The cover page of the current issue of NewScientist magazine (Jan 24, 2009) gave me the shock of my life! "DARWIN WAS WRONG! Cutting Down the Tree of Life", blared the head lines. Those countless arguments (often heated and time consuming but always finishing up with an upper hand for science), I had with my Creationist friends came readily to mind. In fact, I was jolted when the telephone rang, fearing that one of the friends has located the magazine and is now calling up to claim his long due moment of glory. Thus, it was with much trepidation and dark forebodings that I delved into the cover story on Page 34. But it turned out to be the happiest thing in the end. There lay the following lines, on Page 39 that, ".....downgrading the tree of life doesn’t mean that the theory of evolution is wrong – just that evolution is not as tidy as we would like to believe. Some evolutionary relationships are tree-like; many others are not." Whow!! What relief! Even the neighbours must have heard my sigh of relief!
After the euphoria was over though, I couldn't help look again at the cover pages and wonder why NewScientist had chosen to give Science the 'jolt of the 21st century' with an head line which is surely contrived in bad taste. Or was it the Circulation Department which had the final say in the matter? If it indeed was, it made the distance between pulp fiction and one of the most 'revered' (is the word allowed in scientific jargon, I wonder!) magazines shrink by a very large amount. Many of the people who'd see the front cover in book stalls and other public places obviously won't trouble themselves to buy it and read the article in full. They will move away instead, with a wrong notion in their minds that is caused by the impropriety of some of the editors sitting cosy halfway around the world. For many children, the title "DARWIN WAS WRONG" will be the epithet they will remember about the Theory of Evolution for the rest of their lives.
NewScientist! I feel ashamed of you after these long years of veneration and sense of authority I felt for you.
