Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 531

January 31, 2019

Jerry Coyne has another reason to be mad at Templeton

He has gone to the wrong station again.

First, background: He has been defending the Great Social Science Hoaxers of 2018 (you know, the people who rewrote Mein Kampf as feminist claptrap and got it accepted and so forth?) from the trumped-up accusations that now replace embarrassment on the part of academics in ex-disciplines in the social sciences. (But then if your discipline is essentially dead, maybe you have nothing to be embarrassed about?):

But were there any dangers in promulgating false data the way that BP&L did? No, because their papers never entered the literature. The trio of hoaxers promptly informed the journals of the hoax after the papers were accepted, and, as far as I know, none of those papers stand as published contributions…

Finally, Hanlon tries to exculpate the hoaxed journals because they are “interdisciplinary”: …

No, these journals fell for the hoaxes not because of their reverence for “science and scientific methods” (we have no data supporting that claim), but because the papers BP&L submitted were accepted because of reverence for their ideology, which was Authoritarian Leftist “grievance” work, in line with what these journals like. Jerry Coyne, “More science-dissing: WaPo’s misguided criticism of “scientism”” at Why Evolution Is True

Um, yeah. And if anyone thinks those people aren’t coming for serious science, well, they sure won’t need us to tell them when it happens.

That said, Coyne is distressed by the fact that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which supports people who are being jackbooted by authoritarian leftists, is supported by… Templeton:

What do you do when an organization you admire gets money from an organization you detest? I’ve just found out that FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a free-speech group whose work I admire, has gotten lots of dough from the John Templeton Foundation. Jerry Coyne, “FIRE is supported by Templeton” at Why Evolution Is True

Well, that’s a way better investment on Templeton’s part than crackpot cosmology. Jerry needs to stop whining and learn the term “co-belligerent.” People who win often have co-belligerents as well as friends and allies. It’s not an accident, it’s a feature.

Now get this: He says, “As for me, well, I’ll still report on FIRE’s activities promoting free speech on campus, but I won’t be involved with them in any other way (not that they’ve ever asked me!).” Can’t think why they haven’t asked him; can you? On the other hand, if he just minds his business and reports, he’ll be helping in the long run. .

See also: Social Science Hoax Papers: Putting A Respectable Face On Persecuting The Hoaxers

Embattled “Social Sciences Hoax” Prof Is Not A Hero, He’s A Canary

Social Science Hoaxer’s Job At Risk For Revealing “Bias”

Sokal hoaxes strike social science again

Exposing gender studies as a Sokal hoax

Social Science Hoax Papers Is One Of RealClearScience’s Top Junk Science Stories Of 2018

and

Alan Sokal, Buy Yourself A Latte: “Star Wars” Biology Paper Accepted

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Published on January 31, 2019 20:00

The junk science of the abortion lobby

Pediatric neurosurgeon Michael Egnor : Fetuses not only experience pain but experience it more intensely than do adults:

“Much of pro-abortion advocacy is science denial—the deliberate misrepresentation of science to advance an ideological agenda. Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University, wrote a misleading essay on that theme in the New York Times, “Science won’t end this debate” (January 22, 2019).” Michael Egnor, “More.” at Mind Matters

See also: The Governor Of Virginia: Killing Babies Is OK By Me (Barry Arrington)

and

Does brain stimulation research challenge free will? (Michael Egnor)

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Published on January 31, 2019 17:18

The centriole as just another instance of random accumulation in cells

The structure of the centriole is a mere clump of molecules, as you see:

The electromagnetic property of microtubule has been reported with both computation modelling and experimental evidences. From Reason and Science via Otangelo Grasso

Recent development in the field of quantum biology highlights that the intracellular electromagnetic field (EMF) of microtubules plays an important role in many fundamental cellular processes such as mitosis. It is an intriguing hypothesis that centrosome functions as molecular dynamo to generate electric flow over the microtubules, leading to the electric excitation of microtubule EMF that is required for spindle body microtubule self-assembly. With the help of motors proteins within the centrosome, centrosome transforms the energy from ATP into intracellular EMF in the living cell that shapes the functions of microtubules. There will be a general impact for the cell biology field to understand the mechanistic function of centrosome for the first time in correlation with its structural features. From Reason and Science via Otangelo Grasso

