April 2006 Archives

IBM researchers have shown how science explores new and innovative approaches to discover DNA patterns which are shared by areas of the human genome that were considered to have little or no influence on its function and areas which do have function.

From the IBM Press Release

As reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), regions of the human genome that were assumed to largely contain evolutionary leftovers (called “junk DNA”) may actually hold significant clues that can add to scientists’ understanding of cellular processes. IBM researchers have discovered that these regions contain numerous, short DNA “motifs,” or repeating sequence fragments, which also are present in the parts of the genome that give rise to proteins.

Professor Steve Jones presented a lecture at the Royal Society on evolution and creationism. The lecture can be watched at this link

Science is about disbelief. It accepts that all knowledge is provisional and that any theory might in principle be disproved. Some theories are better established than others: the earth is probably not flat, babies are almost certainly not brought by storks, and men and dinosaurs are unlikely to have appeared on earth within the past few thousand years. Even so, nothing is sacred in 1905 classical physics collapsed after a seemingly trivial observation about glowing gases and the same is potentially true for all other scientific theories.

Unlike ID, science is indeed tentative and can accept false positives. In addition, science can in fact accept our ignorance in some matters. This ignorance is often seen as evidence for design. Such gap arguments are what make Intelligent Design scientifically vacuous.

Many biologists are worried by a recent and unexpected return of an argument based on belief by the certainty, untestable and unsupported by evidence, that life did not evolve but appeared by supernatural means. Worldwide, more people believe in creationism than in evolution. Why do no biologists agree? Steve Jones will talk about what evolution is, about new evidence that men and chimps are close relatives and about how we are, nevertheless, unique and why creationism does more harm to religion than it does to science.

I will have to listen to Jones’s talk. I certainly agree with him that intelligent design does a lot of harm to religion. As far as science is concerned, it mostly serves to confuse people with what many have come to accept as a scientifically vacuous approach.

Steve Jones won the Aventis Prize for Science Books (then known as the Rhone-Poulenc Prize) in 1994 for ‘The Language of the Genes’. In 1997 he was awarded the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize - the UK’s foremost award for communicating science to the public.

Some good news from our British friends.

A statement opposing the misrepresentation of evolution in schools to promote particular religious beliefs was published today (11 April 2006) by the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science.

The statement points out that evolution is “recognised as the best explanation for the development of life on Earth from its beginnings and for the diversity of species” and that it is “rightly taught as an essential part of biology and science courses in schools, colleges and universities across the world”.

Royal Society Press Release

I just can’t imagine how stressful it is to be an ID advocate. You’ve got all this maze of sound-bites and talking points to navigate, all vetted by professional Public Relations operatives and carefully studied to send the appropriate message, and then you get distracted one moment, open you mouth and - BAM - you mess it all up. Here’s one more example. Do you remember ever hearing ID advocates proclaim that “we should follow the evidence wherever it leads”? If not, you haven’t been paying attention (don’t worry, you can still catch up here or here, for instance). If you believed the ID advocates’ spin, however, you probably should have read the small print, because apparently there’s at least one exception: you are allowed not to follow the evidence after all, if doing so will take you to conclusions that may challenge your religious beliefs. In fact, it’s actually better not to even try to follow it there, just in case.

Everyone has probably heard that the new White House Press Secretary is Tony Snow, formerly a talk show host on Fox News. Those who were paying attention last year may remember that he is also pretty clearly a straight-up creationist, or at least credulously repeats their talking points. See:

Tony Snow (2005). “Why can’t we have a rational debate.” TownHall.com. August 12, 2005

Media Matters (2005). “Tony Snow’s evolutionary falsehoods.” Media Matters for America. August 12, 2005.

Media Matters (2005). “The many falsehoods of Tony Snow.” Media Matters for America. April 19, 2006.

What got Tony Snow writing essays about ID and how hard it was to have a rational debate? I may have had a wee bit to do with that.

For months and months, right up to February 2006, we in Ohio were told that the “critical analysis of evolution” benchmark and lesson plan wasn’t ID. ID advocates on the Ohio State Board of Education – Michael Cochran and Deborah Owens-Fink – told us that; the author of the “critical analysis” lesson plan, Bryan Leonard, told us that; the DI repeatedly trumpeted “no ID!” on its web site. No ID at all here, folks, we were assured. Perish the thought!

