News

Here’s a story, “Leaky Genes Put Evolution on the Fast Track, Pitt and UW-Madison Researchers Find” (Eurekalert, Jun 15, 2011) where

The team traced the development of a unique feature in a species of fruit fly that began with low-level gene activity and became a distinct feature in a mere four mutations as an existing gene took on a new function, according to a report in PNAS 

Slight changes in DNA transcriptional enhancers can activate dormant genetic imperfections, causing “leakiness” or low level activity in developing tissue that is different from the genes’ typical location. A few more mutations can result in “a new function for an old gene.” One such gene found its way to becoming a permanent fixture in the ban of a species of fruit fly. However, Read More ›

Well, they would, but … Once you’re thick in Science, you can question the paradigm. But if you want to get grants, if you want to be elected to high positions, if you want to get awards as a promoter of public education of Science, you can’t question the paradigm. ~  45.09 I interviewed dozens and dozens of scientists and, when they’re amongst each other or talking to a journalist who they trust, they’ll speak about ‘It’s incredibly complex’ or ‘Molecular Biology is in a crisis’, but, publicly, they can’t say that. ~  45.52 – from Expelled Witham is a veteran Washington area journalist and author.

Here, Caltech physicist Sean Carroll graciously responded here to UD’s Vincent Torley’s questions, explaining why he thinks God is not needed to explain the universe. It’s shaping up to be one of our most popular posts, besides which … Starting at 3, dark knight KD has certainly livened up the discussion, as have regulars like CannuckianYankee, BlakeG, uoflcard, donaldm, and a host of favourites. If you want to comment, with wit and polish, come on in, the water’s fine.

Here’s David Berlinski and Paul Nelson on Ricochet, interviewed by Berlinski’s daughter Claire Berlinski: I asked my father and Paul Nelson to reply to as many of your questions about the Great Expectations conference as they could–beginning with the obvious: “Is it true that Paul Nelson believes that the world is only 6,000 years old?” (I paraphrase, but that idea came up in the comments.) They’ve given their answers to a few more questions, including: “Do you guys believe in intelligent design?” and “Do you actually know anything about science?”

At ScienceDaily, we learn that while “the brains of all vertebrates display gender-related differences,”

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen have now demonstrated for the first time in the white-browed sparrow weaver, an African songbird, that the extent of these sex differences in the brain varies according to social status, and cannot be explained by singing behaviour as previously thought.

Essentially, only the dominant male in the small flock mates, and during the breeding season, “sings a long and complex solo song that it only performs at dawn.”

According to the hitherto accepted hypothesis, Read More ›

No. Good illustration of the “magic” of low rez? Yes.

Here, Dave Coppedge handily summarizes and comments on the news from DarwinWorld, everything from “how the skunk got its stripes” to why superstitions “actually make evolutionary sense.” Of course, superstitions make evolutionary sense – in Darwinworld, the distinction between fact and “useful” fantasy disappears. Interestngly, Coppedge notes, One encouraging sign is that more readers seem to be mocking the evolutionary just-so stories in the comments. They usually get shouted down by Darwin bigots (some with terrible spelling and no sense of history or philosophy) … Coppedge offers an anti-bigot kit at the foot of the post.

“It is now blasphemy to criticise Darwin.”

Some months ago an American philosopher explained to a highly sophisticated audience in Britain what, in his opinion, was wrong, indeed fatally wrong, with the standard neo-Darwinian theory of biological evolution. He made it crystal clear that his criticism was not inspired by creationism, intelligent design or any remotely religious motivation. A senior gentleman in the audience erupted, in indignation: “You should not say such things, you should not write such things! The creationists will treasure them and use them against science.” The lecturer politely asked: “Even if they are true?” To which the instant and vibrant retort was: “Especially if they are true!” with emphasis on the ‘especially’.- Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, “It is now blasphemy to criticise Darwin,” Spiked Review of Books Online (26 March 2010)

and Read More ›

In “Why the universe wasn’t fine-tuned for life” (New Scientist, 08 June 2011), Marcus Chown tells us that Victor Stenger’s new The Fallacy of Fine-tuning “dismantles arguments that the laws of physics in our universe were ‘fine-tuned’ to foster life.”:

If the force of gravity were a few per cent weaker, it would not squeeze and heat the centre of the sun enough to ignite the nuclear reactions that generate the sunlight necessary for life on Earth. But if it were a few per cent stronger, the temperature of the solar core would have been boosted so much the sun would have burned out in less than a billion years – not enough time for the evolution of complex life like us.(You have to pay to read the article.)

Some, including some atheists, consider fine-tuning evidence for God (though not necessarily sufficient evidence). But not Stenger apparently. Determining whether you think he “dismantles” fine tuning, you might like to consider mathematician George Ellis’s “Toy Universe”comments on the question: Read More ›

Before the Evolutionary Agony Aunt, Darwinian Brand Marketing, and thousands of dim frosh learning the “real” reasons people pray or why we don’t throw granny under the bus?

Think back. Think waaay back (if you can) to Wilhelm Reich, once the science darling of the Establishment, with a single, simple idea that governed everything:

The spiritual hysteria that Reich inspired in the America of the 1940s and early ’50s is as hard to explain now as the madness that 1920s crowds felt hearing Bix Beiderbecke play the cornet, especially when you consider that most Reichians were supposed to be educated skeptics and cultural critics. Even—or especially—intellectuals are not immune to America’s chronic and recurring religious revivals in their various forms.Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Dwight Macdonald, J.D. Salinger, Paul Goodman, William Burroughs and other bohemian culture heroes were among his followers: examples of what Lionel Trilling unsettlingly called “the moral urgency, the sense of crisis and the concern with personal salvation that mark the existence of American intellectuals.” Reich won a particular following among intellectuals, artists and cultural spokesmen who were looking for a new revo
ution after becoming disillusioned with communism.

– Henry Allen, “Thinking Inside the Box: Why some of America’s most prominent minds fell for the wildly eccentric ideas of Wilhelm Reich,”The Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2011

Reich was the prophet of the “apocalyptic orgasm.” No, really. And did any big brain get suspicious on account of his Read More ›

Look what University of Chicago’s James Shapiro is saying,

New research has shown that a novel way of looking at evolution is needed. Cells are sensitive and communicative information processing entities. Novelty in evolution comes in part from genome changes that are the result of regulated cellular activity. The next step in the understanding of evolution is emerging since the Modern Synthesis of Darwinism and Mendelism and the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA in the middle of the last century. Vid also. Slides here.

He says the new way is informatics. And it’s okay for an establishment guy to just say this stuff?:

Disentangling basic issues in evolutionary debates

1. Origin of life & the first cells – still on the fringes of serious scientific discussion Read More ›

In 2000, a man gathered two lbs of rock from a meteorite that crashed into the ice on Tagish Lake, in northern British Columbia, Canada. He kept them frozen until, in 2008, a Canadian research consortium bought them. In “Meteorite hints at life’s origins: As debate continues to swirl around arsenic-loving bacteria, a space rock yields new astrobiological clues,” Tia Ghose (The Scientist , June 9, 2011) tells us, Organic compounds from a meteorite may hold clues to the origin of life on Earth, according to a study published today (June 9) in Science. Water on the asteroid reacted with the rock to form organic compounds—including many scientists believe are the crucial ingredients that sparked life in Earth’s primordial oceans Read More ›

In “Clever Tool Use in Parrots and Crows”, (ScienceDaily, June 13, 2011) , we learn:

Parrots and Corvids frequently astonish researchers investigating animal intelligence, in particular when it comes to solving technical problems. The New Caledonian crow (Corvus monduloides), for example, manufactures and uses elongated objects such as sticks or pieces of Pandanus leaves as tools to probe for grubs in tree bark and dead wood. The kea (Nestor notabilis), a mountain parrot which is unknown to employ tools in the wild, can accomplish the use of compact objects tools to knock a food reward out of place. Read More ›

In “Yukon fossils reveal oldest armoured organism” (CBC News, Jun 13, 2011), we learn, … 800 million-year-old fossilized evidence that organisms were trying to protect themselves by forming their own shield-like plates.It is the oldest evidence ever of biomineralization, the use of minerals by a living thing to form a hard shell, similar to the way clams or lobsters form their own protection. The tiny fossils date back between 717 and 812 million years. [ … ] Until now the oldest evidence from similar organisms biomineralizing was found in Africa and dates back to about 550 million years ago, Cohen said. The fossils are microscopic, of course. Do they raise questions one doesn’t ask nowadays? See also “Spider in amber Read More ›

😆 Wrapping up the recent contest on why some educated people trash books unread and what to call those who do, thanks to commenter TomG at 9 who links us to a study at Thinking Christian of “noviewers” of Steve Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: So then, who read the book? Of those who rated the book favorably (5 stars), 94 percent likely read the book, and 2 percent communicated they had not read it, and 4 percent were in the middle grouping. Of those who gave the book a 1-star rating, only 26 percent likely read the book. About 43 percent of very negative ratings came from people who read the book only in part (or whose reading of Read More ›