In American Association for the Advancement of Science’s magazine, Science, we read,
In the grand scheme of evolution, mutations serve only to break structures and degrade functions, Behe argues. He allows that mutation and natural selection can explain species- and genus-level diversification, but only through the degradation of genes. Something else, he insists, is required for meaningful innovation. Here, Behe invokes a “purposeful design” by an “intelligent agent.”
There are indeed many examples of loss-of-function mutations that are advantageous, but Behe is selective in his examples. He dedicates the better part of chapter 7 to discussing a 65,000-generation Escherichia coli experiment, emphasizing the many mutations that arose that degraded function—an expected mode of adaptation to a simple laboratory environment, by the way—while dismissing improved functions and deriding one new one as a “sideshow” (1). (Full disclosure: The findings in question were published by coauthor Richard Lenski.) Nathan H. Lents , S. Joshua Swamidass , Richard E. Lenski, “A biochemist’s crusade to overturn evolution misrepresents theory and ignores evidence” at Science
Who are the reviewers? Readers may remember Nathan Lents from his book, Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes, which prompted the legitimate question, “Does Nathan Lents, author of a “bad design” book really teach biology? (A doctor looks at his claims about the human sinuses).” Pathologist and biomedical engineer Joshua Swamidass has long been associated with theistic evolution group Biologos, though maybe not so much now. Richard Lenski is a respected researcher and NAS member who runs multi-generation evolutionary experiments on bacteria.
If you know a bit of the history of the debate, two things stand out from the review. As author Michael Behe observes,
In a few days I will offer a detailed rebuttal. But the overwhelmingly important point to notice right up front is that the reviewers (Lenski plus Josh Swamidass over at Peaceful Science and John Jay College biologist Nathan Lents) have absolutely no response to the very central argument of the book. The argument that I summarized as an epigraph on the first page of the book so no one could miss it. The one that I included in the title of a 2010 Quarterly Review of Biology article upon which the book is based. The one for which I chose the most in-your-face moniker that I could think of (consistent with the professional literature) to goad a response: The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution: Break or blunt any gene whose loss would increase the number of offspring. The rule summarizes the fact that the overwhelming tendency of random mutation is to degrade genes, and that very often is helpful. Thus natural selection itself acts as a powerful de-volutionary force, increasing helpful broken and degraded genes in the population. Michael Behe, “Woo-hoo! In Science Review of Darwin Devolves, Lenski Has No Response to My Main Argument” at Evolution News and Science Today
Odd indeed. Claims around reproductive fitness (increasing the number of offspring) form the bulk of the news we hear around Darwinism. It’s supposed to explain how you vote, shop, and tip at restaurants, never mind why the peacock has a spectacular but useless tail. So the audience for the review (and the book) is presumably familiar with the concept. Do the reviewers, peers in the field, not have a response? They comment on just about everything else Behe has done.
Second, overall, the language of the review reminded some of us of something we’d heard before and it was easily traced: Lents and Swamidass had been struggling in public on how to do a hit on Behe’s book. And they came up with some of these ideas, served up to Science as leftovers from a blog that took root in the ruins of a previous blog apparently founded in response to someone getting dumped as a commenter here at Uncommon Descent. (Look, we agree that the soap opera is dull; our notes are just for the record. Watch the ball instead.)
If the only purpose for accepting this review was to convince Science readers that Darwinism, the central dogma of evolution, is not simply collapsing, I believe that the review will succeed. Many researchers want nothing more than to get their grant and go through the approved motions to present the approved research, maybe get the desired positions. If information is in an approved paper, it will look like fact to them. Yes, that’s a racket, but what else is there?
On the other hand, if you are in a position that you can afford to know more of the bigger picture of why Darwinism isn’t working anymore, get Darwin Devolves and examine carefully Behe’s central point – the very one the Science reviewers chose to omit discussing: The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution: Break or blunt any gene whose loss would increase the number of offspring. Is it correct?
In these times, are you better off knowing the problems or innocently citing approved sources of misinformation as your reason for making decisions? You decide.
