Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 7
March 1, 2023
The decay of science mags is not going unnoticed
At Vox, citing an apparent takedown of Scientific American, Vox Popoli notes,
… But it could just as easily be describing Popular Science, which is now equally devoid of genuine science. UPDATE: Or Nature, which also appears to be a candidate. – Vox Popoli (March 1)
We’ve noticed this trend and there’s been some odd moments at NEJM and Lancet as well.
Woke has its fans but it takes no prisoners. Perhaps we will get rigorous science in dribs and drabs now.
Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd
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February 28, 2023
David Berlinski meets Eric Metaxas
Neither David Berlinski nor Eric Metaxas is a forgettable character:
Copyright © 2023 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.From a discussion of Berlinski’s latest book, Human Nature, they go on to some more theologically charged topics. The dramatic tension between the two is notable and interesting and unusual for the SITC forum, punctuated by laugh-out-loud moments of humor. It’s not just the very different personalities that make the conversation fascinating, but David’s steadfast refusal to agree with Eric that the design evidence that we discuss here points to an intelligent agent behind nature. – David Klinghoffer (February 27, 2023)
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Fossil insect found at WalMart… maybe not even extinct
Prospectors used to say, gold is where you find it. Now this:
At Phys.org:
A giant insect plucked from the façade of an Arkansas Walmart has set historic records. The Polystoechotes punctata (giant lacewing) is the first of its kind recorded in eastern North America in over 50 years—and the first record of the species ever in the state.
The giant lacewing was formerly widespread across North America, but was mysteriously extirpated from eastern North America by the 1950s. This discovery suggests there may be relic populations of this large, Jurassic-Era insect yet to be discovered, explained Michael Skvarla, director of Penn State’s Insect Identification Lab.
Skvarla found the specimen in 2012, but misidentified it and only discovered its true identity after teaching an online course based on his personal insect collection in 2020. He recently co-authored a paper about the discovery in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington.
“I remember it vividly, because I was walking into Walmart to get milk and I saw this huge insect on the side of the building,” said Skvarla, who was a doctoral student at the University of Arkansas at the time. “I thought it looked interesting, so I put it in my hand and did the rest of my shopping with it between my fingers. I got home, mounted it, and promptly forgot about it for almost a decade.”
It wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that the giant lacewing would find its time to shine. In the fall of 2020, with the world in lockdown, Skvarla was teaching Entomology 432: Insect Biodiversity and Evolution at Penn State. He taught the lab course via Zoom, with students following along remotely on loaner microscopes, and used his own personal insect collection as specimen samples.
As he went to demonstrate the features of a specimen he had previously labeled an “antlion,” Skvarla noticed that the characteristics didn’t quite match those of the dragonfly-like predatory insect. Instead, he thought it looked more like a lacewing. A giant lacewing has a wingspan of roughly 50 millimeters, which is quite large for an insect, a clear indicator that the specimen was not an antlion, as Skvarla had mistakenly labeled it. The students got to work comparing features—and a discovery was made, live on Zoom. – Adrienne Berard, Pennsylvania State University (February 27, 2023)
This Polystoechotes punctata or giant lacewing was collected in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 2012 by Michael Skvarla, director of Penn State’s Insect Identification Lab. The specimen is the first of its kind recorded in eastern North America in over fifty years—and the first record of the species ever in the state. Credit: Michael Skvarla / Penn StateWell now, that was one COVID zoom course that turned out NOT to be a complete waste of time… !
The paper requires a fee or subscription.
You may also wish to read: ction (or maybe not): New Scientist offers five “Lazarus species”
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Convergent evolution: Sleeping behavior in plants evolved independently multiple times
Plants can move in ways that might surprise you. Some of them even show ‘sleep movements,’ folding or raising their leaves each night before opening them again the next day. Now, researchers offer convincing evidence for these nightly movements, also known as foliar nyctinasty, in fossil plants that lived more than 250 million years ago…
“It is now clear that sleeping behavior has evolved independently in various plant groups and at different times in the course of Earth’s history, so it must have some ecological benefits to the parent plant,” [Stephen] McLoughlin continued.
The findings show that it’s possible to infer not just structures but also behavioral characteristics of fossilized plants and animals. The researchers say that biological features of ancient organisms could be deciphered in the future from fossil specimens through further detailed observations of animal interactions with both fossil and modern plants.
“Evidence of fossil insect damage on leaves can provide a great deal more information about plant ‘behavior’ and ecology than just herbivory,” McLoughlin said. “The fossil record of plant-animal interactions is a rich and largely untouched bank of ecological data.”
We now know that “the evolutionary history of the ‘sleeping movements’ of leaves can be traced back to the late Paleozoic gigantopterid plants more than 250 million years ago,” Feng said. In future studies, he hopes to explore how many other plant lineages may have had similar behavior. – Cell Press (February 24, 2023)
Each of these complex plant behaviors, involving significant information systems, evolved independently but somehow it all just happens via natural selection? Nope.
The paper is open access.
You may also wish to read: Evolution appears to converge on goals—but in Darwinian terms, is that possible?
