Jay L. Wile's Blog, page 24

Will Scientists Resurrect the Woolly Mammoth?

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Model of a woolly mammoth at the Royal BC Museum in Canada. (click for credit)

One of my former students sent me an article from The Telegraph, a news outlet in the UK. The headline reads:

Woolly mammoth will be back from extinction within two years, say Harvard scientists

The article was written in February of 2017, so the student wanted to know if there would really be living woolly mammoths next year. The answer, of course, is absolutely not. This article is just another example of how many “science journalists” understand neither science nor journalism. Nevertheless, the actual scientific story is interesting, even though it isn’t nearly as sensational as what is indicated in The Telegraph‘s article, or articles found on other sites, such as here and here.

These articles are attempting to report on the Woolly Mammoth Revival Project, which is headed by Harvard professor Dr. George Church. As its website indicates, the goal is not to bring back the identical mammoth species again. Instead, its goal is to create some kind of elephant/mammoth hybrid that can live in colder climates. Why would it want to do that? For ecological engineering.

At some time in the past, woolly mammoth herds (and herds of other cold-adapted animals) roamed what are now the evergreen forests in the northern latitudes. This kept the growth of evergreens in check, making those areas more like grasslands. In addition, the mammoth herds would pack down and scrape away snow. Without this “land reshaping,” snow insulates the soil below, reducing the depth to which it freezes. As the deeper soil thaws, it releases greenhouse gases, and the worry is that those released greenhouse gases will accelerate global warming, aka “climate change.” Now please note that actual data indicate thawing soil will reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but most “climate change” alarmists aren’t interested in the data.

In the end, then, the Woolly Mammoth Revival Project hopes to populate the north with cold-adapted, elephant-like animals that will once again turn the northern evergreen forests into grasslands, packing down and scraping away the snow as they roam.

I see at least one big problem with this idea. We have already witnessed the devastating effects of introducing new animals to regions where they don’t exist. In my high-school biology course, I discuss the devastation that occurred when Europeans brought rabbits to Australia. It took a virus to get that problem under control, and it is still a long way from being solved. Because some people simply cannot learn from history, the cane toad was later introduced in Australia, and biologists are still trying to fix that mess. Does anyone really believe that introducing herds of elephant-like mammals in the north isn’t going to result in a similar fiasco?

Putting aside that problem, however, the research is interesting and is worth discussing a bit more. While woolly mammoths are not alive today, some have been so well-preserved that DNA has been taken from their remains. That DNA has been sequenced, and in 2015, a study compared that DNA to the DNA of Asian elephants, which are genetically very similar to woolly mammoths. The study identified 1,642 genes in woolly mammoth DNA that are different from the genes in Asian elephants. The Woolly Mammoth Revival Project is using gene-editing procedures to change some of those genes in Asian elephant DNA to match what is found in woolly mammoth DNA.

Has the project been successful? According to their website:

To date a number of genes have been successfully rewritten into Asian Elephant cell lines, generating increasingly mammoth-like cells with each precise edit. Mutations for mammoth hemoglobin, extra hair growth, fat production, down to nuanced climate adaptations such as slightly altered sodium ion channels in cell membranes have already been engineered into fibroblast cell lines.

If you don’t recognize the term, fibroblast cells are found in connective tissue. They produce proteins that are characteristic of such tissue. So far, then, the project has managed to produce individual cells in which some of the genes have been changed to what was found in mammoths. That, of course, is a far cry from making an actual animal, and it is farther still from “resurrecting” the woolly mammoth!

As the project’s website states, the team now has to convert those fibroblast cells into stem cells, and then coax those stem cells to produce various tissues, like blood, hair, and fat. Most likely, the tissues won’t act properly, because the new genes have to be regulated. A lot of gene regulation occurs in what evolutionists used to call “junk DNA,” and there is still much we don’t understand about that. With a lot of trial and error, however, it is possible that at some point, they will have a genome that can produce cold-adapted tissues properly.

Now comes the hard part. They have to coax one of those cells into thinking it is the result of a fertilization process, so that it will start to form an embryo. The coaxing itself isn’t a problem; we have seen that already in other mammal clones. The problem will be developing the embryo. Typically, a clone is made by allowing the cell to start the embryonic development process and then, when it reaches the correct stage, implanting it into a female of the same species. Obviously, that’s not possible in this case.

So what will the scientists do if they ever reach the point of being able to make an embryo? The obvious choice would be to implant the embryo into an Asian elephant. But there’s a problem with that. Asian elephants are an endangered species! Nurturing an embryo and giving birth is a dangerous task for any mammal, and if the experiments with mammal cloning are any indication, it will have to be done several times to get viable offspring. Is it really ethical to experiment on endangered animals like that?

That’s why I say this is the hard part. In the end, the project’s current plan is to build an artificial womb in which to allow the embryo to develop. There has been some progress made in artificial wombs, but they have only been used on lamb embryos that had already been in a real womb for at least 125 days. In addition, the lead researcher says that this technology is not intended to work in the early stages of embryonic development, which would be necessary for the Woolly Mammoth Revival Project.

To sum up, then, we will not be seeing woolly mammoths in 2019. In fact, we won’t even see elephant/mammoth hybrids in 2019. If this ambitious project ever succeeds, it will be many years, probably decades, from now.

Death and Transformation

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From left to right, Robert Kaufmann, JJ Brannon, yours truly, and John Ashmead.

I have to warn you. This post is different from the normal fare you will find on this site. It represents more of an unfinished thought than an argument or an analysis. However, I want to share this unfinished thought with you, because I can’t help but think that it might be important, at least in some way.

This past weekend, I attended a memorial service and wake for a man who was taken from this earth far too soon: James Jerald (JJ) Brannon. I met JJ at a science fiction convention that I speak at nearly every year. He was the cousin and dear friend of the man who invited me to participate in the conference, and he was also a speaker at the conference. In fact, we did several panel discussions together over the years, such as the one pictured above. That particular panel was about the diseases we might expect to see in the 21st century.

JJ was, in a word, unique. He had many awesome qualities, but he was, quite frankly, incredibly difficult to deal with. He often portrayed himself as an expert on subjects about which he was not well-educated, and unless you worked hard to hold him in check, he would monopolize any conversation he was a part of. He also went on and on and on and on and on when a subject was very important to him.

Now don’t get me wrong. JJ was incredibly difficult to deal with, but he was also an amazing friend. I genuinely enjoyed seeing him, and I was truly fond of him. Also, he loved me and his other friends (and his family) fiercely. However, after spending a lot of time with him, I often found myself getting annoyed with him. His cousin (the friend who introduced us) often felt the same way. One thing he would often complain about is that when JJ called, it was never a short conversation. As I said, JJ could go on and on and on, especially when a subject really interested him.

When I went to his memorial service, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. What would people say about this wonderful but annoying man?

Well, to a person, everyone talked about how JJ loved his friends and family. More than once, it was said that he loved them almost to a fault. Everyone who spoke about JJ had to stop because of overwhelming emotion, and one of the speakers couldn’t even finish. That’s how much he was loved.

I noticed something else as well. I noticed that the same qualities that annoyed me (and others) were suddenly considered endearing. More than once, the people who spoke mentioned the long phone calls, and those in attendance laughed about them. It seemed like everyone in attendance would love to be on the other end of one of those annoying phone calls…now.

Please understand that the speakers were being truly sincere. They weren’t trying to sugar coat things. They were honestly going to miss something that, had it happened the day before JJ died, they probably would have griped about. That’s what death seems to do. It brings things into focus. Sure, JJ’s long phone calls kept some from finishing the new season of Arrested Development on Netflix. Sure, JJ’s long ramblings monopolized conversations. Sure, his attempts to “educate” you on issues he didn’t quite understand were frustrating. Nevertheless, they were a part of this man we all loved, and now those things no longer exist, because the man we loved is no longer on this earth.

What’s my point? I am not quite sure. It seems that JJ’s death has “transformed” his annoying characteristics into endearing ones. I wonder how that relates to the transformation that death brings to our bodies, as discussed in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44. After discussing how a seed is planted and is transformed into something different, Paul tells us:

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

Is the transformation of JJ’s annoying habits into endearing ones a glimpse of the kind of transformation death brings to us? I don’t know, but it’s interesting to consider.

I can tell you one thing for certain: Like the people who spoke at JJ’s memorial service, I truly wish I had the chance to be “annoyed” by him again. His death has brought into focus just how special those annoying moments were.

Study of Mice Highlights the “Junk DNA” Myth

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Junk DNA is a crucial to evolutionary theory, despite the fact that it most likely doesn’t exist to any significant extent.

The concept of “junk DNA” is crucial to evolutionary theory. For example, the “gold standard” of evolutionary simulations doesn’t produce any evolution unless at least 85% of the simulated DNA is junk. This is why so many evolutionists are fighting against the straightforward conclusions of the ENCODE series of studies, which indicate that at least 80% of the human genome is functional. Dr. Dan Graur, for example, has famously said that if ENCODE is right, then evolution is wrong.

As is the case with most evolution-inspired ideas, the more we learn about the natural world, the more it becomes obvious that there is very little “junk DNA” in nature. A recently-published study of gender in mice highlights this fact. In the study, an international collaboration of scientists examined the development of sexual characteristics in mice. As you probably already know, in mammals there is a pair of chromosomes referred to as sex chromosomes. If an individual has an X chromosome and a Y chromosome in that pair, he is a male. If the individual has two X chromosomes, she is a female.

But the development of the proper characteristics associated with each sex depends on what happens during embryonic development. For example, as a mammal embryo develops, it starts out producing ovaries. However, there is a gene on the Y chromosome called Sry. It produces a protein that controls the production of another protein, called SOX9. The SOX9 protein turns developing ovaries into testes. A male develops testes, then, because of the action of a gene on the Y chromosome. But as this latest study shows, there is more to it than that.

The scientists removed a small section of DNA from genetically-male mice. This section is found in what the authors refer to as a “gene desert,” a section of DNA that is devoid of genes. Nevertheless, when that small section of DNA was deleted, the genetically-male mice developed ovaries and female genitalia. Now please understand that the genes involved in the production and regulation of the SOX9 protein were not removed; only a small portion of what many would call “junk DNA” was removed. Nevertheless, without that section of DNA, the genetically-male mice did not produce enough SOX9 protein, so the ovaries continued to develop into ovaries, which then caused the production of female genitalia. As a result, the authors refer to this small section of DNA as a SOX9 “enhancer.” It enhances the production of SOX9 at just the right time, so the males develop the correct gender characteristics.

