There are several mined quotes in Michael Behe's book that the QMP

currently cover, and that I have seen elsewhere in creationist

Below, I hereby offer a debunking of one of them.

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Quote as given by Michael Behe in Darwin's Black Box, 1996 hardcover
edition, p.29:

"We conclude - unexpectedly - that there is little evidence for the
neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental
evidence supporting it are weak."

The reference is:

Orr, H.A. and Coyne, J.A. "The Genetics of Adaptation: A Reassessment,"
American Naturalist vol.140, p.726 (1992).

I looked that paper up, and as it turns out - and I'm sure this will

no one's surprise - this quote was taken out of context in a highly
misleading way.

Behe uses this quote in a section along with numerous other quotes,

of which I also intend to pursue, in order to support his point that

Mivart to Margulis,

there have always been well-informed, respected
scientists who have found Darwinism to be inadequate" (p.30).

and Orr are not in any way supporting Behe's view or disagreeing with
evolution in general, as Behe strongly implies they are.

The topic of this
paper is the role of different types of mutation in giving rise to
evolutionary adaptation. The first sentence of the paper is as follows:

"It is a tenet of evolutionary biology that adaptations nearly always

from the substitution of many genes of small effect" (Orr and Coyne, p.
725).

Now here is Behe's quote in context, from the next page (and note that he
placed a period where no period originally was):

"We conclude - unexpectedly - that there is little evidence for the
neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental
evidence supporting it are weak, and there is no doubt that mutations of
large effect are sometimes important in adaptation.
We hasten to add, however, that we are not 'macromutationists' who
believe that adaptations are nearly always based on major genes. The
neo-Darwinian view could well be correct. It is almost certainly true,
however, that some adaptations involve many genes of small effect and

involve major genes. The question we address is, *How often* does

involve a major gene? We hope to encourage evolutionists to reexamine

neglected question and to provide the evidence to settle it" (p. 726).

and more:

"The micromutational view of Darwin, Fisher and others is clear:

arise by allelic substitutions of slight effect at many loci, and no

substitution constitutes a major portion of an adaptation. There are, in
contrast, at least two forms of macromutationism [reference omitted]. The
first is exemplified by the extreme saltationism of Goldschmidt

omitted]: single 'systemic mutations' produce important, complex

in essentially perfect form (Goldschmidt believed that systemic mutations
were chromosomal rearrangements). As Charlesworth [reference omitted]

this 'strong' version of macromutationism is almost certainly wrong.

highly unlikely that a single mutation could create adaptations as

as eyes or legs, much less new taxa differing by many adaptations.
The second form of macromutationism posits that adaptation often
involves one or a few alleles of large effect. Although these alleles

produce perfect adaptations by themselves, they are responsible for a

portion of the adaptation. This 'weak' version, which is more

Goldschmidt's view, is the form of macromutationism we consider in

of this article. Although the term 'macromutationism' has unfortunate
historical connotations, we use it for lack of a better word" (p.726).

In other words, the sole thrust of Orr and Coyne's paper was to argue in
favor of a different model of *mutation* - one where a mutation affects a
"master control" gene and thus influences the activity of many other

which that gene regulates. They set this in opposition to the

that evolution would have to proceed by altering the effect of each

downstream genes individually. (As it turns out, Orr and Coyne were

the money with this one: scientifically literate readers will by now
doubtless be familiar with the homeobox genes whose discovery has

tremendous jumpstart to the field of evolutionary developmental

given us new insight into the origin of complex adaptations.)

This is in no way a disagreement about the fact that evolution has

Instead, like so many creationist-mined quotes, it is a legitimate
scientific debate about the *mechanisms* by which that process takes

Behe has ripped it out of context and used it deceptively to convey to
readers the false impression that Orr and Coyne have doubts about the

fact of evolution's occurrence, when in reality nothing could be further
from the truth.