As we said earlier this week, “Hello? Darwin’s world is collapsing around us, snowflakes. See Suzan Mazur’s new book Darwin Overthrown: Hello Mechanobiology and the Dissent from Darwinism list now topping 1000 career scientists. And these are unrelated events we heard about just this week, never mind all the others of the last two decades.”
See also: Mike Behe’s New Book, Darwin Devolves: “Absolutely Convincing” Or “Omits Contrary Examples”
From our files:
Protein families are still improbably astonishing – retraction of Matlock and Swamidass paper in order?
Biologist Wayne Rossiter on Joshua Swamidass’s claim that entropy = information
Inference Review did not set out to make a fool of cosmologist Adam Becker
I don’t know why News thinks this is news. 🙂
Good on Behe for keeping himself fit & strong, as he must be to be able to shift goalposts around like this.
This is the description of the book’s central message on the book’s homepage:
And this is what he is now claiming the central message is:
So now the second sentence of the original message has disappeared. Could this be because the Science review demolishes it, by simply pointing to the evidence that refutes it by pointing to several examples where evolution has built and created new things at the genetic level?
Perhaps the fact that the reaction to Dr. Behe’s new book is turning so loud lately indicates widespread anxious desperation in the Darwinian territory?
Entrenched in their ideological bias, they keep spitting their microevolutionary extrapolatations, like delusional dictators hidden in a dark bunker, giving ineffective marching orders to a fictional army that has ceased to exist beyond their prolific imaginations. From their position they can’t see the avalanche of scientific discoveries that is making their outdated macroevolutionary ideas totally senseless. Even atheist scientists are calling for a revision of the old dogmas. But the establishment wants to hold their position at any price, to continue brainwashing the students with textbooks sprinkled with unscientific half trues. However, time seems against them. Newer research papers shed more light on the fascinating biological systems, revealing complex functionality and functional complexity. Fascinating is an understatement in this case.
I’ve just read the review and it doesnt look like they ignore the main point. They acknowledge that many loss of function mutations are advantageous but say Behe is selective in the ones he discusses. For example in Lenski’s work there were many LOF but one new function which Behe dismisses.
They say Behe ignores many instances where his ideas were demolished and fails to mention many cases which disprove his point.
Final sentence: Ultimately Dawrin Devolves fails to challenge modern evolutionary science because, once again, Behe does not fully engage with it. He misrepresents theory and avoids evidence that challenges him.
One serious mistake they make – and there is NO excuse for this- it to claim that Behe claimed the chloroquine resistance couldn’t have evolved. Behe’s entire point of his previous book was that it DID evolve but he uses it to set a baseline for whats plausible.
Lantog, for clarification, where does the review address the point addressed here: “The argument that I summarized as an epigraph on the first page of the book so no one could miss it. The one that I included in the title of a 2010 Quarterly Review of Biology article upon which the book is based. The one for which I chose the most in-your-face moniker that I could think of (consistent with the professional literature) to goad a response: The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution: Break or blunt any gene whose loss would increase the number of offspring. The rule summarizes the fact that the overwhelming tendency of random mutation is to degrade genes, and that very often is helpful. Thus natural selection itself acts as a powerful de-volutionary force, increasing helpful broken and degraded genes in the population.”
If it is true that “One serious mistake they make – and there is NO excuse for this- it to claim that Behe claimed the chloroquine resistance couldn’t have evolved. Behe’s entire point of his previous book was that it DID evolve but he uses it to set a baseline for whats plausible,” then it does not sound as though addressing his objections honestly formed any part of their intentions.
At any rate, based on your information, all the more I had better read the book.
News
I’m sure they were addressing them honestly but they certainly didn’t read his work very closely…or even the analysis of his work on blogs!
His book will definitely move the the front of the line in terms of my reading list – but its a long line and its hard to justify when I have plenty to read for work.
News – they address that by acknowledging it:
Bob O’H at 7: “re) to goad a response: The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution: Break or blunt any gene whose loss would increase the number of offspring. The rule summarizes the fact that the overwhelming tendency of random mutation is to degrade genes, and that very often is helpful. Thus natural selection itself acts as a powerful de-volutionary force, increasing helpful broken and degraded genes in the population.”
That is a very general statement. It is not addressed by citing some contrary examples to the ones Behe cites, for the obvious reason that neither he by way of illustration nor they by way of rebuttal can list and discuss all the examples (and maintain a meaningful discussion). They do not appear to want to address the main thesis, that the major effect of natural selection is devolution.
If they had reason to fear Behe might be right, it would be easier for them to hunt and peck for instances where that isn’t true and create a lot of fanfare around those.
The argument from Darwinists against Behe’s argument seems to be, that he dismissed “improved functions and derided a one new one as a “sideshow””.
I’ll wait for Behe himself, (“In a few days I (Behe) will offer a detailed rebuttal”), to address the molecular details, but one thing that struck me in the Darwinist’s accusation that Behe has ignored and/or dismissed evidence in favor of Darwinism, is that Darwinists themselves completely ignore many lines of evidence that directly contradicts and/or falsifies their theory.
For instance, (out many such instances I could allude to), aside from hand-waving about ecological niches, the only response I’ve ever seen from Darwinists to the following line of evidence is silence, and/or dismissal of its importance. That line of evidence is the extreme, i.e. non-Darwinian, stasis witnessed for ancient bacteria and/or microbes,
The extreme stasis witnessed in morphology goes back even further,
The geochemical signature reveals the same result of long term extreme stasis
Thus, since Darwinists constantly ignore many lines of falsifying evidence such as this, it is the height of hypocrisy for them to now falsely accuse Dr. Behe of ignoring and/or dismissing evidence.
Like Dr. Behe said, “In a few days I (Behe) will offer a detailed rebuttal”. And that is certainly far more than the hand waving dismissal that we constantly get from Darwinists to all the lines of evidence presented against them that falsifies their theory..
News @ 8 – is the the main thesis that the major effect of natural selection is devolution, or is it (as Behe states on the book’s webpage) that devolution is the only effect of natural selection? I haven’t read the book, so I’m going to go with what the book’s homepage says.
Bob O’H:
When Lenski, et. al, say this: “—while dismissing improved functions and deriding one new one as a ‘sideshow’ “, they’re referring, IIRC, the “evolution” of glucose or lactose metabolism (or some sort of sugar reduction) in an aerobic environment. Behe has pointed out already that the E. coli already has this capacity and that this “additional” capacity is not the ability to degrade the sugar for metabolic purposes but the ability to use this capacity in an “deoxygenated” (or “oxygenated”—can’t remember which, but either way it’s basically the same thing). And the way this is done is by breaking down other stuff.
So, it’s NOT something ‘new,’ but, rather, an already present capability being simply utilized under aerobic conditions. This is not some monumental build-up of some entirely new function.
Lenski, et. al., can rave all they want about this ‘new function,’ but it is completely unimpressive–which is like most of ‘microevolution’: a slightly bigger beak size, dark coloration from lighter coloration etc. (You know, like saying a ‘red’ Corvette is an entirely new species of Corvette, which are normally either black or white.)
Now why didn’t they think of that!
OK, so I will most assuredly purchase Dr. Behe’s new book, but it hasn’t been PUBLISHED yet. I’ve already bought and read 2 of his previous books. He strikes me as a sane man in a sea of insanity. We need more writers like him. Or Ann Gauger. I like her writing, too.
BA77,
Good commentary. Thanks.
PaV,
Good point. Thanks.
When we were on an Alaska cruise, a marine biologist mentioned that the dorsal fin of orcas was diminishing over recent decades. Nobody knows why, exactly, though there are theories. Anyway, I thought this was a good example of Behe’s point.
These guys are clueless:
So blind and mindless processes didit? Blind and mindless processes can’t even produce eukaryotes. These fools are barking at the new moon.
Skeptical of the claim that blind and mindless processes didit.
It is all question-begging and whining.
I have not read the book neither am I a scientist, so what I have to say may not hold much water but…
His central caveat is this: “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution: Break or blunt any gene whose loss would increase the number of offspring. The rule summarizes the fact that the overwhelming tendency of random mutation is to degrade genes, and that very often is helpful. ”
I’m not a supporter of Darwinism, but neither do I think this could be characterized as a Rule. We all know that this can and does happen, but he asserts it happens as the mechanism for evolution. He asserts that random mutations are “often very helpful”. I think that is was overstepping the evidence. Often? Really? “Very helpful”? Really? Sure, there are some that have proven helpful in certain ways, but how in the world can this be stated as a rule of evolution? Aren’t most mutations neutral or just slightly deleterious? I’m not on board this argument yet and I’m afraid that if it gets blown out of the water, it will have a negative effect on ID.
