Quite apart from any factual errors, about which I’m not at all qualified to judge, here is what seems to me to be Meyer’s fundamental logical error IMO:
According to Darwin’s theory, the differences in form, or “morphological distance,” between evolving organisms should increase gradually over time as small-scale variations accumulate by natural selection to produce increasingly complex forms and structures (including, eventually, new body plans). In other words, one would expect small-scale differences or diversity among species to precede large-scale morphological disparity among phyla.
(Darwin’s Doubt, Chapter 2)
He illustrates this by asking us to comparing this figure, which he says is what we do see:
With this (appallingly badly drawn) one:
Which he claims Darwin’s theory says we ought to see.
And he says:
The actual pattern in the fossil record, however, contradicts this expectation (compare Fig. 2.12 to Fig 2.11b). Instead of more species eventually leading to more genera, leading to more families, orders, classes and phyla, the fossil record shows representatives of separate phyla appearing first followed by lower-level diversification on those basic themes.
Well, of course it does, Dr Meyer! You have just, in Chapter 2 of your fat book made an absolutely fundamental error of understanding of the entire principle of phylogenetics and taxonomy. No, of course you wouldn’t expect phyla to follow “lower-level diversification on those basic themes”. How could it possibly? And how could you possibly so fundamentally misunderstand the entire point of Darwin’s tree and its relationship to the nested hierarchies observe by Linnaeus?
All branching events, in Darwin’s proposal, whether the resulting lineages end up as different phyla or merely different species, start in the same way, with two populations where there once was one, and a short morphological distance between them. It is perfectly true that the longer both lineages persist for, the greater the morphological distance will become. But that isn’t because they started different, or because the phyla come later. It’s because what we call phyla are groups of organisms with an early common ancestor, whose later descendents have evolved to form a group that has a large morphological distance from contemporary populations who descended from a different early common ancestor.
So when a phylum, or a class, or even a kingdom first diverges from a single population into two lineages, the “morphological distance” from the other lineage will be very short. We only call it a “phylum” because eventually, owning to separate evolution, that distance becomes very large.
I’ve amended the drawings in the book as below, and, instead of labeling the trees by what a contemporary phylogeneticists might have called them, I’ve called each tree a phylum, and I’ve drawn round the organisms that constitute various subdivisions of phyla in colours from orange to green to represent successive branchings. Rather than the little bunch of twigs marked “families” by Meyer, I’ve indicated the entire clade for each subdivision, or tried to.
In Meyer’s version, he called the early sprout “ONE SPECIES”, which a contemporary phylogeneticist (Dr Stephen Chordata perhaps) would have called a “species”. But by the time of the next tree (which I think is supposed to incorporate the first), and Dr Chordata’s distant descendent comes along, she may call it an entire “genus”, and become rather more interested in the “species” that she observes it contains. Move along one to the next tree on Meyer’s time-line and an even more distantly descendent will call the whole tree a “family” containing “genera” and “species”. What was a “genus” to her great^10 grandmother will be several genera to her, and so on. And with each multi-generation of palaeontologist, the descendents of what were close relations in her ancestral palaentologist’s day are now separated by a wide “morphological distance.
So of course, if we look at the fossil record as these speciation-events were happening and try to categorise the organisms in terms of their modern descendents, we will find a great number of different phyla, and far fewer species. Of course they have different body plans, because they lived at a time when many different lineages from the first populations of rather amorphous multi-cell colonies were still around, some with not much symmetry, some with bilateral symmetry, some with five-fold symmetry, and many that didn’t go very far and left no extant lineages. Because of course Meyer also forgets the big extinction events, which are the other part of the answer to why one particular branch “exploded” while the others were never seen again. It’s even in his terrible Figure 1.11. Which he may not have been responsible for drawing, but he should at least have looked at.
ETA: the other drawing, fixed:
ETA2:
Another extraordinary example of Meyer’s complete failure to understand what a clade is, or that the words “phyla” and “class” refer to clades. Coloured emendations are mine (orange/red for Meyer’s “phyla”, blue for Meyer’s “class”):
I’d have expected an urbane, Cambridge-educated guy like Meyer to know the [ETA: spot the erroneous] singular of “phyla” but that’s minor compared to his crashing howler of an attempt to demonstrate what the term means.
