“If we have learned anything at all in a century and a half of evolutionary biology, it is that facile generalizations are dangerous.  The evolutionary process finds a way to create exceptions to every model we propose.”
Austin L. Hughes, from the June 20 entry.

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Briefly Noted   08/31/2005    

• Human Body – You Smell Like a Dog:  Bloodhounds, we know, are good at telling the direction of a scent, but it turns out that humans have that ability, too.  Researchers at UC Berkeley did experiments with human subjects to see if they could tell which direction a scent came from.  Functional MRI (fMRI) was used to monitor their brain activity.  The subjects were able to tell which nostril found the scent, especially when they sniffed.  This means that the brain can judge time of arrival – as with hearing – to sense the direction of a source.  With practice, the researchers believe, we could get pretty good at it.  Source: LiveScience.com.
• Ethics – Most Science Papers Are Wrong:  There is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true, warns a researcher.  Personal biases, wish fulfillment, bad sampling, poor technique, conflict of interest and other biases combine to make most research findings false.  Source: New Scientist.  But how do we know that conclusion is true?
• Origin of Life – Light May Favor Left Hands:  Radiation from space might preferentially destroy one form of chiral molecules like amino acids, say researchers.  If amino acids were ferried to the early earth on icy dust, this may have favored one hand over the other.  But the experiments with circularly polarized light on one amino acid – leucine – produced an excess of only 2.6% – far less than the 100% purity required for life (see online book).  Source: New Scientist.
• Theology – Catholic Statement Worries Darwinists:  A letter from four Austrian scientists to Science Aug. 26 expressed dismay that a Viennese Cardinal said, “evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense is not true” and that there is “overwhelming evidence for design in biology.”  They called this a political move toward dogmatism and fundamentalism reminiscent of the Galileo affair.
• Early Man – Another Dmanisi Skull:  Another skull has been found in the republic of Georgia near Tblisi.  This one was in the best condition of the other five that had been found earlier.  The bones, a “million years older than any widely accepted pre-human remains in Europe, have provided additional evidence that Homo erectus left Africa a half-million years or more earlier than scientists had previously thought.”  That’s a lot of time for this human group to have done more than scratch, wouldn’t one think?  Source: LiveScience.com.
• Amazing Birds – Chickens Have Magnetic Compass:  Chickens are not so dumb; they have magnetic radar.  Two articles on EurekAlert (EurekAlert 1, EurekAlert 2) about experiments on birds with magnets and light suggest that “birds’ orientation abilities may be more complex than previously thought and that birds may be able to interpret magnetic signals by more than one mechanism.”  See also Current Biology Volume 15, Issue 16, 23 August 2005, Pages R620-R621.
• Amazing Bugs – Beetles Inspire Nanotechnology:  A Cornell scientist, intrigued by how beetles could adhere to leaves when threatened, decided to imitate them.  The beetles are able to take advantage of surface tension by exuding “120,000 droplets of secreted oil, each making a bridgelike contact between the beetle’s feet and the leaf.”  Each droplet is just a few microns wide, the report on Cornell University says, but in concert, they act like two wet pieces of paper sticking together.  A beetle can cling to a palm leaf with “adhesive strengths equal to a hundred times its own body weight – the human equivalent of carrying seven cars.”  Researchers are using the principle to create small, fast transistor switches.
• Cell Biology – Multi-Talented Telomerase:  Telomerase, the enzyme that keep DNA tips (telomeres) from unraveling, apparently does more than control the aging of a cell.  Science Now reports that it also regulates stem cells and spurs cell growth.  It can even grow hair on mice.
• Darwin – What Henslow Taught Darwin:  John S. Henslow, a “kindly Professor” at Cambridge and a creationist, taught Darwin how to collect plant specimens carefully and identify varieties within a species.  Henslow was the one who recommended Darwin to be naturalist on the HMS Beagle.  Four writers in Nature (436, 643-645, 4 August 2005, doi: 10.1038/436643a) believe that Darwin took the lessons he learned from Henslow with him on the voyage, and rather than use his data on varieties for demonstrating the stability of species, as Henslow did, began to entertain ideas of species transformation.

Next headline on:  Human Body • Politics and Ethics • Origin of Life • Bible and Theology • Early Man • Birds • Terrestrial Zoology • Cell Biology • Darwin • Amazing Stories

• Connect the Dots:  Having just read Richard Weikart’s From Darwin to Hitler (02/03/2005), Chuck Colson on BreakPoint drew parallels to the Terry Schiavo incident.
• The Skill of Skell:  Dr. Philip S. Skell again showed the power of a cogent editorial as he asked “Why Do We Invoke Darwin?” in The Scientist.  He claimed that Darwinian evolution is essentially useless as a heuristic in experimental biology.  The subscription-only article has been reprinted by Discovery Institute.
• Sports ID:  Sally Jenkins, sports writer in the Washington Post, gave surprisingly good press to ID.  Her point is not that ID is good science, but a little philosophical adventurism can be helpful.  She seems to have a point here and there, but mostly engages in name-dropping and complaining that the human body isn’t perfect.  Rob Crowther at Evolution News liked it.  He thought she hit a home run – at least for getting the definition of ID straight. 
• Larsony:  Edward J. Larson, professor of science history (U of Georgia), told the LA Times what he thought the country needs to do about ID: not replace Darwinism, which he feels has been useful to science, but use it as a teachable moment: “good biology teachers could use issues raised by the intelligent design movement to help their classes better understand Darwinism.”  Larson delivered the lectures “The Theory of Evolution: A History of Controversy” in 2002 for The Teaching Company Great Courses Series.  He recognized then and now that most people do not accept doctrinaire evolution and that their values need to be taken into consideration by scientists and educators.  Nevertheless, he agrees with the scientific establishment that science must operate by methodological naturalism.  Tom Magnuson at Access Research Network considers Larson a brilliant man with blinders on.
• [A]theistic Science:  Cornelia Dean in the New York Times wrote about varying views on God among scientists, focusing on the theistic-evolution views of Dr. Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project.
• Highlander Games:  No Bobby Burns is he; guest columnist for The Scotsman, Robin Dunbar, called ID a “dangerous folly” and let President Bush have a piece of his mind.

