Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 161

Science, science denial, and popular neuroses

Neurologist Steven Novella does not
disappoint, reproting on a new study of science gullibility:

What all this means (combined with other research, which the article reviews), is that trust in science itself, while a good thing overall, makes people more susceptible to pseudoscientific manipulation. All you have to do is make a claim seem sciency by quoting an alleged expert or citing a study (regardless of the quality, relevance, or representativeness of that study), and those with trust in science will see that as a cue to trust the claims being made.

Overall I think this means that when dealing with noncontroversial claims by legitimate scientists, trust in science is a good thing. It makes people more likely to accept claims and conclusions which are likely to be true because they are backed by legitimate science. But when dealing with pseudoscience, science denial, or claims that are controversial because they have political or ideological implications, this trust in science can be exploited to increase belief in and dissemination of false claims.

Steven Novella, “Trust in Science May Lead to Pseudoscience” at Neurologica Blog

But wait! That’s the finger on the scale! Suppose, listening to the evidence around COVID-19, I reasonably believed that it originated in a lab in Wuhan (China) which was doing experiments that the local people were not qualified to be doing?

Such a conclusion is inconvenient to current science bureaucrats but entirely reasonable otherwise. So then, they are “pro-science” and the rest of us are “anti-science”?

Well, “science” won’t be the winner.

Shouldn’t someone do a paper on the neuroses of “science” supporters like Novella?

You may also wish to read: Why should we believe atheists on the subject of God? Logic and evidence both point to the existence of God, whatever atheists may think. Most atheist arguments involve quibbles with a vast body of logic, evidence, and experience. Listen, sure — but check it out.

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Is dark matter the Fermi balls forged in the Big Bang?

Another day, another dark matter theory:

The mysterious matter may have come from quantum bags that got squished together in the early universe.

Dark matter — the mysterious substance that exerts gravity but doesn’t interact with light — might be made of tiny black holes permeating the universe. And according to a new theory, those black holes might have been made from Fermi balls, or quantum “bags” of subatomic particles known as fermions that got smooshed together in dense pockets during the universe’s infancy.

The theory could explain why dark matter came to dominate the universe.

“We find that in some cases, the Fermi balls are so dense that the fermions are too close to each other, triggering the collapse of a Fermi ball [in]to a black hole,” Ke-Pan Xie, a researcher at the Center for Theoretical Physics at Seoul National University in South Korea, told Live Science.

Paul Sutter, “Is dark matter made of ‘Fermi balls’ forged in the Big Bang?” at Space.com (September 2, 2021)

Unless we are on the wrong track altogether. We shall see.

You may also wish to read:

Discover: Even the best dark matter theories are crumbling

Researcher: The search for dark matter has become a “quagmire of confirmation bias” So many research areas in science today are hitting hard barriers that it is reasonable to think that we are missing something.

Physicists devise test to find out if dark matter really exists

Largest particle detector draws a blank on dark matter

What if dark matter just doesn’t stick to the rules?

A proposed dark matter solution makes gravity an illusion

and

Proposed dark matter solution: “Gravity is not a fundamental governance of our universe, but a reaction to the makeup of a given environment.”

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The four-legged whale: The biggest tourist attraction that never was?

We don’t know. But here are some things to consider:

The NPR story warns:

“We regret to inform you that your nightmares are about to get worse.

A team led by Egyptian scientists have dug up a 43 million-year-old fossil in the Sahara Desert in Egypt of a now-extinct amphibious four-legged whale.

That’s right, folks — a whale with legs.”

The problem with these claims? That’s right, folks — they didn’t find any of the fossil’s legs. Everything you just read about this fossil is the product of imagination. In fact, if you check the technical paper you’ll learn that they found very little of the fossil at all. Figure 1 from the paper, which can be seen online here, shows the bones that were discovered shaded in red. Zoom in and look at the drawing in the middle. You may notice, as I said, a curious absence of red-shaded leg bones.

Also absent: the pelvis, the vast majority of ribs and vertebrae, and the front portion of the snout. Undoubtedly the organism had these bones, but to call this a “whale with legs,” or to unequivocally depict it as some species transitional between terrestrial mammals and whales (as seen above), is to impose a huge amount of evolutionary imagination on the situation.

Casey Luskin, “Evolutionary Imagination and Belief Drive False Claims of a “Four-Legged Whale”” at Evolution News and Science Today (September 1, 2021)

It gets better. Read on.

People need these stories in order to keep going on with their lives — as they understand them.

It may matter much less than we think whether the stories are true or not.

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Another “hint” of a possible origin of life…

From the RNA world file:

New research looking at how the conditions on primordial Earth might have produced life has identified a mixture of salts that, mixed with heat flows from molten rock, could potentially have contributed to the formation of self-replicating biomolecules.

This self-replication is a key part of the ‘RNA world’ hypothesis: the idea that ribonucleic acids (RNA) can both store biological information and perform the required structure folding for life to grow and evolve into the state it is today.

