It appears, therefore, that the new hypothesis is no spoiler itself; it is a door of opportunity, a fresh wind taking the story of bird evolution out of the doldrums:

Without such broader knowledge, it is uncertain how essential WAIR was for any extinct members of the theropod lineage, including the earliest birds.  Regardless, this work will continue to stimulate research on flight and its evolution.  The debate over whether flight originated in tree- or ground-living creatures is centuries old.  The WAIR hypothesis has provided a biologically plausible alternative to that rather stale dichotomy.

Caught in the act!  This is an important principle to understand about Darwinism, and why it has become so successful, and why it has taken over the intellectual world.  It no longer matters whether a hypothesis is true or not, but only whether it keeps lazy scientists employed as storytellers.  Evolutionary science has been liberated from repeatability, testability and observability.  The key word is now plausibility, which being translated, means science has become fiction.  After all, any good novel or short story is plausible, isn’t it?  (Since there are no Laws of Plausibility, at least it will be plausible to somebody, especially the storyteller.)
    For Darwinists studying the evolution of birds from dinosaurs, to really do their job rigorously, they would have to identify every beneficial mutation or gene duplication, connect it to an actual functional advantage, and monitor its spread through a population.  They would have to find every transitional fossil, know its date accurately, trace the development of all the flight-related hardware and software in the genes (including feathers, perching feet, hollow bones, avian lungs, specialized organs, modified brain, body size, metabolic rate, specialized muscles and tendons, and behavioral instincts, such as knowing how to take off and land and use thermals), explain how these morphological changes proceed from embryo to adult, and much more.  Clearly, doing all this is impossible.  Moreover, they would need to uncover, by experiment, new natural laws that create increasing levels of complexity and information against the inexorable pressure of entropy.  Even if in some fantasyland they could perform these impossible experiments, they would never know if it matched prehistory without getting into a time machine and watching the whole story unfold.
    This is too hard, so evolutionists changed the rules.  They don’t like doing science the old way, the way Joule and Faraday and Mendel did it.  It’s so much easier to just flop on the sofa and speculate.  When the NSF comes around and wonders how the grant money is being spent, the Darwinist can show the photo album from the last vacation in the Bahamas (see Dec. 03 headline), or show a home-video clip of partridge chicks running up a ramp in the lab, or demonstrate the latest computer games (see May 8 headline) enough to look busy.  And so that Eugenie Scott can brag about all the scientific literature that supports evolution, the Darwinist can have his or her grad student write it up in specialized jargon for Nature or Science or National Geographic, ending with the typical benediction about all the wonderful stories that the latest new twist on the plot opens up.  Look through the Chain Links on “Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory” and check if this is not indeed the situation.
    Calling all Baloney Detectors.  Wake up and smell the coffee.  We’ve been hoodwinked.  All along, Eugenie Scott and the rest of the Darwin Party have been browbeating their critics that they just don’t understand “science” and that to do “science” we must play by “the rules.”  But she didn’t explain that the rules were changed when the Darwin Party came to power.  Old Charlie was clever.  He had a vivid imagination and a gift of gab, and instead of proving his story, he said, “It’s plausible, isn’t it?  Prove me wrong!”  So we took the bait and headed off on an impossible quest, trying to prove a universal negative, instead of calling his bluff and making him prove his story right.  While we were distracted, he rounded up the Starving Storytellers, gave them lab coats and became their patron saint.  They have been in his debt ever since.
    Antievolutionists have been snookered into trying to prove that this or that alleged feathered dinosaur really isn’t an ancestor to birds, or that this or that microevolutionary change cannot be extrapolated endlessly, without realizing that they are trying to beat Hobbes at Calvinball.  As long as the Darwinists are free to make up stories that can never be proved, it’s hopeless to call them on the carpet.  The one who sets the rules controls the game.
    The reason Darwin Party members are so vehement against critics is that their jobs are at stake.  The founding fathers of science declared independence from speculation by framing an unwritten constitution which demanded that scientific results be observable, testable and repeatable.  But later presidents, giving into pressure from special interest groups that found the work too hard, started entitlement programs like the Great Society for Storytellers.  The GSS took over labs, removed the flasks and ammeters, and set up couches surrounding banquet tables filled with “tantalizing speculations” (see Sept. 18 commentary).  Eventually, Big Science became a bloated bureacracy distributing limited grant money to more and more storyteller banquets, while those rugged individualists who still believed in the founding principles of science were being burdened to support the growing welfare state.  Those few who called for fairness were accused of hate speech, and ridiculed as irrational, superstitious obscurantists who simply didn’t understand “science.”
    If people woke up and realized that Darwinists are not pulling their fair share, that real science was subsidizing the Darwinists’ endless quest for a good story, some heads might roll.  Science itself, however, would go on.  The good old science that builds space stations and discovers molecular motors, that explores Mars and digs up dinosaur bones and classifies hummingbirds, would do just fine.  Medicine would still advance, high school science fairs would still be popular, microscopes and telescopes would continue to sell, and discoveries would continue to pour forth.  But if the public demanded accountability, then all the useless, distracting, parasitic welfare programs promoted by the Darwin Party would dry up.  Certain loudmouth bums and welfare queens would be stuck holding up signs saying, Will Tell Stories for Food.
    This should not be taken as a tirade against Darwinists.  We are actually very tolerant of them.  If they want to continue to loaf and watch Charlie’s angles, that’s fine; there are even some creationists who like some episodes.  But teach it in the theater class, not the science class.
Next headline on: Birds. • Next headline on: Dinosaurs. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next dumb story.