When the rhetoric flies, exercise sense, not sensationalism.  Some get it right, some have no context.  This debate has deep roots in history.  Perpetuating buzzwords or labels is not going to make the debate over naturalism vs. design disappear.  Caution: read news articles and editorials on this issue only with Baloney Detector engaged and in good working order – but do read.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Intelligent Design

Scientists love a good puzzle, and being surprised is fun; we can all share the excitement of a new and baffling phenomenon.  But what none of them seems to be asking is the obvious question: how could this moon be anywhere near 4.6 billion years old?  Look at the size of those canyons – 80 miles wide and 50 miles apart – they speak of large-scale processes at work, not just minor eruptions.  This revelation is just the latest in a long string of discoveries that challenge the consensus view of the age of the solar system.  For all the flash and color of the model diagrams, New Scientist says that tidal heating and internal radioactivity are not anywhere near sufficient to drive the activity.  Why not consider the possibility that Enceladus – as well as the solar system that contains it – is young.
    Don’t miss the zoom-in movie; it is really cool.  It puts the imaging capabilities of Cassini into perspective.  The color mosaic is also a beautiful sight.  Here are the tiger stripes up close.  For a complete catalog of Enceladus images, go to Cassini multimedia page and select “Enceladus.”  The Planetary Photojournal is the NASA repository for all solar system images.  Simply click on Saturn, then on Enceladus.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Physics • Dating Methods

• Poll:  A new Pew Research Poll reported on MSNBC News found that 64% of Americans want creationism taught alongside evolutionism, and 38% favor teaching creation only.  For details see the Pew Research press release which includes results on many other questions about religion, politics and education.
• California:  An AP story published by ABC News says that Christian schools are suing the University of California system for not accepting their students.  The Association of Christian Schools International says that the UC is discriminating against high school students who used textbooks critical of Darwinism.  Colin Sharkey at Campus Magazine calls this a political, not scientific move by UC.  Meanwhile, UCLA is seeking to hire a professional evolutionist; does such a person publish or perish, or evolve or perish?
• Pennsylvania:  The battle over evolution is still raging in Dover, according to USA Today.
• South Carolina:  State senator Mike Fair wants South Carolina students to hear the full range of scientific theories of origins, including intelligent design, according to Insight Magazine and Agape Press.
• Australia:  LifeSite reports that a federal minister of education down under told reporters that “ID would have a place with Darwinism should parents or schools be interested.”  According to the headline, opponents are furious.  The article refers to the testimony of former evolutionist Dean Kenyon, whose futile search for chemical origins of life was highlighted in the film Unlocking the Mystery of Life.
• Iowa:  A big ID row has broken out on the Iowa State campus, Iowa State Daily.  120 faculty members have signed a statement rejecting intelligent design as science.  The Des Moines Register explained how Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet, became a target of controversy when Hector Avalos, religion professor [an atheist] garnered the signatures because of Gonzalez’ research activities and beliefs about ID.  When columnist Rekha Basu claimed that, “ISU can’t afford to let its curriculum be polluted this way,” Mike Gene, editorializing on Telic Thoughts feared this may lead to a McCarthyesque loyalty oath for faculty members.  Guillermo responded the next day to the Des Moines Register and Reid Forgrave wrote an article about the controversy surrounding him in the same issue.  Agape Press also wrote about it.

If science were really so threatened by a few people using the D word design, the Darwinists wouldn’t have to defend their pet story with loyalty oaths, signed statements, and discrimination.  They could solve their little conflict with a little evidence.  That’s where the wise advise aiming our eyes.
Next headline on:  Education • Darwinism and Evolution • Intelligent Design

At least they’re using white people this time (see articles by Carl Wieland and Jerry Bergman).  Mark Looy at Answers in Genesis couldn’t keep silence any longer, especially when he had a Londoner on staff, Dr. Monty White, to interpret the zoo’s actions in light of Darwinian theory.
    The Darwin Party leaders need to give the rest of us a demonstration.  They should get into the cage and show us how to act like a primate – where to scratch, how to shriek and club each other, how to draw figures of prey on the wall, and how to make rock music.  After we lock the door and take the key, we’ll promise to take good care of them (feed them all the bananas they want, etc.) as we laugh all the way to the school board meeting.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Dumb Ideas

