Is lavish taxpayer funding killing science?

_{Denyse O'Leary

February 2, 2020

Intelligent Design, Peer review, Philosophy, Science}

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Before you say no, at least read this:

My experiences at four research universities and as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research fellow taught me that the relentless pursuit of taxpayer funding has eliminated curiosity, basic competence, and scientific integrity in many fields.
Yet, more importantly, training in “science” is now tantamount to grant-writing and learning how to obtain funding. Organized skepticism, critical thinking, and methodological rigor, if present at all, are afterthoughts. Thus, our nation’s institutions no longer perform their role as Eisenhower’s fountainhead of free ideas and discovery. Instead, American universities often produce corrupt, incompetent, or scientifically meaningless research that endangers the public, confounds public policy, and diminishes our nation’s preparedness to meet future challenges.
Nowhere is the intellectual and moral decline more evident than in public health research. From 1970 to 2010, as taxpayer funding for public health research increased 700 percent, the number of retractions of biomedical research articles increased more than 900 percent, with most due to misconduct. Fraud and retractions increased so precipitously from 2010 to 2015 that private foundations created the Center for Scientific Integrity and “Retraction Watch” to alert the public.
Edward Archer, “The Intellectual and Moral Decline in Academic Research” at James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

One cringes to think of the public policy that is based on much of this “research.”

One senses that the massive increase in research misconduct masks a deeper issue. Why don’t scientists want to be more honest? In most systems whose practitioners are distinguished for a high standard of integrity, integrity is actually a value. Can science thrive without it?

See also: End of science prediction from 2014: Are we there yet? Daniel Greenfield on the Saganization of science: This form of science measures itself not against the universe, but against the intellectual bubble inhabited by those who share the same worldview or those who live under their control.

Comments

You going to provide some.. ah… evidence… for this claim?
Do you believe in free-will, Mimus?Truthfreedom_{February 3, 2020
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Silver Asiatic @20: RE: question @12 "A survey of scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science" But how many scientists are members of the AAAS? What proportion of the total number of scientists are members of the AAAs?jawa_{February 3, 2020
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How cute, Mimus wants to pretend that he cares about the actual evidence! :)bornagain77_{February 3, 2020
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It really shows you the type and kind of people that evolutionists are, how they don’t value evidence or care about scientific evidence they just care about forcing their way and their beliefs onto society.
You going to provide some.. ah... evidence... for this claim?Mimus_{February 3, 2020
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@24 EG
And can one person have more than one imagination? ????
According to philosophical materialism anything is possible. Magic rules. Truthfreedom_{February 3, 2020
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Thus, as amply demonstrated in the preceding post, Mimus's claim that "there really is empirical proof that molecular phylogenetics works to recover relationships." is just a big fat lie. The fact of the matter is that phylogenetics have falsified Darwinian claims. Too bad empirical evidence just does not really matter to Darwinists. They will continue to believe in Darwinism no matter what the evidence says to the contrary. They have a utterly blind faith in Darwinism that would make the most ardent Islamic fundamentalist cringe!bornagain77_{February 3, 2020
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Mimus at 22 claims,
the most important and exciting results (for Evolution) are published in higher-profile journals.
Really??? I been asking Darwinists for ANY experimental evidence that unguided material processes are capable creating just a single gene or protein for years. Perhaps you care be the first one, by reference to your "higher-profile journals" of course, to supply us with that critical piece of missing empirical evidence for evolution?
