I just checked the most popular tables and saw how VJT’s UD James Tour article got 30,000 or so hits within a few days.
Why?
Reddit and Facebook etc atheists are suddenly screaming (and don’t seem to know that Dr Tour DID meet with someone for private discussion and . . . by implication, has not found a satisfactory answer) — per Groovamos at 9, this was a mis-impression on my part) but, again, why?
Then Google popped up: VJT has republished the article at Science News on Feb. 18. [–> He was credited as author, it seems there has been an auto-publishing.]
We are getting the back-wash of that spreading publicity.
All to the good.
Let those who would dismiss Dr Tour’s concerns answer to points such as this, from the man who built the molecular car.
First, his Veritas Forum Talk:
[youtube PZrxTH-UUdI]
Second, a key claim highlighted by VJT:
James Tour’s molecular nanocar 2
… I will tell you as a scientist and a synthetic chemist: if anybody should be able to understand evolution, it is me, because I make molecules for a living, and I don’t just buy a kit, and mix this and mix this, and get that. I mean, ab initio, I make molecules. I understand how hard it is to make molecules. I understand that if I take Nature’s tool kit, it could be much easier, because all the tools are already there, and I just mix it in the proportions, and I do it under these conditions, but ab initio is very, very hard.
I don’t understand evolution, and I will confess that to you. Is that OK, for me to say, “I don’t understand this”? Is that all right? I know that there’s a lot of people out there that don’t understand anything about organic synthesis, but they understand evolution. I understand a lot about making molecules; I don’t understand evolution. And you would just say that, wow, I must be really unusual.
Let me tell you what goes on in the back rooms of science – with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners. I have sat with them, and when I get them alone, not in public – because it’s a scary thing, if you say what I just said – I say, “Do you understand all of this, where all of this came from, and how this happens?” Every time that I have sat with people who are synthetic chemists, who understand this, they go “Uh-uh. Nope.” These people are just so far off, on how to believe this stuff came together. I’ve sat with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners. Sometimes I will say, “Do you understand this?”And if they’re afraid to say “Yes,” they say nothing. They just stare at me, because they can’t sincerely do it.
I was once brought in by the Dean of the Department, many years ago, and he was a chemist. He was kind of concerned about some things. I said, “Let me ask you something. You’re a chemist. Do you understand this? How do you get DNA without a cell membrane? And how do you get a cell membrane without a DNA? And how does all this come together from this piece of jelly?” We have no idea, we have no idea. I said, “Isn’t it interesting that you, the Dean of science, and I, the chemistry professor, can talk about this quietly in your office, but we can’t go out there and talk about this?”
If you understand evolution, I am fine with that. I’m not going to try to change you – not at all. In fact, I wish I had the understanding that you have.
But about seven or eight years ago I posted on my Web site that I don’t understand. And I said, “I will buy lunch for anyone that will sit with me and explain to me evolution, and I won’t argue with you until I don’t understand something – I will ask you to clarify. But you can’t wave by and say, “This enzyme does that.” You’ve got to get down in the details of where molecules are built, for me. Nobody has come forward.
The Atheist Society contacted me. They said that they will buy the lunch, and they challenged the Atheist Society, “Go down to Houston and have lunch with this guy, and talk to him.” Nobody has come! Now remember, because I’m just going to ask, when I stop understanding what you’re talking about, I will ask. So I sincerely want to know. I would like to believe it. But I just can’t.
Now, I understand microevolution, I really do. We do this all the time in the lab. I understand this. But when you have speciation changes, when you have organs changing, when you have to have concerted lines of evolution, all happening in the same place and time – not just one line – concerted lines, all at the same place, all in the same environment … this is very hard to fathom.
I was in Israel not too long ago, talking with a bio-engineer, and [he was] describing to me the ear, and he was studying the different changes in the modulus of the ear, and I said, “How does this come about?” And he says, “Oh, Jim, you know, we all believe in evolution, but we have no idea how it happened.” Now there’s a good Jewish professor for you. I mean, that’s what it is. So that’s where I am. Have I answered the question? (52:00 to 56:44)
While we are it, the UD pro-darwinism essay challenge is still open:
provide a 6,000 word feature-length article that justifies the Darwinist tree of life from its OOL roots up through the Cambrian revo — as in Darwin’s Doubt territory — and other major formation of body plans up to and including our own origins, and we will host it here at UD, one of the leading ID blogs in the world. We are perfectly willing to host a parallel post with another site. Only, you must provide thesis and observation based evidence that solidly justifies your conclusions in light of inference to best explanation, the vera causa principle and other basic principles of sound scientific induction. Also, you must actually argue the case in outline, a summing up if you will. You must strive to avoid Lewontin’s a priori evolutionary materialism, and if you would redefine science on such terms you will have to reasonably justify why that is not a question-begging definition, in a way that is historically and philosophically soundly informed. Of course, you may link sources elsewhere, but you must engage the task of providing a coherent, non-question-begging, cogent argument in summary at the level of a feature-length serious magazine article . . . no literature bluffs in short.
If the goods were out there, there would have been dozens of eager applicants.
Suffice to say, that apart from attempts to get back to the usual Darwinist attack-rhetoric tactics, we had no serious take-up after a full year. I put together a very unsatisfactory composite from in-thread exchanges as a measure of where the matter stands.
Let’s see if the oh so eager Darwinists can do better now. So, Reddit, Facebook, TSZ, ATBC, Anti-Evo, etc Darwinists and atheists, what is your answer on the merits? END
F/N, Mar 16: Kindly cf my markup of Sewell’s clip on the 1980 Field Museum closed doors meeting of a top circle of 150, here. It’s all there, evo as fact, stasis and gaps, usage of macro and micro evo in the context of the top dogs, even the attempt to read the genetic code as an argument from homology to common descent, and more.
Comments
JG: Bottom of the page, right hand side. KFkairosfocus
March 8, 2014
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99,727kairosfocus
March 8, 2014
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'PPS: The surge, of course, also documents that Sci News has credibly had significant impact.'
So, surprise, surprise, the automatic RSS aggregator scorns as piffling is, in reality, a heavy-duty tool.
Back to school for you, Nicholas. It surely wasn't difficult to infer simply from its name!Axel
March 8, 2014
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Where are you seeing this view count?JGuy
March 8, 2014
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99,058kairosfocus
March 8, 2014
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Let's observe a snapshot:
A world-famous chemist tells the truth: there’s no scientist alive today who understands macroevolution (98,079)
Frequently raised but weak arguments against Intelligent Design (31,529)
A Whale of a Problem for Evolution: Ancient Whale Jawbone Found in Antartica (17,642)
10 + 1 Questions For Professor Myers (15,569)
Richard Dawkins On His Recent Encounter With John Lennox (Updated) (14,717)
Not bad for a fairly specialist blog, but obviously one of these is not like the others.
And, it is still going strong.
KFkairosfocus
March 8, 2014
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F/N: An index of the strength of the surge (which is past the 30,000 practically overnight peak):
March 7: >> kairosfocusMarch 7, 2014 at 4:05 am (Edit)
90,960 >>
>> kairosfocusMarch 8, 2014 at 4:54 am (Edit)
97,161 >>kairosfocus
March 8, 2014
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F/N: As an index of the impact of the Sci News repost, it took a year more or less for the article to hit 30+ thousand hits; creeping along on dead article hits, relatively speaking. (If you track the WACs you will see that "normal" creeping up effect as articles are picked up as references.) In about a week, once it was being discussed in Facebook, Reddit etc, it has reached to approaching 100,000 hits and should pass that across the weekend. This is in the main a back wash from those discussions and the triggering Sci News post. In short, we independently know the mechanism that has triggered this, and it is a cumulative effect of contacts in social networks, which is the basic way viruses spread come flu season, only the networks are not online. Using my strat mktg background (Franklin needs to know I also hold an MBA) we are looking at a fad surge in the first instance, or more accurately a slice of it . . . the effect in other fora is probably much larger . . . and we will likely see a settling down to a much higher steady plateau. This also gives UD a bigger mind share which should lead to a bigger uptick elsewhere. Why the effect? The star power of the name James Tour, multiplied by the Sci News pickup. This suggests to me that a few courageous tenured or retired profs with general eminence need to come out of the closet and expose a bit more of the truth on origins science issues. And they by and large need to be live so no claims about quote mining can be used to suppress. A strong statement by someone like Ben Carson would do wonders, for instance. KFkairosfocus
March 8, 2014
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March 8, 2014
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March 7, 2014
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March 7, 2014
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Franklin: You evidently do not recognise a logistic based, modified, product life cycle model. The one that is relevant to market type situations. And BTW, going viral is going to fit that as epidemics spread in much the same way. Surge and flatten out to a steady pattern. KFkairosfocus
March 7, 2014
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March 7, 2014
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KF, you could have saved all that typing by jsut presenting the regression model that best fits the data. Going viral would have a exponential model and a simple linear regression model (likely the better fitting model) would show it doesn't fit the descriptor of 'going viral'.
