Misconceptions
Browse Misconceptions:
- Teaching both creationism and evolution is fair.
- Evolution is not scientific because nobody saw it happen.
- Evolution is not a highly reliable science because it is only a theory.
- Humans could not have evolved from monkeys because monkeys still exist.
- Evolution and belief in God are mutually exclusive.
- Evolution is a weak scientific idea (evolution is a "theory in crisis").
- Microevolution is not evolution.
- Missing links disprove evolution.
- Radiometric dating is unreliable.
- Evolution is not scientific because nobody saw it happen.
Teaching both creationism and evolution is fair.
Students (and parents) often contend, sometimes under the rubric of "critical thinking," that teaching both sides of an issue in an educational setting is both fair and good educational practice; therefore both creationism and evolution should be taught. There are major problems with this contention. (1) Presenting two or more scientific sides to an issue in a science classroom may be appropriate, but creationism in any form (including "creation science" and "intelligent design") is not science—it is religion, and inappropriate for the science classroom. (2) There are not just two "sides" to this issue anyway. There are hundreds of religious and tribal creation stories, and by this reasoning, all of these stories would deserve equal time. The precious little time given to science in schools should not be further reduced in favor of non-science instruction. (3) Teaching that there are "two sides" implies that the scientific community accepts alternatives to evolution, which is not the case. It is not "fair" to students to mislead them about the consensus of opinion in the scientific community concerning evolution.Activities: Of Sunsets, Souls and Senses, CONPTT - Science vs. Non-science
Evolution is not scientific because nobody saw it happen.
Students often believe that because large-scale evolution is not directly observable (actually happening before their eyes—invertebrates to vertebrates), e.g., evolution either doesn't qualify as science or it is inferior science. Often these students are not satisfied with microevolutionary examples. Whether or not they accept such examples, they need to learn that direct "eyeball" observation is not a necessary criterion for good science and that in fact most of science is not based on this type of observation; particularly illustrative are the historical sciences (e.g., astronomy, geology, paleontology, etc.) Pointing out a few examples of historical science which the students already agree are scientifically factual is important. This way the students can wrestle with the inconsistency of why they have one criterion for the historical science they accept, yet a different criterion for evolution.Activity: The Flat Earth
Evolution is not a highly reliable science because it is only a theory.
Much of this misconception comes from the nonscientific everyday use of the word "theory." The everyday meaning of "theory" to most students implies something for which there is little-to-no evidence or something that is merely a guess. Complicating matters more is the prominent misconception that if scientific theories are good enough and have enough evidence they become laws, making theories inferior to laws. Students need to understand that theory has a different meaning in science and that within science, theories are the most important level of understanding—not just guesses. More specifically, students need to learn that "theory"means an explanation of phenomena that has been rigorously tested, while a law is a descriptive generalization of phenomena. Theories commonly incorporate and explain laws, as well as logical inferences, facts, and hypotheses. Evolution is a theory, just as, and no less observable than, gravitation (masses attract one another with a force inversely proportional to the square of their distances) or atomic theory (that all matter is composed of atoms).Activity: Theory, Theory
Humans could not have evolved from monkeys because monkeys still exist.
Most students who hold this misconception believe: (1) that we evolved from monkeys (as they currently exist) and (2) that if we evolved from monkeys (or any form of monkey or ape) that the monkeys/apes should not be present today because they all should have changed into humans. They think that a whole population evolves, not understanding that only a portion of the population evolves into a new species. They don't understand that living apes and monkeys share common ancestors with humans, rather than being their ancestors. A simplified drawing of a tree with some hominid transitions on one branch and monkeys and apes on others should begin to help their conceptual change.Activity: Classroom Cladogram of Vertebrate/Human Evolution
Evolution and belief in God are mutually exclusive.
Some religious traditions teach their followers that one must reject a belief in God if one accepts evolution as the best scientific explanation for the diversity of life on earth. Nonetheless, the majority of North American institutions that train future religious leaders (i.e., Christian seminaries) do not regard evolution and religion as mutually exclusive. Moreover, in the scientific community there are thousands of scientists who are devoutly religious while recognizing the scientific factuality of evolution. Many people, including scientists and theologians, consider science and religion to be separate ways of knowing, and concerned with different phenomena. Catholics and mainstream Protestants frequently express forms of theistic evolution, believing that God uses the process of evolution to create, much the same way they believe God uses the natural processes of pregnancy to bring humans into the world. Students should come to understand that while "doing" modern science, researchers practice methodological naturalism—as scientists, they use only natural causes to explain nature. Methodological naturalism is separable from naturalism as an atheistic philosophy.Activity: Who Said It?
Evolution is a weak scientific idea (evolution is a "theory in crisis").
Students are unaware of the acceptance of and enormous amount of research in evolution that goes on in the scientific community. A major part of this confusion is mistaking that arguments among scientists about how evolution occurs for arguments about whether it occurs. Students could be taught some of the history of the scientific debate concerning evolution, and be given the task of researching and reporting on the large number of scientific journals that publish articles on evolution. They should come to realize that the journals do not contain articles about whether evolution occurred, but rather about the patterns and mechanisms of evolution.Activity: Proposing the Theory of Biological Evolution
Microevolution is not evolution.
Some students (mostly creationists) do not realize that demonstrations of microevolution are relevant to macroevolution. They believe that God (or an unknown designer) engineered organisms with the ability to change over time within certain limits (often referred to as "kinds"). For example, fish might be able to change into different fish, but not eventually into full-time air-breathing land-dwelling animals. These students do not accept any cumulative change beyond kinds. So such students do not object to typical speciation lessons but do not find them pertinent to macroevolution. To help students learn how microevolution could lead to macroevolution, the teacher could utilize good fossil transitions, lineages, and molecular comparisons as illustrative of macroevolution.Activity: Macro-Evolution: Patterns & Trends
Missing links disprove evolution.
Students frequently believe that there are no intermediate/transitional fossils (between species or higher categories) and, therefore, evolution is disproved. Most of these fossils, however, illustrate structural transitions; because of other anatomical characteristics, they are usually not considered to be actual ancestors. Students need to understand that the probability of finding a specimen that belonged to a population that belonged to a species that is on the direct line of descent of a modern form is very low. Most fossils, therefore, are "cousins" rather than ancestors of other known forms. However, we can learn much about the course of evolution from the transitional morphological structures that are abundant in the fossil record. Examples include the transitions from reptiles to mammal, fish to amphibians, dinosaurs to birds, early hominids to humans, and land mammals to whales.Activity: Reconstructing History
Radiometric dating is unreliable.
For religious reasons, some students believe that the earth is young (on the order of 10,000 years old); they are antievolution at least in part because a young earth would provide inadequate time for evolution to occur. Therefore, it becomes important for them to invalidate radiometric dating as a way to disprove evolution. Although one cannot deal with the religious ideas promoting such views, students need to understand how isotopic age dating works and that it is very accurate—usually less than 1% error of measurement. Methods used for radiometric dating are based on the same physics that put people on the moon—it is not unreliable science! Commonly students are familiar only with carbon-14 dating, and are unaware of the large number of isotopes available for dating different periods of time. The multiplicity of isotopic dating techniques resulting in the same or very close dates also supports the reliability of radiometric dating.Activity: Determining Age of Rocks and Fossils
