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John Corrigan "Jonathan" Wells is an American author, a prominent promoter of intelligent design and an opponent of evolution, which Wells and other intelligent design proponents often refer to as "Darwinism."

In his book, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?, Wells says that evolution conflicts with the evidence, and argues against its teaching in public school science classes However, his views on evolution, as well as AIDS, run counter to scientific consensus on evolution and the causal link between HIV and AIDS, skeptics of which are known as the AIDS reappraisal movement. Wells rejects evolution in favor of intelligent design and denies the causal link between the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). The scientific community overwhelmingly accepts evolution and considers the causative role of HIV to be well proven and dissident arguments are the result of ideologically-driven cherry-picking and misrepresentation of predominantly outdated scientific data, with the potential to endanger public health by dissuading people from utilizing proven treatments. Intelligent design is widely characterized within the scientific community as pseudoscience, as shown by numerous statements from Academies of Sciences.

Background

After dropping out of college (where he was majoring in geology) and working as a taxi driver in New York City, Wells was drafted into the United States Army, serving from 1964 to 1966. After returning to college at UC Berkeley, he was ordered to reserve duty. Being by that time a critic of the Vietnam War, he refused to report for duty and was incarcerated for 18 months at the Leavenworth military prison.

In the 1970s Wells joined Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. He graduated from the church's Unification Theological Seminary in 1978 with a Masters in Religious Education. He has since written extensively on Unification theology and since 1981 has taught from time to time at the Unification Theological Seminary.Wells worked for the Unification Theological Seminary until 1996. The president of the school, David S.C. Kim, said Wells had made a great contribution to the school's development. Wells has written on the subject of marriage within the Unification Church and has been called a "Unification Church marriage expert" by church sources. He is married and has two children.

In 1986 Wells earned a PhD in Religious Studies at Yale University. He then returned to UC Berkeley where in 1994 he was awarded a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology. Shortly after completing his doctorate, Wells joined former UC Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson, father of the intelligent design movement, at the Discovery Institute. After receiving his doctorate, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher in developmental biology; however it is alleged that this was an unpaid position arranged by Johnson.

Wells now serves as a fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, hub of the intelligent design movement, and at the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, an organization that promotes intelligent design.

Opposition to evolution

Of his early student days at Unification Theological Seminary (1976-78), Wells said, "One of the things that Father advised us to do at UTS was to pray to seek God's plan for our lives." He later described that plan: "To defend and articulate Unification theology especially in relation to Darwinian evolution."

Wells stated that his religious doctoral studies at Yale focused on the "root of the conflict between Darwinian evolution and Christian doctrine" and encompassed the whole of Christian theology within a focus of Darwinian controversies. He said, "I learned (to my surprise) that biblical chronology played almost no role in the 19th-century controversies, since most theologians had already accepted geological evidence for the age of the earth and re-interpreted the days in Genesis as long periods of time. Instead, the central issue was design."

Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church bankrolled Wells's education. Wells said that learning how to "destroy Darwinism," the term he and intelligent design proponents use to mean evolution which is opposed by the Unification Church, was his motive for seeking his second Ph.D. at Berkeley:

"Father's words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle." --Jonathan Wells, Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D.

Wells's statement and others like it are viewed by the scientific community as evidence that Wells lacks proper scientific objectivity and mischaracterizes evolution by ignoring and misrepresenting the evidence supporting it while pursuing an agenda promoting notions supporting his religious beliefs in its stead. Massimo Pigliucci, having debated Wells, said Wells "clearly lied" during his debates and misrepresented his agenda and science. Moreover, Pigliucci wrote Wells simply does not understand some of the theories Wells tries to attack. The Discovery Institute responded that "Darwinists have resorted to attacks on Dr. Wells’s religion".

Wells has written a large number of articles attacking evolution and defending Intelligent Design. He was one of the contributors to Natural History Magazine's 2002 debate between ID advocates and evolution supporters.

Icons of Evolution

Wells is best known for his 2002 book Icons of Evolution, in which he discusses ten examples which he says show that many of the most commonly accepted arguments supporting evolution are invalid. Icons of Evolution has been called an "influential intelligent-design book."

Wells's assertions and conclusion in this book, as well as in his other writings, are rejected by the scientific community. Scholars quoted in the work have accused Wells' of purposely misquoting them and misleading readers. Biology Professor Jerry Coyne wrote of Icons, "Jonathan Wells' book rests entirely on a flawed syllogism: ... textbooks illustrate evolution with examples; these examples are sometimes presented in incorrect or misleading ways; therefore evolution is a fiction."