ETA:3 Note: As Mung has pointed out, Meyer shows that he does know the singular of “phyla”, he just doesn’t get it correct it in this particular diagram. However, as I have said elsewhere (and above), this error is minor compared with the howler of including only a group of of descendents in his circled “phyla”, not the whole branch, which as I’ve said, undermines his entire argument.
No, it is not wrong.
You are correct, Mung. He does know the singular. But as you can see, I was commenting on a figure in which he gets it wrong. I guess he’s just a poor proofreader.
Not me, but there are plenty. Try google.
Out of interest, as I’ve not read the book, could you summarize the ID model that explains the Cambrian?
It’s amazing what ID supporters concentrate on.
Meyer makes a mistake, turns out he knew the term all along.
Yet what does Mung concentrate on? Just this. What about all the other issues raised Mung? All the other stuff Meyer is wrong about? Well, Mung knows what Mung cannot defend those mistakes so he harps on and on about the single one Mung can, in fact, defend. By inference, Mung knows the other issues are really issues however…
Very telling Mung! Please do carry on! Your attitude exemplifies why ID supporters do not deserve charity.
There’s an easy way to settle who is wrong Mung! Citation fight! You need to get used to making a claim then backing that claim with evidence, or ID will never get anywhere.
Let me help.
You claim that disparity is a measure of diversity. That’s just wrong because of this – (citation) – and this (citation) which support my argument for reasons X, Y, Z.
and so on. That’s how the grown ups do it!
You end your sentences too early! You always forget the support for your claim!
Mung, read the comments. Lizzie corrected the mistake quite transparently. You are just too trollish to admit she did. Why can’t you answer my question about Agassiz? Would dishonesty have anything to do with it? Certainly if Meyer was correct about Agassiz’s quote having any value to us then you could defend it, couldn’t you.
This is exactly why creationists shouldn’t be given a forum to “debate” with real scientists once they have proven they can’t be honest. After you have explained and explained and explained and explained and explained and explained the only thing left is this tit-for-tat. Mung is leaching off of Lizzie’s standing. The sentiment is magnificently noble but the execution will always be turned against the thoughtful people like her. It is completely telling that there is no equivalent to Lizzie anywhere in the creationist web community.
Aardvark:
Still right there in the OP for anyone to read:
Mung knows he can’t defend any of Meyer’s stupidity so he hangs on to his dishonest distraction as his security blanket.
Maybe someday you’ll deal honestly with the evidence but not today, eh Mung?
Mung and Joe G behave like hit men for UD. If the “ilk” at TSZ question the godfathers at UD and don’t genuflect to their pronouncements, Mung and Joe G sweep in with their machine guns and start shooting up the place.
I have now corrected it in the OP as well as (twice) in the comments. His error with the singular of phylum in that diagram appears to be an exception. However, his error in the concept is not, which is my point.
Mung, perhaps you would like to address it.
i’ve been a lurker here and on ud for a while now. i consider myself completely agnostic atm and enjoy reading debates on both sides and sites.. simply searching for answers and truths. but i must point out that people on this site seem far more hateful and quick to try to write off their opponents as dumb or as having useless opinions or arguments. a lot more fingers in their ears going “la la la” here from my observations. ironic seeing as the “about this site” section claims otherwise. reading some of these comments make me cringe. is this reddit ?
You forgot to mention feces.
well, it’s still there in the OP. so what do you want me to say? that it’s not still there in the OP?
From the OP:
well, yes. and to quote Meyer:
the term “phyla” (singular: “phylum”) refers to divisions in the biological classification system
So if you ask me, Elizabeth chose to latch on to something that might make Meyer look bad, while ignoring the contrary evidence.
Let’s not pretend that shes completely “objective.”
Such as?
Elizabeth Liddle:
Elizabeth could have deleted her mistake, but she didn’t. Instead, she claims to have “corrected” it.
So here’s the “corrected” version, from the OP:
And this can be distinguished from the non-corrected version how?
You’re right: The Creationists hereabouts are fairly hateful, and do “try to write off their opponents as dumb or as having useless opinions or arguments”. Sadly, when a Creationist chooses to write hateful crap, and deride their opponents as stoopid & yada yada… well, that’s what they’re going to do, and there doesn’t seem to be any remedy for the abuse they spew, short of banning them. Which, I hasten to add, our gracious hostess Lizzie isn’t going to do.
