How bad have things gotten for the ID side? Completely unable to make good on their promise to generate any ID based research, they have now taken to outright lying about the work done by real scientists. Okay, so maybe they've been doing that for quite some time. Still, William Dembski's latest blog entry strikes me as even more brazen than usual.
Dembski writes:
Here is an ID research paper published in PNAS. Note that some important principles of evolutionary theory are criticized in the abstract. This research shows how ID is capable of being applied in biology.
PNAS refers to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a prestigious journal indeed. If they ever did publish an ID research paper, that would be big news. Happily, one only has to read a few sentences of the actual paper mentioned here to realize just how silly Dembski is being.
The paper in question is entitled, The regulatory utilization of genetic redundancy through responsive backup circuits. The remainder of Dembski's post merely reprints the abstract of the paper, and I will now do likewise. The bold face in the final sentence is Dembski's:
Functional redundancies, generated by gene duplications, are highly widespread throughout all known genomes. One consequence of these redundancies is a tremendous increase to the robustness of organisms to mutations and other stresses. Yet, this very robustness also renders redundancy evolutionarily unstable, and it is, thus, predicted to have only a transient lifetime. In contrast, numerous reports describe instances of functional overlaps that have been conserved throughout extended evolutionary periods. More interestingly, many such backed-up genes were shown to be transcriptionally responsive to the intactness of their redundant partner and are up-regulated if the latter is mutationally inactivated. By manual inspection of the literature, we have compiled a list of such "responsive backup circuits" in a diverse list of species. Reviewing these responsive backup circuits, we extract recurring principles characterizing their regulation. We then apply modeling approaches to explore further their dynamic properties. Our results demonstrate that responsive backup circuits may function as ideal devices for filtering nongenetic noise from transcriptional pathways and obtaining regulatory precision. We thus challenge the view that such redundancies are simply leftovers of ancient duplications and suggest they are an additional component to the sophisticated machinery of cellular regulation. In this respect, we suggest that compensation for gene loss is merely a side effect of sophisticated design principles using functional redundancy.
Now merely using a phrase like “sophisticated design principles” is enough to make the ID folks claim you as one of theirs.
Let's begin by scouring that abstract for the important principles of evolutionary theory Dembski's says are criticized.
It's been known for some time that gene duplication and divergence is an important mechanism for generating novelty in the course of evolution. The duplication of a gene leads to functional redundancy. One of the copies can then mutate, thereby possibly acquiring a new function, without leading to catastrophic damage to the organism. Indeed, gene duplications can be viewed as golden opportunities for functional innovation, and consequently would generally not be expected to remain for long in a population. (This is what the authors of the paper have in mind in describing these redundancies as “evolutionarily unstable.”).
This has been perfectly mainstream evolutionary theory for quite a long time. See, for example, Susumu Ohno's 1970 book Evolution by Gene Duplication. And it will remain perfectly mainstream after this article. That's because the remarkable discovery made by the authors of the paper is that, while usually redundant genes behave in accordance with expectations, there are instances where it can actually be selectively advantageous to preserve the duplicated gene.
They explain this clearly in the first two paragraphs of the paper:
Duplicate genes and paralogous gene families long have been perceived as genomic sources of genetics robustness (1-5). The assumption is that a functional overlap of these genes acts to compensate against mutations. Yet, this very fact also renders redundancy evolutionarily instable (5, 6), and functional overlaps, typically, are rapidly lost because of divergence (7).Nevertheless, numerous examples of paralogs retaining their functional overlap for extended evolutionary periods (for examples, see refs. 6 and 8-12) suggest that, at least for a fraction of gene pairs, redundancies are conserved throughout evolution despite their predicted instability.
A little later we come to this:
In fact, although retention of redundancy is much less frequent than its loss, its widespread existence is nontrivial and cannot (6) be dismissed as leftovers of recent duplication events.
And later still:
In this work, we wish to adapt the view that, at least in some pathways, redundancies are selected for based on some evolutionary advantage that they confer to the wild-type organism. In particular, we suggest the existence of regulatory designs that exploit redundancy to achieve functionalities such as control of noise in gene expression or extreme flexibility in gene regulation.
So what have we learned? Most of the time things proceed exactly the way you would naively expect them to. Duplication leads to redundancy, which quickly leads to divergence and new functionalities. But sometimes there is a heretofore unsuspected selective advantage to maintaining both copies of the duplicated gene. Describing some of those advantages is the primary purpose of the paper.
I'd say that paper fits very comfortably indeed within evolutionary theory. That there is so much heretofore unsuspected complexity in the mechanisms of genetics is one of the reasons biology is such a hot science these days.
So, even in the shadow world of ID fanatics, how could this paper be construed as helpful to the cause? Well, you need to realize that ID folks take it as axiomatic that evolutionists are desperate to dismiss large quantities of animals' genotypes as useless leftovers. So any time something previously dismissed as evolutionary junk is found to have any function at all, they are happy to claim it as a victory.
