Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 164

August 27, 2021

Lutheran religious studies prof asks, Is methodological naturalism racist?

Robert F. Shedinger came across an open access 2020 paper in Social Psychology of Education, “Why are there so few ethnic minorities in ecology and evolutionary biology? Challenges to inclusion and the role of sense of belonging” which brought up something you are not likely to hear from the
Darwin Lobby:

It is well established that people of color are poorly represented in STEM fields compared with their representation in the larger population. That is for a host of complex sociological and economic reasons. But even taking this into consideration, the authors note that African Americans are even more poorly represented in EEB [ecology and evolutionary biology] fields in comparison with non-EEB fields of biology. This extremely poor representation in EEB cannot be explained by the factors leading to underrepresentation in STEM fields, so there must be something else going on.

To find out what, the authors surveyed a sample of college undergraduates from different racial and ethnic groups about their attitudes towards STEM in general and EEB in particular. The findings point to a number of factors, especially among African Americans, leading to a sense of not belonging in the culture of the EEB community. Two of these factors were a greater tendency toward religiosity and moral objections to evolution.

Surprisingly, and contrary to the expectations of the authors, African American (as well as Latino) undergraduates expressed a greater desire than white students to seek advanced education in ecology and evolutionary biology. Yet despite their interest level, the perceived lack of belonging they would experience in the EEB community appears to prevent their actual pursuit of advanced education (in 2014 African Americans earned fewer than 2 percent of PhDs granted in EEB fields but 5.1 percent in non-EEB subfields of biology).

As the authors note, African Americans consistently score higher on surveys of religiosity than the general population. This will not be surprising to anyone familiar with the African American church tradition. But African American undergraduates seem to be aware of the absolute requirement that EEB research be done in accordance with methodological (and de facto metaphysical) naturalism. Their religious inclinations will therefore be in conflict with the culture within the EEB community and it will be difficult for them to feel a sense of belonging in that community. The same with their moral objections to evolution, moral objections that are well founded in the African American experience (see Human Zoos). The demands of methodological naturalism thus become an impediment to the greater participation of people of color in ecology and evolutionary biology. What insights might we be losing as a result?

Robert F. Shedinger, “Is Methodological Naturalism Racist?” at Evolution News and Science Today (August 27, 2021)

When Shedinger asks, “What insights might we be losing as a result?”, one wants to ask, “Who is the ‘we’”? The Darwinians don’t want insights; they want control. Yes, the rest of us are losing insights but that hardly counts. Breaking the stranglehold sounds like a team effort.

It’s an interesting discussion of the findings in the light of the recent op-ed in Scientific American claiming that creationism was based on white supremacy.

See also: At Evolution News and Science Today: The casual racism of Charles Darwin. Shedinger calls Allison Hopper’s piece in Scientific American, “startlingly vacuous,” which raises — once again — the question of why on earth the mag published it. It’s not as if there is no scholarship on the topic of Darwin and racism. Did the editors not want to address that scholarship? Well, we can’t read minds but we can make some reasonable guesses. How about: Create a big uproar and hope everyone will focus on that and not on the topic at hand? Shedinger also notes perceptively, “One does not become racist because of the view one holds on human origins. One becomes racist for other complex reasons and then reads that racism back into whatever view on human origins you hold.”

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Published on August 27, 2021 18:22

The most serious outcome of the replication crisis in science

The reason the replication crisis matters is that we are constantly told to Trust the Science when there seems like less reason to do so all the time:

Back in 2018, several hoaxers slipped works dubious on their face past peer review and into publication. One study, which made it into the journal Sex Roles, employed “thematic analysis of table dialogue” to determine why heterosexual men go to Hooters, a question that would seem to answer itself. Another looked at “Human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at urban dog parks in Portland, Oregon.” And a third just scattered some modern buzzwords into translated passages from “Mein Kampf” and was published under the title “Our Struggle Is My Struggle” in a journal of feminist social work.

Meanwhile, leading names in the field of social psychology turn out to have committed research fraud to an extent that it tainted the entire field. And as the Wall Street Journal reported, “One noted biostatistician has suggested that as many as half of all published findings in biomedicine are false.” Glenn H. Reynolds, “We’re told to ‘follow the science’ — yet some of it is just plain wrong” at New York Post (August 26, 2021)

We’ve noted much of that at this blog. Reynolds observes,

Bad research guides behavior — whether it’s government policy or drug development budgets or energy research — in the wrong direction.

