Posted by Ian Musgrave on July 10, 2004 | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

Adelaide is an unusual city, a mix of parochialism and conservatism and progressive, innovative thinking. One of the examples of the latter is the Thinkers in Residence program, where world renowned thinkers are invited to Adelaide to discuss issues relevant to urban and regional development. Currently, the Thinker in Residence is Baroness Susan Greenfield, a world authority on neuroscience cognition the pharmacology of Alzheimer’s disease. Baroness Greenfield is considered to be the 14th most inspirational woman in the owrld (and as she wryly notes, Dolly Parton is the 9th). Last Friday night I went to a symposium on “Neurotransmitters in the Brain”, where I listened to here give a talk entitled “Is there more to the brain then neurotransmitters?”.

What has this got to do with evolutionary biology?

Continue reading  “I shared a lift with Baroness Greenfield”

Posted by PvM on July 10, 2004 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

On July 5, 2004, the school board in Darby, Montana voted 3-2 not to adopt a proposed “objective origins policy” on its second reading. The policy had been tentatively approved on February 2 at its first reading, but is now rejected. The proposal sparked intense local controversy and national media attention earlier this year. The fate of the polic …

Read the full story at NCSE Web

Continue reading  “ Darby board rejects "objective origins"”

Posted by PvM on July 10, 2004 | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

A new book Evolution vs. Creationism: an introduction by Eugenie C. Scott has been published. It can be ordered via Amazon.Com

Continue reading  “New Book: Evolution vs. Creationism”

Posted by PvM on July 09, 2004 | Comments (95) | TrackBack (0)

Henry Gee’s column

Intelligent design?

The fact that the work seems so surprising exposes another, more dangerous conceit that scientists are prone to. Dangerous, because it leaves science wide open to the temptations of so-called ‘Intelligent Design’. Advocates of this view object to evolution by invoking what Richard Dawkins has called the ‘Argument from Incredulity’ - that is, if I don’t believe that something is possible, it cannot happen.

Read more at Nature

Thanks to Glenn Branch for pointing out this interesting article.

Posted by PvM on July 09, 2004 | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

The more I read about Dembski’s explanatory filter and his reliability claims the more I come to the conclusion that Dembski has created a big problem for himself by suggesting on the one hand that it is reliable:

Briefly, the claim that specified complexity is a reliable marker of design means that if an item genuinely instantiates specified complexity, then it was designed. As I argue and continue to maintain, no counterexamples to this claim are known.

Dembski, ISCID No False Positives and the Lust for Certainty on November 2002

and

I argue that the explanatory filter is a reliable criterion for detecting design. Alternatively, I argue that the Explanatory Filter successfully avoids false positives. Thus whenever the Explanatory Filter attributes design, it does so correctly.

Dembski,  “The Explanatory Filter: A three-part filter for understanding how to separate and identify cause from intelligent design”, Mere Creation Conference originally titled “Redesigning Science.”, 1996.

But on the other hand Dembski also accepts the risk of false positives (although he considers this, incorrectly, the inevitable nature of science).

Continue reading  “Icons of ID: Reliability revisited”

Posted by Reed A. Cartwright on July 08, 2004 | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

The Presbyterian Church of New Zealand recently reviewed one of Dembski’s latest books,  The Design Revolution.  The reviewer, Alistair McBride, is a former science teacher and current minister.  He has this to say about the book.

For me the book is characterised by a great deal of polemic and special pleading which makes it difficult to tread a path through the argumentation.

His real target is something he calls Darwinism. As I read the chapter “The Only Game in Town” I found he tries to narrow the debate down to a particular understanding of what Darwin wrote… .

… From my reading, the branch of evolutionary biology has come to see that “natural selection” plays only a part in the overall scheme of the theory of evolution and to argue solely against a narrowly defined Darwinist position obfuscates the issues being discussed in the wider scientific community.

Follow this link to read the rest.

Thanks to Glenn Branch for the heads up.

