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I think Ann Coulter noted in her book "Godless" we also have about 35% genetic similarity with daffodils. :)

Coulter did claim that, but like almost everything else in her chapters on evolutionary biology, it's dead wrong.

When it comes to biology, Coulter is clueless.

This is what she incorrectly asserts on page 231:

Except the genome argument proves too much. The human genome is 35 percent identical to that of a daffodil. I think even a Darwiniac would admit humans are not 35 percent identical to a daffodil. Again, the cult's smoking gun of evolutionary proof turns out to be an imaginary water pistol.

The key problem with Coulter's daffodil claim is that it just isn't true, but of course that doesn't stop her telling her readers falsehoods anyway. Nor does she even attempt to footnote or otherwise source it, she just asserts it and hopes that her audience won't bother fact-checking her on it. Sadly, in most cases, she's right and thus she feels safe in pulling this kind of nonsense all throughout her chapters on evolution.

But she obviously got this (directly or indirectly) from the paper, "98% Chimpanzee and 35% Daffodil: The Human Genome in Evolutionary and Cultural Context". But if she had *read* the paper, she'd have seen that a) the author pulled the "35% daffodil" figure out of thin air, just for discussion's sake, it wasn't based on any actual comparison of DNA, and b) the point he makes in the paper is that the chimp comparison is *highly* significant, even more than the 98% figure might appear at first glance, whereas even a "35%" difference with some other species would be *less* meaningful than it might appear at first glance (partly because two TOTALLY RANDOM genomes would still have a 25% match by chance, so that's the "baseline", the "zero point".

In other words, his paper demonstrates why Coulter's little rhetorical trick is a dishonest and inappropriate one. So ironically, her source for her figure is one that *torpedoes* the argument she's trying to make from it. We see this again and again in her chapters on evolution -- when you check her source material (even the ones she fails to list in the hopes that no one will be able to check it against her claims, as in this this one), you find over and over again that her source material CONTRADICTS the claims that Coulter tries to make using them.

And again, the author just *made up* the 35% daffodil figure for discussion purposes, but Coulter cluelessly states it as established fact.

Furthermore, even if the 35% figure *had* been the correct one, only a naive reader (her favorite kind) would find any reason to conclude that it's "ridiculous", because a) as the author points out, 35% is only a little over the 25% "random match" rate, and b) all multicellular organisms do share a whole crapload of common biochemistry and foundational mechanisms regarding metabolism, cellular activity, replication, etc. Coulter is playing off the fact that the naive reader will ponder the *apparent* lack of similarity between humans and daffodils (e.g. "I ain't green!") without realizing how very much we have in common "under the hood" as multicellular eukaryotes.

The "35%" paper can be read here, although it's scanned sideways, very annoying: http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/pubs/natureculture.pdf

Another paper by the same author on the same topic makes his "out of thin air" source for the daffodil figure even more obvious: http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/interests/aaa/marksaaa99.htm. Key excerpt:

Once again, the DNA comparison requires context to be meaningful. Granted that a human and ape are over 98% genetically identical, a human and any earthly DNA-based life form must be at least 25% identical. A human and a daffodil share common ancestry and their DNA is thus obliged to match more than 25% of the time. For the sake of argument let’s say 33%.
The point is that to say we are one-third daffodils because our DNA matches that of a daffodil 33% of the time, is not profound, it’s ridiculous. There is hardly any biological comparison you can make which will find us to be one-third daffodil, except perhaps the DNA.
In other words, just as Simpson argued in the 1960s, the genetic comparison is exceptional, not at all transcendent. DNA comparisons overestimate biological similarity at the low end and underestimate it at the high end – in context, humans are biologically less than 25% daffodils and more than 98% chimpanzees.

Underlining was in the original, red-fonting is mine.

This "35% daffodil" meme, however, is making the rounds. For example it appears here in a Guardian review of a biology book:

The new starting point came from the recognition of the surprising continuities in genes between one species and another. We not only have nearly 99% of our genes in common with chimps, but some 35% in common with daffodils.

From the way the review states it, you'd think he got it *from* the book. But fortunately the book itself is fully text searchable at amazon.com, and the word "daffodil" doesn't even appear anywhere in the book, nor its scientific name, nor is any occurrence of the number "35" in the book relevant.

Getting back to Coulter's inanity, what in the hell does it mean to say that the genome comparison "proves too much"? It's word hash.

And I'm afraid that her "hey, someone said we're apes", and "we share DNA with daffodils" remarks in no way demolishes the DNA evidence or demonstrates that the DNA similarities are "an imaginary water pistol", although she's apparently stupid enough to think it does, because this is the air-headed entirety of her "rebuttal" to the great breadth and depth and richness of the DNA evidence for evolution and common descent.

I can't believe anyone is gullible enough to fall for that kind of hand-waving, but apparently I've overestimated her audience, and she has correctly assessed her audience when she brazenly makes fallacious and false claims that she knows they'll uncritically swallow.

I've been working through her chapters on evolution and writing up all the errors, lies, fallacies, and other mindbogglingly bad material in them. Sadly, it's far harder to find anything she got right than to find things she got stunningly wrong. If you'd like to be pinged when I finally get the (HUGE) fact-checking list compiled and post it, please FreepMail me.