Theory of Organismal Problem-Solving

In a 2004 paper in the intelligent design journal Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design, Wells proposed his "Theory of Organismal Problem-Solving" (TOPS), which was intended to provide a mechanism by which intelligent design "could lead to new hypotheses and scientific discoveries". The idea is based on two fundamental assumptions, that "Darwinian evolution" is false, and that intelligent design is true. Rather than seeking experimental verification for intelligent design, TOPS "explore what happens when ID rather than evolutionary theory is used as a framework to ask research questions".

In the paper, Wells sought to apply this to cancer and centrioles. Wells stated that "cancer is not correlated with any consistent pattern of DNA mutations, but it is correlated with abnormalities at the chromosomal level -- a phenomenon called "chromosomal instability", and that many researchers see cancer as a "centrosomal disease" rather than a DNA disease. This led him to centrioles. Since centrioles look like turbines under electron microscopy, Wells used the TOPS metholody to conclude that "if centrioles look like turbines they might actually be turbines".

In response to Wells's assertion that cancer was a disease of chromosomal instability and not genes, Ian Musgrave, writing in the The Panda's Thumb replied that "this knowledge seems to have eluded most researchers in the field" and pointed out that where chromosomal translocations underlie cancer, "chromosomal instability can be traced to a mutation in a single gene".

Centrioles

Using the TOPS methodology, which assumes that intelligent design is true and "Darwinian evolution" is false, Wells revisited the issue of centrioles in a 2005 paper entitled "Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?" in Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum. Wells's paper "assumes that are holistically designed to be turbines", and goes on to develop a hypothesis of how they work. The Discovery Institute lists this paper as a "featured article" on their list of "Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design." This has been challenged by History and Philosophy of Science professor John M. Lynch, who points out that Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum is edited by Italian creationist Giuseppe Sermonti, whose own book Why Is a Fly Not a Horse? is published by the Discovery Institute, and largely publishes only research outside the general scientific consensus. Lynch said of Rivista: "While there may be interesting ideas here, there is no indication that they represent mainstream thought in biology. And while this might be an 'internationally respected biology journal' within certain (anti-Darwinian) communities, it cannot be considered so among the majority." and "the influence of Rivista, we see that - as one would expect from the above - the journal is of negligible importance at best ... in the case of Rivista could not reasonable be called 'internationally respected'." The Discovery Institute's statement that Wells's paper is a peer reviewed article published in scientific journal runs counter to the testimony of intelligent design proponent Michael Behe in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District and the judge's findings and ruling.

Kansas evolution hearings

In 2005, Wells attended the Kansas evolution hearings, which were boycotted by mainstream scientists. There Wells testifed, "I became convinced that the Darwinian theory is false because it conflicts with the evidence." When questioned about the age of the earth, he replied, "I think the earth is probably four-and-a-half billion or so years old. ... But the truth is I have not looked at the evidence. And I have become increasingly suspicious of the evidence that is presented to me and that's why at this point I would say probably it's four-and-a-half billion years old, but I haven't looked at the evidence."

Prior to the evolution hearings, in December 2000 after the Pratt County, Kansas school board revised its tenth-grade biology curriculum at the urging of intelligent design proponents to include material that encourages students to question the theory of evolution, the Pratt Tribune published a letter from Jerry Coyne challenging Wells's characterization in an article of his work on peppered moths, saying that his article appended to the Pratt standards was misused and being mischaracterized:

"Creationists such as Jonathan Wells claim that my criticism of these experiments casts strong doubt on Darwinism. But this characterization is false. ... My call for additional research on the moths has been wrongly characterized by creationists as revealing some fatal flaw in the theory of evolution. ... It is a classic creationist tactic (as exemplified in Wells's book, "Icons of Evolution") to assert that healthy scientific debate is really a sign that evolutionists are either committing fraud or buttressing a crumbling theory." -- Jerry Coyne, letter to the editor, Pratt Tribune.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design

In 2006 Wells published his second major book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, which was part of a series published by Regnery Publishing. The book was praised by Tom Bethell, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, but was described by Reed Cartwright of Panda's Thumb as being "not only politically incorrect but incorrect in most other ways as well: scientifically, logically, historically, legally, academically, and morally."

AIDS reappraisal

Wells denies the consensus of the scientific community that HIV has been conclusively proved to be the sole cause of AIDS. In 1993 he signed the The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis petition calling for a "reappraisal of the evidence" for the connection between HIV and AIDS.

