Why Were So Many Darwin Defenders No-Shows at the World’s Premier Evolutionary Conference?

_{Thomas Cudworth

July 9, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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I have often wondered whether the loudness and aggressiveness of many culture-war defenders of neo-Darwinian evolution bears any relationship at all to the actual scientific contributions of those defenders to the field of evolutionary biology. As it happens, we have at hand some evidence, albeit of a rough and ready kind, relevant to that question.

From June 17 to June 21, 2011, at the University of Oklahoma (Norman) campus, the conference “Evolution 2011” was in session. It was co-sponsored by three scientific societies – The Society for the Study of Evolution, The Society of Systematic Biologists, and the American Society of Naturalists. It was billed by its promoters as “the premier annual international conference of evolutionary biologists on the planet.”

That billing may be somewhat hyperbolic, yet two things are clear: the conference was huge, with an expected turnout of 1400-1500 people; and many of the big names of evolutionary biology were to be there. Jerry Coyne was to give an address; H. Allen Orr was to chair a session; and Gunter Wagner and Sergey Gavrilets, cutting-edge biologists from the famed 2008 Altenberg conference, were to be there as well. Hundreds of papers were scheduled, and the research contributors to the various papers and presentations, according to the index for the conference, numbered something like 2,000.

It is interesting to make a mental list of the Darwin-defenders who have been most active in the culture wars, whether by publishing popular books defending Darwin, by appearing as witnesses against school boards in court cases, by working for the NCSE, by running pro-Darwinian blog sites, or by attacking Darwin critics throughout cyberspace, and to see which of them either read papers or at least contributed to the research and writing of papers for this premier conference.

Let’s start with those Darwin defenders who are actively anti-religious or show contempt for religion in their writings and internet remarks. Conspicuously absent from the list of conference contributors were evolutionary champions Richard Dawkins, P. Z. Myers, Larry Moran, and Eugenie Scott.

Among those who have not attacked religious belief, but have violently bashed ID and/or passionately upheld neo-Darwinian theory, Paul Gross (co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse) and plant scientist Arthur Hunt (who has debated ID people live and on the internet) were not listed as contributors to any of the papers.

Among those who were active in the Dover ID trial, as witnesses for the plaintiffs, the no-shows include Kevin Padian, Robert Pennock, and Brian Alters.

Among the prominent Christian Darwinists, i.e., theistic evolutionists/evolutionary creationists, only Ken Miller was going to be there, and not to read a scientific paper, but to issue a cultural manifesto on why evolution matters in America today. The leading figures of Biologos – Darrel Falk, Dennis Venema, Kathryn Applegate, David Ussery, David Kerk, Denis Lamoureux – who have so often been presented, explicitly or implicitly, as experts on evolutionary biology – produced no papers for this conference. British scientists Oliver Barclay and Denis Alexander, who have posted several guest columns on Biologos, are not mentioned. The frequent UD commenter and Quaker TE Allan MacNeill, who has penned hundreds of thousands of words on UD and on his own blogs, apparently couldn’t manage 5,000 or so words for an original research paper for the conference, nor could the belligerent Calvinist TE and almost as prolific anti-ID blogger Steve Matheson.

Now of course statistics of this sort don’t prove anything about the competence or incompetence of any particular individual. There are all kinds of good reasons why a competent evolutionary theorist might not contribute to a particular evolutionary conference. Maybe some of these people elected to attend another evolutionary conference later this year, or early next year, or maybe their travel budget was exhausted. Maybe personal matters prevented them from going. Maybe some of them attended the conference, to keep up with the field, even though they contributed no paper. But one wonders why such a large number of rabid pro-Darwinists would be non-contributors at the premier evolution conference in the world, if they are as competent in the field of evolutionary biology as they make out. Could it be that most of these people, though possessing degrees in the life sciences, are in fact not trained specifically in evolutionary biology, and therefore had no original work to contribute?

I would be interested in hearing from readers about this. Of the people I’ve named, how many have read a paper at, or at least co-written a technical paper for, any secular conference on evolutionary biology in the past ten years? Or published a peer-reviewed paper specifically on evolutionary biology in a secular scientific journal in the past ten years? Are many of the loudest defenders of neo-Darwinian orthodoxy in fact unqualified to talk at an expert level about the latest theoretical and experimental work in evolutionary biology? And if so, why do they set themselves up as the world’s teachers when it comes to evolution? Why do they write so many blogs, post so many comments, put up so many nasty book reviews on Amazon, participate in so many anti-ID debates on the Darwinist side, if they aren’t experts in the field? Why don’t they let the real experts in evolutionary biology – the Coynes and Orrs and Sean Carrolls – do the public cheerleading and debating for evolutionary biology, and stick quietly to their own specialties of cell biology, genetics, developmental biology, etc.?