But in a recent Seattle Times article, Bruce Chapman, President of the Discovery Institute, was reported to have said that Ohio’s State Board of Education eliminated intelligent design when it discarded the creationist benchmark and lesson plan in February. According to the story,

Already, he [Chapman] said, an effort in Ohio to include intelligent design in school curricula failed when some state school-board members said the Dover case settled the issue. (Italics added)

“… an effort in Ohio to include intelligent design”. Well, well. Who woulda thunk it!

The DI’s Media Complaints Division took immediate umbrage. Rob Crowther complained that the reporter got it all wrong. Crowther wrote

It isn’t just the theory of intelligent design that Postman has trouble getting straight, it is the facts of what is going on in the public policy debate. He writes that:

“an effort in Ohio to include intelligent design in school curricula failed when some state school-board members said the Dover case settled the issue.”

Notice what Crowther left out in the sentence that he quoted from the story: “Already, he said,…”. The reporter didn’t say it, he reported what Chapman said – the antecedent of “he” in that sentence is Chapman.

And now, the rest of the story …

Over at the American Museum of Natural History is an online exhibit on Darwin, that features a Galapagos tortoise webcam! It’s rather soothing, the tortoises aren’t very speedy. (Hat tip to Margaret)

Over on the DI’s new Declaring-Victory-in-Superficial-Public-Debates-Where-No-Federal-Judges-are- -Present-to-Enforce-Actual-Rules-of-Evidence-and-Keep-You-Honest blog, Bruce Chapman highlights a news story on a recent debate at North Carolina State University. Describing the four-person panel, Chapman writes,

North Carolina State University has shown, however, that the topic can be debated with the fairness and civility that ought to characterize academic discussions. On Thursday, April 20, before a crowd of some 200 people, a biologist and philosopher defended intelligent design, and a biologist and philosopher defended Darwinism.

The articles says that the two ID defenders were “Gerald Van Dyke, an NCSU botany professor, and Robert Hambourger, an NCSU associate professor of philosophy.” I was pretty sure I had heard of pretty much all publicly speaking ID supporters who had something resembling a biology PhD – it is easy to remember them, because it is a very short list. So who was this Gerald Van Dyke guy? It turns out he is indeed an honest-to-goodness Professor of Mycology at NCSU. He works on pathogenic fungi that attack agricultural crops.

Even though I didn’t remember him specifically, he seemed familiar for some reason.

Paul Nelson has a “new” argument against common descent. It revolves around the discovery of ORFans, “orphan Open Reading Frames”, ie stretches of DNA that appear to code for a protein (an Open Reading Frame, ORF), but that we have no current idea of what the protein is or does, or what other proteins it is related to (hence ORFan). A powerpoint presentation from one of Dr. Nelson’s talks that mentions ORFans is here. ORFans also loom large in Dr. Nelsons rather forceful commentary on a post by Sahotra Sarkar describing a debate between them.

Are ORFan’s a significant problem for evolution? No, not in the least. The ORFan story, while still not completely understood, represents a good example of how science works, and why it’s a good idea to actually understand evolutionary biology before you criticise it (and why it’s a good idea to not stop reading in 2003).

Both RPM and Chad beat me to posting this survey [edited to add: and Janet too! Freakin’ quick triggers…], which I’ve had in my drafts box for a week. So, before absolutely everyone else beats me to it, I thought I’d pose the questions to y’all, and see how you would answer the question, “What is one science question every high school graduate should be able to answer?”

(Continued at Aetiology)

This post contains my commentary on the Annotated Bibliography on the Evolution of the Immune System, now online in the NCSE Kitzmiller archive. The Annotated Bibliography describes the significance of each publication listed in the Supplementary Material for the recent Nature Immunology article on the “immune system cross” during Behe’s testimony in Kitzmiller v. Dover. For article, click here. For the full Annotated Bibliography, click here. The Annotated Bibliography has reached an approximately final state, but I would still be interested in any additional comments people might have. My overall point with all this, of course, is that unless and until ID proponents (1) acknowledge the existence of this scientific literature, (2) admit that their previous statements about the nonexistence of this literature were wrong, and (3) substantively rebut this literature, providing a better and more detailed explanation for the immune system, then they aren’t even beginning to be scientifically serious.