Evolutionary theory is so useless.  The first two scientists ought to be humbly standing in awe of cellular wonders at the fringe of our ability to comprehend them, and all they wanted to do was speculate about how machines built themselves by chance.  Did Richards and Cavalier-Smith add any logical or observational support for evolution?  Assuredly not.  They merely assumed it from the start, then organized the observations into a presuppositional template.  Could they delineate the actual mutations and selective forces that morphed one form into another?  Could they tell how the original ancestral forms – already highly complex – emerged out of the primordial chemistry lab?  Did they even for a moment consider the possibility that apparent design might represent actual design?
    Each of these motors, and the functions they perform, are examples of what Michael Behe dubbed irreducibly complex machines.  Without myosin and the tracks on which they run already assembled and functioning, there would be no functional advantage on which natural selection could act.  But even if the motors and tracks emerged somehow, why would they persist if there were no jobs?  Like superhighways without towns and settlers, they would be like pork-barrel projects of dubious utility.  The entire cell is interdependent.  The cell as a unit has to have a high degree of minimum complexity in place before anything will work.  Such cavalier speculation as exhibited here is no more logical or useful than arranging the cars at an auto show into an evolutionary sequence and claiming they arose without designers.
    The article about ATP synthase, by contrast, did not walk into Storybook Land.  The team advanced our knowledge by using novel techniques to image the machines, and then offered a testable hypothesis about the purpose of the bridge structure.  Notice that this was an implicit intelligent-design assumption.  They assumed the bridging improved the efficiency of ATP synthesis by channeling the substrate into a coherent operation.  That can be tested, whereas evolutionary speculation about presumed ancestors cannot.  The paper also illustrated the common experience of biochemists that the closer we look at cellular structures, the more complex they become.  By extension, that means the harder it becomes to explain them by evolution, and the more we begin to see design on higher levels of organization and efficiency.  ATP synthase is wonderful enough, but to see it organized into an “ATP synthasome complex,” well – that’s awesome.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Evolution

These results demonstrate that the temporal distribution of genus first and last occurrences in the marine animal fossil record is intimately related to the temporal continuity and quantity of sedimentary rock.  Determining why this result is the case is more challenging than demonstrating that it is so.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Assuming that macroevolutionary patterns derived from genus first and last occurrences have the potential to be meaningful in a biological sense, the task then becomes to explain why patterns in the genus fossil record are closely duplicated by analogous patterns in the sedimentary rock record.  As discussed above, there are two possibilities, (i) preservation bias and (ii) shared forcing mechanisms (common cause).

Under the common-cause hypothesis, however, genera are expected to originate early in a sedimentary basin’s history as new habitats and environments expand and to go extinct abruptly when environmental changes eliminate the basin environments altogether.  Thus, similar average durations for sections and genera as well as corresponding peaks and troughs in rates of origination and extinction are expected.  Interestingly, the common-cause hypothesis also predicts that the genus-section extinction correlation should be stronger than the genus-section origination correlation because genus extinction can match the timing of rapid environmental shifts that result in section truncation, whereas genus origination may not be capable of responding instantly to the macroevolutionary opportunities afforded by basin expansion.  This possibility is sensitive to choice of timescale, but it is supported by analyses that find less empirical support for pulsed genus origination [i.e., punctuated equilibria] than for pulsed genus extinction at the same level of temporal resolution in the Phanerozoic.

This lengthy entry is exhibited here to show how evolutionists can fool themselves into thinking the observations support Charlie’s tall tale.  In the first place, he used evolutionary assumptions to calibrate evolutionary assumptions: the “common timescale” of both databases is the geologic column, a theoretical arrangement of global sediments built on the assumption of evolution and millions of years.  This is reminiscent of the joke about the church bell ringer who set his watch by the clock tower on the parliament building, only to find out that the clock tower maintenance man set his clock by the church bell.  Second, the correlations are only marginally significant.  His charts show severe outliers.  Sometimes the anomalous data points have an important story to tell.  Third, his use of gap-bound rock sections only concentrates on the beginning and ending of continuously-deposited sediments.  In the old Dr. Seuss book The Cat in the Hat, the first and last pages of the book, showing the children contentedly at ease in a clean living room, belies all the chaos and commotion that occurred in the middle.  Last, Peters trusted in the “if you build it, they will come” theory of evolution.  He didn’t explain how new genera of marine organisms would “emerge” when the sea level rose or fell; he just assumed that whenever organisms are given a safe haven, presto!  macroevolution happens.  In short, the evolutionary story rigged, controlled, operated and guaranteed the outcome of the entire analysis.  Evolution is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    For a side dish, consider what EurekAlert recently reported: most scientific papers are wrong.  Whether from financial interest, prejudice, unseen biases, conflict of interest, peer pressure or the desire to prove relationships that don’t exist (false positives), “There is increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims.”  Iain Murray, writing for Competitive Enterprise Institute, reflected on what this means – much authoritative-sounding science talk is inconclusive and, frankly, politically or selfishly motivated.  The paper by Peters, reviewed here, fits the description.  For all its graphs and jargon, it is trying to prove something that isn’t necessarily true, built on a bias for a certain brand of Darwinian evolution.
    Even if there were a correlation between sediment counts and genus counts, could there be a non-evolutionary explanation?  Naturally.  In a flood scenario, for instance, more genera are likely to be buried in sediments corresponding to the volume of the material.  The first appearance of a genus would either represent the chance placement in the layers or a mechanical artifact of the burial process, such as liquefaction or hydrodynamic sorting.  Extinction would occur, but not origination by evolution.  No great time periods need transpire.  Since Peters’ radar screen was not tuned to this possibility, he missed it.
Next headline on:  Geology • Fossil Record • Evolution

This story illustrates the need for conservatives who respect the sanctity of life to keep boundaries around maverick scientists motivated by dollars more than ethics.  Researchers would not be looking for alternatives to grinding up human embryos if it weren’t that there were enough people outraged at the ethical malfeasance of killing one life to save others.  The selfish motives of the stem-cell pushers became evident when some reporters showed them worrying that this discovery might reduce funding for embryonic stem cell research.
    It’s too early to tell whether this or other alternative methods for breeding the totipotent cells will make embryonic stem cell research obsolete and eliminate the ethical concerns; even if it does, there are many more moral issues besides this in the era of synthetic biology.  Keep informed, and keep the heat on.
Next headline on:  Health • Politics and Ethics

