Discovery Institute's Blog, page 86

Conversations with Michael Denton: Evo-Devo as a Two-Edged Sword for Darwinism

"Evo-devo" sounds like it should be an early 1980s punk rock band. In fact, as Discovery Institute biologist Michael Denton explains, the field of evolutionary development biology, like the iconic Darwinian Tree of Life itself, cuts sword-like through neo-Darwinism.

The sword has two edges. Yes, the revelations of evo-devo are suggestive of evolution in the sense of common descent. However, the "highly conserved gene circuits and integrated developmental modules" that guide development are...

"Feminist Glaciology": Here's a Peer-Reviewed Science Journal Article that Didn't Get Retracted

Want a bit of context for the story about the PLOS ONE paper that got pulled for extraneous references to "design" and a "Creator" in explicating hand biomechanics? Here's an article published a couple of months ago by the journal Progress in Human Geography. The title: "Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research."

Satire? Hoax? The Daily Caller says no:

Academics at the University of Oregon have determined that glaciers and the sc...

Science and the "Darkness of the West"

Writing in the London Times, Melanie Phillips is on fire with a righteous indignation at the "dark ages," the eclipse of wisdom and integrity, into which science has fallen. She starts with climate change but is only warming up:

The problem of scientific integrity, however, goes far wider. Psychology, neuroscience, physics and other scientific areas have been convulsed by revelations of dodgy research.

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, has written bleakly: "The case against scie...

Bill Nye's Philistine Materialism

If parading vulgarity is cause for looking askance at someone's wisdom in other areas of life, why not in science? Watch this video from Bill Nye, answering a question from a college philosophy student on whether philosophy is a "meaningless" pursuit, as some other brilliant scientific minds have suggested (Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson). Nye doesn't employ any bathroom vulgarities but his answer reflects a thoroughly philistine materialism.

Olivia Goldhill at Quartz examines the brie...

Think You Can Design a Better Fruit Fly?

What happens when you tinker with the design specs of a live flyer? Four European scientists with specialties in biology and aerodynamics got together and ran some clever experiments with fruit flies to find out. The biologists found ways to change the shape of the flies' wings, and the flight engineers measured what happened in performance tests. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, yield some lessons about the capabilities of mutation and natural selection to make modificati...

On Teaching the Evolution Controversy, Misconceptions from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Over at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, John Cook, Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, writes about how to teach students about climate change. He rejects teaching the controversy in favor of instruction that "both teaches scientific concepts and explicitly mentions and refutes misconceptions."

Discovery Institute takes no position on climate change, but Cook specifically mentions evolution, too. He notes:

The problem with "tea...

PLOS ONE "Creator" Scandal Enters Witch-hunt Territory

The move by major science journal PLOS ONE to pull a peer-reviewed paper over mentions of a "Creator" and "design" looks worse and worse. The Chronicle of Higher Education quotes Ivan Oransky of Retraction Watch who says the decision to retract the article on hand biomechanics was "knee-jerk." This too caught my attention:

Even Elsevier, a leading publisher of subscription-based journals, has had papers that were "clearly intelligent design-driven," Mr. Oransky said.

That is a strange off-ha...

Sorry, Animal Rights Activists -- Nature Reports on Meat's Importance for Brain Development

On the nutritional properties of meat, animal rights activists are fooling themselves and others. We are told that human beings are natural herbivores, which is a crock. We are told that meat is biologically bad for us. In moderation, that is also a crock. We are told that children can safely be forced into being vegans. No, that is potentially perilous.

Now, Nature reports that meat is important in the development of the brain:

There is a clear, but underappreciated link between meat and th...

From a Biologist, Common Sense on That Censored PLOS ONE Paper

Deep-sea biologist Andrew David Thaler comments on the decision by PLOS ONE to retract a peer-reviewed paper on the architecture of the human hand, for the sole reason that it included passing references to the "design" of a "Creator." He thinks "It shouldn't have been" retracted:

Passing peer-review does not mean a paper is perfect. Passing peer-review means that the study being reported is scientifically sound. It would be amazing if everything else about a paper -- the authors' underlying...

The Evo-Devo Revolution: LEGOs or Transformers?

Editor's note: In his new book Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, Michael Denton not only updates the argument from his groundbreaking Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985) but also presents a powerful new critique of Darwinian evolution. This article is one in a series in which Dr. Denton summarizes some of the most important points of the new book. For the full story, get your copy of Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis. For a limited time, you'll enjoy a 30 percent discount at CreateSpac...