A New Fairy Tale about the “Evolution of the Brain” and Radikal’s
Biased Coverage
In its 26 March 2004 edition the Turkish daily Radikal carried
an article titled “Man, A Genetic Error!” The article concerned
a new evolutionist claim put forward by University of Pennsylvania’s Hansell
Stedman and his team. The caption to the article read: “The contribution
of a ‘genetic error’ to the development of mankind: The jaw shrank
and made room for the brain when a gene was subjected to mutation 2.4 million
years ago.” According to the Radikal account, it was this mutation that
lay behind human beings’ having such a large brain volume.
However, the claims made in the report consist entirely of speculation
based on evolutionist prejudice. The researchers, who had signed up to evolution
right from the outset, identified a difference between the nucleotide sequences
in the gene that encodes the protein myosin, produced in the muscles of the
human jaw, and the gene which encodes the same protein in apes, and treated
this difference as a mutation. Evolutionists reject right from the outset the
possibility that the nucleotide sequences in apes and human beings could have
been separately designed. Neither is that the only assumption underlying the
claims in question. After assuming a mutation, the researchers then assume that
the jaw muscles are a factor restricting brain volume. Furthermore, that assumption
has been the subject of an unequivocal objection, which is ignored in Radikal.
In a news commentary written by Elizabeth Pennisi and published in Science
magazine, the Columbia University physical anthropologist Ralph Holloway objects
to the claims made by Stedman and his team in the words, “To suggest that
the brain is constrained by chewing muscles is just rubbish.” 1
An article published by the British scientific magazine Nature
news service, which carried the research article, states, “The theory
is by no means proven.2 ” However, here too
Radikal demonstrates the same scrupulousness as it does in its selection
of interpretations which favour evolutionist speculation, and ignores this statement
published by the magazine’s news service, the direct source of the report.
At the basis of this lies a policy of seeking to portray the theory of evolution
as a very solid one.
The assumption that an organ as complex as the brain evolved through
random mutation and natural selection, an assumption requiring unlimited powers
of imagination, is immediately submitted as a scientific theory, and no space
at all is devoted to comments that oppose the theory. Readers are thus deprived
of the right to use their critical faculties and are forced to dogmatically
accept a claim based totally on imagination. We invite the Radikal management
to review the daily’s scientific news service activities accordingly.
Note: This article also constitutes our response to a short report
in the 26 March 2004 edition of daily Posta called “Our Jaw Is
the Architect of Intelligence!”.
1. Elizabeth Pennisi, “The Primate
Bite: Brawn Versus Brain?” Science, vol. 303, Issue 5666, 1957,
26 March 2004
2. Michael Hopkin, “Jaw-Dropping Theory of Human Evolution,” Nature
Science Update, 25 March 2004, http://www.nature.com/nsu/040322/040322-9.html
