The Peppered Moths Fraud

By Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo

In 1959, Kettlewell wrote an article in Scientific American entitled, Darwin’s Missing Evidence.22 This article claimed to show that the mechanism for evolution, natural selection, really worked. It also claimed that the environment could instigate mutations and heredity would propagate them to new life forms. To substantiate these claims, Kettlewell made use of the two varieties of peppered moths, Biston betularia, the light and the dark strains. The article showed a dark tree trunk with mainly dark moths on it and he said that in the sooty, industrialized parts of England the dark strain survived because birds could not see them against the dark background. Then he showed a light tree trunk with mainly light moths on it. This supposedly demonstrated that the light moths survived better on the light tree trunks in the non ndustrialized areas of England. He also said the eyes of these moths could see their own color and their little brains would be unhappy until they landed on a tree trunk that matched their wing color. He did not present any evidence to substantiate this claim.

Kettlewell called this article an experiment, yet there were no analytical statistics used to analyze the data. For his design, the statistic of choice would have been a chi-square (X2) analysis to indicate whether or not his results were statistically significant. It was not possible to do a chi-square analysis because he reported numerically only three-fourths of the data. He said of the rest, “. . . we recaptured proportionately twice as many of the dark form as the light.” It seemed strange that he would go to the trouble of reporting all the other numbers then suddenly end verbally. It also seemed strange that the editors allowed the article to be published not only without a statistical treatment but also without complete data. No responsible science journal would do either one.

It also seemed strange that the article contained the old superstition that a black environment would cause a life form to mutate to a black color. It was also strange that the moth’s tiny brain was credited with matching its wing color to the tree trunk color. It was also strange that a dark form was considered a mutation given that there are so many domesticated animals, like cats and dogs, that have pure black or pure white forms as a result of selectively breeding from the enormous variability to be found naturally in any life form. Strangest of all was the fact that this moth does not land on tree trunks. It roosts in the canopy of trees. Then the truth came out that the moths were captured, killed and glued to the tree trunk of the same color to falsify the findings.

The peppered moth story found in virtually every biology textbook in the chapters on evolution is a forgery and Scientific American collaborates with such forgeries. This “classic case of industrial melanism” by H.B.D. Kettlewell called “Darwin’s Missing Evidence,” was a thoroughly planned fraud.10,11,19,21,22,28,36 Like Darwin’s original so-called evidence, this example of the missing evidence also was a forgery. This is understandable, but not excusable, because any evidence for the nonexistent evolution ghost must be fraudulent. The only way to substantiate the existence of the evolution ghost is with falsified evidence and so far this seems to be all evolutionists have.

References

10. California Department of Education. California Science Frameworkfor K-12 Public Schools, 2000. Biology/Life Sci Gr 9-12, p.33; 2003, pp. 243, 244.

11. Coyne, Jerry A. Not Black and White. Nature, 396 (11/5):35-36, 1998.

19. Hickman, C.P., L.S. Roberts and A. Larson, Integrated principles of zoology. Boston: Mc Graw     Hill, 2001, pp. 12, 113, 114, 631.

21. Johnson, G. B., Biology, visualizing life, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1998, pp. 178, 180, 181, 182, 217, 221 – 223, 227

22. Kettlewell, H.B.D. Darwins’s Missing Evidence. Sci. Amer. 200 (3): 48-53, 1959.

28. Miller, K. R. and Levine, J., Biology, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2000.pp. 284, 297, 722, 762.

36. Sargent, T.D., C.D. Millar and D.M. Lambert. The “classical” explanation of industrial melanism, assessing the evidence. Evol. Biol. 30: 299-322, 1998.

Rise and Fall of Evolution, A Scientific Examination, 2003, pp. 68-69.