In the wake of his recent BBC television programme, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough tackles those who challenge evolution head on.
As the products of evolution, people may seem churlish if they challenge evolution's wisdom.
Those who challenge evolution invoke the scientists Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins, while those who plead for the sanctity of science cite Genesis and the Book of Job.
Both organizations supported standards that would allow students to critically challenge evolution, however, so expect the debate to go on — maybe just more gently.
In the heat-shock environment we provided as a selective challenge, evolution of greater protein thermostability would be beneficial.
I would not have found the Orr and Coyne articles without The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything, which also drove me to read Behe's disturbingly popular Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution and see for myself how it might sway a person who knows little biology.
To reach a turning point where new antibiotic drug discovery will begin anew on the scale needed to meet the challenge of evolution and resistance will require new funding models.
Elsewhere in the issue, challenges in addressing broader evolutionary questions are raised (see 'Five challenges in evolution and infectious diseases', Metcalf et al. (2014)), e.g. how can we understand the origins of selective pressure on a virus population, as opposed to our focus on how to deal with selective coefficients?
But their lawyer forcefully cross-examined the other side's experts, pushing them to acknowledge that nothing in the current standards prevented discussion of challenges to evolution, and peppering them with queries both profound and personal.
It's argued that consuming dairy products or anything unavailable before the advent of farming, is challenging both evolution and our bodies.