In most scientific areas, non-experts don’t pretend to stand in for experts. You don’t see solid-state physicists rushing onto the blogosphere to defend the latest view on black holes from Stephen Hawking. They leave the defense of cosmology to the cosmologists. But for some reason every medical geneticist, soil scientist, biochemist, developmental biologist, cell biologist, anthropologist, part-time first-year biology instructor, undergrad biology teacher at a Christian college, etc., thinks himself or herself an expert on evolutionary theory, and competent to debate it with anyone, any time. Normal professional humility goes out the window when defending Darwinian theory is concerned. That’s why I think it’s important to ask the question: how many of the self-appointed defenders of Darwinian evolution have demonstrated competence, proved by research and publication, in the field of evolutionary biology?

Comments

Nick Matzke:
But even the evolution of flagellum–>T3SS would require the evolution of a bunch of new proteins/new genes, and drastic modification of others, change of binding sites, change of function by cooption, etc. All of these are things that ID folks most vociferously deny — especially, the evolution of new information, which all of this would be. So again, ID loses if even this scenario is adopted.
Not if they were designed to evolve, Nick- you know like Dawkins "weasel" program. Heck even Mike Gene's front-loaded evolution covers that. Also what us ID folk say is that information is not reducible to matter and energy and neither matter nor energy can create information.Joseph_{July 11, 2011
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Typo. I meant: "A gene duplication followed by very specific amino acid substitutions would be needed to get from YscJ –> FliF, yet a simple deletion event would be needed to get from FliF –> YscJ."LivingstoneMorford_{July 11, 2011
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But even the evolution of flagellum–>T3SS would require the evolution of a bunch of new proteins/new genes, and drastic modification of others, change of binding sites, change of function by cooption, etc. All of these are things that ID folks most vociferously deny — especially, the evolution of new information, which all of this would be. Indeed? Consider the facts: The flagellar proteins are all longer than the T3SS proteins, with the exception of FliN (YscQ is the only T3SS protein that is longer than its flagellar homologue). Further consider that the flagellar proteins have a higher degree a "functional specificity" than their T3SS counterparts. By this I mean that, in order for the flagellar proteins to carry out their function, very specified amino acid residues need to be in the proteins. This is not true of T3SS proteins: T3SS proteins seem to be capable of tolerating more amino acid substitutions than flagellar proteins. The implication of this? Namely, very specific mutations would not be needed for the T3SS proteins to carry out their function. T3SS proteins are generally less stable than their flagellar counterparts, yet they can still carry out their function. Let's just take a look at one example of how it is very plausible for a T3SS protein to evolve from its flagellar homologue: FliF is ~550 amino acid residues in length, while its homologous counterpart (YscJ) is ~270 amino acid residues in length. Obviously, FliF has an extra ~200 residues because those residues are required for flagellar function, but those extra residues are NOT required for YscJ to function. A simple deletion event of those ~200 residues would result in the YscJ function. Yet, to get from YscJ to FliF would require very specific mutations, because those ~200 residues are rather specific and need to be specific in order to carry out the flagellar function. A gene duplication followed by very specific amino acid substitutions would be needed to get from YscJ --> FliF, yet a simple deletion event would be needed to get from YscJ --> FliF. So, not-very-specific mutations are needed to get from a flagellum to a T3SS. Incidentally, I should like to know what new binding sites would have to evolve in order to get from flagellum to T3SS -- I do not deny that new binding sites can evolve, I am just curious about this. And, of course, I accept the idea that new information can arise through mindless processes. In conclusion: while the evolution of a T3SS --> flagellum would require very specific mutations, the evolution of flagellum --> T3SS could be accomplished by just a few, not very specific mutations.LivingstoneMorford_{July 11, 2011
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For some reason, I don’t find that ironic at all. Firstly, in my view, the T3SS evolved from the flagellum via the stochastic processes of random mutation and natural selection. I.e., no intelligence was required for the origin of the T3SS if it evolved from the flagellum. Phylogenetic results then can be used to support the contention that the T3SS is younger than the flagellum without having to admit that the flagellum evolved via purely mindless processes.
But even the evolution of flagellum-->T3SS would require the evolution of a bunch of new proteins/new genes, and drastic modification of others, change of binding sites, change of function by cooption, etc. All of these are things that ID folks most vociferously deny -- especially, the evolution of new information, which all of this would be. So again, ID loses if even this scenario is adopted.NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
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Thomas Cudworth:
Elizabeth Liddle: You are being vague, and are evading the point.
I was making a general point!
Eugenie Scott, Ken Miller, etc. have all loudly shouted that ID is not good science, because if it were, ID people would have peer-reviewed publication in evolutionary biology. The Christian Darwinists at Biologos also loudly proclaim that ID is not good science regarding evolution. So the natural response is to ask these critics to supply some example of their own work in evolutionary theory. I am inviting them to do this.