While the results of this study are fascinating, they are not surprising. After all, it has become more and more clear that the concept of “junk DNA” is a myth. As a result, it makes sense that even small sections of DNA have important functions, at least in certain stages of development or under certain conditions. The reason I am blogging about the study is because of something the lead author said in an article that was published on his institution’s website:

Our study also highlights the important role of what some still refer to as ‘junk’ DNA, which makes up 98% of our genome. If a single enhancer can have this impact on sex determination, other non-coding regions might have similarly drastic effects. For decades, researchers have looked for genes that cause disorders of sex development but we haven’t been able to find the genetic cause for over half of them. Our latest study suggests that many answers could lie in the non-coding regions, which we will now investigate further.

Indeed. As Dr. John Mattick so aptly put it more than a decade ago:

…the failure to recognise the implications of the non-coding DNA will go down as the biggest mistake in the history of molecular biology.

Observations about Second-Generation Homeschoolers

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One of several second-generation homeschoolers I have met this year.

This is “convention season” for homeschoolers across the United States, so I have been traveling to several different homeschool conventions, giving talks and speaking individually with lots of homeschooling parents. In some ways, these conventions never change. Many of the talks that I give are on the same topics that I spoke about at homeschooling conventions more than 20 years ago: how to “teach” science at home, why it is best for most students to be homeschooled through high school, and the fact that homeschooling produces graduates who are, on average, significantly better university students. Obviously, the details of the talks change every few years, but the basic points do not.

In the same way, many of the questions I get from homeschoolers are the same year after year and convention after convention. My son is only in 7th grade but is about to start Algebra 1. Should he really take high school biology? (In general, the answer is “yes,” but it depends on the student’s ability to work independently and how he reacts to academic rigor.) If he does take biology in 7th grade, can it be included on the high school transcript? (Once again, the answer is “yes.” See this article for more details.) My daughter is very talented in ballet and wants to pursue it as a career, but it requires a lot of rehearsal time. What should I do? (If a professional says that she has real potential, then you should scale back her other academic courses so that she can pursue her talents. Don’t neglect her education; just pare it down to the basic essentials so that she can have more time to hone her craft).

At the same time, however, each year brings a few changes. Some of the conventions that used to be large and well-attended are either very small or nonexistent. Other conventions that didn’t exist many years ago are now large and well-attended. Lots of new curricula are available, giving homeschoolers a wealth of choices for how to meet their children’s educational needs. The people you see at homeschooling conventions are also becoming more and more diverse every year.

This year, I noticed a new difference. Most likely, the difference has been slowly growing over a period of many years, but after speaking at the California Homeschool Convention this past weekend, it struck me that this year, I have interacted with a lot of second-generation homeschoolers (homeschool graduates who are now homeschooling their own children).

Of course, I have probably been interacting with second-generation homeschoolers for a long time, but for whatever reason, they are now identifying themselves to me. In every convention I have attended this year, at least one (usually several) young parents tell me that they used my curriuculum when they were homeschooled students and are now using it to homeschool their own children. While speaking with these amazing people, I made some observations that I would like to share.

They seem to be less dogmatic than the first generation of homeschoolers. Many first-generation homeschooling parents are very concerned that the worldview presented in the curriculum they use matches their own. They ask me detailed questions about how I treat evolution, the age of the earth, etc. The second-generation homeschooling parents who identified themselves to me also asked detailed questions, but it was usually to make sure that I give an adequate treatment to the “other side” of issues. They want to educate their children with their worldview, but they also want their children to practice critical thinking. I really like that!*

They plan ahead. Many of the first-generation homeschoolers I meet are focused on getting through the next year. The second-generation homeschoolers are trying to see how next-year’s plan fits into a long-term educational strategy. At the California Homeschool Convention, for example, I met a homeschool graduate who happens to read this blog. He and his wife attended the convention, even though they don’t have any children yet! His wife was not homeschooled, and he wanted her to get an idea of what homeschooling was all about so that she could help him make an informed decision about education once they started having children. As a side benefit, she told him that it helped her to understand him a little better.

They are really glad that they were homeschooled. In one sense, that goes without saying. Obviously, they wouldn’t be homeschooling their own children if they didn’t think homeschooling worked well for them. However, they seem genuinely enthusiastic about their homeschool experience and have a strong desire to replicate that enthusiasm in their own children. I can imagine graduating from a private school and being pleased with how it prepared me for university. If that were to happen, I would probably send my children to that same school, if I were still living nearby. However, I can’t imagine being as enthusiastic about it as these second-generation homeschoolers are about homeschooling their children.

They are not intimidated by serious academics. Because I write science courses, I get a varied reactions from homeschooling parents. Some hate science and don’t want to teach it. Some want to teach it but feel completely unable to do so. Some want science to be “simple.” A few of them love science and want their children to love it and learn it in the most rigorous way possible. In general, the second-generation homeschoolers are more likely to be in that last category. The same goes for math, another “dreaded” subject among many homeschoolers. These second-generation homeschoolers don’t shy away from the challenge of helping their children learn subjects that can be academically rigorous.

Now, of course, all of these impressions are based on my personal interactions, so they aren’t the result of any kind of serious study. Nevertheless, based on these interactions, I think the future of homeschooling is very bright!

NOTE: I received this as a Facebook message from a second-generation homeschooler, and I think it adds a good insight:

“I am a one who graduated in 96 and there are several 2nd gens in our old, well established homeschool support group. I think we are enthusiastically conservative and want to raise our kids to have a Christian worldview BUT we do not seem to be as fearful as the previous generation was about certain things. We also tend to more picky about things like NOT doing conventional “school” at home (I think we are more confident about educational philosophy). We want to prepare our children for the world that actually exists. Unfortunately a lot of 1st gen, older parents in leadership tend to think our lack of fear about exposure to certain things means we are too liberal! Or that our criticism of certain older, popular homeschool curriculum is akin to betrayal or rejection of conservative homeschooling…Older homeschool leaders need to see that just because we do not have the exact same concerns as the first generation, does not mean the second gen homeschoolers are too “liberal.” We just sometimes have a different approach to education based on our experiences.”

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Another Unsuccessful Attempt to Detect Dark Matter

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This NASA image illustrates the fact that most astrophysicists think there is about four times as much dark matter as visible matter in the universe.

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article about a galaxy that has no “need” for dark matter. This is interesting, because most galaxies “need” dark matter to explain the motion of their stars. Based on the mass that is actually observed in most galaxies, the stars should not be moving the way that they do. Thus, scientists think there must be a lot of mass in those galaxies that cannot be seen (dark matter). To make their current theories work, scientists estimate that about 80-85% of the mass in the universe comes from dark matter. Since dark matter is thought to be so prevalent in the universe, scientists have tried to detect it directly, without any luck.

How do you detect something you can’t see? First, you have to have some idea of what you are looking for. Then, you design an experiment to see if what you think you might be looking for really exists. The most “promising” candidate for dark matter is a class of hypothetical particles called “weakly interacting massive particles” (WIMPs). These are particles that don’t interact with matter using the electromagnetic force. Since the electromagnetic force works via the exchange of photons, if a particle doesn’t use the electromagnetic force, it produces no light. Instead, WIMPs are thought to use only the gravitational force and the weak force, which works only at the subatomic level and is responsible for most of the natural radioactivity on planet earth.

Since all the matter we know of uses the electromagnetic force, WIMPs are obviously strange particles. However, they are allowed by the mathematics of the standard model of physics, which is why they are considered the most “promising” of the candidates for dark matter. How do scientist try to detect WIMPs? The most sensitive WIMP detector is called XENON1T, which is filled with liquid and gaseous xenon. The design of the detector allows scientists to identify electromagnetic interactions that occur between particles hitting the detector and the liquid xenon inside. They discard those interactions, and what’s left should be any interactions that use only the weak force. Those, of course, would be caused by the WIMPs.

The team of scientists using XENON1T reported their latest results at a seminar on May 28th, and so far, they have not seen a signal that is consistent with what is expected for WIMPs. I think their results argue strongly that WIMPs don’t exist, but that’s not the only explanation. The results could also mean that physicists don’t understand WIMPs as well as they thought, and these particles actually interact more weakly with matter than what the theories tell us.

If WIMPs don’t exist, does that mean dark matter doesn’t exist? Of course not. Remember, to detect something, you have to have some idea of what you are detecting. There are other candidates for what dark matter might be. For a while, scientists thought that “massive astrophysics compact halo objects” (MACHOs) like neutron stars might be the answer. That would mean dark matter is similar to the matter we already know, but it’s just too dim to see with our telescopes. The problem with MACHOs is that according to the Big Bang Model, the universe couldn’t make enough of them to account for the amount of dark matter that is supposed to be in the universe. Of course, if the Big Bang Model is wrong, perhaps dark matter is made of MACHOs.

Another candidate for dark matter is the axion. This theoretical particle was proposed to explain very odd experimental results involving the strong nuclear force. However, if they have the right mass, they could also compose dark matter. Experiments trying to detect axions have been developed, and one has recently demonstrated that it now has the proper sensitivity, if the axions have the properties they must have for dark matter.

The Kaluza-Klein particle is another candidate for dark matter, and it’s probably the most exotic. It’s a particle that exists mostly in another dimension that we cannot see. While this sounds like science fiction, the theory that predicts it is at least mathematically sound. That doesn’t mean it’s accurate, but it does mean it’s more than wishful thinking. Even though the particles are mostly in this other dimension, large-energy collisions should force them to decay into particles we can measure in our four dimensions (the three dimensions of space, along with the dimension of time). That’s one of the things that particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider are looking for.

Finally, some models suggest that the force of gravity involves the exchange of particles called “gravitons.” Some versions of those models suggest that the graviton has a partner particle, the gravitino. If the gravitino is light enough, it could also be a candidate for dark matter. Of course, gravitons haven’t been detected, so for this to solve the dark matter problem, we have to believe in a possible partner particle of a particle that hasn’t yet been detected.

Of course, there is one more possibility: there is no dark matter at all. Instead, it’s possible that gravity doesn’t work the way we think it does over galactic distances. Remember, most of what we know about gravity comes from experiments here on earth and in our solar system. That’s a very small scale compared to a galaxy! There are those who say that with some modifications, gravity alone can account for the motion of stars in galaxies.

So based on the science we know right now, either 80-85% of the mass in the universe is made of this mysterious stuff called dark matter (which we so far have not detected), or gravity doesn’t work the way we think it does on galactic scales. That’s why I love science! It leads to amazing conundrums that might take decades or centuries to figure out!

NASA Has NOT Found the Building Blocks of Life on Mars

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A “self-portrait” of the Curiosity rover on Mars: a composite of several images taken with the rover’s Hand Lens Imager.

The headlines are screaming it. NASA Mars rover discovers ‘building blocks’ for life: 3-billion-year-old organic matter, Curiosity Rover Finds Ancient ‘Building Blocks for Life’ on Mars, Building Blocks of Life Found on Mars, etc. etc. There’s only one problem. The building blocks of life were not found on Mars. I wish they had been. I think it would be awesome to find evidence of life on other planets besides earth. However, what NASA’s rover discovered on Mars wasn’t even close to the building blocks of life.

So what was really found on Mars? Not surprisingly, the title of the scientific paper that was published in the journal Science comes close to the truth:

Organic matter preserved in 3-billion-year-old mudstones at Gale crater, Mars

Now, of course, I think the “3-billion-year-old mudstones” is scientifically irresponsible, but notice the difference between the scientific article’s title and the title of the articles written by “science journalists.” There is no mention of life in title of the scientific article.

But wait a minute. Isn’t that just semantics? Doesn’t “organic” refer to chemicals that come from living things. Absolutely not! As I tell students in my elementary science book Science in the Industrial Age:

While organic chemicals are generally associated with living things, it is possible to make them from nonliving things…Scientists still use the terms “organic” and “inorganic” today to classify chemicals, but they do so based on the elements that make them up, not based on where they come from.

Now, of course, the news articles I linked above eventually get around to saying that it is possible for the molecules discovered on Mars to have come about without the presence of life. Even with that caveat, however, the news articles are still wrong, because the molecules discovered are not, in any way, the “building blocks of life.”

There are four chemical building blocks of life: proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids. Each of these can be recognized because they have identifiable functional groups: specific arrangements of elements that have defined chemical properties. Proteins, for example, are long chains of amino acids, and amino acids have two functional groups: an amine group and an acid group. Lipid are composed of glycerol and three fatty acids. Carbohydrates, the simplest of the building blocks, have carbon atoms as well as twice as many hydrogen atoms as oxygen atoms. Nucleic acids are composed of a nitrogen-containing base, a sugar, and a phosphate group.

Did NASA’s curiosity rover find any of the functional groups that are found in the chemical building blocks of life? It might have found one. There might have been an acid group in the chemicals that were found on Mars, but that molecule could also be a chemical that has no acid group at all. The analysis that the rover is capable of doing cannot distinguish between the two. If course, there are acid groups in many organic compounds that have nothing to do with life, so the presence of an acid group tells us absolutely nothing. In addition, to be one of life’s building blocks, the acid group must be accompanied by an amine group. There were no amine groups discovered. The rover didn’t even find evidence of life’s simplest building blocks: carbohydrates.

This is why the scientific paper makes only these statements about life:

Organic matter preservation is central to understanding biological potential on Mars through time. Whether it holds a record of ancient life, is the food for extant life, or has existed in the absence of life, organic matter in martian materials holds chemical clues to planetary conditions and processes…[The rover’s] molecular observations do not clearly reveal the source of the organic matter in the Murray formation. Biological, geological, and meteoritic sources are all possible. Certainly, if ancient life was the organic source, then despite sulfur incorporation, the material has been altered sufficiently, such as by diagenesis or ionizing radiation, to obscure original molecular features more consistent with life (e.g., a greater diversity of molecules or patterns of limited structural variation within compound classes, such as hydrocarbon chains), or an insufficient amount of organic matter was deposited to allow detection…Our results suggest that it is likely that organic matter from various sources may be widely distributed in the martian rock record. Even if life was not a key contributor, meteoritic and igneous or hydrothermal sources have a strong potential to be broadly emplaced.

(emphasis mine, reference numbers removed)

Notice how the authors admit that the molecules don’t even have the characteristics you would expect from the building blocks of life, but that could be because they have been altered significantly since the time they were deposited.

Why am I making a big deal of this? Isn’t the fact that organic molecules have been found on Mars surprising? Not really. Organic molecules have been found throughout the solar system, and we’ve known that for at least 30 years. So the very fact that this is being trumpeted as something “surprising” is irresponsible. More importantly, however, anyone who is interested in the chemistry associated with life needs to understand that there is a vast gulf between simple organic molecules such as what were found on Mars and even the very basic building blocks of life itself. Life’s chemistry is both amazing and complex, and to indicate that simple molecules like those found on Mars have any relation to the chemistry of life is grossly misleading.

Study Demonstrates that Most Animal Species Came Into Existence at the Same Time?

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Most of an animal’s DNA is in the nucleus of the cell, but there is DNA in the powerhouse of the cell, which is called the mitochondrion.

In a comment on a previous article, a reader informed me of a study that I had not seen. It was published in the journal Human Evolution and its results are consistent with the idea that 90% of all animal species came into being at roughly the same time. This is certainly not what the hypothesis of evolution would predict, so some creationists as well as some intelligent design advocates have presented the study as evidence against evolution. In my reply to the comment, I expressed skepticism, even though I would love for the conclusions of the study to be correct. Now that I have read the study itself, I am even more skeptical.