Right of Reply: Our Response to Jerry Coyne - September 29, 2019 by Günter Bechly, Brian Miller and David Berlinski Excerpt: David Gelernter observed that amino acid sequences that correspond to functional proteins are remarkably rare among the “space” of all possible combinations of amino acid sequences of a given length. Protein scientists call this set of all possible amino acid sequences or combinations “amino acid sequence space” or “combinatorial sequence space.” Gelernter made reference to this concept in his review of Meyer and Berlinski’s books. He also referenced the careful experimental work by Douglas Axe who used a technique known as site-directed mutagenesis to assess the rarity of protein folds in sequence space while he was working at Cambridge University from 1990-2003. Axe showed that the ratio of sequences in sequence space that will produce protein folds to sequences that won’t is prohibitively and vanishingly small. Indeed, in an authoritative paper published in the Journal of Molecular Biology Axe estimated that ratio at 1 in 10^74. From that information about the rarity of protein folds in sequence space, Gelernter—like Axe, Meyer and Berlinski—has drawn the rational conclusion: finding a novel protein fold by a random search is implausible in the extreme. Not so, Coyne argued. Proteins do not evolve from random sequences. They evolve by means of gene duplication. By starting from an established protein structure, protein evolution had a head start. This is not an irrational position, but it is anachronistic. Indeed, Harvard mathematical biologist Martin Nowak has shown that random searches in sequence space that start from known functional sequences are no more likely to enter regions in sequence space with new protein folds than searches that start from random sequences. The reason for this is clear: random searches are overwhelmingly more likely to go off into a non-folding, non-functional abyss than they are to find a novel protein fold. Why? Because such novel folds are so extraordinarily rare in sequence space. Moreover, as Meyer explained in Darwin’s Doubt, as mutations accumulate in functional sequences, they will inevitably destroy function long before they stumble across a new protein fold. Again, this follows from the extreme rarity (as well as the isolation) of protein folds in sequence space. Recent work by Weizmann Institute protein scientist Dan Tawfik has reinforced this conclusion. Tawfik’s work shows that as mutations to functional protein sequences accumulate, the folds of those proteins become progressively more thermodynamically and structurally unstable. Typically, 15 or fewer mutations will completely destroy the stability of known protein folds of average size. Yet, generating (or finding) a new protein fold requires far more amino acid sequence changes than that. Finally, calculations based on Tawfik’s work confirm and extend the applicability of Axe’s original measure of the rarity of protein folds. These calculations confirm that the measure of rarity that Axe determined for the protein he studied is actually representative of the rarity for large classes of other globular proteins. Not surprisingly, Dan Tawfik has described the origination of a truly novel protein or fold as “something like close to a miracle.” Tawfik is on Coyne’s side: He is mainstream. https://quillette.com/2019/09/29/right-of-reply-our-response-to-jerry-coyne/
Mimus goes on to claim that
there really is empirical proof that molecular phylogenetics works to recover relationships. If you want to claim they will fail in some scenario you need to make an argument, not just say “THIS IS AN ASSUMPTION” and think you are making a meaningful contribution.,,,
Actually severe problems with phylogenetics have been known about for years now,
“The genomic revolution did more than simply allow credible reconstruction of the gene sets of ancestral life forms. Much more dramatically, it effectively overturned the central metaphor of evolutionary biology (and, arguably, of all biology), the Tree of Life (TOL), by showing that evolutionary trajectories of individual genes are irreconcilably different. Whether the TOL can or should be salvaged—and, if so, in what form—remains a matter of intense debate that is one of the important themes of this book.” Koonin, Eugene V. (2011-06-23). The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution (FT Press Science) (Kindle Locations 76-80). Pearson Education (USA). A New Model for Evolution: A Rhizome – Didier Raoult – May 2010 Excerpt: Thus we cannot currently identify a single common ancestor for the gene repertoire of any organism.,,, Overall, it is now thought that there are no two genes that have a similar history along the phylogenic tree.,,,Therefore the representation of the evolutionary pathway as a tree leading to a single common ancestor on the basis of the analysis of one or more genes provides an incorrect representation of the stability and hierarchy of evolution. Finally, genome analyses have revealed that a very high proportion of genes are likely to be newly created,,, and that some genes are only found in one organism (named ORFans). These genes do not belong to any phylogenic tree and represent new genetic creations. per Cornelius Hunter - Darwinsgod As a 2012 paper published in Biological Reviews of the