1. Redox regulation:  A sensitive chemical balance is maintained between reducing and oxidizing (redox) conditions along the protein’s pathway through the folding factory.  “The redox gradient between the ER and the cytosol seems to be important for intercompartmental signalling, particularly in the integrated response to oxidative stress, in which adaptive responses emanating from different compartments are coordinated.  And redox reactions with opposite electron fluxes must take place in the ER to mediate formation, isomerization and reduction of disulphides.  The wealth of redox assistants allows these fluxes to be separate, and channels electron transport through specific protein–protein interactions.”
2. Location specificity:  “Although most folding factors in the ER are ubiquitously expressed throughout the body, some are tissue-type specific or cell-type specific, and probably fulfil a particular synthetic task....  For example, efficient collagen production requires the expression of hsp47, whereas a tissue-specific protein-disulphide-isomerase-like protein, PDIp, is produced in the pancreas and probably permits the massive secretion of digestive enzymes.”
3. Bridge builders:  Junctions called disulphide bridges are common in protein folds, and these, although weak, are carefully maintained by a host of enzymes called oxidoreductases: “The impressive number of oxidoreductases in the ER suggests that catalysis and regulation of disulphide-bond formation is crucial for folding.  Energywise, in most cases, the contribution of a disulphide bond is hardly more than that of a single hydrogen bond [i.e., quite weak], yet, without disulphide bonds, native conformations are not obtained.  Disulphide bonds cannot force a folding protein into a given conformation: in the sampling of conformations during folding in the ER, native and non-native disulphide cross-links are transiently formed [i.e., correct and incorrect links form and break easily, and must be guided].  Continuous activity of oxidoreductases probably ensures that these covalent links remain flexible until folding is completed.”
4. Correct fold recognition:  Even though a string of amino acids could conceivably fold in large number of ways, like a Rubik’s cube, somehow the chaperones are able to tell a correct (native) fold from an incorrect one.  “Besides providing a unique folding environment, the ER has a crucial quality-control role.  How does it discriminate between native and non-native proteins?  The answer to this question depends primarily on ER chaperones.  When folding or assembly intermediates expose hydrophobic [i.e., water-avoiding] surfaces, unpaired cysteines or immature glycans, ER-resident chaperones or oxidoreductases interact with them, and as a consequence they are retained in the ER or retrieved from the Golgi complex [see 11/12/01 headline].  By forming multimolecular complexes, folding factors in the ER may provide matrices that couple retention to folding and assembly.  Immature proteins may also form aggregates that are excluded from vesicles exiting from the ER” [i.e., such that they are not ejected before they are ready].
5. Fail-safe inspection:  A protein needs to pass multiple layers of monitoring: “All proteins are subjected to a ‘primary’ quality control that monitors their architectural design through ubiquitous folding sensors (Table 1).  ‘Secondary’ quality-control mechanisms rely instead on cell-specific factors and facilitate export of individual proteins or classes of proteins.... the ER is the main test bench where molecules destined for the extracellular space are scrutinized for their potential toxicity.”
6. Feedback regulation:  The ER not only does quality control, but sends messages back to the nucleus to regulate the production of more chaperones: “The reasons for having a quality-control system in the ER are easy to understand where protein folding and function are concerned, especially in multicellular organisms where development relies on the fidelity of protein secretion.  Quality control can also regulate the transport or the activity of certain proteins during differentiation or in response to stress or metabolic requirements.”
7. Waste control:  When a protein cannot be folded after repeated attempts, more assistants are on hand to ensure proper dismantling and recycling: “Mutations or unbalanced subunit synthesis make folding or assembly — and hence exit from the ER — impossible.  To maintain homeostasis [dynamic equilibrium], terminally misfolded molecules are ‘retrotranslocated’ or ‘dislocated’ across the ER membrane to be degraded by cytosolic proteasomes” [organelles equipped to break up badly-folded proteins and recycle their parts].
8. Time limits:  Somehow, the cell knows when a protein has had enough time to shape up or ship out:  “A fascinating problem is how molecules that have not been given the time to fold (and therefore are unfolded) are discriminated from those that have failed to fold after many attempts (misfolded), and must therefore be disposed of.  One way of timing glycoprotein quality control involves the sequential processing of N-glycans and in particular mannose trimming in the ER.  It remains to be seen how substrates are eventually targeted to the retrotranslocation channels, how these are opened, and to what extent proteins must be unfolded to negotiate dislocation.”
9. Workforce regulation:  Like a company’s human resources department that responds to managers’ calls for more workers, the cell keeps track of how many chaperones are available, and sends out “help wanted” ads to the nucleus.  “To maintain the efficiency of quality-control mechanisms in diverse physiological conditions, living cells have evolved regulatory circuits that monitor the levels of available chaperones.  This is true for both the cytosol and the ER, and compartment-specific responses clearly exist that selectively restore optimal levels of the desired folding factors.”
   
10. Emergency squads:  The authors provide two examples of rapid-response traffic control teams: “The accumulation of aberrant proteins in the cytosol triggers the heat-shock response, resulting in de novo synthesis of hsp70 and other cytosolic chaperones.  But if aberrant proteins accumulate in the ER, cells activate a different response, the unfolded protein response (UPR), which leads to the coordinated synthesis of ER-resident chaperones and enzymes.”
    
11. Failure consequences:  The authors give an example of what can go wrong when the system gets swamped, starved, or sent defective parts: “Physiologically, ER stress (a condition in which the folding machinery in the ER cannot cope with its protein load) can be caused by synthesis of mutated or orphan proteins, absence of cofactors (an example being scurvy, in which collagen cannot fold because of the lack of vitamin C), or a drastic increase in otherwise normal cargo proteins.”
12. Unified response to varied inputs:  A variety of signals can lead to the same Unfolded Protein Response (UPR) pathway: “How do the diverse unfolded or misfolded proteins that accumulate in the ER provoke the same pathway?  The unifying concept is that BiP and other primary quality-control factors maintain the stress sensors in the ER in the inactive state, so that chaperone insufficiency triggers UPR whatever the nature of the cargo.”
13. Meltdown regulation:  What happens when the damage is so great, that further operation of the factory would be dangerous?  Three independent controls make sure an orderly shutdown occurs (apoptosis, or cell death: see 04/09/02 headline).  “The mammalian ER sensors, Ire1, PERK and ATF6, guarantee a tripartite response with synergic strategies.  By phosphorylating eIF2alpha, PERK transiently attenuates translation, limiting protein load.  ATF6 drives the transcriptional upregulation of many ER-resident proteins and folding assistants.  Ire1 activates XBP-1, which in turn induces transcription of factors that facilitate ER-associated degradation (ERAD).  The two-step activation of XBP-1 (transcriptionally induced by ATF6 and post-transcriptionally regulated by Ire1) guarantees the proper timing of the UPR [unfolded protein response] attempts to fold proteins precede the decision to degrade them.  If the response fails to clear the ER, apoptosis is induced through several pathways.”  The authors explain that “The UPR is multi-faceted and regulates proteins involved in quality control, ERAD and many aspects of the secretory pathway.”
14. Balancing act:  The quality control mechanisms walk a tightrope, with serious consequences for falling off:  “Quality control must be a balance between retaining and degrading potentially harmful products and not preventing export of biologically active proteins.  CFTR mutants in cystic fibrosis illustrate an overzealous quality control, where biologically active mutants cannot leave the ER.  In this case, relaxing the quality control could cure the patient.  But disease can also originate from defective degradation.  If the rate of synthesis of a protein exceeds the combined rates of folding and degradation, a fraction of it will accumulate intracellularly.”  Misfolded proteins have to make it across the ER membrane in time, and get degraded by the proteasome in time, or else aggregations (aggresomes) can build up inside or outside the ER.  These are implicated in a number of “ER storage diseases.”