An often asked question may be phrased as follows: what can be said about evolution if it all happened in the past, for surely understanding where our biological diversity came from is then a mixture of scientific inference and inspired guesswork, almost impossible to verify?  Imperceptibly slow evolution encourages such skepticism.  In the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote “We see nothing of these slow changes in progress until the hand of time has marked the lapse of ages”.
    In fact, numerous studies have demonstrated evolution in action, and the study of finches on the island of Daphne has contributed significantly.  When the environment changes, for example when a severe and prolonged drought occurs, finches die in large numbers, not randomly but size-selectively.  Large finches with large beaks have an advantage over small birds, and survive better, because they are able to crack the large seeds that are relatively common after almost all the small seeds have been consumed.  When they breed the next year they produce offspring with large beaks because beak size is heritable.
    This change from one generation to the next is evolution.  Some time later, the environment changes again, food supply changes, the advantage shifts toward finches with small beaks and correspondingly the direction of evolution changes.  The back and forth process may have a net trajectory toward large or small size, and this is where inference enters the interpretation, because persistent directional changes in structures such as bird beaks are not likely to occur so rapidly that they can be documented in a few years.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The molecular analysis of finch beaks has only just begun.  In addition to this functional genetic study, molecular markers in the nuclear and mitochondrial genome have been used to estimate the phylogeny of the finches.  With some exceptions they support the traditional grouping of the species on the basis of their plumage and beak characteristics.  Molecular markers have also been used to track the exchange of genes between species that interbreed, albeit rarely, and the finding is dramatic.  They show a pair of species on Daphne in a state of flux, at present converging genetically and morphologically, having diverged strongly in the past.  This nicely captures the evolutionary dynamism that Darwin’s finches display to an unusual degree.

There you have it: the world’s leading authorities on the beaks that made Charlie famous, and they don’t add a thing to what young-earth creationists already believe.  The Grants merely repeated what is already admitted by intelligent-design researchers in the films Unlocking the Mystery of Life and Icons of Evolution; any observed changes are mere oscillations about a mean.  These poor devoted people have measured beaks for over 30 years and have not found any persistent directional changes – nor could they be expected to in one human lifetime.  They even admit that today the birds remain interfertile and so have not really undergone speciation after however long they have lived on these islands.  Yet they expect us to think that it is a scientifically sound inference to extrapolate their data, which, in evolutionary terms, constitute noise, into long-term directional trends.
    Inference, interpretation based on presuppositions – that’s what Ken Ham and the most ardent creationists accuse the Darwinists of engaging in without scientific rigor.  We all have the same data, but the interpretation depends on your world view and how much you adore Charlie.
    David Berlinski chuckles at the Darwinistic boasting over this most famous of examples of evolution.  It “doesn’t even pass the threshold of anecdote,” he said in the film Icons of Evolution.  OK, finch beaks adapt to drought conditions, and adapt back when the rains return (the changes are submillimeter differences, by the way).  Fine.  But, Berlinski continues, to be convinced that all the complexity of life could be explained by Darwin’s hypothesis of natural selection, “we’re going to need a whole lot more by way of evidence.... a whole lot more if this is to be serious science.”
Next headline on:  Birds • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

As Pythagoras knew, if you pluck a string, it will vibrate in its entire extent, as well as in halves, thirds and so on, and each of those vibrational modes will result in a separate harmonic frequency. Yet we usually perceive the pitch as corresponding to the lowest of these, which is the fundamental.  For a simple demonstration of the ‘missing fundamental’ effect, pick up a phone.  Most telephone lines cut off the lower frequencies, resulting in a slightly tinny sound, yet the fundamental pitch does not change; a male voice does not sound like Mickey Mouse.  The brain seems to figure out the missing pitch.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Bendor and Wang studied the auditory cortex (the region of the brain that enables perception of sound) in the marmoset monkey.  They show that there are neurons in this region that respond in essentially the same way to a variety of sounds that all have the same fundamental but do not share any frequencies.  For example, a neuron that responds to 200 hertz also responds to the combination of 800, 1,000, and 1,200 hertz because all correspond to the same fundamental.  This effect is unusual because neurons usually respond only within their receptive field, which is typically a narrow range of frequencies. The marmoset neurons, however, responded not only to frequencies in their receptive fields, but also when there was no frequency within the receptive field but the other frequencies in the stimulus were harmonically related to the missing one.  This property makes psychologists happy, because it provides evidence (if not yet a mechanism) for perceptual constancy.  These neurons respond to an abstract property – pitch – derived from, but not identical to, physical sound features. Presumably, therefore, it is thanks to such neurons that we can follow a tune as the instruments change.

One might wonder why marmosets need such a system, given that they don’t spend much time listening to iPods.  But periodic sounds are important in the natural environment because they are almost exclusively produced by other animals, and so pitch is a good cue to segregate these sounds from background noise.  Marmosets are highly vocal creatures, and the development of pitch-sensitive neurons would also be central to communication.  From an evolutionary perspective, these abilities could be seen as precursors to human pitch perception, which has led to our unique development of music and is similarly crucial for speech.

