Editor:

Two hallmarks of "scientific" creationism are misunderstanding and
misrepresentation of scientific results.  Neocreationist Patrick
Glynn ["Monkey on our backs", NR, September 13 1999] is guilty of both.

Contrary to Glynn's claim, evolutionary biologists simply do not argue
that "all life and species can be explained solely by chance mechanisms".
Natural selection involves both mutation and selection, and the selection
component is largely non-random.

He elevates "intelligent design" to the status of a "theory", despite
the fact that it makes no predictions, is unfalsifiable, offers no
directions for further research, and is not supported by any body of
work in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

He states that the anthropic principle has generated a "vast
literature", but fails to recognize that this literature is almost
entirely popular interpretation, not peer-reviewed research.  The
actual impact of this principle, as measured by citations in 
Science Citation Index, is quite small.

Finally, it is simply untrue that "it has been established that the
simplest version of DNA contains more information that is contained in
all the laws of chemistry and physics".    Glynn's primary source is a
neocreationist tract written by a lawyer; the source it cites does not
support the claim.  How could it?  We simply do not currently know "all
the laws of chemistry and physics"; perhaps there are infinitely many.
We do not know the information content of the initial conditions; nor
do we even know the information content of a single fundamental
constant such as G.

Glynn's commentary is an unwitting example of why we need more
science education, not less, in our schools.

Jeffrey Shallit

[Note: this is the letter I actually wrote. The published version was edited and is slightly different.]