It’s time for the annual AAAS meeting, so there is plenty of press on science topics. Your local creationist will not approve:

Human Evolution: Gain Came with Pain

Humans are the most successful primates on the planet, but our bodies wouldn’t win many awards for good design. That was the consensus of a panel of anthropologists who described in often-painful (and sometimes personal) detail just how poor a job evolution has done sculpting the human form here Friday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW). Using props and examples from the fossil record, the scientists showed how the very adaptations that have made humans so successful—such as upright walking and our big, complex brains—have been the result of constant remodeling of an ancient ape body plan that was originally used for life in the trees. “This anatomy isn’t what you’d design from scratch,” says anthropologist Jeremy DeSilva of Boston University. “Evolution works with duct tape and paper clips.”

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The point of citing all these problems? Evolution doesn’t “design” anything, says anthropologist Matt Cartmill of Boston University, a discussant on the panel. It works slowly on the genes and traits it has at hand, to jerry-rig animals’ and humans body plans to changing habitats and demands. “Evolution doesn’t act to yield perfection,” he says. “It acts to yield function.”

See: aaas.confex.com