In this case, scientists looked at the mixture of magnesium (Mg) and sodium (Na) as it might have been on Earth in its earliest years: for RNA folding to work, a relatively high concentration of doubly charged magnesium ions and a lower concentration of singly charged sodium is required.

“Accordingly, the question arises as to which environments on early Earth might have provided suitable salt conditions for such prebiotic processes. One geologically probable process that produces saline environments is the leaching of salts from basalt,” the international team of researchers writes in their study. ScienceAlert (September 3, 2021) The paper is closed access.

David Nield, “A Unique Mixture of Salts Could Have Sparked Life on Primordial Earth, Study Hints” at

All these “hints” are simply trying to explain how life might have got started without any information at all.

But you know what they say: When you are in a hole, KEEP digging! Dig harder, harder…

This is part of the RNA origin of life claim:

See also: Welcome to RNA World: The five-star hotel of origin-of-life theories

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Memory transfer documented in animals

Yes, in the much-studied worm C. elegans:

The microscopic roundworm C. elegans regularly encounters dangers in its environment such as the pathogenic bacterium P. aeruginosa, which seems like an appealing food source but can sicken worms if eaten. C. elegans isn’t equipped to shout out warnings as a human would, but new work by researchers from Princeton researcher Coleen Murphy’s laboratory shows that worms who encounter P. aeruginosa can help others avoid the danger, and identifies a crucial part of the mechanism by which this is done.

In earlier work, Murphy’s lab discovered that mother worms who are sickened by P. aeruginosa learn to avoid the bacterium, and that they can impress this avoidance behavior upon their offspring for the next four generations. Mother worms who’ve eaten P. aeruginosa absorb a bacterial small RNA called P11 through their intestines, which touches off a signal in the worm’s germ line reproductive cells that is then transmitted to a neuron that controls behavior. Afterwards, the new behavior is conveyed to future progeny via changes made to germ line cells. In their new paper, co-first authors Rebecca Moore, Rachel Kaletsky, and Chen Lesnik, and colleagues show that avoidance behavior can also be conveyed from trained worms to other, naïve adult worms.

“We found that one worm can learn to avoid this pathogenic bacterium and if we grind up that worm, or even just use the media the worms are swimming in, and give that media or the crushed-worm lysate to naive worms, those worms now ‘learn’ to avoid the pathogen as well,” explains Murphy.

This finding suggests that worms secrete some signal that, when picked up by other worms, can modify their behavior. Interestingly, the progeny of worms “educated” by receipt of this signal also avoid pathogenic P. aeruginosa for the following four generations. This suggests that the secreted signal touches off the same learning pathway in recipient worms as in those directly exposed to the pathogen. Murphy’s group sought to identify the secreted signal.

Princeton University, “Scientists discover a mechanism for memory transfer between individuals in C. elegans” at ScienceDaily (September 2, 2021) The paper is closed access.

The epigenetic ability to transfer memories intergenerationally is — when documented — much more informative than stupid Darwinian claims about “natural selection acting on random mutation” that somehow brings about this specific result with no information content.

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More on how few Black people choose evolutionary biology…

Given the history, it would be harder to explain why they would than why they wouldn’t:

Evidence exists that religiosity functions as a challenge to inclusion within evolutionary biology. Religiosity is negatively associated with exposure to evolutionary theory, knowledge about evolution, and acceptance of evolution. In a sample of African-American college students, Bailey found that the more religious the students were, the less knowledge they had about evolution.[9] Moreover, religiosity is also associated with having moral objections to the theory of evolution. Thus, a cultural mismatch exists between the religious beliefs of students, and those of evolutionary faculty who are unable to properly deal with religious differences and moral objections to evolution. This may create a challenge that leads to a lower sense of belonging in fields of study that are entrenched in evolutionary thinking.

The O’Brien, et al. research found that “African Americans had a significantly lower sense of belonging in evolutionary biology as compared to Whites…. greater religiosity and moral objections to evolution were associated with feeling a lower sense of belonging in evolutionary biology.”[10] It is well-documented that African Americans consistently score higher on surveys of religiosity than the general population, which is not surprising to one familiar with the African-American church tradition. Furthermore, the climate in evolutionary biology …

Jerry Bergman, “Blacks Realize Evolution Is Racist, Thus Few Become Evolutionary Biologists” at Creation–Evolution Headlines (September 3, 2021)

Black Americans could hardly be unaware of the significance of the idea that there are subhumans. It was said of themselves. And it is fundamental to Darwinian thinking.

Human Zoos: America’s Forgotten History of Scientific Racism

We are not putting the matter too strongly when we say that Darwinian thinking has been one of the ways racism survives in modern society. Apart from the belief in some sort of subhuman (central to Darwinism), it’s not clear how racism could easily survive a multiracial society. Sure, there will always be a preference for the Home team vs. the Away team. But that’s universal and it cuts both ways.

You may also wish to read: Darwinian biologist Jerry Coyne speaks out on a SciAm op-ed’s claims that denial of evolution stems from white supremacy It seems obvious, on reflection, that Hopper’s piece is a disastrously clumsy effort on the part of Scientific American to get Woke. Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne thinks the mag is not just circling the drain but “approaching the drainhole.” To the extent that the editors couldn’t find someone who at least gets basic facts right, he has a point.

