AN EXPECTANT silence has descended on the small room in the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. Alan Grafen, a theoretical biologist from the University of Oxford, is taking his time to set up his presentation. When he’s ready, he denounces three of his colleagues as “unscholarly” and “transparently wrong”, and wonders what could have led such “talented, honest biologists” to be so “misguided”.
It’s day one of a meeting on the evolution of conflict and cooperation, and exchanges are fierce. At stake is one of the pillars of modern evolutionary biology: the theory of inclusive…