Producing such research is a natural temptation, conscious or subconscious, for scientists. Success depends on funding, and funding agencies want results. So do university administrations. And all too often, both are as interested in something that produces headlines, and headlines often drive policy.

Glenn H. Reynolds, “We’re told to ‘follow the science’ — yet some of it is just plain wrong” at New York Post (August 26, 2021)

So what we think we know and must defend becomes the enemy of what we need to know.

You may also wish to read: Medical science: “Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?” Michael Cook: The gold standard for fraud is a Japanese researcher in anaesthetics, Yoshitaka Fujii, of Toho University. By the time he came unstuck about 10 years ago, he had published around 200 articles – and 183 of them have been retracted because he had falsified the data. “If someone can publish 183 fabricated trials,” said Roberts, “the problem is not with him, the problem is with the system.”

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Published on August 27, 2021 16:52

At Mind Matters News: Are animals capable of committing suicide?

Generally, experts think not. They may, of course, become profoundly depressed and engage in self-harm but suicide requires abstraction of the idea of death:

Good questions. Death — as humans understand it — is an abstraction. Awareness of global reality tells us that

1) All humans (and all life forms) eventually die.

2) Therefore, I, as a human, will die someday.

3) People who die do not ever just come back and resume their former place in this world. That is true of me too.

It isn’t just a massive body of evidence that tells us this; it is abstract reasoning applied to the massive body of evidence.

Here’s a thought experiment: Suppose a pensioner has two dogs and one of them dies. He buries the lost pet in the back garden. Three days later, he comes home through the back way and finds the deceased pet running to greet him, as the other dog barks excitedly in the window. As between the dogs and the pensioner, which will be happy and excited and which will be profoundly shaken by the experience?

The elephants who try to prop up a deceased member of their clan probably don’t have anything like a human sense that their companion is dead. If they did, they would probably not be trying to prop the companion up.

Denyse O’Leary, “Are animals capable of committing suicide?” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: Death, seen as the idea of “ending it all,” is an abstraction. To know that you will die one day is to engage in abstract thought. Animals don’t do that. If they did, we’d be in big trouble.

You may also wish to read:

In what ways are cats intelligent? Cats have nearly twice as many neurons as dogs and a bigger and more complex cerebral cortex.

In what ways are dogs intelligent? There is no human counterpart to some types of dog intelligence.

and

The real reason why only human beings speak. Language is a tool for abstract thinking—a necessary tool for abstraction—and humans are the only animals who think abstractly.

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Published on August 27, 2021 16:33

Materialism hangs on to science now — not by evidence but by politics

The changes are happening under the radar:

This past June, the Center for Science & Culture hosted the Conference on Engineering in Living Systems (CELS). The presenters demonstrated how applying engineering principles and tools to biological research yields profound insights into the operations of living systems and the logic behind their design. This content was fully anticipated by the attendees. The presentation that came as somewhat of a surprise showcased the extent to which the subdiscipline of systems biology has for the last few decades often operated within what is almost indistinguishable from a fully design-based framework. Much of the research within the field has effectively replaced evolutionary assumptions with design-based assumptions, language, and tools of investigation. This scientific revolution, which has only just begun, raises the question of whether the debate over intelligent design has come to an end.

Changing Assumptions

At a philosophical level, the answer to this question is clearly no. The proponents of scientific materialism still maintain a stranglehold over researchers, so those who openly question the official orthodoxy face the constant threat of secular inquisitors undermining their reputations and careers. In addition, official media outlets and educational institutions continue to feed the public a steady diet of disinformation directed against anyone who speaks honestly about the clear evidence for design in biology. And any material put out by design proponents is immediately met by critics who consistently misrepresent the material’s content and the related science to undermine the authors’ credibility. This practice was well demonstrated by a recent critique of Stephen Meyer’s latest book (here, here, here, here).