As you read through this, keep in mind the Discovery Institute’s hiliarious commentary in their recent book attempting to rebut to the Kitzmiller decision, Traipsing Into Evolution:

Consider [Judge Jones’s] skewed summary of the evidence relating to the irreducible complexity of the immune system. He cited Kenneth Miller’s speculative assertions as if they were facts, while refusing even to mention biochemist Michael Behe’s detailed rebuttal during the trial. (Traipsing, p. 45, italics added)

Speculative? I guess in ID-Land, dozens of publications in top journals confirming key expectations is “speculation”, whereas the vague statement that divine intervention occurred sometime, somewhere, for unspecified reasons is considered rock-solid. Even better, Traipsing then quotes from Behe’s “detailed response” to the immune system section of Jones’s opinion. However, the book neglects to point out that Behe tried exactly the same silly arguments in his direct testimony at trial, and they were specifically debunked on cross-examination. For more on Behe’s “detailed rebuttal”, see here.

One of the folks at William Dembski’s blog has issued a challenge. He claims that all of the arguments that we use to establish that ID is substantially the same as creationism are based on false premises (he’s wrong about that) and he says:

Why can’t ID opponents focus on the arguments, themselves, and show how they are equivalent to Creationism? If ID really is just repackaged Creationism, why not just expose the arguments for what they are and be done with it?

I take him up on his challenge and show the creationist roots of all of the major ID arguments in a post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Comments may be left there.

This should have happened last week, but longtime PT contributor and author of the much-beloved “The Quixotic Message”, or “No Free Hunch”, and also the equally beloved Quixotic References, formerly known as theyeti, and catcher of broadheaded skinks and legless glass lizards, mild critic of hydrogen as an alternative fuel, HAS SUCCESSFULLY DEFENDED HIS PHD!!! (although he somehow lost his original post announcing this). He somehow managed to do this while writing all of these great PT posts, including classics like Phillip Johnson’s Bold Stand and Phillip Johnson’s Bold Stand, Redux.

More importantly, Steve can now finally achieve his true reason for getting a PhD, which was to join the list of Project Steve Steves.

I don’t actually know what Reuland’s PhD was about, something biomedical I think, but for now I think I will assume it had something to do with getting Sunbeams From Cucumbers.

The Douglas County Sheriff is closing the case of Mirecki’s beating because they can’t find any leads.

The trail has gone cold in the investigation of a roadside beating reported late last year by a Kansas University professor.

Douglas County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Lt. Kari Wempe said Thursday that detectives had finished their paperwork related to religious studies professor Paul Mirecki’s report that he was beaten by two unknown men on Dec. 5, 2005, on a roadside south of Lawrence.

The office has not identified any suspects and, unless any new leads come in, the investigation is finished.

At the time, Mirecki was under fire for comments he had posted online critical of organized religion.

Now back when Mirecki was assaulted some pundits claimed that he had staged the beating. Given that the case has closed without any charges filed, it would appear that those pundits owe Mirecki an apology.

Hopefully, Pianka and the Texas Academy of Science are still watching their backs.

Steve Jones, the award-winning geneticist and author, argued that suggesting that creationism and evolution be given equal weight in education was “rather like starting genetics lectures by discussing the theory that babies are brought by storks”.

Link

Here in the pounding-nails-into-the-ID-coffin department of the Panda’s Thumb, we are still hard at work. Longtime PT posters Andrea Bottaro, Matt Inlay, and I have just published a “Commentary” essay in May 2006 issue of Nature Immunology. (Update: Subscription no longer required. Thanks to NI.) See the NCSE announcement and more background at the NCSE Evolution Education and the Law website.

The article is:

Bottaro, Andrea, Inlay, Matt A., and Matzke, Nicholas J. (2006). “Immunology in the spotlight at the Dover ‘Intelligent Design’ trial.” Nature Immunology. 7(5), 433-435. May 2005. (Subscription no longer required: DOI | Journal | Google Scholar | PubMed | Supplementary Material)

Therein, we review the now-notorious episode in the Kitzmiller case where, during Eric Rothschild’s dissection of Michael Behe, Rothschild challenged Behe’s claims about the scientific literature on the evolutionary origin of the immune system by piling up on Behe’s podium a stack of books and articles on the evolution of the immune system. Behe responded that he had not read most of it, but dismissed it out of hand, and this cavalier attitude seems to have been one (of many) factors that impressed Judge Jones and persuaded him to issue the thorough, detailed ruling that he did.

