Eppur Si Muove
Over the break, I watched a couple of episodes of The West Wing including one about political attacks on science called Eppur Si Muove.

It reminded me – a lot – of an experience that I had 20 years ago, back in 1995. As in that episode, I received a phone call while at work that began with false praise as a ploy to keep me on the line. I was very upset at the time, and so I immediately wrote about what had happened.

Blogs didn’t exist back then, and so I submitted my essay to Newsweek magazine, which had a one-page feature called “My Turn” that offered the opportunity to reach a large and broad audience. Alas, it was not published. Here it is now:

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Science, Church and State

Today I had a most remarkable, and disturbing, phone call

by Richard E. Lenski

Before I tell you about that call, let me explain why I want to tell you. As a scientist, I know my profession often does an inadequate job of helping the public understand our work and why it is worthy of support. As a United States citizen, I feel compelled to speak out against those increasingly loud voices who denounce science while claiming that only their religious beliefs are the truth.

I am a university professor, and I study the evolution of microorganisms such as bacteria. Bacteria reproduce so quickly that it is possible to study their evolution in the laboratory. The bacteria in my experiments undergo many generations every day, and each small flask holds millions of individuals. Over the course of months and years, my students and I can see actual changes in the physical appearance and genetic makeup of the bacteria. These changes demonstrate the evolutionary principles of randomness – different mutations occurred in different flasks – and adaptation by natural selection, whereby these bacteria became better suited to the environment in the flasks.

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Rumraket wrote:
Yeah not only that. Maybe shit like this happens frequently but I'm just amazed we've now gotten to the point where researchers in evolution have to answer private phone calls from religious nutbags.