Page 198 - Once Upon a Time There Was Darwinism

Once Upon a Time
There Was Darwinism

The Untold Story of Science and
the Peppered Moth:

"What is going on here?" Holdrege
asked himself. He had been display-
ing photographs of moths on tree
trunks, telling his students about
birds selectively picking off the
H.B.D. Kett le well
conspicuous ones. . . "And now
someone who has researched the
moth for 25 years reports having seen only two
moths" sitting on tree trunks. What about the lichens, the soot, the
camouflage, the birds? What about the grand story of industrial
melanism? Didn't it depend on moths habitually resting on tree
trunks? 143
This strangeness, first noticed and expressed by Holdrege,
soon revealed the true story of the peppered moth. As Judith
Hooper went on, "As it turned out, Holdrege was not the only one to
notice the cracks in the icon. Before long the peppered moth had kindled a
smoldering scientific feud." 144
So, in the scientific argument, what facts became clear?
Another American writer and biologist, Jonathan Wells, has

written on this subject in detail. His book Icons of Evolution devotes
a special chapter to this myth. He says that Bernard Kettlewell's
study, regarded as experimental proof, is basically a scientific
scandal. Here are some of its basic elements:
◆ Many studies made after Kettlewell's experiments
showed that only one type of these moths rested on tree
trunks; all the other types preferred the underside of

horizontal branches. Since the 1980s, it has be-

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