Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 199

China lands Rover on Mars to look for water, life

At Utopia Planitia:

Once Zhurong’s six wheels roll off the landing platform and onto the Martian dust, the rover will expand its foldable, butterfly-like solar panels and explore the area for a primary mission lasting three months. The vehicle could work well beyond this conservative goal however—the solar-powered Spirit and Opportunity rovers had primary missions of about 90 days, and they each ended up exploring Mars for years.

Utopia Planitia, thought to be the site of an ancient sea, has sedimentary layers that could contain evidence of past water. Even more exciting, these layers of rock could contain traces of any past life on Mars, says James Head III, a planetary scientist at Brown University.

“Because the pre-selected landing site is close to an ancient ocean shoreline, and distinct from others, the science data will uncover more secrets of Mars,” Long says. The site complements the research being carried out by NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers in the ancient lakes of Gale and Jezero craters, respectively, Head adds.

Andrew Jones, “China’s Mars rover touches down on the red planet” at National Geographic

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Science writer John Horgan on why the multiverse is a fantasy

Given the subtitle, “Why the multiverse is fantasy,” Horgan, best known for The End of Science (1996), isn’t pulling any punches:

I am not a multiverse denier, any more than I am a God denier. Science cannot resolve the existence of either God or the multiverse, making agnosticism the only sensible position. I see some value in multiverse theories. Particularly when presented by a writer as gifted as Sean Carroll, they goad our imaginations and give us intimations of infinity. They make us feel really, really small—in a good way.

But I’m less entertained by multiverse theories than I once was, for a couple of reasons. First, science is in a slump, for reasons both internal and external. Science is ill-served when prominent thinkers tout ideas that can never be tested and hence are, sorry, unscientific. Moreover, at a time when our world, the real world, faces serious problems, dwelling on multiverses strikes me as escapism—akin to billionaires fantasizing about colonizing Mars. Shouldn’t scientists do something more productive with their time?

Maybe in another universe Carroll and Siegfried have convinced me to take multiverses seriously, but I doubt it.

John Horgan, “The seduction of the multiverse” at IAI News (May 11, 2021)

See also: The multiverse is science’s assisted suicide

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Claim (sort of) that carb-heavy diet fueled Neanderthal brain growth

Joining the queue of theories about how the human brain (the most significant force in the natural universe) came to exist:

New research examining bacteria collected from Neanderthal teeth suggests that our hominid cousins’ diets were heavy on roots, nuts and other starchy, carbohydrate-rich foods at least 100,000 years ago, reports Ann Gibbons for Science. Shifting to eating high-calorie starches as a dietary staple may have been essential for fueling the evolution of our large human brains, and this study pushes back the earliest evidence of that shift.

“We think we’re seeing evidence of a really ancient behavior that might have been part of encephalization—or the growth of the human brain,” says Christina Warinner, an anthropologist at Harvard University and co-author of the research, in a statement. “It’s evidence of a new food source that early humans were able to tap into in the form of roots, starchy vegetables, and seeds.”

Alex Fox, “Neanderthals Ate Carb-Heavy Diets, Potentially Fueling Brain Growth” at Smithsonian Magazine

Okay, so nuts did it. The thing is, fat, meat, and starch have all been blamed for the big human brain. When do we get round to spices and salt? They’ve been unjustly neglected.

See also: Eating fat, not meat, led to bigger human type brains, say researchers.

Earlier discussion of the fat theory.

Starchy food may have aided human brain development

Do big brains matter to human intelligence?

Human evolution: The war of trivial explanations

and

What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness

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Science historian Michael Flannery offers some thoughts on the drive to deplatform Darwin

Michael Flannery

Flannery’s against deplatforming of this type, of course, as all civilized people should be — but that doesn’t mean we must believe malarkey about Darwin’s personal views on race:

A recent article at The College Fix reports that the University of Sheffield’s teaching and research handbook has declared Charles Darwin a “racist” who concluded that his “renowned theory of natural selection justified the view that the white race was superior to others, and used his theory of sexual selection to justify why women were clearly inferior to men.” The Sheffield proclamation brought a hail storm of denials and protests, insisting that it was unhistorical and “morally stupid.” The Darwin defenders stress that he was opposed to slavery, and as Adrian Desmond and James Moore tried to demonstrate in their book Darwin’s Sacred Cause, that formed a conviction of universal “blood kinship” based upon common descent for the evolutionist.

