ID’s “predictive prowess”

_{William Dembski

January 14, 2008

The Design of Life}

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A producer from one of the national talking heads programs is discussing with FTE’s PR firm whether to interview me or Jonathan Wells regarding our new book THE DESIGN OF LIFE. The producer has some reservations about interviewing us:

Hi [snip],

As I’m sure you know, one of the main claims any scientific theory can make is predictive prowess. In other words, if a theory is true, then other things should also be verifiable experimentally, or by research. Before we make a call on your clients, can you or they provide any samples of things that intelligent design theory has predicted, which researchers have later determined to be true?

Thanks.

[snip]

I have my own list of answers, but I’d like to hear those of this group.

Comments

“Would that imply that organisms with more junk DNA would need more regulation, and hence be more complex? Would that be an ID prediction?” To a degree it would be a prediction.
To what degree? I don't understand your qualification. About the "what if only some junk DNA had function" question, I was asking whether some junk DNA being non-functional would (in your phrase) "completely undermine ID". I'm still interested in knowing this. BobBob O'H_{January 15, 2008
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See Research ID continued: Empirical ID Research Gonzalez' Lunar exploration prediction
"In fact, we might predict that such evidence is available somewhere, if we search diligently enough. It was precisely this prediction that led one of us (Guillermo) to consider the value of lunar exploration for uncovering relatively well-preserved relics of Earthly life from this early period."
------- Also: Intelligent Design is Empirically Testable and Makes Predictions By Jay Richards and Jonathan Witt at Evolution News & Views
"Behe predicts that scientists will not uncover a continuously functional Darwinian pathway from a simple precursor to the bacterial flagellum and, moreover, any detailed evolutionary pathway that is articulated will presuppose other irreducibly complex systems."
Note particularly:
NOTES: 1. Philosophers of science now know that "prediction" is too narrow a criterion to describe all scientific theorizing. Empirical testability is the more appropriate criterion. 2. "Empirical testability," "falsifiability," and "confirmability" aren't synonyms. "Empirical testability" is the genus, of which falsification and confirmation are species. Something is empirically testable when it is either falsifiable, confirmable, or both. Moreover, something can be confirmable but not falsifiable, as with the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) or the existence of a cosmic designer. Both of these claims are still empirically testable. Further, recent work in the philosophy of science has revealed the degree to which high level scientific theories tend to resist simple refutation. As a result, Karl Popper’s criterion of “falsifiability,” which most commentators seem to presuppose, was rejected by most philosophers of science decades ago as a litmus test for science. Nevertheless, it’s certainly a virtue of scientific proposals to be able to say what evidence would count against it.
DLH_{January 15, 2008
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To have a mathematical equation programmed right into the genome would be inefficient. So, something along these lines will probably be discovered at the level of a protein complex, or a protein complex interacting with miRNA and siRNA (my guess)
How would the structure of the proteins and RNAs be coded and inherited if not from the genome? Are you suggesting some other form of inheritance? BobBob O'H_{January 15, 2008
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Bob O'H @ 49: "Just to clarify - what if some junk DNA had no function, but the rest did?" In Darwinian theory, when no conceivable idea exists for the necessary intermediates between form A and form B, we're told/assured that "well, we don't know what it's function is, but someday we will." It all looked like "junk" to Darwinists before. Now it's obvious that it isn't all "junk". When you have some plants that have four copies of the genome, to know why that's the case isn't so obvious at times. I imagine we'll find that some of the "junk" sure appears to be "junk". According to Fred Hoyle, you would expect some "junk"---but this is from the man, of course, who demolished Darwinian theory in his book, "The Mathematics of Evolution." Maybe there's a reason for some "junk". One of the predictions of ID that I listed included one about 'redundancy'. Would that classify as "junk"? "Would that imply that organisms with more junk DNA would need more regulation, and hence be more complex? Would that be an ID prediction?" To a degree it would be a prediction. Let me ask you this: Would Darwinain theory "predict" that rice would have over 50,000 proteins in its genome while humans would only have about 30,000? PaVPaV_{January 15, 2008
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DaveScot wrote:
If the designer is still in the neighborhood still able to intervene then all bets are off. No matter what happens, evolution or lack thereof, it can be fobbed off as the intervention of a designer.
