Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 549

Kim Kardashian’s paper one of Top Ten Science Retractions of 2018

What’s hot? What’s not?/Niklas Bildhauer, Wikimedia

One can’t help thinking that in at least two cases, much more must be wrong than just individual misconduct:

5 For many years, Piero Anversa was one of the world’s leading figures in the field of cardiac stem cells. No longer. In 2018, his former institution, Harvard Medical School, requested that journals retract 31 papers from Anversa’s lab over concerns about the validity of the reported data. So far, 14 have been pulled. The retractions are just the latest—and doubtless not the last—development in the slow unraveling of Anversa’s work, a saga that began with questions nearly five years ago and has included a $10 million settlement between Harvard teaching hospitals and the US Department of Justice over allegations of fraud.

It feels, at first, like a tragic drama: How the mighty are fallen! Then, in the aftermath, one asks oneself, but didn’t anyone know? All too likely, yes, lots of people knew, but so many were complicit in one way or another that discussion was risky.

At least, that is the most likely explanation.

6 Kim Kardashian: Reality show star, internet meme machine, fame seeker and, now, published scientist? Kardashian’s name cropped up as first author of a 2018 paper in Drug Designing & Intellectual Properties International Journal (since removed) titled “Wanion: Refinement of Rpcs.” Her co-authors included the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, and Tomáš Pluskal, now a postdoc at MIT. In fact, the article was a figment of Pluskal’s imagination, executed with the help of SciGen, the paper-writing algorithm created at MIT, to sting the journal. Editors there obliged nicely, accepting the hoax manuscript and requiring zero revisions. Retraction Watch, “Top Retractions of 2018” at The Scientist

Again, the fact that this sort of hoax works is not the hoaxers’ “fault.” See also Sokal hoaxes strike again.

Retraction Watch’s searchable database of retractions is here.

While we’re here: From Chemistry World: Forensic science is “in crisis” A study of the causes of science skepticism sails right by the most obvious cause of skepticism: Repeated untrustworthiness

and

Another Pop Science Great, The 100-Calorie Snack Guy, Fizzles On the Retraction list above at 10.

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Eric Holloway: How can we measure meaningful information?

toothpicks/Superbass (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Neither randomness nor order alone create meaning. So how can we identify communications in a scientifically meaningful way?

Dropping a handful of toothpicks on the table seems to produce a different sort of pattern than spelling out a word with toothpicks. Surprisingly, this intuitive distinction is harder to make in math and the sciences. Algorithmic specified complexity (ASC) enables us to distinguish them.

Neither Shannon information nor Kolmogorov complexity work well for this purpose.

This leads us to a third concept, algorithmic specified complexity (ASC). ASC solves the problem by combining the two measures. ASC states that an event has a high amount of information if it has both low probability and a concise description. This matches our intuition much better.
More.

Eric Holloway has a Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Baylor University. He is a current Captain in the United States Air Force where he served in the US and Afghanistan He is the co-editor of the book Naturalism and Its Alternatives in Scientific Methodologies. Dr. Holloway is an Associate Fellow of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

Also by Eric Holloway: Human intelligence as a halting oracle

and

Does information theory support design in nature?

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Researchers: Rare form of natural selection acts to “block the formation” of unfit hybrids

howler monkey/
/Paulo B. Chaves  ( CC BY 2.0 )

From ScienceDaily:

Evolutionary biologists believe that various natural selection pressures can help complete the process by strengthening barriers to gene flow between two groups, pushing them toward full reproductive isolation.

And because natural selection favors organisms that successfully reproduce over those that don’t, it is biased against hybrids, which sometimes die before reproducing or are simply incapable of reproducing.

Natural selection tries to block the formation of these “unfit” hybrids. One way to do that is to gradually increase the genetic differences between two groups of organisms — in this case black and mantled howler monkeys — so that it’s more difficult for them to mate and to produce hybrid offspring.

While working to thwart the formation of hybrids in this way, natural selection strengthens reproductive isolation by increasing genetic differences. This process is called reinforcement; while the idea has been around for more than a century, empirical evidence to support it is scarce.

To test for the presence of reinforcement, Baiz and her colleagues compared the DNA of black and mantled howler monkeys living the Tabasco hybrid zone to the DNA of black and mantled howler monkeys living far from the hybrid zone.

If reinforcement is working to thwart hybridization and to strengthen reproductive isolation, then the genetic differences between the two species in the hybrid zone should be greater than the genetic differences between monkeys of these two species living on either side of the hybrid zone.

And that’s exactly what Baiz and her colleagues found when they compared genetic markers that are at or near genes likely associated with reproductive isolation.