Nevertheless, I’ve indicated repeatedly that there is a difference between the sheer fact of opposition to slavery and a fervent belief in racial equality. That Darwin opposed slavery is certainly true, but that he rejected the idea of racial equality is also true. This is why I’ve called Desmond and Moore’s misguided book a whitewashing effort that offers “little new and nothing of importance.” It is also wrong to exonerate Darwin as merely the product of his “times,” an era when supposedly everyone was racist. Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection, certainly wasn’t. Unlike Darwin, he insisted all peoples everywhere “possess human qualities of the same kind as our own,” and in terms of “intelligence and morality” emphasized that there is “no marked superiority in any race or country.”

Nothing of this sort ever came from the public or private pen of Darwin; in fact, quite the opposite.

News, “Charles Darwin: Racist Spokesman for Anglo-Male Superiority?” at Mind Matters News (May 13, 2021)

Darwin’s racism doesn’t make his theory — either in its original form or any current iteration — right or wrong. The theory must be addressed on the merits of the case.

See also: Sheffield University: Darwin ruled “problematic” figure due to racism The article provides a whole list of non-woke historically significant scientists about to be subjected to whatever the Woke have in store for them, mostly post-mortem.

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Ridiculous science news — before we get started on the real stuff

It staggers/wanders into the Inbox and just sits there — and eventually one feels one must do something.

How about the triceratops skull that weighs 3000 lbs or 1361 kg:

A 7-foot-long, 3,000-pound triceratops skull dubbed “Shady” has been unearthed in the Badlands of South Dakota, a Missouri college announced.

“It was so exciting … we just didn’t believe it,” David Schmidt, a geology and environmental science professor at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, said in a statement last week.

Schmidt led the group excavation, which usually finds just fragments of dinosaur bones in its annual digs, but this year was different.

Wyatte Grantham-Philips, “3,000-pound triceratops skull named ‘Shady’ excavated in South Dakota” at USA Today News (August 26, 2020)

Well then, keep digging!

More recently, yet another bizarre marine worm, with one head but more than 100 butts, possibly up to 1000:

Peering inside Ramisyllis m. revealed that each time its body branches in two, the internal organs—from the nerves to the guts and muscles—are also duplicated, according to Gizmodo. Each split, the researchers discovered, is encircled by a band of muscle. When the team took a closer look at the structure of these rings of muscle, they could actually tell which half of the bifurcated body came first and which was a new addition.

When it comes time for these worms to reproduce, things take another odd turn. Each of the animal’s many terminal openings forms something called a stolon that grows eyes and a brain, reports Mindy Weisberger for Live Science. When the stolon is ready, it detaches and swims off, guided by its rudimentary nervous system so that it can get fertilized.

News, “This Marine Worm Sprouts Hundreds of Butts—Each With Its Own Eyes and Brain” at Smithsonian (May 12, 2021)

The worm, essentially, branches and the butts grow eyes and a brain. But animals are not supposed to branch, as plants and fungi do. Another curious fact is that no trace of food has been found so far, inside the guts.

You could not make nature up.

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“Professor Dave” goes after eminent chemist James Tour

Readers will recall that James Tour offers a series at YouTube on origin of life.

Professor Dave responded with a diatribe:

Who is Professor Dave? His name is Dave Farina and EducationWeek tells us,

Farina, who taught in high school and undergraduate classrooms for 10 years before turning into a YouTuber, received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Minnesota’s Carleton College and a master’s in chemistry and science education at California State University. His career included a full-time position teaching chemistry, biology, and physics at a private school in Hollywood, and substitute teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area, before transitioning to lecturing at a trade university.

