Discovery Institute's Blog, page 485

Glaring Bloopers Found in Proposed Texas Science Curricula Materials

According to a study released today by the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute, bogus embryo drawings, long-debunked claims about tonsils, and outdated information from a 1950s lab experiment highlight the glaring bloopers found in proposed science instructional materials currently being considered by the Texas State Board of Education.

"Retro-science must be in, because the proposed materials are filled with outdated scientific claims," said Casey Luskin, a...

Digging Into Granville Sewell's Peer-Reviewed Paper Challenging Darwinian Evolution

As we reported earlier this week, University of Texas El Paso mathematics professor Granville Sewell had a peer-reviewed paper accepted for publication in the journal Applied Mathematics Letters which was pulled after an outcry from the Darwin lobby. The journal has now agreed to apologize to Sewell as well as pay $10,000 in attorney's fees as a result of its actions.

But what was so offensive about Sewell's article that Darwin activists wanted it spiked?  Interestingly, the article w...

Tennessee teen schools columnist on evolution and science education

Tennessee state legislators were recently ridiculed by a Knoxville News Sentinel columnist after the Tennesse House overwhelmingly passed an academcic freedom bill designed to protect teachers who present both the evidence for and against neo-Darwinism in biology classes. Now a high school student takes the journalist to task and schools her in the realities of the bill and what it means for science education.

I had the opportunity to read Pam Strickland's column, "Legislatures should be...

New Research on Epistatic Interactions Shows "Overwhelmingly Negative" Fitness Costs and Limits to Evolution

Two new papers published in the journal Science are reporting the results of studies on genetic interactions of mutations--a phenomenon called epistasis. While epistasis is sometimes cited as a potential mechanism for improving evolutionary fitness or overcoming fitness costs, these studies found the opposite. According to the research, as mutations--even beneficial mutations--accumulated, negative interactions among the mutations caused fitness to decrease. A ScienceDaily news...

The First Law of Darwin Lobbying and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

A few years back I had a friendly lunch conversation with Wesley Elsberry, a longtime activist for Darwin and former staff member at the National Center for Science Education. During the conversation, I said it seems unfair that the Darwin lobby alleges that intelligent design (ID) proponents don't publish in the mainstream scientific literature (an untrue charge), but then those same ID critics simultaneously work hard to prevent ID proponents from publishing in the mainstream...

Journal Apologizes and Pays $10,000 After Censoring Article

In one of their favorite soundbytes, members of the Darwin lobby like to assert that intelligent design scientists do not publish peer-reviewed research. That claim is manifestly false. But the fact that intelligent design scholars do publish peer-reviewed articles is no thanks to Darwinists, many of whom do their best to ensure that peer-reviewed articles by intelligent design scientists never see the light of day.

Witness the brazen censorship earlier this year of an article by...

Inherit the Wind at Christianity Today

UPDATE (1:41 PM, 6/6/11): Earlier today, an editor at Christianity Today International informed me that CT would correct its error and remove the inaccurate material inspired by Inherit the Wind. This has now been done. Kudos to the folks at CT for fixing the error when it was brought to their attention. If only more media outlets were like that!

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Like the Energizer Bunny, the old play/film Inherit the Wind keeps on going, wreaking havoc with people's understanding...

Study Reports a Whopping "23% of Our Genome" Contradicts Standard Human-Ape Evolutionary Phylogeny

We've recently discussed different genetic studies on primate relationships were finding contradictory evolutionary trees. As discussed, one recent study found data that conflicted with the standard primate phylogenetic tree, reporting that "for ~0.8% of our genome, humans are more closely related to orangutans than to chimpanzees." We then commented:

0.8% of our genome might not sound like a lot, but that equates to over 20 million base pairs. That's means that over 500 times more raw...

Beyond The Genome: A Non-Reductionist Perspective On Development

One common theme which often permeates discussions pertaining to embryology and developmental biology -- particularly (but not limited to) within ID circles -- is the idea that an organism's DNA sequence may not wholly be responsible for the development of the three-dimensional structure and architecture found within cells, organs and body plans.

As explained here by biologist Jonathan Wells, every cell of a developing organism (with one or two notable exceptions such as T and B lymphocytes) ...

Life, Purpose, Mind: Where the Machine Metaphor Fails

[This article is authored by Biologic research scientist Ann Gauger, whose work uses molecular genetics and genomic engineering to study the origin, organization and operation of metabolic pathways. She received a BS in biology from MIT, and a PhD in developmental biology from the University of Washington, where she studied cell adhesion molecules involved in Drosophila embryogenesis. As a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard she cloned and characterized the Drosophila kinesin light...