Jay Bedsole:

Since moths don’t typically land on tree trunks, Kettlewell used glue to attach dead, dark moths to dark tree trunks and dead, light moths to light tree trunks. He then photographed these moths to demonstrate the camouflage effect. The following comes from the National Center for Science Education (referring to and trying to justify these photographs):

“These pictures are illustrations used to demonstrate a point - the advantage of protective coloration to reduce the danger of predation. The pictures are not the scientific evidence used to prove the point in the first place. Compare this illustration to the well-known re-enactments of the Battle of Gettysburg. Does the fact that these re-enactments are staged prove that the battle never happened? The peppered moth photos are the same sort of illustration, not scientific evidence for natural selection.”

I guess I can see their point. By the same scientific standards we should proclaim that cold fusion, demonstrated by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, of the University of Utah in 1989… (the results of which have never been repeated…) is an example of good science. After all, it served to “illustrate” how great it would be to discover a source of unlimited free energy!

But are we to believe in these bits of science fiction simply because they’re rumored to be true?

What scientific good comes from promoting bad science? Scientist that still hold this up as an important example of Natural Selection in action are really trying to sell an idea. They believe the idea is right, therefore it is apparently justifiable to use bogus data to support that idea. It’s not the first time bad science has been used to sell this idea… Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man, Java Man, Peking Man, Haeckel’s Embryos, and more.

It’s learning about this kind of science that makes me question everything. That, in itself is a good thing, but what about the budding young scientists that simply trust the accepted scientific views based on the accepted scientific evidence? When the real truth diverges from the perceived truth, how long does it take us to get to the real truth if it is unacceptable to explore the real gaps in scientific knowledge?

And indeed we SHOULD be questioning it.