“Speciation is a complex process that can be driven by direct and indirect mechanisms that interact to maintain and strengthen the process, and this study is one of the few natural examples that documents this,” Baiz said. Paper. (paywall) – Baiz M, Tucker P, Cortés-Ortiz L. Multiple forms of selection shape reproductive isolation in a primate hybrid zone. Molecular Ecology, 2018 DOI: 10.5061/dryad.5d4mb06 More.

It’s no wonder that biologists have debated whether this “reinforcement”form of natural selection even exists. If it does, it is acting as a purposeful agent. Now, if these researchers have found an instance of it, what does that mean?

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See also: Monkeys More Closely Related To Sister Species Than Same Species In Different Locations?

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How plant roots know when to branch out

From ScienceDaily:

Root branches only form when in direct contact with soil moisture using an adaptive response termed ‘hydropatterning’. Professor Malcolm Bennett of the University of Nottingham, and Professor Ari Sadanandom from the Department of Biosciences at Durham University, discovered that hydropatterning is controlled by a branching master gene called ARF7. Their teams observed plant roots lacking ARF7 were no longer able to hydropattern. The researchers concluded that when roots are exposed to moisture ARF7 remains active and promotes root branching, but when exposed to air, ARF7 is modified and inactivated, blocking root branching.

Professor Sadanandom explained: “Plants are relatively immobile and therefore their growth and development is very much dependent on their environment. Our research has identified the particular protein which can modify, and even inactivate root branching, therefore limiting plant growth and development.

“This is hugely exciting as it opens up the possibility for us to adapt this protein interaction and potentially develop plants that could continue to branch roots even in challenging conditions such as water scarcity.” – Jane Icke, University of Nottingham More.

We keep discovering more information systems in plants and the amount of time for them to develop has been growing shorter. As the Darwinist becomes more urgent, his explanations grow less likely.

See also: Key plant groups pushed back tens of millions of years 27 December 2018The report backdates the origin, not only of podocarps (the evergreens), but of seed ferns and cycad types of plants. Those are millions of years of natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinism) that these plants did not turn out to have. If Darwinism seemed unbelievable before, what do you think now?

Researchers: Flowers bloomed in early Jurassic, 50 million years earlier than thought “Researchers were not certain where and how flowers came into existence because it seems that many flowers just popped up in the Cretaceous from nowhere,” explains lead author Qiang Fu” It now looks as though they just popped into the Jurassic from nowhere.

A complex network of genes helps plants cope with DNA damage

and

also:Can plants be as smart as animals? Seeking to thrive and grow, plants communicate extensively, without a mind or a brain

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2018 AI Hype Countdown 5: Robert J. Marks on the claim, AI Can Fight Hate Speech!

AI help, not hype, with Robert J. Marks: AI can carry out its programmers’ biases and that’s all:

Some people may be under the illusion that AI detection of hate speech will be disinterested and fair. After all, the assessment is being done by a computer, which has no ideology or political leanings. An added strength is that the program is being written by “scientists” who are never corrupted by political bias.

Front Runner for Most Inane Statement of 2018

“I believe that the whole idea of conscious thought is an error. ” So says
Peter Carruthers, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park in this article in Scientific American. Proving once again, that some ideas are so gobsmackingly stupid, it takes a lot of education to believe them. He might as well have said, “I have a conscious thought that there is no conscious thought.” There is really no need to argue against self-refuting piffle like this. There is only one thing to say:

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Talk about a perfect storm! Social science needs evolutionary theory?

Anyone who has read Colin Wright’s “The New Evolution Deniers” at Quillette knows that social science no longer accepts fundamental ideas in Darwinian evolution, like the sexes. And Wright, fellow evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, and others are expected to just cringe and get re-educated or else.

That was the point of a question we asked earlier, Which side will atheists choose in the war on science? So far, they seem to want to avoid the obvious conclusion that increasingly they must choose progressivism over whatever they think their science has taught them—or else fight.

In the middle of all this a well-meaning person tries to explain how evolutionary theory can help social science:

My high school biology teacher, Mr. Whittington, put a framed picture of a primate ancestor in the front of his classroom—a place of reverence. In a deeply religious and conservative community in rural America, this was a radical act. Evolution, among the most well-supported scientific theories in human history, was then, and still is, deliberately censored from biological science education. But Whittington taught evolution unapologetically, as “the single best idea anybody ever had,” as the philosopher Dan Dennett described it. Whittington saw me looking at the primate in wonder one day and said, “Cristine, look at its hands. Now look at your hands. This is what common descent looks like.” …