Abstract:
Recent development in the field of quantum biology highlights that the intracellular electromagnetic field (EMF) of microtubules plays an important role in many fundamental cellular processes such as mitosis. Here I propose an intriguing hypothesis that centrosome functions as molecular dynamo to generate electric flow over the microtubules, leading to the electric excitation of microtubule EMF that is required for spindle body microtubule self-assembly. With the help of motors proteins within the centrosome, centrosome transforms the energy from ATP into intracellular EMF in the living cell that shapes the functions of microtubules. There will be a general impact for the cell biology field to understand the mechanistic function of centrosome for the first time in correlation with its structural features. This hypothesis can be tested with technics such as superresolution live cell microscope. (open access) More. Paper. Centrosome Functions as a Molecular Dynamo in the Living Cell – 2015

Also: 2+2=5. Don’t forget that now, when the authorities ask.

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

See also: Do centrioles carry biological information?

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Published on January 31, 2019 12:03

The Governor of Virginia: Killing Babies is OK by Me

Yesterday two stories out of Virginia went viral. In the first the Democrat sponsor of an “abortion” bill confirmed that she intends to allow the babies to be killed up to the moment of birth. See here.

You can read the text of the bill in this article. Under the proposal a baby could be killed up to the moment of birth if a doctor says it would help the woman’s MENTAL health. Depressed that you are about to have a baby? Well, let’s kill it.

The second story is about the Virginia governor’s foray into apologetics for killing little babies. (When I first wrote this I almost wrote “infanticide.” I am not going to use that word anymore. It is sterile and academic. Let’s call it what it is – killing little babies) The governor did not even attempt to make a pretense that he would stop the killing of babies if they somehow escaped their mother’s wombs.

Yesterday O’Leary for the UD News desk brought this story to my attention. It is about a plot among students in the next state south (North Carolina for the geographically impaired) to go full Columbine on their school.

I would bet one billion dollars that if a school shooting occurred in Virginia today, Governor Northam would say something like “I am shocked and dismayed by these killings.” And I am equally sure he would be completely blind to the disconnect between what he said today in response to the shootings and what he said yesterday in response to the pending legislation.

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Published on January 31, 2019 07:01

Raining carrots: Falsifiability does not, by itself, make for good science

Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, looks at the role of falsification in science:

Now, a scientific prediction must be falsifiable, all right. But falsifiability alone is not sufficient to make a prediction scientific. (And, no, Popper never said so.) Example: Tomorrow it will rain carrots. Totally falsifiable. Totally not scientific.

In particular, she addresses the question of why the ability of a new, larger collider to falsify previous predictions is not as important as we might think. For one thing, how good are the predictions?:

The major motivation for new particles at higher energies, therefore, has for the past 20 years been an idea called “naturalness”. The standard model of particle physics is not “natural”. If you add more particles to it, you can make it “natural” again. Problem is that now the data say that the standard model is just not natural, period. So that motivation just evaporated. With that motivation gone, particle physicists don’t know what to do. Hence all the talk about confusion and crisis and so on.

Of course physicists who come up with new models will always claim that they have a good motivation, and it can be hard to follow their explanations. But it never hurts to ask. So please do ask. And don’t take “it’s falsifiable” as an answer. Sabine Hossenfelder, “Just because it’s falsifiable doesn’t mean it’s good science.” at Back(Re)Action

In short, she is saying, the universe wasn’t supposed to be like this and that’s the basis for the current crisis in cosmology. One can always invent “falsifiable” theories but their falsifiability is not in itself a virtue; it is simply the basis for them being theories in science at all. The question of whether they should be pursued or funded is a quite different one.

Note: Quite separately, some theorists would like to get the multiverse accepted as a fact in the absence of any evidence and are thus making noises against falsifiability (a war on falsifiability, in effect).

See also: Sabine Hossenfelder: Physics Problems That Lead To Breakthroughs Arise From Inconsistencies In Data, Not Beautiful Math

Theoretical Physicist Takes On Panpsychism. Bam! Pow!

and

Why the multiverse has become more important than falsifiability.

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Published on January 31, 2019 06:31

January 30, 2019

You wouldn’t think crocs had a complex history but they do

Alligator in Myakka River State Park, Florida/© Michele Hogan

From ScienceDaily:

Previous research has pointed to crocodiles and alligators starting with a land-based ancestor some 200 million years ago and then moving to fresh water, becoming the semi-aquatic ambush predators they are today.

