Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 6

Assault on science from within: Medical journal articles

At American Council on Science and Health:

There are plenty of reasons for skepticism about medical studies. Some are poorly designed or performed, and some conclusions are totally implausible. In addition, some interpretations of them are intentionally misleading, and some studies need not have been done at all. – Henry I. Miller, MS, MD (March 2, 2023)

Some useful insights follow.

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Evolution News: A Remarkably Candid Statement About an Unsolved Evolutionary Puzzle

Here’s a thought to kick around: The purpose of the category of Deuterostomes may simply be to appear to support a narrative. How many people will really ask for evidence as to whether it does or not?

Evolution News: A Remarkably Candid Statement About an Unsolved Evolutionary Puzzle

About deuterostomes:

According to current systematic theory, everyone reading this right now belongs to the taxonomic category Deuterostomia. This refers to the “second opening”: the group was originally defined with respect to the embryological appearance of the anus (first opening) versus mouth (second opening), a trait no longer considered diagnostic. Deuterostomia is still around as a systematic grouping, however, and it is showing signs of strain. At present, three phyla belong to Deuterostomia: chordates (that’s you), echinoderms (e.g., sea urchins), and hemichordates (acorn worms).

The origins of Deuterostomia represent a long-standing mystery: … – (Paul Nelson, February 21, 2023)

Paul Nelson quotes from a new paper in Biological Reviews:

In many ways, despite hundreds of years of zoological effort and two decades since the publication of the new animal phylogeny (Halanych et al., 1995; Aguinaldo et al., 1997), we remain in an intellectual wild west with regard to deuterostome origins. No hypothesis, no matter how far-fetched it may seem, can be entirely discarded. No theory, no matter how enticingly logical, can claim to have emerged victorious among its competitors. The deuterostomes continue to elude a single, clean narrative to describe their early evolution, a state that is both fascinating and frustrating in equal measure.

and asks, “at what point does the category Deuterostomia become unreal?”

Here’s a thought to kick around: The purpose of the category of Deuterostomes may simply be to appear to support a narrative. How many people will really ask for evidence as to whether it does or not?

The paper requires a fee or subscription.

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Table Talk: Evolution and Christianity – Is there a conflict?

“Let’s talk to Richard Buggs:

Can you believe in creation and take evolutionary science seriously? How do they work together and are there conflicts? What about Adam and Eve? We talk to evolutionary biologist Richard Buggs. He is excellent at explaining complex biology in ways we can understand and gives brilliant insights into the diversity we need amongst scientists today.

Richard is currently Senior Research Leader (Plant Health & Adaptation) at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and Professor of Evolutionary Genomics at Queen Mary, University of London. – (36:22 min, February 6, 2023)

Here’s Richard Buggs on another topic:

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Antarctic krill genome is biggest yet at 48.01 Gb

At Cell Press:

Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is Earth’s most abundant wild animal, and its enormous biomass is vital to the Southern Ocean ecosystem. Here, we report a 48.01-Gb chromosome-level Antarctic krill genome, whose large genome size appears to have resulted from inter-genic transposable element expansions. Our assembly reveals the molecular architecture of the Antarctic krill circadian clock and uncovers expanded gene families associated with molting and energy metabolism, providing insights into adaptations to the cold and highly seasonal Antarctic environment. Population-level genome re-sequencing from four geographical sites around the Antarctic continent reveals no clear population structure but highlights natural selection associated with environmental variables. An apparent drastic reduction in krill population size 10 mya and a subsequent rebound 100 thousand years ago coincides with climate change events. Our findings uncover the genomic basis of Antarctic krill adaptations to the Southern Ocean and provide valuable resources for future Antarctic research. – (open access)

So the krill genome is something like a species biography? That’ll be handy for researchers. The human genome is, we are told, only 3.2 billion bp (or 6.4 billion if diploid).

We’ve come a long way from junk DNA.* Now we are reading the library for clues about the history.

Note: The Guiness Book of World Records assigns the largest genome to the Mexican axolotl:

The largest genome (a species’ total genetic material) currently mapped for an animal is that of the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum). Also known as the Mexican salamander, this famously neotenic species (able to reproduce while still in the larval state, it frequently never matures) has a 32-gigabase genome, i.e., 32 billion base pairs – the basic units or building blocks of DNA. This is at least 10 times as many base pairs as recorded in the human genome.

Update: In The Mysterious Epigenome: What Lies Beyond DNA, on pages 35-36, James Gills and Tom Woodward point out that the Japanese plant “Paris japonica” hitg 149 gb of DNA, topped only by two amoebas: “Amoeba proteus” at 290 gb and “Polychaos dubium” at 670 gb. Lotta history there maybe.