I'm not sure I understand this argument. What is the difference between the designer being present a long time ago to front-load a bunch of genomes (say during the Avalon explosion) and then be absent for 100 million years (for whatever reason) before returning to front-load a new set of genomes? Why would the new intervention either falsify the ID hypothesis or render it unfalsifiable? Maybe the designer was not absent between life form explosions. Maybe he had a reason to wait a 100 million years. After all, you did suggest the possibility of multiple front-loadings. I don't get it.Mapou_{January 15, 2008
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See Research ID Junk DNA Predictions of Intelligent Design Encourage readers to add to Predictions of ID etc.DLH_{January 15, 2008
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Clarence #31: "I simply don’t agree with your comment that a fossil can be interpreted any way you please. Like the rest of science, inetrpretations of fossils are peer reviewed and criticised by the expert community and a consensus opinion emerges once there is sufficient data." This is a very naive view, Clarence. It's not that simple. "I think you miss the point about the search for Tiktaalik. According to evolutionary theory there ought to have been transitional species between fish and the earliest land-dwellers." Maybe you've missed the point that evolutionary theory---Darwinism---predicts all kinds of intermediate forms. Where are all the other millions of intermediate forms that the fossil record was predicted, by Darwin, to contain? Let me add: you missed my point about the possible environmental factors that effect the genome. IOW, how can you distinguish between a genome that has adapted itself to a particular environment, and a genome that has been "produced" by the same said environment? How do you confidently distinguish the one from the other? "Given that the fossil record shows and absence of land-dwellers in earlier strata and the appearance of land-dwellers in later strata, it follows logically that the transitionals should have fossils represented in strata intermediate between them." Conversely, how do you know that it isn't the case of a "land-dweller" adapting itself to an intermediate environment, rather than an aquatic form adapting itself to a more terrestial environment? Remember, it's an intermediate. Now you can see why we need lots of 'intermediate forms' to untangle the mess. "Converesely, I see Tiktaalik as a negative for ID. If the designer has designed fish, and then wants to design something for the land, why bother with a transitional?" If He explained the answer, would you understand? More to the point: does every "design" have one, and only one, form to it? Isn't it possible to "design" something in such a way that it takes on different forms in different circumstances?PaV_{January 15, 2008
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ari Still you need some basis for assuming non-intervention. Well, yes. The idea that miracles must not be expected is one of the axioms of our culture. Other cultures do not hold this. And note that this axiom is not based on science but rather science is based on it.tribune7_{January 15, 2008
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tribune7 Still you need some basis for assuming non-intervention. Maybe we (or something else) are pre-programmed to turn into some super creature at some time in the future?ari-freedom_{January 15, 2008
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Continuing from #21: (9) This is an expectation; not a prediction: Since Bateson showed that morphology can take on geometric proportions from one taxa to another, we should expect some kind of mathematical formulation to occur. To have a mathematical equation programmed right into the genome would be inefficient. So, something along these lines will probably be discovered at the level of a protein complex, or a protein complex interacting with miRNA and siRNA (my guess) (10) Again, an expectation; not a prediction: As progress is made in robotics wherein sophisticated programming allows for very life-like motions, a similarity between the signal processing scheme of animals and machines is likely to emerge.PaV_{January 15, 2008
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Paul Giem Functional genes can certainly show up as if by magic where intelligent agency is involved. We routinely transplant genes from one organism to another. One rather visible (pun intended) example that gets a lot of popular press is the insertion of a gene that codes for a luminescent protein that glows under ultra-violet light. It's been inserted in things ranging from tobacco to fish to cats. Glow in the dark pets are coming soon to a petstore near you!DaveScot_{January 15, 2008
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Dave No matter what happens, evolution or lack thereof, it can be fobbed off as the intervention of a designer. Or the non-intervention, which is a very important distinction and one of the pillars of Western Culture and science, itself. It becomes a theory of everything, much like chance & necessity Very good point. Darwinism, like theism, is not a science. becomes when decoupled from statistical probability, and thus explains nothing. Not objectively or measurably. But remember, anything extrapolated far enough becomes a matter of faith. Which is the wonderful thing about ID: it is not meant to be extrapolated any further than any other practical, useful science. Here's criteria for design; object meets/doesn't meet criteria; object is/may not be designed. A very simple program. And who is the designer? The program can't address it.tribune7_{January 15, 2008
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The religious perspective: G-d created man, creation was complete, He rested, generally assume order and degradation afterwards except for a few specified miracles to make a point. Life from aliens: more aliens could always try to seed earth with new lifeforms. Why assume they would stop trying?ari-freedom_{January 15, 2008
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One other prediction illustrates the difficulty of making predictions. I have run into the argument a number of times that if a Creator (the propounders of this argument discount space aliens) wanted to re-use a part from one organism in another one, He would simply copy the relevant DNA where it was needed. On the other hand, the cytochrome C gene seems to have been copied with slight modifications from organism to organism, so that there is a branching tree effect. The branching tree isn't quite as perfect as it is cracked up to be, and different proteins can give different branches. And how much variation can be allowed between different families, orders, classes, and phyla is not clear. Nor is it clear that the different forms of cytochrome C are not optimized to serve the purposes of the different organisms. To affirm the latter would take more knowledge about optimal organism function than we possess. However, one point is probably valid. If one designs an airplane and a car, certain designs will be taken over without significant modification, especially if the designer is the same, such as is apparently the case for the Saab. Why don't we see this in nature? Those arguing this way have a point. Perhaps we do see here a prediction for intelligent design. Is is falsified? Actually, no. One frequently sees the same system re-used in a number of organisms. Histones and hox genes come to mind. But these examples are compatible with gene conservation and common descent. What is really striking is where common descent is not a reasonable explanation. What is really striking is when we have such things as bacterial rhodopsin showing up in rice. Nobody that I know of claims that the common ancestor of these had the gene. On the face of it, this would seem to falsify common descent. However, the immediate response is that this is "lateral gene transfer"; that the rice somehow got a bacterial gene inserted into its genome. So far it is a just-so story. We have no idea whether this can happen, or how easy it is. As examples of "lateral gene transfer" pile up, we should start asking questions about mechanism, and how easy it really is to get bacterial genes to go to the right place in the genome of another organism. Lateral gene transfer may be a fertile field for research by ID adherents. The breakdown of the final common ancestor to a network of shared genes is the NDE expression of a prediction that ID has been making for a long time.Paul Giem_{January 15, 2008
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tribune If the designer is still in the neighborhood still able to intervene then all bets are off. No matter what happens, evolution or lack thereof, it can be fobbed off as the intervention of a designer. It becomes a theory of everything, much like chance & necessity becomes when decoupled from statistical probability, and thus explains nothing. Right now the chance & necessity faithful are trying very hard to credibly explain why so little happened in all those opportunities for evolution that P. falciparum had in the last 50 years. If they shrug it off by saying "sometimes creative evolution happens fast with few opportunies for heritable change and sometimes it doesn't happen at all with billions of trillions of opportunities" then chance & necessity becomes a theory of everything with no predictive power making it an absolutely useless historical narrative far removed from the practice of science. DaveScot_{January 15, 2008
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However, if this is a confirmed prediction of ID it presupposes something that many IDists, particularly the devoutly religious, don’t want to accept - that the designer is no longer with us. If we don’t make that presumption then what was observed could be the result of a designer actively suppressing the evolution of P. falciparum. Just because the house is built doesn't mean the builder goes away. He may be living in it even :-)tribune7_{January 15, 2008
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I don't have the exact quote at hand but I don't think Francis Crick intended panspermia to be taken too seriously. It was really intended as a "call to arms" to wake up the OOL community because he felt there were real problems they weren't addressing. Carl Sagan spent a lot of time and effort debunking the idea of UFO's even though his popularization of SETI as the inevitable result of evolution and "billions and billions" of earth like planets probably was responsible for the widespread belief we've been visited by aliens.ari-freedom_{January 15, 2008
