August 2005 Archives

Diona Carrillo reports on four Cerritos College science instructors who are bravely standing up against intelligent design.

“Intelligent design is a philosophy, it is not a theory, it’s not a scientific theory, it’s not even a scientific hypothesis; it’s a belief,” Constance Boardman, biology instructor said.

The instructors have realized that ID is nothing more than a gap theory

An emphasis on weaknesses or “holes” and gaps in evolution, is the heart of the intelligent-design movement.

Jozsef Ludvig in the Baltimore Sentinel writes

But in reality, by leaving the name and identity of the designer unknown, ID becomes a placeholder for any religion while narrowly escaping the definition of a religion itself. But it can still not pose for science because it starts with the premise that a supernatural force had to be involved in the creation of life from inorganic matter. In order to prove this premise it then invents the non-empirical device of irreducible complexity which is just a typical God-Of-The-Gaps and cannot explain anything by itself. The resulting negative inference of a supernatural force from empirical ignorance is, by definition, neither a scientific subject nor consistent with the scientific method. Thus ID is not science.

The recent Kansas creationist kangaroo court hearings on evolution run by three creationist members of the Kansas State Board of Education (see here and here for stories) and the previous (1999) debacle in Kansas are having consquences for higher education in that state. In a story in the Lawrence Journal-World the Provost of Kansas University said

For the state to be portrayed repeatedly in the national press as being anti-science does damage to this university. The frustration is you fight this reputation problem every step of the way.

KU dropped three places in the most recent U.S. News & World Report rankings of universities.

Michael Lynch’s critique of Behe and Snoke (2004) is now available as is a reaction by Behe and Snoke. Don’t forget to read the editor’s message about it as well.

We’re still discussing it, but here is Lynch’s abstract.

Lynch M (2005) Simple evolutionary pathways to complex proteins. Protein Science, 14:2217-2225.

Abstract: A recent paper in this journal has challenged the idea that complex adaptive features of proteins can be explained by known molecular, genetic, and evolutionary mechanisms. It is shown here that the conclusions of this prior work are an artifact of unwarranted biological assumptions, inappropriate mathematical modeling, and faulty logic. Numerous simple pathways exist by which adaptive multi-residue functions can evolve on time scales of a million years (or much less) in populations of only moderate size. Thus, the classical evolutionary trajectory of descent with modification is adequate to explain the diversification of protein functions.

Ricardo Azevedo has some view up on his blog: BS Model Gets Lynched.

Carl Zimmer has the big news: the first draft of the chimpanzee genome is being published in Nature today. This is fantastic news, and it’s difficult to under overstate the importance of this. We want many different organisms sequenced to sample diversity, but having the sequence of two closely related species is going to be incredibly useful. Aren’t you just itching to see what the differences are?

Sadly, I just finished slapping Phil Skell around for his blindness to how evolution informs biology. I suspect he’s going to be dully oblivious to this event, too.

In the August 29 issue of the Scientist, Phil Skell writes in his opinion piece “Why Do We Invoke Darwin? Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology” the following:

Phil Skell Wrote:

Despite this and other daculties, the modem form of Darwin’s theory has been raised to its present high status because it’s said to be the comerstone ofmodem experimental biology. But is that correct? “While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky’s dictum that ‘nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,’ most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas,”

A.S. Wilkins, editor of the journal BioEssays, wrote in 2000. “Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one.”

I decided to investigate the quote. Guess what?

by Mike Syvanen

[Dr. Michael Syvanen is a professor studying molecular genetics in the Department of Medical Microbiology at the University of California, Davis, and has been an advocate since the early-80s of an idea that has gained considerable support over the last few years - that much evolution is not tree-shaped, but net-shaped. That is, that genes cross taxonomic lineages. Since many attacks on evolution claim we should “teach the controversy”, we at Panda’s Thumb thought it might be nice to present an *actual* controversy in science. Discussion is welcomed. Here, at least.]