A reporting of the correlation coefficient (R^2) would help show everyone which model is the best fit to the data as well.franklin
March 7, 2014
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F/N: I should note that I am of course looking at a fad spike driven renewed growth Bass curve, and anticipate a permanently higher plateau rate of access for multiple reasons; similar to how the hula hoop came back from obscurity in the 70's or how pumps came back in the 80s or how platform shoes . . . to my annoyance as a former safety officer . . . have come back from the dead, we even have pumps with platforms, an ankle buster if I ever saw one. Recall, this was a dead thread with remaining niche pickup. The best explanation for the spike is the Sci News article and pickup linked to Tour's eminence as a Chemist hitting the social networks (which I do not normally even bother to look at). The further significance can be seen on the AIDA marketing model: attention is the key to interest, decision and action. This is an adoption wave phenomenon feeding a jump to a higher adoption plateau with a stronger steady growth rate.kairosfocus
March 7, 2014
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PPS: The surge, of course, also documents that Sci News has credibly had significant impact.kairosfocus
March 7, 2014
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PS: The WACs is also getting an uptick, it has clocked on a couple of thousand hits in a week or so.kairosfocus
March 7, 2014
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FYI, Franklin, about 1 week ago, the number was about 32,000 and climbing at maybe some hundreds per month -- similar to the UD Weak Argument Correctives, which still is the no 2 hits for what is after all a specialist topic. What has happened is, a new dynamic has kicked in, reflected in the surge we have seen. The surge, which went to 38,000 in some days then boom, 70,000 essentially overnight then now 90,000+ was in a few days. The phenomenon of onward discussion is where the real multiplier effect is happening, as discussions on other fora happen. In short, the key thing is, the number here at UD is secondary, a back-wash from the curious clicking on a back-link to the Sci News article, then clicking from the bottom of that here at UD. Taking the usual newsies' ROTh that 25% may follow a jump line, that is maybe 6 percent of those following up; putting us on reasonable terms in the million plus pair of eyeballs territory as this surge fades into a plateau. Those who just read the onward debates will be much larger still. So, yes, the immediate peak of the fad surge has passed in some days, but the discussion has irrevocably spread far and wide. And, it is still the case that we were looking at now a higher plateau, and at a case where the most interesting thing is the lack of a cogent response to Tour's concerns. The issue of the 6,000 word Darwinist essay challenge unanswered since Sept 2012 is a good index of that. KFkairosfocus
March 7, 2014
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90,960kairosfocus
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Kf:
87,300, and climbing fast!
You have collected some data on website hits. You could plot those data points and do some statistical analysis to see if the data fit the conclusion that the data represent a topic going 'viral'.
Try simple linear regression as a first attempt to model the data and see how that works.franklin
March 7, 2014
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Q: You are right, and we need to ask some pointed questions why so many darwinists feel compelled to behave so nastily whenever questions are asked about their favourite ideology [er, theory]. H'mm, that may be the answer, we are likely dealing with an ideological agenda verging on a religion-substitute and worldview with cultural agenda . . . here, shaped by the radical relativism and even amorality that are inherent to an evolutionary materialist worldview dressed up in a lab coat; a worldview that patently has in it no foundational IS that can properly bear the weight OUGHT. And certainly, politics is a notorious hangout for those who imagine they have a right to heckle and slander, or worse. Ditto, on how dare you question US. Rather reminds me of how dangerous -- literally, not figuratively -- it was to deal with communist agitators back in the day. KFkairosfocus
March 7, 2014
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87,300, and climbing fast!kairosfocus
March 6, 2014
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supplement to post 31:
Jim Al-Khalili and the Quantum Robin - video
According to Quantum Physicist Jim Al-Khalili, the phenomenon Quantum Entanglement in Robins is "nothing short of miraculous."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jepgOQEvWT0bornagain77
March 6, 2014
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In my opinion, there's a vast difference between
A. An intelligent examination and focused discussion about differences in interpretation of scientific data and problems with current theory.
and
B. Outright warfare similar to the clash of lawyers in a courtroom, where each side presents evidence only in favor of their "client" theory, and mocks anything contrary.
Choice B is characterized by tactical ploys such as using ad hominem attacks, inserting emotionally charged words, leaving out inconvenient information, exhibiting puffery, and all the other typical obfuscations mentioned in earlier posts.
These are forms of intellectual bullying that escalate into marginalizing, harassing, lying, threatening, silencing, and firing people with different viewpoints.
It's important to note that this behavior is not by any means restricted to Darwinist attacks against people holding an ID or a Bible creationist view. The social poisonings, muggings, and assassinations occur frequently in all human institutions! Ask any faculty department chair, company executive, or government official. Or parent.
-QQuerius