*Because junk DNA sounded like a slam dunk for Darwinism, as politically powerful theistic evolutionist Francis Collins was quick to point out in The Language of God. (2007). To say nothing of atheist cultural icon Richard Dawkins here, Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne (here), and unidirectional skeptic Michael Shermer (here). Notice how that history is quietly being erased. Otherwise, it would be necessary to acknowledge that what many regarded as a correct prediction from Darwinism is not true.

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Researchers: “An increased heart rate creates anxiety.” Well yes, but …

At The Scientist:

During feelings of anxiety, the brain kicks the heart into overdrive. But as it races, does the heart, in turn, talk to the brain? For centuries, scientists have debated whether the heart holds sway over the mind, and now, research published today (March 1) in Nature suggests that physical states can influence emotional ones. The study found that an elevated heart rate can cause anxious behaviors in mice—but only in risky circumstances. This suggests that interventions that target the heart might be effective treatments for panic disorders, the authors suggest. – Natalia Mesa (March 1, 2023)

We didn’t know that was even controversial. Even a mouse would have to be concerned. What he can do about it is, of course, another matter.

The paper is open access.

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Jurassic Shark! Already highly evolved

From the University of Vienna:

Cartilaginous fish have changed much more in the course of their evolutionary history than previously believed. Evidence for this thesis has been provided by new fossils of a ray-like shark, Protospinax annectans, which demonstrate that sharks were already highly evolved in the Late Jurassic. This is the result of a recent study by an international research group led by palaeobiologist Patrick L. Jambura from the Department of Palaeontology at the University of Vienna, which was recently published in the journal Diversity.

Cartilaginous fishes (sharks, rays, and ratfish) are an evolutionarily very old group of animals that already lived on earth before the dinosaurs more than 400 million years ago and have survived all five mass extinctions. Their fossil remains can be found in large numbers all over the world – however, usually only the teeth remain, while the cartilaginous skeleton decays together with the rest of the body and does not fossilize. (February 28, 2023)

Do we ever find the truly primitive shark?

The paper is open access.

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Climate Change’s Bait-and-Switch

This will go down as my shortest post ever:

What’s wrong with this equation for the burning of octane?
2 C8H18+ 25 O2⟶ 16 CO2+ 18 H2O

Let’s see who’s astute out there.

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ID-friendly scientist argues for life on other planets

Experimental physicist Rob Sheldon offers some thoughts:

I do think comets can exchange spores and therefore comet-to-comet infection spreads life throughout the galaxy, if not the universe.

Is life rare in the solar system? Observations say that it is common. I’ve made a long list but briefly:

Mars: Observations of algae, fossils, bioengineered minerals, metabolism, diurnal cycles, biology-made gasses, organics

Venus: biological gasses

Jupiter moons: spectroscopic signatures of photopigments, organics, energy outgassing with water vapor

Saturn’s moon: organics, amino acids

Interstellar: organics, signature matched by hollow shells (diatoms), Comets: fossils, chiral amino acids and nucleotides, organics, anomalous heat generation (metabolism), biominerals, photopigments, oxygen

3. Could these be the result of a massive collision with Earth that spread contaminated life throughout the Solar system?

Perhaps, though the widespread observations mean that it had to happen a long time ago, perhaps over 3 billion years ago. Mars lost its water a long time ago, for example, so the biominerals are probably over a billion years old. In addition, only the most robust amino acids are found on comets, the others have decayed away. Likewise the racemization of the L-amino acids take time. These have a built in “clock”, which given the temperature profile, predict the age. We only have limits on the temperature–CI meteorites have never been above 100C. And given those limits, the age comes out to at least 100 Mya, if not 1Gya. So all these constraints make it less likely that life began on Earth and spread through the Solar System. And of course, interstellar observations are incompatible with that hypothesis.

Here’s a .pdf. Here’s his site, with much more.

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In real science, dissent is a feature, not a bug

At Physics Today

In science, dissent is not a drawback; it is a necessity. The mathematicians Edward Kasner and James Newman write that “the testament of science is so continuously in a flux that the heresy of yesterday is the gospel of today and the fundamentalism of tomorrow.” The courage to say no to scientific authority, to contradict widely accepted knowledge, to question and disrupt the status quo is essential to science’s ability to move forward.

In a 1675 letter to Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton wrote the famous phrase “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Newton paraphrased earlier uses of that sentence to make a point: Mavericks can produce transformative change only thanks to a vast body of incremental research done quietly, with no fame or recognition, and with no front-page news. In science, the incremental progress of many enables the transformative actions of individual mavericks.

