Reading time: ~2 min read
To recapitulate, following their examination of thousands of ground finches (Geospiza fortis) from the 1970s to the 1990s, Grant and his team observed no net increase or decrease in beak size. Moreover, no new species or characteristic emerged, and they observed no net change in any direction.
An objective scientist's task is to report that fact without speculation or distortion. It is unacceptable to exaggerate a phenomenon or to distort its true significance for the sake of producing evidence for any theory. Yet Professor Grant's analysis was completely opposed to his findings; he made a claim of a phenomenon that he never observed, that one finch species could turn into another in as short a time frame as 200 years, and he thus cast a serious pall over his own research. In the words of the California University biologist Dr Jonathan Wells, this is "exaggerating the evidence."240
Wells states that Darwinists frequently resort to such methods, and cites as an example some expressions in a pamphlet issued by the American National Academy of Sciences:
A 1999 booklet published by the National Academy describes Darwin's finches as "a particularly compelling example" of the origin of species. The booklet goes on to explain how the Grants and their colleagues showed "that a single year of drought on the islands can drive evolutionary changes in the finches," and that "if droughts occur about once every 10 years on the islands, a new species of finch might arise in only about 200 years."
That's it. Rather than confuse the reader by mentioning that selection was reversed after the drought, producing no long-term evolutionary change, the booklet simply omits this awkward fact. Like a stock promoter who claims a stock might double in value in twenty years because it increased 5 percent in 1998, but doesn't mention that it decreased 5 percent in 1999, the booklet misleads the public by concealing a crucial part of the evidence. 241
It is astonishing that the respected and trustworthy American National Academy of Sciences should employ such a deception to look for evidence for natural selection and evolution in finches' beaks. Berkeley University's Professor Phillip Johnson said so in an article in the Wall Street Journal:
"When our leading scientists have to resort to the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail, you know they are in trouble."242
In sum, the story of the Galapagos finches, claimed to represent one of the most impressive examples of evolution through natural selection, is a clear deception—but only one of hundreds of similar examples of evolutionists resorting to unscientific methods.
References
- Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution, Regnery Publishing Inc., 2000, pp. 173-174. ↩
- Ibid., pp. 174-175; See National Academy of Sciences, Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition, Washington DC, 1999. ↩
- Phillip E. Johnson, "The Church of Darwin" The Wall Street Journal, 16 August 1999. ↩