Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 220

Horizontal gene transfer as a serious blow to claims about universal common descent

Trust our stalwart physics color commentator Rob Sheldon to draw the logical conclusion about horizontal gene transfer between plants and insects: If plants and insects can exchange genes (and who knows what else can?), what are we to make of dogmatic claims about universal common descent? He writes,

If I said, the “Universal Law of Gravity” states that all matter attracts other matter through the Newton’s inverse square law, then if I found an exception, the entire law is broken. You couldn’t even say, “most of the time it works barring a few exceptions.” The Universality of the law is the problem. We would have to figure out why the exceptions were exceptional, and until we knew why, all we could say is that there is no Universal law to discuss–it has become a Special Law of Gravity.

For Universal Common Descent, we can say that all life, everywhere on the planet Earth MUST have come from some common ancestor, because it is a Universal law. We don’t have data on those ancient ancestors, but we can rely on the Universality to derive their previous existence. Once there is an exception, once there is a critter that did NOT have a common ancestor, then it is no longer a Universal law, and we can no longer rely on its Universality in our logic syllogisms. Even worse, we know that waiting for a random event to turn lizards into chickens is going to be a loooong wait, whereas transporting the chicken or stealing the chicken genes can be done in a very brief moment. In the statistical sense, the pathway of random mutating evolution is a set of measure zero when contrasted with all the other available pathways of making a chicken. In Mike Behe’s example, if there are a billion ways to break a gene, and only one way to improve it, which event will occur first and with what probability? So losing the Universality of common descent isn’t a slight inconvenience, it is universally deadly to the theory.

Which is why those that need the theory for other philosophical reasons, won’t give it up without a fight.

Note: Rob Sheldon is the author of Genesis: The Long Ascent and The Long Ascent, Volume II.

See also: Horizontal gene transfer between plants and insects acknowledged. So what becomes of all the Darwinian casuistry around “fitness” and “costly fitness” if things can happen so simply as this? The article emphasizes the benefits of studying “evolution.” Indeed, but that can’t mean fronting Darwinism 101 any more.

Copyright © 2021 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Horizontal gene transfer between plants and insects acknowledged

So what becomes of all the Darwinian casuistry around “fitness” and “costly fitness” if things can happen so simply as this?

The finding, reported today in Cell, is the first known example of a natural gene transfer from a plant to an insect. It also explains one reason why the whitefly Bemisia tabaci is so adept at munching on crops: the gene that it swiped from plants enables it to neutralize a toxin that some plants produce to defend against insects.

Early work suggests that inhibiting this gene can render the whiteflies vulnerable to the toxin, providing a potential route to combating the pest. “This exposes a mechanism through which we can tip the scales back in the plant’s favour,” says Andrew Gloss, who studies plant–pest interactions at the University of Chicago in Illinois. “It’s a remarkable example of how studying evolution can inform new approaches for applications like crop protection.”

Heidi Ledford, “First known gene transfer from plant to insect identified” at Nature

The article emphasizes the benefits of studying “evolution.” Indeed, but that can’t mean fronting Darwinism 101 any more.

The paper is open access.

See also: Horizontal gene transfer: Sorry, Darwin, it’s not your evolution any more

Copyright © 2021 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Honeybees, astonishingly, are not going extinct

The bees have refused to play their role, according to dissident scientist Hank Campbell:

The latest numbers on honeybee colonies have been released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and they show that the Beepocalypse we keep being warned about has been postponed for another year.

Instead of going extinct, as activist fundraising campaigns assured us would happen unless efficient targeted seed treatments were replaced by mass spraying of plants with antiquated pesticides still certified “organic”, bees are doing great. The only fluctuations are “statistical wobble” that can happen any time – or due to economics …

If your bee business is in decline the way nearly every business was in decline last year, you stop replacing bees. Every month millions die because they only live a few weeks. And in winter deaths due to natural causes will get even worse. Factor in natural pests like varroa mites and it is common to have whole colonies wiped out. Because of random variation, some years show higher than average deaths and some lower. Stuff happens in nature. And years ago stuff happened -another mass die-off of bees, just like those have been recorded since the first known record of bee numbers were kept, in 950 AD. “Colony collapse disorder” was coined to pretend this was a new phenomenon but it was as old as managed beehives.

Instead of dying out, there are now 10 honeybees for every human on the planet – more than 25 years ago. And that is just in one species. There are over 25,000 species of bees, we just don’t try to count them all because the others are not part of a billion dollar industry, like sending honeybees around in trucks to pollinate almond farms.

Hank Campbell, “Latest Data Show Bees Are Still Thriving At An Alarming Rate” at Science 2.0

Campbell tells us that there are 40 million lbs of surplus honey in the United States. If only they would send it to places where there is hunger… honey is excellent nourishment.

