Posted by Steve Reuland on April 24, 2004 | Comments (9) | TrackBack (2)

Sorry, this one’s about a week late. But best to have it logged for future reference…

Our close buddy Kent Hovind is apparently in trouble with the law (yet again) for tax evasion. Hovind (or Dr. Dino as he prefers to be called, though his ‘PhD’ is from a diploma mill) is a popular, if totally wacky, YEC who runs a “ministry” down in Florida, complete with Dinosaur Adventure Land theme park. It’s basically a home-made obstacle course that seems to have nothing to do with dinosaurs, other than looking very dangerous.

Continue reading  “Hovind in trouble with law (again).”

Posted by Andrea Bottaro on April 23, 2004 | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

In a startling turn of events, multifaceted theologian/mathematician/philosopher and ID Generalissimo Bill Dembski, not content of having single-handedly revolutionized every field of modern science, has apparently decided to turn his keen intellect to the restaurant business, and has opened, in co-ownership with a certain Don Port, an “Intelligently Designed BBQ” joint in Riesel, Texas.  “I was tired of being asked: where’s the beef?”  the Baylor University Research Associate Professor in the Conceptual Foundations of Science apparently told some of his closest associates.

Continue reading  “Still No Free Lunch from Bill Dembski!”

Posted by Matt Young on April 22, 2004 | Comments (43) | TrackBack (0)

Andrea Bottaro has shown by example the irrelevance of William Dembski’s explanatory filter to archaeology.  In this contribution, I want to show how in the real world the explanatory filter can lead to a false positive.

Dembski’s vaunted explanatory filter is no more than a flow chart designed to distinguish events of low probability.  If the probability of an event is low enough and if Dembski can discern a pattern, then he concludes that the event must have been the product of design.  Dembski admits that the explanatory filter may produce a false negative (fail to infer design where design exists) but claims it will never produce a false positive (infer design where none exists).  In this article, I will give a real example wherein the explanatory filter could have yielded a false positive.

Continue reading  “Dembski's Explanatory Filter Delivers a False Positive”

Posted by John M. Lynch on April 21, 2004 | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

PZ made me aware of this via his blog, and I thought it should be posted here.

According to this press release, the venerable evolutionary biologist, John Maynard Smith has died aged 84. Maynard Smith started as an aeronautical engineer, but after World War II became interested in evolutionary biology, eventually being mentored by JBS Haldane. He is especially noted for his work on game theory, the evolution of sex, and also on the major transitions in the development of life.

I had the pleasure of meeting JMS in 1989 when I was a member of the organizing committee for University College Dublin’s Biological Society. He had been retired from the University of Sussex for about five years by then, and we arranged for him to come and talk. It was quite the experience spending four hours after the talk in a pub listening to (and being listened to) by one of the world’s greatest evolutionary biologists. We talked biology, beer, socialism, and how not to organize a biological sciences department, among many topics. It was clear that he genuinely cared what we graduate students had to say.  Many pints of Guinness were enjoyed that night and the memory lives with me.

For more on Maynard Smith and his work, see the Center for the Study of Evolution at Sussex.

Posted by PZ Myers on April 21, 2004 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

I'm trying a little experiment on the web—a project to highlight and encourage other people to write about biology or medicine or natural history by posting a biweekly digest of interesting weblog articles on those topics. The project is called The Tangled Bank. The first entry is currently posted at my website, and the next edition will be published in two weeks and hosted at the Invasive Species Weblog. These will be places where you can learn about other weblogs that should be of interest to readers of The Panda's Thumb.

Our first edition has only seven entries, but we hope that will grow, and that's why I'm mentioning it here. If you even occasionally write about science on your weblog, send a URL to one of your recent articles, preferably with a brief synopsis, to host@tangledbank.net. If the article meets our generous criteria, we'll acknowledge you with a link in the next edition. Join in, make connections, spread the word about good science!

Posted by Wesley R. Elsberry on April 21, 2004 | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0)

Some time ago, an Insight article by Stephen Goode quoted ID advocate and Discovery Institute Senior Fellow William A. Dembski as saying that biologists opposed to “intelligent design” were like the repressive former Soviet regime. Knowing something of the history of science under Soviet rule, I knew that the actual lessons of history were being completely inverted by Dembski. Scientists who applied principles of biology accepted in the West were, in fact, repressed under Soviet politically mandated biological doctrines, specifically those teleological principles of Michurinism promulgated by Trofim Denisovich Lysenko.

I joined with Mark Perakh, who lived through Soviet scientific repression and encountered Nazi materials in World War II, to write an essay that explores the ID advocates’ deployment of invidious comparisons of biologists to the Soviet and Nazi regimes. We conclude that these comparisons cannot be sustained, that they can only be proposed through thorough ignorance of the actual historical record, that politically mandated biology is a costly proposition, and that the elements of self-aggrandizement in ID advocacy ironically echo the Soviet and Nazi regimes that they invoke as being like their opponents.

The essay is available on TalkReason.org and as a PDF at TalkDesign.org and atAntievolution.org.