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I really, really like Behe's work on the evolution of P.falciparum viewed as a prediction of ID. However, if this is a confirmed prediction of ID it presupposes something that many IDists, particularly the devoutly religious, don't want to accept - that the designer is no longer with us. If we don't make that presumption then what was observed could be the result of a designer actively suppressing the evolution of P. falciparum. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If one posits an active intelligent agency with virtually limitless powers involved with the course of evolution then that designer can suppress change as easily as causing change to happen. That's another reason why I prefer the front loading version which supposes one or just a few points in the history of life were design inputs were made. Then we can make the prediction that we won't observe any significant creation of novel cell types, tissue types, organs, or body plans even when we observe a eukaryote such as P.falciparum having orders of magnitude more opportunities for mutation and selection to create complex novel structures than all the mammals that ever lived had available to them. This has been brought up a number of times by critics and a designer in absentia is the only reasonable response while still maintaining that lack of macro-evolution in the present world no matter how many replications or generations are involved is a prediction of ID. It's a category-killer of a prediction in that case which has been confirmed in one well studied prolific eukaryote. It represents a test of both evolution by chance & necessity and evolution intelligent design. Chance & necessity's predictions (in the laughable sense that it makes major predictions for the future trajectory of evolution when billions of trillions of replications under intense selection pressure are involved) failed miserably while the ID prediction was confirmed. Unless chance & evolution be completely useless in making predictions about the course and extent of evolutionary change it's reasonable to say that it predicts something phenotypically novel and complex should emerge with that much opportunity to do what is claimed it did in the past. DaveScot_{January 15, 2008
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Does the idea that the universe started 15 billion years ago with a big explosion have predictive value Absolutely. It predicted the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) which was subsequently found and heralded as a confirmed prediction of the theory much like Einstein's theory of relativity (or was it special relativity?) predicted that light would be bent by intense gravity fields and much later this was confirmed by the observation of stars very close to the disk of the sun during a solar eclipse.DaveScot_{January 15, 2008
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I've never seen a credible scientific justification for this: “junk-DNA” would completely undermine ID if it turned out to really be “junk”. It appears to be a theological argument presupposing a perfect designer whose perfect design can't have or could never have acquired any functionless baggage over the course of its existence. DaveScot_{January 15, 2008
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This is a fascinating discussion! I particularly like Venus Mousetrap's prediction that a forcefield must be protecting DNA. Discovery of this field would completely vindicate ID - I would compare it to Eddington's discovery of the bending of light-rays around the eclipsed sun, thereby corroborating general relativity. And, as VM says, it would have fantastic applications in industry. These are exciting days all right for ID! When have Darwinists ever improved our lives as much as ID one day will? Still, I'd like to hear Prof. Dembski's list. He's being a bit of tease - asking us mere laypeople to guess what ID predicts, when he, the leading ID scientist in the world keeps the real ID predictions close to his chest! And no girl likes being teased.... So Dr Bill, no more flirting, let's get to second base right now! Peace and kisses, Zoe.PlatosPlaything_{January 15, 2008
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PaV @ 18 -
(1) As already mentioned, “junk-DNA” would completely undermine ID if it turned out to really be “junk”. But, of course it isn’t.
Just to clarify - what if some junk DNA had no function, but the rest did?
(3) A complicated level/levels of regulation. If “junk-DNA” is not junk—as ID fully expected—then, concomitantly, it should have a function. The most likely function is that of regulation. When you consider that the ratio of non-coding to coding DNA is 48 to 1, then you must also expect an incredible level of regulation.
Would that imply that organisms with more junk DNA would need more regulation, and hence be more complex? Would that be an ID prediction? BobBob O'H_{January 15, 2008