Many people have played important roles in exposing the scientific vacuity of Intelligent Design and its religious foundations. On Red State Rabble, Pat Hayes describes the role played by Barbara Forrest in bringing down ID. Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross are the authors of the highly insightful book Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design published in 2004 by Oxford University Press

Pat Hayes Wrote:

In the months since the Dover decision, leaders of the intelligent design movement have played and re-played the trial a thousand times. The Discovery Institute and the Thomas More Law Center have had a very public falling out. Intelligent design proponents have come to refer to Judge Jones, a lifelong Republican who was appointed by George W. Bush, as an activist judge.

What they have not done, as a movement whose leaders are nearly all men, is come to grips with the great role played in their embarrassing defeat by Barbara Forrest, a tiny but very determined woman from Louisiana, who simply took their own words and turned them against them.

The US News and World Report recently released their 2007 rankings for graduate schools. The report covers both professional and graduate programs like medical and law schools and science Ph.D. programs. The science Ph.D. programs are split into disciplines and subdisciplines. Bellow, I’ll share with y’all the rankings of the two subdisciplines most relevant for what we do here: Ph.D. programs in Ecology/Evolutionary Biology and Paleontology. These rankings are not entirely accurate because any program that is part of a medical school (like Stanford’s EEB) is not listed in these ranking but instead is considered as part of the medical school rankings. (Disclaimer: My program is listed in the EEB rankings.)

So, if any of our readers are looking to go to graduate school in evolutionary biology, they should give a good look to these programs. If you want to look at genetics/genomics/bioinformatics, biochemistry, or other fields that also relate to evolution you’re going to need to pick up a copy of the US News and World Report’s rankings.

Though much of the attention to and reports of intelligent design/creationist shenanigans come from the United States, we’re certainly not the only ones inundated with deniers of evolution and other sciences. A self-described UK evolution “sceptic” is journalist Melanie Phillips, who writes for The Daily Mail. She’s annoyed many scientists in the country due to her views not only on evolution, but also on vaccination (such as this article from earlier this year), drawing the ire of many who point out that she doesn’t understand the underlying science.

She’s proven her critics correct again, with a recent article touching on everything from the Da Vinci Code, to religion/lack thereof, and to, of course, evolution.

(Continue reading at Aetiology)

Yesterday, the Baylor student newspaper printed an article that referred to the Discovery Institute as a “conservative Christian think tank”. The DI, as you can imagine, didn’t like that description one bit because, frankly, they’ve spent so many years selling the silly notion that they’re not a conservative Christian think tank and it’s just annoying when all that propaganda doesn’t pay dividends. They fired off a letter and the Baylor paper caved in immediately and pulled the article and made a “correction”. A brief look at the evidence will show that the paper got it right the first time.

Continue Reading at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Comments may be left there.

A week or so ago, I attended “Darwinian Evolution in the 21^st Century,” the 21^st Regional Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science (Friday evening and Saturday, April 7 and 8, 2006) at the University of Colorado. The conference kicked off with talks by Rob Pennock and Betty Smocovitis on Friday night and continued Saturday with eight contributed papers. Anyone who is in the Boulder-Denver area at roughly this time next year will doubtless be rewarded by attending the 22^nd conference.

Victor Stenger of the University of Colorado presented a talk called “ Can Science Study the Supernatural?” He concluded, correctly in my opinion, that it can. Indeed, Professor Stenger considers that we are studying claims of the supernatural when we study ESP, near-death experiences, the Shroud of Turin, or religious visions or miracles. Some of these turn out to have plausible natural explanations, but we could not have said a priori that they would necessarily. Many people accept studies of the supernatural when “supernatural” is interpreted to mean ESP or near-death experiences but demur when the question is phrased, “Can Science Study Religion?” or “Can Science Study God?” as opposed to the broader “supernatural.” I will argue, with Professor Stenger, that science can indeed study claims of religion when those claims are factual statements about the natural world or purport to be factual statements about the natural world. But I will take issue with his contention that science has disproved the existence of God and show why I think it is a politically dangerous argument.

How involved in politics should scientists be? What factors are important when it comes to making that decision?