Some of us worry about all this because, if people ever pick themselves up from the status of punched puppet in the bureaucrats’ Punch and Judy Show around COVID-19, trust in science generally may take a hit. That particular pick-your-favorite-apocalypse has really hurt.

“Trust the science” just can’t sound the same any more to a thinking human being.

Copyright © 2021 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

If early brains didn’t take up all the space in the skull, doesn’t that suggest design?

Not that anyone who needs a job at the U would admit it:

Research published today by my colleagues and me in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution indicates some of our earliest ancestors — which were likely still taking their first steps on land — had brains that only filled about half the space in their skulls.

Growing and maintaining brain tissue is energetically expensive for animals. The relative size of different regions of the brain is thought to be guided by a concept known as “the principle of proper mass”.

This states the more important a sense or brain region is to an animal, the more likely it is that region will be enlarged compared to others. After all, it’s pointless to spend lots of energy growing a visual processing centre if you’re a blind, cave-dwelling animal.

Alice Clement, “When our evolutionary ancestors first crawled onto land, their brains only half-filled their skulls” at The Conversation

But why would skulls just happen to be so big all on their own if a greater need for capacity was not anticipated?

The paper is open access.

Copyright © 2021 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Free excerpt from Steve Meyer’s new book, Return of the God Hypothesis

Here: And from the excerpt:

My own interest in what scientific discoveries show about the possible existence of God germinated over thirty years ago when I attended an unusual conference. At the time, I was working as a geophysicist doing seismic digital signal processing for an oil company in Dallas, Texas. In February 1985, I learned of a Harvard historian of science and astrophysicist, Owen Gingerich, who was coming to town to talk about the unexpected convergence between modern cosmology and the biblical account of creation as well as the theistic implications of the big bang theory. I attended the talk on a Friday evening and found that Gingerich had come to Dallas mainly to speak to a much larger conference the next day featuring leading theistic and atheistic scientists. They would be discussing three big questions at the intersection of science and philosophy: the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the origin and nature of human consciousness.

Fascinated, I attended the Saturday conference at the Dallas Hilton. The organizers had assembled a world-class lineup of scientists and philosophers representing two great but divergent systems of thought. I was not surprised to hear outspoken atheists or scientific materialists explaining why they doubted the existence of God. What shocked me was the persuasive talks by other leading scientists who thought that recent discoveries in their own fields had decidedly theistic implications.

Here’s the site: The Return of the God Hypothesis

Steve Meyer is also the author of Darwin’s Doubt.

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

Copyright © 2021 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Researchers: Genes help dogs understand pointing

Recent research on nearly 400 Labrador puppies reveals a genetic basis for a tendency to look to humans for guidance:

The researchers put the puppies through three tests. First, they performed a classic pointing experiment, placing the young dogs between two overturned cups—one containing a treat—and pointing to the one with the treat. The animals understood the gesture more than two-thirds of the time, approaching the performance of adult dogs. But they didn’t get any better over a dozen rounds, suggesting they were not learning the behavior, MacLean says.

DAVID GRIMM, “THESE ADORABLE PUPPIES MAY HELP EXPLAIN WHY DOGS UNDERSTAND OUR BODY LANGUAGE” AT SCIENCE (MARCH 17, 2021)

The second test measured eye contact with a friendly human speaking directly to the puppy. The puppies averaged six seconds. That is rare among wolves, we are told, and among mammals generally. In many species, eye contact is a form of aggression, not of communication in general. But the puppies treated it as friendly communication.

Denyse O’Leary, “Researchers: Dogs are hardwired to understand us” at Mind Matters News

Of course, the evidence that the behavior might originate in genes does not necessarily mean that it is found in the puppies’ wild ancestors. The genetic component, based on pedigree research in replation to performance in the study, was 43%.

But now, here’s a puzzle: Chimpanzees don’t easily understand the pointing gesture even though they have fingers. Puppies don’t have fingers but can easily learn to understand the pointing gesture.

You may also enjoy: In what ways are dogs intelligent? There is no human counterpart to some types of dog intelligence.

Copyright © 2021 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Some cells increase gene expression after death

[image error]Glial cells illustration (stock image).
Credit: © Kateryna_Kon / stock.adobe.com

This cell activity, involving study of brain tissue removed during operations, is an exercise in futility:

These ‘zombie genes’ — those that increased expression after the post-mortem interval — were specific to one type of cell: inflammatory cells called glial cells. The researchers observed that glial cells grow and sprout long arm-like appendages for many hours after death.

“That glial cells enlarge after death isn’t too surprising given that they are inflammatory and their job is to clean things up after brain injuries like oxygen deprivation or stroke,” said Dr. Jeffrey Loeb, the John S. Garvin Professor and head of neurology and rehabilitation at the UIC College of Medicine and corresponding author on the paper.

