated. Stasis is not a problem for modern evolutionary theory. As I pointed out yesterday, sudden appearance and stasis are two of the patterns that we should expect to observe if we apply our modern understanding of how new species form (i.e., allopatric and especially peripatric speciation) and the observed phenomenon of "stabilizing selection" to the fossil record.
In spite of McLeroy's attempted deflection, the "out of context" charge is clearly supported by the fact that he has openly admitted that he copied the Gould quotes from a Creationist website. If he would actually take the time to read the book from which those quotes were mined, he would realize that the only things Gould ever wrote about "stasis" were actually part of his arguments in favor of evolution.
In truth, none of the scientists who opposed McLeroy's amendment denied that stasis is one of the patterns observed in the fossil record. They simply disputed McLeroy's false claim that this pattern "doesn't support evolution." If McLeroy had taken the time to actually read Gould's own words instead of the quote mines he plagiarized, he might understand this simple point.
Despite his impassioned plea, McLeroy's amendment was eventually struck from the standards. Unfortunately, it was later replaced with the following "compromise" amendment:
"Analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning any data about sudden appearance, stasis and the sequential nature of groups in the fossil record."
While definitely an improvement over the original, the inclusion of the words "sudden appearance" and "stasis" will undoubtedly give McLeroy the green light to make the same arguments again when new Biology textbooks are considered in 2011. Unless, of course, he actually learns something about evolution between now and then.
Unfortunately, with Don McLeroy, stasis is data.
posted by Jeremy Mohn