For some of us, the answer to that comes fairly easily. One or two of us managed to evade the stereotype of the scientist-of-the-future, and caught the involvement bug because we were popular enough to win a role in student government early in our lives. A few of us were caught in a different stereotype - the children of the flower children - and have never known what it is like to not be involved in political causes. A bunch of scientists are just plain incapable of keeping their noses out of anything they bump into, whether it directly involves science or not.

The decision is harder for others. There are a few scientists who really do have an ivory tower mindset, and actively try to avoid anything that smacks of politics. Many put so many hours into their science that they don’t have any to spare for politics. More are apathetic to politics, or disillusioned, or simply unaware of the issues.

Both the involved and uninvolved should read a new article in PLoS Biology. The article, “Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover of Biology,” provides some reasons to get more involved in the political process and some hints as to where the efforts of scientists might most effectively be focused.

Read More (at The Questionable Authority):

Mark Psiaki, Associate Professor at the Sibley School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering which is part of the Cornell University and advisor of Cornell’s IDEA club provides us with some insights into the minds of ID activists. I will leave most of his claims without comments as they speak best for themselves.

Mark Psiaki Wrote:

The principle of irreducible complexity does not give one all of biology, but if true, it serves to divert the biologist from wasting time by trying to answer a question to which there is no scientific answer.

Guest Post: Follow-up to last night’s panel discussion on ID/Evolution

How more upfront can one be about the scientific vacuity of Intelligent Design?

Of course Irreducible Complexity is flawed in many ways such as 1) it limits itself to Darwinian pathways 2) it concludes that IC systems are not just evidence against Darwinian theory but also in favor of Intelligent Design (false duality) 3) Darwinian pathways to IC systems have been identified.

Recent research on the origins and evolution of the genetic code have shown how “The standard genetic code enhances adaptive evolution of proteins” in a paper by Wen Zhu, Stephen Freeland, Journal of Theoretical Biology 239 (2006) 63–70

Not only is the genetic code ‘optimal’ in the sense that the effects of point mutations or mistranslations on the phenotype are minimized, a property which seems to argue for stasis, but the genetic code also speeds up the rate of adaptive evolution, a property which seems to argue for rapid change.

Again we see how the concept of robustness and evolvability are intricately linked in the genetic code.

On The Design Paradigm Salvador Cordova ‘responds’ (sic) to various claims about evolution and irreducible complexity. As I will show, the response further establishes the scientific vacuity of Intelligent Design.

Salvador Cordova Wrote:

You said, “You should also read up on existing evolutionary explanations for complexity such as scaffolding and Co-option “. No rather you should try to refute the well reasoned issues posed by the displacement theorem and the improbabilities associated with large scale co-option.

Nice redirection from examples of IC systems arising by natural pathways to yet another poorly developed concept of ID namely the displacement theorem. While the displacement theorem once again shows that ID is all about the supernatural, it also shows that as long as the system is ‘open’ to external information, there are no real issues. In other words, whether the external information is the environment or some supernatural or natural designer, it does not help ID’s cause. See Bad Math for more comments on Dembski’s claims.

As to the probabilities of ‘large scale co-option’ I notice the absence of much of any argument, calculations etc to support this claim.

While the scientific vacuity of Intelligent Design has been well documented, it does not hurt to show how Intelligent Design compares to evolutionary science.

NEW LONDON, Conn. - Phillip Barnes, associate professor of biology at Connecticut College, will explore the nature of science by contrasting evolutionary biology with intelligent design in a free and public lecture on Thursday, April 20, at 4:30 p.m. in Room 014 of the F.W. Olin Science Center.

His talk, “Evolution and Intelligent Design,” will include a discussion of the predictive power of the science of evolution “and its relevance for setting public policy in the potential avian flu epidemic, while intelligent design provides no relevant predictions or information for public policy,” Barnes said. Time for questions and discussion will follow.

Link

I have just come across the world’s coolest flatfish picture, and I just thought I would share. Apparently seven of the world’s 550 species of flounder are actually polymorphic for which side of the juvenile becomes the new “top” side in the adult flatfish. Apparently either eye can pop out and rotate to the new top. This says some rather interesting things about the developmental processes involved.

For more, go check out the webpage describing the research of famed flatfish researcher Dr. Carolyn Bergstrom of Bamfield Marine Science Centre in Bamfield, British Columbia.

See also this random talk.origins discussion, on “Why did the flatfish’s eye move from one side to the other?,” and this funny reply, and this other random talk.origins post.