Michelle Goldchain, “‘Professor Dave’ Explains How He Attracted 345,000 YouTube Subscribers” at EducationWeek (March 6, 2019)

Organic chemist Royal Truman (who isn’t on YouTube, so sent us text) responds:

Typical evolutionist strategy: (1) Insult your opponent and speak with such authority the ignorant will figure they must know what they are talking about. No sane person would be so arrogant and risk looking foolish, right? (2) Spread the opposition thin. We can’t respond to this flood of nonsense from all sides. 95% of all this dribble remains unanswered.

I don’t think origin of life researchers will be too pleased with a video so hopelessly flawed that it makes the community look dumb. If I were Prof. D. I would discretely remove this video. Dead serious.

Some of us with PhD’s in organic chemistry actually understood Tour’s arguments. Where to start with all Prof. D’s errors? I’ll stop at half a dozen.

(1) Prof. Tour points out that converting molecules A->B->C-> leads to mostly unwanted side products and low yields for every step unless carefully controlled. Eventually, one runs out of material, unless the reaction steps are each carefully designed and executed. Prof. D. claims this is irrelevant since “autocatalytic cycles would solve this”. Uh, is this supposed to be a joke? Is he saying the whole reaction series needs to be organized, such that each conversion step is part of an autocatalyzed cycle; and then all of these are linked together? That is insane. This is chemical gibberish, even more so in the natural world.

(2) Gas-phase chemistry which produces simple molecules like CO, SiO, NH3, CH4, etc. in space are “relevant to abiogenesis” we are told. Right. And also, to space ships and computers and, I suppose, to an integrated chemical plant. Tour offers his opponents all of these chemicals they want in pure form. Now, he says, show how true RNA, DNA and proteins can form naturally.

(3) Prof. D. brings up “self-replicating ribozymes” as if these carefully synthesized molecules (manufactured ultimately using optically pure biological enzymes) would be available naturally. He never mentions how the cycles are carefully guided by changing temperatures and other details at just the right time, nor that after a few cycles everything degrades to become worthless. Cellular process are utterly different mechanistically and reliable for millions of cycles.

(4) Prof. D. claims a “Continuum between replicating chemical systems and biological systems.” That is absurd. Enzymes are coded for on DNA, nothing remotely related occurs naturally. There is no continuum. No replicators have been reported outside of life, based on complex internal structure. The formation of raindrops or crystallization are obviously not replicators, not being able to synthesize their own components.

(5) Prof. D. should show the viewers a real, naturally occurring autocatalytic system that was not deliberately designed and very, very carefully put together under pristine lab conditions. Even if we are only given a non-natural conceptual example, we’d like to see it’s relevance to how cellular life could have arisen from it.

(6) ee (enantiomer excess): some amino acids are known to crystallize with sometimes more d, other times more l form, under very carefully designed conditions, having no relevance to origin of life scenarios (e.g., a mass of pure asparagine). Prof. D. forgot that such entrapped amino acids can’t polymerize to form proteins. He says thermodynamic stability is irrelevant. Really? What happens under conditions where amino acids polymerize to form proteins, over deep time and equilibrium conditions (like in water)? Nature produces 50:50 d:l forms. Nobody disputes that a small ee excess can form short-term inr miniscule sample sizes for stochastic reasons. But life requires vast amounts of 100% pure amino acids, and for statistical reasons large quantities will produce 50:50 mixtures.

I found the ad hominems vulgar and no substitute for an understanding of what Prof. Tour has been explaining. The evidence Prof. D. presented was ridiculously superficial and misleading. If I were him, I’d get rid of this video, since this is a pure gift for Prof. Tour. Other creation scientists or intelligent design specialists could use this as “a typical example of the level of abiogenesis work.”

Dr. Tour responded to Prof Dave graciously:

We are told:

In spite of the continued personal attacks by Professor Dave, Dr James Tour has decided to stand by his invitation…will he accept? For anyone who wonders…this was recorded on April 26th.

If we hear anything more, we’ll let you now.

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Larry Moran’s new book sounds like a scorcher

Readers may recall that Larry Moran, an evolutionary biologist who used to comment here (not very favorably, but hey) is writing a book asserting that 99% of DNA is junk. A recent blog post took after an MIT biologist, Rick Young:

He was interviewed by Jorge Conde and Hanne Winarsky on a recent podcast (Feb. 1, 2021) where the main topic was “From Junk DNA to an RNA Revolution.” They get just about everything wrong when they talk about junk DNA including the Central Dogma, historical estimates of the number of genes, confusing noncoding DNA with junk, alternative splicing, the number of functional RNAs, the amount of regulatory DNA, and assuming that scientists in the 1970s were idiots.