It has been over 30 years since the suggestion that horizontal gene transfer (HGT) may have been a factor in the evolution of life entered the literature. Initially these speculations were based on discoveries made in medical microbiology; namely that genes for resistance to antibiotics were found to move from one bacterial pathogen to another. This discovery was so unexpected and contrary to accepted genetic principles that though announced in Japan in 1959 (1,2) it was not generally recognized in the west for another decade. Speculations that HGT may have been a bigger factor in the evolution of life was inviting because it offered broad explanations for a variety of biological phenomena that have interested and puzzled biologist for over the last century and a half. These were problems that had been raised by botanists that have puzzled over the evolution of green plants (3) as well as by paleontologists that recorded macroevolutionary trends (4) in the fossil record that were often difficult to reconcile with the New Synthesis that merged Darwin’s thinking with Mendelian genetics. However, outside of the field of bacteriology this exercise did not really attract that much attention until the late 1990s at which time there was a major influx of data indicating that HGT had been very pervasive in early life. Namely, complete genome sequences began to appear. Simple examination of these sequences showed beyond any doubt that horizontal gene transfer was indeed a major factor in the evolution of modern bacterial, Archael and Eukaryotic genomes.

On Pharyngula, PZ Myers reports how the Lehigh Department of biological sciences has taken a position on intelligent design.

Of particular interest is that this is Michael Behe’s university.

PZ Myers reports that, as was the case with Guillermo Gonzalez, “Behe’s academic freedom is fully supported by his department, but this is a loud vote of no confidence in his work. That sounds like an unpleasantly uncomfortable environment to be in.”

This is off topic, but over on my personal blog I have some low-resolution before and after pictures from New Orleans. The flooding, even at the very low resolution of these images, is simply mindnumbing.

My heart, and I’m sure the heart of everyone here, goes out to all those impacted by this tragedy. People will need lots of time, lots of effort, and lots of assistance before they can begin to recover from this disaster.

The mainstream media is finally coming to terms with the truth of His Lord, the Creator.

One woman even wrote in to say that she had “conceived the spirit of our Divine Lord,” the Flying Spaghetti Monster, while eating alone at the Olive Garden.

“I heard singing, and tomato sauce rained from the sky, and I saw angel hair pasta flying about with little farfalle wings and playing harps,” she wrote. “It was beautiful.” The Spaghetti Monster, she went on, impregnated her and told her, “You shall name Him … Prego … and He shall bring in a new era of love.”

Someone named Emma kindly provided a couple of links to PDF files relevant to the California creationist lawsuit. One of the links is to a propaganda piece written by the Association of Christian Schools International, which is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. The second link is to a copy of the actual complaint that has been filed in the case.

The ACSI propaganda flyer is an interesting read, but I’m not going to take the time to criticise it at present. Instead, I’m going to begin by looking at the complaint, which should contain the real meat of the suit. The complaint is over one hundred pages in length, and I have found material that I’d like to comment on very early in the complaint. Since both my time and my tolerance for this type of thing are limited, it will probably take several posts over several days for me to wade through everything. Read More (at The Questionable Authority)

Jerry Coyne is one of the many contributors to magazines, newspapers, blog sites and so on who have realized that Intelligent Design is not only scientifically vacuous but also theologically risky.

In The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name Coyne writes

Coyne Wrote:

Intelligent design, or ID, is the latest pseudoscientific incarnation of religious creationism, cleverly crafted by a new group of enthusiasts to circumvent recent legal restrictions. ID comes in two parts. The first is a simple critique of evolutionary theory, to the effect that Darwinism, as an explanation of the origin, the development, and the diversity of life, is fatally flawed. The second is the assertion that the major features of life are best understood as the result of creation by a supernatural intelligent designer. To understand ID, then, we must first understand modern evolutionary theory (often called “neo-Darwinism” to take into account post-Darwinian modifications).

In “Letters to the Editor” of the Cornell Daily Sun Adam Moline makes the following statement which captures much of what is wrong with ID

The problem with intelligent design is not that the background assumptions are bad but that the method employed by Intelligent Design’s advocates is not the scientific method. They use God in the same way that the ancient Greek dramatists did: to circumvent an otherwise insoluble problem in the final act. Just as deus ex machina is an improper means to conclude plays, intelligent design is an improper means to advance knowledge.

My native state hasn’t had headlines go nationwide over antievolution lately. But there are indications that Florida may be one of the next big targets of the antievolution advocates.

Ron Matus at the St. Petersburg Times wrote about this in today’s paper:

Ron Matus Wrote:

Nationally, it’s a raging debate. President Bush weighed in this month. Time magazine devoted its cover story to the subject two weeks ago.

But in Florida, the teaching of intelligent design - the newest, faith-based counterpoint to Darwin’s theory of evolution - is not an issue.

At least, not yet.

Some observers expect the other shoe to drop next year, when Florida education officials revisit state science standards as part of a routine review of what should be taught in Florida schools.

Update: Ex-Minnesota antievolutionist Cheri Pierson Yecke has been appointed Florida’s K-12 Chancellor for education. It looks like the antievolution forces have been at work already in Florida.

(Continue reading… on The Austringer)

As PvM already mentioned, It’s hitting the fan here in Iowa. For those of you who have been paying attention to the Smithsonian/Privileged Planet controversy, you may recognize the name Guillermo Gonzalez. He’s the co-author of the book by the same name, a DI fellow, and just happens to be a faculty member of the Astronomy department at Iowa State University. Hector Avalos, an associate professor of religious studies at ISU, and colleagues at ISU drafted a letter opposing the teaching of ID as science; 124 faculty signed it. Now, predictably, Gonzalez says he’s being “viciously attacked,” “intimidated,” and it’s created a “hostile work environment” (sound familiar, anyone?).

My colleague, Steven Mahone, a board member of Colorado Citizens for Science and an engineering professional with the largest utility in southern Colorado, agreed recently to debate the well-known creationist Kent Hovind on evolution vs. creation. As Mr. Mahone describes below, he was snookered into leaving his visual aids at home, whereas at the last minute Mr. Hovind was allowed to present his. As I write, it is still unclear why Mr. Mahone and another debater were prohibited from bringing their visual aids, but it seems likely that the Campus Crusade for Christ, a sponsoring organization, was not at fault, and they have sent Mr. Mahone an elegant and sincere apology, which is reproduced below.

Here is Mr. Mahone’s account of the debate.

Leon Satterfield descibes in The president and ‘intelligent design’ a goofy id(ea):

Leon Satterfield Wrote:

What a goofy idea President Bush had earlier this month when he said that public schools should teach both “intelligent design” and evolution, as if they were academically equal.

The president apparently doesn’t know — or more likely doesn’t care because he can sniff out votes from halfway across the country — that evolution is a scientific notion and that intelligent design is a religious belief and therefore has no place in our secular public schools. He also apparently doesn’t know — or more likely doesn’t care — that we were founded as a secular nation. No national church, no religious creeds we had to pretend to subscribe to.

For Neurode…

Bergstrom (Department of Zoology University of Washington Seattle, WA, USA) and Lachmann (Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences Leipzig, Germany) have published a paper titled “Shannon Information and Biological Fitness”.

They conclude that

In this paper we have shown that two measures of information, Shannon entropy and the decision-theory value of information, are united into one single information measure when one looks at the strategies that natural selection will favor, namely those that maximize the long term growth rate of biological organisms. Furthermore, we have shown that in evolving biological systems, the fitness value of information is bounded above by the Shannon entropy. These results suggest a close relationship between biological concepts of Darwinian fitness and information-theoretic measures such as Shannon entropy or mutual information.

The never ending stream of articles critical of Intelligent Design have appeared since Bush made his ill-timed statement.

Daniel C. Dennett, a professor of philosophy at Tufts University, is the author of “Freedom Evolves” and “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”, joins the virtual fray.

In Intelligent Design: Show me the science Dennett explores Intelligent Design.

Dennett Wrote:

Is “intelligent design” a legitimate school of scientific thought? Is there something to it, or have these people been taken in by one of the most ingenious hoaxes in the history of science? Wouldn’t such a hoax be impossible? No. Here’s how it has been done.

A couple of weeks ago, after I posted on Panda’s Thumb a brief response (see here) to Dembski’s amusing dismissal of my essay published in Skeptic, v. 11, No 4, 2005 (without his saying a word about the substance of my critique), on the website maintained by Dembski appeared a comment whose author accused me of false claims regarding my publication record.

As I had mentioned before, the last time I updated my list of publication was in 1985, when I applied for a position at CSUF. At that time the list already contained over 200 items, even though it did not include many of my published papers which were outside my professional work (many such papers were published in several languages in magazines such as Partisan Review, Midstream, Present Tense, Kontinent, Possev, Ukrainian Quarterly, Samtiden, Vremya Iskat [Et Levakesh], Vremia I My, and others).

Confronted with the libelous post on Dembski’s site, which Dembski chose to keep without rebuttals, thus in fact joining the author of the calumny, I searched my files and found my List of publications which I submitted to CSUF in 1985. It contained 211 items, even omitting many publications outside my professional research.

Dr. Wesley R. Elsberry kindly offered to scan and OCR the text of that list of publications (many thanks, Wesley). Thanks to Wesley’s generous assistance, this list, which is more than 20 years old, although containing a few OCR errors, can now be seen here.

I don’t think I need to prove that I did not abruptly stop publishing in 1984. Were the list updated after 1985, its size would grow by more publications, and more so if, besides my research papers, it included also papers dealing with pseudo-science in its various disguises. If my papers and the book which are not about my research in physics were added, the total would be now over 300 items, in tune with what I claimed in my response to Dembski’s post.

I apologize for taking space on Panda’s Thumbs by posting these remarks, but I feel it is proper to post them after the libelous comment appeared on Dembski’s site, where, as it is known, no comments are allowed which are short of either praising Dembski or attacking his critics.

As we are so often reminded by proponents of Intelligent Design creationism, we contain molecular “machines” and “motors”. They don’t really explain how these motors came to be other than to foist the problem off on some invisible unspecified Designer, which is a poor way to do science—it’s more of a way to make excuses to not do science.

Evolution, on the other hand, provides a useful framework for trying to address the problem of the origin of molecular motors. We have a theory—common descent—that makes specific predictions—that there will be a nested hierarchy of differences between motors in different species. Phylogenetic analysis of variations between species allows us to reconstruct the history of a molecule with far more specificity than “Sometime between 6,000 and 4 billion years ago, a god or aliens (or aliens created by a god) conjured this molecule into existence by unknown and unknowable means”.

Richards and Cavalier-Smith (2005) have applied tested biological techniques to a specific motor molecule, myosin, and have used that information to assemble a picture of the phylogenetic history of eukaryotes.

Continue reading “Evolving motors” (on Pharyngula)

While ID itself remains silent on the nature of the designer, some real scientific theories are sprouting up around the country which do not shy away from identifying the nature of the intelligent designer.

The tooth fairy, the easter bunny, Santa Claus and the stork…

Hat tip to Gerald Nachman of the San Francisco Chronicle

Teach the controversy I say…

The Seattle Post Intelligencer has an opinion piece where it asks the following burning question:

Chapman and company acknowledge that intelligent design is underdeveloped as a testable scientific theory. Nevertheless, they believe their ideas deserve inclusion in science curricula. A number of states already have opted for just such a requirement. Soon, we all may be facing this Burning Question:

Should intelligent design be part of science education?

In a post earlier today, I noted that a group of creationists are suing the University of California system in order to force UC to accept several of their classes that are currently not considered adequate. One of the courses in question is biology. As I already pointed out, UC is not discriminating against Christians by refusing to accept the class; it is simply living up to its responsibility to ensure that applicants are adequately prepared for university study. Nevertheless, I was curious as to what about these particular biology classes was so poor as to attract attention.

Read more (at The Questionable Authority).

Guillermo Gonzalez, author of “Privileged Planet” is touting the concept of Intelligent, reports “The Iowa Channel”. It is creating quite some uproar at Iowa State University.

Gonzalez Wrote:

“It’s something that brings a renewed interest in science”

Gonzalez remains silent as to how this brings a renewed interest in science. Conflating science and religion never serves a good purpose.

Gonzalez said that humans are the product of a creator – whether it is God or whomever – and were not created by chance and a product of evolution.

More cracks are starting to show.

In How Intelligent Design Hurts Conservatives (By making us look like crackpots) published in The New Republic on 8/16/05, Ross Douthat argues that Intelligent Design will hurt the conservatives.

In short, the scientific vacuity will catch up with the religious and political motivated arguments and back fire.

And intelligent design will run out of steam–a victim of its own grand ambitions. What began as a critique of Darwinian theory, pointing out aspects of biological life that modification-through-natural-selection has difficulty explaining, is now foolishly proposed as an alternative to Darwinism. On this front, intelligent design fails conspicuously–as even defenders like Rick Santorum are beginning to realize–because it can’t offer a consistent, coherent, and testable story of how life developed. The “design inference” is a philosophical point, not a scientific theory: Even if the existence of a designer is a reasonable inference to draw from the complexity of, say, a bacterial flagellum, one would still need to explain how the flagellum moved from design to actuality.

John West:Discovery Institute Wrote:

There’s little question that the Earth is billions of years old, said John West, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a public policy think tank in Seattle that is critical of Darwinian theory.

“Critics would rather tar everyone with the brush of creationism,” said West, who teaches political science at Seattle Pacific University. “I think the idea that Genesis provides scientific text is really farfetched.”

LA Times: Adam, Eve and T. Rex

The big tent is only comfortable when it serves one’s purpose but when the tent becomes to crowded, ID seems to be quickly back pedalling. Now ID is not only fighting science but also young earth creationism. And it is ill equipped to handle either one.

Science because ID fails to propose a scientifically relevant theory and thus remains scientifically vacuous. Creationism because it invited it into its big tent.

It appears that yet another creationism-related lawsuit is in the works. This time, the venue is in California, and it is the Creationists who are doing the suing. Apparently, the Association of Christian Schools International and Calvary Chapel Christian School of Murietta are no longer satisfied with being able to teach their students creationism instead of real biology. Now, they also want to make sure that their students will not have to suffer the consequences of this decision, and they are suing for that “right”.

Continue reading (at The Questionable Authority)

Chris Buttars, the eternally clueless Utah state Senator, certainly didn’t get the answers he wanted from the Utah state school board. Buttars has been threatening to submit a bill to mandate the teaching of “divine design” - a slightly more honest version of intelligent design - if the school board doesn’t issue a position statement officially denouncing human evolution. Instead, the board has gone the other direction:

The state school board’s proposed position statement on teaching evolution doesn’t give an inch for a state senator’s “intelligent design” concepts.

That bothers Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan. He wants the board to insert language saying humans didn’t evolve from any other species…

Its contents were revealed in a school board agenda the Deseret Morning News received this Friday.

“As a fundamental scientific concept, evolution is a necessary part of science classroom instruction, and it will continue to be taught and progressively refined as a key scientific principle,” the 1 1/2-page document states.

“Teachers should respect and be nonjudgmental about (student) beliefs, and teachers should help students understand that science is an essential way of knowing. Teachers should encourage students to discuss any seeming conflicts with their parents or religious leaders.”

The document also defines the weight of theory in scientific context, cites evidence that the universe and life have changed over time, and notes other ways people glean understanding, such as historical analysis, art, religion and philosophy, which rely upon “other ways of knowing, such as emotion and faith.

“While these ways of understanding and creating meaning are important to individuals and society, they are not amenable to scientific investigation and thus not appropriate for inclusion in the science curriculum,” the document states.

On Wednesday night, FOX News anchor Bill O’Reilly interviewed Rick Sternberg. The subject was Sternberg’s allegations of harassment at the hands of various employees of the Smithsonian Institution. The cause of this harassment, says Sternberg, was his decision to publish a pro-ID article during his stint as editor of The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. For some background on the situation see the recent PT entries by Nick Matzke here, and by Andrea Bottaro here.

Over at EvolutionBlog I have posted this analysis of O’Reilly’s segment. Enjoy!

Well, it’s Official. It’s not just the New York Times believing the Discovery Institute’s line that New Mexico’s new school science standards “embraced the institute’s ‘teach the controversy’ approach.”

Now it’s the Rio Rancho Public Schools.

On Monday, August 22^nd, the Rio Rancho (NM) School Board adopted “Science Policy 401”, over the protests of most of the attendees at the meeting.

The policy begins by saying

The Rio Rancho Board of Education recognizes that scientific theories, such as theories regarding biological and cosmological origins, may be used to support or to challenge individual religious and philosophical beliefs. Consequently, the teaching of science in public school science classrooms may be of great interest and concern to students and their parents.

It gets worse from there. Much worse.

I’ve written about this fascinating Drosophila gene, bicoid, several times before. It’s a maternal effect gene, a gene that is produced by the mother and packaged into her eggs to drive important early events in development, in this case, establishing polarity, or which end of the egg is anterior (bicoid specifies which end of the egg will form the fly’s head). Bicoid is also a transcription factor, or gene that regulates the activity of other genes. We also see evidence that it is a relatively new gene, one that is taking over a morphogenetic function that may have been carried out by several other more primitive genes in the ancestral insect.

Continue reading “Bicoid evolution” (on Pharyngula)

More and more people, scientists and religious people alike, are coming to the obvious conclusion that Intelligent Design is scientifically vacuous.

Beyond the fish wars

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Jim Burklo, a minister of Sausalito Presbyterian Church, presents his opinion

It [Intelligent Design] is not a theoretical alternative to evolution, because it suggests no other credible means by which this outside intelligence created the complexity of life. There is nothing in the theory of evolution, the only one that holds any water in explaining the origin of the species, that proves or disproves the existence of such an intelligent “designer.” Even if one thinks of God as a separate, distinct being that manipulates the universe, “intelligent design” offers no intelligent reason to suggest that evolution wasn’t God’s chosen instrument of creation.

Guy T. Sturino has an interesting article on Intelligent Design.

Sturino Wrote:

Intelligent Design adds nothing to the scientific, investigative curiosity about the nature of our universe, and as such is a waste of time, energy and resources much better spent in providing our children with the tools necessary to succeed in a multi-cultural and multi-religious society.

On his personal website he published an article on August 22, 2005 titled “A Class On Intelligent Design.”

The DI’s list of 400 Darwin doubting scientists has one fewer member. Robert Davidson has bailed out, saying

When I joined [the Discovery Institute] I didn’t think they were about bashing evolution. It’s pseudo-science, at best … What they’re doing is instigating a conflict between science and religion.

and

He was shocked, he says, when he saw the Discovery Institute was calling evolution a “theory in crisis.”

“It’s laughable: There have been millions of experiments over more than a century that support evolution,” he says. “There’s always questions being asked about parts of the theory, as there are with any theory, but there’s no real scientific controversy about it.

Davidson began to believe the institute is an “elaborate, clever marketing program” to tear down evolution for religious reasons. He read its writings on intelligent design — the notion that some of life is so complex it must have been designed — and found them lacking in scientific merit.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. And it’s in the DI’s hometown paper.

RBH

(Hat tip to Valentine Pontifex on Infidels)

From Bill Maher’s “Real Time with Bill Maher”* for August 23^rd, 2005:

And finally, New Rule: You don’t have to teach both sides of a debate, if one side is a load of crap.

(Transcript of “New Rules” segment)

It’s a bit sad that many of our journalists don’t have the insight shown by our comedians.

Hat tip to Bill Farrell. *Correction on title of show provided by Bill Gascoyne.

I have just had a truly amazing adventure. From July 29 - August 6, I accompanied Alan Gishlick and Eugenie Scott (and members) on NCSE’s “Creationism and Evolution” raft trip down Grand Canyon. Here are “Gish” and Genie, my hosts.

Quiet. Listen.

These are the new recordings of the ivory-billed woodpecker. Go here for the whole story, and more recordings.

Last year Ian, Steve, and I wrote a critique of a flawed anti-“Darwinian processes” paper by Michael Behe and David Snoke. At the time we had been discussing turning it into a publication, but we set aside the idea after we learned that the editors of Protein Science had asked an expert on gene evolution, Michael Lynch from Indiana University, to write a response to Behe and Snoke (2004).

Now it comes to pass that Michael Lynch’s response and a reply by Behe and Snoke is going to be published in next month’s Protein Science.

We’ll keep our readers informed about Lynch’s analysis of Behe and Snoke’s science.

by Marshall Berman and Dave Thomas

On Sunday, August 21, 2005, the New York Times published an article entitled “Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive.” This otherwise excellent article unfortunately contained several errors that resulted from treating some false information from the Discovery Institute (DI) as accurate. One major error was accepting the DI view that New Mexico has “embraced the institute’s ‘teach the controversy’ approach.” This is absolutely false, as the following evidence will show.

Over at ID the Future is an open letter to Science from several Discovery Institute luminaries protesting that, despite the fact that they do no research and have published no original research on ID, Intelligent Design Creationism is indeed Science.

Alan I. Leshner (Redefining Science, July 8) says intelligent design isn’t science because scientific theories explain what can be observed and are testable by repeatable observations and experimentation. But particular design arguments meet this standard.

Before going on to their example, I’d like to point out that some of the arguments of Young Earth Creationism (YEC) also meet this standard. For example, YEC makes specific, testable claims about the age of the Earth, so why isn’t YEC science? Several reasons, not the least that when confronted with clear, unambiguous, multiple independent lines of evidence that their claims are wrong, the YEC will ignore this evidence, or invoke miracles, or pretend the evidence doesn’t exist. They will not accept evidence to the contrary of their preconceptions, so despite having testable claims, YEC isn’t science.

How does ID creationism fare?

Coming soon to Nebraska?

In the August 18^th issue of Nature (1), Donlan et al. suggest a novel way to save certain species of megafauna: bring them to the North American wilderness. (CNN summary/commentary here).

It’s not as outlandish as it may sound. As they point out, North America had many similar species until 13,000 years ago, including mammoths, camels, cheetahs, and lions. While they acknowledge there are differences between modern species and those which existed once upon a time in America, they suggest that the modern species are proxies for their long-extinct cousins, and could be used to “re-wild” North America. The authors suggest a mutually beneficial relationship: portions of the Great Plains benefit from tourism dollars, while the animals benefit from increased habitat and a decreased threat of extinction. Win-win, right?

One of the comments that was inspired by my earlier post on the invasive gall wasps that are threatening some native Hawaiian plants raised a point that is worth responding to in detail, since it comes up fairly often both in arguments with anti-evolutionists and in discussions about the costs and benefits associated with conservation efforts:

“Big Bill” said: “And further, letting foreign people plants and animals in always increases diversity. Sure, some native peoples, plants, and animals will die out, but it’s not like they have any right to the land. There is no God-given title. If the native peoples, plants and animals cannot compete and survive, that is their fault. It’s Darwin in action.”

Bill’s statement does capture a basic fact about the biological effects of invasive species: if the invasive species outcompetes the natives, resulting in the extinction of the native species, it is simply a case of natural selection. I cannot argue with that. There are some who might claim that situations involving invasives do not count, because the invasive arrived as the result of human intervention rather than “naturally”. I dislike that argument, both because it ignores the fact that the effects would probably have been the same regardless of the mode of arrival and because it implies that humans aren’t really part of nature.

Read more (at The Questionable Authority):

One of the items in the list of offenses Richard Sternberg claims to have suffered at the hands of his Smithsonian colleagues and the “Darwinian orthodoxy” after the publication of the Meyer paper is the accusation of being a “Young Earth Creationist”. However, the record shows that, at the time, the accusation was hardly a purposeful smear aimed at unfairly tarnishing Sternberg’s reputation, but a reasonable conclusion based on the available information. More below.

Note: The paper by Chen et al. is now published online. Embarassingly for the BBC, the fossil is named Vetustovermis, not Vetustodermis. I thought the misspelling would explain why Vetustodermis originally got zero google hits (there are now 160 google hits on Vetustodermis), but it turns out that Vetustovermis currently gets zero google hits, although I am sure this won’t last. Anyhow, I will correct the name, and add a few comments on the paper to the end of this post.

The BBC has a story up about the Cambrian fossil Vetustovermis planus, a critter so obscure that, at the time of this posting, it received zero hits on google. The BBC reports that a study is coming out in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B: Biological Sciences that evidently phylogenetically places Vetustovermis outside of any extant phylum, but perhaps nearer to molluscs within the Lophotrocozoans.

Given the recent revelations concerning the political pressure brought to bear upon the Ohio State Board of Education to adopt faulty standards permitting non-science to be taught in science classes, it is time for everyone to take a few minutes out of their busy schedules and do something real.

Write the media in Ohio and make it clear that the next item of business on the SBOE agenda needs to be a return to the uncompromised, science-only standards produced by their standards writing committee, and remove the faulty, anti-science lesson plan adopted under the compromised standards.

Please use the media contacts page to write to the listed Ohio newspapers, and don’t overlook the national media as well.

Ohio has been the example that the Discovery Institute has used ever since late 2002 as the model of what they want in other states. Do we want gamed politics everywhere, just like we had in Ohio? If not, take the time to help take back the process from the anti-science extremists.