Publications

Articles in peer-reviewed journals

• Wells J (1985). "Inertial force as a possible factor in mitosis". Biosystems. 17 (4): 301–15. PMID 3902112.
• Larabell CA, Rowning BA, Wells, J, Wu M, Gerhart JC (1996). "Confocal microscopy analysis of living Xenopus eggs and the mechanism of cortical rotation". Development. 122 (4): 1281–9. PMID 8620855.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Rowning BA, Wells J, Wu M, Gerhart JC, Moon RT, Larabell CA. link Microtubule-mediated transport of organelles and localization of beta-catenin to the future dorsal side of Xenopus eggs. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1997 Feb 18;94(4):1224-9.

Books

• Charles Hodge's Critique of Darwinism: An Historical-Critical Analysis of Concepts Basic to the 19th Century Debate. Edwin Mellen Press, April 1988. ISBN 0889466718 and ISBN 978-0889466715
• Icons of Evolution. Regnery Publishing. 2000. ISBN 0-89526-276-2
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Regnery Publishing. 2006. ISBN 1-59698-013-3
• The Design of Life. Co-author with William A. Dembski. Foundation for Thought and Ethics. 2007. ISBN 0980021308

External links

• Jonathan Wells biography from the Discovery Institute
• Articles by Wells from the Discovery Institute
• Collection of Wells essays
• Wells hits a home run at Harvard
• Panelists Discuss Validity Of Evolutionary Theory at Harvard University
• FAQ on Wells
• Icons of Evolution? - Why much of what Jonathan Wells writes about evolution is wrong
• Answers to Wells's 10 questions from National Center for Science Education
• A response to Wells hits a home run at Harvard
• Pandas Thumb's Chapter by Chapter analysis of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design
• New Mexicans for Science and Reason debate Jonathan Wells

