page_title: Jerry Coyne
section_title: Pseudoscience critic
hierarchical_section_title: Jerry Coyne / Pseudoscience critic
caption_attribution_description: Jerry Coyne speaking at The Amazing Meeting.
context_page_description: Jerry Allen Coyne is an American biologist known for his work on speciation and his commentary on intelligent design. A prolific scientist and author, he has published numerous papers elucidating the theory of evolution. He is currently a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago in the Department of Ecology and Evolution. His concentration is speciation and ecological and evolutionary genetics, particularly as they involve the fruit fly, Drosophila.
  He is the author of the text Speciation and the bestselling non-fiction book Why Evolution Is True. Coyne maintains a website and writes for his blog, also called Why Evolution Is True. He is a hard determinist.
  Coyne gained attention outside of the scientific community when he publicly criticized religion and is often cited with atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. He is the author of the book Faith vs Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible. Coyne officially retired in 2015.
context_section_description: Coyne comments and responds to critics of science and evolution. In a rebuttal, he clearly identifies his reasons for skeptical reasoning.
  all scientific progress requires a climate of strong skepticism.
  — J.A. Coyne, The New Republic
  He offers criticism of creationists who appear closed minded by adhering to a literal Biblical view. He questions the creationist concept of animals diverging only within kinds, which is in itself an admission of transitional intermediates between very different groups (i.e., whales and their terrestrial relatives) found throughout the fossil record.
  we have many examples of transitional fossils between what anyone would consider different kinds: fish and amphibians (like Tiktaalik, which Nye mentioned), between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, between reptiles and birds, between land animals and whales, and of course, between early and modern humans, with early fossils showing intermediacy between the features of apelike ancestors and modern humans.
  — J.A. Coyne, The New Republic
  Coyne believes that both sides of such debates between evolutionists and young earth creationists could benefit from a better understanding of the fossil record and for modern tools such as Isochron dating. He considers that the inability of creationists to address these subjects fully suggests that "religion can poison one's mind so deeply that it becomes immunized to the real truth about the cosmos."
  He is also a critic of the Neurodiversity movement, claiming that in its extreme, neurodiversity wishes to deny medical treatment for any person with a mental condition, particularly autism, even if the person wants a medical treatment.
caption: Jerry Coyne (at podium), at "The Amaz!ng Meeting 2013"
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