Fair enough. But what I am saying is that you don't have to be an original researcher in a domain to have the competence to spot flawed science. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. I am not an evolutionary biologist at all, yet I consider myself competent to evaluate scientific arguments, on logic, if not on factual minutiae.
Some of our critics have actually done work in evolutionary biology: Coyne, for example. I already conceded that such people exist. But the bulk of our loudest and personally nastiest critics do not appear to have done a stitch of work in the field.
Well PZ Myers is a developmental neurobiologist, not an evolutionary biologist. But it's a good background for understanding evolutionary biology. Dawkins, I readily agree, is frequently simply out of date.
If I am wrong, if I have just missed the work, you may correct me by providing the names of conferences and journals in which the work appeared. Or they can.
Well, you can do a google scholar search, but PZ Myers doesn't seem to have published much recently. I'm not sure his job is primarily a research one. My point is that doesn't disqualify him from evaluating research - indeed, it may give him more time to do so, as he should if he is primarily involved in teaching.
Zs for “reading voraciously” and having a vast knowledge base, that certainly applies to Paul Nelson and William Dembski and Richard Sternberg and Michael Denton, but our critics simply dismiss the competence of those Ph.D.s to comment on evolutionary theory.
Well, I think we have apples and oranges here. On the one hand, ID critics point to the dearth of peer-reviewed work in ID as evidence of its lack persuasive ness. On the other hand, you point to the dearth of peer-reviewed work by specific critics of ID as evidence of their lack of competence to criticise. These two things are not the same :) There is no shortage of peer-reviewed work supporting evolutionary theory, and there is no shortage of people without peer-reviewed work criticising it. In other words we have two separable issues: One is: are people qualified to critique the science? And the other is: is the science any good? Peer-reviewed publications are offered as evidence in both cases, but the questions are different. The reason I think Dembski et al are wrong is not because they do not have peer-reviewed papers (which could, conceivably, be because their work is being deliberately suppressed) but because I think the work has serious errors. And the reason I think PZ Myers is probably qualified to critique it is because he generally makes what seems to me to be a persuasive case.
So again, there is a double standard. And that’s how dying theories hold onto power: by applying a double standard.
No, I don't think so. I do think that it's harder to get radical theories published than non-radical, but the quid pro quo is that if your radical theory is well-argued and supported, you get published in the highest impact journals. Novelty has to run a more taxing gauntlet than something run-of-the-mill, but the potential prize is, well, Nobel. So I don't accept the charge of double standard. PZ Myers and Dembski are equally entitled to critique the other's preferred theory, regardless of how much they have published. Whether they are competent can only be judged by how much competence they show. But whether they are right or not can be at least partly judged by whether, not they, but the theory they espoused, gets published. Yes, I'll give Dembski a temporary pass on that front because he has a harder row to hoe - maybe the first ID Nature paper is still to come. But only on that front - the reason that I think he is wrong, is not because I have a "double standard" but because, well, I think he is wrong. I don't think the science works.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 11, 2011
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Nick matzke:
Just that the founders and leaders of the ID movement are. Behe was a coauthor of Pandas, as Stephen Meyer. A host of other DI fellows were contributors or reviewers. Chunks of the book were hosted on the DI website for a decade or more. Dembski and Wells coauthored the 3rd edition.
What Dr Behe says: Intelligent Design is NOT Creationism (MAY 2000)
Scott refers to me as an intelligent design "creationist," even though I clearly write in my book Darwin's Black Box (which Scott cites) that I am not a creationist and have no reason to doubt common descent. In fact, my own views fit quite comfortably with the 40% of scientists that Scott acknowledges think "evolution occurred, but was guided by God."- Dr Michael Behe
Dr Behe has repeatedly confirmed he is OK with common ancestry. And he has repeatedly made it clear that ID is an argument against materialistic evolution (see below), ie necessity and chance. Then we have: What is Intelligent Design and What is it Challenging?- a short video featuring Stephen C. Meyer on Intelligent Design. He also makes it clear that ID is not anti-evolution. Next Dembski and Wells weigh in:
The theory of intelligent design (ID) neither requires nor excludes speciation- even speciation by Darwinian mechanisms. ID is sometimes confused with a static view of species, as though species were designed to be immutable. This is a conceptual possibility within ID, but it is not the only possibility. ID precludes neither significant variation within species nor the evolution of new species from earlier forms. Rather, it maintains that there are strict limits to the amount and quality of variations that material mechanisms such as natural selection and random genetic change can alone produce. At the same time, it holds that intelligence is fully capable of supplementing such mechanisms, interacting and influencing the material world, and thereby guiding it into certain physical states to the exclusion of others. To effect such guidance, intelligence must bring novel information to expression inside living forms. Exactly how this happens remains for now an open question, to be answered on the basis of scientific evidence. The point to note, however, is that intelligence can itself be a source of biological novelties that lead to macroevolutionary changes. In this way intelligent design is compatible with speciation. page 109 of "The Design of Life"