Cambridge philosophical Society reported, "Incongruence between phylogenies derived from morphological versus molecular analysis, and between trees based on different subsets of molecular sequences has become pervasive as datasets have expanded rapidly in both characters and species". Another paper published the following year in the journal Nature, highlighted the extent of the problem. The authors compared 1,070 genes in twenty different yeasts and got 1,070 different trees. An article in Quanta magazine, reporting on the paper in Nature, highlighted the challenge these findings pose for the Darwinian tree of life: "According to a new study partly focused on yeast, the conflicting picture from individual genes is even broader than scientists suspected. “They report that every single one of the 1,070 genes conflicts somewhat,” said Michael Donoghue, an evolutionary biologist at Yale who was not involved in the study. “We are trying to figure out the phylogenetic relationships of 1.8 million species and can’t even sort out 20 [types of] yeast,” he said." A New Approach to Building the Tree of Life - June 2013 These results aren't what we should expect from a process of blind, gradual macroevolution.,,,, Evolutionary biologist Seirian Sumner describes the emerging problem, "These data are telling us to put to bed the idea that all life is underlain by a common toolkit of conserved genes. Instead, we need to turn our attention to the role of genomic novelty in the evolution of phenotypic diversity and innovation.,,, We can now sequence de novo the genomes and transcriptomes (the genes expressed at any one time/place) of any organism. We have sequence data for algae, pythons, green sea turtles, puffer fish, pied flycatchers, platypus, koala, bonobos, giant pandas, bottle-nosed dolphins, leafcutter ants, monarch butterfly, pacific oysters, leeches…the list is growing exponentially. And each new genome brings with it a suit of unique genes. Twenty percent of genes in nematodes are unique. Each lineage of ants contains about 4000 novel genes, but only 64 of these are conserved across all seven ant genomes sequenced so far. Many of these unique ('novel') genes are proving important in the evolution of biological innovations. Morphological differences between closely related fresh water polyps, Hydra, can be attributed to a small group of novel genes. Novel genes are emerging as important in the worker castes of bees, wasps and ants. Newt-specific genes may play a role in their amazing tissue regenerative powers." - WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? - Life Evolves Via A Shared Genetic Toolkit Seirian Sumner Sweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution – May 28, 2018 Excerpt: Darwin perplexed,,, And yet—another unexpected finding from the study—species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there’s nothing much in between. “If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies,” said Thaler. “They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space.” The absence of “in-between” species is something that also perplexed Darwin, he said. https://phys.org/news/2018-05-gene-survey-reveals-facets-evolution.html "I think the tree of life is an artifact of some early scientific studies that aren't really holding up." - Dr. Craig Venter, "phylogenetic conflict is common, and frequently the norm rather than the exception" (Dávalos et al., 2012). Phylogeny: Rewriting evolution - Tiny molecules called microRNAs are tearing apart traditional ideas about the animal family tree. - Elie Dolgin - 27 June 2012 Excerpt: “I've looked at thousands of microRNA genes, and I can't find a single example that would support the traditional tree,” he says. "...they give a totally different tree from what everyone else wants.” (Phylogeny: Rewriting evolution, Nature 486,460–462, 28 June 2012) (molecular palaeobiologist - Kevin Peterson) Mark Springer, (a molecular phylogeneticist working in DNA states),,, “There have to be other explanations,” he says. Peterson and his team are now going back to mammalian genomes to investigate why DNA and microRNAs give such different evolutionary trajectories. “What we know at this stage is that we do have a very serious incongruence,” says Davide Pisani, a phylogeneticist at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth, who is collaborating on the project. “It looks like either the mammal microRNAs evolved in a totally different way or the traditional topology is wrong. http://www.nature.com/news/phylogeny-rewriting-evolution-1.10885 Congruence Between Molecular and Morphological Phylogenies - Colin Patterson Excerpt: "As morphologists with high hopes of molecular systematics, we end this survey with our hopes dampened. Congruence between molecular phylogenies is as elusive as it is in morphology and as it is between molecules and morphology." http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od171/sampler171.htm 'The theory makes a prediction (for amino acid and nucleotide sequence studies); we've tested it, and the prediction is falsified precisely.' Dr. Colin Patterson Senior Principal Scientific Officer in the Paleontology Department at the British Museum Walter T. Brown, In the Beginning (1989), p. 7 Excerpt: "There is not a trace of evidence on the molecular level for the traditional evolutionary series: simple sea life > fish> amphibians > reptiles> mammals. In general, each of the many categories of organisms appear to be equally isolated." - per evolution facts Bones, molecules...or both? - Gura - 2000 Excerpt: Evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don't resemble those drawn up from morphology. Can the two ever be reconciled?,,, When biologists talk of the 'evolution wars', they usually mean the ongoing battle for supremacy in American schoolrooms between Darwinists and their creationist opponents. But the phrase could also be applied to a debate that is raging (between Darwinists) within systematics. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6793/full/406230a0.html The universal ancestor - Carl Woese Excerpt: No consistent organismal phylogeny has emerged from the many individual protein phylogenies so far produced. Phylogenetic incongruities can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various taxa to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves. http://www.pnas.org/content/95/12/6854.full Shilling for Darwin — The wildly irresponsible evolutionist - William Dembski - Oct. 2009 Excerpt: The incongruence of gene and species trees is a standing obstacle, or research problem, in molecular phylogenetics. per uncommondescent Do orthologous gene phylogenies really support tree-thinking? Excerpt: We conclude that we simply cannot determine if a large portion of the genes have a common history.,,, CONCLUSION: Our phylogenetic analyses do not support tree-thinking. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15913459 Evolution: Charles Darwin was wrong about the tree of life - 2009 Excerpt: "We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality," Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist per guardian Uprooting The Tree Of Life - W. Ford Doolittle Excerpt: as DNA sequences of complete genomes have become increasingly available, my group and others have noted patterns that are disturbingly at odds with the prevailing beliefs. per doolittle pdf “That molecular evidence typically squares with morphological patterns is a view held by many biologists, but interestingly, by relatively few systematists. Most of the latter know that the two lines of evidence may often be incongruent." (Masami Hasegawa, Jun Adachi, Michel C. Milinkovitch, "Novel Phylogeny of Whales Supported by Total Molecular Evidence," Journal of Molecular Evolution, Vol. 44, pgs. S117-S120)
And the final nail in the coffin for phylogenetics was this,
New Paper by Winston Ewert Demonstrates Superiority of Design Model - Cornelius Hunter - July 20, 2018 Excerpt: Ewert’s three types of data are: (i) sample computer software, (ii) simulated species data generated from evolutionary/common descent computer algorithms, and (iii) actual, real species data. Ewert’s three models are: (i) a null model which entails no relationships between any species, (ii) an evolutionary/common descent model, and (iii) a dependency graph model. Ewert’s results are a Copernican Revolution moment. First, for the sample computer software data, not surprisingly the null model performed poorly. Computer software is highly organized, and there are relationships between different computer programs, and how they draw from foundational software libraries. But comparing the common descent and dependency graph models, the latter performs far better at modeling the software “species.” In other words, the design and development of computer software is far better described and modeled by a dependency graph than by a common descent tree. Second, for the simulated species data generated with a common descent algorithm, it is not surprising that the common descent model was far superior to the dependency graph. That would be true by definition, and serves to validate Ewert’s approach. Common descent is the best model for the data generated by a common descent process. Third, for the actual, real species data, the dependency graph model is astronomically superior compared to the common descent model. Where It Counts Let me repeat that in case the point did not sink in. Where it counted, common descent failed compared to the dependency graph model. The other data types served as useful checks, but for the data that mattered — the actual, real, biological species data — the results were unambiguous. Ewert amassed a total of nine massive genetic databases. In every single one, without exception, the dependency graph model surpassed common descent. Darwin could never have even dreamt of a test on such a massive scale. Darwin also could never have dreamt of the sheer magnitude of the failure of his theory. Because you see, Ewert’s results do not reveal two competitive models with one model edging out the other. We are not talking about a few decimal points difference. For one of the data sets (HomoloGene), the dependency graph model was superior to common descent by a factor of 10,064. The comparison of the two models yielded a preference for the dependency graph model of greater than ten thousand. Ten thousand is a big number. But it gets worse, much worse. Ewert used Bayesian model selection which compares the probability of the data set given the hypothetical models. In other words, given the model (dependency graph or common descent), what is the probability of this particular data