# Somebody screws up teaching evolution **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 27, 2018, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994 "2018-09-27T04:02:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2018, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/41 "2018-09-30T12:31:09Z")
But humans do have characteristics in common with lobe-finned fish, such as two pairs of appendages containing one bone, then two bones, then multiple bones. We have characteristics in commn with other eutelostomes including lungs (which have been converted into swim bladders in many but not all water-based eutelostomes.) If you tried, you could spend all day coming up with derived characters shared with fish but not with arthropods, comb jellies, or placozoa. No, animals are _not_ in the clade of plants–the last common ancestor of animals and plants was not a plant. Take a look at the cladogram near the bottom of [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obazoa) page–plants are a couple of levels down the clade named Archaeplastida, animals are obvious. Plants and animals are both eucaryotes in exactly the same way that humans are mammals, that mammals are tetrapods, and that tetrapods are lobe-finned fish. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2018, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/42 "2018-09-30T13:50:05Z")
This discussion doesn’t pass The Tomato Test. What’s The Tomato Test? Simple: Is the discussion more complicated than the question of whether a tomato is a fruit? The tomato is a fruit botanically, in that it’s a seed-bearing structure in a flowering plant formed from the ovary after flowering. The tomato is a vegetable culinarily, in that it’s savory. So the tomato is a fruit in any biology textbook, but a salsa isn’t a fruit salad and ketchup isn’t a jelly. Humans are fish cladistically. We’re also tetrapods, mammals, and monkeys for the purposes of a modern biology textbook, but we’re none of those things for tax purposes. Or the purpose of marriage laws, or laws about who needs to go to school, or who needs to register for the draft. The only people who are wrong are the people who demand that words only have one meaning regardless of context. You don’t have to make a bustle in a hedgerow to know sometimes words have two meanings, or twelve, or any other number. And I _will_ make a stand on this because linguistics is just as much of a science as biology. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2018, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/43 "2018-09-30T14:47:38Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > This discussion doesn’t pass The Tomato Test… The claim that it’s _just_ semantics assumes that there’s nothing about evolutionary relationships that people don’t understand. That’s not a safe assumption, so it’s certainly worth clarifying the issues. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2018, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/44 "2018-09-30T16:27:11Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > This discussion doesn’t pass The Tomato Test. > > What’s The Tomato Test? Simple: Is the discussion more complicated than the question of whether a tomato is a fruit? Not all answers are simple. It is okay to try to make an answer shorter and easier to understand for a lay audiance or children, but you shouldn’t make the answer so simple that it is wrong. Which is what occured with the answer to the question that kicked off this thread. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2018, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/45 "2018-09-30T19:18:50Z")
The whole idea that evolution never said we evolved from monkeys is itself a common meme used to argue against a reductionist Creationist argument: “If we evolved from monkeys, why do monkeys still exist?” The answer was “We didn’t evolve from monkeys. Both we and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor.” The person asking that question clearly is using “monkey” to mean modern monkeys, and so this response makes sense. But, as a meme by itself, it no longer does. It may have been created with good intentions, but it is now spreading inaccurate facts. The problem is, fixing the question breaks it. You can’t ask “Did humans evolve from modern monkeys?” because it gives away the answer. If you pick a specific monkey, then it doesn’t get the point across. The only good way to ask the question is to have the answer being “yes,” and have it teach that this little factoid is false. Have it explain “It is true that humans did not evolve from any monkeys existing today. We merely share a common ancestor with them. However, that common ancestor is scientifically classified as a monkey, and would likely be called a monkey if seen today.” ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2018, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/46 "2018-09-30T19:19:57Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > This discussion doesn’t pass The Tomato Test. > > What’s The Tomato Test? Simple: Is the discussion more complicated than the question of whether a tomato is a fruit? > > The tomato is a fruit botanically, in that it’s a seed-bearing structure in a flowering plant formed from the ovary after flowering. > > The tomato is a vegetable culinarily, in that it’s savory. > > So the tomato is a fruit in any biology textbook, but a salsa isn’t a fruit salad and ketchup isn’t a jelly. > > Humans are fish cladistically. We’re also tetrapods, mammals, and monkeys for the purposes of a modern biology textbook, but we’re none of those things for tax purposes. Or the purpose of marriage laws, or laws about who needs to go to school, or who needs to register for the draft. > > The