He's most likely referring to the US. Depending on who does the polling and how, about half the population thinks the Theory of Evolution is a bad joke or a sci

He's most likely referring to the US. Depending on who does the polling and how, about half the population thinks the Theory of Evolution is a bad joke or a scientific conspiracy or something. The opposing side is known as "Creationists." They like to characterize scientifically informed people as "Evolutionists" but of course that's more misinformation. One of the various tracks of Creationist argumentation is that scientists make the "unjustified assumption that change progresses at a more-or-less constant rate" or, "that the rate of change today is the same as the rate of change way back when." They like to claim we can't know the decay rate of radioactive carbon (carbon dating, y'know) was the same a few thousand years ago (when the Earth was created) as it is today. I mention all this because this red herring about steady evolutionary progress is one of the arguments of Creationists, and so it's annoying to see those words used in that context in a science-y article.