Scientific & Evolution Misconceptions Oklahoma Educators Evolve October 24, 2015 For more:

Scientific & Evolution Misconceptions

Oklahoma Educators EvolveOctober 24, 2015

For more: www.bntweedy.net/outreach/


Misconception:Science is a collection of facts… Examples

A cuttlefish can change each half of its body one color while the other half is a different color.




Lakes with lots of top predator fish in then tend to be clearer than those without them.



Lakes with lots of top predator fish in then tend to be clearer than those without them.

The energy of an object is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared (E = mc2)



Misconception:Science is a collection of facts…

Science is a process used to understand the world around us!


Misconcepion:It’s just a theory…


Misconcepion:It’s just a theory… A hypothesis or theory is a best guess or wild guess…

Hypothesis

Explicit Assumptio

ns

Past Research

Observations


Misconcepion:It’s just a theory… Hypothesis Theory Law… HYPOTHESIS

Narrow Topic or Specific Phenomena Examples

Driving forces behind the evolution of skink species in Philliplines Impacts of agriculture on pollinators Effects of freshwater mussels on mercury contamination


Misconcepion:It’s just a theory… Hypothesis Theory Law… Theory

Broad Topic or General Phenomena Examples

Theory of Evolution Theory of General Relativity Island Biogeography Theory


Misconcepion:It’s just a theory… Hypothesis Theory Law… Theory

Broad Topic or General Phenomena Examples

Theory of Evolution Theory of General Relativity Island Biogeography Theory


Misconception:Corrections/Changes to part of a theory invalidate all of it… Scientific knowledge is always being

refined Errors and mistakes happen

But science corrects itself eventually We don’t know everything, there are gaps

That’s why we do science

EMAIL ACTIVITY


Misconception Summary

Science is a collection of facts… Its just a theory… Corrections or changes to part of a theory invalidate all of it… What makes an idea scientific…

Testable Falsifiable Observations of the natural world Peer reviewed

CRITIQUE THE CLAIM ACTIVITY!


Common Evolution MisconceptionsAdapted from talkorigins.org

CLAIM: The second law of thermodynamics says that everything

tends toward disorder, making evolutionary development impossible.

REALITY: The second law of thermodynamics says no such thing. It

says that heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one or, equivalently, that total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease. This does not prevent increasing order because



CLAIM: Most mutations are harmful, so the overall effect of

mutations is harmful. REALITY:

Most mutations are neutral. Beneficial mutations are commonly observed. Whether a mutation is beneficial or not depends on

environment. High mutation rates are advantageous in some

environments.



CLAIM: DNA and chromosome counts differ widely between

different organisms. REALITY:

Chromosome counts are poor indications of similarity. Chromosomes can split or join with little effect on the

genes themselves. One human chromosome, for example, is very similar to two chimpanzee

chromosomes laid end to end



CLAIM: The second law of thermodynamics says that everything

tends toward disorder, making evolutionary development impossible.

REALITY: The second law of thermodynamics says no such thing. It

says that heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one or, equivalently, that total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease. This does not prevent increasing order because



CLAIM: Some biochemical systems are irreducibly complex,

meaning that the removal of any one part of the system destroys the system's function. Irreducible complexity rules out the possibility of a system having evolved, so it must be designed.

REALITY: Argument from incredulity Irreducible complexity can evolve



CLAIM: Practically all "vestigial" organs in man have been shown to

have definite uses and not to be vestigial at all. REALITY:

"Vestigial" does not mean an organ is useless. A vestige is a "trace or visible sign left by something lost or vanished“

Some vestigial organs can be determined to be useless if experiments show that organisms with them survive no better than organisms without them.



CLAIM: The first individual of the new species would be very

unlikely to find a mate REALITY:

This objection falsely assumes that speciation must happen suddenly when one individual gives rise to an individual of another species.

Sometimes new species can form suddenly, but this occurs with species that are asexual or hermaphroditic and do not need to find mates.



CLAIM: No case of macroevolution has ever been documented.

REALITY: We would not expect to observe large changes directly. The evidence for evolution does not depend, even a little,

on observing macroevolution directly. As biologists use the term, macroevolution means evolution

at or above the species level. Speciation has been observed.

There are many transitional forms that show that macroevolution has occurred.



CLAIM: All known fossils of ancient humans would fit on a billiard

table (or in a coffin). REALITY:

That may have been true at one time, but there are thousands of hominid fossils now.

It takes only a handful of fossils to show that hominid forms have changed over time.



CLAIM: Human and dinosaur footprints have been found together

in Cretaceous rocks of the Paluxy Riverbed near Glen Rose, Texas.

REALITY: The alleged human footprints involve a number of

misidentified and spurious phenomena. Creationists often failed to exercise scientific rigor and due

caution in their early Paluxy field work and promotions.



CLAIM: If we are descended from apes, why are there still apes

around? REALITY:

Humans and other apes are descended from a common ancestor whose population split to become two (and more) lineages.

The question is rather like asking, "If many Americans and Australians are descended from Europeans, why are there still Europeans around?"



CLAIM: Given all the species that exist and have existed, there

should be billions of transitional fossils in the fossil record; we should have found tens of thousands at least.

REALITY: Some important factors prevent the formation of fossils

from being common.



CLAIM: Sequences of transitional fossils do not show direct

ancestry. REALITY:

Perfect knowledge is not necessary to verify a pattern. One does not need to watch Jupiter constantly for twelve years, without blinking, to verify that it orbits the sun.

Knowledge advances by subjecting hypotheses to tests that effectively distinguish one hypothesis from another.



CLAIM: The geological column is a fiction, existing on paper only.

The entire geological column does not exist anywhere on the earth.

REALITY: The existence of the entire column at one spot is irrelevant.

All of the parts of the geological column exist in many places, and there is more than enough overlap that the full column can be reconstructed from those parts.

There are several places around the world where strata from all geological eras do exist at a single spot.



CLAIM: Earth's rotation is slowing down, so it cannot be more than

a few million years old. REALITY:

The earth's rotation is slowing at a rate of about 0.005 seconds per year per year. This extrapolates to the earth having a fourteen-hour day 4.6 billion years ago, which is entirely possible.

The rate at which the earth is slowing today is higher than average because the present rate of spin is in resonance with the back-and-forth movement of the oceans.



CLAIM: Because of tidal friction, the moon is receding, and the

earth's rotation is slowing down, at rates too fast for the earth to be billions of years old.

REALITY: The moon is receding at about 3.8 cm per year. Since the

moon is 3.85 × 1010 cm from the earth, this is already consistent, within an order of magnitude, with an earth-moon system billions of years old.

The magnitude of tidal friction depends on the arrangement of the continents



CLAIM: Earth's rotation is slowing down, so it cannot be more than

a few million years old. REALITY:

The earth's rotation is slowing at a rate of about 0.005 seconds per year per year. This extrapolates to the earth having a fourteen-hour day 4.6 billion years ago, which is entirely possible.

The rate at which the earth is slowing today is higher than average because the present rate of spin is in resonance with the back-and-forth movement of the oceans.

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