New research is providing a fascinating new perspective on fine-tuning and a three hundred year old debate. First for the context. When Isaac Newton figured out how the solar system worked he also detected a stability problem. Could the smooth-running machine go unstable, with planets smashing into each other? This is what the math indicated. But on the other hand, we’re still here. How could that be?  Read more

The regulation of cellular processes occurs at many levels. Gene expression, where the DNA is transcribed into an RNA molecule, is exquisitely controlled but so are the many downstream actions as well. For instance, the new RNA molecule can be inactivated by an incredible process referred to as RNA interference. This sophisticated process targets specific genes, and as usual nature’s own tools provide researchers with excellent means to investigate and harness biology. For instance, researchers have used RNA interference to turn off one gene at a time in the human cell to determine its function.  Read more

Now that News of the World has been shuttered in a scandal, what would we do without New Scientist for our  dose? In “Are wide-faced men rascals?” (07 July 2011), Andy Coghlan manages a straight face, reporting, Can it be true that men with extra-wide faces are more likely to be liars and cheats? That’s what a study published this week claims, but some researchers specialising in the evolution of trustworthiness have questioned the results.The study’s authors claim to have shown that men are most likely to cheat and lie if they have wider faces as measured by the facial width-to-height ratio, or WHR. Sceptics argue that the evidence supporting such a huge claim is weak, especially given that the Read More ›

In Origination of organismal form: beyond the gene in developmental and evolutionary biology (MIT Press, 2003), we learn about the first Altenberg meeting  (1999) of biologists who doubt Darwin. The locally famous one, that Suzan Mazur covered, came later. Read More ›

Claire Berlinski comments at Ricochet: “Seriously, if you could have seen how everyone scrambled to get out of the camera when I said we just want to talk about the interesting things we were talking about yesterday. And people are afraid. It would be the end of their careers.” Caption quote: “People who want to explore these ideas are as afraid of reprisal as anyone I’ve ever met in Turkey. (Excessively so, I’d say: It’s not as if anyone is going to lock them up. But obviously, something is keeping them from speaking freely. And that cannot be good for any of us.) ” The fact that the “land of the free” is governed by an unrepresentative elite is incisively Read More ›

“We call these events [mutations] accidental; we say they are random occurrences. And since they constitute the only possible source of modification in the genetic text, itself the sole repository of the organism’s hereditary structures, it necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. Read More ›

In “The Role of Creation in Science: The Real Story, a Breath of Fresh Air” (Evolution News & Views, July 2, 2011), science historian Michael Flannery remarks on Jonathan Bartlett’s “The Doctrine of Creation and the Making of Modern Biology,”

In a recent article at the Classical Conversations web site, Jonathan Bartlett authored an interesting commentary on creation as a concept for and catalyst to scientific inquiry and advance with “The Doctrine of Creation and the Making of Modern Biology.” Given the persistent claim by so-called “defenders” of quality science education such as Eugenie Scott, Paul Hanle, and others that only natural processes functioning via unbroken natural laws in nonpurposeful ways counts as science and that anything else is a “science stopper,” everyone–especially those least likely to do so–would do well to take page from Bartlett’s page of history. Read More ›

Those of you who’ve followed my posts and comments will have picked up that my view of Intelligent Design is pretty complicated. On the one hand, I defend design inferences, even strong design inferences. I’m entirely comfortable with questioning Darwinism (if that view still has enough content to identify it as a clear position, anyway), and have a downright dismissive view of both naturalism (if that view… etc) and atheism. I regularly see the ID position butchered, mangled and misrepresented by its detractors, most of whom should and probably do know better.

On the flipside, I don’t think ID (or for that matter, no-ID) is science, even if I reason that if no-ID is science then so is ID. My personal leaning has always been towards theistic evolution, and I see evolution as yet another instance of design rather than something which runs in opposition to it – a view which I know some ID proponents share, but certainly not all. I think non-scientific arguments for and inferences to design have considerable power, and see little reason to elevate particular arguments simply because some insist they’re “scientific”.

Here’s another part of that flipside, and the subject of today’s post. One of the more prominent ID arguments hinges on the trichotomy of Chance, Necessity, and Design. The problem for me is that I question the very existence of Chance, and I see Necessity as subsumable under Design.

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In “Climate of Fear: Big Science, Big Government” (Forbes, July 8, 2011), Patrick Michaels, lobbyist for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, admits, In his 1961 Farewell Address, Dwight Eisenhower famously predicted the rise of a “military-industrial complex,” in which he said, “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist”. He then went on to speculate as to what Vannevar Bush had wrought.Few remember the next paragraphs, in which he said that at universities, because of the enormous cost of scientific research, “a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity,” and that “we must also be alert” to the “danger that public policy itself could become the captive of a scientific-technological Read More ›

When I was seven years old I figured it all out. It was a simple, logically inescapable conclusion. I believed that I was the product of a purely materialistic, random process that did not have me in mind. When I die and my chemistry shuts down I will cease to exist, enter eternal oblivion, and nothing I ever achieve or do will have any ultimate purpose or meaning. Furthermore, there is no ultimate justice. Hitler and the millions he tortured and murdered will have the same ultimate fate: pointless, meaningless oblivion. I lived my life in a complete state of depression, anger and despair for 43 years as a result of this notion, although I accomplished much during that time Read More ›

Here. Epistasis between Beneficial Mutations and the Phenotype-to-Fitness Map for a ssDNA VirusDarin R. Rokyta1*, Paul Joyce2, S. Brian Caudle1, Craig Miller3, Craig J. Beisel2, Holly A. Wichman3 Epistatic interactions between genes and individual mutations are major determinants of the evolutionary properties of genetic systems and have therefore been well documented, but few quantitative data exist on epistatic interactions between beneficial mutations, presumably because such mutations are so much rarer than deleterious ones . We explored epistasis for beneficial mutations by constructing genotypes with pairs of mutations that had been previously identified as beneficial to the ssDNA bacteriophage ID11 and by measuring the effects of these mutations alone and in combination. We constructed 18 of the 36 possible double mutants Read More ›

To prevent parasite infections by promoting “genetic variation” (Jul 7, 2011):

Sexual reproduction, then, serves as a way to keep introducing genetic variety, a process that has to constantly be repeated in order to continue staving off attacks the latest and deadliest parasites. This is known as the “Red Queen Hypothesis”, taking its name from a line in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass in which, “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”

But no, wait. Read More ›

In “Calcified clue to ancient photosynthesis” (Nature, 2011/07/06), Katharine Sanderson reports:

Mat of microbes contains calcium carbonate that could only have formed through photosynthesis.The most direct evidence yet for ancient photosynthesis has been uncovered in a fossil of a matted carpet of microbes that lived on a beach 3.3 billion years ago. Read More ›

Here. And here. File with: “Okay, so Earth is rare. And who predicted that? ” Hat tip: Pos-Darwinista

From Carl Zimmer at Discover Magazine’s “The Loom” blog, we learn, “Last year arsenic-based life, now chlorine-based life” (12011/07/06)

I checked in with Steven Benner, a chemist who has raised a lot of concerns about the arsenic-life research last year. What did he think of the new research?“It looks true,” he said. Read More ›