The Clever Badger One lab accident away from being a super villain

(Mis)information Overload

(Note - this post has been cooking for a while.  I'm not completely satisfied with it, but I'm releasing it to the wild anyway.  It may get edited in the short near term. )

During a recent business trip to New Orleans, I was having dinner with some colleagues when the conversation turned from whether jambalaya was a dry rice dish or more of a soup (it's the former) to evolution. Of the five people at the table, two of us were doing most of the talking, a third was attempting to moderate the discussion, and the other two were probably wishing they'd gone to the next restaurant down the street.
Within the dialog, my colleague raised several issues of the form "evolutionists say [something]" or "evolution means [something else]". The problem was that none of the things he was claiming are true. This was a lesson to me that even well educated people can have serious misunderstandings about evolution and evolutionary theory.
There are many reasons for such misunderstandings - incorrect or incomplete information in the popular media, lack of adequate discussion in science classes¹ , religious teachings - but the net result is that when many people think they're talking about evolution, they really aren't. This essay will discuss some of the more common misconceptions that came to light in the aforementioned conversation, and will provide links to resources where the interested reader can learn more.
Before getting into the details, we first need to define what evolution (and evolutionary theory) is. I like the following definition of evolution by Douglas Futuyma: Evolution is change in the properties of groups of organisms over the course of generations.² It's a clean definition, and unencumbered by elaborations, and really gets to the heart of what evolution is. By this definition (and this is the definition that scientists working in the field use), a generation of children with more blue eyed kids than there were in the parents' generation is evolution.
The Theory³ of Evolution (ToE), consequently, is the theoretical framework that seeks to explain evolution. It encompasses a number of mechanisms, the most well-known of which is Darwin's concept of Natural Selection - the idea that selective pressures in the environment lead to an increase in organisms with traits that are advantageous with respect to those pressures. There are numerous other mechanisms that are described as well, but they are beyond the scope of this essay.

Evolution says that life came from nothing
This is not true. Evolution deals with how life changes over time. It doesn't address the origin of life. In point of fact, evolution presupposes the existence of living organisms.
The study of the origins of life is known as abiogenesis, and there are currently several theories about that origin. Two of the more well-known are exogenesis - the theory that simple organic molecules were brought to Earth from elsewhere in the universe (perhaps on meteorites), and clay theory - the theory that simple self-replicating molecules arose at the shorelines of primordial oceans, catalyzed by the presence of certain mineral-rich clays.
Regardless of how life on Earth originated (and perhaps we'll never know), evolution is still the best explanation of how life has changed and diversified on Earth.

Evolution implies that the universe appeared in the Big Bang
This is also not true, and is an erroneous conflation of biology and cosmology. As with the origin of life, the ToE presupposes the existence of a universe. Whether that universe was brought into being by God, the Big Bang, or any other mechanism, the ToE doesn't change.

Evolution says there is no God
Once again, this is a misconception. The ToE specifically, and science in general, is neutral with respect to the existence of God. The ToE seeks to explain observations of the natural world in terms of natural processes and causes. Many devoutly religions people have no problem at all reconciling their faith with evolution. Indeed Ken Miller of Brown University, a prominent evolutionary biologist is a staunch Catholic, and sees evolution as a process through which God works in the world.
What the ToE does tell against are certain literal readings of the Book of Genesis.⁴  The assertion that evolution is atheistic is, at the root, an assertion that evolution tells against the notion of Biblical literalism.

Scientists keep changing their story
This statement is technically true, but the implication that this is a bad thing is wrong. Scientific theories change through time as new observations are made. Newton's Laws of Motion were perfectly serviceable as descriptors of how things move through space. Einstein's theories of General and Special Relativity represent refinements of Newton's Laws, and ultimately came about because of new observations.
Evolution is the same way. In the latter half of the 19th century, when Darwin published On The Origin of Species, he didn't have any knowledge of genetics. Once genetics became known and understood, it's connection to evolution became apparent. As we gain more knowledge of how populations of organisms interact, we become aware of new evolutionary mechanisms at work. The underlying principles of the ToE aren't changing - the extensions serve to strengthen the theoretical framework, not undermine it. The inability of a theory to grow and explain new observations is a sign of a brittle theory. The assertion that data should be interpreted to support a predetermined conclusion is bad science, and an indication that the conclusion isn't strong enough to stand on its own merits.

