[bellaire]

Teleology was used somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The older literature was problematic because it aligned too neatly with anthropocentric ideas of goal-oriented evolution, and gave rise to nonsense objections like "Where is the missing link?" and "Why are apes still around?"

I don't doubt the integrity of the scientists who were involved with the earlier literature, but in hindsight it looks an awful lot like a teleological bias.