By the addition of the “edited to add”
The rule is that nothing is deleted after publishing. Any corrections are made as corrections.
ETA; this does require reading the post to the end, of course! (see how that worked)
ETA Correction of obvious typos having spotted them after posting is fine.
The phrase “far more hateful and quick to try to…” is comparative.
Could you suggest a less hateful and dismissive site for me to participate in? I haven’t been able to find one, but it internet is very big.
Do tell.
Dissmissive can be earned.
Skeptics are not required to be agnostic about heliocentrism, but are required to be agnostic about string theory.
It’s in the bylaws. Look it up.
We are given a few minutes to correct typos. I see no reason to note additions and corrections made in the first five minutes.
If I listed all my typo corrections, the addenda would be longer than some comments. Sure, there is no problem with correcting obvious typos when spotting them. Should I now go back and ETA that comment?
I don’t delete things, Mung. I’ve added a correction. But for the sake of those who don’t read to the end, I will now add a strikeout.
Perhaps finally you well address the actually howler in that diagram, rather than the error in the singular of phyla.
Elizabeth quotes Meyer in her OP:
Elizabeth tells us:
So, how does Elizabeth distinguish Meyer’s “factual errors” from his “logical errors”?
Meyer:
In other words, one would expect small-scale differences or diversity among species to precede large-scale morphological disparity among phyla.
What is the factual or logical error here? I don’t see it, I really don’t.
Elizabeth then further quotes Meyer:
This appears to be a factual claim, which Elizabeth has already stated she is not qualified to judge.
So if Elizabeth does not disagree with either of these quotes from Meyer, what does she disagree with?
A DRAWING!?
Her beef is not with anything factual or logical in anything he wrote in Chapter 2, it’s with A DRAWING!? Please tell me I’m wrong.
Now, if in his text Meyer says one thing, but then presents a drawing to illustrate what he wrote, and the drawing is inconsistent with what he wrote, perhaps there’s some hay to be made here. But really? This is the main objection to his book? That you don’t like a drawing?
Elizabeth claims to be critiquing Chapter 2, but the drawing she finds so offensive is from Chapter 7. Go figure.
Figure 2.8 on p. 36 (Chapter 2) the groups are clearly labelled PHYLUM.
Figure 2.12 on p. 43 (Chapter 2) the groups are clearly labelled PHYLUM. Elizabeth even reproduces this drawing in her OP.
The figure from Chapter 7 which she finds so offensive has PHYLUM on the right hand side as can clearly be seen from her reproduction of it.
So where’s the beef? Talk about trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. Talk about cherry-picking.
Of all the multiple diagrams in the book you found one that said PHYLA in which that usage is questionable and not even from Chapter 2. Just ignore all the others that say PHYLUM and ignore what Meyer wrote and accuse Meyer of not knowing the difference, and then when that claim turns out to be directly contradicted by the evidence blame him for missing one drawing.
An urbane Cambridge guy like Meyer would never have missed that one drawing. Oh no. Therefore anything else he wrote is immediately suspect.
Elizabeth, do you have some legitimate objection to something Meyer wrote in his book? Because if you do, I am having a hard time seeing it.
That’s not surprising.
The difference between your discussion style an that of adults is that adult actively seek to understand each other ” and you actively seek to midunderstand.
It’s called word lawyering, but actually it’s seldom done by real lawyers. I’ve been on a jury, and if a lawyer pulled this stunt, his client would be in real trouble.
Real paleontologists are starting to weigh in on this book.
petrushka:
Whatever. It would help if you’ve actually read the book, then you might be in a better position to understand. But given that you’ve not read the book, and probably have no intention of reading the book, claiming that my discussion style is is to “actively seek to midunderstand” [sic] smacks of Prior Belief Trumping Scholarship. Skeptical much?
well, thorton, that post ranks right up there with the best ever you’ve produced here at “The Dis-Skeptical Zone.”
Yet Lizzie claims there’s been no response to her nonsense.
Elizabeth Liddle:
Your claim is that “Meyer’s Howler” is that he doesn’t understand phylogenetics.
And to “prove” your claim, you distort what Meyer wrote. Right?
No, Mung, I have not distorted what Meyer wrote. I quoted him verbatim and reproduced his own diagrams.
I annoted the diagrams in a different colour to make my annotations clear, and you can see the mistake.