The Tide Shifts

Yet, at a practical level, the tide of the debate appears to be decisively shifting…

Brian Miller, “End of the Road for the Intelligent Design Debate?” at Evolution News and Science Today(August 23, 2021)

A quibble with Brian Miller’s analysis above: It’s not “philosophy” as such that fronts Darwin’s stranglehold on the discussion of evolution. It’s the power to cause career ruin. That’s the stick end of politics, not of philosophy.

Many Darwinians may be calculating enough to want to see out their careers to emeritus even if they know that the tide of evidence is against them — ruining others along the way.

You may also wish to read: Researchers: Blind mouse pups prepared for sight. Researcher: “I love this paper. It blew my mind,” says David Berson, who studies the visual system at Brown University and was not involved in the research. “What it implies is that evolution has built a visual system that can simulate the patterns of activity that it will see later when it’s fully mature and the eyes are open, and that [the simulated pattern] in turn shapes the development of the nervous system in a way that makes it better adapted to seeing those patterns. . . . That’s staggering.”

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Published on August 27, 2021 05:25

Researchers: Blind mouse pups prepared for sight

Both nature and nurture, we are told:

In the days before a newborn mouse opens its peepers, nerve impulses that have been sweeping randomly across the retina since birth start flowing consistently in one direction, according to a paper published in Science today (July 22). This specific pattern has a critical purpose, the authors say, helping to establish the brain circuitry to be used later in motion detection.

“I love this paper. It blew my mind,” says David Berson, who studies the visual system at Brown University and was not involved in the research. “What it implies is that evolution has built a visual system that can simulate the patterns of activity that it will see later when it’s fully mature and the eyes are open, and that [the simulated pattern] in turn shapes the development of the nervous system in a way that makes it better adapted to seeing those patterns. . . . That’s staggering.”

Ruth Williams, “Retinal Activity Prepares Blind Newborn Mice for Vision” at The Scientist (July 22, 2021)

Sure. Funny how random swishes of chemicals somehow supposedly cause this.

Are we writing a drama here or what? Like, at some point, that guy — or his audience — is supposed to “get it,” right?

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Published on August 27, 2021 04:46

August 26, 2021

Claim: Poll shows Americans are more accepting of evolution now

Of course, if you get to write the questions, instead of using standard ones…

The level of public acceptance of evolution in the United States is now solidly above the halfway mark, according to a new study based on a series of national public opinion surveys conducted over the last 35 years.

“From 1985 to 2010, there was a statistical dead heat between acceptance and rejection of evolution,” said lead researcher Jon D. Miller of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. “But acceptance then surged, becoming the majority position in 2016.”

University of Michigan, “Evolution now accepted by majority of Americans” at ScienceDaily

The paper is closed access.

But get this:

Besides Miller and Ackerman, the authors are Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education; Belén Laspra of the University of Oviedo in Spain; and Carmelo Polino of the University of Oviedo and Centre Redes in Argentina; and Jordan Huffaker of U-M.

University of Michigan, “Evolution now accepted by majority of Americans” at ScienceDaily

Wait. Scott and Branch are key players in the Darwin-in-the-schools lobby (National Center for Science Educaton)! How’s that for objectivity?

And sure enough:

Before even reading the report I suspected exactly what the flaw in the study would be: it didn’t actually query people about whether they accepted something like what basically all evolutionary biologists believe in — a form of (apparently) blind and unguided Darwinian evolution, responsible for essentially all the major innovations in the history of life. Instead, it measured support for a much weaker definition of “evolution” akin to common descent or mere change over time.

Sure enough, the survey asked respondents if they agree with the following statement: “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.” The authors claim in their paper that this “simple question asking whether humans evolved over a long period is a useful and clearer indicator of respondent acceptance or rejection of evolution.” Well, that all depends on how you define “evolution.” I know many proponents of intelligent design (ID), who are ardent skeptics of the neo-Darwinian and other mainstream models of evolution, but who might well answer that question with a solid yes.

Take Michael Behe, for example. Behe accepts common ancestry, and so by the survey’s standards he accepts evolution. Yet Behe gets repeatedly labeled a “creationist” by the NCSE. Don’t believe me? For one example of many see this article which says, quite pejoratively, that “Behe is a creationist…”

Do you see the disconnect? If not, here’s what’s wrong.