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peter So you are saying that the dna for all creatures for all history existed in the first life form? Not necessarily. One method used to insure the integrity of data is to store copies of it in different locations so if one is visited by catastrophe the others survive. If life here was seeded by an intelligence it wouldn't be limited to a single first form. It would be limited by only what was able to survive. There could have been any number of them although on the young earth they'd be limited by the environment at the time. One organism doesn't have to contain the entire database for everything that follows. It could also be a distributed database with different fractions of it of residing in organisms that didn't reproduce sexually. Life may have begun here from hundreds or even thousands of cell lines. Extremophiles of all kinds would be a good starting point. If not then there are some gaps. How do you explain these gaps? There is also the possibility of multiple front loadings over the course of history although I tend to favor just one instance. Existing species can be easily modified with new information by highly transmissable, highly contagious viral vectors which in principle could cause some large and abrubt phenotype changes in a very small number of generations or even just one generation constrained only by physical limitations like a fish not being able to have mice hatch from its eggs. Keeping within the realm of the physically possible under the known laws of physics places some constraints on the whole matter. For instance, the source of the initial life would have be in causal contact with the earth. Barring faster than light travel that rules out most of the universe. Because of the immense energy required to accelerate a mass to a significant fraction of light speed and slow it down upon arrival it becomes more reasonable as the mass of the payload decreases. So you wouldn't ship, metaphorically speaking, the San Diego Zoo here and have it soft-land. The same constraints would also limit being able to observe what was happening so to make appropriate adjustments or along the way. I haven't read the book but I understand that Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel took these factors into account when they wrote Life Itself which was about what they called the theory of Directed Panspermia. To stay within the bounds of the physically possible, in other words to avoid resort to the supernatural, one needs a good understanding of what is physically possible for intelligent agents. I highly recommend K. Eric Drexler's book Engines of Creation which was the seminal work in the emerging field of nanotechnology which devotes a good portion of the book to the limits of the physcially possible through intelligent agents with well developed nanotechnology. DaveScot_{January 15, 2008
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OK. Here are some predictions that I believe a proponent of ID and/or front-loading could make. (1) Optimality of DNA. If anything in nature was designed by a Higher Intelligence, DNA was. If something is intelligently designed for some purpose, then it should be optimal for that purpose. Of course, it can get a bit tricky if an entity is designed for many different purposes which have conflicting requirements, necessitating some sort of engineering compromise. Nevertheless, one simple prediction that ID would make is that NO biologist will ever be able to build a genetic code which can do a BETTER job than DNA for ALL of the following purposes: regulating the development and functioning of organisms; transmitting genetic information faithfully from one generation to the next; and making minor adjustments (mutations) in response to environmental changes. If someone can design a molecule that excels DNA in one of these areas and equals it in the others, then ID is falsified. (2) Inexhaustibility of DNA as a research model. If DNA was designed by a Supernatural Intelligence, then one would expect it to be a perpetually fruitful research subject for scientists - especially computer scientists, and that these scientists will always be able to make refinements in computer coding and data storage by copying existing features of DNA molecules. If we ever reach a stage where scientists can say, "That's it. We have nothing more to learn from DNA. We've now got data storage devices that incorporate all of its desirable features and more besides," then ID will become obsolete as a hypothesis. Why? Because any Designer that's dumber than Homo sapiens doesn't deserve to be called a designer, that's why. (3) The existence of active or dormant equivalents for each and every functional vertebrate gene in all phyla of metazoa (animals). We already know that genes for the expression of digits have been identified in sea anemones. However, even a fairly modest version of the front-loading hypothesis would also imply that sponges (which are animals) should have these genes too. A bolder version of the hypothesis (one front-loading event, at the dawn of life) would imply that plants and bacteria should have these genes as well. With regard to (1): an article in "Science Daily" (Fen. 9, 2007) at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070208230116.htm refers to DNA as "nearly optimal for encoding signals of any length in parallel to sequences that code for proteins." It reports that Dr. Uri Alon and his doctoral student Shalev Itzkovitz "showed