References

1. ^ "Biological evolution is the theory that all living things are modified descendants of a common ancestor that lived in the distant past. It claims that you and I are descendants of ape-like ancestors, and that they in turn came from still more primitive animals...much of what we teach about evolution is wrong. This fact raises troubling questions about the status of Darwinian evolution. If the icons of evolution are supposed to be our best evidence for Darwin's theory, and all of them are false or misleading, what does that tell us about the theory? Is it science, or myth?" --Jonathan Wells, Introduction, Icons of Evolution
2. ^ "In order to advance his thesis, Wells has to convey the idea that "Darwinism" pits itself against traditional Christianity: to allow pupils to learn it is to give them up to atheism, decadence, liberalism and to lose the culture war. Note that Wells does not wage war against evolution. In fact, he is at pains to make it (somewhat) clear that he wages war against "Darwinism", which in context might sound like the sort of thing any sensible Christian would want to guard against. Unfortunately, Wells isn’t exactly clear what he means by Darwinism as opposed to evolution. Easily, one of the prominent faults of Wells’s screed is a pervasive confusion between terms. Words, like "Darwinism" and "Traditional Christianity", seem to mean whatever Wells wants them to mean for that specific sentence. In many cases words are used without regard for his own stated definitions and usually without regard to usage elsewhere in his book. There are several possible reasons for this confusion in terms. First, Wells confusion may be by design. I have argued elsewhere that creationists intend to confuse their audiences when they argue. Second, if you review the acknowledgements page, you’ll read how Wells used many authors to help him prepare this text. It is possible that Wells’s editorship was so insufficient that he allowed a term that makes up part of the book’s very title to have a flexible meaning. My suspicion is that there was both disparity between the understanding of key terms by different authors as well as an intention to confuse." Humburg, Burt (August 26, 2006). "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design Review: Why Should Words Have Meanings? (Chapter 1)". The Panda's Thumb. Retrieved 2007-02-04.
3. ^ "As I stated earlier, Johnson, Dembski, and their associates have assumed the task of destroying 'Darwinism,' 'evolutionary naturalism,' 'scientific materialism,' 'methodological naturalism,' 'philosophical naturalism,' and other 'isms' they use as synonyms for evolution." Barbara Forrest’s Letter to Simon Blackburn Barbara Forrest. March 2000. Quoted in Rebuttal to Reports by Opposing Expert Witnesses William A. Dembski. May 14 2005
4. ^ "In latest Commentary essay on 'Darwinism' - as it is often called by those who do not know much evolutionary biology..." Gross, Paul R. (March 2003). "Darwinism versus intelligent design". Commentary Magazine. 115 (3). Retrieved 2007-02-05. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |quotes= ignored (help)
5. "Several of them grossly exaggerate or distort the truth, while others are patently false. Yet they are found year after year in almost all textbooks dealing with evolutionary theory, and they invariably accompany other material promoting that theory. When someone points out that the textbook examples misrepresent the facts, Darwinists don’t rush to correct them. Instead, they rush to defend them." "Critics Rave Over Icons of Evolution: A Response to Published Reviews", Jonathan Wells, June 12, 2002, posted at Discovery Institute website, accessed August 13, 2007
6. ^ Is It Science Yet?: Intelligent Design Creationism And The Constitution Matthew J. Brauer, Barbara Forrest, Steven G. Gey. Washington University Law Quarterly, Volume 83, Number 1, 2005. (PDF file)
7. National Science Teachers Association, a professional association of 55,000 science teachers and administrators in a 2005 press release: "We stand with the nation's leading scientific organizations and scientists, including Dr. John Marburger, the president's top science advisor, in stating that intelligent design is not science.…It is simply not fair to present pseudoscience to students in the science classroom." National Science Teachers Association Disappointed About Intelligent Design Comments Made by President Bush National Science Teachers Association Press Release August 3 2005
   Defending science education against intelligent design: a call to action Journal of Clinical Investigation 116:1134-1138 American Society for Clinical Investigation, 2006.
   Echoes of Lysenko: State-Sponsored Pseudoscience in South Africa University of Cape Town, Centre for Social Science Research. (PDF file)
   Myers, PZ (2006-06-18). "Ann Coulter: No evidence for evolution?". Pharyngula. scienceblogs.com. Retrieved 2006-11-18.
   National Association of Biology Teachers Statement on Teaching Evolution
   IAP Statement on the Teaching of Evolution Joint statement issued by the national science academies of 67 countries, including the United Kingdom's Royal Society (PDF file)
   From the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society: 2006 Statement on the Teaching of Evolution (PDF file), AAAS Denounces Anti-Evolution Laws
8. ^ The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis
9. "His personal peculiarities include membership in the Moonies and support for AIDS reappraisal - the theory that the HIV is not the primary cause of AIDS" Undercover at the Discovery Institute Beth Quittman. Seattlest, September 8, 2006.
10. ^ "some leading lights of anti-evolution Intelligent Design theory, including ID godfather Phillip Johnson and Moonie Jonathan Wells, have joined the AIDS denialist camp." AIDS 'Denialism' Gathers Strange Bedfellows Peter McKnight. Originally published in the Vancouver Sun, June 17, 2006.
11. "99.9 percent of scientists accept evolution" Finding the Evolution in Medicine National Institutes of Health
12. Galea P, Chermann JC. (1998). "HIV as the cause of AIDS and associated diseases". Genetica. 104 (2): 133–142. PMID 10220906.
13. Delaney M. (1995). ""The Duesberg phenomenon": Duesberg and other voices". Science. 267 (5196): 314. PMID 7824920.
14. Watson J. (2006). "Scientists, activists sue South Africa's AIDS 'denialists'". Nat Med. 12 (1): 6. PMID 16397537.