When attacking ID these pro-Darwin activists are very happy to use the “creationist” label in an apparent attempt to marginalize or sideline ID. But when measuring the degree of support for evolution in the culture, they’re happy to count ID proponents as not as “creationists” but as “scientifically literate” supporters of “evolution” — especially if that means the support-statistics go higher.

Casey Luskin, “Survey Artificially Inflates the Percentage of Americans who “Accept Evolution”” at Evolution News and Science Today

A serious poll would be done by a pollster without links to either side.

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Published on August 26, 2021 18:34

At Mind Matters News: Cuttlefish have good memories, even in old age

Octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish are surprisingly smart for invertebrates. Researchers are gaining some insights into how intelligence helps them:

It’s not clear why cephalopods — octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish — are unusually intelligent among invertebrates. One thesis worth considering is that they don’t have shells. Constantly assessing information from their environment is more important to them than it would be to, say, clams and oysters that can simply filter food from flowing water and shut their shells when danger threatens. Also, as ScienceDaily notes, “Without exception all cephalopods are active predators and the ability to locate and capture prey often demands some sort of reasoning power.” Well, anyway, cleverness.

Just how the cephalopods became intelligent is an open question. Many life forms might be better off to be more intelligent but they aren’t. But then, questions like these are part of what makes science fun.

Denyse O’Leary, “Cuttlefish have good memories, even in old age” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: Cuttlefish are cephalopods and many types of cephalopod show a number of intelligent characteristics which we are only beginning to investigate

You may also wish to read: Octopuses get emotional about pain, research suggests. The smartest of invertebrates, the octopus, once again prompts us to rethink how we understand the origin of intelligence. The brainy cephalopods behaved about the same as lab rats under similar conditions, raising both neuroscience and ethical issues.

Scientists clash over why octopuses are smart New findings show, the brainy seafood breaks all the rules about why some life forms are smart. For many years, we’ve been trying to understand why the octopus is uniquely smart among cephalopods. Research answers some questions only to raise others, as a recent controversy shows.

and

“What neuroscientists now know about how memories are born and die” Where, exactly are our memories? Are modern media destroying them? Could we erase them if we wanted to?

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Published on August 26, 2021 17:21

Steve Meyer bids farewell to Steven Weinberg’s “purposeless cosmos” thesis in the Jerusalem Post

Meyer is the author of The Return of the God Hypothesis.

Here’s the op-ed. Casey Luskin looks at the controversy, in part based on time he has spent in Africa, working on South African fossils:

Reflecting on the death of outspoken atheist physicist Steven Weinberg, Steve Meyer notes,

“the twilight of an increasingly dated view of the relationship between science and religion.” He quotes Weinberg stating that, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” Elsewhere Weinberg stated that science corrodes religious belief:

“[T]he teaching of modern science is corrosive of religious belief, and I’m all for that! One of the things that in fact has driven me in my life, is the feeling that this is one of the great social functions of science — to free people from superstition.”

Casey Luskin, “Meyer in the Jerusalem Post: Farewell to the Purposeless Cosmos” at Evolution News and Science Today (August 19, 2021)

This kind of language is highly offensive and condescending towards people in parts of the world where everyday life reveals evidence that the supernatural is real. Indeed, many of my African friends are Christians and scientists who, like some American scientists I know, see no conflict between science and religion. They recognize that God created the world to operate according to regular natural laws that can be studied by science. They believe, as I do, that He can also intervene in and direct nature when He wishes. You might believe (or assume, as many theistic evolutionists do) that such interventions never occur, certainly never in a way that would leave a record in the evidence. But your personal preferences don’t govern science, or God.

Meyer goes further and argues that not only can science and religion coexist, but science makes a strong cause for a religious worldview. In light of modern science, “Weinberg’s aggressive science-based atheism now seems an increasingly spent force.” This is because science challenges an atheistic worldview, but also because of the repugnant tactics of the “new atheists.”