Seems ID activists do not shy away from inflation after all… In this case inflation of claims about a course taught by Allen MacNeill at Cornell.

The Cornell IDEA Club then posted a notice on their blog about the course, pointing out that it would be a seminar in which intelligent design theory would be discussed in the larger framework of its relationship to evolutionary theory. However (perhaps because of the source), this was immediately picked up by several websites supporting ID (most notably World Net Daily) and spun as “Cornell to Offer Course in Intelligent Design.”

Link

Of course our friends at Uncommon Descent decided to join the fray with Cordova’s posting ID Course at Cornell.

Seems ID is desperate for attention but why not spend all this effort and energy on making ID scientifically relevant? Or is that too hard? Let’s read on:

We’ve already documented the profoundly silly response of the Discovery Institute and ID advocates to the recent announcement of the finding of Tiktaalik roseae; now let’s look at the response of more traditional creationists. Two creationist groups, the young earth Answers in Genesis and the old earth Reasons to Believe, have put out press releases (what is it with creationists and press releases?) claiming to have debunked the finding and shown that it poses no problem for creationism. As we will see, this is wishful thinking to the point of delusion on the part of both organizations.

Continue Reading at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Comments may be left there.

Note: Much of the introduction has been rewritten to correct some errors about the nature of the blog and the name of the blog (PvM)

Allen MacNeill, who has announced the Cornell Course “ Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?” has a personal web blog called “The Evolution List”. In a posting titled Where The REAL Action Is In Evolutionary Biology MacNeill addresses the role of neutrality in evolution.

Since ID activists seem to have some problems understanding the importance of neutrality, such as the fact that neutraility is a selectable trait, I responded as follows: Various people have pointed out that the language used in my response is overly technical. I will attempt in a future posting to address the various concepts in more detail and hopefully make them more accessible to all interested parties

Intelligent Design activists have become more and more insistent, given the recent court rulings, that Intelligent Design is not religious (wink wink) as it merely identifies ‘designed’ objects and does not say anything about the ‘designer(s)’. While others have already shown how vacuous such claims are, a recent paper takes a different take on this issue. Elliott Sober in a paper titled INTELLIGENT DESIGN THEORY AND THE SUPERNATURAL – THE “GOD OR EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS” REPLY describes how ID points to a supernatural intelligent designer.

The study was reported in the journal Nature

Asa Issie, Aramis and the origin of Australopithecus Nature 440, 883-889 (13 April 2006)

Tim D. White, Giday WoldeGabriel, Berhane Asfaw, Stan Ambrose, Yonas Beyene, Raymond L. Bernor, Jean-Renaud Boisserie, Brian Currie, Henry Gilbert, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, William K. Hart, Leslea J. Hlusko, F. Clark Howell, Reiko T. Kono, Thomas Lehmann, Antoine Louchart, C. Owen Lovejoy, Paul R. Renne, Haruo Saegusa, Elisabeth S. Vrba, Hank Wesselman and Gen Suwa

The latest fossil unearthed from a human ancestral hot spot in Africa allows scientists to link together the most complete chain of human evolution so far.

The 4.2 million-year-old fossil discovered in northeastern Ethiopia helps scientists fill in the gaps of how human ancestors made the giant leap from one species to another.

That’s because the newest fossil, the species Australopithecus anamensis, was found in the region of the Middle Awash - where seven other human-like species spanning nearly 6 million years and three major phases of human development were previously discovered.

Source

A new study in the journal Pediatrics suggests that a tonsillectomy may improve the condition of kids diagnosed with attention defecit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I think it’s an excellent case of some true “alternative explanations” for the data that the creationist/ID types often crow about.

Creationists often try to validate their position by saying that both they and mainstream scientists start from the same data, but that creationists use their “Bible glasses” to interpret it, while scientists view it through their “evolution glasses.” In other words, they’re not wrong–it’s just a different interpretation of the same data, and where you end up depends on your initial biases and worldview. Though this is bogus when it comes to creationism, there are indeed real debates in the literature, where two hypotheses may be similarly compelling.

(Read more at Aetiology)

In the latest misaimed blast from the Whine and Cheese Division of the Discovery Institute, Michael Francisco expresses shock and dismay at the idea that people would actually claim that Intelligent Design and creationism are the same thing:

Finally, during the debate over [Kentucky Governor] Fletcher’s school board nominees, one House member argued they should “send a message that we are not a state that will fall prey to intelligent design, which is nothing more than creationism.” This argument merely repeats the common misconception that intelligent design and creationism are the same.

