Evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson says Richard Dawkins is just a ‘journalist’

Edward O. Wilson, November 2014: "He's a journalist."

Legendary Harvard professor E.O. Wilson delivers a serious zinger aimed straight at Oxford University’s Richard Dawkins during a recent interview with BBC Two’s Newsnight.

by John Tyburski

Copyright © 2015, John Tyburski. All rights reserved.

Published at TheDawkinsMonitor.com on 26 January 2015.

The non-scientific public likely hears enough on the “battle” between science and religion to overshadow the disputes that occur between scientists regarding scientific controversies. These disagreements tend to be a bit too esoteric for nonscientists to care. While they can be vicious and protracted, these rows largely remain hidden from public view.

Every now and then, however, a scientific skirmish boils over into the mainstream, which is exactly what happened about three months ago between retired Harvard University professor Edward O. Wilson and retired Oxford University professor Richard Dawkins. The battle was, in fact, part of an ongoing war between the two over evolutionary theory, an area of biology with which both Wilson and Dawkins are closely associated.

Dawkins is probably best known by most as an outspoken critic of religion in general and of Christianity in particular. Early in his academic career, Dawkins conducted some original research in evolutionary biology and wrote influentially in the subject. Wilson, also a somewhat outspoken critic of spiritual faith, has published over 440 peer-reviewed manuscripts, over two dozen scholarly books, and is regarded as the world’s leading expert in social insect biology. Wilson is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and Dawkins is a member of the British Royal Society. Both are heavyweights in their respective academic capacities.

During a recent interview with Evan Davis on BBC Two’s Newsnight to promote his most recent book titled The Meaning of Human Existence, Wilson was asked about his dispute with Dawkins on evolutionary theory.

“There is no dispute between me and Richard Dawkins and there never has been, because he’s a journalist,” explained Wilson. “[J]ournalists are people who report what the scientists have found, and the arguments I’ve had have actually been with scientists doing research.”

Davis followed up with a question of whether Wilson has any regard today for Dawkins’s concept of “the selfish gene.”

“I’ve abandoned it, and I think most serious scientists working on it have abandoned it,” said Wilson. “Some defenders may be out there, but they’ve been relatively almost totally silent since our major paper’s come out.”

The major paper that Wilson referred to was on the evolution of eusociality, published in Nature on 26 August 2010, which refuted Dawkins’s proposals put forth in his book The Selfish Gene, published in 1976.

Shortly after the interview broadcast, Dawkins took to Twitter to defend himself, tweeting: “Anybody who thinks I’m a journalist who reports what other scientists think is invited to read The Extended Phenotype.”

Dawkins was referring to his 1982 book, The Extended Phenotype, intended as a follow up to The Selfish Gene. Whether or not Dawkins was insulted by being called a journalist was settled when he later tweeted a link to his severely critical review of Wilson’s 2012 book The Social Conquests of Earth, published in Prospect magazine in June of that same year.

In that review, Dawkins wrote that while Wilson may have presented “interesting and informative chapters on human evolution, and on the ways of social insects,” his readers are “obliged to wade through many pages of erroneous and downright perverse misunderstandings of evolutionary theory.”

Further in, Dawkins insinuated that the only reason Nature published Wilson’s 2010 eusociality paper was because of Wilson's reputation. Dawkins suggested that had the paper been submitted anonymously, it would have not survived the ordinary peer-review process. As any scientist will attest, this was an extraordinarily harsh criticism.

Wilson’s original reply to Dawkins’s review was tempered; it only took a slightly unfriendly turn at the very end with a reply to Dawkins’s rather long list of big-name researchers who were critical of Wilson’s 2010 Nature paper: “[M]aking such lists is futile. It should be born in mind that if science depended on rhetoric and polls, we would still be burning objects with phlogiston and navigating with geocentric maps.”

At the time of the review controversy, Warwick University professor Georgy Koentges remarked in an interview for The Guardian that “Dawkins has a lot of unnecessary rhetoric in his review.”

Neither man has probably yet healed from the wound inflicted by the other, and the public has probably not heard the last from these two mighty rivals.

Readers can learn more about and stay current with Richard Dawkins by visiting the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science website. Those interested in E.O. Wilson and his most recent work are encouraged to visit the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation website.