He has labelled as “phyla” or “phylum” only the tips of the relevant branch, not the whole branch.
This is a mistake. It is an important mistake because his argument about diversity vs disparity hangs on his erroneous understanding of a taxon. And by misunderstanding what a taxon is, his argument breaks down.
Just read my whole post, Mung, and look at the drawings from Chapter 2 as well. He makes the same mistake there, but with the words “genus” and “family”. I added the diagram from Chapter 7 later, to show just how consistent his error is, and how much it dominates the entire book.
Elizabeth, I can’t help but notice your pointed avoidance of materially relevant questions at UD. So here I am, back again at TSZ.
At my count, you quoted Meyer twice in your OP, and you didn’t appear to disagree with the first quote and agreed with the second quote.
Here is the first quote:
This is from page 40 of the book. Do you disagree with this statement? If so, do you disagree with it as a matter of fact or as a matter of logic?
Meyer continues:
This is the context of Figure 2.11 on page 42. Context is important, correct? Did Meyer misquote or otherwise misrepresent Dawkins?
According to the notes, the quote is from Unweaving the Rainbow p. 201.
Continuing on page 42:
This is the context of Figure 2.11 on page 42. Context is important, correct? Did Meyer misquote or otherwise misrepresent Darwin?
Taking into consideration the context, what is it that Fig 2.11b is attempting to illustrate? Given the quote from Darwin, is it just pure coincidence that Fig 2.11b illustrates two families?
Of what possible relevance, given the context, is the complaint that the families represented are not monophyletic because of the way the circles are drawn?
Red herring.
Can we move on now?
Don’t need to read Mein Kampf to discuss Hitler’s ideas Mung.
Don’t need to read DD to discuss Meyer’s widely disseminated ideas either.
I see you still won’t address all the huge holes in Meyer’s stupidity. What a surprise. You also won’t address Meyer’s dishonest quote-mining which has already been substantiated with examples right here at TSZ. Another big surprise.
Do you know any of your IDiot buddies willing to answer the questions? Anyone willing to explain how Meyer’s IDiot claims fit in with the 3+ billions years of life before the Cambrian, and the 500+ million years of extinctions and re-diversification after the Cambrian? Because it’s obvious you sure can’t.
Elizabeth:
That’s precisely the point that Meyer makes.
That’s precisely the point that Meyer makes.
huh?
By your own admission phyla come later. Your claim that Meyer thinks that because the phyla come later that this is somehow a cause of the differences is incoherent nonsense.
And Meyer isn’t making a claim of special creation for the different phyla, so your “that isn’t because they started different” is a straw-man.
This explains so much of your misrepresentation of Meyer. You think he’s a Young Earth Creationist or that he believes that each phylum was individually and separately created! Finally the pieces fall into place.
You’ve violated your own “principles.”
Of course he is Mung. That’s the whole point of his IDiot exercise, that the different Cambrian body plans were Created (i.e “Intelligently Designed”) and didn’t evolve from earlier life. Meyer even says it’s the Christian God who did it.
You’re the only one I’ve seen bring up the YEC strawman. Haven’t you failed enough times on that bit of nonsense yet?
Just because Meyer is an Old Earth Creationist doesn’t mean he’s not a creationist.
As far as I know, no one has succeeded – or ever will succeed – in pinning down how Meyer thinks god did it. Does he think god created the first member of each of those dozen Cambrian phyla out of thin air and dropped them directly into place in the Cambrian seas? Mung says that’s not what Meyer thinks, but how could Mung possibly know? It’s would cost Meyer’s job for him to make his ideas clear – he’d offend some important IDiot faction no matter what he answered. He’s not totally stupid, he’s smart enough not to answer clearly.
hotshoe:
So?
So? So your recent comment to LIzzie is pointless, because it doesn’t matter if Meyer is not a YEC (or is a YEC after all), that’s not why every scientist knows Meyer has screwed up. There’s no point in you scolding Lizzie:
You’re just plain wrong, Mung. Meyer IS a creationist – although perhaps not a YEC, still a creationist – and because of his creationism, he does not believe that phyla originated by unguided natural evolution. He believes in the un-evidenced alternative, that they were “created” by the god usually recognized as the christian god. It doesn’t matter what method he imagines god used to create those phyla, but whatever method it was, he wrote a whole book about how it couldn’t be evolution.
