Page 548 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Rise and Fall of the Myth

How was this myth invented? Judith Hooper explains that Kettlewell, and other Darwinists who made
up the evolutionist story of the peppered moths with him, distorted the evidence in their desire to find
proof for Darwinism (and become famous in the process). In so doing, they deceived themselves:

They conceived the evidence that would carry the vital intellectual argument, but at its core lay flawed science,
dubious methodology, and wishful thinking. Clustered around the peppered moth is a swarm of human ambi-
tions, and self-delusions shared among some of the most renowned evolutionary biologists of our era. 147

Greatly contributing to the myth's collapse were experiments that a few other scientists did on the sub-
ject after it became known that Kettlewell's experiments had been distorted. An evolutionist biologist who

recently studied the story of the peppered moth and found it to be without substance was Bruce Grant, pro-
fessor of biology at the College of William and Mary. Hooper reports Grant's interpretation of conclusions
reached by other scientists who repeated Kettlewell's experiments:

"It doesn't happen," says Bruce Grant, of Kettlewell's dominance breakdown/buildup studies [on moths].
"David West tried it. Cyril Clarke tried it. I tried it. Everybody tried it. No one gets it." As for the background

matching experiments, Mikola, Grant and Sargent, among others, repeated what Kettlewell did and got results
contrary to his. "I am careful not to call Kettlewell a fraud," says Bruce Grant after a discreet pause. "He was just
a very careless scientist." 148

Other evidence that the evolutionist story of the peppered moths is completely wrong lies in North
America's population of Biston betularia. The evolutionist thesis is that during the Industrial Revolution, air
pollution turned the moth population black. Kettlewell's experiments and observations done in England

were regarded as evidence of this. However, the same moth lives in North America, where no melanism has
been observed despite the Industrial Revolution and the air pollution. Hooper explains this situation refer-
ring to the findings of Theodore David Sargent, an American scientist who studied the question:

[Evolutionists] . . . also ignored the studies on the North American continent that raised legitimate questions
about the classical story of dark backgrounds, lichens, air pollution, and so on. Melanics are equally common in

Maine, southern Canada, Pittsburgh, and around New York City . . . and in Sargent's view, the North American
data falsify the classical industrial melanism hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts a strong positive correlation
between industry (air pollution, darkened backgrounds) and the incidence of melanism. "But this was not true,"
Sargent points out, "in Denis Owen's original surveys—which showed the same extent of melanism wherever

sampled, whether city or rural area—and hasn't been found by anyone since. 149

With the discovery of all these facts, it came to light that the story of peppered moths was a giant hoax.
For decades people all over the world were misled by photographs of dead moths pinned to a tree bark, in-
tended to supply Darwin's missing evidence, and the constant repetition of an old-fashioned story. The ev-
idence Darwin needed to find is still missing, because there's no such evidence.
A 1999 article published in The Daily Telegraph, a London newspaper, sums up how the myth was finally

discredited:

Evolution experts are quietly admitting that one of their most cherished examples of Darwin's theory, the rise
and fall of the peppered moth, is based on a series of scientific blunders. Experiments using the moth in the
Fifties and long believed to prove the truth of natural selection are now thought to be worthless, having been de-

signed to come up with the "right" answer. Scientists now admit that they do not know the real explanation for
the fate of Biston betularia, whose story is recounted in almost every textbook on evolution. 150

In short, the myth of industrial melanism—like other supposed proofs for evolution, avidly defended
by many evolutionists—crumbled.
Once, because of conservatism and lack of knowledge, the scientific world could be duped by tales like
that of the peppered moths. But now, all such Darwinist myths have been discredited.

546 Atlas of Creation Vol. 3