And the history of science is rife with outstanding mavericks. In the fifth century BCE, the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras suggested heavenly bodies are made of stones snatched by a rotating ether. Arrested and sentenced to death for his claims about the Moon and the Sun, Anaxagoras was saved by his friend Pericles, a powerful statesman, and instead was exiled. The revolutionary progress made by Anaxagoras spurred some of humanity’s earliest attempts at understanding the order of the universe and the transition from chaos to order through motion, an idea still in use today. – Tomasz Durakiewicz (November 2022)

Part of what went wrong during the COVID crazy is that no one with influence seemed to realize that.

Hat tip: Pos-darwinista

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News about the lab leak leaking out – and why it matters to ID

Most of us grew up seeing science as a huge net benefit to our lives. Then the COVID years saw science come to mean something very different: “Obey the diktats of every worrywart holding some kind of office, no matter how reckless, and avert your eyes from the obvious consequences.” — School lockdowns anyone? Cancer patients losing priority? Small businesses destroyed while the megabusinesses get larger, less efficient, and more authoritarian? Civil liberties not only ignored but actually derided by pretentious ignoramuses in the media?

The cherry on top? A reasonable hunch that the virus escaped from a lab in upcountry China that was dedicated to studying such viruses was derided as a racist conspiracy theory.

Reasonable hunch?: At MercatorNet:

The city at the epicentre of the pandemic is also home to China’s leading coronavirus lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

The lab’s virus database was taken offline on 12 September 2019, and along with it, 22,000 coronavirus samples. The same day, security was beefed up and a tender issued to replace the lab’s air-conditioning system.

Personnel at the WIV fell sick in October 2019 with symptoms that were entirely consistent with what we came to know as Covid-19.

Despite their knowledge of the outbreak, the Chinese Community Party kept silent about it during the crucial early weeks and apparently “disappeared” a WIV researcher and citizen journalists who blew the whistle.

Cybersecurity analysts have recovered Chinese government data that had been wiped from the internet, showing a major buy-up of PCR supplies in Wuhan in late 2019 — equipment used to test for coronaviruses. – Kurt Mahlberg (March 2, 2023)

But nuthin’ to see here, right, folks? Move along there …!

Just recently — not surprisingly — some people whose job is to help prevent such crises from recurring have felt forced to try to be honest about the possibility. The news has started to leak out and – as for the “debunkers” – well, lots of us now have the receipts:

At Jewish World Review:

When Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., posited the possibility of a lab leak in February 2020, he was roundly mocked by the media. The New York Times headlined, “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins.” Scientific American headlined — in March 2022! — “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis Made It Harder for Scientists to Seek the Truth.” Facebook actively quashed attempts to disseminate the theory; Dr. Anthony Fauci went on national television and downplayed the theory. – Ben Shapiro (March 1, 2023)

It now gets riper: From Jonathan Turley:

Yesterday, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that the FBI believes that Covid-19 did originate from a lab in China. While liberal pundits have tried to dismiss the similar finding of the Department of Energy, the public attention of the FBI will make it more difficult to spin out of this major story. Yet, the most interesting moment with Wray came in an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier. Wray told Baier that the agency has, “for quite some time now, assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.” The notion that the FBI has held this belief for “quite some time now” is unnerving since it remained stoney silent as experts and commentators were censored and shunned for even uttering the theory. – (March 1, 2021)

And so … at New York Post:

“How many employees of media corporations who repeatedly mocked the COVID ‘lab leak’ theory as a ‘debunked’ lie that only insane conspiracy theorists believe (because Fauci told them to say that) will apologize now that much of the USG (US government) believes this?” tweeted Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald. – Ariel Zilber (February 28, 2023)

It is absolutely astonishing that the NYT’s lead COVID reporter — who became that only because the pape fired their real reporter because he upset rich teenagers who they made him take to Peru — said it’s racist to consider the “lab leak” theory. pic.twitter.com/ZV5nknpoEv

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 28, 2023

A huge number of NBC and CNN employees repeatedly said the “lab leak” theory was “debunked.” That was a total lie. It was never debunked. That lie was concocted by Fauci and Peter Daszak, who had major, undisclosed personal conflicts in protecting the Wuhan Lab.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 28, 2023

MSNBC’s @JoyAnnReid: “Debunked bunkum” that Covid could have come from a Chinese lab pic.twitter.com/TTis0PusYy

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 27, 2023

The question isn’t whether any of these people will face consequences. They probably won’t. And that isn’t even what matters.

No, a bigger fish is being fried here: The point isn’t just that the debunkers are proven wrong in principle  (because there was good reason for concern) but that there was never any  reason to give them much credibility in the first place – except that they claimed to represent “science.”

A few more blows like this – and they would be just the ones to administer them – and trust in science among the smarter segments of the public will not easily recover.

That will be strange new territory for all of us.

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