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Are pandas no longer endangered?

So China says. Watch National Geographic squirm:

The giant panda, China’s national animal, is a global symbol of cuteness. But the black-and-white bears have long suffered for their irresistible qualities—poached for their pelts, smuggled out of the country as cubs to the U.S. and Japan, and speculated on like a tradeable stock by zoo collectors.

By the 1980s, their numbers in the wild had fallen to just over a thousand. Extinction loomed.

But this summer, pandas also became a global symbol of conservation success. Chinese officials announced that the animals—whose wild population has almost doubled after 30 years of government-led recovery efforts—are no longer endangered.

In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature had already downlisted the giant panda from endangered to vulnerable, citing a steadily increasing population and expanded habitat. But some Chinese scientists and officials rejected that assessment, saying it was premature and could undermine panda protection efforts.

Kyle Obermann, “China declares pandas no longer endangered—but threats persist” at National Geographic (Hongh Kong, September 1, 2021)

= probably false

Yes, that dateline is Hong Kong, overrun during the COVID crazy. We hope this turns out okay for the pandas. But now that China decides, we are in very different territory. Bets are off.

More hopefully, Extinction (or maybe not): New Scientist offers five “Lazarus species.” But now facts will be off the table.

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Philosopher: Darwinism vs. evidence was always a sore point

Laszlo Bencze, on reading Neil Thomas’s Taking Leave of Darwin (2021), notes,

—

I am currently reading Neil Thomas’s recent book, Taking Leave of Darwin. He highlights Darwin’s rhetorical tricks in a most engaging way:

Curiously, Darwin himself acknowledged and indeed drew attention to the lack of fossil evidence—he even, as he put it, “had difficulty imagining by what gradations many structures had been perfected,” adding, “Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?… as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the Earth?” [Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859), p. 129]

Yet, as Gertrude Himmelfarb (who did more than any other critic to unmask Darwin’s rhetorical evasions) noted, Darwin’s technique here and elsewhere was “to assume that by acknowledging the difficulty, he had somehow exorcized it,” coming up with a faux confession aimed at propitiating critical dissent. Thereafter, misgivings are whisked away by rhetorical legerdemain cum disarming self-effacement, and he proceeds, in a famously circular argument, to blame the fossil record itself for not providing the evidence he desired (lacing this with the pious hope that future fossil finds would prove him right). His hope that the gaps would be remedied after his day has not, however, been fulfilled to date. —Taking Leave of Darwin, Neil Thomas, p. 76 – 77

This rhetorical technique continues today in almost every explanation of or defense of evolution. Sound criticisms are not answered. Rather they are “pooh poohed” away as the pathetic limitations of inferior minds whereas the superior minds of evolutionists “see no problem” with any fanciful evolutionary speculation. How could the irreducible complexity of the flagellum have evolved bit by bit? No problem. Another cellular organelle was co-opted. Of course that vague term is meant to be understood as a comprehensive answer. Criticisms of such vagueness evoke Darwin’s classic response “I see no reason why it couldn’t have worked out that way.”

“Life from non-life? Yes, that is an amazingly difficult problem and we agree that no one has the slightest idea how it happened. Nonetheless, we see no reason why it should not yield to scientific advances in chemistry.” Problem acknowledged and solved. “Move along now. We’ve got business to attend to.”

—

The “other business” has too often been the huge fists of the law and social exclusion.

That’s really what Darwinists are expert at.

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Cars do not self-replicate. Even highly computerized ones.

Thus, it is worth noting that life forms do:

Rob Stadler offers a look at the question, in terms of origin of life, in relation to his book, Stairway to Life: An Origin-Of-Life Reality Check.

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Genes respond to coded information in signals

Here’s how even molecules can respond to signals:

New research from North Carolina State University demonstrates that genes are capable of identifying and responding to coded information in light signals, as well as filtering out some signals entirely. The study shows how a single mechanism can trigger different behaviors from the same gene — and has applications in the biotechnology sector.

“The fundamental idea here is that you can encode information in the dynamics of a signal that a gene is receiving,” says Albert Keung, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State. “So, rather than a signal simply being present or absent, the way in which the signal is being presented matters.”

For this study, researchers modified a yeast cell so that it has a gene that produces fluorescent proteins when the cell is exposed to blue light.

North Carolina State University, “Genes can respond to coded information in signals – or filter them out entirely” at ScienceDaily (August 31, 2021)

The point here is that genes, like fungi, are not intelligent but — like mechanical devices — they can respond to signals.

The reason the confusion arises is that establishment science does not want to admit that creative intelligence underlies the universe. Forced into a corner, some will even pretend that mushrooms think and genes have “behavior,” the way a dog would.

You may also wish to read: At Mind Matters News: Mushrooms have minds? Well, if you doubt humans are exceptional… … it is a short step to thinking that mushrooms have minds. A Miami University biologist has taken that step.

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