March 2011

The last decade has witnessed three contenders for the title: earliest identifiable human ancestor. These are Ardipithecus, Orrorin and Sahelanthropus. All of them generated great excitement at the time of their discovery and, for many, they were evidence that the lineage of the human genus was being clarified. However, those willing to read research papers (rather than media reports) were more aware that the research community was not of one mind about the significance of these fossil remains. Recently, Wood and Harrison have contributed a major review paper that revisits these arguments and finds that the various claims for human ancestry are not rigorous. They offer alternative explanations for these three fossil hominines. “In their paper, Wood and Harrison caution Read More ›

At ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2011), we are invited to contemplate, “Has Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Already Arrived?”, With the steep decline in populations of many animal species, from frogs and fish to tigers, some scientists have warned that Earth is on the brink of a mass extinction like those that occurred only five times before during the past 540 million years.Each of these ‘Big Five’ saw three-quarters or more of all animal species go extinct. Is a three-quarters disappeance – as hinted by the University of California, Berkeley, paleobiologists who published a study in Nature, March3, – at all likely to happen, short of a worldwide nuclear holocaust or giant asteroid hit? Tigers are featured in the article but – Read More ›

Scratch that. Partial answer just in. One already has. Here (Retreating Into Silence, March 6, 2011), Mark Steyn tells a prescient story: A prominent British imam has been forced to retract his claims that Islam is compatible with Darwin’s theory of evolution after receiving death threats from fundamentalists.This is not in Lahore or Cairo but in London, at what is described as “a prominent mosque which also runs one of the country’s largest sharia courts” – in other words, a religious institution that already enjoys the imprimatur of state approval, albeit not (yet) to the same degree as in Pakistan. The imam, Dr Hasan, has issued a groveling apology – “I seek Allah’s forgiveness for my mistakes” – but they Read More ›

The Zed and I agree about David Brooks’ revolting Social Animal theories, to judge from his Salon review: I made it almost a third of the way through the arid wasteland of David Brooks’ didactic novel, “The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement,” before I succumbed. I had begun reading it determined to be dispassionate and analytic and fair, but I couldn’t bear it for long: I learned to loathe Harold and Erica, the two upscale avatars of upper-middle-class values that Brooks marches through life in the story. And then I began to resent the omniscient narrator who narrates this exercise in unthinking consumption and privilege that is, supposedly, the ideal of happiness; it’s like watching Read More ›

In response to someone who wondered whether American scientists might be letting their imaginations run away with them about this spectacular new alien life find, Rob Sheldon offers “absolutely not”. Au contraire, the French were onto it and NASA dropped the ball. On why that happened, he says, NASA’s attitude is an example of

… “pathological science” and was extensively discussed by Irving Langmuir in 1953 and subsequent publications

I can assure you, nothing in Hoover’s [the discovering scientist’s] work comes within a mile or so of being pathological. Hoover has several gigabytes of pictures taken in every single CI meteorite he can get his hands on. The pictures have made him a sensation in the French Academy, the Belgian Academy and the Russian Academy. Experts in microbiology have examined the pictures and not only verified their biological identity, but asked how he obtained such clarity that exceeds what they can accomplish in the laboratory. (Freeze dry for a thousand years…) The only people that continue to shun him are the US and NASA. Ultimately it is ideology that prevent people from taking the pictures seriously, a prior commitment to “life only exists on Earth”. Some of those people are conservative Christians, some are dedicated Darwinists. I really don’t think it is a well-reasoned position, but still, there’ a lot of ideological opposition.

By the way, Fox News is offering updates, comments from relevant scientists, though as of ten minutes ago, I couldn’t yet find them. Keep checking back.

I suppose some Evolution Sunday clergy will now be preaching sermons about how to adjust to the fact that we now “know” how life got started purely by chance (abiogenesis). Our ID community’s rebbe, Moshe Averick, told me,

I don’t think it has any implications at all for abiogenesis. No one really has much of a clue how abiogenesis could have occured on earth, the best that could be said is that not only is life on earth inexplicable, but life elsewhere in the universe is also inexplicable.