If you endured the heavy reading in the above paragraphs, you were undoubtedly rewarded with a sense of how incomprehensibly amazing and mind-boggling a living cell is.  Think of it: all this activity is going on right now in every cell in your body.  The authors describe it in typical scientific jargon, but sprinkled here and there are hints of their own wonder and fascination at how all this quality control works.  Who could help but to be awe-struck at the choreography and efficiency of so many coordinated parts?  No human enterprise comes close.
    Only twice do the authors mention evolution just in passing, and in both cases, they merely assume it rather than explain it.  The first reference almost argues against it: “A certain degree of freedom from quality control is essential for the evolution of proteins.  However, it comes at a price for multicellular organisms.  Indeed, many proteins that cause systemic amyloidosis [clumping, runaway misfolding] ... can adopt more than one conformation and can undergo uncontrolled aggregation outside of the cells.”  This means that mutations have a hard time getting past the guards, and even when they do, the consequences could be catastrophic.  How then, could evolution ever get a beneficial mutation past the controls, without mucking up the whole works or triggering the cell-death alarm?  Don’t look for an explanation from these authors.  If there was ever a need for more examples of irreducible complexity, this is surely a contender.
    This afternoon, after reading this scientific paper, I was sitting in a fast food restaurant eating a hamburger and looking out the window at a sunset.  I paused for a moment to think about how many tiny miracles of sophisticated, coordinated interaction were going on inside my body to make possible the enjoyment of tasting food and seeing a beautiful sky.  If more people knew just a fraction of this information, and really thought about it with any common sense at all, they would be impelled to acknowledge that an all-wise Creator with superior intelligence must exist.  The beauty and balance of all these systems should move us to fear Him and want to know Him.  A big part of the problem in society is that so few individuals have any vague idea of what is required to allow them to do something as routine as eating a hamburger, talking with a friend, or looking at the colors in the sky.
    Scientific papers are difficult for most people to read, requiring understanding of specialized vocabulary and abstract concepts.  O, that more talented people could translate this information into everyday terms, and visualize it for more to see, that it might rekindle their sense of wonder.  Do you have such talent?  Has this article struck a chord with you?  Would you think and pray about how you might make this kind of worship-inducing information accessible to children and adults alike?  Some possibilities come to mind: radio, print, audio-visual media, film, tracts, church bulletins, classroom teaching, educational games and role playing, computer animations... did you get any ideas while reading?  If this kind of amazing information excites you, how could you make it accessible to those in your sphere of influence?  If you have an inspiration, write in and share it.
    Our perception of our lives and the world around us is often far too simplistic.  Science should be, like James Joule said, a worshipful quest.  He felt the study of nature and nature’s laws was “essentially a holy undertaking,” and of “great importance and absolute necessity in the education of youth.”  He said, “After the knowledge of, and obedience to, the will of God, the next aim must be to know something of His attributes of wisdom, power and goodness as evidenced by His handiwork.... It is evident that an acquaintance with natural laws means no less than an acquaintance with the mind of God therein expressed.”  Let’s hear a hearty Amen.  Take a moment to thank God for quality control that keeps your machinery humming.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next amazing story.

Gaia theory does not contradict darwinism, rather it extends it to include evolutionary biology and evolutionary geology as a single science [sic].  In Gaia theory, organisms change their material environment as well as adapt to it.  Selection favours the improvers, and the expansion of favourable traits extends local improvement and can make it global.  Inevitably there will be extinctions and losers, winners may gain in the short term, but the only long-term beneficiary is life itself.  Its persistence for over three billion years in spite of numerous catastrophes, internal or external, lends support to the theory.  I have never intended the powerful metaphor ‘the living Earth’ more seriously than the metaphor of ‘the selfish gene’.  I have used it, along with my neologism geophysiology, to draw attention to the similarity between Gaian and physiological regulation.

As the Earth ages, the Sun’s heat ineluctably intensifies; in approximately one billion years the Earth will pass the limit of climatic stability and irreversibly return to inorganic chemistry.  Moreover, as it grows older the Earth system weakens, and before long a large planetesimal impact may throw our planet prematurely into its final hot, dry state.  A few thermophiles in oasis ecosystems might survive, but we could never recapture the abundant life and lush environment we now enjoy.  The Earth system is elderly and we should treat it with respect and care.
    Gaia theory reconciles current thinking in evolutionary biology with that in evolutionary geology  It extends, not contradicts, Darwin’s vision, just as relativity enhances, not denies, Newtonian physics.  The theory is provisional, but provides an intellectual habitat where understanding of the Earth can evolve and grow.  Perhaps its greatest value lies in its metaphor of a living Earth, which reminds us that we are part of it and that human rights are constrained by the needs of our planetary partners.

Well, it’s going to be interesting to see the letters to the editor on this one.  Advice: stay out of the line of fire.  Maybe Nature has had it with Lovelock and Margulis’ incessant whining about how closed-minded establishment scientists are, and acquiesced, “All right already, here’s a forum, give us your best shot,” expecting Lovelock to implode in full public view.  It appears he did.
    What’s funny about Gaia is not just its cute new-age, daisy-holding-hands metaphorical imagery, but the rancor it has generated among its adherents against the reigning Darwin Party.*  Like Simon Conway Morris’s demiurge orchestra-conductor model (see Dec. 7 headline), Gaia is just not mindless enough.  Darwinists hate minds.  They want a blind, aimless, purposeless, impersonal, mechanistic process from eternity to eternity.  Even our minds are supposed to be chemical illusions (see Oct. 3 headline).  Despite Lovelock’s valiant performance, trying to portray Gaia as an act without an actor, he blows it by talking about “the Earth system” being elderly and deserving of our respect.  One does not respect mindless, purposeless, undirected processes.  Darwin Party members in the audience will have a cow when he delivers his soliloquy about his pet theory being an extension to Darwinism comparable to relativity being an extension to Newtonian mechanics.
    Well, Lovelock, you got your fifteen minutes on stage.  Gong.  Next.

---

* For fun reading, look at the nasty things Margulis (and other evolutionists who are not deemed naturalistic enough) have said against the Darwin Party, as quoted in Henry Morris’s December commentary, “Willingly Ignorant,” from ICR.  If you think the Big Science establishment is open to unorthodox views, wait’ll you read these seething quotes.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next dumb story.

The study of early art has been plagued by our desire to see this essentially human skill in a progressive evolutionary context: simple artistic expressions should lead to later, more sophisticated creations.  We imagine that the first artists worked with a small range of materials and techniques, and produced a limited range of representations of the world around them.  As new materials and new techniques were developed, we should see this pattern of evolution in the archaeological record.  Yet for many outlets of artistic expression — cave paintings, textiles, ceramics and musical instruments — the evidence increasingly refuses to fit.  Instead of a gradual evolution of skills, the first modern humans in Europe were in fact astonishingly precocious artists.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Microscopic examination suggests that they may have been reed-voiced instruments, like a modern oboe, and that the finger holes have been chamfered to increase the pneumatic efficiency of the finger seal: simple whistles they are not.  Such evidence of complexity is used to argue that these cannot be the first musical pipes, even though they are the oldest in the archaeological record.

The Victorian idea of progressive evolution has been a very persuasive metaphor for explaining change in the archaeological record, particularly over a time of biological change in the human species.  Yet the archaeological evidence is now forcing us to come up with new timescales for cultural change and innovation.  This is a challenge that makes the smallest finds of archaeology as important as the largest.

While Sinclair’s candor is laudable, it does not go far enough.  The evolutionary metaphor is beyond salvage.  The observations falsify evolution and instead support the creation paradigm, that man was endowed with intelligence and artistic skill from the beginning.  In the Biblical timeline, for instance, metallurgy, farming, ranching and musical instrument making were already advanced by the seventh generation from Adam (see Gen. 4:16-22).  After the flood and Babel, it is certainly plausible that technology took a huge setback, and as post-flood ice ages ensued, generations of humans dispersed into whatever habitats they could find, including caves.  For a Q&A list on creation anthropology, see Answers in Genesis.
    The fact that some human artifacts are found in caves does not mean the artists were primitive.  Some people like living in or visiting caves (even today).  Besides, it could be a selection effect, either that cave environments preserve artifacts better, or that archaeologists are more wont to explore caves than surface terrain.  The dating methods Sinclair trusts are flawed anyway, being built on evolutionary presuppositions, so his whole predicament is a prison in his own mind.  Our enlightened post-Victorian era must now wake up to the realization that progressive evolution was just a persuasive metaphor, and as scientists should know, metaphors bewitch you (see July 4 headline).
Next headline on: Early Man. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

Darwin was educated not as a biologist, but as a country vicar.  Although he may have read Hutton’s book, it is equally likely that Darwin read one of the standard religious works of his day (now perhaps the most ridiculed book in biology), William Paley’s Natural Theology (1803), which presents Paley’s proof of the existence of God, as well as of Divine creation.  (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