With all the effort that those dedicated Discovery Institute folks have put into trying to convince people that ID really isn’t creationism, what could possibly make people think that it is?

Read more (at The Questionable Authority):

Last night (April 10^th), the Rio Rancho School Board held a hearing on it’s controversial “Science Policy 401.”

After hearing from about 30 of the more than 100 people packed into the board room, the board deleted the phrase from the original policy

When appropriate and consistent with the New Mexico Science Standards, Benchmarks, and Performance Standards, discussions about issues that are of interest to both science and individual religious and philosophical beliefs will acknowledge that reasonable people may disagree about the meaning and interpretation of data.

and replaced it with this one, taken directly from the New Mexico Science Standards, Benchmarks, and Performance Standards

“Students shall understand that reasonable people may disagree about some issues that are of interest to both science and religion (e.g., the origin of life on earth, the cause of the big bang, the future of the earth).”

I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I’m always up for a good documentary. The History Channel this week is running a series, 10 days that changed America. According to the website,

The History Channel selected 10 teams of award-winning documentary filmmakers to spotlight “10 historic events that triggered seismic shifts in America’s political, cultural or social landscape.” The programs, including the one filmed in Dayton, include archival footage, reenactments, historic artifacts and interviews.

On Wednesday, April 12^th, they’ll air “Scopes: The Battle over America’s Soul” (9PM EST). Should be interesting; I see that Answers in Genesis is already complaining about it.

Here’s the latest update in the continuing saga of UT Professor Eric Pianka, and the articles from the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise.

I got up early this morning, and made several phone calls to try and get to the bottom of why all mention of Pianka had been expunged from the paper. Bottom line: big misunderstanding, and the articles are now back online. It had absolutely nothing to do with the paper trying to dodge responsibility for its actions, or the paper not standing behind the articles, or any of the other possibilities that I had thought were likely. It appears that I didn’t have the full story, and jumped to some conclusions in the earlier articles that were not entirely justified.

Read More (at The Questionable Authority):

Update: I’ve added some substantial comments 81029 and 81054 that might be lost in the comment roll, but add some important perspective to Behe’s arguments.

Michael Behe is known as the author of the concept of Irreducible Complexity (IC, but see [note 1]). However, he has given several different, not entirely consistent, definitions of IC. Everyone is familiar with the “multiple parts” definition, fewer will be familiar with the “neutral mutational steps” definition (1) and fewer still with the idea that amino acids interactions themselves are IC (2, see my critique of this). Indeed, Behe’s recent paper with David Snoke (3) relied on a combination of the last two definitions (see our critique), and Behe also used the latter definition in the Dover trial (3).

A paper just out in the journal Science has effectively refuted the claims of the Behe and Snoke paper (4)

It looks like Jerry Adler of Newsweek has seen the same problem I did with the reaction of the “leading researchers” of ID to Tiktaalik. See “Evolution: If It Walks Like a Fish…”

PS: See also this cartoon from Kansas, and also this cartoon.

Fish can hold breath for months

If you thought you were the champion of holding your breath under water as a kid, think again. Crucian carp, a fish closely related to the goldfish, can live months without oxygen, scientists have discovered.

…

“Anoxia related diseases are the major causes of death in the industrialized world,” said Goran Nilsson, a professor at University of Oslo. “Evolution has solved the problem of anoxic survival millions of years ago, something that medical science has struggled with for decades with limited success.”

While ‘Intelligent Design” failed to resolve onf of the major causes of death, evolution has been far ‘smarter’.

A number of people commenting on my last article noticed and highlighted the disappearance of stories related to the Pianka affair from the website of the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise. Dave Thomas picked up the story, and posted it here. I’m going to provide a bit more detail on the scope of the paper’s dishonest and despicable conduct, along with the text of an email that I’ve sent them.

Read More (at The Questionable Authority):

Boy, this is not turning out to be a good week for the creationists. Now the famous museum of Kent Hovind, aka Dr. Dino, has been closed. Read “Park could face extinction” in the Pensacola News:

In Mike Dunford’s PT blog The Seguin Gazette-Enterprise and Misrepresentation of Pianka., some commenters noticed that the Seguin