set? Bayesian model selection compares the two models by dividing these two conditional probabilities. The so-called Bayes factor is the quotient yielded by this division. The problem is that the common descent model is so incredibly inferior to the dependency graph model that the Bayes factor cannot be typed out. In other words, the probability of the data set, given the dependency graph model, is so much greater than the probability of the data set given the common descent model, that we cannot type the quotient of their division. Instead, Ewert reports the logarithm of the number. Remember logarithms? Remember how 2 really means 100, 3 means 1,000, and so forth? Unbelievably, the 10,064 value is the logarithm (base value of 2) of the quotient! In other words, the probability of the data on the dependency graph model is so much greater than that given the common descent model, we need logarithms even to type it out. If you tried to type out the plain number, you would have to type a 1 followed by more than 3,000 zeros. That’s the ratio of how probable the data are on these two models! By using a base value of 2 in the logarithm we express the Bayes factor in bits. So the conditional probability for the dependency graph model has a 10,064 advantage over that of common descent. 10,064 bits is far, far from the range in which one might actually consider the lesser model. See, for example, the Bayes factor Wikipedia page, which explains that a Bayes factor of 3.3 bits provides “substantial” evidence for a model, 5.0 bits provides “strong” evidence, and 6.6 bits provides “decisive” evidence. This is ridiculous. 6.6 bits is considered to provide “decisive” evidence, and when the dependency graph model case is compared to comment descent case, we get 10,064 bits. But It Gets Worse The problem with all of this is that the Bayes factor of 10,064 bits for the HomoloGene data set is the very best case for common descent. For the other eight data sets, the Bayes factors range from 40,967 to 515,450. In other words, while 6.6 bits would be considered to provide “decisive” evidence for the dependency graph model, the actual, real, biological data provide Bayes factors of 10,064 on up to 515,450. We have known for a long time that common descent has failed hard. In Ewert’s new paper, we now have detailed, quantitative results demonstrating this. And Ewert provides a new model, with a far superior fit to the data. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/07/new-paper-by-winston-ewert-demonstrates-superiority-of-design-model/
bornagain77_{February 3, 2020
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mimus:
But there really is emprical proof that molecular phylogenetics works to recover relationships.
Only if the relationship is that of a common design.ET_{February 3, 2020
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TF
Evolutionist’s imaginations kind of reminds me of the imaginations of many nutritionists or fad diet supporters or perpetual motion machine supporters or alternative medicine supporters.
Which evolutionist are you referring to? And can one person have more than one imagination? :)Ed George_{February 3, 2020
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It really shows you the type and kind of people that evolutionists are, how they don't value evidence or care about scientific evidence they just care about forcing their way and their beliefs onto society. Truthfreedom_{February 3, 2020
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I wouldn’t expect all of those papers to be retracted, at the same time. I think most of them would just be ignored over time.
Evolution has an impact factor (roughly the average number of citations of a paper in 2 yers) of around 4, so articles appearing there are certainly picked up and built upon. That being said, it's a mid-tier journal in our field, and the most important and exciting results are published in higher-profile journals.
such, then we could wonder if that species is truly representative of all life forms on earth.
No experiment can do that, so there is always wiggle room to keep selective scepticism going. But there really is emprical proof that molecular phylogenetics works to recover relationships. If youw ant to claim they will fail in some scenario you need to make an argument, not just say "THIS IS AN ASSUMPTION" and think you are making a meaninful contribution.Mimus_{February 3, 2020
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Evolutionist's imaginations kind of reminds me of the imaginations of many nutritionists or fad diet supporters or perpetual motion machine supporters or alternative medicine supporters. Truthfreedom_{February 3, 2020
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Jawa Here's one source: https://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/ Regarding your post #7, yes true.Silver Asiatic_{February 3, 2020
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Mimus To say that we have a gap in our current understanding is certainly one way to look at it. I see the problems as being more significant than that. I wouldn't expect all of those papers to be retracted, at the same time. I think most of them would just be ignored over time. I was not familiar with the Hillis paper - thank you. I'd have to look into it more carefully to understand.