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February 27, 2023
Peter Woit: String theory is dead
At IAI.TV:
Following Eric Weinstein’s interview on how String Theory culture has stifled innovation in theoretical physics, longstanding critic of String Theory, Peter Woit, takes aim at the theory itself. He argues that String Theory has become a degenerative research project, becoming increasingly complicated and, at the same time, removed from empirical reality. Even the remaining string theorists of the past have given up on the ontology of strings, as well as the original vision of the theory. – Peter Woit (February 23, 2023)
But can something like string theory really die? Didn’t it ever only exist in order to keep smart people from grappling with reality?
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Cancer researcher: DNA Code Takes My Breath Away
There are only four letters in the “alphabet” of DNA. They are A, G, C, and T. Yet those four letters can be translated into the 22 amino acids that make up virtually all protein in all living things on planet Earth. Think very large: every single organism in every single environment, from the beginning of life some 4 to 5 billion years ago until today, has been encoded by just those four letters of the DNA alphabet.
That is right. Your life, every beat of your heart, and every breath you take, is based on a code. The Oxford mathematician John Lennox put it this way in his conversation with Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, and Peter Robinson in a recent episode of Uncommon Knowledge: “The information required is linguistic, and linguistic language is not produced by random processes.” – Stephen J. Iacoboni (February 23, 2023)
But don’t complex codes come into existence without intelligence all the time? 
Like, the way War and Peace and Pride and Prejudice just sort of wrote themselves?
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More on the Lab Leak theory vindicated… receipts pile in…
To summarise. A bat coronavirus pandemic began in the city with the biggest bat coronavirus lab in the world, a long way from where those viruses are found naturally. It was caused by the first and so-far only sarbecovirus with a furin cleavage site in it, a feature that had been inserted into other coronaviruses nearby, and that had been planned to be inserted into a sarbecovirus for the first time. And the lab in question has refused repeatedly to publish a list of all the viruses it possesses. Oh, and the other possible cause of the pandemic – an infected animal in a market – has still never shown up.
Matt Ridley is co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, with Alina Chan. – Matt Ridley, February 27, 2023
A key point from Jonathan Turley: All the deception at the highest levels has charged the whole concept of “conspiracy theory” with a fascinating new relevance:
Academics joined this chorus in marginalizing anyone raising the theory. One study cited the theory as an example of “anti-Chinese racism” and “toxic white masculinity.”
As late as May 2021, the New York Times’ Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was calling any mention of the lab theory “racist.”
She embodies the model of the new “advocacy journalism” at the Times. Reporters who remained wedded to the dated view of objective journalism were purged from the ranks of the Times long ago.
Mandavilli and others made clear that reporters covering the theory were COVID’s little Bull Connors. She tweeted wistfully “someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.” – February 26, 2023
Who was it that said: “These days, the lead time between a conspiracy theory and everyday news is about two years?”
But didn’t Elon Musk get that down to six months at Twitter?
You may also wish to read: Lab leak theory vindicated in upper echelons Turley has the receipts. The COVID crazies have singlehandedly done more damage to “the science” and “trust the science!” than anyone who actually hated science could possibly do.
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February 26, 2023
Lab leak theory vindicated in upper echelons
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Energy Department has concluded that the COVID pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak.
The conclusion is reportedly based on a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress. Many will be exploring why the scientific evidence of a lab leak was so slow to emerge from intelligence agencies.
However, for my part, the most alarming aspect was the censorship, not the science.
There will continue to be a debate over the origins of COVID-19, but now there will be a debate.
For years, the media and government allied to treat anyone raising a lab theory as one of three possibilities: conspiracy theorist or racists or racist conspiracy theorists. – Jonathan Turley (February 26, 2023)
Turley has the receipts. The COVID crazies have singlehandedly done more damage to “the science” and “trust the science!” than anyone who actually hated science could possibly do.
You may also wish to read: Convoy: We’re not your lab rats any more
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Cornelius Hunter on evolution as a religious theory
Excerpt: … theological claims are common in Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (Darwin 1859), where they are essential to his science. The religion is not a tangential message, and one need not read between the lines to see it. In the Origin, it would not be an exaggeration to say the religion drives the science. Darwin’s religion is not merely present, it is prominent and has primacy over the science. The religion is foundational.
The importance of religion in Darwin’s theory is also apparent in the science he presented. As Section 5 shows, Darwin did not have sufficient scientific arguments and evidence to advance his theory. Finally, as Section 6 and Section 7 demonstrate, these roles and relationships between religion and science persisted after Darwin. This religious foundation was by no means peculiar to Darwin’s thought. It has remained foundational since Darwin in motivating and justifying the theory. What we find in Darwin continued in later evolutionary thought. Therefore, the thesis of this paper is that evolution is best understood as a theological research program.
Here are all the videos.
The paper is open access.
Hat tip: Philip Cunningham
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Yeast has “genes in waiting”
At Evolution News and Science Today:
We watched this talk live today (see the YouTube link, below) and highly recommend it. Anne-Ruxandra Carvunis is an associate professor in Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine: – Evolution News and Science Today (February 21, 2023)
Here’s the talk:
Carvunis should watch her back. There are lots of useless Darwinprofs out there clogging the system till retirement. They have nothing to do but take down anyone who questions their orthodoxy.
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