At Evolution News & Views, Michael Behe reviews the latest work from Richard Lenski’s long-term experiments with E. coli: Readers of my posts know that I’m a big fan of Professor Richard Lenski, a microbiologist at Michigan State University and member of the National Academy of Sciences. For the past few decades he has been conducting the largest laboratory evolution experiment ever attempted. Growing E. coli in flasks continuously, he has been following evolutionary changes in the bacterium for over 50,000 generations (which is equivalent to roughly a million years for large animals). Although Lenski is decidedly not an intelligent design proponent, his work enables us to see what evolution actually does when it has the resources of a large number of organisms over a substantial Read More ›

Ann Gauger posted an amusing facebook dialogue on the blog of the Biologic Institute: “Sometimes it might be a good idea to actually read what ID proponents write before critiquing it.” Click here to read the rest.

After critiquing Libby Anne’s atheism and faulty epistemology in my previous post, I propose to complete my examination of her philosophy by critiquing her views on ethics, and in particular on human persons and the morality of abortion. Readers will recall that a few days ago, Libby Anne put up a post that subsequently went viral, describing how she had lost faith in the pro-life movement. What I aim to show in this post is that her views on ethics (and in particular, on abortion) are riddled with contradictions, and that her philosophical understanding of the pro-life ethic is very poor. I shall also address the question of how a non-religious person might go about trying to determine what is Read More ›

Christians have traditionally believed that the design of living things is evidence of God’s handiwork.  For millennia they agreed with the psalmist who gave thanks to God for the obvious and exquisite design of his body:  “For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.  I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made . . .”  Psalm 139:13-14.  Honest atheists do not dispute the Christian belief that living things appear to be designed.  Even world famous arch-atheist Richard Dawkins concedes this point, writing that “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”  Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker.  Dawkins does not mince Read More ›

Evolutionists now understand how the eye evolved. While skeptics have been claiming something doesn’t come from nothing, evolutionists have been busy tracking down the details. As one paper explains, “the gap in understanding of the molecular evolution of eye components is all but closed.” That is amazing. For understanding eye evolution at the molecular level is the holy grail, or at least a holy grail. As we have discussed before, vision is profoundly complicated and it is not clear how it could spontaneously arise as evolutionists believe it did. And vague speculation, with cartoon illustrations, of light sensitive patches magically morphing into a series of increasingly sophisticated eyes do not help much. What is needed is a plausible explanation of how such Read More ›

Kudos to Daniel Sarewitz for his must-readcomment on the problem of bias in scientific research where he discusses mounting evidence that bias in science is not random. If it were then multiple studies would serve to cancel it out. Instead false positive results persist and to make matters worse, science’s attempts at internal controls, such as conflicts of interest disclosure, are not keeping up with the problem. Sarewitz points out that industry teams, who seek actually to implement scientific findings, are consistently unable to confirm what were thought to be “landmark” findings. As John Ioannidis has put it, “claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”  Read more

Over at his “step-by-step” post Upright BiPed muses over the irony of Elizabeth Liddle calling herself “skeptical” and naming her blog “The Skeptical Zone” when she clings to conclusions driven by her deeply held ideological predispositions in the teeth of logic and evidence and with a dogmatic fervor that would make a medieval churchman blush.  The dictionary defines “skeptical” as “an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object.”  That last phrase is the key.  When a person says they are skeptical, they may mean they are generally skeptical or particularly skeptical.  UB obviously believes that a person who takes on the mantle of skepticism is using the word in the former sense, Read More ›

The deep sea harp sponge has a series of vertical vanes that maximize surface area for passive suspension feeding. As onereport explains:  Read more

The Central Dogma has had an enormous impact on the way genetics research has developed over the past 50 years. Basically, the dogma states that DNA genes encode mRNA, and mRNA allows proteins to be constructed, and proteins do all the work needed for cells to function. There is a linear logic here that fits into a view of the genome that is static throughout its life and provides a blueprint for life. This is how Franklin and Vondriska introduce their paper: “Arguably the greatest postmodern coup for reductionism in biology was the articulation of the central dogma. Not since “humors” were discarded from medical practice and logic and experiment instituted as the cornerstones of physiology (which they remain today) Read More ›

