Most EES proponents have very little in common except that they see themselves as revolutionaries. They each have their own little hobbyhorse that is presumably being suppressed by classical evolutionary biologists. Some of them belong to a cult called The Third Way (of Evolution). They are very good at promoting their point of view through whatever means it takes to get attention. The media loves them.
One of their tricks is to write glowing book reviews of any book that supports their cause and even supposedly reputable journals are happy to publish these reviews. For example, last year Nature published Denis Noble's glowing review of How Life Works by Philip Ball [see Philip Ball's new book: "How Life Works"]. It didn't matter that many scientists panned that book—Nature preferred to commission a friendly reviewer.
Now they've done it again. Nature published a 3½ page review of Evolution Evolving from a prominent EES supporter, Eva Jablonka: A new vision for evolution is long overdue.1 Here's how it begins.
It’s rare that researchers question theories that make up the backbone of whole fields. But in Evolution Evolving, Kevin Lala and four other eminent evolutionary biologists do just that. Their philosophically informed discussion challenges the textbook version of evolutionary theory, known as the modern synthesis, which has been regarded by many scientists as sacrosanct since its conception in the mid-twentieth century. This shift in thinking — which amounts to a new way of unifying the life sciences — is long overdue.
The modern synthesis contends that the only process that leads to evolutionary adaptations is the gradual natural selection of DNA mutations, which arise at random. Lala and colleagues argue that how an organism develops also plays a central part in evolution, not just natural selection. They have been championing this view, which they call the extended evolutionary synthesis, for more than a decade (Laland et al., 2015). And it is hotly debated in the field.
It doesn't get any better.
The first author of the book under review is Kevin Lala, who used to be known as Kevin Laland. He is also the first author of the paper that Jablonka quotes in the second paragraph of her review. I bet you won't be surprised to learn that Eva Jablonka is one of the authors on that paper! They are all "eminent evolutionary biologists."
Lala promoted his book in a recent New Scientist article that I discussed a few weeks ago [see New Scientist promotes misinformation about evolution]. Publicity is the one thing that these "eminent evolutionary biologists" are really, really good at. Have the editors of Nature been conned into believing that this is a serious debate?
The title of the online version is slighlty different: A new vision for how evolution works is long overdue.
Laland, K.N., Uller, T., Feldman, M.W., Sterelny, K., Müller, G.B., Moczek, A., Jablonka, E. and Odling-Smee, J. (2015). The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and predictions. Proc. R. Soc. B [doi: 10.1098/rspb.2015.1019]
11 comments :
Larry! You prefer the word " cult " for TWE cranks, but I think "Gang"
is more suitable. :)
I don't know how a journal decides which books to review, or which reviewers are chosen to review a book. Perhaps someone knows a bit about this process and can contribute it here. Its possible that some of this gets decided by someone coming forward, out of the blue, and proposing that they want to review a particular book. THAT would lead to the one-sided example that we see here.
I'm hoping douglas Futuyma reviews the book. I've always found his critiques of EES to be firm but fair, and he has shown himself to be one of the few "famous" biologists willing to tackle EES.
"how an organism develops also plays a central part in evolution, not just natural selection." What does that even mean?
@psbratterman It means that if you want to understand the particular pathway that a lineage has followed during the history of life, then you need to understand the particular characteristics of that organism. For example, if you are interested in bacteria then you need to know whether they are capable of photosynthesis and if you want to study the evolution of mushrooms you need to understand something about spores.
If your main interest is the evolution of animals then it helps to know how they develop; for example, do they have an exoskeleton of do they have bones? Do they have wings or tusks? This is all about reconstructing the history of life and it has very little to do with fundamental evolutionary theory (population genetics).
One of the problems with EES people is they don't know the difference between the history of life and evolutionary theory. Also, most of them think that the only important thing about evolution is adaptation in large animals and they want to apply that to all of evolution.
In July 2003, Ross Crozier and I reviewed Mary Jane West Eberhard's book 'Developmental Plasticity and Evolution' in Nature. This came about as follows.
Ross Crozier and I had a talk on MJWE's ideas about phenotypic plasticity at a conference, and had similar opinions. Ross Crozier approached Nature, asking whether we could review MJWE's book, given that we had published on phenotypic plasticity. Nature agreed.
Therefore, I rather think that people approach Nature, and Nature gives a cursory glance.
Well said, Larry! I think Jablonka's quote is quite measured. A new view of evolution is long overdue. The real question is whose view? And it is possible that such a "new" view, may actually be quite old. Your readers might be interested in my stuff. The following is a cut-and-paste from my website:
Forsdyke, D. R. (2024) Theory in Biosciences 143, 1-26. Speciation, Natural Selection, and Networks: Three Historians Versus Theoretical Population Geneticists.
The abstract of that paper raises a lot of red flags, such as the 1960's date for the Modern Synthesis. It also seems to ignore neutral theory which is a huge part of the modern theory. Might I suggest a paper for you:
"Hybrids between any of the Madeiran mouse races carrying robertsonian fusions would be sterile or infertile owing to the complex chromosomal configurations that would be produced at meiosis7,8. Our results indicate not only that accelerated rates of radiation can occur without involving adaptive processes, but also that chromosomal evolution can be an efficient mechanism of isolation, as several reproductively isolated chromosomal races have appeared in less than 500 years."
https://www.nature.com/articles/35003116
The abstract reads: "Nevertheless, in the 1960s, the theoretical population geneticists celebrated a “modern synthesis” of the teachings of Mendel and Darwin, with an exclusive role for natural selection in speciation." Readers can for themselves decide whether a celebration of something on a certain date is the "date for" that event.
I don't know of a single living population geneticist who would claim that natural selection has an exclusive role in speciation. If the 1960's were mentioned, the most important thing to come out of that decade was Neutral theory, not a celebration of the Modern Synthesis which was primarily a product of the 1920's through 40's (e.g. Huxley's 1942 book "Evolution: The Modern Synthesis").
As of right now, the differences between divergent species is still understood to be a product of the base sequence differences between their genomes. Plasticity in embryonic development is also see as an expression of the underlying genetic sequence. The cause of plasticity are the genes that make it possible. What exactly needs to be changed or fixed in the modern theory?
Effective population size does not explain long-term variation in genome size and transposable element content in animals
Alba MarinoGautier DebaeckerBenoit Nabholzshow 2 more
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.100574.1
Post a Comment