And he wrote that book without understanding – apparently – anything about science and science writing.
Has nothing to do with him being a YEC – or not – has everything to do with him being either incompetent, or dishonest, or both, while being a creationist of some flavor or other. Who cares, they’re all the same in the end.
Reposting a response I made to Optimus at UD:
Yes, well, I’m not feeling very charitable towards Meyer, who frankly has no excuse for this book. He’s a smart guy, and he knows enough about science to know that you have to know a heck of a lot more about a science to be able to write a book overturning it. And I strongly suspect that he knows that his book is a logical mess, but thinks it serves some higher purpose anyway. After all, he has published under a religious imprint, not a science one.
So in that sense you are correct. However, you are not correct that I made no attempt to understand the point being made. I always attempt to understand points being made, and made considerable effort here. I think he’s wrong. That is not a matter of “prejudice” it is a matter of, well, considering, on good grounds, that he is wrong.
No problem. I am not a palaeontologist either.
No, I do not. He isn’t stupid. I think it’s worse than that.
Meyer describes what Common Descent predicts, wrongly. Clearly, if he is attempting to describe not what he believes, but what he thinks the people he disagrees with believe, then he needs to get that right.
Yes. And the point about that system is that it works because the features of organisms fall into a nested hierarchy, which demands some kind of explanation.
One explanation is Common Descent. If Common Descent is the answer, then we would expect that the features common to all members of a taxon would be present in a common ancestor, but that features shared only by a subset (“derived” characters) would not be. Hence the term “primitive” characters for those features postulated to be possessed by the common ancestor.
So Common Descent makes very clear predictions about the fossil record – the further back we go in time (dateable from the strata in which the fossils are found) the more we are likely to find fossils in which only the postulated “primitive” characters are found.
And of course we do, which is why Common Descent is so well supported as an explanation for the nested hierarchy – the nesting is not only found in the features of extant organisms, but the prediction made by Common Descent as the explanation is supported by the time line of the fossils.
No, it does not. If he were simply arguing that the “rank-free” approach (in other words the entire approach of phylogenetics) was misguided then he might have the makings of an interesting book. But he doesn’t. He just relegates the point to detail about what “convention” he is using. Yet it contaminates his entire argument about what he says is expected “under Common Descent”. What is expected under Common Descent is a blurring of categories at the root of each clade, with early organisms that possibly belong to phylum A or phylum B being sufficiently similar that it is hard to say to which lineage (or category) they belong. In other words, the “morphological distance” between members of phyla at the root of those phyla will be close.
And so his argument that “disparity” as a measure of “morphological distance” is also a feature of the organisms in different phyla is undermined. It is only true if we refuse to categorise any organism as a member of a phylum until long after the phylum is postulated to have begun.
But in that case, it renders his prediction “under Common Descent” wrong. As I keep saying, he can’t have it both ways.
Obviously I do. But If we take Meyer’s idiosyncratic implied view, then he gets the prediction of Common Descent wrong.
I have no axe to grind. As I say, a “contemporary palaeontologist” would regard the first little shrub as something like a genus with species. By the time the whole tree is there, a much later palaeontologist would look at that same little shrub at the bottom of the whole tree and call its branches phyla.
It’s not that the phyla emerge later, it’s that once the rest of the branches are present that we require more taxonomic ranks to represent the depth of nesting.
So under Common Descent, we expect phyla divisions to precede species divisions. But we also expect the morphological distance between phyla to be less at the root (no more than between two recent species) than at the tip.
And that is what we observe. We only don’t observe it if we use Meyer’s arbitrary paraphyletic circles. But if we use his terminology, then we would phrase the Common Descent prediction differently – the prediction would still be identical, and still match observation.
It may well be. The book made me rather angry, I confess. But I agree that it is difficult to have a meaningful interaction with someone whose base viewpoint is very different, as is evident in this thread.
I didn’t make a fuss over a typo. I tossed it off as a parenthesis on a one liner on an ETA, then corrected it. Mung has been doing the fussing.
I am not qualified to judge factual errors regarding palaeontology.
However, I am as qualified as anyone, including you, to judge whether the argument actually makes sense.
Here is the problem as I see it as dispassionately and as clearly as I can make it:
Meyer argues that under Common Descent we should see small morphological distances between lineages that become larger over time, as each lineage diversifies down separate lineages.
