Paranoid to the bone

“Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress.” Professor Stephen Jay Gould

Why add the bit about predicable progress? It doesn't fit. Being pruned by extinction doesn't rule out progress or that evolution moves inevitably in a pattern, even though it has its random elements; the pattern has a discernible direction, in spite of instances of stagnation and retreat, toward higher and higher more effective living forms.

Science is not supposed to care if the truth goes against your personnel desires.