This article almost earned a Dumb award for its useless evolutionary speculations.  Zatorre committed the plostrum ante equum fallacy (cart before the horse), assuming that necessity was a sufficient mother of invention.  Aside from the empty evolutionary fluff, though, the article underscored a fascinating aspect of hearing that merely hints at the engineering necessary to make it work.  Music doesn’t make evolutionary sense because it is a gift of God.  If Bach appreciated that fact, how much more so should modern anatomists, physiologists and neurologists.
Next headline on:  Human Body • Physics • Amazing Stories

Benner points out that water is generally not a good solvent for doing organic chemistry – which is, in the end, what life is all about.  For one thing, water is rather reactive, tending to split apart the bonds that link the building blocks of biomolecules together.  It readily breaks peptide bonds, for example, as well as many of the bonds in nucleic acids, such as RNA.  “The structure of RNA screams ‘I did not arise in water!’” Benner asserts.  He says that in about four out of five cases, synthetic organic chemists will avoid using water as a solvent.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

But of course organic chemists aren’t usually trying to create life.  Water has many properties that seem indispensable for the functioning of proteins and cells.  It is an excellent solvent for ions, for example – crucial for nerve signalling, enzymatic processes, biomineralization and the behaviour of DNA.  It is also a master of weak intermolecular interactions such as hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic forces.  The latter play a central role in protein folding and protein-protein interactions, whereas the former often act as bridges between protein binding sites and their substrates.  And water’s ability to absorb and lose heat without undergoing a large temperature change provides thermal cushioning, shielding cells and organisms from wild temperature swings.
    No other known liquid combines all of these properties.

Asking such ‘what if’ questions might seem strange to biologists and chemists, but it is far more common in cosmology or physics [see 08/16/2005].  For cosmologists, the physical Universe seems to be precariously fine-tuned to make life possible.  For example, the fine-structure constant, which determines the strength of electromagnetic interactions, is not fixed by any known fundamental theory; and yet if it was ten times larger, stable atoms could not exist....
He [John Finney, University College, London] adds that “the fine-tuning argument with respect to water is a far more complex problem than that in astrophysics.  Without knowing what aspects of water are important, I suspect we are doing little more than speculating.”

Benner is participating in a US National Academies panel funded by NASA that is looking at possible alternative chemistries for life, and which he hopes will identify research directions that funding agencies can pursue.  He believes that researchers should aim high – to create life forms that do not reproduce the chemistry that is found on Earth.  In other words, if we can’t easily get to other worlds, we should build them here.

Steven Benner should know better.  He knows more than most evolutionists how many and intractable are the problems with chemical evolution; the problems are so bad, in fact, that he joked that they are almost enough to make one consider becoming a creationist (see 11/05/2004 entry).  Now that is really bad to a Darwinist!  Nothing could be worse.
    Articles like this are useful to show that creationists and intelligent design advocates are not making things up when they talk about the fine-tuning of the laws of physics and the impossibility of getting life by chance.  Here you have it in the evolutionists’ own words.  There is nothing to show for a century of speculation – only futureware.
    Cynics will undoubtedly follow not the water, but the money.  Chemical evolution has no real use for water, methane, or any other solvent, really; the thing that lubricates it is funding.  It’s what gave the charlatan Sidney Fox his fifteen years of fame (01/07/2005), and is keeping Astrobiology the slickest new drainpipe for NASA dollars.  Without funding, the Darwinian storytelling enterprise (12/22/2003) would dry up, and the bums would have to work in the real world.  Meanwhile, it’s your tax dollars at work.
Next headline on:  Origin of Life • Physics and Chemistry

Scientists are good at finding logical patterns and turning data into a coherent narrative.  But the study of human origins is tricky: The bones tell a complicated story.  The cast of characters keeps growing.  The plot keeps thickening.  It’s a heck of a tale, still unfolding.
    More than half a century ago the great biologist Ernst Mayr surveyed the field of paleoanthropology and saw all sorts of diverse characters: Peking man, Java man, and Homo erectus.  He figured out that they were all the same thing and helped bring coherence to a rambling tale.  By the 1960s the textbook version of human origins looked pretty tidy: Humans evolved in Africa; Homo habilis begat Homo erectus, who begat Homo sapiens.  (The Neandertals were sort of a fly in the ointment.)  Today the field has again become a rather glorious mess.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Earth doesn’t yield a perfect database.  Still, it’s our scientific impulse to impose parsimonious explanations on complex problems in the same way that Newton realized that the fall of the apple and the motion of the planets were governed by the same simple force called gravity.  But the process of evolution can’t be observed like the fall of an apple.  Life—despite all the efforts of modern science—is messy.

Is it any wonder why Achenbach wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week?  Look at what he did.  He demolished everything most of us were taught as evolutionary fact years ago.  He admitted that the whole picture is a mess of disconnected, confusing pieces.  He admitted that no one can make sense of it.  He admitted that paleoanthropology is not in the same ballpark as Newton’s hard science, and why?—because “the process of evolution can’t be observed like the fall of an apple.”  There aren’t enough ape bones, there aren’t enough human bones, and there aren’t enough bones of anything in between that is not controversial.  On top of all that, we might even just be imposing our own preconceptions on the data!  He quotes someone who casts doubt on the honesty of paleoanthropologists.  That seasoned veteran of the “science” of paleoanthropology believes the researchers are trying to squeeze too much blood out of their bones.
    In short, Achenbach has just shorn paleoanthropology of any claim to legitimate science.  Yet in the midst of this doleful tale of ignorance, he commits the most egregious logical fallacy imaginable.  (1) First, he bluffs with his made-up story that humans evolved out of Africa six or seven million years ago – how does he know?  Did he observe this?  On which bones did he base this belief?  Ignoring the fact that the out-of-Africa view is controversial, even if the leading candidate for the “thickening plot,” he instructs us that this belief is not open to question: “the central fact of human evolution is a given.”  (2) Second, like a stingy hyena unable to eat but snapping angrily at anyone approaching the carcass of a dead science, he says, “those who would doubt evolution are arguing against the entire enterprise of science.”  So creationists, keep out; this is our storytelling game, he implies.  Fine; if your view of science is bluffing, ignorance, open-ended storytelling and authoritarianism, you can have it.
    The plot keeps thickening, he says.  It’s the enterprise of science, he says.  The Science Restaurant used to be a nice place to hang out before Chef Charlie swindled the owners and took over.  He replaced everything on the menu with the only thing he knew how to cook, his original Thicken Plot Pie, which has become so thick now it should only be taken with a strong laxative.  It’s understandable why Achenbach, moaning in discomfort, is envious of Newton and his—shall we say it?—“regularity.”
Next headline on:  Early Man • Evolution • Dumb Stories