Anthropic at 10, this may be of interest:
The following article shows the principle of Genetic Entropy being obeyed in the fossil record by Trilobites, over the 270 million year history of their life on earth.
The following study of one hundred fossil groups also found ‘early high disparity’ and “turns the traditional V-shaped cone model of evolution on its head. ”
A few more quotes that support the principle of genetic entropy in the fossil record:
A general rule of thumb for the ‘Deterioration/Genetic Entropy’ of Dollo’s Law as it applies to the fossil record is found here:
Moreover, it has been found that a radical change in environment leads to extinction of species and not to the origination of new species as Darwinists presupposed:
Also of interest, humans are devolving, not evolving into some type of superhumans as was envisioned by the Nazis, and as is still envisioned by many modern day Darwinists,
of related note:
The genetic evidence falls in line with the fossil evidence,
Also see,
It is actually possible that Darwin and ID proponents are both right. How so? Very easy. We don’t know where random events are coming from in nature. Sure, wave function collapse is presumably random, and so the mutations caused by quantum events are presumably random too, but where is this randomness coming from? If the randomness is ultimately produced and controlled by the Designer, then those random mutations are no longer random. They can be guided on as-needed basis, yet we will never notice the subtle difference.
A never-ending debate where people talk past each other?
Eugene states,
I don’t ‘presume’ wave function collapse to be random. As Steven Weinberg stated, “In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure”. Weinberg also stated that the instrumentalist approach undermines the Darwinian worldview from within in that “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”
Moreover, with the closing of the ‘free-will loophole’, the instrumentalist approach is now empirically verified as being true:
Moreover the probability distribution for where you will find a particle after wave function collapse follows the Born rule, and is therefore not completely random.
In fact, the inability to derive the Born rule for probability distribution is one of the main reasons why we know that the Many Worlds Interpretation is false.
Moreover, Darwinists presupposed that the randomness of life would be based on thermodynamic principles, not quantum principles. As Bruce Alberts stated, “most of us viewed cells as containing a giant set of second-order reactions: molecules A and B were thought to diffuse freely, randomly colliding with each other to produce molecule AB.”
Yet life, contrary to what Darwinists presupposed, and as Schrodinger predicted in his 1944 book “What is Life”, life is found to be based on ‘very orderly’ Quantum Principles, and not on ‘very disorderly’ thermodynamic principles as Darwinists had presupposed:
Moreover, the presupposed unconstrained randomness of thermodynamics, as is held in Darwinian theory, is falsified by what is termed the ‘Quantum Zeno Effect’. Which is, to put it simply, an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay.
The reason why I am very impressed with the Quantum Zeno effect as to establishing consciousness and free will’s primacy in quantum mechanics is, for one thing, that Entropy is, by a wide margin, the most finely tuned of initial conditions of the Big Bang:
Moreover, as the following paper, (The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution), states, “Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,”
Moreover, on top of all that, the vast majority of ‘mutations’ to DNA are now shown, directly contrary to Darwinian presuppositions, not to be random mutations but are shown to be directed mutations.
Moreover even these ‘directed’ mutations are of no help to Darwinists. Specifically we find that, “Even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.”
Further notes refuting the entire reductive materialist foundation of Darwinian evolution can be found here:
Quote and Verses:
Behe deserves the three stooges’ criticism for playing their game with his acceptance of “natural selection”, “beneficial mutation”, “microevolution”, etc.
It is really sad that Joshua Swamidass is really proud of his review even though it is nothing but an attack on a straw man or caricature of what Dr. Behe is saying.
That was from Dr Behe’s schooling of Judge Jones after the lame decision came out. These three stooges clearly didn’t get, didn’t read or couldn’t understand, the memo.
What is even more pathetic is not one of ID’s opponents will understand any of that nor will they grasp anything Dr. Behe has to say because they cannot grasp the context.