Sir

I was disappointed to see Maciej Giertych's letter “Creationism, evolution: nothing has been proved” (Nature 444, 265; 2006) published without any disclaimer or comment by the editors. Even though I am aware that Nature asked Giertych to comment on the News story “Polish scientists fight creationism” (Nature 443, 890–891; 2006), I can find no justification for publishing pseudoscientific arguments in this first-rate scientific magazine.

The level of scientific illiteracy in those arguments is self-evident and, as such, does not need any further discussion. What needs some comment is Giertych's claim about the scientific inspiration for his criticism of evolutionary science. Contemporary creationists espousing 'intelligent design' (ID) are careful to avoid mentioning religion — as was Giertych in his recent public statements. Yet Polish readers can refer to his four articles in Encyklopedia “Białych Plam” (The Encyclopedia of 'missing pages' volumes 4 and 6, PWE, 2000, 2001). These articles, “Darwin, Charles Robert”, “Darwinism”, “Evolution”, and “Evolutionism”, provide a more extensive version of the arguments presented in his Correspondence, and explicitly refer to religion and ID views.

Reasonable criticism is as fundamental to science as natural selection is to adaptive evolution. But what Giertych calls “new scientific evidence against the theory of evolution” could not be published in any serious peer-reviewed journal. In fact, publishing scientific papers is not a significant goal for creationists in Poland or anywhere else — on the contrary, the goal is to replace evolution with some pseudoscience in school curricula, as reported in the News story “Polish scientists fight creationism” (Nature 443, 890–891; 2006). The creationists' movement is dangerous to the general public on political, not scientific, grounds.