I think he's right about that. But I think he's wrong about a lot more, and so does PZ, who documents a set of errors in a post on the Panda's Thumb that expresses what I disliked about the essay. I'd like to zoom in on one particular thing I really didn't like about Safina's essay: the suggestion that scientists are "propounding Darwinism":
By propounding “Darwinism,” even scientists and science writers perpetuate an impression that evolution is about one man, one book, one “theory.”Science writers, I'll readily grant, "propound Darwinism," though I suspect that the most abundant and profligate users of the term are the purveyors of intelligent design creationism. But to what extent to scientists do this?
Well, let's have a look. I searched PubMed (articles in English only) for the use of terms that would refer to Darwin's concept of natural selection. In one search, I found entries that include the string "natural selection" and in another search I found entries that include "evolution" and "selection" but not "natural selection." The number of hits (20,109) would have been bigger if I had looked for entries including "positive selection," "purifying selection," "evolutionary adaptation," and so on. But there it is: more than 20,000 articles in the scientific literature that make reference to natural selection in some way. Then I searched for "darwinian" (1143 hits) and "darwinism" (204 hits). I put them together, because I'm a generous guy. Here's a nice little graph of the results:
The "cult of Darwinism" is an invention of propagandists who are smart enough to know that a frontal assault on evolutionary science is a suicide mission. I concur with the multiple commenters on the essay at the Times' site when they refer to this aspect of the essay as a strawman. Safina made some good points about the equating of Darwin and evolution. But he's addressing the wrong audience. Scientists know that's a mistake, and creationists know it's not true. Scientists don't say it. Creationists do.