• Irish Scream:  Bill O'Reilly had Dr. Richard Sternberg on his O'Reilly Factor show on Fox News Aug. 24 (see Washington Post background story and Discovery Institute fact sheet).  O'Reilly was clearly animated over the “brutal” tactics of the “fascist” anticreationists as Sternberg described how he was treated at the Smithsonian for allowing an I.D. paper to be published.  With incredulity expressed in two-hand gestures, O'Reilly asked “Why?” they were doing this to him.
• Concerned Women for Human Events:  The debate over ID was discussed both by Concerned Women for America and Human Events, which reprinted David Limbaugh’s essay (see below).
• Larry King Jive:  Larry King moderated a heated discussion between pro-ID panelists John MacArthur, Jay Richards and Senator Sam Brownback, and anti-ID panelists Barbara Forrest, Depak Chopra and Senator Christopher Shays.  Larry King’s opening questions seemed off point.  The first thing out of his mouth was asking MacArthur if he believed the earth was only 5000 years old, and then asking Forrest if we came from monkeys, why there are still monkeys.  Both respondents seemed to wonder what those questions had to do with the item under discussion.  The anti-ID side seemed the most intent on making their case that ID isn’t science, while MacArthur wondered why evolutionists seem to be in such a panic over the obvious evidence for design.  Jay Richards stuck to his guns that the Discovery Institute does not advocate mandating ID, despite Forrest’s persistent attempts to prove that ID people are religiously motivated.  Chopra, who accepts ID as a source of consciousness, was more vicious against MacArthur than the evolutionists.  Senator Brownback calmly asked that the nation engage in a vigorous discussion over evolution, bringing the best arguments together.  Let’s identify facts that are facts and theories that are theories, he repeated.
• Frist in Line:  Senator Bill Frist (R-Tenn), though recently breaking ranks with the President over stem cell research, announced his agreement with Bush over intelligent design in an AP story (see MSNBC News).  Frist has an M.D. from Harvard Medical School.  He said that exposing children to both views “doesn’t force any particular theory on anyone.  I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future.”  The article mentions a voice from the other political persuasion: Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean called President Bush “anti-science” over his remarks.
• OhIDo:  Governor Bob Taft of Ohio, a Republican, threw his hat into the ID ring, according to the Chillicothe Gazette.  He’s not sure what intelligent design means, but at least feels students ought to be able to hear criticisms of Darwinian evolution.  The “teach the controversy” approach will provide the best compromise, he feels, between opponents who have differing ideas of how evolution should be taught.
• Dykstra’s Law:  David Limbaugh answered the critics who called him an idiot for this editorial, proving that everyone is someone else’s weirdo.
  
• Hidden Motives:  Why did Science reproduce the following quote without comment?  Utah state senator D. Chris Buttars, in a USA Today editorial August 9, said, “The trouble with the ‘missing link’ is that it is still missing! ... The theory of evolution ... has more holes in it than a crocheted bathtub.”
• Who Speaks for Space?  In an ostensibly nonpartisan editorial on Space.Com, SETI Institute Director of Education and Public Outreach Edna DeVore spoke out against the President’s remarks.  Though written as the statement of a scientific rather than political organization, and quoting the positions of scientific societies, DeVore nonetheless employed arguments common to liberals: “Teaching creationism is in violation of the separation of church and state, and has been ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court in several cases.”  DeVore mentions in passing that Bush’s remarks have generated about 120 reactions per day in print since he spoke in favor of intelligent design August 2.
• Name-Calling:  William Safire in the New York Times looked at the scorn heaped on “creationism” in a brief and simplistic history of anti-evolutionism, and quoted several vehement anti-ID polemics, mostly liberal but with one conservative joining the scorn fest.  Noting the new attack word “neo-creo” invented by anticreationist Philip Kitcher to counter the “marketing genius” of the label “intelligent design,” Safire left his own views unclear.  He gave the last word with a Nobel laureate at Brown University, Leon Cooper: “If we could all lighten up a bit perhaps, we could have some fun in the classroom discussing the evidence and the proposed explanations — just as we do at scientific conferences.”
• Getting Warmer:  The New York Times printed two more articles on the intelligent design controversy Sunday and Monday.  Though the articles still lean heavily against I.D., the Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman gave them credit for making progress on toning down their bias.  He thinks the articles have gone from 90% negative to about 60%.
• Separate, but Equal?  Lee Harris at Tech Central Station wrote a long essay that basically takes a “non-overlapping magisteria” position, hoping peace will be attainable if Christians throw creationism overboard and stick with theology, and science leaves them alone with their beliefs.  He calls Darwinism part of the “normal science” consensus of our day.
• Censorship:  The conservative internet news source World Net Daily has published an issue of its Whistleblower Magazine devoted to the issue, entitled, “Censoring God: Why is the science establishment so threatened by the intelligent design movement?