Restriction-site maps of the terminal lineages were used to infer the evolutionary history of the experimental lines for comparison to the known history and actual ancestors.
I don't know what they're referring to as evolved "ancestors" here, but I'm guessing they're looking at adaptations within a species. If such, then we could wonder if that species is truly representative of all life forms on earth.Silver Asiatic_{February 3, 2020
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If your evidence of fraud is that the introduction of a scientific paper identifies a gap in our current understanding of a topic then we are going to have to retract a lot of papers. As far as I can see the only real claim you make above that you can't test DNA based phylogenetic methods as a way of reconstructing evolutionary relationships. But that's just wrong, Hillis developed an experiment 30 years agoMimus_{February 2, 2020
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SA
Evolutionary science: They’ll admit the problems in the theory just to give themselves a reason for working on it, and in the hopes that they’ll become famous for solving these intractable problems in the Theory Which has No Weaknesses Within it. “We’re supposed to explain how and why something evolved based on our theory. But in this evolutionary study, we explain that these worms did not evolve and we don’t know why”.
From a friend: The reason why I don't believe in evolution is because of the evidence. I consider myself a strict empiricist, so I go only by evidence. If you think only in terms of scientific evidence evolution would be viewed as a very weak fringe idea, like a science fiction idea, not really true or close to true. I really used to believe in evolution before when I didn't go by evidence, but then I started to think about things in terms of only evidence and empirical observations so I stopped believing in evolution. The reason why most people believe in evolution is because of authority, incredulity, or really wanting to believe in evolution, not because of evidence. I just don't know how anyone who goes strictly by evidence can believe in evolution, something that ordinarily would be viewed as like a crackpot theory, not even real science. Usually since evolutionists realize how weak the evidence supporting evolution is they resort to avoiding discussing evidence and just discuss: Authority: Authority figures believing something or agreeing that something is true isn't equivalent to scientific evidence that it's true. What matters to me is what the scientific evidence shows us not what authority figures believe. You can't determine what's true or false by what authority figures personally believe. Incredulity: Usually the evolutionist will say something like "what alternative is there?", which is just an argument from personal incredulity. You can't determine what's true or false by using incredulity. It’s just foolish people looking at fossils and imagining things, they are backed by authority figures rather than actual scientific evidence…what a joke. The only reason most people believe in evolution is because they were raised and taught to just like someone raised and taught to believe in the tooth fairy…it has absolutely nothing to do with scientific evidence. It’s just in their imagination. Truthfreedom_{February 2, 2020
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Deceleration of morphological evolution in a cryptic species complex and its link to paleontological stasis Evolutionary science "We're supposed to explain how and why something evolved based on our theory. But in this evolutionary study, we explain that these worms did not evolve and we don't know why".Silver Asiatic_{February 2, 2020
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Silver Asiatic, Enjoy the superbowl party! Please, someday after the party, can you look at my question @12 and relate it to my post @7? :) Also, there are examples like Dr Francis Collins who is not atheist but has no problem with Darwinian evolution. Thanks.jawa_{February 2, 2020
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Mimus
reading these papers, do you really have reason to believe they are fraudulent?
Yes, I do. I have a superbowl party to attend in a few minutes, so I can barely be expected to read and analyze three research papers, test the findings and then report, however … I'll start with a few things on the one about morphological statis (sic) in a group of worms. First, all of the statistical analysis in that paper is based on the idea that correlations in DNA sequences indicate various degrees of relatedness. That's a false assumption right at the beginning and it cannot be directly tested.
The highly conserved 18S gene was unable to unambiguously distinguish the most recent divergence between closely related species
It assumes the species are related. But they could have similar DNA features and have independent ancestries. I'd say that this entire paper is a tissue of lies, ambiguities, cover-ups and deliberate attempts to deceive people.
The occurrence of morphological stasis, defined as little or no morphological evolution over extended periods of time, remains a controversial topic in evolutionary biology (Futuyma 2010).
