Table 1 Common misconceptions and examples of students’ answers
Category | Description of misconception | Examples from students’ answers |
|---|---|---|
Teleological/Intentionality | Student believes change happens as a result of need or desire | “Humans are evolving to be protected against new diseases. This evolution is due more to choice than to natural selection.” |
“When the human population needs to evolve to change to its surroundings, it will.” | ||
“I doubt that the earth will allow humans to become different species.” | ||
Principle of inertia | Student believes selection has always occurred and so will continue to occur | “Evolution is a process that will never stop, even in the human species.” |
“I believe humans are still evolving because there is no reason why this process would have gone on for so long without stopping and suddenly come to a halt.” | ||
“If we accept the theory of evolution as an explanation for historical data, we must assume that we will continue to evolve.” | ||
Use and disuse | Student believes traits that are used are retained and those that are not used are lost | “I think that the human head will increase in size because as a race, humans are acquiring more and more knowledge.” |
“Some people are born without wisdom teeth because they are for chewing much tougher things that have long since been lost in the human diet.” | ||
“I think that the pinky-toe on our feet will get smaller and smaller until it goes away because it doesn’t seem to have a purpose.” | ||
“More and more people are being born without an appendix. Seeing as this is not useful to us, this makes sense, and is evidence of evolution.” | ||
Lack of selection/natural selection as all or nothing | Student believes natural selection no longer occurs in first world countries OR that selection only happens when organisms die | “Medicine has halted natural selection by enabling the defined ‘weaker’ of the species to live longer.” |
“There is no differential fitness in the modern world for humans.” | ||
“There isn’t any sort of predator around that attacks and causes the weak to die.” | ||
“There is nothing favoring the survival of only specific people.” | ||
“Everyone can survive in our environment.” | ||
Uniform species | Student believes all organisms in a species are essentially alike | “There is a significant amount of recorded human history, and they don’t seem that different from us.” |
“I am no different from my mom and she isn’t any different from her mom.” | ||
Natural selection as speciation | Believes evolution equals speciation | “No, because evolving equals change from one species to another.” |
“I don’t believe we will become a new species.” |