Finally someone has stated the obvious: Evolution does not play a crucial role in life science research. Of course evolution, like the flat earth theory, does make some helpful predictions. But one need not have one eye on the evolution text in order to rightly do life science research, as Steven Shapin explains:
I have taught many talented biology students, both in the US and the UK, who could not give a coherent account of evolution by natural selection – teleology remains strikingly popular – and while it may or may not be the case that
evolution provides the conceptual ‘foundation’ of life science, it is certainly not the case that biologists need to have command of any such theory to do competent work, for example, on the sex life of marine worms, on algal photosynthesis, or on the nucleotide sequence of breast cancer genes. Lots of practitioners of lots of modern expert practices turn out not to be very good at articulating their practices’ supposed foundations.
Don't count the evolutionary myth of self-importance to go away anytime soon though.
