Evolution Used the Same Molecular Toolkit? Common Sense from Jonathan Marks

Every time I see a thoughtless headline like this one at Science Daily, “Evolution Used Similar Molecular Toolkits to Shape Flies, Worms, and Humans,” where the organisms being compared are as different (morphologically) as flies, worms, and humans, I think of Jonathan Marks’s blunt comment.

Marks is an evolutionary biologist/anthropologist at the University of North Carolina, and an uncommonly plain speaker and writer (bless him).In a 1993 talk to the American Association for the Advancement...