Here's the first lie. If this is controversial, what does it say about THE THEORY upon which all of biology rests and within which there "are no weaknesses" as we've heard it claimed. Where's the controversy and what does it mean? The term "morphological stasis" is deceptive in itself. It means "evolution did not occur". So, I didn't even get started and we have a fraudulent paper to deal with. So, the evolutionists are lying to themselves, the public, their sponsors - anybody at all, it doesn't matter. It's just a lot of B. S. (bad stuff).
Morphological variation is seen as a desired feature of any biological system and its absence is often interpreted as a potential failure to capture variation (Weiss 2011).
Again, more lies and cover-ups. "Desired" by who? They're saying that evolutionists "desire certain outcomes" and are not merely interested in what the observations show? Who does this? Why is this happening? How often do scientists "desire" something to fit their theory? Here's evidence of a motive for fraudulent work. They "desire" one thing, but see another. Then they have to explain their disappointment, so they make up notions about why there's "morphological stasis" (no evolution), the opposite of what evolution claims. They want variation, and it's not present. So, we're given a paper that tells us that one species didn't evolve. Nothing tells us why. This is completely useless, a waste of money and yes, a scientific fraud. Let me put it this way, if I - a relatively uneducated layman - had a half-million dollars to contribute to scientific research, do you think I'd give it for more of this nonsense? Maybe the work in finding an antidote to the coronavirus would give a more beneficial payback?
Lineages with higher evolvability are expected to occupy broader range of habitats more quickly and efficiently, ultimately replacing less labile groups (Rabosky and Adams 2012) and hence, cases of low evolvability and morphological stasis are expected to be exceptionally uncommon.
That's odd. THE THEORY "expects" something. We usually call that "predicts", but in the case of lying evolutionists, we let them say "no, not predict, we just 'expected'". Ok, you "expected". The theory gave you that expectation. Stasis is exceptionally uncommon. The liars interpret that to mean, "it only happens 50% of the time?".
Despite this, examples of morphological stasis are commonplace in the fossil record (Cheetham 1986; Futuyma 2005, 2010; Frame et al. 2007; Hunt et al. 2008; Hunt and Rabosky 2014; Voje et al. 2018), where series of invariant morphotypes occur at diverse time?scales in different organismal groups (Cheetham 1986; Hunt 2007).
Oh, that's too bad. I feel so bad for you all. It was "expected" to be uncommon, but actually it's "common". Don't worry, the evolutionary frauds can tell us that we now expect it to be common, so everything is ok. Normally, honest scientists will say "the theory predicted something that didn't happen, therefore the theory has been falsified". But we know that evolutionists never work that way.
A theory that aims to explain the occurrence of long periods of stasis is the punctuated equilibrium (Eldredge 1971; Eldredge and Gould 1972).
Punctuated Equilibrium -- they're still trotting that one out from the 1970s. Another of The Greatest Theories Known to Mankind. And precision? Oh certainly ...
In its essence, punctuated equilibrium suggests that species undergo long periods of morphological stasis, which are disrupted by rapid change during speciation (Eldredge and Gould 1972; Futuyma 2005).
Great theory. We looked at the fossils. No gradualism. "Therefore, they must have evolved rapidly". Wow, good work. And predictive? "Sometimes it works this way, other times not". Again, this is completely useless. As mindless as the supposed forces that created all of it.
Although the modern synthesis?punctuated equilibrium debate lasted for about two decades, over the years paleontological evidence was aligned with the major processes suggested by the modern synthesis: selection, drift, mutation, and gene flow (Hunt and Rabosky 2014). However, the conciliation of stasis with these processes was never thoroughly achieved.
Two competing, contradictory views and a "conciliation" "was never thoroughly achieved". The Theory doesn't work. They know it. Now this paper, supposedly, is going to solve it? Again, more lies and coverups. They'll admit the problems in the theory just to give themselves a reason for working on it, and in the hopes that they'll become famous for solving these intractable problems in the Theory Which has No Weaknesses Within it. I think that's a good enough start for me. Of course, a die-hard evolutionist has no problem with contradictory claims and "unresolved" problems in the theory. None of this is a big deal. For me, that's merely additional evidence that they cannot present honest papers and almost everything evolutionists do is fraudulent in its very first principles. It's bogus science.Silver Asiatic_{February 2, 2020
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I’m not the best one to ask on this because I believe that almost all papers on evolutionary biology are fraudulent and are never retracted.