The wording may seem subtle but is significant.  Anti-ID reporters are determined to portray intelligent design as inherently religious, so they employ the word supernatural to make their point: “See?” they gloat, hammerlocking their straw man;  “This can’t be science, because it’s about the supernatural!”  But if the reference is to intelligent causes, those are already employed in scientific explanations in many fields.  Science can investigate whether the cause was planned or unplanned without making any statements about who the Planner was or what the motive for the design was: this is done all the time in archaeology and criminology, for instance – even in SETI itself, which makes DeVore’s position all the more ironic.  Caught in a logical trap, all she can do is fall back on arguments from authority and bandwagon.
    It’s good that evolution and intelligent design are getting debated in public more and more these days, but not all comments are well reasoned or informed.  Some writers who think with their gall bladders instead of their cerebra are saying the most bile things.  Investigating I.D. with uninformed prejudice, they ask, “what’s that awful smell?”, unaware it is their own breath blowing back in their face.  Their acerbic remarks may some day come back to sting them when the Darwin idol, like that of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, falls and is dragged around the scientific square by cheering, liberated minds.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Intelligent Design • Politics and Ethics

Not much on a mammal’s body seems simpler than hair, but like everything else in living things, simplicity evaporates on closer inspection.  Not only are these hairs shaped just right to produce a tight, insulating pattern, but the blueprint has to be encoded in DNA and transcribed by the cellular construction factory according to spec, and extruded from each hair follicle at the right time, with the right shape, the right color and the right length.  Lecturer Dr. David Menton can keep an audience entranced for an hour about the wonders of hair.  The structural details on the micro level are necessary to produce the macro result: a sleek, playful otter that makes a living in cold water.  It doesn’t take much water to keep a daughter otter happy.  Two pints makes one cavort.
Next headline on:  Mammals • Amazing Stories

Life history evolution is not the only field where invariants or universal constants are proposed.  The Universal Temperature Dependence of metabolism proposal asserts that the metabolism of all organisms can be described by a single equation.  Scaling laws (as, for instance, basic metabolic rate scale as mass to the power 3/4) are called universal over all life.  This hankering for universal explanations has been criticized not only on technical grounds but also for ignoring biology and the variation between organisms.  Interesting biology might not be in life history invariants but in biological variation.

Evolutionists desperately want their theories to be considered scientific, but the language of science is mathematics.  They should recall the difference between the hard sciences and biology, as expressed by the Harvard Law: “Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it *@#&! well pleases.”  The deception is even worse when evolutionary psychologists measure human behavior according to Koestler’s Ratomorphic Fallacy, treating people like lab rats, or when they try to describe altruism, whether in humans or bacteria, in terms of the equations of game theory.  One of the ugliest of recent examples involved anthropologists trying to measure the evolution of anti-Semitism (see 07/19/2005).
    Read the quote at the top right of this page again.  Is there anything in evolutionary biology that even comes close to Kepler’s Laws or Newton’s Laws in generality and formal structure?  Scientific research papers on evolution often contain equations, formulas, and graphs (e.g., 07/21/2005), but if even some of the most basic observable ratios of characteristics between present-day animals can produce misleading relationships, why should anyone trust relationships inferred between dead things lost in imaginary evolutionary prehistory?  If the “interesting biology” lies in variation, no pattern of evolution can be rigorously inferred.  Thus, evolutionists in their formalisms commit the fallacy of statistics, fooling and being fooled.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

Scientists are increasingly interested in harnessing biological motors for use in micro- and nanotechnology, but recent research has mainly involved taking moving parts out of cells and adapting them for use elsewhere.  It’s a complicated process that can require protein engineering.  So, chemist Doug Weibel of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and colleagues wondered if they could simply use an intact organism as a beast of burden instead.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The intelligent design movement could get a load of this.  It was amazing enough that some flagella are built like high-tech rotary motors.  For humans to harness that power and use it underscores the claim that these really are molecular machines.  It’s there; it works; why reinvent the wheel?
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Amazing Stories

Mayell is right about the fallacy of imputing human emotional and moral qualities to birds.  Still, birds are among the smartest of animals (03/23/2004, 02/17/2004, 08/09/2002).  Who could know what they think and feel without becoming a birdbrain?  (Remember, that is a compliment, not an insult—02/01/2005).  To believe that such behaviors are mere emergent properties of matter in motion seems inadequate.  In evolutionary terms, animal behaviors that look playful or emotional seem senseless in a world of survival, and evolutionists are at a loss to explain them (03/24/2005).  Maybe the fact that we humans can relate to the cries, chirps, and behaviors of emperor penguins indicates that there is, at some level, a non-material element to their ontology, a kind of psyche.  While avoiding the fallacy of personification, we must also not commit the fallacy of reductionism.
    Penguins, despite their comical waddling, deserve our respect.  They are wonderful birds, amazingly adapted to their harsh environment.  (And, contrary to the claims of paleoanthropologists, they demonstrate that walking upright was not invented by Lucy.)  As true birds, yet so profoundly different from the sparrows and robins that share our urban settings, penguins outperform fish as champion swimmers (09/10/2004).  The sea is their sky.  They fly through the water with the speed and grace of a swift.  Emperors are among the most handsomely dressed of all penguins, their black-and-white curvaceous outfits highlighted with a blush of facial vermilion.  One would think it was produced by the same fashion designer who decorated orcas and pandas.  Viewers will undoubtedly notice also how the plumage pattern changes dramatically from chick to adult: the chicks’ eyes are surrounded by goggles of white, whereas the parents’ are nearly concealed in jet black.  Knit together as effectively as thick fur, the feathery coat repels freezing water and biting winds that can rage up to 100 miles per hour and plummet to 70 degrees below.  Their thick, leathery feet, looking like crampons underneath and alligator skin on top, are tough enough to survive miles of walking across ice, yet tender enough to cradle an egg and protect a downy hatchling for months.
    So many physiological adaptations have to be finely tuned for these birds to survive – from the warm flap of skin that incubates the egg centimeters away from the deadly cold, to the ears and eyes that can survive the pressure a thousand feet down in the ocean, to the exact timing of the hatching of the eggs and the females’ arrival to feed them, and much, much more – they seem irreducibly complex on the macro scale.  Undoubtedly some accentuation of existing characters might occur over many generations as the habitat changes, but to believe that all these adaptations could have coalesced in one species by a blind process of natural selection stretches credulity beyond reason.  If it were true, where are the transitional forms?  Where are the fossils?  Despite the single reference to millions of years of adaptation, March of the Penguins is a film about intelligent design.  Fact is stranger than fiction.  Like World magazine said, this stuff just can’t be made up.
    Take the family to see this movie.  You’ll laugh at the penguins’ bellyflops, admire their handsome suits, observe the physical adaptations that outfit them for survival, and shiver at the hardships they endure.  The story is beautiful, the photography stunning (a tribute to the challenges the cameramen endured), the music is memorable, and, despite the occasional human emotions attributed to the birds, it’s true – emperor penguins actually perform this incredible 70-mile march, year after year, in one of the harshest environments on earth.  This may be a film you will want to have in your home DVD collection along with Winged Migration, to reflect on any time your life seems too difficult.  We give it two flippers up.
Next headline on:  Birds • Media • Amazing Stories