Posted by PvM on July 08, 2004 | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)

Is neutral evolution non-Darwinian?

„…Variations neither useful not injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left either a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in certain polymorphic species, or would ultimately become fixed, owing to the nature of the organism and the nature of the conditions….”

Charles Darwin, Origin of species (1859)

Continue reading  “Complexity: Darwin and neutral evolution”

Posted by Nick Matzke on July 08, 2004 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

Are you ravenous for information? Today's issue of Nature announces that Nature has created a central science news service, . Anyone with a subscription to any Nature journal (or a university subscription) can access all of the news, anyone at all can subscribe to the free daily news service, and everyone can try the whole thing out for free for two months at http://www.nature.com/news.

It’s quite handy.  Just today I discovered that adaptive immune systems have evolved not once, but at least twice — once in the jawed vertebrates, and again, in an entirely different way, in their sister group, the lampreys (left).  You may recall that Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe listed the adaptive immune system as one of several “irreducibly complex” systems that supposedly scientists had no idea how to explain with evolution.  This was debunked in rather excruciating detail a few years ago, but it is worth pointing out that every month brings out new discoveries filling in details on the evolution of the vertebrate immune system.

Posted by Wesley R. Elsberry on July 08, 2004 | Comments (74) | TrackBack (1)

Touchstone magazine this month has an issue devoted to antievolution, running under the title, “Darwin’s Last Stand?” In a question and answer section, there is a question that William A. Dembski provides an answer for:

Touchstone: Where is the ID movement going in the next ten years?  What new issues will it be exploring, and what new challenges will it be offering Darwinism?

Dembski: In the next five years, molecular Darwinism — the idea that Darwinian processes can produce complex molecular structures at the subcellular level — will be dead.  When that happens, evolutionary biology will experience a crisis of confidence because evolutionary biology hinges on the evolution of the right molecules.  I therefore foresee a Taliban-style collapse of Darwinism in the next ten years. Intelligent design will of course profit greatly from this. For ID to win the day, however, will require talented new researchers able to move this research program forward, showing how intelligent design provides better insights into biological systems than the dying Darwinian paradigm.

(Anonymous (Touchstone Magazine), (2004).  “The Measure of Design: A conversation about the past, present & future of Darwinism and Design.”  Touchstone, 17(6), pp. 60-65.)

The structure of the answer is quite interesting. Asked about the future of intelligent design, Dembski immediately responds with speculations about Darwinism.

The fact of the matter is that “intelligent design” has not, to date, offered any new challenges to any part of evolutionary biology. Every single argument made by ID advocates had its origins elsewhere, either in the biological literature or in antievolutionary sources. According to Dembski, designers are innovators, but thus far ID advocates have tallied up a big goose egg on innovative critiques of evolutionary biology.

Continue reading  “The Ever-Imminent Collapse of Evolution”

Posted by PvM on July 07, 2004 | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

We’re all familiar with the use of William Paley’s famous  watch analogy as an indicator of design. But did you know that cyanobacteria have their own watches? In the 9/4/99 issue of Science, an article appears entitled “New Timepiece Has a Familiar Riing,” written by Marcia Barinaga. The article  even has a nice picture of cyanobacteria, with a caption that some might enjoy:

Thus starts a posting titled “Finding a watch in the ocean” by an intelligent design proponent on biological clocks.

These biological clocks, also known as ‘circadian clock’ have all the attributes of ‘design’, they seem to be complex  and specified (clock, feedback loop, oscillator). So what do we know about these circadian clocks?

Continue reading  “Icons of ID: Paley's watch”

Posted by PZ Myers on July 07, 2004 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

I've been writing a fair amount about early pattern formation in animals lately, so to do penance for my zoocentric bias, I thought I'd say a little bit about homeotic genes in plants. Homeotic genes are genes that, when mutated, can transform one body part into another—probably the best known example is antennapedia in Drosophila, which turns the fly's antenna into a leg.

