Saturday, February 26, 2005

Evolution: Theory of the Year

Just came across this from No More Mister Nice Blog. He posted a link to this fun page: New Mexicans for Science and Reason -- Best and Worst of the Year Awards. It's kind of fun all the way down, go read their awards...

But this one was especially noteworthy:
The "Don't Stop Now - It's Getting Good" Award goes to the Theory of Evolution, which still struggles for popular acceptance while finding stupendous experimental support and utility in science. In 2004, the evolution of irreducibly complex features was documented for flagellum motors and colorful coral proteins; more transitions were found between fish and amphibians (nostrils and fins-to-legs), the handedness of primordial amino acids was better understood, a single gene was found to be capable of giving mice long, bat-like fingers (explaining rapid evolution of bats), the natural history of the Uterus was developed, a gene common in Tibetans was found to improve oxygen intake, and a possible common ancestor of all the great apes, including humans, was found. Not a bad year, except for that "popular" thing. National Geographic gets a commendation for helping in that regard.

God survived Copernicus, I imagine he'll survive Darwin, too.