15. "Discredited doctor's 'cure' for Aids ignites life-and-death struggle in South Africa", by Sarah Boseley. Published in The Guardian on May 14 2005. Accessed 9 Feb 2007.
16. AIDS Denial is Pseudoscience Department of Physics Southern Methodist University.
17. e.g., "Repeatedly, old arguments, long since refuted, have been refurbished and presented to new audiences that are ill-equipped to evaluate them. Lately, creationist pseudoscience has been attempting to insinuate itself into the curriculum under the rubric of "intelligent design." Statement from the California Academy of Sciences, 1994.
18. Statement from the International Council for Science
19. "for most members of the mainstream scientific community, ID is not a scientific theory, but a creationist pseudoscience." Trojan Horse or Legitimate Science: Deconstructing the Debate over Intelligent Design David Mu. Harvard Science Review, Volume 19, Issue 1, Fall 2005.
20. "I eventually dropped out of school and drove a taxicab in New York City until receiving my draft notice in 1964. After spending two years in the U. S. Army, I transferred to the University of California at Berkeley. By then I was a critic of the Vietnam War, and when the Army called me back as a reservist in 1967 I refused. I was arrested by military police, court-martialed, and sent to Leavenworth. All together, I spent a year and half in prison." Jonathan Wells Then, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design website
21. "NNDB:Jonathan Wells". NNDB. 2006. Retrieved 2006-12-28.
22. Jonathan Wells (1997) Theological Witch-Hunt: The NCC Critique of the Unification Church, Journal of Unification Studies hosted at www.tparents.org
23. Board of Trustees Meeting notes posted at tparents.org, a Unification Church website
24. Marriage and the Family: The Unification Church Blessing
25. Unificationist Photos from 1997 and 1998
26. Jonathan Wells
27. ^ Jonathan Wells, Notable Names Database
28. ^ An Introduction to Intelligent Design Peter Gegenheimer. Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Kansas-Lawrence. Associate Professor of Molecular Biosciences. Lawrence KS USA
29. "Why I Went for a Second PhD". 1996. Retrieved 2007-08-10. I have taught embryology at a state college and am now a post-doctoral research biologist at Berkeley, writing articles critical of Darwinism.
30. Biography, Jonathan Wells Discovery Institute
31. Dr. Jonathan Wells Returns to UTS Cornerstone, 1997.
32. Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D - Jonathan Wells, from tparents.org
33. Know Your Creationists, Daily Kos
34. The new Monkey Trial Michelle Goldberg. Salon, January 10, 2005.
35. The Words of Reverend Sun Myung Moon: Our Standard
36. Creationism by stealth Jerry Coyne. Nature, Volume 410, April 12, 2001.
37. From Evolution Theory to a New Creation Theory -- Errors in Darwinism and a Proposal from Unification Thought "Under the Supervision of Sang Hun Lee." Unification Thought Institute, 1996.
38. Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design Michael Shermer. Times Books, 2006. Page 110
39. Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D. Jonathan Wells. The Words of the Wells Family
40. Mything the point: Jonathan Wells’ bad faith John S. Wilkins. The Panda's Thumb March 30, 2004.
41. Jonathan Wells knows nothing about development, part I PZ Myers, Pharyngula, January 24, 2007.
42. Jonathan Wells knows nothing about development, part II PZ Myers, Pharyngula, January 25, 2007.
43. PZ Myers is such a LIAR! PZ Myers, Pharyngula, November 3, 2006.
44. Whereby Jon Wells is smacked down by an undergrad in the Yale Daily News, Tara C. Smith, Aetiology, January 31, 2007.
45. Massimo Pigliucci. Denying Evolution: Creationism, Scientism, and the Nature of Science (Sinauer, 2002): ISBN 0878936599 page 44-45
46. The Real Truth about Jonathan Wells from the Discovery Institute.
47. List of articles by Jonathan Wells, Discovery Institute
48. Intelligent Design?, Natural History magazine
49. Darwinian Conservatism by Larry Arnhart: A Reply to Jonathan Wells
50. Saint Gasoline: The Funhouse Mirror of Intelligent Design
51. Discovery Institute: Scientist Exposes Evolution’s Weaknesses in Politically Incorrect Book About Darwinism and Intelligent Design
52. "The new Monkey Trial - Salon
53. See: 1) List of scientific societies rejecting intelligent design 2) Kitzmiller v. Dover page 83. 3) The Discovery Institute's A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism petition begun in 2001 has been signed by over 700 scientists as of August 20, 2006. A four day A Scientific Support for Darwinism petition gained 7733 signatories from scientists opposing ID. The AAAS, the largest association of scientists in the U.S., has 120,000 members, and firmly rejects ID. More than 70,000 Australian scientists and educators condemn teaching of intelligent design in school science classes. List of statements from scientific professional organizations on the status intelligent design and other forms of creationism.
54. Creationism by Stealth Jerry Coyne. Answers In Science, Tufts University.
55. ^ Wells, Jonathan (2004). "Using Intelligent Design Theory to Guide Scientific Research" (PDF). Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design. 3.1. Retrieved 2007-02-05. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |quotes= ignored (help)
56. Musgrave, Ian (July 6, 2005). "That's another fine mess you've made Jonathan!". The Panda's Thumb. Retrieved 2007-02-05.
57. "Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?"
58. Wells vs tiny flies Ian Musgrave. The Pandas Thumb, August 9, 2006.
59. Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design (Annotated) by the Discovery Institute
60. Why is a Fly Not a Horse? Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture.
61. Revisiting Revista Dr. John Lynch. Stranger Fruit, June 2, 2005.
62. Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District 4: whether ID is science
63. Wells testimony Kansas evolution hearings.
64. Letter to the editor Jerry Coyne. Pratt Tribune. December 200. Also available from the Pratt Tribune's pay archive.
65. 'Politically Incorrect' Series Takes on Darwinism and Intelligent Design
66. "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design Review". Panda's Thumb. August 19, 2006. Retrieved 2006-11-04.

• Creationists
• Intelligent design advocates
• ISCID fellows
• Unificationists
• Living people
• Discovery Institute fellows and advisors
• AIDS dissidents
• Denialism
• Signatories of "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism"