Caroline Crocker, of American Institute for Science and Technology Education (AITSE), writes me to comment, Scientific Integrity and Dr. Hauser Can being disorganized lead to scientific fame? Harvard University scientist Marc Hauser became famous for his work in cognitive evolution. As a psychologist who investigates the neurological basis for morality and works with primates and Read More…
Evolutionary biology
The Panda’s Thumb Goes After Casey Luskin Yet Again
Casey Luskin, Program Officer in Public Policy and Legal Affairs for the Discovery Institute, has recently published an article entitled ZEAL FOR DARWIN’S HOUSE CONSUMES THEM:HOW SUPPORTERS OF EVOLUTION ENCOURAGE VIOLATIONS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE in the Liberty University Law Review. Luskin continues to be a favorite target of the anti-ID crowd over at The Read More…
Is Craig Venter’s Synthetic Cell Really Life?
Bioethicist Gregory Kaebnick, Ph.D., has an interesting take on the recently announced synthetic cell created by a team of researchers led by J. Craig Venter at the J. Craig Venter Instititute (JVCI). In a recent article in The Scientist entitled Is the “Synthetic Cell” about Life?, Kaebnick writes: …the technical accomplishment is not quite what Read More…
The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs!
A friend directed me to this fun little article from the Jewish World Review. I’m not a regular reader of JWR, so missed this wonderful little piece from Paul Greenberg, in which he recalls the Sokal Hoax of 1996. For those not familiar with it, the Sokal Hoax was an article written by Professor Alan Read More…
Another Day, Another Bad Day for Darwinism
In the latest issue of Nature, a definitive role for pseudogenes is established. In the last sentence of the Abstract the authors conclude: These findings attribute a novel biological role to expressed pseudogenes, as they can regulate coding gene expression, and reveal a non-coding function for mRNAs. Haven’t read the full article* (no time at Read More…
Non-Darwinian Evolutionary Theories listed by Martin Cadra
Pagels and others (like Nei) have argued that the majority of biological features could not have emerged from Darwinian means. If they are right, it stands to reason that if evolution is true, it has to be mostly non-Darwinian. At UD we have explored various non-Darwinian theories of evolution by scientists like Jukes, King, Kimura, Read More…
Natural Scaffolding Discovered
Formation of “irreducibly complex systems” via purported scaffolding has been an ongoing debate amongst evolution and intelligent design theorists. Now a natural scaffolding has been discovered – and it may itself be part of another “irreducibly complex system”. Sharma et al., discovered that natural fat works as a biological scaffold for “cells to grow and Read More…
Peer-Reviewed Article Critical of Darwinism by NAS Member, Evolution by Absence of Selection
recent molecular data supports the theory of mutation-driven evolution rather than neo-Darwinism. Masotoshi Nei Member National Academy of Sciences Selectionism and Neutralism Not only is the notion of Darwinism challenged by ID proponents and creationists, but it is also challenged by non-Darwinian theories of evolution. The competing schools of thought are the Mutationists and the Read More…
We’re Not Critics – We’re Enemies!
Today’s Fox News website had this little story, entitled Climate Scientists Plan to Hit Back at Skeptics. In the article, Stanford University climate researcher Paul R. Ehrlich had this to say about global warming skeptics: “Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight Read More…
Applied Intelligent Design, Part 1
This is the first of probably three posts on applied Intelligent Design. This is not an extensive list of applications of ID concepts, but I thought that giving people examples of how ID can be not only interesting and informative but actually useful in solving both biological and engineering problems.
Dinosaurs from birds?
How well neoDarwinian evolution is established and the universal “consensus” over it is demonstrated by: Bird-from-Dinosaur Theory of Evolution Challenged: Was It the Other Way Around? ScienceDaily (Feb. 10, 2010) — A new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides yet more evidence that birds did not descend from Read More…
How were RNA gene repeats, “essential” to DNA repair, formed?
RNA replications have now been discovered to be “essential” to DNA error correction systems. If they are “essential”, how could they arrive by random mutation and “selection”? On what basis does neoDarwinism predict error correction in the first place? From Intelligent Design, methodology one expects to see evidence of design in complex biochemical systems. From Read More…
California Lawmaker demands answers over museum censorship
Apparently round two of the controversy over the California’s Science Center’s cancellation of Darwin’s Dilemma is getting ready to take place. This was reported and discussed here back in October, as well as here and here in December. Now, a California State Senator is calling the constitutionality of the censorship into question.
Why anyone takes evolutionary biology seriously after this, I will never know …
I mean this: A complete inability to predict anything, using current assumptions. I am not saying it’s not worthwhile. Mental health studies may be worthwhile too, even if you can’t predict when someone goes postal …. It’s another thing for people to use laws to force this stuff on the school system. Remember, the One Read More…
Editing the Tape of Evolutionary History Yet Again
The late Stephen J. Gould once wrote “Replay the tape [of evolution] a million times from a Burgess [the Burgess Shale fossils]beginning, and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again. It is, indeed, a wonderful life.” (Gould, Stephen J. [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University], “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale Read More…