This is a bad week for established views. First it was the settled view on dinosaur extinction that got a shake-up, and now the old story that Darwin waited to publish Origin of the Species because of concerns over religious reactions is getting some scrutiny. From Nature (registration required):

Did Darwin delay publishing his theory of evolution by natural selection because he feared an outcry from the establishment? This has been a popular belief, and has been stoked by the fact that although Darwin began formulating the theory in 1837, he did not publish On the Origin of Species until 1859.

Now John van Wyhe, a science historian at the University of Cambridge, UK, says that after a painstaking trawl through the letters, notes and books written by, to or about Darwin, he can rule out the idea once and for all. … To carry out his study, Van Wyhe searched for the word "delay" in primary and secondary sources covering the period in which Darwin was working on Origin of Species. He says Darwin and those who knew him never unambiguously referred to a delay in publishing, or gave any explanation for the 20-year 'gap'. … The historian further argues that in letters to friends, family and colleagues, Darwin continually communicated his belief that species could change, and that this is inconsistent with the notion that he was keeping his heretical ideas secret during this period. He even paid copiers on at least two occasions to produce early drafts of his species theory. By documenting exactly what he was doing during the 'gap years', van Wyhe makes the case that Darwin just didn't get down to writing Origin of Species until he had completed other work in hand, including an eight-year study of barnacles. … But several Darwin scholars are not convinced. [Editor of the Darwin Digital Library of Evolution, David] Kohn and others agree that the way in which cultural and social pressures influenced Darwin's decisions may have been overplayed, particularly in the public arena, with less attention being paid to the involved process of scientific discovery. But the consensus in the field is likely to remain that a multitude of factors underpinned Darwin's delay.

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