...the eye, the animal to which it belongs, every plant, indeed every organized body which we can see, are only so many out of the possible varieties and combinations of being which the lapse of infinite ages has brought into existence; that the present world is the relict of that variety; millions of other bodily forms and other species having perished, being by the defect of their constitution incapable of preservation, or of continuance by generation.²

Charlie, a plagiarist?  This was interesting, so I looked up Paley’s refutation in his once-honorable, classic treatise that Abler calls “now perhaps the most ridiculed book in biology.”  The venerable theologian offered three rebuttals to the principle now known as natural selection.  (1) His first might be characterized as a straw man argument today; Paley rhetorically asks that if all possible creatures had existed, why do we not see unicorns, centaurs, etc.  Darwinists might reply with their standard common-ancestry claim that natural selection would only build on patterns established early on, rather than from an infinite pool of possible forms.
    (2) The second argument is more interesting and still carries weight today.  It’s the argument from classification.  If nature could produce infinite gradations between forms, why do we find all living things grouped into nested hierarchies of taxa, Paley asks:

But, moreover, the division of organized substances into animals and vegetables, and the distribution and sub-distribution of each into genera and species, which distribution is not an arbitrary act of the mind, but is founded in the order which prevails in external nature, appear to me to contradict the supposition of the present world being the remains of an indefinite variety of existences; of a variety which rejects all plan.  The hypothesis [i.e., natural selection] teaches, that every possible variety of being hath, at one time or other, found its way into existence (by what cause or what manner is not said), and that those which were badly formed, perished: but how or why those which survived should be cast, into regular classes, the hypothesis does not explain; or rather the hypothesis is inconsistent with this phenomenon.  Ibid.,, p. 48.

In other words, why are their large gaps between major kinds?  The problem of gaps between living and extinct phyla was clearly understood long before Darwin.  For an elaboration of this “nested hierarchy” objection to common descent, read The Biotic Message by Walter Remine.
    (3) The third rebuttal is an argument from analogy with machines.  Paley says that no man seeing a variety of machines would think that, out of an assortment of all possible machines that might have arisen from a pool of metal, the remaining forms were “what were left from the accident, as best worth preserving....”  Paley sees no difference between this and inferring natural selection instead of design in living things.  Although this argument from analogy might have been rebuffed in the past, with the retort that living things are not like artificial machines, the discovery of molecular machines in the cell gives the point renewed force today (see Dec. 4 headline and embedded links in the commentary).  Biologists know that protein machines are selected from a near-infinite configuration space, being determined by the sequence of amino acids of which they are composed (see 09/06/2001 headline).  Yet we find these machines already functional in the most primitive life forms and highly conserved throughout the living world.  Natural selection cannot be invoked before the machines of replication existed.  It is time, therefore, to resurrect Paley’s third argument against natural selection and speak it into 21st century terms.
    So two out of three objections Paley raised to selection have not been satisfactorily refuted by Darwinists, without first assuming evolution to be true (circular reasoning).  It looks like Paley anticipated Darwin’s case and ably refuted it in advance.  So if Charlie cannot claim priority for the “discovery” of natural selection (according to popular misconception), maybe it is time to distribute the credit and blame where it is due.  Thanks, Dr. Abler, for enabling us to set the record straight.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

North Carolinians are justly proud of their famous sons, including Billy Graham, but this prayer must have stunned the crowd at this ostensibly secular celebration.  Mrs. Lotz pulled no punches.  There was no mealy-mouthed reference to some nonsectarian Force, but a distinct, unambiguous statement that Jesus Christ is Lord of creation and our only Savior.  The gospel message was clear and forceful.  No loud ovations were heard from the crowd at the Amen, and the next speaker was introduced without comment.  Such boldness is rare on the American scene today.  Listen to her prayer, if you can find it on replays, where it most likely will be secretly edited out.
    The Wright brothers, by the way, were sons of a minister in the United Brethren church, and as boys, professed faith in Christ.  They said their Christian upbringing was influential throughout their lives.  For their remarkable story, readers are encouraged to get a copy of the Mott Media Sowers Series biography by George Ludwig, They Gave Us Wings, for the family to read on this momentous centennial of human powered flight.  Here is also a short biography on the Answers in Genesis website.
    Speaking of creation, the Wright brothers got much of their technological insights from watching birds.  Admiring gulls and eagles hovering in the air, Orville and Wilbur carefully studied their perfect balance between the forces of lift, drag and gravity.
Next headline on: Birds. • Next headline on: The Bible.

You would think that those sorts of conditions would be pretty hostile to astrobiological theory.  But metaphysical naturalism may be older and more robust than we thought.  Do you guys have any vague conception of how complicated photosynthesis is?  And you want to push it back a billion years, making it magically emerge in brainless bacteria in the midst of a meteor terror war?
    Thank you, Roger, for your winning entry in Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week.
Next headline on: Origin of Life. • Next dumb story.

Models are playthings for theorists.  They may or may not correspond to reality.  Beware of popularizers who speak of models as facts.  Cosmological facts obey Dunlap’s Laws of Physics: (1) Fact is solidified opinion.  (2) Facts may weaken under extreme heat and pressure.  (3) Truth is elastic.
Next headline on: Cosmology.

Keep talking, Dr. Dawkins.  You make the case against atheism better than anyone.  While appealing to rationality and science, your case is built on ridicule, the either-or fallacy, loaded words, association and other tricks of miseducation and non-reason.  How can you attribute so much evil to religion, when we have just had Darwin’s century, and the worst mass murders in history built upon atheistic and Darwinistic beliefs?  We should title this story “The blind The Blind Watchmaker maker.”  Please tell us more about the evolution of transcendent wonder.  Sounds fascinating.
See also 04/23/2003 and 03/18/2002 headlines about Richard Dawkins.
Next dumb story.

The strength of the earth’s magnetic field is one of the longest-measured physical properties of our planet.  It shows a steady decline over the past 150 years.  There is much we still do not understand about planetary magnetic fields.  What causes it?  (The leading dynamo theories are beset with complexities that perplex the experts.)  How big did it get in the past?  (Earth still has the strongest field of any rocky planet, by a large factor.)  Will it reverse and go back up to its former strength?  If it did so in the past, how did life survive the periods when it was weakest?  How long does a reversal take?  There is much we do not know, but one thing is clear from the empirical data: in the present epoch, it is dropping at “an alarming rate” (see Nov 6, March 4, and 11/25/2002 headlines).  Those who believe such a dynamic property can be sustained for 4.6 billion years must add secondary assumptions and subplots to their stories.
Next headline on: Physics. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

In this life, there are few honors higher than being compared to Daniel, the faithful prophet who withstood the idols – and the lions – of his day without compromise.  Establishment scientists have been ruthless in their attacks on Johnson, but as John Perry cleverly writes, Johnson “continues to befriend the lions even as he declaws them intellectually.”  The Darwinists try to dismiss him as a non-scientist, but they cannot withstand the blows of his logic.  A law expert can be better qualified than a scientist to expose flawed arguments and focus on the basic questions of a case.  Perry’s excellent profile in World is highly recommended reading.  Congratulations to the “courtly combatant,” as Perry calls him, whose steadfast opposition to idolatry, never vituperative but eminently convincing – along with his influential leadership – makes him truly the leading edge of the wedge.
    Will we see Babylon fall in our lifetime?  If so, be prepared for Persia, too.
Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

Vitamin D is a steroid hormone that helps regulate calcium, an element vital not just for strong bones and teeth, but for nerves and the heart as well.  It’s found in very few foods except for salmon and other fatty fish.  Most vitamin D is made when ultraviolet B (UVB) light hits a precursor molecule in the skin.  As 25(OH)D, it then travels through the blood to the kidneys, which turn it into an active metabolite that regulates calcium levels.  Other tissues make this metabolite locally to maintain cell health.

