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Genetics

Evolutionary biologist Will Provine vs genetic drift?

Friends write to say that Darwinian evolutionary biologist (retired) William B. Provine has written a book , The “Random Genetic Drift” Fallacy (2014): Much of my life has been devoted to the history of population genetics. My early book was my Ph.D. thesis still in print: The Origins of Theoretical Populations Genetics (1971, 2nd edition, 1991). I stated in the 2nd edition in the Afterword that “random genetic drift” was giving me pause, as does the evolutionary synthesis. My later book was Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology (1986) and is also still in print. Now I am writing this book against “random genetic drift,” invented by R. A. Fisher and followed by Sewall Wright and J. B. S. Haldane. “Random Read More ›

ID Found in DNA

Researchers at Brigham Young University shaped DNA strands into the letters BYU, reported Live Science.  Let’s have a little fun with this clever achievement (an indisputable case of intelligent design) with some thought experiments that make use of ID reasoning. Suppose instead of forming the DNA into letter shapes, they used a code with the existing bases arranged in triplets: AAA = A, AAC = B, AAG = C, AAT =  D, and so forth.  Cracking the code would reveal the letters BYU. Suppose they spelled out “Brigham Young University” in full using this code and signed their names with it.  Now they’re not only approaching the Universal Probability Bound, they are tightening the independently verifiable specification. Suppose instead they Read More ›

Professor Robert Winston Rejects Determinism in Genetics

The Festival of Science in Liverpool, organised by the prestigious British Association, has certainly produced some fireworks this past week. Following Professor Reiss’s comments, Professor Robert Winston has now criticised ‘science delusions’ and a ‘deterministic’ approach to genetics. Winston is well known through the mainstream media in the UK as a leading geneticist. He accuses militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins of damaging science with their rhetoric, commenting that the new atheism is ‘dangerous,’ ‘irresponsible’ and ‘very divisive.’ Winston comments that; “Far too many scientists including my good friend Richard Dawkins present science as…factually correct. And actually of course that clearly isn’t true.” “I think that…it is actually…irresponsible. I think it poo-poos other people’s views of a universe about which Read More ›