Larry Moran, “MIT Professor Rick Young doesn’t understand junk DNA” at Sandwalk (May 10, 2021)

This from the pod summary of the show featuring Rick Young:

Much of this so-called junk DNA actually encodes RNA—which we now know has all sorts of incredibly important roles in the cell, many of which were previously thought of as only the domain of proteins. This conversation is all about what we know about what that non-coding genome actually does: how RNA works to regulate all kinds of different gene expression, cell types, and functions; how this has dramatically changed our understanding of how disease arises; and most importantly, what this means we can now do—programming cells, tuning functions up or down, or on or off. What we once thought of as “junk” is now giving us a powerful new tool in intervening in and treating disease—bringing in a whole new category of therapies.

Anyway, Moran goes on to say,

This is a very serious question. It’s the most difficult question I discuss in my book. Why has the false narrative about junk DNA, and many other things, dominated the scientific literature and become accepted dogma among leading scientists? Soemething is seriously wrong with science.

Larry Moran, “MIT Professor Rick Young doesn’t understand junk DNA” at Sandwalk (May 10, 2021)

What’s “wrong,” so far as the rest of us can see, is that researchers keep finding new functions that formerly-junk DNA performs, so they keep looking. For the same reasons as fisherfolk return to the well-stocked lake.

See also: Larry Moran to write new book: Claims genome is 99% junk. If he wants to pick a fight with ENCODE, grab a seat.

We are encouraged to celebrate ENCODE III and the demise of junk DNA.

and

Did beliefs about junk DNA hinder the Human Genome Project?

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At Mind Matters News: Why some think emergence is replacing materialism in science

Adam Frank

As U Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank points out, materialism, in the form of reductionism, posits a world without novelty:

In an article at BigThink, University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank (pictured) argues that reductionism is — for good reasons — fading in science: “Reductionism offers a narrow view of the universe that fails to explain reality.” It is slowly being replaced:

Reductionism is the view that everything true about the world can be explained by atoms and their interactions. Emergence claims that reductionism is wrong, and the world can evolve new stuff and new laws that are not predictable from “nothing but” atoms. Which perspective on science is correct has huge implications, not only for ourselves but for everything from philosophy to economics to politics.

ADAM FRANK, “REDUCTIONISM VS. EMERGENCE: ARE YOU “NOTHING BUT” YOUR ATOMS?” AT BIGTHINK (APRIL 29, 2021)

Frank intends a series of articles at BigThink on why emergence is replacing reductionism. The capsule version is that reductionism reduces everything to the behavior of elementary particles and “describes a world without fundamental novelty or essential innovation.” But that isn’t the world we live in.

And emergence?

As philosophers Brigitte Falkenburg and Margaret Morrison put it, “A phenomenon is emergent if it cannot be reduced to, explained or predicted from its constituent parts… emergent phenomena arise out of lower-level entities, but they cannot be reduced to, explained nor predicted from their micro-level base.” From an emergentist view, over the course of the universe’s history, new entities and even new laws governing those entities have appeared.

ADAM FRANK, “REDUCTIONISM VS. EMERGENCE: ARE YOU “NOTHING BUT” YOUR ATOMS?” AT BIGTHINK (APRIL 29, 2021)

Frank argues that evolution is the creative force that does all this (including evolving new laws?) But it’s not clear that what he means by “evolution” is the garden variety change in life forms over time.

To the extent that emergence marches with panpsychism, it probably is catching on. That means we may see ourselves in different kinds of philosophy of science arguments over evolution.

See also:

Why is science growing comfortable with panpsychism (“everything is conscious”)? At one time, the idea that “everything is conscious” was the stuff of jokes. Not any more, it seems.

and

How a materialist philosopher argued his way to panpsychism. Galen Strawson starts with the one fact of which we are most certain — our own consciousness. To Strawson, it makes more sense to say that consciousness is physical — and that electrons are conscious — than that consciousness is an illusion.

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Angus Menuge on the mind–body problem: It’s like developing and then writing down an idea

From his background in computer science, the Concordia University philosopher sees mind–body interaction as a transmission of information between two realms:

Angus Menuge: My own view, and here I’m influenced by my background in computers, is that I see evidence all the time that there is transmission of information between two realms…

A simple everyday example is reading and writing. When I read, my eyes interact with physical marks on a page. Yet as a result, I have thoughts. Then I can store memories. And it seems that these engrams in my brain, they’re physical as well. And likewise, as I’m thinking about an essay, I have ideas in my mind; they’re translated into things that I can write down.

So we need to think of the human being as an integrated system. And that integrated system has, within it, an automatic translation function. And what that means is that we can go from, for example, an abstract volition, where you notice that when you want to raise your arm, you don’t have to have taken a PhD in physiology and know what’s really going on, right?

You have an incredibly abstract specification. Raise my arm. And every time you do it, it’s probably different. And yet the motor program, or probably a suite of motor programs, takes over.

So what happens? I think what happens is that your volition is translated into a physical instruction that then implements that volition…

It would be a very poorly designed system if, every time we wanted to raise our arm, we’d have to know how to adjust each and every molecule in our arm or what specific pattern of nerve signals we would have to send. Well, then we’d be unable to act. And likewise, if what matters is that I don’t stub my toe again, all I’ve got to remember is, don’t push your toe like that rather than worrying about how I did it this time. Because the odds are, I’d never do the same physical movement again.

News, “How would Angus Menuge resolve the mind–body problem? ” at Mind Matters News

Here are the earlier parts of the series:

Part 1: How do we know we are not just physical bodies? The mind–body problem is one of the most difficult issues in modern philosophy. Philosopher Angus Menuge cites the immateriality and indivisibility of the mind and discusses the evidence from near-death experiences.

Part 2: If the mind and body are so different, how can they interact? A look at different models of the mind–body problem. Angus Menuge asks, Why should wanting a drink of milk produce physical changes like opening the fridge? It’s a harder question than many think.

Part 3: How have various thinkers tried to solve the mind–body problem? Philosopher Angus Menuge explains why traditional physicalism (the mind is just what the brain does) doesn’t really work. Some philosophers today claim that the mind is simply what the brain does; a newer group thinks the mind emerges from the brain but is not simply the brain.

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Dinoflagellate genome structure is unique

Ceratium hirundinella , a dinoflagellate (public domain)

Or, as the title of the story puts it, “unlike any other known”.: One of the main components of plankton in the oceans, dinoflagellates can be parasites or symbionts and include bioluminescent species, photosynthetic species, and species that produce a “red tide.” The species sequenced was Symbiodinium microadriaticum, an important symbiont of corals:

While the updated genome confirms some of what has been suggested by previous work, an unusual relationship between DNA transcription and the shape and organization of their chromosomes reveals that dinoflagellates harbor some of the strangest genomes in the eukaryotic world, according to findings published April 29 in Nature Genetics.

Rather than the flexible, X-shaped chromosomes familiar to humans, dinoflagellates organize their genetic material in orderly blocks along rigid, rod-shaped chromosomes. Genes within blocks are consistently transcribed in one direction and rarely interact with others outside their immediate vicinity. This odd arrangement, the authors found, influences the three-dimensional structure of the entire chromosome.

Amanda Heidt, “Dinoflagellate Genome Structure Unlike Any Other Known” at The Scientist

The paper is open access.

So, in other words, these plankton evolved (randomly, so we are told) a highly successful genome that’s entirely different from the type that most life forms have. Well, if you are skeptical of Darwinian claims that it all happened randomly but just once, how about (at least) twice? Increasingly, Darwinism – or whatever it is that they want to call that stuff nowadays – is for true believers.

See also: Giraffe genome points to maybe four species but it is “not evolutionary”If a big survey of the giraffe genome can’t tell us the answers to the most puzzling questions about one of the most remarkable animals, where should we look for answers next?

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