Plants also have homeotic genes, and here is a little review of flower anatomy to remind everyone of what 'body parts' we're going to be talking about. The problem I'll be pursuing is how four different, broadly defined regions of the flower develop, and what that tells us about their evolution.

Continue reading "MADS boxes, flower development, and evolution" (on Pharyngula)

Posted by Steve Reuland on July 07, 2004 | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

A bit of new research suggests that the rise of human civilization may have been predicated on increasing lifespans.  This allowed older adults to be, well, grandparents.  And that allowed them to pass on their knowledge and skill well after their own reproductive lives were over.  Kin selection strikes again.

Old Age Was Secret of Modern H. Sapiens’ Success.

Modern humans began to live long and prosper only about 30,000 years ago, researchers report. Results published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveal a striking increase in human longevity during the Upper Paleolithic Period when the number of people surviving to old age increased four-fold. […]

The findings support the so-called grandmother hypothesis, which posits that older women no longer responsible for their own children help support the group by strengthening social bonds and providing greater opportunities to pass on specialized knowledge. “There has been a lot of speculation about what gave modern humans their evolutionary advantage,” Caspari remarks. “This research provides a simple explanation for which there is now concrete evidence: modern humans were older and wiser.”

Although some might say that H.L. Mencken disproved this hypothesis long ago when he remarked, “The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”

Posted by Ian Musgrave on July 07, 2004 | Comments (23) | TrackBack (0)

For a group that claim their ideas to be driven by science, rather than religious ideology, the Paleyists turn up in religious settings far more often than scientific ones. The latest issue of Touchstone magazine is largely given over to “Darwin’s last stand”, and has many essays from Paleyist stalwarts.

Of interest is the essay by Discovery Institute Fellow Jonathan Witt, “The Gods must be tidy!”. In this essay, amongst other things, he blames “Darwinism” for bad art and architecture. There are a number of errors in the essay; once again we have anti-evolutionists completely misunderstanding the basis of evolutionary biology (and the dreary old Nazis get trotted out again). I can’t deal with all the errors in one short essay, so I will concentrate on some of the more interesting ones.

Continue reading  “What but design of darkness to apall?”

Posted by PvM on July 06, 2004 | Comments (31) | TrackBack (0)

In this episode of Icons of ID I will take a quick look at how the definition of information used by ID proponents is nothing more than an argument from probability. In fact when ID proponents claim that chance and regularity cannot create complex specified information (CSI) all they are saying is that such pathways, as far as we know, are improbable. If a pathway is found that is probable, the measure of information, which is confusingly linked to probability decreases.
In fact, I argue, that intelligent designers similarly cannot generate specified complex information since the probability of intelligent designers designing is close to 1.

Continue reading  “Icons of ID: Probability as information”

Posted by Reed A. Cartwright on July 05, 2004 | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

The eminent evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr — who is a member of NCSE — celebrated his 100th birthday on July 5. Writing in the July 2 issue of Science, he reflected on his eighty years of “watching the evolutionary scenery,” from his education in Germany through the development of the Modern Synthesis to the discoveries of molecular biology. “[E]volutionary biology is an endless frontier,” he concluded, “and there is still plenty to be discovered.”

The Panda’s Thumb is pleased to join its voice to the chorus of those around the world who have wished Professor Mayr a very happy birthday.

Note: Modified from NCSE’s release.

Posted by Reed A. Cartwright on July 05, 2004 | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

A while back I was looking through my 1970s Funk & Wagnals’ Wildlife Encyclopedia and read the entry on River Dolphins.  In it a particular passage caught my eye because it was not very parsimonious.