Italy Going Soft on Darwinism    08/19/2005  
The controversy over evolution is not limited to American shores.  An editorial in the September issue of American Naturalist¹ expresses concern that evolutionary biology is getting a low-key treatment in Italian universities:

The Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection is the unifying principle of the biological sciences.  Unfortunately in the Italian academic system, evolutionary biology is not acknowledged as an independent research area, so no faculty positions in “evolutionary biology” can be established, and most students hear only a brief summary of evolutionary theory in the final hours of their introductory zoology, paleontology, or genetics courses.  To make matters worse, during the past two years, several creationist organizations have been publicly attacking the teaching of evolutionary theory.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Today, class, we will learn about the evolution of the pizza.  The pizza was not created by intelligent design, as those rascally creationists allege.  Instead, it “emerged” out of the primordial dough.  Over millions of years, it became just one species of Italian food on the evolutionary Cuisine of Life, with spaghetti, linguini, tortellini and macaroni branching off early and forming the Pasta Kingdom, incorporating parmesan by lateral cheese transfer.  Some theorists believe that pepperoni was once a free-living organism that became incorporated into pizza as an endosymbiont during the Prosciutto epoch of the Paleocarne Era.  The pizza class experienced a rapid diversification into many forms on the North American continent, as the Italian fast-food restaurant niche opened after the last Ice Cream Age.  This stimulated an explosive period of adaptive radiation, producing the Round Table family, the Shakeys family, and the Chuck E. Cheese family, among others.  The microwave pizza, with no phylogenetic connection to the old-world pizzas of the Italian peninsula, provides a striking example of convergent evolution....
    That makes about as much sense as the usual evolutionary storytelling in biology.  Will Italian students give it much more than a yawn?  Maybe Go-Evil should obtain a concertina marching band and hold parades, where Emperor Charlie as Grand Marshall can strut down the Appian Way in his new clothes – on second thought, better pack a designer loincloth.
    Have you ever noticed that every announcement by Big Science starts with the same line? – “the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection is the unifying principle of the biological sciences.”  It’s almost enough to feed conspiracy theories.  In actuality, evolution is about as unifying as iron mixed with clay, the iron representing hard science based on observation, and the clay representing evolutionary speculation.  No matter how much it tries to cling to the iron, the clay will not be able to support the statue without a change of ore.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Education

By “young,” Amelin and Krot are not claiming really young, but only a few millions less than billions: some 5 million years after the assumed birthday of the solar system, when meteorites were supposed to have formed.  They exaggerate this birthdate to five significant figures: 4.5672 plus or minus 0.0007 billion years ago.  With such contrived precision (see 06/05/2003 entry), Amelin and crew feed the Age of the Solar System (q.v. acronym) Myth.  The rest of the scientific community falls in line, never questioning these ages.  Here, we see that Dr. Moyboy himself ("millions of years, billions of years") has found an anomaly that allows him to throw in a thickening to the plot and get more fame in Nature.  If this helps solar system theorists question their assumptions a little, that’s a modicum of progress.  Does it demonstrate that these two chondrules really are 4.5627 +- .0005 and 4.5628 +- 0.9 billion years old?  Better read the caveats at the end of their paper:

This formation event [the hypothetical impact that formed the chondrules] has probably homogenized radionuclides in chondrules and metal of the CB chondrites, and reset short-lived radiogenic isotope systems.... For establishing consistent Solar System chronology, these chronometers have to be linked together and tied to an absolute timescale.  Most meteorites are made of components formed at different time, and/or experienced complex and prolonged post-formation metamorphic history, and are not suitable for linking short-lived chronometers.  In contrast, the correlated studies of multiple short-lived isotope systems in CB chondrites can potentially test the consistency among them and provide a tie to an absolute timescale, which will be an important step towards the unified timescale of the earliest Solar System.  (Emphasis added.)

With such wheeling and dealing going on behind the scenes, would you trust a resultant date to five significant figures?  If so, try Madame Bluffy’s panacea potion.  She mixed a pinch of bat wing, a smidgeon of spider eye and a handful of shredded Amanita mushroom gill in a solution of approximately half goat milk and half vodka.  She guarantees it 99.263 +- .004% effective in the treatment of warts, goiter, acid reflux and toenail fungus.
Next headline on:  Dating Methods • Solar System