Perpetuated Falsehoods

I've been reading a lot of books in the past two weeks. In fact, I've been reading more here than I do at home. I've been reading this fantastic book by Ann Coulter called "Godless" about the American education system. Guess what? Three of the facts Coulter denounced as lies were taught in my college Biology course. I was taught these as facts, and it turns out they were lies. Good grief. Here they are:

1) The Peppered Moth Experiment was bunk. This was an experiment done in London which stated that when the trees were blackened with pollution, there were more black moths in the air. When London cleaned its air, there were more white moths. This was because white moths showed up clearly against black trees so birds could spot them easier. See? Moths with a certain color are favored over moths with a less favorable color. (As you see, this proves hands down that you can eventually evolve a gecko into a German Shepherd.) As it turns out, peppered moths do not rest on trees and are not hunted by birds. They fly at night when birds are asleep and they rest on the underside of branches. Turns out the famous pictures that are touted by every biology textbook (including the one I sold to Megan) that show how distinctly a white moth stands out against black bark were staged by gluing dead moths to a tree. Peppered moths would never rest on bark of their own volition. I promise you, unless you have a really awesome nonliberal Biology teacher, you will hear the story of the peppered moths.

For more information on this subject, check out the article "The Moth That Failed," by Paul Raeburn published in the NEW YORK TIMES!!! on August 25, 2002. See also Nicholas Wade's "Staple of Evolutionary Teaching May Not Be Textbook Case" also in the New York Times, but on June 18, 2002.

Just a warning, when even the New York Times doesn't perpetuate liberal falsehood, there is something really wrong going on.

I mentioned three lies, I'll give you the other in a later blog post.