only people who are wrong are the people who demand that words only have one meaning regardless of context. You don’t have to make a bustle in a hedgerow to know sometimes words have two meanings, or twelve, or any other number. > > And I _will_ make a stand on this because linguistics is just as much of a science as biology. > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Not all answers are simple. It is okay to try to make an answer shorter and easier to understand for a lay audiance or children, but you shouldn’t make the answer so simple that it is wrong. Which is what occured with the answer to the question that kicked off this thread. Darren is exactly right. It’s not about whether the answer is simple or complicated. It’s about whether it’s correct, and it’s not. Especially when there actually is a fairly simple answer that is also correct. The discussion is only complicated because some people are denying the answer and some people, it seems, don’t even understand the question. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/47 "2018-10-01T13:26:29Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > The [Identical Ancestor Point for Europeans is only about 1,000 year ago.](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/white-house-limits-scope-fbi-s-investigation-allegations-against-brett-n915061) So, for Europeans, you only have to go back about 1,000 years before you find the same set of common ancestors of every European alive today. Your link appears to claim that Europeans are all descended from Brett Kavenaugh. Although I admit I didn’t read it all the way through.😁 ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/48 "2018-10-01T13:34:51Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > Your link appears to claim that Europeans are all descended from Brett Kavenaugh. Although I admit I didn’t read it all the way through.😁 This is where John is being thankful that the wrong link he gave was that tame… ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/49 "2018-10-01T14:35:27Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Darren is exactly right. It’s not about whether the answer is simple or complicated. It’s about whether it’s correct, and it’s not. Especially when there actually is a fairly simple answer that is also correct. The discussion is only complicated because some people are denying the answer and some people, it seems, don’t even understand the question. It isn’t incorrect it is merely incomplete, ambiguous and the terms used not fully defined. But this is a simplistic Q&A on a website and it gets a valid point across in a way that only the truly pedantic could object to. It isn’t a University degree course. It is talking about a scheme to engage kids and improve the teaching of evolution in classrooms. Christ it even involves cuddly sharks and I just know someone out there will be outraged at the attempt to poison our kids minds with the belief that some aquatic creatures are a 90% polyester/nylon mix. The whole tone of the quiz is evolution 101 and it would be silly to stray too far into cladistics and taxonomy when the point being made is clear. i.e. No, we did not evolve from the monkeys that we call monkeys today but from a creature that was an ancestor to us both. That’s a perfectly good place to start, accurate and succinct if not technically perfect. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/50 "2018-10-01T15:36:11Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Not all answers are simple. You aren’t responding to the point I made and, perhaps, deliberately misunderstanding it. My point is that words have meanings derived from context, which will be met with varying levels of comprehension and enthusiasm depending on the audience. _That_ is the full, complete answer of what a word means, not the lies-to-children one which emphasizes dictionaries and other reference works as being normative. It’s the full, complete answer of what _every_ word means. So when you’re arguing over whether humans are fish, you have to define “fish”, and you run into the fact I outlined above. That fact is what underlies The Tomato Test. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/51 "2018-10-01T16:23:18Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > Your link appears to claim that Europeans are all descended from Brett Kavenaugh. Although I admit I didn’t read it all the way through.������ > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > This is where John is being thankful that the wrong link he gave was that tame… Hey, the Stomy Daniels link wasn’t all that racy! 🙂 [Here is the correct link.](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001555&type=printable) ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/52 "2018-10-01T16:41:25Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > No, we did not evolve from the monkeys that we call monkeys today but from a creature that was an ancestor to us both. …but that creature so resembled a modern monkey that, if you saw one today, you would have no difficulty calling it a monkey and might not even realize it’s not a modern monkey. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/53 "2018-10-01T17:15:40Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > Your link appears to claim that Europeans are all descended from Brett Kavenaugh. I guess this means four accusations are just the tip of the iceberg. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/54 "2018-10-01T17:22:08Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > …but that creature so resembled a modern monkey that, if you saw one today, you would have no difficulty calling it a monkey and might not even realize it’s not a modern monkey. Which is exactly the long-winded expansion that a simplistic quiz can’t really get into and in your own words it is not a species of modern monkey. All that you say is true (or might be true, we don’t have the full picture and probably never will) but I think it is clear that the question is there to make a simple point and uses the word “monkey” to refer to the extant creatures we see today, which is the way we use the word in 99.9% of situation. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/55 "2018-10-01T18:19:07Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Which is exactly the long-winded expansion that a simplistic quiz can’t really get into and in your own words it is not a species of modern monkey. > > All that you say is true (or might be true, we don’t have the full picture and probably never will) but I think it is clear that the question is there to make a simple point and uses the word “monkey” to refer to the extant creatures we see today, which is the way we use the word in 99.9% of situation. If you can’t give a correct answer without a long (I’ve deleted the unnecessarily hostile and anti-intellectual “winded”) explanation then they should have picked a different question. I googled _evolution quiz_ and took the first several on the list. Some of them seem to be aimed at a primary/middle school audience and some aimed at a high school/early college audience, but none of them had ambiguous questions or questionable answers. The problem isn’t the quiz format, the problem isn’t the lay or child target audience, the problem is that the BBC provided a half-assed slap-dash quiz that _should_ be beneath their reputation. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/56 "2018-10-01T19:30:07Z")
On a somewhat related note, I’m amused to see [this Creationist](http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/01/creationist-school-board-candidate-apologizes-for-controversial-sign/) accidentally get something right–[prehensile tails](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehensile_tail) are a trait in New World Monkeys, not Old World ones, so he really didn’t have an ancestor that swung by its tail. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/57 "2018-10-01T21:46:07Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > On a somewhat related note, I’m amused to see [this Creationist](http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/01/creationist-school-board-candidate-apologizes-for-controversial-sign/) accidentally get something right–[prehensile tails](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehensile_tail) are a trait in New World Monkeys, not Old World ones, so he really didn’t have an ancestor that swung by its tail. Accusing him of racism for that sign (as some apparently did) is just about as dumb as his creationism. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/58 "2018-10-01T23:31:10Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Accusing him of racism for that sign (as some apparently did) is just about as dumb as his creationism. In any and all contexts, any mention of hanging or [display of raw cotton](https://m.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/hobby-lobby-cotton-stems-facebook-controversy-race-12208543.php) is racist. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/59 "2018-10-02T07:50:36Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > If you can’t give a correct answer without a long (I’ve deleted the unnecessarily hostile and anti-intellectual “winded”) explanation then they should have picked a different question. Firstly, “long-winded” is neither hostile nor anti-intellectual. It is the very mildest of literary criticism and one I’ve applied to my own writings and speaking in the past. Keeping things at the right level for your audience is a critical part of communicating. As for picking a different question? Well it is an important question and some variation of it always pops up from those ignorant of how evolution works. To not answer it would be, almost literally, to ignore the 800lb gorilla in the room. “if we evolved from monkeys how come there are still monkeys?” is how it is often framed. It is clear that the Q&A is designed to deal with that in a simplistic manner and uses the word “monkeys” accordingly. > [@](#): > > The problem isn’t the quiz format, the problem isn’t the lay or child target audience, the problem is that the BBC provided a half-assed slap-dash quiz that _should_ be beneath their reputation. I think you are being overly nit-picky. If you accept that the quiz setters were using the word “monkey” to mean modern monkeys (which they clearly are) then the answer is perfectly fine. You and I both know that a pat answer to pretty much any question on evolution will be at best incomplete and requires a full chapter or book(s) to explain in full but that was not what the quiz set out to do. Look, I’m a stickler for exactness of language. I’m really careful with what I say and I can be hyper critical of those that aren’t but even I can’t find too much fault with this because it uses an informal and commonly understood usage of “monkey” to get an important factual point across in an informal quiz. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/60 "2018-10-02T07:59:35Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > In any and all contexts, any mention of hanging or [display of raw cotton](https://m.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/hobby-lobby-cotton-stems-facebook-controversy-race-12208543.php) is racist. I missed this before my previous reply (and racism plays no part in this thread but use of language does) but I really hope your are being sarcastic here. You can’t possibly mean this. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994.md?page=4)