Isn’t it interesting that a precursor protein is just sitting there in the skin waiting for the right wavelength of light from the right kind of star.  Almost makes you think God wanted us to get out of the house once in awhile and explore His awesome creations.  Visit our Photo Gallery for some sources of heavenly sunshine.
Next headline on: Health.

This would be funny if they spent their own money.  For more on evolutionary confusion about mammal origins, see the Dec. 2 headline and the big National Geographic story festival in the March 18 headline.  MSNBC News, as usual, is all agog at this wonderful new discovery and what it tells us about evolution.
    Meanwhile, the Europeans are all flustered trying to drum up interest to join the “Assembling the Tree of Life” bandwagon (see 10/30/2002 headline).  A letter to the editor in the same issue of Science by two UK scientists moans that Europe doesn’t seem to see the connection between evolutionary studies and practical benefits:

Perhaps the best explanation is that AToL is still seen to be about taxonomy, a domain that urgently needs rebranding if it wants to attract funds for big programs such as the Genome Project.   Only when the linkage of the tree of life to conservation, genomics, and DNA-based identification for medicine and ecology is made obvious will the project be put in its proper perspective.  Taxonomic study is fundamental to all areas of science, but as demonstrated by the projects funded by the NSF program, it is only a starting point.  A great deal more needs to be done to move modern evolutionary science to the heart of society’s efforts to understand the living world and make its utilization sustainable and effective.”  (Emphasis added.)

Notice how they conflate evolutionary study with taxonomy.  Taxonomy is good.  Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, was a creationist.  Evolutionists keep trying to sneak Darwinist religion into “all areas of science” and “utilization” when, in fact, it is useless.
Next headline on: Mammals. • Next headline on: Fossils.

As if to say, Sorry you didn’t get the Olympic gold; here’s a foil-covered chocolate medallion from your friends.  Pearson repeats the common media compromise myth that “though Damadian’s concept was important,” it was the other guys’ work that was essential to MRI.  Will the revisionists succeed in burying the facts?  Only if we let them.  See also the Dec. 3 and Oct. 10 headlines, and the historical documentation on MRI at Fonar Corporation.  Damadian has remarked that in the old days, when he had to fight international corporations from stealing his patent and convince reporters of the priority of his discovery, he was at the mercy of biased reporters.  Now at least he can use the World Wide Web to get the truth out.
Next headline on: Politics.

Antibodies not only protect us from infection, they have been exploited for years in the laboratory — in diagnostic tests, to purify proteins and as the workhorses of cell biology to detect, locate and identify cellular proteins.  Designed by evolution to recognize and bind virtually any molecule that could exist, what more could we ask of them?  Quite a lot, it seems.  To meet the demands of today’s researchers and drug developers, antibodies are being cut down to size, tweaked into new shapes, and manufactured in entirely new ways.

The authors praise the technology of the antibody system, which presumably arose by chance, then say humans, using intelligent design, are making them even better.  Go figure.  Should this quote get the prize, or the one from the end of the entry on Monday? (see Dec. 8 headline).
    Darwinists invariably assume evolution rather than demonstrate it.  They are so blind to their own circular reasoning that to even call them on it produces a quizzical look.  “Designed by evolution,” antibodies protect, detect, and adapt to any molecule that could exist.  What’s so strange about that?
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next dumb story.

OK, OK, we won’t press the point.
Next headline on: Mars. • Next dumb story.

Now, wait a minute.  Humans evolved, too, right?  How can anything be “undesirable” in evolutionary terms?  And we thought that predation was a good thing and made the prey stronger.  Maybe the large horns are a burden and the hunters are improving the sheep’s fitness.  Who are we, as evolved brethren of algae and frogs and bats, to say that bigger sheep are desirable?  That’s speciesism.  If hunters evolved, then everything will work out in the end, and if the sheep go extinct, well, lots of things have gone extinct.
    Don’t believe a word of this.  Just be consistent, that’s the point.  Actually, even 30 years is nowhere long enough, and Alberta nowhere near a big enough region, to make any claims whatsoever about evolution.  Run the whole experiment for a million years over all of North America and maybe we’ll give you a second chance to tell your story.
Next headline on: Mammals. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Well, Duh  Dept.   12/08/2003
News flash from the University of Warwick!  A psychologist has figured out that the “spiritual meaning of Christmas brings more happiness than materialism.”  The article headline begins, “Religious people are happier than those without spirituality in their life, says psychologist Dr. Stephen Joseph from the University of Warwick, and those who celebrate the original, Christian, meaning of Christmas are, on the whole, happier than those who primarily celebrate the festive season with consumer gifts.”

Thank you, Dr. Joseph, for telling us this profound scientific discovery.  Now tell the organizers of the Darwin Party Holiday Party, who really have nothing left but materialism (in both senses of the word).  Maybe they can start on the road to recovery by ripping off the Darwin additions to the fish symbol, and decorating their halls with Christmas trees instead of phylogenetic trees.
    Speaking of the “holiday party” concept as a symbol of the de-Christianizing of Christmas rampant in our day, here’s a campaign that prominent Jewish spokesperson Dennis Prager suggests: get your company to rename its “holiday party” back to “Christmas party” like it used to be.  (Yes, that’s right; a Jew supports Christmas parties.)  Now you can add another good reason to Prager’s invincible logic: it’s for your co-workers’ psychological health.
Next headline on: The Bible.

At least this article doesn’t attribute the “intricate design” to evolution.  Silence is golden.  That’s a form of progress.
Next headline on: Bugs and Crawlers.

Well, good luck with this model.  Even with the overtime, sooner or later you’ve got to end the game.  Much of the dust gets swept into the planet by gas drag, and those particles are not coming back.  Other dust is knocked out of the ring plane and out of orbit entirely by the impact of incoming micrometeoroids (which may be frequent, as shown by the near-continual phenomena of the spokes).  It is clear that much of the lost material is never coming back.  Rings are not forever.
    Cassini’s high approach over the ring plane next July 1 should provide some spectacular new data that may either support or weaken the new computer models.  Until then, this hypothesis appears to be little more than ad hoc fudging to get away from “philosophically unappealing” observations.
Next headline on: Solar System. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

This might be rephrased as an old-fashioned bad-news, good-news joke.
Bad news: Mars has no protective magnetic field, so is bombarded by deadly radiation.  If you go, you would be at high risk of cancer, cataracts, nervous system damage, and other unknown health problems.
Good news: You could live underground.
Next headline on: Mars.

Wow.  All this in a tiny fly!  Wrapping up this amazing journey into miniaturized ultrasophisticated engineering, Dickinson puts his work into perspective:

In the end, it’s just a fly.  Is such an insignificant organism really worth all this effort?  The natural world is filled with complex things, like immune cells, the human brain, and ecosystems.  Although we’re made great progress in deconstructing life into its constituent parts such as genes and proteins, we have a ways to go before we have a deeper understanding of how elemental components function collectively to create rich behavior.  The integrative approach that we are using to study fly flight is an attempt to move beyond reductionism and gain a formal understanding of the workings of a complex entity.  The fly seems a reasonable place to start, and if successful, I hope such work will stimulate similar attempts throughout biology.  The lessons learned along the way may provide useful insight for engineers and biologists alike.  Even if you don’t buy such grand visions, I hope you will at least think before you swat.