Lol, OK. What basis do you have to make this claim? There are 3 open acess papers in the January issue of Evolution ( a good society journal in our field) Ashby simulates co-evolution between hosts and STIs https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.13883 Holand et al looks at the strengh and direction of selection in reindeer https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.13894 Cerca et al investigate morphological statis in a group of worms https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.13884 reading these papers, do you really have reason to believe they are fraudulent?Mimus_{February 2, 2020
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Silver Asiatic @4: “Most scientists are atheists.” Where did you get this information from?jawa_{February 2, 2020
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SA, the only reason I asked is because I am sure that the number of journals and published papers has increased significantly since the days I was at University publishing papers.Ed George_{February 2, 2020
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EG - I don't have any recent data on the relative numbers whether trending up or down or flat. Retraction Watch cites a 2008 paper saying that the absolute numbers are "low but increasing". I'm not the best one to ask on this because I believe that almost all papers on evolutionary biology are fraudulent and are never retracted. We highlight some of those here at times. But from within the scientific community, I mean asking them, the report will probably be that there is little or no increase and there is no problem to be concerned about. This particular OP is just focused on biomedical research and as you mentioned previously, the drive for profitability especially for pharmaceuticals will cause some dishonest reporting.Silver Asiatic_{February 2, 2020
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SA, I don’t disagree with this. There is bad behaviour in all walks of life, even by Christians. I suspect that the number of outright fraudulent acts in science publications is not that high. However, I think that the unintentional influence of personal bias exists in all research, to one extent or another. With regard to retractions for fraud or misconduct, is there any indication that the relative, rather than absolute, numbers are higher?Ed George_{February 2, 2020
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EG
But given that the vast majority of discovered by other scientists (mostly atheist), I would doubt that assertion.
The motive for discovery and exposing frauds may be professional competition, jealousy or desire for fame. In other cases, scientists rely on the success of some experiements in order to test others, so to explain the failure of their own work, they have to look for the reasons - and therefore they'll be happy to blame the poor work done by others. But we don't know the motives. There is 'misconduct', for whatever reason. It leads me to consider also, how much fraudulent science has not yet been discovered and retracted? It's not reasonable to think that 100% of it has been found.Silver Asiatic_{February 2, 2020
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Apparently many of the Nobel prize winners were not atheists: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_Nobel_laureates https://www.johnlennox.org/resources/145/how-many-nobel-prize-winnersjawa_{February 2, 2020
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Ed George, Any comments on this: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/suzan-mazur-on-how-the-college-board-skews-students-toward-darwinism/#comment-691996 ? Thanks.jawa_{February 2, 2020
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SA
Why do scientists lie about their work? Maybe most of them are totally corrupt and evil. It could be. Atheism is an entirely evil belief system. Most scientists are atheists. So, it does line up. It works for me, anyway.
But given that the vast majority of discovered by other scientists (mostly atheist), I would doubt that assertion.Ed George_{February 2, 2020
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"... with most due to misconduct"
That concluded the sentence Ed George quoted. Integrity in an academic field should improve over time, not decline. Why do scientists lie about their work? Maybe most of them are totally corrupt and evil. It could be. Atheism is an entirely evil belief system. Most scientists are atheists. So, it does line up. It works for me, anyway.Silver Asiatic_{February 2, 2020
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From 1970 to 2010, as taxpayer funding for public health research increased 700 percent, the number of retractions of biomedical research articles increased more than 900 percent,...
I would caution against the relationship between causation and correlation. In that same time period there was also a large increase in patents filed for university discoveries (eg, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, etc), a newly realized revenue source for universities. Is the increase in fraudulent claims due to increased public funding, increased pressure to discover something that is patentable, or just an increase in the amount of research? Personally, I don’t know enough to offer an informed opinion, but it would be interesting to look deeper.Ed George_{February 2, 2020
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