I don’t think this is a good example. My post is intended to apply to the contemporary academia, whereas the basics of evolutionary theory were proposed way back in the 19th century, and the decisive controversies over them played out back then, when the situation was very different from nowadays in many relevant ways. (Of course, creationism is still alive and well among the masses, but for generations already it has been a very low-status belief with virtually zero support among the intellectual elites.)
On the other hand, when it comes to questions in evolutionary theory that still have strong implications about issues that are ideologically charged even among the intellectual elites, there is indeed awful confusion and one can find plenty of examples where prestigious academics are clearly throwing their weight behind their favored ideological causes. The controversies over sociobiology are the most obvious example.
In contrast, when it comes to modern applications of evolutionary theory to non-ideologically-sensitive problems, the situation is generally OK—except in those cases where the authors don’t have a clear and sound approach to the problem, so they end up producing just-so stories masquerading as scientific theories. This however is pretty much the situation that should trigger my first heuristic.
I don’t think this is a good example. My post is intended to apply to the contemporary academia, whereas the basics of evolutionary theory were proposed way back in the 19th century, and the decisive controversies over them played out back then, when the situation was very different from nowadays in many relevant ways. (Of course, creationism is still alive and well among the masses, but for generations already it has been a very low-status belief with virtually zero support among the intellectual elites.)
On the other hand, when it comes to questions in evolutionary theory that still have strong implications about issues that are ideologically charged even among the intellectual elites, there is indeed awful confusion and one can find plenty of examples where prestigious academics are clearly throwing their weight behind their favored ideological causes. The controversies over sociobiology are the most obvious example.
In contrast, when it comes to modern applications of evolutionary theory to non-ideologically-sensitive problems, the situation is generally OK—except in those cases where the authors don’t have a clear and sound approach to the problem, so they end up producing just-so stories masquerading as scientific theories. This however is pretty much the situation that should trigger my first heuristic.