The authors of the study analyzed the DNA of many different species of animals. However, they did not look at the DNA found in the nucleus of the cell. That DNA, called nuclear DNA, is responsible for most of an organism’s genetically-defined traits. They looked at mitochondrial DNA, which is the small amount of DNA that is found in the mitochondrion, the structure that produces most of the energy that the cell ends up using. To give you an idea of how different mitochondrial DNA is from nuclear DNA, the nuclear DNA of a human being is over 3 billion base pairs long, while human mitochondrial DNA is just over 16,000 base pairs long. You don’t need to know what “base pairs” are to see that there is only a tiny, tiny amount of mitochondrial DNA in a human cell compared to nuclear DNA.

Now even though there isn’t a lot of mitochondrial DNA, some sections of it seem to be very characteristic of the species of animal from which the cell comes. For example, a 2016 study analyzed a section of mitochondrial DNA (called the COX1 gene) among different species of birds. It showed that the COX1 gene alone was enough to separate 94% of the birds into species. Similar studies indicate that the COX1 gene can separate other species of animals, so the sequence of the COX1 gene is often referred to as the DNA barcode of the animal. This is what the authors of the study I am discussing focused on.

The authors analyzed the “DNA barcodes” of many different animal species, looking for a specific kind of mutation: one that doesn’t actually change the product of the gene. Remember, a gene is a “recipe” that codes for a particular protein. The COX1 gene used in the DNA barcode is the recipe for a protein lovingly called “mitochondrially encoded cytochrome c oxidase I.” A protein is a string of amino acids linked together, and the DNA “recipe” is just a list of those amino acids and the order in which they need to be strung together. Well, the genetic code has more than one way of indicating an amino acid, and sometimes, a mutation will change part of the DNA, but the resulting change will indicate the same amino acid. This is called a synonymous substitution, because the mutation doesn’t change the recipe for the protein. It just changes the way that recipe reads.

Consider, for example, a recipe for a cake. It might call for two teaspoons of vanilla extract. Suppose you copy that recipe so you can give it to a friend, but instead of writing “two teaspoons of vanilla extract,” you write “2 tsp. vanilla extract.” You have essentially made two synonymous substitutions, substituting a number for the word “two” and an abbreviation for the word “teaspoon.” A synonymous substitution mutation in DNA is similar. The product of the recipe doesn’t change, but the way the recipe reads changes. As a result, even after the mutation happens, the protein produced by DNA remains the same.

The authors assume that synonymous substitution mutations can happen freely, because they don’t change the proteins being produced and therefore should have no effect on the organism. Because of that, synonymous substitution mutations should not be “weeded out” by natural selection, so the more synonymous substitution mutations, the longer those mutations have been accumulating. When they compared the number of these mutations among many different animals, they found that 90% of them had the same level of mutations, indicating that they had been experiencing mutations for the same length of time. This is consistent with the idea that 90% of the animals came into being at the same time.

Now, of course, the authors don’t argue for that idea! It would invalidate the evolutionary hypothesis, and I am sure they don’t want to be considered heretics! As a result, they try to explain around their conclusion by suggesting that there are mechanisms which tend to reduce the genetic diversity among individuals in a species. Because of these mechanisms, most species had uniformity in their mitochondrial DNA at roughly the same time and have just been collecting mutations since then.

As I have said, I am skeptical of their conclusion. That’s because of their assumption that synonymous substitution mutations don’t affect the organism and are thus not subject to natural selection. They produce some arguments to support that assumption, but they discount the most important argument against their assumption: the fact that we know synonymous substitutions change the rate at which a gene is turned into a protein. Since the mitochondrion is the “powerhouse” of the cell, it would make sense to me that its function is highly dependent on the rate at which its genes can be turned into proteins. As a result, I find it highly unlikely that the organism is unaffected by synonymous substitution mutations.

Now while I disagree with the more “sensational” conclusion of their study, they do make one statement that I think is quite important:

The tight clustering of barcodes within species and unfilled sequence space among them are key facts of animal life that evolutionary theory must explain.

In other words, they are saying that there is a lot of discontinuity in mitochondrial DNA of animals. You have a sequence that defines one species, a sequence that defines another species, and nothing in between. If you hope to come up with any kind of plausible mechanism for evolution, you will need to explain that kind of discontinuity.

The Final Mother/Daughter Comparison Between My Chemistry and Apologia’s Chemistry

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In case you missed out on the first installment of this review, a mother and daughter have been comparing my chemistry course, Discovering Design with Chemistry, to Apologia’s chemistry course, Exploring Creation with Chemistry, 3rd Edition. This review came about because they had originally started using Apologia’s course, and it just wasn’t working for them. They started using my course, and it worked much better, as you can see in the previous installment as well as what you can read below. The comparison starts with the daughter’s perspective and ends with the mother’s perspective:

From the daughter’s perspective:

Last January, I wrote a comparison review for 3 modules of Apologia’s Exploring Creation, 3rd Edition, to 4 chapters of Dr. Wile’s Discovering Design with Chemistry. My overall view was that Apologia was very thrown together and confusing, while Discovering Design was more organized and enjoyable. In May of this year, I completed studying Dr. Wile’s Discovering Design with Chemistry, as well as reading over Exploring Creation; my original opinions remain the same as before. Though, there are a few more things I’d like to add in.

As I went through both texts, I discovered that the order of information and tone of writing is very important to how the student copes with the material. For example, Discovering Design is in conversational tone as if Dr. Jay himself were the one talking. He will often add in quick, funny or humorous things throughout the text especially when the topic starts getting heavy, which I find helps to release “chemistry stress.” Exploring Creation is also in a conversational tone, but it gets to be a bit confusing when a paragraph is giving an example using the pronoun “I,” and the student in this case has no idea who ‘I’ is.

In Discovering Design, Dr. Jay explains things to the point, builds on top of the material as chapters go on, and balances the difficulties of that material so that it doesn’t seem like too much. I can’t say any of this for Exploring Creation. While a few explanations are easy to understand, too often the book contains wordy paragraphs and unnecessary rules, and it’s difficult to grasp how any of the chemistry concepts taught are connected. In Discovering Design, you can’t wait to read the next section. In Exploring Creation, you can’t wait until you’ve finished the module.

I did come across a few frustrating things while studying Discovering Design. One was not being able to successfully complete experiments, because I couldn’t get the materials in the country where I live, and sometimes getting generally confused because, well, chemistry can sometimes be confusing. However, having said that, the experiments I was able to complete were excellent and helpful (For example experiment 10.4), the extra helps website helped overcome some of the confusion, and overall the course was really what I was expecting when I wanted to learn about Chemistry. I didn’t study Exploring Creation all the way through (On Your Owns and tests), but after just reading it, I don’t imagine a student would have a very good idea of the beauty of what chemistry really is; as Discovering Design does so well.

The last thing I can say is that Exploring Creation is like learning a bunch of mixed up chemistry facts, while Discovering Design is taking a thorough chemistry course.

S. White, student

From the mother’s perspective:

As we worked through Discovering Design, I found my thoughts were about the same regarding the teacher’s material. The fact that concepts are well-explained in the Discovering Design teacher’s manual helped a lot, as it has been a very long time since I have studied chemistry. Comparing the tests of the two texts, I especially noticed a difference in the weighting of the points for the test questions. In the Discovering Design tests, I felt there was a healthy balance between grading the math and grading the understanding of concepts, whereas Exploring Creation seemed to put too much weight on the math questions so that even if a student got everything right but two of the math questions, he could fail the test, which doesn’t seem to be right when a student has clearly mastered the concepts.

I would like to note here that Dr. Wile’s text is designed to take a normal school year, and as you can see, my daughter completed the entire text in 5 months. This was not because the text was too easy, but rather that my daughter dedicated 5 or 6 hours a day (and in some cases more) to chemistry in order to finish it before her graduation. I would not recommend this schedule to the average student.

L. White, teacher

Do “Climate Change” Skeptics Behave in a More “Sustainable” Way?

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A few days ago, I ran across an interesting study that I think is worth discussing. Like most studies that try to understand human behavior, its results are incredibly tentative. Nevertheless, they are interesting, and they also are consistent with a trend that I have noticed among my colleagues and friends.

The researchers wanted to probe how a person’s belief in human-induced “climate change” affects his or her personal behaviors. They recruited 600 people from Amazon Mechanical Turk (I had never heard of it until reading the study), and assessed both their beliefs about human-induced climate change as well as their behavior when it came to four types of “pro-environmental” activities: recycling, using public transportation, purchasing environmentally-friendly consumer products, and utilizing reusable shopping bags.

One very important aspect of this study is that the researchers didn’t just do this once. They did it seven times throughout one year. That way, they could track beliefs and behaviors as they ebbed and flowed. Unfortunately, it is hard to keep people interested in a study like this, so while they started with 600 participants, only 291 actually completed all seven evaluations. However, some participants missed just a few evaluations, so an average of 413 participants were evaluated in each of the second through seventh analyses.

Some of the results were not at all surprising. Based on people answering several questions about climate change, they found that they could generally categorize their participants as either “Highly Concerned,” “Cautiously Worried,” or “Skeptical.” However, they found that those beliefs did change a bit depending on the weather, with people trending more towards “Highly Concerned” during the warmer parts of the year. As the authors note, this is consistent with a lot of other studies. They also found that the “Highly Concerned” group was much more likely to advocate for government policies to combat climate change.

The surprising result, however, was that the “Skeptical” group was significantly more likely to engage in three of the four pro-environmental behaviors listed above than were the “Cautiously Worried” or the “Highly Concerned.” The “Skeptical” group was more likely to take public transportation, purchase environmentally-friendly consumer products, and utilize reusable shopping bags. The “Highly Concerned” and “Skeptical” groups recycled at pretty much the same frequency, but the “Cautiously Worried” recycled at a lower frequency.

Now, of course, the authors list several limitations to their study, and it is certainly possible that this surprising result is a consequence of one of those limitations. However, it is at least consistent with my observations. In general, those I know who have a more conservative outlook tend to be the ones who are more skeptical of human-induced climate change. They are also the ones who tend to be more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviors.

The authors offer a few possible explanations for their surprising result. Here are two of the more interesting:

Perhaps [the “Highly Concerned”] engaged in moral licensing, whereby their concern about climate change psychologically liberated them from engaging in (and reporting) pro-environmental behavior. Or, perhaps the “Highly Concerned” felt that federal policies were the more effective means of addressing climate change (vs. individual pro-environmental behaviors).