Our George Hunter will doubtless comment shortly on his regular blog, but I overheard him say, Read More ›

While searching Discover, I ran up against this from Perimeter Institute cosmologist Neil Turok, “Will We Discover That the Universe Had No Beginning and Has No End?” (October 2010): In the conventional picture of the origin of the universe, the Big Bang is the beginning of time. This is one of the greatest mysteries in science, and I’ve spent the last few years trying to work out how to make sense of the moment when, in that picture, the universe emerged from a point of infinite density and temperature—what’s known as the initial singularity. I’m exploring the idea that the singularity was not the beginning of time. In this new view, time didn’t have a beginning, and the Big Bang Read More ›

No, not a joke. From “Exclusive: NASA Scientist Claims Evidence of Alien Life on Meteorite” by Garrett Tenney (March 05, 2011) here: Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, has traveled to remote areas in Antarctica, Siberia, and Alaska, amongst others, for over ten years now, collecting and studying meteorites. He gave FoxNews.com early access to the out-of-this-world research, published late Friday evening in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology. In it, Hoover describes the latest findings in his study of an extremely rare class of meteorites, called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites — only nine such meteorites are known to exist on Earth. Though it may be hard to swallow, Hoover is convinced that Read More ›

While rummaging through Discover Magazines Top 2010 stories relevant to our blog’s interests, I sailed into #46: Do Physical Laws Vary From Place to Place? by Tim Folger (January-February special/December 16, 2010) by These tentative findings raise the possibility that the physical laws that allow life to exist may hold true only in our particular part of the universe. “There could be regions with different values for the constants of physics,” Webb says. “We inevitably find ourselves in one that allows us to be here.” If so, we must seek a replacement for the word “constant”. Such large speculations on such tentative findings, and it’s in the top 50 stories. I am glad no one allows cosmologists near stock brokerages Read More ›

… and served with cold mashed potatoes, lumpy gravy, and wan, limp lettuce.

Here, University of Alabama science historian Michael Flannery, laments that Darwin’s co-theorist Wallace has been “Darwinized”, referencing the many efforts by Darwinists to downplay his involvement in evolutinary theory, principally because he was not a materialist atheist. For example,

Quammen writes, “he was a man of crotchety independence and lurching enthusiasms, a restless soul never quite satisfied with the place in which he lived, a believer in spiritualism and séances, a devotee of phrenology, a dabbler in mesmerism, a later apostate from Darwinian theory when it came to the development of the human brain, an opponent of smallpox vaccination, and an advocate of nationalizing large private landholdings, who by these and other eccentricities gave his detractors some grounds for dismissing him as a crank. Which they did. The question that no scholar or biographer has adequately answered is: How to reconcile such brilliant achievements, radical convictions, and incautious zealotries within one human character–the character of a consummate empiricist and field naturalist?”

Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life does precisely that. These disparate features CAN be reconciled if you quit casting Wallace’s spiritualism, socialism, belief in mesmerism, and his opposition to vaccination dismissively as “eccentricities.” Recast properly, Wallace becomes a prescient figure who called for much-needed land reform, women’s rights, a broadened view of science expanded beyond the strictures of a dogmatically held methodological naturalism, a man who refused to yield on issues of individual freedoms and public health when serious questions remained, a precursor to intelligent design, and a vocal opponent of the ethical and moral dangers of the rising tide of eugenics. Viewed in this way Wallace’s convictions seem less “radical,” his “zealotries” less “incautious,” his “lurching enthusiasms” more understandable — the very epitome of a “consummate empiricist and field naturalist” truly willing to go where the evidence would lead him.

For more, go here.

One thing I learned from reading Flannery’s biography of Wallace is that he developed his passion for land reform as a result of his experiences as a land surveyor, surveying in areas where traditional common lands had been enclosed and country folk were left without resources. Opinions differ as to whether the move was necessary, but the suffering wasn’t.

Here I learned that Darwin’s inner circle was very much pro-enclosure: Read More ›

Jane Harris-Szovan’s book, Eugenics and the Firewall (when social Darwinism hit the Canadian province of Alberta), has been getting lots of attention, here for example, and here. She notes,

If you’re wondering why only the left is interviewing me, then you need to learn a bit about who runs my province. [Not the left. – d., 😉 ] Still, l it makes me sad, that the Christian and right wing media are running away from this issue like ‘fraidy cats. I expected it, but I am sad that I was right.)

The embarrassment here is that eugenics in Alberta was spearheaded by evangelical Christians, including a premier whose soubriquet was “Bible Bill.” The left has a stake in exposing this scandal, not the Christian groups. But it’s time someone did, just to clear the air.