We usually take it for granted that because whales, porpoises and dolphins are so obviously descended from land animals, their ancestors must have returned directly to the sea.  As a result, it is something of a surprise to learn there are such animals as river dolphins, and we suppose they have come up rivers from the sea.  In fact, the ancestors of dolphins could just as easily have left the land fro the rivers, and later invaded the sea.  This is supported by the primitive characters exhibited in the skeletons of the freshwater dolphins.  In most whales, porpoises and dolphins the seven neck vertebrae are squashed together and fused, and the animals have no visible neck.  In freshwater dolphins the vertebrae are separate and there is still some sign of a neck.  Also, the skull of a freshwater dolphin has not undergone the same fundamental changes as the skulls of its marine relatives, and in several ways is more like the skull of the extinct dolphin Squalodon of 15 millions years ago.

The problem of this hypothesis is that it requires the river dolphins of the Amazon, Ganges, Yangtze, etc. to all be autochthonous and essentially unrelated, since those river systems are separated by good span of geography.  So I went digging to see how science has progressed in 30 years, and found this gem.

Hamilton H et al. (2001) Evolution of River Dolphins. The Royal Society Proceedings: Biological Sciences, 268: 549-556.

Continue reading  “River Dolphins and Evolution”

Posted by PZ Myers on July 05, 2004 | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

To all Mac OS X users: a whole pile of bioinformatics tools have been made freely available to us, as announced on nodalpoint.org:

Many Life Science researchers need bioinformatics tools for the desktop. But many of the common Open Source tools are difficult to install for people without much Linux/Unix knowledge. We have created a user friendly install package for the MacOSX platform. The package installs most of the common bioinformatics packages: EMBOSS, Blast, HMM etc and also installs some biological databases. Together with the packages it is possible to configure webservices e.g. Blast. Researchers will find it very useful to be able to install a user friendly GUI in top of EMBOSS (embossRUNNER).
All packages can be downloaded at www.ebioinformatics.org. Detailed instructions and HOW-TOs have being published on the latest issues of EMBnetNews (free from www.embnet.org).

It's a 252MB gzipped file that will take up about 850MB installed. You'll also need to install X11 for Mac OS X; this is included on the Panther CDs (disc 3), but isn't installed by default. You'll need a fast connection and a bit of room on your hard disk for all this stuff! They also recommend that you get a three-button mouse, the one thing I'm lacking on my laptop.

The instructions for installation are in multiple volumes of EMBnetNews, and unfortunately they've been superceded in steps. Volume 9.1 has the original, rather convoluted instructions, but you might want to see them to get the list of stuff that is going to get plopped onto your computer. Volume 9.2 has details on Blast and GUI frontends. Volume 9.3 has more on Blast and performance information, and describes a major change in the installation procedure: it now just takes one double-click on a single installer package to put everything in one directory on your computer (in other words, ignore the instructions in 9.1). Volume 10.1 is just a short note listing some recent additions.

This probably isn't something anyone should do on a whim. It's going to require about as much horsepower and resources as, say, the latest version of Diablo, or whatever the hot new graphics-intensive video game might be. And once you've got it running, it's not going to be obvious how to do anything with it unless you've got a bit of molecular biology background.

I've put it on my machine, and it was fairly straightforward; it only took about an hour for everything, and that includes the download time (I have a fast connection). Don't ask me for help with it, though, I'm just tinkering myself and puzzling my way through all the bits and pieces.

Posted by Jack Krebs on July 05, 2004 | Comments (50) | TrackBack (0)

I cross-posted my last essay on science standards and ID over at ARN, and someone there offered this:

Concerning the Ohio standards, Meyer [Stephen Meyer, of the Discovery Institute] said this:

[quote]
Dr. MEYER: Well, we agree with you, Ken, and this is one of the reasons that we asked—certainly there were political supporters of design in Ohio who are getting the cart before the horse. That’s one of the reasons we took the theory off the table for the purposes of the state testing standards. We understand that this is a new theory. We think it’s unrealistic to think that teachers would be able to be informed enough to teach it well at this point, and so we said, ‘Look, the main focus,’ as you have said, ‘of biological research is evolutionary theory. Let’s look at that openly and in a critical manner.’ [endquote]

Do you agree with this?

I’d like to respond to this question here.

Continue reading  “Teaching students to critically analyze”