Who is Libby Anne? That’s what you’re wondering, isn’t it? I’ll let her introduce herself: As a brief introduction, I was raised in a large homeschooling family influenced by the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements. I grew up an evangelical Christian, though with some fundamentalist aspects. I found my beliefs challenged in college and am today an atheist and a feminist. I am in my mid-twenties, married to a wonderful man… and busily raising young children… I am also in graduate school getting my Ph.D. in a humanities field. (I’ve omitted the names of family members, out of respect for their privacy.) Libby Anne has a Web site called Love, Joy, Feminism. I would recommend that readers take the time Read More ›

Denyse O’Leary has a piece that may interest UD readers at TheBestSchools.org: Readers may remember Ben Carson, the gifted neurosurgeon who failed Political Correctness 101 at Emory University and then gently but pointedly attacked PC in his commencement address. Carson’s sin was to point out that Darwin’s theory of evolution offers no firm basis for making moral judgments apart from the claim that morality helps us spread our selfish genes. Top Darwinian philosopher Michael Ruse agrees with him about that. But Ruse supports Darwinism, so he experiences no backlash. And Carson, who has saved countless lives, literally found himself in the “never again” category as a commencement speaker because he opposes it. . . . Recently, columnist Star Parker, president Read More ›

Michael Behe has a new blog post at Evolution News & Views responding to this paper that recently appeared in Science: A paper appeared recently in Science that reminded me of one of my favorite toys when I was a kid — a rolling-ball maze. Over the years I had a few different varieties, including two- and three-dimensional ones. The basic gist is that a person has to twist and turn the toy to roll a ball through a plastic, transparent maze from the entrance to the exit. Of course there are a lot of dead ends and blind alleys, so it’s pretty tricky, at least at first. Once you learn the path, it becomes trivial. Näsvall et al. (2012) do the same with a Read More ›

Evolutionary biologist Michael Lynch, of Indiana University Bloomington, has a new paper that has just been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), entitled “Evolutionary layering and the limits to cellular perfection.” From the abstract, Although observations from biochemistry and cell biology seemingly illustrate hundreds of examples of exquisite molecular adaptations, the fact that experimental manipulation can often result in improvements in cellular infrastructure raises the question as to what ultimately limits the level of molecular perfection achievable by natural selection. Here, it is argued that random genetic drift can impose a strong barrier to the advancement of molecular refinements by adaptive processes. Moreover, although substantial improvements in fitness may sometimes be accomplished via the emergence of novel cellular features Read More ›

Science Daily features an interesting report today, which you can read here: Humans share over 90% of their DNA with their primate cousins. The expression or activity patterns of genes differ across species in ways that help explain each species’ distinct biology and behavior. DNA factors that contribute to the differences were described on Nov. 6 at the American Society of Human Genetics 2012 meeting in a presentation by Yoav Gilad, Ph.D., associate professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago. Dr. Gilad reported that up to 40% of the differences in the expression or activity patterns of genes between humans, chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys can be explained by regulatory mechanisms that determine whether and how a gene’s recipe Read More ›

This new book looks interesting: About the Book The nature of scientific activity has changed dramatically over the last half century, and the objectivity and rigorous search for evidence that once defined it are being abandoned. Increasingly, this text argues, dogma has taken the place of authentic science. This study examines how conflicts of interest–both institutional and individual–have become pervasive in the science world, and also explores the troubling state of research funding and flaws of the peer-review process. It looks in depth at the dominance of several specific theories, including the Big Bang cosmology, human-caused global warming, HIV as a cause of AIDS, and the efficacy of anti-depressant drugs. In a scientific environment where distinguished experts who hold contrary Read More ›