Icons of Evolution - "... and your little dog, too!"

Evil-lutionists are an immoral secret society of materialists who brainwash high school and college students into believing Neo-Darwinism in order to have their way with your daughters.

You'll believe in more than THAT before I'm finished with you!
- Wicked Witch of the West (Or perhaps it was said by one of Wells' Neo-Darwinists?)

This seems to be, in a nutshell, the thesis statement of “Icons of Evolution”.

The more I study this book the more convinced I become that Jonathan Wells is in serious need of psychiatric help.

I’ve been going over chapter eleven, the 'Ape to Man' icon. Wells seems unable to point out where this icon is in serious use by any scientist – he can only point to jokes and cartoons. Instead, he tries to stretch the Piltdown Hoax to fit this icon, and doesn't bother to state that the Piltdown bones were ignored for decades by serious paleontologists because they didn't make any sense.

Wells also makes the sage pronouncement that conclusions in evolutionary science are invalid because people are (gasp!) inclined to be subjective instead of objective.

Heh. Newsflash. Scientists realize their hypothesis, data and conclusions can be tainted by subjectivity, and they use the process of science to overcome these problems and strive toward more objective answers.

The rest of the chapter has a very low information to text ratio.

Instead Wells seems to spend a lot of time on his own paranoia – the belief that evolutionary scientists are conspiring together to ignore (or hide) the 'fact' that there is no ‘proof’ of evolution.

I’m about 2/3 through chapter eleven at this point, and had to put it down. Wells conspiracy theory was funny through the first five chapters, but by now it just makes me weary.

Man, I hope the next book isn't this full of woo!