O.P.Bs—Other People’s Books

Years ago when I was young and dumb and convinced I had miles and miles (so many I would never run out) to go before I slept, I spent three weeks in an NYC apt. babysitting puppeteer's cat. The on-tour puppeteer Theodora Skipitares was doing amusing research on scientific frauds--puppets as serious biz. A disconcertingly real-looking puppet of Marie Cure stared at me like an interloper or burglar whenever I came or went.

In her library I found an engrossing book that described out-and-out hoaxes Piltdown Man, the Cardiff Giant, and Paul Kammerer’s frog sex hoax over which he was sufficiently shamed that he committed suicide shortly after it was revealed.

The one I remember best was Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk, who, it is now known, fabricated part of his research on sweet pea genetics by extending it mathematically. He simply could not have brought that many generations of sweet peas to maturity and die at 62, as he did. He would have to be far older, but he is recognized as the Father of Genetics because his math was correct. Fatuous then, the book, whose title I have forgotten, kicked my skepticism up a few flights.

The Biologist Bro-in-law's I found a book called Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne. The cover graphic of changes from a flightless, long-legged lizardy thing to a bird tells the story. But fossil record that extends meters into the sediment of the sea bed is incredibly vast and yields astonishingly exact explanations to tight to dismiss.

It is difficult to believe God created heaven and earth, and no way 10,000 years and 7 days ago. If a supreme being did set it in motion, it was something along the lines of “Let there be light; let there be carbon-oxygen ooze and let's see what it can do!”

A Critical Eye keeps looking till it dies.