A unicorn in the garden
A donkeycorn in a water garden. Photograph by Mary Schwalm.There’s been a lot of coverage of Richard Lenski’s citrate-metabolizing bacteria this summer, and it’s pretty entertaining. Lenski is a biologist at Michigan State and has been maintaining populations of E. coli bacteria in his lab for two decades. Bacteria rapidly divide, grow and die; they acquire random mutations, and lose them; it’s called evolution, and it happens. Over the years Lenski has published numerous papers on his experimental bacterial evolution project, all of which describe the populations, you know, changing over time.
Probably nothing would have happened if science writer Carl Zimmer hadn’t profiled Lenski’s work. Zimmer is one of the best science writers out there, transforming basic science research findings into fascinating tales of biological anomalies and unlikely plot twists, and he’s devoted a lot of attention to Lenski’s evolving bacteria. Last year he wrote about the work in The New York Times and he also described it in his book Microcosm, published this past May. Lenski was recently inducted in the National Academy of Sciences—a big honking deal: Congratulations, Dr. Lenski!—and his inaugural publication in the Academy’s scientific journal describes a discovery having to do with the bacteria evolving the ability to metabolize citrate. These results were also presented by graduate student Zachary Blount at the evolution conference in Minnesota this June, to an entertained audience who watched a video of what it took to analyze the 40 trillion cells in the experiment. Zimmer also wrote, eloquently, about this finding, and why it’s cool, in a June 2 post on his blog. (Recommended reading if you’re interested in the details of the actual science.) With an interested reception in the scientific community and national attention in the popular media, Lenski and his well-adapted cells were, obviously, ripe targets for an outraged rejection by the anti-evolution people.
This awkward and blustery rejection is the entertaining part. Science blogger and anti-evolution watchdog PZ Myers has thoroughly covered the spectacle, which originated with an open letter to Lenski on Conservapedia and which has spread humor and incredulity across across the interwebs and into academic departments nationwide (for specifics, see posts from June 18, June 24 and July 4). The rundown: Conservapedia founder Andrew Schlafly wrote to Lenski, expressing “skepticism” and reminding him that publishing scientists have to disclose procedurals and findings to their readership. Lenski wrote back, explaining that Schlafly should read his paper and discover the procedurals and findings therein; he also, politely, explained a few scientific points in plain language. Schlafly wrote again, announcing “a second request for the data.” Lenski unleashed a grand torrent. The entire exchange is available on Conservapedia, but the most victorious parry is the one in which Lenski flays open Schlafly’s fundamental ignorance about scientific research:
It is my impression that you seem to think we have only paper and electronic records of having seen some unusual E. coli. If we made serious errors or misrepresentations, you would surely like to find them in those records. If we did not, then—as some of your acolytes have suggested—you might assert that our records are themselves untrustworthy because, well, because you said so, I guess. But perhaps because you did not bother even to read our paper, or perhaps because you aren’t very bright, you seem not to understand that we have the actual, living bacteria that exhibit the properties reported in our paper, including both the ancestral strain used to start this long-term experiment and its evolved citrate-using descendants. In other words, it’s not that we claim to have glimpsed “a unicorn in the garden”—we have a whole population of them living in my lab! And lest you accuse me further of fraud, I do not literally mean that we have unicorns in the lab. Rather, I am making a literary allusion.
It may not be over yet. There are mutterings of a lawsuit: Schlafly mentioned the possibility of suing Michigan State for discrimination if they don’t hand over the data. You can scan Conservapedia’s talk page to find that incandescent idea, but in doing so you may discover something else: the whole situation is very depressing. The talk thread associated with this debacle exhibits a stunning lack of comprehension about how science works. Most of it addresses Schlafly’s ongoing mission to get Lenski’s “undisclosed data“: Which data do we want? Where do we look for it? Do we have to read old papers? We’re going to need a freezer! What’s the phone number for the journal? Can we make them make Lenski give us the data? Maybe we should sue… Why is there such a vast canyon of ignorance about how science—funded by more than $30 billion in the U.S. by NSF and NIH alone—proceeds? Better science education would not only resolve Schlafly’s handicap, it would solve the problem altogether; there isn’t a creationist alive who actually understands evolutionary biology.