But a new analysis, published online today in the journal Scientific Reports, offers a different story. Modern crocodiles and alligators came from a variety of surroundings beginning in the early Jurassic Period, and various species occupied a host of ecosystems over time, including land, estuarine, freshwater and marine.

As University of Iowa researcher and study co-author Christopher Brochu says, “Crocodiles are not living fossils. Transitions between land, sea, and freshwater were more frequent than we thought, and the transitions were not always land-to-freshwater or freshwater-to-marine.” Paper. (open access) – Eric W. Wilberg, Alan H. Turner, Christopher A. Brochu. Evolutionary structure and timing of major habitat shifts in Crocodylomorpha. Scientific Reports, 2019; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-36795-1
More.

Actually, Dr. Brochu is mistaken. Crocodiles are still “living fossils” because they are largely unchanged over many environments. We think the term “durable species” is a better descriptor for all such species because it evokes the same characteristic—they are largely unchanged over a very long period—but the term is not itself an apparent contradiction in terms.

Essentially, crocodilians are highly adaptable.

See also: Convergent Evolution Of Crocodile And Dolphin Skull Shapes

Crocodile’s eyes fine-tuned for lurking

Someone noticed the alligator’s second jaw joint

and

Stasis: Life goes on but evolution does not happen

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Published on January 30, 2019 16:18

Evolutionary biology’s favorite fish evolve according to an existing genetic program

And not according to the Darwinian claim:

It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, wherever and whenever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.

[image error]Stickeblack/Andrew MacColl

From ScienceDaily:

Genetic analysis of sticklebacks shows that isolated populations in similar environments develop in comparable ways. The basis for this is already present in the genome of their genetic ancestors. Evolutionary biologists from the University of Basel and the University of Nottingham report these insights in the journal Evolution Letters.

Many examples can be found in nature of evolution producing the same characteristics repeatedly and independently. Similar adaptations to similar environmental conditions have been documented in numerous animal and plant species, even if primarily on the level of external characteristics. The extent to which similar populations have also made use of the same genetic variants during their evolution, however, is little known. Paper. (open access) – Quiterie Haenel, Marius Roesti, Dario Moser, Andrew D. C. MacColl, Daniel Berner. Predictable genome-wide sorting of standing genetic variation during parallel adaptation to basic versus acidic environments in stickleback fish. Evolution Letters, 2019; DOI: 10.1002/evl3.99 More.

That’s a lot of information to be just randomly packed into evolution many millions of years in advance.

See also: Darwinism: Misfits do better than theory predicts (sticklebacks featured)

and

Emeerging view that evolution is predictable (sticklebacks featured)

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Published on January 30, 2019 15:24

Paul Davies and the “struggle to define life”

The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Finally Solving the Mystery of Life by [Davies, Paul]

Another piece on Paul Davies’ new book, The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Finally Solving the Mystery of Life, on the importance of information in understanding life:

“The basic hypothesis is this,” Davies says. “We have fundamental laws of information that bring life into being from an incoherent mish-mash of chemicals. The remarkable properties we associate with life are not going to come about by accident.”

The proposal takes some unpacking. Davies believes that the laws of nature as we know them today are insufficient to explain what life is and how it came about. We need to find new laws, he says, or at least new principles, which describe how information courses around living creatures. Those rules may not only nail down what life is, but actively favour its emergence.Ian Sample, “
‘I predict a great revolution’: inside the struggle to define life” at The Guardian

Information is the key? Wait till they discover the Law of Conservation of Information and try applying it to the hapless popular Darwinism that dominates biology today.

See also: Paul Davies: Life’s Defining Characteristics “Better Understood As Information”

Law of Conservation of Information vs. Darwinism

Law of Conservation of Information Part I

and

Law of Conservation of Information Part II

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Published on January 30, 2019 07:37

Knock Me Over With a Feather; Jerry Coyne is Being Honest About the Meaninglessness of Subjective Morality

Writing at his blog:

With few exceptions, most scientists and philosophers think that morality is at bottom based on human preferences. And though we may agree on many of those preferences (e.g., we should do what maximizes “well being”), you can’t show using data that one set of preferences is objectively better than another. (You can show, though, that the empirical consequences of one set of preferences differ from those of another set.) The examples I use involve abortion and animal rights. If you’re religious and see babies as having souls, how can you convince those folks that elective abortion is better than banning abortion? Likewise, how do you weigh human well being versus animal well being? I am a consequentialist who happens to agree with the well-being criterion, but I can’t demonstrate that it’s better than other criteria, like “always prohibit abortion because babies have souls.”

