Helping "John Doe" understand evolution

When do you think that the following passage was first published?

John Doe guesses that evolution is true, but he rather wishes it were not. ... John Doe suspects from head-lines in his newspaper that evolution is a debatable theory, that it is being overthrown every six months, and that it may be discarded before long.

Those of you who saw the list of the new items I picked up yesterday probably guessed correctly; that the quote came from the 1925 popular book Evolution for John Doe by Henshaw Ward. Although written in 1925 it still (unfortunately) relevant, particularly when newspapers that feature good science coverage seek comments from religious zealots on evolution in the name of objectivity.

Many of the misunderstandings about evolution from the 1920's (and even the 19th century!) are still with us, and some of the founding creationist tracts are strikingly similar to the fundamentalist pamphlets we see now. We certainly know much more about evolution now than we did 75 and 150 years ago, yet we're still combating the same creationist arguments (even though they are occasionally draped in new clothes). The workings of mass media can be a hindrance rather than a help in such circumstances, and as my colleague John Wilkins recently concluded;

I don't have a solution to this. Media ownership has become corporate, and independent means of communication, including the Web 2.0, are basically drinking from the PR hose anyway. I suspect there is no single set of solutions to it, but just to do what got science across in the beginning anyway: education, and repetition of the facts from credible sources. It is my view that enough people actually want to know more than the gee-whiz gimcrackery of popular science magazines, and that if you make the information available in a proper manner, some will pick it up. All we can hope is that there is a threshold, a tipping point, within our reach that will enable us to once again try to have an informed and critical society.

There isn't going to be any point where "our work is done." Effectively and accurately communicating science to the public is always going to be a struggle and there is not any one "magic" solution. The development of professionals who both understand science and are good writers, like some cultivated through science blogging, could do much to improve the way mass media reports science, but whether or not such skilled writers can become established is another question altogether.

For my own part, I see this blog as only the beginning of what I hope to be a longer career communicating science. I've got a few print publications in the works, and (much like Henshaw Ward) I feel that the book I'm writing (see the "Book Progress" posts here) is going to fill a wide-open gap in the present public discourse about evolution. Whether I will be successful or not, I cannot say, but the only way in which we will truly "lose" to antievolutionists and their ilk is if we give up altogether.