that the real genetic code was superior to the vast majority of alternative genetic codes in terms of its ability to encode other information in protein-coding genes." That sounds like DNA is good but not optimal. The researchers "also demonstrated that the real genetic code provides for the quickest incorporation of a stop signal--compared to most of the alternative genetic codes--in cases where protein synthesis has gone amiss." My prediction here is that even IF alternative genetic code turns out to be better than DNA at BOTH of these things (encoding other information as well as incorporating a stop signal) then there should definitely be some other function of DNA (e.g. long-term transmission of genetic information) at which the alternative genetic code does not perform as well as the code we find in DNA. If, on the other hand, DNA turns out to be merely in the top 1%, say, of all possible designs, then this discovery would suggest that DNA in its present form somehow developed over the course of time from something less perfect, and that it stopped improving when it reached a local fitness peak. As regards prediction (2), things are looking good for ID, if an article in "Science Daily" (Feb. 23, 2007) and available online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070220034152.htm is anything to go by. "In a report scheduled for the April 9 issue of ACS' Biotechnology Progress, a bi-monthly journal, Masaru Tomita and colleagues in Japan point out that DNA has been attracting attention as perhaps the ultimate in permanent data storage. "Data encoded in an organism's DNA, and inherited by each new generation, could be safely archived for hundreds of thousands of years, the researchers state." It sounds like DNA will be a pretty fruitful area for computing research, for the foreseeable future. (3) is perhaps the easiest prediction to test. Does anyone know of any confirming or disconfirming genetic data from sponges or from plants?vjtorley_{January 15, 2008
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front loading as an alternative to rm/ns to explain observed cases of microevolution makes sense. Limited descent makes sense (for example, lions and tigers probably had a common ancestor as they can produce hybrid ligers) But bacteria turning into people through front loading? Pardon my Yiddish, but that sounds a bit "farfetched."ari-freedom_{January 15, 2008
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Looks like the ul and li tags don't work like they do in the preview. Here's the list again: *A robust specification *Specification integrity controls *Manufacturing facilities with quality control *Optimized materials *Materials selection schemes *Dimensional tolerance control *Sequenced assembly instructions *Assembly control and error checking systems *Coordinated transport systems for materials and waste *Build-in test *Feedback and feedforward systems *Error checking and correction *Modularity and reusability in components *Signalling between functional modules *Fault sensing systems and response *Parallel processing *Recursive systems *Contrained redesign capabilities *Internal acceptance testing of new designs *Controlled failure *Coordination with outside systems(ecological awareness) *Built-in learningSteve Petermann_{January 15, 2008
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One of the problems with making predictions is that the evidence for ID based on analogous systems in engineering just keeps rolling in at such a rapid pace. But what if that evidence hadn't been discovered yet? Here would be some predictions most of which would be post hoc but some may yet to be discovered. These are based entirely on what one would expect from an intelligently designed system from an engineering perspective. A robust specificationSpecification integrity controlsManufacturing facilities with quality controlOptimized materialsMaterials selection schemesDimensional tolerance controlSequenced assembly instructionsAssembly control and error checking systems Coordinated transport systems for materials and wasteBuild-in testFeedback and feedforward systemsError checking and correctionModularity and reusability in componentsSignalling between functional modulesFault sensing systems and responseParallel processingRecursive systems Contrained redesign capabilitiesInternal acceptance testing of new designsControlled failureCoordination with outside systems (ecological awareness)Built-in learning Steve Petermann_{January 15, 2008
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ID predicts that when M & NS operate, they will be characterized more as trench warfare (breaking things) than as an arms race (making things).nroys_{January 15, 2008
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So basically, ID research would attempt to look for what characteristics reliably signal design and then it would try to determine (look into, research) if life and the universe exhibit those characteristics.Bettawrekonize_{January 15, 2008
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Once we show that there are characteristics that reliably signal design, we should then try to examine whether or not life and the universe exhibit those characteristics.Bettawrekonize_{January 15, 2008
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