Few books set off a firestorm when they’re first published, but Icons of Evolution was about as flammable as an American flag at an anti-war protest in Berkeley . Of course, in earlier days when Wells was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War and even went to jail to avoid the draft, setting Old Glory ablaze wasn’t a hugely radical endeavor. A radical Wells is, however, as he battles a scientific establishment that, he feels, is bent on censorship and the suppression of the truth.

Denounced by critics in peer-reviewed science journals ranging from Nature to The Quarterly Review of Biology, Wells seems to have quite a bit of fun writing up rebuttals. Serious critiques do not go unanswered and many are available to read on the website of the Discovery Institute, at which he’s a senior fellow. He has been attacked as a liar and a cultish religious crusader working for the Reverend Moon (yes, he really is a Moonie). Icons, his critics claim, uses the perennial strategy of quote-mining, combing through the literature, and picking out-of-context gems to cite. Wells has even been the subject of a libelous assault from the National Center for Science Education, a plain-sounding and faux-prestigious name for an ideologically-driven institution, which asserted Wells didn’t get any research published at Berkeley ; the professor Wells studied under has since contradicted this claim, but the record has not been righted. Wells, it should be noted, holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from Cal .

Wells examines an impressive list of reputable biology textbooks used in universities and high schools, including the widely-used Biology by Campbell, Reece, and Mitchell. Relying on an incredible amount of peer-reviewed articles published in the scientific field, Wells critiques the textbook claims about the origin of life, the fossil record, embryology, and a variety of other classic arguments used by neo-Darwinists. The Miller-Urey experiment, for example, is outdated, and later origins research hasn’t progressed very far; the Cambrian explosion is barely covered in textbooks, which means students aren’t taught that most animal phyla appear in the fossil record without precursors; and textbooks claim that the earlier in development, the more similar are embryos of different kinds of animals, a false statement that has often been buttressed by faked drawings from the 19th century.

Fervent supporters of neo-Darwinism have unfairly attacked his book for being driven by the intelligent design “movement.” Devout opponents of Wells are almost religious in their tenacity, claiming that the Discovery Institute and the many other scientists and philosophers affiliated with intelligent design are trying to “bring God back into public schools.” In fact, Wells does not address intelligent design anywhere in his book, and all efforts led by the Discovery Institute in amending curricula are only designed (pardon the pun) to critique neo-Darwinism, not to advance creationism or intelligent design (which are two separate things, mind you).

The timeliness of this book could not be more acute. School boards through- out the nation are grappling with this complicated issue. Too often those whose careers are tied to evolution circle the wagons and shut down scientific dissent, ruining the careers of good scientists who are critical of the reigning orthodoxy. I challenge all readers to use Wells’ bibliography and check for them- selves to see if his research is shoddy. By reading this book, Stanford students will equip themselves with a firmer understanding of the scientific controversy that surrounds this theory science itself survived without for millennia.

Disclaimer: Tristan Abbey is the director of the Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center (www.idurc.org).