Correct.
He then argues that we don’t see this.
Wrong.
He bases his assertion that we don’t see it on the fact that “phyla” divisions, come before “lower taxa” such as “families” or “genera” in the fossil record.
Correct.
He then characterises phyla as groups separated by a “large morphological distance”, and thus argues that because phyla came before genera, then large distances came before small, in contradiction to the expectation under Common Descent.
And here is the problem: if we define phyla “phylogenetically” then there is no contradiction – phyla were morphologically close when they started, AND they started before genera. So the expectation under Common Descent (small morphological distances before larger) holds, AND phyla before genera holds.
But, alternatively, we don’t call something a phylum unless the morphological distance between phyla has become substantial, then the prediction under Common Descent still holds, because now, phyla don’t appear before genera.
So he is equivocating. He cites evidence, based on phylogenetic usage, that phyla appeared before genera, to contradict the “prediction” that small morphological distance appear before large, even though, under that usage, phyla will be similar near their root. But under “phenetic” usage, we can’t identify phyla until there is a large morphological distance between them, in which case, they don’t appear too early for the prediction under common descent.
Bottom line: Common Descent predicts that small differences will precede diversification. This is what we observe in the fossil record. What we call things is irrelevant to the straightforward match between prediction and observation.
What IS true, however, is that many lineages that start don’t go anywhere, or go for a while then go extinct. So, as time goes on, early phyla (using phylogenetic terminology) will outnumber later phyla. So if we estimate “disparity” as “number of phyla” then disparity, by that definition, will decrease under Common Descent
This is why it is so important to define terms clearly, and not equivocate between different meanings of the same terms. In my view, Darwin’s Doubt is a masterpiece of equivocation, and I think Meyer is smart enough to know this. That is why I express my disapproval in my post – not because I am “prejudiced” against his case (it would be cool if true) but because I don’t think he is being honest. I think the book is a piece of polemic disguised as reasonable argument, and the trick used is the oldest one in the book – equivocation with terms.
But the diagrams are the giveaway.
Anyway, I’d be delighted to continue this at the thread at TSZ, if anyone would like to come over. I think I’m done with this thread.
I see there are some more rule-violations here. I don’t have time to do a clean up right now, but please everyone read the rules and stick to them. And yes, Steve, that does apply to Thorton as well, as does calling anyone else a “weasel”.
Mung, I am not deliberately avoiding any questions, and have answered some of yours at UD. I will try to answer the ones you have posted here as well.
But I am very busy right now, and posting in snatches as I debug an interminable series of bootstraps. ugh.
I have no reason to think Dawkins didn’t say that, and I agree with him.
Then Meyer says:
Which is simply word-play. There is no contradiction between the Dawkins quote and the observation. A contemporary palaeontologist would apply the labels just as Dawkins says. But in retrospect, as Dawkins says, we apply them as they are currently applied, giving the pattern reported by Meyer.
The “contradiction”, as I keep saying, is entirely terminological. And I think Meyer knows this.
At last some people have attempted to engage with it. Not successfully, as yet, in my view.
Lizzie,
I appreciate it. I am most certainly willing to refrain from calling Thorton a weasel. But it seems to be the only language he understands.
It would be great if you could reign in his penchant for making purposefully derogatory remarks in order to childishly try and blunt the impact of a post made by proponents of ID.
Notice how he replies to so many of Mung’s posts only to berate him for not answering questions having nothing to do with the OP. His lambasting is a tiresome distraction, just as it has been when he does the exact same thing on Cornelius Hunter’s blog.
This lambasting and derogatory behavior is and has never been conducive to the type of civil exchange you are trying to establish here as TSZ.
So Elizabeth wants a restart. Fine. I wouldn’t want to defend all the nonsense she posted over at UD either if I were her.
Elizabeth:
Except she wasn’t.
ok, Elizabeth, so you claim that Fig 2.11 was “appallingly badly drawn.”
And to illustrate your claim you submit an appallingly badly drawn figure of your own. Your drawing has no species at all. It also has no families. In your drawing everything is a genus except for the very first species, which you have re-labelled a phylum. And you extend every phylum in your drawing to include the original “species” (not an actual species, but really a phylum).
This a greater “howler” than anything in Darwin’s Doubt
Take this howler, for example:
Meyer, or Elizabeth?