And be sure to visit the Ohio Citizens for Science web site for more information.

Amerindian mythologies present a rich source of creation stories. While these narratives offer spiritual alternatives to naturalistic origins, there have been few vocal native anti-evolutionists, an exception being Vine DeLoria whose books Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact and Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths: A Critical Inquiry both offer trite, predictable and weak arguments against evolution.

At Indian Country Today (“The Nation’s Leading American Indian News Source”) an editorial concludes:

Indian Country Today Columnist John Mohawk this year published a succinctly edited book, ”Iroquois Creation Story: Myth of the Earthgrasper,” which inspires with its clarity from ancient America. In fact, the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) creation story is the living basis of the ceremonial cycles in the longhouses of several reservations, source of origin and the truth of existence for traditional Haudenosaunee. Yet, no one here is suggesting that it be taught as ”science” in the public schools.

Every Native culture across the hemisphere (and cultures from all over the world) would be in its right to line up, then, each with its origin story and each justifiably, as much as the Judeo-Christian Genesis, with its right to believe that its story is the true way that human beings came into existence.

Given the choice, we prefer the non-religious and secular space, such as public schools guided by universally shared scientific values and methods. Let each people have its religious approach and way of prayer. The other approach is a slippery slope to dangerous manipulation and intolerance. What little the various human cultures and societies have in common resides in the life of science and its search for open-minded truth.

NCSE notes the re-appearance of Dr. Eugenie Scott’s article in California Wild Re-Posts “In My Backyard”.

And here is the article with the edits shown.

Update: The OSC letter is going up on IDist websites, so we presume it is legit to post it here. Right-click, Save As for the PDF.

Late today, a reporter called NCSE and, asking for comment, told us that the U.S. Office of Special Counsel had dropped Richard von Sternberg’s religious discrimination complaint against the Smithsonian Institution. The short version is that Sternberg, as an unpaid research associate at the Smithsonian, is not actually an employee, and thus the OSC has no jurisdiction. This was not particularly surprising, considering that PT contributer Reed Cartwright noted way back on February 2 that exactly this might happen.

Legally, this appears to be the end of things. However, as the Panda’s Thumb has documented over the past year (Meyer 2004 Medley, google search), the Meyer/Sternberg/Smithsonian affair has been a piece of politics from the beginning. The OSC’s opinion guarantees it will be politics to the end.

Perhaps in some kind of cosmic penance for Slate editor Jacob Weisberg’s fight-starting editorial, today the Slate “medical examiner” desk has an excellent slide-show essay on Haeckel that actually gives a reasonably balanced overview of Ernst Haeckel, his science and art, and his legacy. The essay appears to be provoked by a showing of the new award-winning documentary Proteus, about Haeckel and the scientific and artistic “discovery” of the under-sea, invertebrate world. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but we are about due for a correction of the all-too-common Haeckel-was-pure-evil narrative that is very common among both evolutionists and creationists. On the other hand, part of the problem with Haeckel was that he tended to mix the science and the artistic, imaginative, metaphysical vision a bit too much, and from the looks of it Proteus may do this too. On the other other hand, all great science popularizations seem to have a pretty strong imaginative vision tied to the dry scientific facts, so mixing the two may be intrinsic to the work of the science popularizer. If this is so, then the thing to do is for readers to simply be alert to what science popularizers are doing, and mentally separate the two aspects of the work so that each can be considered on its own merits.

Slate has an interesting slide show about Ernst Haeckel’s life and work. The commentary touches on the most controversial aspects of Haeckel’s legacy (doctored embryo drawings, racism, etc), but with the aid of some truly stunning pictures, it does a good job at offering a balanced look at this amazingly gifted scientist and artist.

Interestingly, a movie based largely on Haeckel’s story is about to come out. Too bad the casting was done long ago, because judging from the photograph in Slate’s second slide (reproduced here, Haeckel on the left), with a wig and a fake beard Dembski would have been a shoo-in for Haeckel’s part.

Well, this is so brilliant I just had to post it: Ten Questions to Ask Your History Teacher, a parody of Jonathan Wells’s “Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher”, which is based on Wells’s book Icons of Evolution, which is thoroughly dismantled here and here. HT2PZ