It’s interesting to reflect on how seductive the idea must have been back then. I doubt you’d get any prominent Christian leaders on board for compulsory sterilization today. Read More ›

In “Frogs Evolve Teeth – Again: Mysterious re-evolution challenges evolutionary theory, scientists say”, Christine Dell’Amore (National Geographic News, February 10, 2011) tells us, Lower-jaw teeth in frogs re-evolved after an absence of 200 million years, a new study says. The discovery challenges a “cornerstone” of evolutionary thinking, according to experts.Of the more than 6,000 species of frogs, only one, a South American marsupial tree frog called Gastrotheca guentheri, has teeth on both its upper and lower jaws. Most frogs have only tiny upper-jaw teeth. Apparently, G. guentheri has acted in violation of Dollo’s law, according to which traits lost through evolution cannot be regained. “It’s a very clear case of reacquisition of a lost complex morphological structure, which, according to Read More ›

First, a moment of prayer, led by Sister Sindya N. Bhanoo, from the New York Times (March 3, 2011): Charles Darwin has had a remarkable record over the past century, not only in the affirmation of evolution by natural selection, but in the number of his more specific ideas that have been proved correct. Now that the Beard has been appropriately honoured, we learn, shocka!: He may, however, have been wrong about invasive species, at least where amphibians are concerned. Darwin believed that when an invasive species entered a region where a closely related species already existed, it would most likely be unsuccessful because of a competition for resources.“Instead, we found the opposite pattern with amphibians,” said Reid Tingley, a Read More ›

… seems to have sunk like a stone: An objective overview of the biggest controversy in American education.Intelligent Design is one of the hottest issues facing parents and educators to day, but it can be hard to separate the facts from the heated rhetoric. This expert and objective guide gets to the bottom of the questions: What is Intelligent Design? Should it replace or complement traditional science? What’s all the fuss about? • Explains the terms, the controversy, and the involvement of the American courts • Indispensable guide for concerned educators and parents • Written by an expert in the field About the Author Christopher Carlisle, M. Div., is a professor and the Episcopal chaplain at the University of Massachusetts. Read More ›

Recently, we’ve been talking about the Templeton Foundation (, noting that it is spearheading an assault against science teachers who are slow in  paying the Darwin boys their accustomed shakedown.

Here’s Jerry “Why Evolution Is True” Coyne, on how the Templetons efforts to ingratiate themselves with the Darwin boys will never be enough. He introduces Sunny Bains’ 23 page report (.pdf), “Questioning the integrity of the John Templeton Foundation” (Evolutionary Psychology 9:92-115 2011):

Bains is a journalist and scientist at Imperial College London, and her report was supported by Sam Harris’s Project Reason (I’m on the board of advisors). I’ll just give her introductory precis, but if you want to comment on the issues, do read the whole paper. Curiously, it was published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, which of course causes me some cognitive dissonance!

I take it that Coyne is embarrassed by evolutionary psychology, that idiot child of evolutionary biology?

Ah yes, it is true. Coyne denies that the idiot child is his. We must accept his word as a gentleman on that, and I for one believe him. For one thing, in some fracas,

A couple of evolutionary psychologists went after me in the comments, claiming that I was tarring the field by criticizing some articles that were, after all, in the popular press. What these critics don’t seem to realize is that many evolutionary-psychology papers themselves—papers from the primary scientific literature—are also lame, dubious, or even laughable.

Actually, almost all EP papers can be described that way. But we will press on because just now we really want to hear the dirt on Templeton, and it’s Coyne’s own fault if he got himself into a hoo-haw with the Eepers. (Coyne, you are supposed to be playing this one for laughs, you know … )

Anyway, some useful stuff in Bains: Read More ›

In two previous posts (here and here), I raised some objections to the first couple of chapters of Daniel Fairbanks’ 2010 book, Relics of Eden — The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA. I encouraged Fairbanks and others to review all the evidence pertinent to the matter at hand. As impressive the array of arguments for common descent may superficially appear at first glance, with only a cursory reading of the relevant literature, upon closer inspection they invariably fall apart.

Given the demonstrable causal impotence of neo-Darwinism to account for the evolution of novel genes and proteins, new body plans, and radical innovations in form, I have thus in recent months become inclined to be rather sceptical of the stupendous claim that all extant taxa are derivative of a single progenitor or common ancestor. If no one can tell us how such evolution from a common ancestor could possibly have occurred, then how can we be so sure that it did occur? In such a case, one would need to marshall some very spectacular evidence for common descent in order to present a persuasive argument. Unfortunately for Darwinists, however, the evidence for common ancestry is paper thin on the ground.

Chapter three of Fairbanks’ book is concerned with pseudogenes, allegedly once-functional relics of our evolutionary heritage. As with all his other “evidences” for common ancestry, Fairbanks — once again — cherry picks all the seemingly confirmatory evidence, while hand-wavingly ignoring all the obvious counter-examples in the scientific literature. Let’s turn our attention to what he has to say.

Read More ›