How to Succeed in Academia without Upsetting the Applecart

Corroborating Cuvier, there is evidence of mass extinctions having taken place. Two well-known examples are the Permian extinction (dated about 250 million years ago), which exterminated about half of the marine invertebrate families and more than 90 percent of all species), and the K-T extinction at the end of the Cretaceous (65 million years ago) that wiped out the dinosaurs and a great deal else. Evolutionary biologists still have a hard time dealing with such events.

Much of the work in paleontology, like practically all other science, is done by eager young academicians enthusiastic to prove the principles on which they've based their fledgling careers. They seek after positive results; negative results, those that fail to support the theory, are disregarded as failures. The same phenomenon goes on in medicine--a positive study, one that shows improvement in treatment outcomes, is far more likely to get published in a premier journal than is a negative study. Young academicians need to succeed, but they have to do it within the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Furthermore, their mentors--and the people they need to grant them their advanced degrees--are thoroughly embedded in the Darwinian framework. It's hard to get one's doctorate by cheesing off the people who are in charge of awarding it.

But if the evidence leads strongly against the theory, why is it so hard to change the paradigm? It turns out that Darwinism is a just-so story.