Denyse O'Leary

Quite a bit, say Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, in What Darwin Got Wrong. They offer an interesting example, the ‘fourth dimension’ of living systems, The body masses of living organisms vary between 10^-13 grams (bacteria) to 10^8 grams (whales), that is, by 21 orders of magnitude. It’s interesting to see how other physico-chemical and biological properties and processes, and their ratios, scale with mass. How, for instance, surfaces and internal rates of transport, rates of cellular metabolism, whole organism metabolic rate, heartbeat, blood circulation, time and overall lifespan scale with mass. Thee are, of course, all three-dimensional systems, so it seems astounding that all the scaling factors, encompassing microorganisms, plants and animals, are multiples of a quarter, not a Read More ›

Staff writer Lesley Ciarula Taylor explains for Toronto Star readers “Why female red squirrels aren’t choosy about their mates”:

Guelph scientists have solved the puzzling question of why female squirrels are rampantly promiscuous, sleeping with an average of 10 males in one day.

It almost entirely depends on how many guys show up.

That’s the finding reported by University of Guelph researchers from their study of 85 female North American red squirrels. Female squirrels do not pass any specific mating tendencies (one, some, or many guys) on to their daughters.

“A lot of folks who have looked at this before looked at whether it’s good or bad for a squirrel to be promiscuous,” [lead investigator Eryn] McFarlane told the Star on Wednesday. “I wanted to look at whether it was genetic, regardless of whether it was good or bad.”

What she found is that risks and benefits don’t have much to do with how females behave.

[ … ]

This is the first study that says genetics or heredity have little to do with a female squirrel’s sex life.

Goodbye, selfish gene. Or, to put it in the vernacular, none of the ladies are chaste, but some are more chased than others. It depends on how many guy squirrels are around to chase them.

For the tale of how the Washington Post thought it had discovered natural selection among squirrels, go here.

Look, squirrels are, well, squirrelly, but anyway here’s the Abstract:

Read More ›

Recently, I’ve been writing about Jerry Coyne’s comments on Mike Behe’s most recent paper. Coyne is billed by his U as “internationally famous defender of evolution against proponents of intelligent design.” Good man on fruit flies too.

It occurred to me to pull up my Coyne files, re other things he has said. A most interesting picture emerges – in a world where hordes bravely speak the group’s latest mind, the prof (Department of Ecology and Evolution) gives the impression of speaking his own. I won’t hazard whether that earns him greater trust because I don’t know whether Darwin’s folk trust people who think for themselves, but here goes:

Coyne on the useful idiots of theistic evolution:

– Theistic evolution is compromise. (“Coyne is particularly annoyed by the folks at the Darwin-defending but religion-appeasing National Center for Science Education, for “compromising the very science they aspire to defend.” – quoted in Klinghoffer )

Theistic evolution claims are wearing thin. (“Liberal religious people have been important allies in our struggle against creationism, and it is not pleasant to alienate them by declaring how we feel. This is why, as a tactical matter, groups such as the National Academy of Sciences claim that religion and science do not conflict. But their main evidence — the existence of religious scientists — is wearing thin as scientists grow ever more vociferous about their lack of faith.” – quoted in Iannone)

He also enjoys taking the fun out of Fundamentalism, when not engaging in it himself.

(My best guess is that he pays closer attention to the ID guys, as they offer a serious challenge.)

What Jerry Coyne has said about evolutionary biology: (risky! ) Read More ›

The friend who sent me the link notes that the article is “only mildly biased”:

Both sides agree that Dr. Gaskell, 57, was invited to the university, in Lexington, for a job interview. In his lawsuit, he says that at the end of the interview, Michael Cavagnero, the chairman of the physics and astronomy department, asked about his religious beliefs.“Cavagnero stated that he had personally researched Gaskell’s religious beliefs,” the lawsuit says. According to Dr. Gaskell, the chairman said Dr. Gaskell’s religious beliefs and his “expression of them would be a matter of concern” to the dean.

Federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, so interviewers typically do not ask about an applicant’s faith. Depositions and e-mails submitted as evidence suggest why Dr. Cavagnero may have raised the issue with Dr. Gaskell.

For the plaintiff, the smoking gun is an e-mail dated Sept. 21, 2007, from a department staff member, Sally A. Shafer, to Dr. Cavagnero and another colleague. Ms. Shafer wrote that she did an Internet search on Dr. Gaskell and found links to his notes for a lecture that explores, among other topics, how the Bible could relate to contemporary astronomy.

“Clearly this man is complex and likely fascinating to talk with,” Ms. Shafer wrote, “but potentially evangelical. If we hire him, we should expect similar content to be posted on or directly linked from the department Web site.”

[ … ]

Referring to Ms. Shafer’s concern that Dr. Gaskell was “potentially evangelical,” Francis J. Manion, Dr. Gaskell’s lawyer, said: “I couldn’t have made up a better quote. ‘We like this guy, but he is potentially Jewish’? ‘Potentially Muslim’?”

– Mark Oppenheimer, “Astronomer Sues the University of Kentucky, Claiming His Faith Cost Him a Job” New York Times (December 18, 2010).

Oh, do let’s have some fun with the idea: Read More ›

Colorado Springs, CO – December 21, 2010 Access Research Network has just released its annual “Top 10 Darwin and Design Science Stories” for 2010. Gaining top honors on the list was new research that revealed the optimal design of the human eye. Physicists from the Israel Institute of Technology have created a light-guiding model of the retina, which reveals that the glial (or Müller) cells provide low-scattering passage of light from the retinal surface to the photoreceptor cells, thus acting as optical fibers. Researchers concluded “The fundamental features of the array of glial cells are revealed as an optimal structure designed for preserving the acuity of images in the human retina. It plays a crucial role in vision quality, in Read More ›

NASA Science News for Dec. 17, 2010Northern winter is beginning in a special way. On Dec. 21st, the winter solstice, a lunar eclipse will be visible across all of North America. The luster will be a bit “off” on Dec. 21st, the first day of northern winter, when the full Moon passes almost dead-center through Earth’s shadow. For 72 minutes of eerie totality, an amber light will play across the snows of North America, throwing landscapes into an unusual state of ruddy shadow. The eclipse begins on Tuesday morning, Dec. 21st, at 1:33 am EST (Monday, Dec. 20th, at 10:33 pm PST). At that time, Earth’s shadow will appear as a dark-red bite at the edge of the lunar disk. Read More ›

Sure, in any direction consistent with an outmoded materialism. And how sweeping grandeur in that vision of life is entailed? There’s no need to formally revisit the Modern Synthesis, argues Douglas Futuyma, an evolutionary biologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, because evolutionary theory is flexible enough to incorporate well-substantiated new ideas as they arise. “I think the evolutionary synthesis has already been extending itself almost continually for the last few decades,” he says. “I’m not saying that there’s nothing interesting [in the Extended Synthesis]. I just think the self-conscious labeling of it as a new point of view or a challenge to the old, most people don’t buy.” Most dare not buy any new approaches. Read More ›

You thought I was kidding, did you? Nope. A friend advises me that some reviewer or other baptized Darwinist Michael Ruse as a “practicing Anglican” (= Episcopalian):

New Biological Books History, Philosophy, And Ethics of Biology

Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science

By Michael Ruse. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. $30.00. viii + 264 p.; ill.; index. ISBN: 978-0-521-75594-8. 2010.

Elof Axel Carlson

Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York

The author is a philosopher and ardent supporter of evolution by natural selection. He also is a practicing Anglican. His book is an exploration of the conflicts between a scientific worldview (one that excludes supernatural interpretations in matters concerning science) and a religious worldview (one that very much embraces faith, the supernatural, and the central tenets of his Anglican faith). …

So is Ruse also among the prophets?

Well, Ruse apparently sent his kids to “Anglican tradition” schools when he taught in Canada. But in Canada, that’s mainly a way of keeping them from hanging out with Crystal Meth at tax-supported OD High.

In fairness, it doesn’t take much belief or effort these days to be a “practicing Anglican”, but unless Ruse has a big announcement in store, I’m calling this as just another effort to baptize Darwinism, a la Theodosius Dobzhansky, to gain support among adherents of other religions.

I wonder if the airbrush error will make it onto the ‘Net …

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist: Read More ›

You’d better order this one for yourself. It’s the long-delayed outcome of the Nature of Nature conference, which got intelligent design theorists Bill Dembski and Bruce Gordon’s Polanyi Center at Baptist Baylor University shut down.* It features top guns on both sides of the controversy: Unmatched in its breadth and scope, The Nature of Nature brings together some of the most influential scientists, scholars, and public intellectuals—including three Nobel laureates—across a wide spectrum of disciplines and schools of thought. Here they grapple with a perennial question that has been made all the more pressing by recent advances in the natural sciences: Is the fundamental explanatory principle of the universe, life, and self-conscious awareness to be found in inanimate matter or Read More ›

defending his recent paper. Mike Behe’s reply (excerpt): Yes, complex gain-of-FCT events would not be expected to occur, but simple GOF’s would. Yet they didn’t show up. Professor Coyne then proceeds to put words in my mouth: What [Be]he’s saying is this: “Yes, gain of FCTs could, and likely is, more important in nature than seen in these short-term experiments. But my conclusions are limited to these types of short-term lab studies.” No, that is not what I was saying at all. I was saying that, no matter what causes gain-of-FCT events to sporadically arise in nature (and I of course think the more complex ones likely resulted from deliberate intelligent design), short-term Darwinian evolution will be dominated by loss-of-FCT, which Read More ›

“This study reports evidence consistent with the ‘deliberate fraud’ hypothesis. The results suggest that papers retracted because of data fabrication or falsification represent a calculated effort to deceive.”:

Med Ethics doi:10.1136/jme.2010.038125Research ethics

Retractions in the scientific literature: do authors deliberately commit research fraud?

R Grant Steen
Correspondence to
R Grant Steen, Medical Communications Consultants LLC, 103 Van Doren Place, Chapel Hill, NC 27517, USA; g_steen_medicc@yahoo.com
Received 31 May 2010
Revised 29 July 2010
Accepted 13 August 2010
Published Online First 15 November 2010
Abstract
Background Papers retracted for fraud (data fabrication or data falsification) may represent a deliberate effort to deceive, a motivation fundamentally different from papers retracted for error. It is hypothesised that fraudulent authors target journals with a high impact f actor (IF), have other fraudulent publications, diffuse responsibility across many co-authors, delay retracting fraudulent papers and publish from countries with a weak research infrastructure.

Methods All 788 English language research papers retracted from the PubMed database between 2000 and 2010 were evaluated. Data pertinent to each retracted paper were abstracted from the paper and the reasons for retraction were derived from the retraction notice and dichoto mised as fraud or error. Data for each retracted article were entered in an Excel spreadsheet for analysis.

Results Journal IF was higher for fraudulent papers (p<0.001). Roughly 53% of fraudulent papers were written by a first author who had written other retracted papers (‘repeat offender’), whereas only 18% of erroneous papers were written by a repeat offender (?=88.40 ; p<0.0001). Fraudulent papers had more authors (p<0.001) and were retracted more slowly than erroneous papers (p<0.005). Surprisingly, there was significantly more fraud than error among retracted papers from the USA (?2=8.71; p<0.05) compared with the rest of the world.

Conclusions This study reports evidence consistent with the ‘deliberate fraud’ hypothesis. The results suggest that papers retracted because of data fabrication or falsification represent a calculated effort to deceive. It is inferred that such behaviour is neither naï ve, feckless nor inadvertent.

For comments go here “The highest number of retracted papers were written by US first authors (260), accounting for a third of the total. One in three of these was attributed to fraud.”, or here (An excellent example of either crappy science reporting or crappy science …), for the view that it’s all a bum rap.

One site also offers a number of articles on the shortcomings of peer review. Also an article on self-plagiarism and one on self-plagiarism and bogus authorship. Read More ›

My Salvo 15 Deprogram column: LUCY SPEAKS Evolutionary Psychology Is Now Taking Your Questions When Britain’s Guardian newspaper first introduced its “evolutionary” agony aunt (advice columnist in America) in 2009—to honor 150 years of the culture birthed with Charles Darwin’s 1859 book, On the Origin of Species—I thought, “Aha! a send-up, to be sure.” I was wrong, but in fairness, when the evolutionary psychologist speaks, even an expert can’t always tell. No spoof. The Guardian burbled proudly about Carole Jahme, author of Beauty and the Beasts: Woman, Ape and Evolution and winner of the Wellcome Trust Award for Communication of Science to the Public. For the 2009 Darwin bicentennial celebrations, Jahme, who holds an M.A. in evolutionary psychology, put together Read More ›

Apparently, Jerry Coyne is now attacking me, re Behe’s recent paper. To judge from his blog post’s title, he has me confused with Discovery Institute.* (Behe’s paper is available for free download here.) . Dr. Coyne claims that Behe’s findings apply only to artificial selection in the lab. But, at the feet of the great Richard Dawkins, I learned that artificial selection like human breeding of dogs, has proved Behe both wrong and ridiculous, in Edge of Evolution. That is precisely because dog breeding is equivalent to the process that applies throughout nature: Don’t evade the point by protesting that dog breeding is a form of intelligent design. It is (kind of), but Behe, having lost the argument over irreducible Read More ›

Recently, biochemist Michael Behe published an article in Quarterly Review of Biology, titled “Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution’,” arguing that “the most common adaptive changes seen … are due to the loss or modification of a pre-existing molecular function.” So, not only must the long, slow process of Darwinian evolution create every exotic form of life in the blink of a geological eye, but it must do so by losing or modifying what a life form already has. This, apparently, got evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne’s recent attention: Anyway, Behe reviews the last four decades of work on experimental evolution in bacteria and viruses (phage), and finds that nearly all the adaptive mutations in these Read More ›