SCIENCE OBSERVER
The Steve Wars
Margaret Pizer
When Stephen Jay Gould was writing a popular column for Natural
History magazine, his views on evolution were widely known and
quoted. A year after Gould's death, it seems that
"Steve's" support of evolutionary theory survives him.
On February 16, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE)
announced that more than 200 Steves—that is, scientists named
Steve—had signed a statement in support of evolution and
against the teaching of "creation science" or
"intelligent design" in schools. This tongue-in-cheek
petition has a serious point: to illustrate the overwhelming support
of the scientific community for evolution. According to NCSE, only
about 1 percent of scientists are named Steve (Steven, Stephanie,
Stefan, Etienne ...), so the number of Steves amassed to endorse the
statement shows that the support for evolution is not in crisis.
The somewhat unusual petition developed in response to opposing
lists purporting to show that many scientists dispute evolution. One
such list was published by the Discovery Institute in 2001 as an
advertisement in The New York Review of Books, The New
Republic and The Weekly Standard. One hundred
scientists put their names on the list in support of the statement:
We are skeptical of claims for the ability of
random mutation and natural selection to account for the
complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for
Darwinian theory should be encouraged.
One of NCSE's own Steves, Stephen "Skip" Evans, argues
that this statement was "cleverly crafted to mislead the
public" into thinking that Darwin's theory of evolution by
natural selection is not widely accepted among scientists. Indeed,
most biologists would certainly encourage an attitude of healthy
skepticism about the details of evolutionary theory and a careful
analysis of all scientific evidence. But controversy over the
details of how and why evolution occurs, Evans points out, does not
indicate lack of support for evolution among scientists.
The Discovery Institute 100 list, as it came to be known,
engendered extensive discussion on NCSE's network of e-mail
listservs. One supporter remarked that finding 100 scientists in
support of evolution would be easy—even if the signatories
were limited to those named Steve. And so Project Steve was born.
By simply e-mailing a few scientists named Steve and asking them to
pass along the message, NCSE quickly amassed a list of more than 220
Steves. One of the signatories, animal-communication expert Stephen
Nowicki of Duke University, admits that when he first received an
e-mail invitation to join the list, he thought it might be some kind
of joke or scam. Once he checked with the NCSE, he was happy to sign
on. "Now," he says, "everyone wants to be a
Steve." In fact, the Steves keep rolling in—you can check
the progress of the "Steve-o-meter" on the NCSE Web site
(www.ncseweb.org).
Mark Edwards of the Discovery Institute says that Project Steve
simply states the obvious: "The Discovery Institute recognizes
that most scientists are Darwinian biologists. We just wanted to
counter the claim that evolution is unquestioned among
scientists." But Nowicki sees it differently. "You can
find an arbitrary group of people to say anything," he says,
"but NCSE tied both arms behind its back by restricting the
list to Steves, and it still easily found over 200." In
addition to allowing typically apolitical scientists to take a
stand, he says the list "shows that scientists who believe in
evolution have more sense of humor than those who don't."