There is a thread on invidious comparisons used by “intelligent design” advocates on the Antievolution.org discussion board.

Posted by Ian Musgrave on April 21, 2004 | Comments (61) | TrackBack (0)

I was somewhat bemused by Francis Beckwith’s report that ID advocates consider Forensic Science to not be a part of natural science (perhaps natural science is only that which is presented by David Attenbrough). How could reasonable people not see that Forensic science is part of natural science thought I.

Then I had one of my semiannual encounters with the public understanding of science.

Continue reading  “The Stars like Dust”

Posted by Jason Rosenhouse on April 20, 2004 | Comments (27) | TrackBack (0)

Following Pharyngula’s lead I have posted a reply to this breathtakingly stupid column from the conservative website WorldNetDaily. Its author, Kelly Hollowell, repeats the usual charges about how teaching evolution corrupts the youth, turning them into a bunch of knuckle-dragging, godless moral relativists. What’s novel here is her insistence that it is not just evolution, but also the theory of relativity that corrupts the youth. Here’s a sample, make sure you’re sitting down. This is not a parody:

The basis of Einstein’s life-changing view called the theory of relativity can be summed this way: Time is not constant. Both velocity and gravity can distort time. Nearly nine decades ago, this surprising discovery shook the very foundation of human perception, understanding and reality.

Mistakenly, in the minds of many, the theory of relativity became relativism. So it was in the 1920s and still today that the popular interpreter of Einstein’s work finds himself saying “All things are relative” and thinks that he is voicing a scientific discovery. This notion of “all things relative” moved from the laboratory into the public domain, creating an era in which all absolutes disappeared. Relativism has become the prevailing spirit of thought and action in our modern culture, but that is just half the equation.

My reply is available at EvolutionBlog. Enjoy!

Posted by PvM on April 20, 2004 | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

This morning, on my way to work, I listened to NPR. One of the guests, Ebbesmeyer described his recent work on tracking items found by beach combers. Once again I came to realize how the beach provides us not just with pleasurability but also measurability. Without beaches we would not be able to track Rubber duckies.

Continue reading  “The purpose of life is a beach part 2”

Posted by John M. Lynch on April 20, 2004 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

The discovery in microbes of two oxygen-packing proteins, the earliest known ancestors to hemoglobin, brings scientists closer to identifying the earliest life forms to use oxygen.

Hemoglobins are ubiquitous in Eukarya and Bacteria but, until now, have not been found in Archaea. A phylogenetic analysis of the recently revealed microbial family of globin-coupled heme-based sensors suggests that these sensors descended from an ancient globin-only progenitor, or a protoglobin (Pgb). Here, we report the discovery and characterization of two Pgbs from the Archaea: ApPgb from the obligately aerobic hyperthermophile Aeropyrum pernix, and MaPgb from the strictly anaerobic methanogen Methanosarcina acetivorans. Both ApPgb and MaPgb bind molecular oxygen, nitric oxide, and carbon monoxide by means of a heme moiety that is coordinated to the protein through the F8 histidine (histidine 120). We postulate that these archaeal globins are the ancestors of contemporary hemoglobins.

1. Tracey Allen K. Freitas, Shaobin Hou, Elhadji M. Dioum, Jennifer A. Saito, James Newhouse, Gonzalo Gonzalez, Marie-Alda Gilles-Gonzalez, and Maqsudul Alam, “Ancestral hemoglobins in Archaea” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published April 19, 2004, 10.1073/pnas.0308657101 [link].

EurekAlert press release.

Posted by Jack Krebs on April 19, 2004 | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Recently Alabama Citizens for Science Education (www.alscience.org/) has formed, the tenth of similar citizen groups in states around the nation. As has been the case with other groups, ACSE formed partially in response to creationist bills in their legislature seeking to allow the teaching of “alternate theories” to evolution.

As vice-president of Kansas Citizens for Science (KCFS), I would like to welcome Alabama to the growing list of citizen groups working to combat these political attempts to insert creationism into the public school system.

Continue reading  “Welcome to Alabama Citizens for Science Education”

Posted by Jeffrey Shallit on April 19, 2004 | Comments (64) | TrackBack (0)

Recently deceased NYU professor and postmodernist cultural critic Neil Postman (1931-2003) has a cult following for books such as Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly. I have always been mystified by this, since Postman demonstrated again and again in his writings that he was actually remarkably ignorant of the technology he chose to criticize.

This week I picked up a copy of Postman's 1988 book Conscientious Objections at a local book sale. Not surprisingly, Postman's ignorance is on display again, this time about evolution.

Continue reading  “Evolution Confounds Postmodernist Postman”

Posted by PvM on April 18, 2004 | Comments (17) | TrackBack (2)

I am starting what I intend to be a regular contribution in which I will share some of my almost spiritual experiences and insights gained when I was on the beach.

It was this unforgettable moment late summer, the first time that I realized how special the beach really is.

Continue reading  “The Purpose of Life is a Beach Part 1”