What’s significant, Loeb said, is the implications of this discovery — most research studies that use postmortem human brain tissues to find treatments and potential cures for disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease, do not account for the post-mortem gene expression or cell activity…

They found that about 80% of the genes analyzed remained relatively stable for 24 hours — their expression didn’t change much. These included genes often referred to as housekeeping genes that provide basic cellular functions and are commonly used in research studies to show the quality of the tissue. Another group of genes, known to be present in neurons and shown to be intricately involved in human brain activity such as memory, thinking and seizure activity, rapidly degraded in the hours after death. These genes are important to researchers studying disorders like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease, Loeb said.

A third group of genes — the ‘zombie genes’ — increased their activity at the same time the neuronal genes were ramping down. The pattern of post-mortem changes peaked at about 12 hours.

University of Illinois at Chicago, “‘Zombie’ genes? Research shows some genes come to life in the brain after death” at ScienceDaily

Maybe those genes are kind of like a school bureaucracy happily presiding over a school with no students or teachers.

The paper is open access.

Copyright © 2021 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Oldest (so far) cephalopods discovered at 522 million years old?

[image error]Present-day cuttlefish (stock image).
Credit: © slowmotiongli / stock.adobe.com

If this holds up, it’s a remarkable find:

The possibly oldest cephalopods in the earth’s history stem from the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland (Canada). They were discovered by earth scientists from Heidelberg University. The 522 million-year-old fossils could turn out to be the first known form of these highly evolved invertebrate organisms, whose living descendants today include species such as the cuttlefish, octopus and nautilus. In that case, the find would indicate that the cephalopods evolved about 30 million years earlier than has been assumed.

University of Heidelberg, “Cephalopods: Older than was thought?” at ScienceDaily

Wait a minute. Many cephalopods (octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish) are considered very intelligent though it is unclear how they got to be so. Not only is this another instance of stasis (complex life forms emerge early and remain complex) but there is a real possibility that a high level of intelligence emerged early.

Assuming that any intelligence at all could originate via a Darwinian mechanism, early origin followed by stasis does not sound like a Darwinian program for intelligence.

Most molluscs (the larger group to which cephalopods belong) comprise many members for which intelligence might be little use anyhow and they don’t exhibit it — think clams.) So we must also ask, why the cephalopods and not the others?

The paper is open access.

See also: Scientists clash over why octopuses are smart

and

Stasis: Life goes on but evolution does not happen

Copyright © 2021 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Is late stage Darwinism benefiting from the “Semmelweis effect”?

Semmelweis was a young physician from a downscale community who noticed that antiseptic practice might be a good idea for medicine:

Medical students are prudently taught to guard against the “Semmelweis reflex.” Also known as the “Semmelweis effect,” it is the tendency to automatically reject new information or knowledge that contradicts prevailing norms or beliefs. The caveat stems from one of the most notorious debacles in the history of medicine. But it is applicable to any area of human knowledge. It is worth briefly recounting the facts of the case here for the light they shed on the nature of the phenomenon.

As a young Hungarian doctor serving in the maternity ward of mid-nineteenth-century Vienna’s most prestigious hospital, Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865) made an astonishingly simple life-saving discovery. Although the germ theory of disease had not yet been established, he reasoned that doctors who went directly from performing autopsies to examining maternity patients in the hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic were somehow transmitting infection to those women—who were dying at alarmingly high rates compared to poorer patients in the Second Clinic, who were attended by midwives rather than doctors. When he ordered doctors to wash their hands in a chlorinated lime solution before examining patients, the mortality from childbed fever dropped precipitously.

Michelle Marder Kamhi, “Beware the Semmelweis Reflex” at National Association of Scholars

But his innovations were resisted. Many young mothers died in that memory hole.

Ignaz Semmelweis’s story about handwashing helps us understand a culture in which — when the news coming back from paleontology doesn’t favor Darwinism, the proposed solution in many quarters is — more emphatic Darwinism! It’s part of the real story of science: Many scientists are just hangers-on, demanding that the system confirm their prejudices, for the well-being of their careers.

As long as we can talk about it, things aren’t hopeless.

See also from National Association of Scholars: National Association Of Scholars Launches New Report On The Reproducibility Crisis In Science

Hat tip: Pos-darwinista

Copyright © 2021 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Günter Bechly: Ediacarans are not animals

From Part II of the “Precambrian House of Cards”:

Even Evans et al. (2021) themselves admit that “phylogenetic affinities for most of the Ediacara Biota remain enigmatic” and say that “Many Ediacara taxa may represent stem lineages of animal phyla but their diagnostic characters either were not preserved or had not yet evolved.” Hear, hear.

Günter Bechly, “Ediacarans Are Not Animals” at Mind Matters News

The rest of Gunter Bechly’s series is here.

Maybe back then it just wasn’t as clear.

Copyright © 2021 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana