THREAD: Today marks 160 years since Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of the Species" was released, & theory of evolution first unveiled. Evolution is of paramount importance in everything from biology to cancer - but it's often deliberately misrepresented. Here's why.. (1/n) 
..In the book, Darwin beautifully laid out his hypothesis, supported by ample data, pointing to a humbling and deep truth about the interconnected of all life on Earth. As I write in #TheIrrationalApe, Darwin shed light on how we are a part of nature, not apart from it (2/n)
..initially at least, this wasn't that controversial. In fact, Darwin's work was a surprise hit. But inevitably the idea we are not alien from nature ultimately began to rankle some sensibilities.. and as Darwin got more popular, he incurred the wrath of a powerful enemy (3/n)
Richard Owen was a giant of British Science at the time; he had coined the term "dinosaur", and was instrumental in driving the creation of the British Museum. But he was also a vindictive, self-centred, and thoroughly awful piece of work. Just how bad? Let's see (4/n)..
Owen's severe jealously saw him rob people of credit for their discoveries. Owen used his lofty status, for example, to suppress work of palaeontologist Gideon Mantell & had audacity to pass these findings off as his own! It gets worse.. (5/n)
..when the perpetually unfortunate Mantell was disabled in an accident, Owen stole more credit. When Mantell died, Owen wrote a poisonous anonymous obituary of him, and have a section of his spine removed & displayed in the museum without any apparent consent to do so! (6/n)
Owen is perhaps responsible for the most enduring falsehoods about evolution; that we 'came' from modern monkeys. This was calculated to maximise outrage by Owen, & was a deliberate & inflammatory claim, crafted to ensure a visceral reaction. As I write... (7/n)
This was no accident- Owen tutored the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, before the now infamous 1860 debate at the Oxford Museum of Natural History, where Wilberforce asked whether Thomas Huxley, his opponent, was descended from Apes on his mother or Father's side (8/n)
This was of course a complete straw-man of the careful argument that Darwin, Wallace, and others had laid out. But to this day it remains extraordinarily powerful, & frequently voiced in the creationist movement. To quote @RichardDawkins... (9/n)
@RichardDawkins Incidentally, if you're curious why America in particular is surprisingly anti-evolution, you can probably thank a guy called William Jennings Bryan for making biblical-literalism a flash-point of a divide in his church, which we still feed consequences of today! 😟(10/n)
@RichardDawkins ..But all sound and fury aside, evolution is an extraordinary theory that has withstood copious experimental hurdles, and is the bedrock upon which modern biology is founded. Even in my own area of cancer research, it's extraordinarily important. For example... (11/n)
@RichardDawkins ..cancer cells undergo natural selection, ultimately diverging. This is one of the reasons patients frequently become unresponsive to treatment, & why we need to adapt therapy to account for this. @dbasanta is great on this, here's a bit from work we're doing now (12/n)
@RichardDawkins @dbasanta The reality is that evolution is "just a theory" in same way gravity, germ-theory, and quantum mechanics are all "just theories" - well-corroborated models of reality buttressed by swathes of confirmatory evidence, best explaining all observed data. It's not just an idea (13/n)
@RichardDawkins @dbasanta Anyway, enough ranting! Darwin's book remains extraordinarily readable, even today. So let's celebrate 160 years of evolution. Huge thanks to @RichardDawkins for his edits on that chapter of #TheIrrationalApe, which you can check out here if you like! amazon.co.uk/Irrational-Ape…