Casey Luskin, “Meyer in the Jerusalem Post: Farewell to the Purposeless Cosmos” at Evolution News and Science Today (August 19, 2021)

Here’s the Salon piece, subtitled: “What once seemed like a bracing intellectual movement has degenerated into a pack of abusive, small-minded bigots” (June 5, 2021)

Put another way, it was hard to see what problems a volley of abuse and swear words would really solve. And that did seem to be the main solution the New Atheists proposed. And if that’s all naturalist atheism amounts to now, well…

You may also wish to read: How did new atheism become the “godlessness that failed”?

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Published on August 26, 2021 05:24

August 25, 2021

Plant roots from 400 million years ago used a method that is now extinct

3D RECONSTRUCTION OF ASTEROXYLON MACKIEI MADE FROM DIGITALLY RE-ASSEMBLING THIN SLICES OF ROCK. THE RECONSTRUCTION SHOWS THE HIGHLY BRANCHED LEAFY SHOOT IN GREEN AND THE ROOTING SYSTEM IN BLUE AND PURPLE. 3D SCALE BAR 1 X 0.1 X 0.1 CM. IMAGE TAKEN BY DR SANDY HETHERINGTON.

According to a reconstruction:

The first evidence-based 3D reconstruction of the fossil Asteroxylon mackiei, the most structurally complex plant from the Rhynie chert has shown how roots and other types of axes developed in this ancient plant. The fossil is preserved in chert (a type of flint) found near village of Rhynie in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The specimens are exceptionally well-preserved in the 407-million-year-old rocks from the Early Devonian period.

The extinct genus Asteroxylon belongs to the group of plants called the lycophytes, a class that also comprises living representatives such as isoetes and selaginella. The reconstruction has allowed researchers, for the first time, to glean both anatomical and developmental information of this mysterious fossil. This is of particular significance because previous interpretations of the structure of this fossil plant were based to a large extent on comparisons of fragmentary images with extant plants.

The reconstruction demonstrates that these plants developed roots in an entirely different way than extant plants develop roots today. The rooting axes of A. mackiei are the earliest known types of plant roots. “These are the oldest known structures that resemble modern roots and now we know how they formed. They developed when a shoot-like axis formed a fork where one prong maintained its shoot identity and the second developed root identity,” says Dolan. This mechanism of branching, called “dichotomous branching”, is known in living plants within tissues that share structural identity. However, as Dolan stresses: “No roots develop in this way in living plants, demonstrating that this mechanism of root formation is now extinct”. Their findings demonstrate how a now extinct rooting system developed during the evolution of the first complex land plant.

Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, “How the first roots developed more than 400 million years ago” at Eurekalert (August 25, 2021)

If Asteroxylon’s system is extinct, there was less time for the current systems to develop.

The paper is open access.

You may also wish to read: At Mind Matters News: Do brains really evolve? The horseshoe crab’s brain didn’t At Science News: “The preserved central nervous system lends insight into the ancient crab’s behavior, the researchers say. Because the fossil brain is so similar to the brains of modern horseshoe crabs, Bicknell says, it’s safe to say the ancient animal’s walking, breathing and even feeding habits were probably similar to horseshoe crabs’ today, including eating with their legs.”

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Published on August 25, 2021 19:41

Medical science: “Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?”

So says Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal at the BMJ’s blog (July 5, 2021).

At MercatorNet, Michael Cook comments:

In a recent webinar (see below) conducted by Cochrane, an independent group which reviews healthcare data, Professor Ian Roberts, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said that he has become sceptical about all systematic reviews, particularly those that are mostly reviews of multiple small trials.

The gold standard for fraud is a Japanese researcher in anaesthetics, Yoshitaka Fujii, of Toho University. By the time he came unstuck about 10 years ago, he had published around 200 articles – and 183 of them have been retracted because he had falsified the data. “If someone can publish 183 fabricated trials,” said Roberts, “the problem is not with him, the problem is with the system.”

Michael Cook, “There’s a bad smell coming from medical research” at MercatorNet (August 25, 2021)

So many people call for reform but is it really possible at this point? What would it take?

You may also wish to read: We did NOT make this up: Famed Honesty researcher’s paper retracted over made-up data. Of course, before the revelation that a main experiment was faked, Ariely was featured in TED talks, had an advice column in the Wall Street Journal and wrote a New York Times bestseller. (This post is dedicated to all who believe that SCIENCE is a big answer to the questions of the ages.)

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Published on August 25, 2021 19:21

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