From a subjectivist perspective that is exactly right. When a subjectivist says “good” he means nothing more than “that which I prefer.” Coyne leaves unsaid the ominous logical implications of his worldview. If the majority of people prefer eradicating the world of its Jews as a means to racial purity, then not only it will that happen, it will be a “good” thing that it did.

Consider especially this statement: “I can’t demonstrate that it’s [i.e., Coyne’s moral view] better than other criteria.” Again, under the subjectivist paradigm that is correct. Coyne cannot say that his view, or any view, is better than another in any meaningful sense. So which view prevails if none is better than any other? Why, the view of the strong of course. In Coyne’s world the strong impose their preferences on the weak.

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Published on January 30, 2019 06:54

Is a philosophical defence of truth in science possible any more?

This philosopher has done her homework and writes well:

We should expect science to tell us the truth because, by realist lights, this is what science ought to do. Truth – understood as getting things right – is not the aim of science, because it is not what science (or, better, scientists) should aspire to (assuming one has realist leanings). Instead, it is what science ought to do by realist lights. Thus, to judge a scientific theory or model as true is to judge it as one that ‘commands our assent’. Truth, ultimately, is not an aspiration; a desirable (but maybe unachievable) goal; a figment in the mind of the working scientist; or, worse, an insupportable and dispensable burden in scientific research. Truth is a normative commitment inherent in scientific knowledge.

Constructive empiricists, instrumentalists, Jamesian pragmatists, relativists and constructivists do not share the same commitment. They do not share with the realist a suitable notion of ‘rightness’. As an example, compare the normative commitment to get things right with the view of the philosopher Richard Rorty, in whose hands Putnam’s truth as ‘idealised warranted assertibility’ reduces to what is acceptable to ‘us as we should like to be … us educated, sophisticated, tolerant, wet liberals, the people who are always willing to hear the other side, to think out all the implications’. Getting things right is not a norm about us at our best, ‘educated, sophisticated, tolerant, wet liberals’. It is a norm inherent in scientific knowledge. To claim to know something in science (or about a scientific topic or domain) is to claim for the truth of the relevant beliefs about that topic or domain. But, a critic might reply, how can our knowledge – which is perspectival, entrenched in historically and culturally well-defined scientific practices – track the way the world is? How can we be expected to truthfully believe the things we believe in science, despite being situated in a plurality of scientific perspectives? To put it in a different way, how can we – historically and culturally situated epistemic agents – reliably build scientific knowledge over time, despite the possible errors and false steps of past (and current) scientific perspectives?Michela Massimi, “Getting it right” at Aeon

But in a world of intelligent people who believe they are Darwinian animals seeking survival, whose supposed selfish genes unaccountably seek to reproduce themselves, her fine words will not, of course, be any use. Not against the rent-seeking and plunder-seeking assailants in a war on math, and science, squabbling over the carcass. Having wasted the humanities disciplines, as the Sokal hoax on social sciences last year shows, they are moving on into lusher fields of funding.

Science is not only comparatively rich, it is largely undefended. Its bureaucrats are accustomed to bowing to ideological demands from social justice warriors, not resisting them, for reasons of public relations. And at the end of the day, the ‘crat still has a job. That becomes the main thing, just to survive the next politically motivated chop. Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne is a figure of interest because he is slowly learning that. One doesn’tenvy him, learning how his colleagues will behave.

See also: Putting a respectable face on persecuting the social justice science hoaxers

Embattled “Social Sciences Hoax” Prof Is Not A Hero, He’s A Canary

Social Science Hoaxer’s Job At Risk For Revealing “Bias”

Sokal hoaxes strike social science again

Exposing gender studies as a Sokal hoax

Social Science Hoax Papers Is One Of RealClearScience’s Top Junk Science Stories Of 2018

and

Alan Sokal, Buy Yourself A Latte: “Star Wars” Biology Paper Accepted

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Published on January 30, 2019 06:33