And that brings us to a true either-or. If the choice between common design and common ancestry is a false either-or, the choice between intelligent design and materialistic evolution is a true either-or. Materialistic evolution does not only embrace common ancestry; it also rejects any real design in the evolutionary process. Intelligent design, by contrast, contends that biological design is real and empirically detectable regardless of whether it occurs within an evolutionary process or in discrete independent stages. The verdict is not yet in, and proponents of intelligent design themselves hold differing views on the extent of the evolutionary interconnectedness of organisms, with some even accepting universal common ancestry (ie Darwin’s great tree of life). Common ancestry in combination with common design can explain the similar features that arise in biology. The real question is whether common ancestry apart from common design- in other words, materialistic evolution- can do so. The evidence of biology increasingly demonstrates that it cannot.- Ibid page 142
And from one more pro-ID book:
Many assume that if common ancestry is true, then the only viable scientific position is Darwinian evolution- in which all organisms are descended from a common ancestor via random mutation and blind selection. Such an assumption is incorrect- Intelligent Design is not necessarily incompatible with common ancestry.- page 217 of “Intelligent Design 101”
And what do Creationists say- John Morris, the president of the Institute for Creation Research:
"The differences between Biblical creationism and the IDM should become clear. As an unashamedly Christian/creationist organization, ICR is concerned with the reputation of our God and desires to point all men back to Him. We are not in this work merely to do good science, although this is of great importance to us. We care that students and society are brainwashed away from a relationship with their Creator/Savior. While all creationists necessarily believe in intelligent design, not all ID proponents believe in God. ID is strictly a non-Christian movement, and while ICR values and supports their work, we cannot join them."
Hmmm... Strange how the people who understand Creation and ID the best know there is a difference and only the people with a warped agenda try to conflate the two.Joseph_{July 11, 2011
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(a) this is new evidence, which doesn’t support the cut-n-paste contention made in this and many other UD threads that the matter was settled long ago by phylogenetic evidence... My point really isn't concerning when the issue was settled, my point is that, in my humble opinion, the evidence points in the direction of the idea that the T3SS is younger than the flagellum. The key issue isn’t the amount of divergence within the “flagellum group” and the “T3SS group”, the key issue is whether one or both of these isn’t a real “group”, because one includes the other group. There is more diversity in placental + marsupial mammals than there is in monotreme mammals, but that doesn’t prove monotremes nest within placentals+marsupials; phylogenetic evidence shows that they are sister groups. You're being just a touch vague here. Would you care to elaborate, particularly on this comment: "There is more diversity in placental + marsupial mammals than there is in monotreme mammals, but that doesn’t prove monotremes nest within placentals+marsupials." Are you saying that if one aligns, say, a protein of a placental animal and aligns that protein with a protein of a marsupial animal, that there will be greater genetic diversity (in general) than if one aligns a given protein belonging to monotreme mammals? The most ironic thing about this debate is that all the published work which ID guys cite in favor of “flagellum-first” rely explicitly on phylogenetics results, which only make sense if evolution is accepted. So to make these arguments at all they have to accept common ancestry over billions of years of evolution. Which, again, means they’ve lost the main debate. For some reason, I don't find that ironic at all. Firstly, in my view, the T3SS evolved from the flagellum via the stochastic processes of random mutation and natural selection. I.e., no intelligence was required for the origin of the T3SS if it evolved from the flagellum. Phylogenetic results then can be used to support the contention that the T3SS is younger than the flagellum without having to admit that the flagellum evolved via purely mindless processes.LivingstoneMorford_{July 11, 2011
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oops, link: http://aghunt.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/dust-up/NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
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Art posted a response to the OP on his blog: ======== Dust-up It’s been awhile since I’ve done an ID post. Thomas Cudworth on UD goads me thusly:
From June 17 to June 21, 2011, at the University of Oklahoma (Norman) campus, the conference “Evolution 2011” was in session. It was co-sponsored by three scientific societies – The Society for the Study of Evolution, The Society of Systematic Biologists, and the American Society of Naturalists. It was billed by its promoters as “the premier annual international conference of evolutionary biologists on the planet.” … It is interesting to make a mental list of the Darwin-defenders who have been most active in the culture wars, whether by publishing popular books defending Darwin, by appearing as witnesses against school boards in court cases, by working for the NCSE, by running pro-Darwinian blog sites, or by attacking Darwin critics throughout cyberspace, and to see which of them either read papers or at least contributed to the research and writing of papers for this premier conference. … Among those who have not attacked religious belief, but have violently bashed ID and/or passionately upheld neo-Darwinian theory, Paul Gross (co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse) and plant scientist Arthur Hunt (who has debated ID people live and on the internet) were not listed as contributors to any of the papers. … The theme of my column is qualifications. The question is: are most of the Darwinian preachers in the culture-wars competent to discuss the latest developments in evolutionary biology? If they are not competent, shouldn’t the public know this? What I’m trying to do here is to give everyone a chance to say whether these people are or are not qualified. And I invite any of the named people — Falk, Venema, Moran, Miller, etc. — to write in here, listing their publications and conference papers in the field of evolutionary biology, and explaining why we should prefer their account of evolution to those of Darwin-critical specialists in evolutionary theory such as Lynn Margulis, Stuart Newman, Richard Sternberg, etc.
Well, Thomas, I’ll speak only for myself. It turns out that my first paper in the area of polyadenylation had a decided evolutionary flavor, and the implications of this finding weigh on my own research even today. Heck, I’ve done more actual wet-bench research on irreducibly complex systems than Mike Behe, who is, by all estimations, at the head of the ID biochemistry class. I’ve even gone so far as to directly measure the CSI for a specific protein-protein interaction, something no ID proponent anywhere has ever done. All in all, I think I can make a good case that I’m qualified to tell people like Richard Sternberg and Jonathan Wells that their ideas about RNA processing, alternative splicing, and junk DNA are bogus. So I’ve got a couple of questions. First, you may recall that the 2010 meeting of the RNA Society was held in Seattle, Washington. I was there, and I figured that the Discovery Institute would send a cohort to dazzle all those RNA scientists with the latest and greatest ID research that demolishes all manner of RNA science – from the studies on RNA aptamers and ribozymes that show how little CSI there actually is in living things, to all that work on splicing and introns that Wells and Sternberg have shown to be wrong, to that misleading research on ribosomes that looks to spell out a clear evolutionary history that marks the very beginning of life, to, um, well, you get the idea. That’s what I figured. But guess what – the DI couldn’t even scare up the intellectual curiosity to drive a few blocks and present a single, solitary poster on any ID research. What’s up with that, Thomas? I am hoping for more this August, when Wells and Sternberg are surely going to shock the Cold Spring Harbor Eukaryotic RNA Processing meeting with their definitive experimental proof that each and every nucleotide in each and every intron in the human genome has a clear and undeniable biochemical or evolutionary function. I was wondering if you could give the readers at UD a sort of sneak preview of their amazing presentation. What say ye, Thomas? Any possibility of this happening? One more thing – I would post this on UD, but your “moderation” is such that it wouldn’t actually be posted for anywhere from 48 to 480 hours. I apologize that you have to wander on over here to read my reply. ========NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
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I am convinced that the T3SS is almost certainly younger than the flagellum. If one aligns the amino acid sequences of the flagellar proteins (that have homologous counterparts in the T3SS), and if one also aligns the amino acid sequences of the T3SS proteins, one finds that the T3SS protein amino acid sequences are much more conserved than the amino acid sequences of the flagellar proteins. There are two possible explanations for this: (1) The T3SS is younger than the flagellum, or (2) The T3SS proteins are under more functional constraints than flagellar proteins, and so the sequences in T3SS proteins cannot diverge as much. We may rule out option #2 in the light of both in vitro and in silico mutagenesis. For example, I performed an in silico alanine scan on flagellar proteins and their T3SS homologues using SNAPs and found that flagellar proteins are under more functional constraints than T3SS proteins. (E.g., ~39% of the positions in FliF result in a non-neutral mutation when an in silico alanine scan is performed, ~34% of the positions in YscJ result in a non-neutral mutation — YscJ is FliF’s T3SS homologue, for those of you who do not know).
Interesting. But (a) this is new evidence, which doesn't support the cut-n-paste contention made in this and many other UD threads that the matter was settled long ago by phylogenetic evidence (b) as is common amongst non-phylogeneticists, you are misinterpreting the conservation information. The key issue isn't the amount of divergence within the "flagellum group" and the "T3SS group", the key issue is whether one or both of these isn't a real "group", because one includes the other group. There is more diversity in placental + marsupial mammals than there is in monotreme mammals, but that doesn't prove monotremes nest within placentals+marsupials; phylogenetic evidence shows that they are sister groups. As far as the actual published phylogenetic results go on the flagellum question, they seem to indicate that the hypothesis that the T3SS and flagellum are sister groups is as supported (or more supported) than the hypothesis that the T3SS nests within the flagellum. As it's a very ancient event, it's hard to tell for sure, so the debate continues. Surely ID apologists should accurately convey the state of the scientific literature, and not pretend to their supporters that the literature says only one thing, the side the ID guys support? (c) The most ironic thing about this debate is that all the published work which ID guys cite in favor of "flagellum-first" rely explicitly on phylogenetics results, which only make sense if evolution is accepted. So to make these arguments at all they have to accept common ancestry over billions of years of evolution. Which, again, means they've lost the main debate.NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
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The Pandas book doesn’t prove what you claim it does. What it proves is that people who *are* creationists will sometimes adopt ID language in order to conceal the real basis of their argument.
OK then, it looks like I win...because...
It does not prove that ID itself is creationism.
Just that the founders and leaders of the ID movement are. Behe was a coauthor of Pandas, as Stephen Meyer. A host of other DI fellows were contributors or reviewers. Chunks of the book were hosted on the DI website for a decade or more. Dembski and Wells coauthored the 3rd edition.NickMatzke_UD_{July 11, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle: You are being vague, and are evading the point. Eugenie Scott, Ken Miller, etc. have all loudly shouted that ID is not good science, because if it were, ID people would have peer-reviewed publication in evolutionary biology. The Christian Darwinists at Biologos also loudly proclaim that ID is not good science regarding evolution. So the natural response is to ask these critics to supply some example of their own work in evolutionary theory. I am inviting them to do this. Some of our critics have actually done work in evolutionary biology: Coyne, for example. I already conceded that such people exist. But the bulk of our loudest and personally nastiest critics do not appear to have done a stitch of work in the field. If I am wrong, if I have just missed the work, you may correct me by providing the names of conferences and journals in which the work appeared. Or they can. As for "reading voraciously" and having a vast knowledge base, that certainly applies to Paul Nelson and William Dembski and Richard Sternberg and Michael Denton, but our critics simply dismiss the competence of those Ph.D.s to comment on evolutionary theory. So again, there is a double standard. And that's how dying theories hold onto power: by applying a double standard.Thomas Cudworth_{July 11, 2011
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Thomas Cudworth: I'd say that being an active researcher in your field qualifies you to discuss recent developments in that field including your own (obviously you need to be aware of what is going on in your area), but not being an active researcher doesn't disqualify you. What qualifies you is having the knowledge base (theoretical and practical) to evaluate new papers, and the time to read them. And you can't necessarily tell that from someone's recent qualifications. Some of the people whose evaluations I most admire no longer do active research but have vast experience and read voraciously. In fact, being involved actively in research in some ways is a bar to reading lots of other stuff! It takes a heck of a lot of time.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 11, 2011
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just a note to thanks to LivingstoneMorford for his input. It has been informative.bornagain77_{July 10, 2011
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What I’m trying to do here is to give everyone a chance to say whether these people are or are not qualified.
I'm not qualified to say whether they are qualified. I don't think their failure to present papers at conferences is a fair way to judge their qualifications. Their failure to publish peer reviewed papers just shows what they are doing is not science, it does not speak to their qualifications.Mung_{July 10, 2011
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Pardon me for going after a red herring.kairosfocus_{July 10, 2011
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To all Commenters: I would greatly appreciate it if people would respond to the issues raised in my column, and not get off into side arguments about the literary history of the Pandas book or into arguments about the mechanics of evolution. The theme of my column is qualifications. The question is: are most of the Darwinian preachers in the culture-wars competent to discuss the latest developments in evolutionary biology? If they are not competent, shouldn't the public know this? What I'm trying to do here is to give everyone a chance to say whether these people are or are not qualified. And I invite any of the named people -- Falk, Venema, Moran, Miller, etc. -- to write in here, listing their publications and conference papers in the field of evolutionary biology, and explaining why we should prefer their account of evolution to those of Darwin-critical specialists in evolutionary theory such as Lynn Margulis, Stuart Newman, Richard Sternberg, etc.Thomas Cudworth_{July 10, 2011
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F/N: And BTW on their fossil forms comment, I think that while their expression is reflective of a first effort not fully thought through, we should also note from Gould:
. . . long term stasis following geologically abrupt origin of most fossil morphospecies, has always been recognized by professional paleontologists. [[The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002), p. 752.] . . . . The great majority of species do not show any appreciable evolutionary change at all. These species appear in the section [[first occurrence] without obvious ancestors in the underlying beds, are stable once established and disappear higher up without leaving any descendants." [[p. 753.] . . . . proclamations for the supposed ‘truth’ of gradualism - asserted against every working paleontologist’s knowledge of its rarity - emerged largely from such a restriction of attention to exceedingly rare cases under the false belief that they alone provided a record of evolution at all! The falsification of most ‘textbook classics’ upon restudy only accentuates the fallacy of the ‘case study’ method and its root in prior expectation rather than objective reading of the fossil record. [[p. 773.]
And in case you think this is a matter of artful snipping -- the usual snide dismissal of inconvenient admissions by Darwinists and fellow travellers -- I suggest you read the further discussion of that here in light of the relevant NYRB review by Flannery.kairosfocus_{July 10, 2011
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Response to Nick Matzke's comment: "...even Mike Gene has admitted evidence has come in that has supported the evolutionary model, particularly further evidence of homology between the flagellum, T3SS, and the F1Fo-ATPase." A Darwinian mechanism for the origin of the flagellum is not the only explanation for homology. Just take a look at the sequences designed by Fisher et al. If one aligns those designed, un-evolved sequences, one finds that they are homologous to each other. In short, designed sequences can also result in homology. In light of this, sequence homology can hardly be explained only by Darwinian mechanisms. References: Fisher et al. "De Novo Designed Proteins from a Library of Artificial Sequences Function in Escherichia Coli and Enable Cell Growth."LivingstoneMorford_{July 10, 2011
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Hello Dr Liddle, Do you have any idea when we can expect a reply from you in our ongoing conversation. The one regarding a simulation to falsify ID - the very thing that Matske and Company avoid doing.Upright BiPed_{July 10, 2011
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Nick, Years of culture-war politics, and your well-organized indifference to evidence, has wilted your ability to comprehend the central key fact of the debate. Let me help you out. It doesn't matter what was, or was not, included in an attempted school book. It doesn't matter who the proponents of ID are, or what things they may have said at this time or that. It doesn't even matter that there is a politically powerful lobby against ID. Those things may be interesting and important for their own reasons, but they do not change the only thing that really matters - and that is the evidence itself. The core evidence of design boils down to a central claim regarding the explanatory power of two distinct paradigms: Chance contingency + natural law -versus- choice contingency + natural law. At that critical level of the evidence, you have never published a single paper of experimental results which confirms your ideological assumptions. Nor has anone else.Upright BiPed_{July 10, 2011
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Onlookers: Above, Mr Matzke showed just why he and ilk are utterly unreliable and jaundiced on this matter. Had he bothered to actually read honestly to get a true and fair view, he would have seen that -- just as I noted -- even when the term "creationist" was present in the rough draft text, Thaxton et al were definitely divergent from the way that creationists argue. Notice -- and BTW I note how, consistently, this same point is brushed aside when I make it myself -- that in Pandas, the authors are clearly distinguishing their view from the Natural Theology of Paley and from the inference from signs of design of life forms to a specifically supernatural creator in light of religious tradition that is typical of creationist thought. In short, they clearly are not playing at stealth religious apologetics. In fact, just as in the prior -- 1985 -- technical work TMLO, they explicitly draw the point out that an inference to design does not as a scientific inference warrant a conclusion to a designer within or beyond the cosmos. That appears in TMLO, 1985. It appears in the rough draft for Pandas, and it appears and is sustained in the published editions. How much more specific, consistent and explicit can you get than that? As I often have put it, a molecular nanotech lab several generations beyond Venter would be a SUFFICIENT cause for what we see in life forms on earth. 20 years before Venter, Thaxton et al were making essentially the same point. Namely, the science warrants an inference to design, on say the FSCI in DNA [cf discussions here on for a quick look at why], but that is not in itself a warrant for inferring to a particular designer; whether within or beyond the cosmos. Now, I do believe there is a side of ID that does warrant an inference to a designer beyond our observed cosmos, the cosmological inference on fine tuning that suits our cosmos to support C-chemistry cell based life. But that is not what Pandas was about and it was not what TMLO was about. So, clearly, Matzke et al were more concerned to set up a handy creationist strawman than to present a true and fair view of Thaxton et al and their work across the 1980s. We should therefore weigh that credible fact soberly in evaluating any further thing that Matzke et al have to say. Indeed, this piece of strawman laced with ad hominem slander maintained by the NCSE et al for the better part of a decade in the teeth of repeated correction points straight back to the concerns about the sort of ruthless amoral factionalism triggered by the inherent amorality of evolutionary materialism that we have been warned against ever since Plato in The Laws Bk X, 2350 years ago. As a man whose family has just been held hostage by outing tactics and mafioso style threats of we know you, we know where you are and we know those you care for, from the same sort of ruthless amoral evolutionary materialist factionism, I must highlight this prolonged pattern of misbehaviour and call on us to make it very plain to such that enough is enough. Bydand GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 10, 2011
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So, given that option #2 is ruled out, it seems obvious to me that the T3SS is younger than the flagellum -- the T3SS proteins have not been around as long as the flagellar proteins and so they have not diverged as much.LivingstoneMorford_{July 10, 2011