Applying evolutionary theory to social science has the potential to transform education and, through it, society. For example, evolutionary perspectives can help social scientists understand, and eventually address, common social problems. Schoolyard bullying provides one example. Without an evolutionary understanding of the phenomenon, interventions are likely to be ineffective, since they misdiagnose the causes of bullying. Bullying is not merely negative interpersonal behavior; it’s goal-oriented and serves the social function of gaining status and prestige for the bully, which must be understood to combat it. For example, bullying often occurs in front of an audience, suggesting that social attention drives, and may reinforce, the behavior. A 2015 paper suggests most interventions don’t work because they remove the rewards of bullying—increased social status—without offering any alternatives. The researchers recommend that the esteem bullies seek “should be borne in mind when engineering interventions” designed to either decrease a bully’s social status or channel the bully’s social motivations to better ends. A deep understanding of the evolved functions of bullying, in short, provides a fulcrum for potential remedies.Cristine H. Legare, “Why Social Science Needs Evolutionary Theory” at Nautilus

One doesn’t mean to be unkind. But we hardly need “evolution” to know that giving a bully a task that builds self-esteem will distract him from bullying. Legare must surely have heard a kid shout, “Yeah, well, if you’re so great, prove it. Hit a home run tonight!” A teacher can surely find a discreet way of saying the same thing.

If the lame, wordy stuff Legare offers is an example of the outworkings of the “single best idea anybody ever had,” things are as we thought: The Darwinians are unprepared for the woke warriors of social science. One has to feel some pity for these generally sheltered people, knowing what’s coming.

Hey, it could get worse. Increasing numbers of people believe in astrology and witchcraft and, according to inclusivity principles, their point of view is just as worthy of respect as anyone else’s. Wait till that one swings round the bend…

See also: About the facts of life, Darwinian Jerry Coyne is still being stubborn … Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry “Why Evolution Is True” Coyne continues to refuse to follow Nature down the primrose path of political correctness and is doubling down on what people used to be allowed to accept as biological fact (Coyne was president of an evolution society which has started to wobble on whether sexes are real divisions.)

Is Darwinist Jerry Coyne starting to get it about SJW “science”? Ah, not a moment too soon.; Here is a perfect specimen of sp. SJW, Trollus inyerfaceus. We have certainly dealt with them. Coyne may find some in his own back yard.

The perfect storm: Darwinists meet the progressive “evolution deniers” — and cringe… Double down cringe…

The Darwinians’ cowardice before SJW mobs explained in detail: They thought the mob was coming for someone else.

Rob Sheldon: Have a little pity for scientists scared of SJWs I thought the Areo article was the most honest I have met in a long while. It is one thing to boast about courage in the faculty lounge, it is quite another in the provost’s office. I have been cursed with both experiences.

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2018 AI Hype Countdown 6: Robert J. Marks on the claim, AI Can Even Find Loopholes in the Code!

AI adopts a solution in an allowed set, maybe not the one you expected:.

In the same paper in which researchers purported to find examples of AI creativity, we also read the following statement about problems with performance: “Exacerbating the issue, it is often functionally simpler for evolution to exploit loopholes in the quantitative measure than it is to achieve the actual desired outcome.”

One example they offered of this type of gaming the system was a walking digital robot that moved more quickly by somersaulting than by using a normal walking gait. That was a very interesting result. But again—recognized or not — somersaults were allowed in the solution set offered by the programmer. …

I was once working at a startup company called Financial Neural Networks. One of our goals for software was to forecast the futures market for the S&P 500 (an index of the performance of 500 large publicly traded companies in the stock market). More.

Robert J. Marks is one of the authors of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, the lab for which a Baylor deal tried to shut down.

2018 AI Hype Countdown 7: Computers can develop creative solutions on their own! AI help, not hype: Programmers may be surprised by which solution, from a range they built in, comes out on top Sometimes the results are unexpected and even surprising. But they follow directly from the program doing exactly what the programmer programmed it to do. It’s all program, no creativity.

2018 AI Hype Countdown 8: AI Just Needs a Bigger Truck! AI help, not hype: Can we create superintelligent computers just by adding more computing power? Some think computers could greatly exceed human intelligence if only we added more computing power. That reminds me of an old story…

2018 AI Hype Countdown 9: Will That Army Robot Squid Ever Be “Self-Aware”? The thrill of fear invites the reader to accept a metaphorical claim as a literal fact.

2018 AI Hype Countdown: 10. Is AI really becoming “human-like”? Here’s #10 of our Top Ten AI hypes, flops, and spins of 2018 A headline from the UK Telegraph reads “DeepMind’s AlphaZero now showing human-like intuition in historical ‘turning point’ for AI” Don’t worry if you missed it.

Robert J. Marks II, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Baylor University.  Marks is the founding Director of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence and hosts the podcast Mind Matters. He is the Editor-in-Chief of BIO-Complexity and the former Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks. He served as the first President of the IEEE Neural Networks Council, now the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America. His latest book is Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics coauthored with William Dembski and Winston Ewert. A Christian, Marks served for 17 years as the faculty advisor for CRU at the University of Washington and currently is a faculty advisor at Baylor University for the student groups the American Scientific Affiliation and Oso Logos, a Christian apologetics group.

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Did interstellar object Oumuamua normalize space aliens as science in 2018?

Artist’s impression of interstellar asteroid/comet, Oumuamua /ESO, M. Kornmesser

At least media feel freer to treat the topic that way:

The turning point came in November, when Avi Loeb, the head of the astronomy department at Harvard University, co-wrote a paper saying that Oumuamua is so unusual that scientists should consider the possibility that it’s not a far-out comet or asteroid, as his colleagues assumed, but rather an artificial structure.

In other words, maybe it’s an interstellar craft built by extraterrestrials.

…

Jason Wright, a Penn State astronomer who recently launched a graduate program in SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), shares Loeb’s desire for open discussion — and offers an upbeat assessment of the field’s growing respectability. “There’s a real culture change. SETI is becoming a serious scientific discipline,” he says. Corey S. Powell, “How the Oumuamua mystery shook up the search for space aliens” at NBC News

Actually, it has never felt abnormal to media or lacked science backing. Astronomer Carl Sagan (1934–1996) was an immensely popular voice for the idea (as in the film Contact). The actual problem, not that you’d know it from media coverage, has always been lack of evidence and abundance of crackpots. But that has never stopped anyone.

Characteristically, from the same article,

Wright has participated in studies of Tabby’s Star, whose intermittent dimming had some scientists wondering if it was encased within a vast artificial structure built by aliens. While the latest results show that’s not the case, Wright is undeterred. Almost all such searches are destined for failure, he says, and all it takes is one success to change the world. Corey S. Powell, “How the Oumuamua mystery shook up the search for space aliens” at NBC News

Here’s Tabby’s Star.

Sky & Telescope says, “Observations have since firmly ruled out” alien construction projects. But why don’t we take it as a general rule that such findings have never deterred SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) and never will.

The underlying thought seems to be this: In a randomly formed universe, intelligent beings must have randomly evolved in many places; we just have to find them. So They’re Out There and always will be, so long as SETI is around to look for them.

Note: It would be possible to assume the existence of extra-terrestrial civilizations against the backdrop of  Christianity, as C.S. Lewis does in his science fiction works (Space Trilogy). But the need such books meet is not what drives SETI.

See also: Astronomers: Solar system object in transit, Oumuamua, might be a “light sail of extra-terrestrial origin”

and

SETI reacts to the new study that says not to wait up for extraterrestrials

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2018 AI Hype Countdown 7: Robert J. Marks on the claim Computers can develop creative solutions on their own!

Programmers may be surprised by which solution, from a range they built in,comes out on top:

Evolutionary software? In evolutionary programming, programmers develop a goal and see how close they can get to achieving it. They propose billions, even trillions of trillions, of possible solutions to the problems. No computer can analyse them all just by motoring through the numbers. So the programmers develop evolutionary search algorithms, that is, algorithms that intelligently search for a solution based on a bias imposed by the programmer. This bias guides the program toward one or more solutions close to the desired goal.

Sometimes the results are unexpected and even surprising. More.

Marks was himself surprised by the behavior of a swarm of digital Dweebs he had helped create but maybe he shouldn’t have been.

Robert J. Marks is one of the authors of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, the lab for which a Baylor deal tried to shut down.

2018 AI Hype Countdown 8: AI Just Needs a Bigger Truck! AI help, not hype: Can we create superintelligent computers just by adding more computing power? Some think computers could greatly exceed human intelligence if only we added more computing power. That reminds me of an old story…

See also: 2018 AI Hype Countdown 9: Will That Army Robot Squid Ever Be “Self-Aware”? The thrill of fear invites the reader to accept a metaphorical claim as a literal fact.

2018 AI Hype Countdown: 10. Is AI really becoming “human-like”? Robert J. Marks: AI help, not hype: Here’s #10 of our Top Ten AI hypes, flops, and spins of 2018 A headline from the UK Telegraph reads “DeepMind’s AlphaZero now showing human-like intuition in historical ‘turning point’ for AI” Don’t worry if you missed it.

Robert J. Marks II, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Baylor University.  Marks is the founding Director of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence and hosts the podcast Mind Matters. He is the Editor-in-Chief of BIO-Complexity and the former Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks. He served as the first President of the IEEE Neural Networks Council, now the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America. His latest book is Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics coauthored with William Dembski and Winston Ewert. A Christian, Marks served for 17 years as the faculty advisor for CRU at the University of Washington and currently is a faculty advisor at Baylor University for the student groups the American Scientific Affiliation and Oso Logos, a Christian apologetics group. Also: byRobert J. Marks:

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