Thank you, Dr. Dickinson, for a wonderful glimpse into one of nature’s miniature engineering marvels.  We feel like we were sitting behind you on the fly’s back, soaring on a thrill ride, like your first picture humorously illustrates.  Thank you, also for reminding us that the world is filled with wonders like this, from bacteria to blue whales.  Wow.  Who would have suspected such wonders exist in a tiny fly?  Certainly not Charles Darwin.  Which reminds us, we were about to award you Story of the Month for this outstanding article, but you included this one statement which acts like the proverbial fly in the soup: “The information coming from the haltere, a hindwing modified by evolution and resembling a very small chicken drumstick, is particularly important because it is essential in stabilizing reflexes.”  Since even the FDA tolerates a certain threshold of vermin residue in food, we can overlook this one tiny slip in an otherwise excellent piece of design-based scientific research and writing.
Next headline on: Bugs and Crawling Things. • Next amazing story.

The Charlie parley is getting snarly.  Join the club, Simon.  Sit here with Henry, the other Dr. Morris, and let him nurse your wounds.  I hope this teaches you a lesson.  The evolutionary science establishment has no tolerance for compromise.  You might as well become a young-earth creationist and you would get more respect.  As it is, you are acting like the proverbial pacifist wearing the Union jacket and the Confederate trousers.  You’re getting blasted from both sides.  At least the creationists try to be civil and fight like gentlemen.
    To his credit, Irwin admits to the problems of convergence and complexity.  He can mildly tolerate a position of ignorance, that our lack of understanding of convergence and anthropic parameters might mean we cannot understand the world and have to leave it at this: “We’re here because we’re here.”  (This could also mean, “We’re here because we’re not all there.”)  But even this concession is consistent with pure atheism.  What is not tolerable is any hint of purpose or direction to the evolutionary process.  Utter a peep on that and you are a “know-nothing” at best, and “the enemy” that must be destroyed.
    Eugenie Scott, director of the NCSE (the “keep creation out of the schools” lobby group), has stressed in her public debates with Phillip Johnson and other intelligent-design or creationist spokesmen that evolutionists are not at all hostile to religion.  If you want to believe there is meaning and purpose to life, that is fine and wonderful.  Science has no problem with religious faith.  Why, even many evolutionists have their own religious beliefs, which is OK on their own time (just not in the science lab).  She has been so emphatic on this point, she makes it seem like her opposition just doesn’t understand how nice evolutionists really are.  In debate at least, she narrows her point to the “rules of science,” argument, that one must only study natural causes when doing science (methodological naturalism).  Though there may be atheists who are evolutionists, she denies that metaphysical naturalism is a necessary part of Darwinian theory.
    If that were true, why is that any time anyone, even a convinced evolutionist like Simon Conway Morris, tries to present even the slightest hint of design or purpose, he gets blasted?  Look what they did to William Dembski (see 07/11/2002 headline), whose book No Free Lunch used only scientific and mathematical arguments to support the validity of design detection.  Phillip Johnson has been one of the key debaters to see through the fraud of Scott’s false dichotomy of methodological vs. metaphysical naturalism.  He shows that there is no difference in practice, because if you exclude intelligent causes from the outset, what is there for a Designer to do?  If a Designer is not allowed to influence natural causes in any real sense, how can he be gainfully employed?  Theistic evolutionists are kidding themselves.  The Darwinists do not want God even to start the big bang, let alone direct anything, at any time, in any way.  Johnson has also exposed the doubletalk of Darwinists who pretend that evolutionism has no impact on religious belief (see commentary from 01/14/2002 headline).
    The only way you can satisfy the Darwin Party is to agree 100% with metaphysical naturalism: that nature is all there is, and that humans are the product of blind, purposeless forces that did not have them in mind.  Can you name any book review in a science journal that has an ounce of toleration for anything other than 100% conformity to the reigning philosophy of pure atheism?  Astronomer Owen Gingerich gets to speak his mind on occasion (see Feb. 12 headline), but usually only when talking about history, when people didn’t know better.  Try to find a biologist in a science journal admitting to any kind of purpose or intelligence behind the process of evolution, and it will be a long search.  Eugenie Scott is sending those who believe her disclaimer on a snipe hunt just to get them out of the way.
    If nothing else, this kind of article should reveal the real agenda of the Darwin Party.  It’s not about science.  It’s about allegiance.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

Over the past half-billion years, evolution has dished up an almost endless variety of novelties: lungs, legs, eyes, wings, scales, feathers, fur.  So when paleontologists find a creature that doesn’t change, they take note.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

What’s most amazing, ostracode experts say, is how eerily similar the soft-tissue anatomy is to that of modern relatives.  “I was flabbergasted,” says Koen Martens, a zoologist at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 

Some ostracode specialists are stunned.  “This is a demonstration of unbelievable stability,” says Tom Cronin of the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia.  Whereas ostracodes diversified into some 33,000 living and extinct species, “these guys have just been plodding along totally unfazed.”

Finding a modern cylindroleberid in the Silurian clashes with molecular data, which suggest that the group and related families originated relatively recently, says evolutionary biologist Todd Oakley of the University of California, Santa Barbara.  There’s no conflict for zoologist Anne Cohen, a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, who thinks Colymbosathon actually belongs to a long-extinct family.  In any case, the new fossil indicates that a basic ostracode body plan was already present in the Silurian.  It could also help sort out evolutionary relationships of fossil ostracodes.

This is just one more of many remarkable, astounding, flabbergasting examples of living fossils.  “Unbelievable stability” is not a prediction of Darwinism.  The Darwinian world is supposed to be a fluid world, filled with diversification, radiation, and innovation.  During the imaginary 425 million years, the continents moved all over the world, animals crawled onto the land and became geckos and crocodiles and birds and caribou.  Mountains rose and valleys sank, and glaciers repeatedly advanced and retreated over much of the planet.  Some animals moved back into the oceans and became whales, porpoises, manatees and sea lions in just a small fraction of this much time, and humans emerged from grunting chimpanzees, invented language and abstract thought, and conquered space.  Is it reasonable to assume that in this slow whirlwind of continuous dynamical change, these ostracodes just reproduced themselves over and over millions of times without any change whatsoever?
    Darwinists are caught in a crossfire of antagonistic evidence.  Only a well-armored Darwinist could be excited about incoming bombshells like this.  Only by wearing Kevlar-lined lead helmets around their brains can they keep the bullets from penetrating and the insides from exploding.
Next headline on: Fossils. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

Together these findings suggested how melanosomes might move on actin filaments and showed that this type of motility is required for the even distribution of melanosomes within the cell.  From these main observations, it became clear that, during aggregation, a cytoplasmic dynein motor carries melanosomes on the radially arranged microtubules towards the cell center (Figure 1B), while during dispersion a kinesin transports the granules to the periphery (Figure 1C), where they engage via a myosin V molecule with short actin filaments to be distributed further (Figure 1D).  This switching of transport systems is a kind of miniature edition of modern urban traffic, where millions of workers leave the city centers in the evening on trains and board their cars at park-and-ride stations to complete their daily journey within the green peripheral belt.  (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Although the work of Rodionov et al. has moved the field a large step further, there are obviously several issues that remain to be investigated.  Exciting new findings addressing the coupling of motor molecules to the melanosome surface in other experimental animals open the possibility to speculate how the motors may talk to each other on a molecular level.  At least for Xenopus there is now clear evidence that both dynein and kinesin couple to melanosomes via the dynactin complex.  Moreover, both motors compete for the same protein component; this could allow one motor to gain access to the microtubule while the other is prevented from engaging successfully.

Maniak uses the word motor 22 times in his article, which is replete with other urban metaphors: transport system (see 09/26/2002 headline), etc.  Moreover, there is no mention of evolution, Darwin, or of any mechanism that might explain how this elaborate, coordinated, interconnected system could have originated.  Surprised?
    Every muscle move you make, every breath you take, every beat of your heart, and every one of your senses are dependent on molecular machines.  The study of biological motors and molecular machines is the “biology of the future” that Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences and editor of Molecular Biology of the Cell has stated more than once (see 01/09/2002 headline).  It was also a biology the likes of which Charles Darwin and his followers could not have imagined.  Had Darwin seen into the future at what Year 2003 biologists would be detecting in life’s fundamental unit, the cell, and even in the simplest micro-organisms, he well could have developed cold shudders (see 01/29/2002 headline) severe enough to have frozen his evolutionary speculations to death.
Next headline on: The Cell. • Next amazing story.

Other anomalies are calling this popular speculation into question (see June 2 headline, for instance).  If this theory for dinosaur extinction goes, scientists will be back at square one.  Explaining why certain species disappeared suddenly while others did just fine is no easy task, especially when you can’t rent the video to see what really happened.
Next headline on: Geology. • Next headline on: Dinosaurs.

During most of the Cenozoic era, from the Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary 65 million years ago until roughly 24 million years ago, Afro-Arabia was an island continent drifting steadily northwards towards Eurasia.  Fossil mammals documenting this period are scarce and belong almost exclusively to endemic forms restricted to Afro-Arabia, such as proboscideans, hyraxes and elephant-shrews.  But by around 24 million years ago, a permanent land bridge had formed between the two landmasses.  A burst of faunal interchange followed: many Eurasian mammals, such as rhinos and ruminants, dispersed into Africa, and some Afro-Arabian mammals, such as elephants, migrated in the opposite direction.  (Emphasis added in all quotations.)

Among the proboscideans recorded are primitive forms such as Palaeomastodon and Phiomia (also known from older deposits in Egypt).  But there are also representatives of modern families, for example taxa such as Gomphotherium, the earliest proboscidean on the branch leading to extant elephants.  Another surprise is the oldest occurrence of deinotheres, peculiar proboscideans with downward-curved lower tusks, which were previously recorded only from rocks younger than 24 million years old.  The new species of deinothere displays molars that are more ‘bunodont’ in form (that is, made of several distinct cusplets arranged in transverse crests) than its descendant, whose molars display plain transverse crests.  This discovery seems to rule out the possibility that deinotheres are derived from an ancestor bearing plain, transverse-crested molars, as was formerly supposed, and provides new evidence about proboscidean evolution.

Finally, the discoveries of Kappelman et al. highlight two other palaeobiological issues.  First, on northern continents glaciation caused a significant cooling around 33 million years ago, which resulted in numerous extinctions among mammalian communities.  From these new data, however, it seems that large Afro-Arabian herbivores were not affected, either at that time or later, implying that the climatic changes were less severe on southern continents.  Second, the fossil record of the Afro-Arabian continent is not only scanty but also largely concentrated on the northern edge.  This has led to the proposal that other groups of mammals existed in Afro-Arabia during its period of isolation, but that they were restricted to more southern latitudes.  However, the Chilga mammal community is rather like that found at Fayum in Egypt, which is some five million years older, providing hints that there was little provinciality among Afro-Arabian mammals at that time.  As yet, though, we have unveiled only a few of the secrets of mammal evolution on the Afro-Arabian continent.  Many more surprising discoveries are to be expected.

Our policy before commenting on a paper is to approach it with an open mind as much as possible, and give the author the benefit of the doubt.  We give the author or authors their day in court, and begin with the premise innocent till proven guilty.  But we also want to see hard data that support any conclusions, and the conclusions must survive the Baloney Detector to be granted any credibility or respect.  Bluffing is a big turn-off.
    With that in mind, not much survived in this paper.  Jaeger sounds very confident that evolutionists are very well on the way to understanding mammal evolution; it’s just a matter of time, cleaning up a few remaining puzzles.  His position is typical of evolutionists.  The story only makes sense to someone already convinced evolution is true.  The puzzles outnumber the confirmations, but since non-evolutionary alternatives are disallowed from the outset, no amount of negative data can ever falsify their claim that all animals have bacteria ancestors.
    How Jaeger can keep from biting his fingernails at the sheer number of puzzles is the real puzzle.  With your critical, open-minded eye, consider his confessions of these non-evolutionary observations:

The fossil record is scanty.

Known fossils are restricted to isolated locales on the northern periphery of Africa.

“Modern” representatives are mixed in with alleged “primitive” specimens, even though the Afrotheria were supposedly isolated from Europe and Asia for millions of years and had plenty of time and space to evolve all they wanted.

The teeth of the deinotheres evolved from complex to simple, not the other way around.

Some critters managed to get to Africa, while others remained isolated.  Was there some kind of discriminatory ferry system operating?

After the land bridge formed, there were winners and losers, but no way to predict according to evolutionary theory who would win or lose.

A long global ice age seemed to have no effect on the Afrotheria.

There was little provinciality among African mammals (i.e., geographic isolation; the animals were free to roam widely), yet fossils are rare in the interior.
    Anyone see evolution here?  From just a few bones, at a few locations on the northern edge of the huge continent of Africa, Jaeger proceeds to weave a magical mystery tale out of thin air (and hot, spinning air at that).  He daydreams about floating continents, selective weather, selective migrations, selective fossilizations, selective winners and losers, and land bridges that both increase and decrease the evolutionary adaptations of immigrants.  Almost every observation is counter to what was previously believed.  Nowhere does the reader see any hard evidence of transitional forms.  The only solid evidence points to are dead things; remnants of advanced, complex, large, healthy, well-adapted mammals.  The dates are part of the myth; they are made up, based on methods that depend for their validity on evolutionary assumptions and wild extrapolations into the unobservable past.
    In a courtroom, the attorneys have the opportunity to give an opening statement.  These are usually overconfident claims that the facts of the case are going to prove their side.  But then, witnesses have to submit to cross-examination on matters of fact, and the attorneys are prevented from spin doctoring, asking leading questions, or going beyond the evidence.  Unfortunately, the news media often take the opening statement of the Darwinist lawyer at face value and parrot it uncritically to their readers.  Here at Creation-Evolution Headlines, we feel our readers deserve to watch a fair trial.  Jaeger is charged with five counts: doctoring evidence, manufacturing just-so stories, refusing to consider nonevolutionary alternatives, making inferences beyond what scientific caution would allow, and assuming what needs to be proved.  We have swept away the storytelling elements and stared at the evidence, and have reached our conclusion.  Guilty, your honor.
    For more examples of evolutionary storytelling contrary to hard evidence, see these other recent headlines on supposed mammal evolution: 12/12/03 on marsupials, 11/17/03 on Smithsonian’s Mammal Hall, 10/30/03 on cave packrats, 10/13/03 on monkey color vision, 07/16/03 on development, 11/22/02 on dogs, 11/01/03 on placentas, 06/04/02 on tooth evolution, and especially 03/18/03, National Geographic’s embarrassing April 2003 cover story on “the rise of mammals,” and the PNAS hall of shame from 05/28/02.  For that matter, how about the next headline below?
Next headline on: Mammals. • Next headline on: Fossils. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

We have discovered that a preaxial form of polydactyly, in which extra digits are positioned anterior to the first digit, has unexpectedly re-emerged in a marine reptile from the Early Triassic period about 242 million years ago — the overall morphology of both the manus and pes closely resemble those of the earliest tetrapods [sic].  Until now, no post-Devonian tetrapod has been found with a comparative type of polydactyly, so the new amniote provides a striking example of convergent evolution.   (Emphasis added.)

Is there nothing in the world that will shake up a Darwinist enough to get him to question his assumptions?  We are told to believe that millions of years ago, the first four-legged creatures had more toes than we do (an independent, honest observer might suppose that to be an example of devolution, not evolution).  Then 112 million years go by, with all the animals happily swimming and crawling with five digits per foot, and all of a sudden, a marine reptile, by the miraculous process known as “convergent evolution” emerges with extra toes again.  Evolution is so wonderful.  It can explain anything.
    How do they know they didn’t just find the reptile version of the giant of Gath?
Next headline on: Fossils. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Studies on islands have revealed many of the fundamental mechanisms of evolution, particularly the paramount influence of geographical isolation to diversification.  Here, we add an important caveat to these studies, showing that prevailing ocean currents may influence gene flow and adaptive divergence in a terrestrial vertebrate.  The adaptive radiation of anoles in the Caribbean is thought to have arisen by ecologically based natural selection related to habitat use.  However, the level of gene flow between populations will impose an upper limit on the ability of natural selection to drive adaptive divergence.  We have provided evidence that weather-related abiotic phenomena might have important effects on the evolution and adaptive radiation of lizard populations.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

You better believe it might have important effects on evolution.  It stops it.
    First of all, notice that this is another tale about microevolution, so it doesn’t discriminate between creationists and evolutionists.  But is there anything in this story that props up Charlie?  Lizard populations in the Bahamas and surrounding islands were supposed to be a textbook case for adaptive radiation theory, and now look.  They found that the islands were rapidly repopulated – within months – after Hurricane Floyd swept through, with the same species that existed before.  But then, how can they rule out the possibility that some survived the storm?  Did they check under every rock and in the tops of every tree?  This looks like a bad science paper every way you cut it.  That’s why we call evolutionists lazy, and accuse them of appearing to do science while vacationing in the Bahamas.
    Adaptive radiation is only supposed to work if the gene pool gets cut off from the surroundings.  They might be able to cling to that hope, but one of their best examples has just suffered “an important caveat” which, being interpreted, means, “Yeah, BUT...”  It’s the unwelcome lab assistant tapping the evolutionist lecturer on the arm during his praise-for-Darwin speech, whispering in his ear, “Professor, we found a flaw in your data....”  He stumbles for a moment, but continues unabated, “Moreover, ladies and gentlemen, evolution is a fact, supported by countless examples of thorough scientific research.”
Next headline on: Crawlers, Bugs, Lizards Etc.. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Raymond Damadian’s public dispute (see “Physician launches public protest over medical Nobel” Nature 425, 648; 2003) should make us ask whether science is best served by a culture obsessed with rankings and winning prizes.  The history of the Nobel Prize makes it clear that the medallion is etched with human frailties.

Damadian’s campaign to have a share in the prize for his work on developing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a product of a scientific culture based on competition for personal and institutional aggrandizement.  Whatever Alfred Nobel might have meant when he set up prizes for those whose work conferred “the greatest benefit on mankind”, he did not have in mind the promotion of narrow professional interests, nor institutional and national boosterism.

Be that as it may, Damadian knew that in our culture, the Nobel Prize constitutes a quasi-official roster of the greatest discoverers in science.  Textbook writers, historians, and teachers are wont to take the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine as the authoritative statement on who discovered MRI.  For a man whose entire adult life has been consumed with medical MRI, and whose initial discovery in the lab made it all possible, it was understandable for him to try to head off at the pass the revisionism he sees coming.  We can all pitch in by writing letters, as one of our readers did, to papers and magazines that forget the facts.  He told Science News,

“Nobel prizes go to scientists harnessing odd phenomena” (SN: 10/11/03, p. 229: http://www.sciencenews.org/20031011/fob5.asp) didn’t include even a hint about the controversy about the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  Many people believe that Raymond Damadian should have gotten at least a share in the prize.  Damadian saw and demonstrated the potential for using MRI as a medical-scanning technique when others found the idea laughable.

    Friedman does not excuse or endorse Damadian’s media campaign, but rightly points out that we need to get our attention off prizes.  Not every great athlete wins Olympic gold, nor every great author a Pulitzer.  In science, especially, prizes should not be the metric for esteem.  We don’t remember Newton for awards won, or Kelvin for honorary doctorates.  We remember them for what they accomplished: uncovering nature’s laws.  If scientists become motivated to win prizes instead of explore the workings of nature, we will all suffer.
    We can begin by individually paying less attention to prizes.  I have learned that a PhD still needs to earn my respect, not claim it by pointing to the numbers of letters after his name.  After all, do we not regularly read of PhDs making the most ridiculous statements right here in these pages?  Don’t tell me how many college classes you took and how many plaques you have on your wall (maybe your dad had more money to send you to an ivy-league school); show me by your deeds and the wisdom of your words that you deserve my respect.  Some PhDs are clueless; some unlettered men are peerless.  (Faraday and Joule come to mind.)  If you have a degree, consider it a ticket to do great things, not a scepter to make people bow down to you, or a laurel to let wither on the shelf.
    The other two winners of this year’s prize may get plaques on their walls, and some dough, but those are quickly forgotten.  If we let achievement measure greatness, then Damadian’s prize will also be mounted where it belongs.  It will be inscribed every day in detailed anatomical images, posted on hospital walls around the world, that will guide surgeons to accurately diagnose and operate on their patients.  Because of this near-magical technology he invented, that can see below the skin without a knife, his prize will be written in smiling faces of millions whose lives have been spared.  That’s a prize that’s priceless.
For background on the Damadian controversy, see the Oct. 10 headline.
Next headline on: Politics and Ethics.

Observation: tracks of various sizes moving in one direction.  Conclusion: this was a loving family of dinosaurs, with loyal children gently following their tender mother up the beach.  Are such stories justified by the evidence?  Why not try my version: “Run, kids!  The water’s rising!”
Next headline on: Dinosaurs. • Next headline on: Fossils. • Next dumb story.

Try not to get too excited, astronomers.  There is not much data to go on.  The articles are talking 95% model, 5% data.  This little clump is not going to save your theories (see 05/30/2003 headline).  EurekAlert exclaims that Vega has “a planetary system around it which is more like our own Solar System than any other so far discovered.”  Hold your horses.  Vega is not the kind of star you would want to live around unless you like getting cooked well done.  There is a need in modern science for judicious restraint.  Scientists need to learn to subdue the news reporters who are watering at the mouth for juicy manna from the gods.  Tell them if they went to Vega’s clump they would make a fine burnt offering.
Next headline on: Stars. • Next headline on: Solar System.