James Shapiro Responds to My Review of His Book

I reviewed Shapiro's book, Evolution: A View from the 21st Century for NCSE reports. (NCSE = National Center for Science Education.) You can read it here.

James Shapiro has responded to my review in the latest issue of NCSE reports: Reply to Laurence A Moran’s review of Evolution: A View
from the 21st Century.

Shapiro seems to be really upset that NCSE would choose someone like me to review his book. He opens his rebuttal with ...

Before I saw Laurence A Moran’s book review (Moran 2012), I wrote the following: “It is a shame that NCSE chose Larry Moran to review my book; not because of anything he said in the review but because he is hostile to new ideas and perspectives.”

A year ago, Moran posted a piece entitled “Physicists and biologists” on his Sandwalk blog [Physicists and Biologists¹]. In this post, he ridiculed the enthusiasm I expressed in the book for physicists coming into evolutionary studies and bringing new skills and new ideas.

Meanwhile, I welcome all those physicists who know nothing about evolution, protein structure, genetics, physiology, metabolism and ecology. That’s just what we need in the biological sciences to go along with all the contributions made by equally ignorant creationists.

What a great way to make new friends for evolution science—equating physicists with creationists and calling them “equally ignorant”!

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