Anti-evolutionism is a quintessential and particularly pernicious type of pseudoscience. Quintessential because it is both common and characterized by many of the classic hallmarks of pseudoscience. Pernicious because it directly aims at undermining both science, and education more broadly, in accordance with its religious ideological roots.

Yet, rather ironically, even anti-evolutionist tactics evolve. And even more ironically, such evolution can be documented and quantified by using the very same phylogenetic reconstruction techniques that evolutionary biologists normally employ to understand the historical relationships among biological species. A paper published a few years ago by Nicholas Matzke in Science is a splendid example of this approach (Matzke 2016).

Historically, in the United States there have been three major waves of creationism: (1) Bans on the teaching of evolution during the 1920s, culminating with the infamous Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1925; that wave ended in 1968, when such bans were deemed unconstitutional. (2) A shift to “balanced treatment” of evolution and creation “science,” which was dealt what appears to be a final blow in 2005 in the famous Kitzmiller v. Dover case decided by a U.S. District Court. (3) The current wave, which can best be characterized as stealth creationism.

What Matzke did was use phylogenetic reconstruction methods applied to the wording of a large number of anti-evolution bills largely proposed after Kitzmiller v. Dover with the goal of reconstructing their “phylogeny”—that is, to understand how the bills are related to each other by the cultural equivalents of mutation, recombination, and common descent.

The application of evolutionary phylogenetic methods to cultural evolutionary traits is not new; for instance, research has shown congruence between the evolution of surnames and the human population genetics of the male-inherited Y-chromosome. It turns out that linguistics can benefit from techniques developed in evolutionary genetics; let’s see how the same can be true for skeptical inquiries into the nature of anti-evolutionism.

The leading creationist organization in recent times has been the Discovery Institute, a “think tank” based in Seattle that promotes intelligent design (they don’t like to call it “creationism,” because the term is tainted by a long history of association with religious fundamentalism). The Discovery Institute has been crippled by Kitzmiller v. Dover, but they managed to keep limping forward by, well, adapting their strategies to the new cultural and legal environment.

Specifically, they have developed two such strategies: bills that can be classified under the general umbrella of “academic freedom acts” (AFA) and bills that are best understood as belonging to the class of “science education acts” (SEA). These strategies have been consistently employed by anti-evolutionists and have occasionally achieved some success. The Discovery Institute, for instance, has promoted seventeen bills of the AFA type in sixteen states between 2006 and 2015, and three states—Louisiana, Tennessee, and Mississippi—have actually signed one such bill into law.

Matzke focused his analysis on text from a given bill that was simply copied into (“inherited by”) another bill, or which was reused with modifications (“mutations”). Though he also found evidence of “reticulate” evolution, where bits and pieces of one bill were transferred and integrated into the context of a different bill, as if they were interspecies transfers of chromosomes.

The use of standard maximum parsimony analyses showed strong evidence for “descent with modification” across the sample of bills, while Bayesian methods identified highly likely “ancestor nodes” in the phylogenetic tree. By these means, Matzke discovered seven bills that had a disproportionate evolutionary effect. For instance, four Alabama bills introduced between 2004 and 2005 (right before Kitzmiller v. Dover), as well as a 2006 Oklahoma bill were the direct ancestors of the entire AFA strategy.

Matzke has also been able to identify successful “evolutionary innovations” in creationist approaches, for instance the development of the Ouachita policy of targeting for “critical analysis” not just evolution and the origin of life, but also human cloning and global warming. The Ouachita policy was apparently motivated by two factors: first, it reflects a broader anti-science consensus within the ultraconservative religious communities in the United States; second, it helps deflect the charge that previous bills were religiously motivated because they focused exclusively on evolution.

At some point, the AFA strategy has been integrated within and eventually entirely replaced by the SEA. Two Tennessee bills turned out to be pivotal in favoring the SEA strategy, becoming the direct ancestors of nine more bills produced between 2012 and 2015.

Even the overall shape of the anti-evolution phylogeny is informative. It is strongly asymmetrical, which suggests that certain bills have been disproportionally selected as ancestors of new ones, due to some characteristic judged to be particularly successful. When this happens in nature, the result is the rapid spread of evolutionary innovations. In the case of anti-evolutionism, it is the rapid spread of bills that more effectively undermines science education.

The reason this kind of stealth creationism has proven somewhat effective is that legal challenges of the bills have been made difficult by three specific tactics implemented by the Discovery Institute and their supporters: vague wording of the bills themselves, avoidance of any direct religious reference, and an insistence on permission (instead of requirement) to disparage evolution to be given to teachers when they tackle the subject in the classroom. And of course, the conduct of individual teachers can only be challenged administratively or in a court of law if a student or parent complains, which is unlikely in most Southern and Midwestern states because of peer or societal pressure, or simply because the parents themselves are creationists.

The good news is that according to Matzke, the Discovery Institute “brand” has been greatly damaged by Kitzmiller v. Dover, so legislators have shied away from it, focusing instead on modifying and further propagating the language of existing bills. It is also good news, I propose, that the three waves of anti-evolutionism we have seen so far have gradually reduced the scope of their ambitions: initially the teaching of evolution was to be prohibited entirely; then they retreated to “equal time” for both creationism and evolutionism, thus conceding the teaching of the latter; and now they are reduced to stealth action that attempts—however clumsily—to disguise the real nature of these legislative efforts.

Setting aside the delicious irony that allows scientists to use evolutionary analysis tools to track creationist efforts, the lesson here is that this particular culture war is waged over the very long run, and therefore constant vigilance on the part of skeptics is required. I understand and sympathize with the notion that creationism, homeopathy, astrology, UFOs, and the like are “old news” and that it is much more fun to focus our skeptical inquiries onto new types of nonsense, such as vaccine denialism, climate change denialism, novel conspiracy theories, and so forth.

But the reality is that we ought to find room to fight both old and new nonsense, because both kinds are here to stay. Indeed, nonsense has always been here. Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman advocate, statesman, and philosopher who was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, wrote a book two millennia ago titled On Divination. It is the first known full-length treatment of what we today call pseudoscience, and I’ll return to it in a future column. As you can see, nothing new under the Sun.

The reality is that we are locked in a perennial battle. Sometimes we make progress; sometimes we are forced to retreat. What’s the point then? I take inspiration and comfort from a metaphor used by Carl Sagan in his classic The Demon-Haunted World. The subtitle of that book is Science as a Candle in the Dark. We are, have always been, and will probably always be surrounded by the dark. Our job is not the likely impossible one to vanquish the darkness and bring the light everywhere. It is, rather, the more modest but crucially important goal of keeping the light of reason on for the benefit of future generations.

Reference

Matzke, N.J. 2016. The evolution of anti-evolution policies after Kitzmiller v. Dover. Science 351(6268): 28–30.