Evolution says humans came from chimps, or, you've never seen a cat give birth to a dog
This statement represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the whole concept of evolution. Evolution is a differential process, meaning that from one generation of organisms to the next, the changes are very small. Cats give birth to cats that have minutely different genetic structures than their parents. Stacked up over thousands of generations, those differences become significant. The exact same processes are at work in bacteria, and the results are easier to see - such so-called superbugs as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) emerge as successive generations of S. aureus become more resistant to certain antibiotics. The difference is that we can watch ten thousand generations of bacteria grow and reproduce - we can't watch ten thousand generations of cats.⁵

Good Introductions
The books listed here provide good introductions on the basics of evolution and on the analysis of the fossil record. They're not comprehensive, by any means, but they're accessible and fairly quick reads.

Bones, Rocks, and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened, by Chris Turney. Macmillan, 2006.  This book discusses the various dating methods used by scientists to determine the age of really old things (though, perhaps fortunately, it doesn't discuss Boney Rock Stars, so there is no information on Mick Jagger). It's extremely readable, and provides excellent background.

Evolution vs Creationism: An Introduction, by Eugenie Scott and Niles Eldridge. University of California Press, 2005.
This book gives a high level introduction to evolution and evolutionary theory, as well as some discussion of the evolution/creationism/intelligent design controversy within the U.S. This book should allow the reader to understand the basic terminology and some of the underlying concepts of evolution, as they're actually used by biologists

Evolution and Religious Creation Myths: How Scientists Respond, by Paul F. Lurquin and Linda Stone. Oxford University Press, 2007. This book covers similar ground to the Scott/Eldridge book. However, chapters 5 and 6 deal with abiogenesis and cosmological issues, and so serve as a good supplement to the other material.

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, by Neil Shubin. Pantheon, 2008.  Quite possibly the best book I've read so far this year. Shubin looks at the anatomical and genetic connections between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom in a very engaging way.

I'd recommend reading Turney first, then Scott, then Shubin. 

Conclusions

There are many other very common misconceptions out there - these are just the ones that came up in one conversation. The lesson to be learned here is that evolution is a very complex subject that takes quite a bit of effort to understand well. Odds are, unless you've deliberately set out to learn about it, you're probably carrying around a number of misconceptions, too.  There is also a vast amount of information on the subject, and it can get very complicated very quickly.  That said, it's well worth your time to put forth the effort to understand some of the basics of evolution, particularly if you've been brought up with the idea that evolution is just some wild guess notion that a stodgy British guy came up with 150 years ago. 

NOoC 

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¹As an aside - it is impossible, in my opinion, to get a working understanding of evolutionary theory from a high school general biology curriculum - there just isn't time in the school year. Additionally, the typical freshman Introduction to Biology course that most colleges offer doesn't have the structure to get into evolution in any great depth. (The Futuyma text referenced in this essay runs over 500 pages, and is an introductory text. Another, Evolution, Barton, Nicholas H., et al, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2007, runs about 850.)

² Evolution, Futuyma, D. J., Sinauer Associates, 2005.  (This is an excellent book, but it's college level text.  It would be very difficult to get through without a decent background in basic biology.)

³ The word "theory" is used here in the formal sense - a framework that seeks to explain a body of observations in a consistent and logical manner. A theory is not just a guess or a hunch, despite how the word is often used casually. A "fact", in the formal sense, is an observation.

⁴ While this is a subject for another essay, it's worth mentioning that geology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, genetics, linguistics, history, archaeology, paleontology, and meteorology (among other disciplines) tell against the notion of Biblical literalism as well.  That doesn't make any of those other fields atheistic, either. 

⁵Large timescales are hard to get our heads around. Turney's book is really a must-read.