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Response to Nick Matzke's comment: The research papers are split on the question, and the most recent phylogenetic research papers indicate the flagellum and the T3SS are sister groups about equally old, not that the flagellum is older. I am convinced that the T3SS is almost certainly younger than the flagellum. If one aligns the amino acid sequences of the flagellar proteins (that have homologous counterparts in the T3SS), and if one also aligns the amino acid sequences of the T3SS proteins, one finds that the T3SS protein amino acid sequences are much more conserved than the amino acid sequences of the flagellar proteins. There are two possible explanations for this: (1) The T3SS is younger than the flagellum, or (2) The T3SS proteins are under more functional constraints than flagellar proteins, and so the sequences in T3SS proteins cannot diverge as much. We may rule out option #2 in the light of both in vitro and in silico mutagenesis. For example, I performed an in silico alanine scan on flagellar proteins and their T3SS homologues using SNAPs and found that flagellar proteins are under more functional constraints than T3SS proteins. (E.g., ~39% of the positions in FliF result in a non-neutral mutation when an in silico alanine scan is performed, ~34% of the positions in YscJ result in a non-neutral mutation -- YscJ is FliF's T3SS homologue, for those of you who do not know).LivingstoneMorford_{July 10, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
Now, I fully accept that ID doesn’t mean what is written above (at least it bears very little resemblance to anything I’ve read here about ID), so yes, what it may do is “prove… that people who *are* creationists will sometimes adopt ID language in order to conceal the real basis of their argument.”
Why were people supporting the Pandas in the trial? Look at what you wrote. Perhaps that's why. Other reasons might be that they were unaware of it's provenance. Or that they were only testifying as to specific questions which were asked of them. That's how our legal system works. Would you care to make a specific allegation? Why do you continue to advance the ID = Creationism argument when you know it's not true?Mung_{July 10, 2011
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Nick at 32, so you have, in essence, defaulted that you have no concrete examples demonstrating the 'real time' evolution of any molecular machine whatsoever?!? And Nick, just why would you be so sold on neo-Darwinism when even this 'trivial' level of molecular verification cannot be met for neo-Darwinism? Could it be because you get a paycheck for supporting such a evidentially weak position??? As well, I noticed you avoided providing a sufficient material cause to explain the non-local quantum information we now find in molecular biology. Nick, this is not about you winning a argument against ID proponents, this is about a genuine concern for finding the truth. If the material causes of neo-Darwinism are grossly inadequate to explain the staggering levels of integrated information we find in life, which is exactly what the evidence is telling us, why in the world would you fight so hard against this truth???bornagain77_{July 10, 2011
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Elizabeth- Using a released version of the book the quote referred to the fossil record and is supported by (the theory of) punctuated equilibrium. But anyway Dr Behe weighed in on that quote also:
Dr Behe = A Q= pro-ID lawyer Q I would like to direct your attention to page 99, please. I would like to read to you and oft-quoted passage in this case thus far. If you’ll look at the bottom on page 99, it’s going to continue onto 100 as well. It says, quote, Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features already intact: Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, et cetera. Some scientists have arrived at this view since fossil forms first appeared in the record with their distinctive features intact and apparently fully functional rather than gradual development. And I would like to get your reaction to that section? A- Well, it says — it says that some scientists have arrived at this view. I think that’s a way of saying that this is a matter of disagreement and dispute. I certainly do not think that intelligent design means that a feature has to appear abruptly. And I — I certainly would have written this differently if I had done so. Q Now, you say you would have written it differently. Is there another reference or another section in Pandas that you could direct us to to emphasize that point? A Yes. I wrote the section at the end of Pandas which is discussing blood clotting. And on page 144 of the text there’s a section entitled “A Characteristic of Intelligent Design.” And it begins, “Why is the blood clotting system an example of intelligent design? The ordering of independent pieces into a coherent whole to accomplish a purpose which is beyond any single component of the system is characteristic of intelligence.” Q And why did you direct us to that particular section? A Because I think it more clearly conveys the central idea of intelligent design, which is the purposeful arrangement of parts. Q Do you see that then as a, perhaps a better characterization, or more accurate characterization of intelligent design? A Yes, I like this a lot better.
Joseph_{July 10, 2011
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Nick are you sure your conference wasn't more like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Wp9dICOoA&feature=relatedlamarck_{July 10, 2011
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Nick Matzke:
flagellum — even Mike Gene has admitted evidence has come in that has supported the evolutionary model, particularly further evidence of homology between the flagellum, T3SS, and the F1Fo-ATPase:
1- You don't have a testable hypothesis for accumulations of genetic accidents p[roducing either a flagellum nor a T3SS 2- You don't have any evidence that accumulations of genetic accidents can construct new, useful and functional multi-part systems. 3- One man's homolog is another's homoplasy or evn part of a common designJoseph_{July 10, 2011
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Elizabeth, The sentence you cite is NOT from the glossary- rather it refers to the fossil record. The definition provided in the glosary does not match that sentence. Also the publisher was not allowed at the trial- but that 9is the only way to "win"- stop the people who know the best from testifying.Joseph_{July 10, 2011
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