I personally think the explanation is simpler. I tend to engage in “pro-environmental” behaviors because they generally make sense. I recycle because it is a reasonable way to reduce waste. I take public transport when I can because it is generally less expensive and reduces traffic congestion. I tend to buy environmentally-friendly consumer products because it is an easy way to support a healthy environment. I don’t tend to utilize reusable shopping bags, but my wife does. I engage in other pro-environmental behaviors (such as installing LED lighting when it makes sense) because ultimately, it saves money and once again, is an easy way to protect the environment.

Such behaviors have nothing to do with concern about human-induced climate change. They simply make sense. Based solely on my observations (which could be very skewed), those who tend to concentrate on things that make sense are also significantly more likely to be skeptical of human-induced climate change.

Why You Must Read Multiple Opinions When it Comes to Evolution

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I ran across an old article by Dr. David Berlinski. He is one of the more interesting proponents of intelligent design, since he does not believe in God but nevertheless thinks the natural world is obviously the result of design. In addition, he is an entertaining writer whose keen wit and disciplined thought help him cut to the heart of the issues about which he writes.

The entire article is worth reading, but for the purposes of this blog post, I will just give you the “executive summary.” The eye has always been a problem for flagellate-to-philosopher evolution. Not only does it seem so obviously designed, but developing an evolutionary history of the various eyes we see in nature has led to the incredible conclusion that eyes must have evolved independently in multiple evolutionary lineages. Nevertheless, those who fervently believe in evolution as a creation myth are convinced that it must have happened somehow. As a result, they tend to jump on anything that might support their fervent belief.

Enter Dr. Dan-Eric Nilsson and Dr. Suzanne Pelger, who published a scientific article entitled “A Pessimistic Estimate of the Time Required for an Eye to Evolve.” In this article, they sketch what they think might be a path by which a small circle of light-sensitive cells surrounded by a dark pigment and covered with a protective layer of tissue might evolve into a camera-type eye. In a series of eight drawings that they came up with in their own minds, they show how that circle of light-sensitive cells might form a depression, add a lens, and eventually come to resemble some of the eyes that we see in nature.

They measured four aspects of each drawing and assumed that those aspects could each change by 1% for every evolutionary step that was taken towards the next drawing. In the end, they estimated that it would take 1,829 steps to get from the first drawing to the last one. Using a simple equation that tries to estimate how many generations it takes to produce each evolutionary step, they arrived at the conclusion that it would take only 363,992 generations to get the job done. Since some organisms with eyes have generations that last a only a year, they suggest that in some cases, eyes could evolve in a mere 363,992 years.

Now, of course, I think there are a lot of things wrong with this scenario, not the least of which is that Nilsson and Pelger sketched out a hypothetical path knowing what the outcome had to be. That’s not the way evolution is supposed to work, but nevertheless, I applaud Nilsson and Pelger for at least trying to tackle such an intractable problem. After all, you have to start somewhere, so Nilsson and Pelger started with their imaginations. As a result, it’s at least possible that they have produced a first step in the long, difficult journey of trying to understand the evolution of the eye. The problem is what the popularizers of evolution have done with this work. Knowingly or unknowingly, they have spread false propaganda about it, and no one (except Dr. Berlinski and perhaps a handful of others) seems to care.

Dr. Berlinski offers examples of Dr. Matt Young, Dr. Richard Dawkins, and Dr. Ian Stewart each referring to Nilsson and Pelger’s work as a computer simulation that shows how easy it is to evolve an eye. As Berlinski makes clear, Nilsson and Pelger’s work has nothing to do with a computer simulation. They made up the drawings in their heads and then simply analyzed each drawing, using mathematics to determine how long it might take to get from one drawing to the other. Indeed, Dr. Berlkinski actually wrote to Dr. Nilsson and asked him if the study had anything to do with a computer simulation. Of course, Nilsson said it did not.

What’s the big deal? Okay, they didn’t simulate anything on the computer, but they at least came up with a plausible scenario of eye evolution, right? Wrong! A computer simulation could show whether or not such a pathway is plausible, but they didn’t do a computer simulation. If you start at the first of Nilsson and Pelger’s drawings and then have a computer make random changes to it (with no goal in mind), that would be the start of a simulation of how evolution is supposed to work. You could then make some assumptions about how natural selection might decide which random changes to keep and which ones to discard (once again being careful to have no ultimate goal in mind). After that, you could see what comes out. If the product looks something like an eye, then you would have at least some evidence that there is a plausible pathway for the eye to form by evolution.

Of course, whether or not the simulation would actually give us confidence that the eye could evolve would depend on how detailed it was. The more real-world problems it took into account, such as the sources for added structures like the lens, the effects any changes would have on living tissue, the chemical and energy demands of each change, etc., the more confidence we could have that the eye evolved. The key is, of course, that Nilsson and Pelger did no such thing. Nevertheless, many popularizers of evolution try to say that they did.

This is why it is absolutely critical that anyone who wants to learn about evolution must read multiple sources from multiple different points of view. Most people would have no idea that Dawkins and his ilk are misinforming them about Nilsson and Pelger’s work. Reading other authors with opposing views might end up leading to the truth of the matter.