Never mind that the paper states clearly that most of the time things play out precisely as conventional theory predicts. Never mind that in the handful of cases where redundancy persists it is because natural selection actively works to preserve it. Never mind that the opening paragraph of the paper confirms one of the main scenarios for explaining how structures fitting the ID defintion of “irreducible complexity” can evolve gradually. Never mind that this work was done by biologists working firmly within an evolutionary paradigm and that the ID folks, in their decade plus of bloviating about the great discoveries to be found from ID research, never said a word anticipating the results in this paper. And never mind that ID folks have nothing specific to say about the relationship between design and functional efficiency in organisms. Those considerations only matter if your goal is to say something truthful about an important piece of current scientific research.
If, instead, your goal is to chum the waters for the small cadre of drooling lickspittles who increasingly are the only ones who take you seriously (be sure to note the comments to Dembski's post), then you can ignore such petty concerns. Instead you merely say, “Look! The word “design” in a real science paper. Another triumph for our side!”
Still, I do get the feeling that every time I think I've seen the most ridiculous ID claim imaginable, they struggle hard to prove me wrong.
Comments
Wow, I can't believe that Dembski banned "stevie steve" for asking the simple question "Did any ID theorists predict this discovery?" Damn, Billie, sure hates to answer those "hard" questions.
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | July 21, 2006 10:13 PM
I can believe Dembski banned me for that. Potempkin buildings must be protected from the slightest breeze.
Posted by: steve s | July 21, 2006 10:31 PM
Check out Salvador's comment. Have you ever seen anyone misunderstand something that completely?
Posted by: steve s | July 21, 2006 10:34 PM
BillD and his factotums are so far gone down the road of IDiocy that they have only their pretensions left and nothing else at all. Denyse O'Leary although ignorant about science is the decent sort and is not given to acting stupid/childish by banning bloggers or peppering them with abuse. If anyone thought that O'Leary's replacing the loutish buffoon DS would usher in a slightly more decent UncommonlyDense blog they are mistaken. BillD simply can't give up acting silly or pluck the courage to engage in a discussion on other blogs.
Posted by: shiva | July 21, 2006 11:48 PM
Obviously, D. is using a simple medline search to find articles including the term design. I would have expected a more sophisticated tool frome someone who claims to have identified information in DNA sequences that the majority of researchers missed.
BTW, after the retraction of DaveScot UncommonDescent seems to get less entertaining. I will really miss his obsession with the US marine corps.
Posted by: sparc | July 21, 2006 11:59 PM
Oh my gosh, Dembski has evolved (mutated?, devolved?, backslid?) into mturner of ARN. Find a paper, misread it as somehow supporting your own pet bizarre theory, make that assertion with no additional explanation or support, and repeat with a new paper.
Actually, this practice needs a name, as it is sort of like quote mining but on a whole different level. Publication piracy, perhaps?
Posted by: N.Wells | July 22, 2006 12:08 AM
Have you ever met a Creationist who actually read and comprehended an entire scientific paper? Here's a new law: In 95% of papers cited by Creationists, an obvious contradiction of the what the Creationist claims the paper means will be found within five paragraphs of the quoted section.
In this case, scordova's claim can be demonstrated to be wrong in the second paragraph of the paper.
Posted by: Whatever | July 22, 2006 12:09 AM
Actually, mturner laughably claims to understand the important conclusions and scientific methods employed in papers that he has never even read.
I nominate "Precognizant Miscomprehension" as a name for such practices.
Posted by: Whatever | July 22, 2006 12:16 AM
Posted July 21, 2006 9:44 PM, by Jason Rosenhouse --
The paper said, "In this respect, we suggest that compensation for gene loss is merely a side effect of sophisticated design principles using functional redundancy." You never explained why something that is supposed to be natural and random was referred to as "sophisticated design principles" -- not just ordinary design principles but "sophisticated" design principles. The paper repeats the d-word in the statement, "we suggest the existence of regulatory designs that exploit redundancy to achieve functionalities such as control of noise in gene expression or extreme flexibility in gene regulation."
You argue that mere mention of the d-word does not necessarily mean that this paper is pro-ID, but a lot of scientific papers that take evolution for granted or that merely mention evolution in passing are regarded as strengthening evolution theory. For example, I have seen scientific articles that describe co-evolution in such vague terms as "mutual evolutionary influence," "exerts selective pressure on the other," and "caught in a cycle of co-evolution," but those articles do not discuss in detail any possible mechanisms of co-evolution -- see http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2006/07/derbyshire_states_it_plain.php#comment-172604
This paper probably would have been rejected for publication if it had used the d-word more obviously.
Also, this paper is too high-falutin for my tastes, e.g., the paper says, "many such backed-up genes were shown to be transcriptionally responsive to the intactness of their redundant partner and are up-regulated if the latter is mutationally inactivated."
Reed A. Cartwright said ( July 21, 2006 10:13 PM ) --
I am thoroughly disgusted with all the censorship crap that occurs on the Internet. A lot of blogs and other Internet forums get along quite well without censorship. This censorship crap undermines one of the biggest potential advances of the Internet -- an enormous potential improvement in the interchange of ideas.
My answer to stevie steve's question is that not all applications of scientific principles need be predictive -- the applications can be retrospective as well, e.g., saying that a particular observation is consistent with a particular scientific principle. In fact, a lot of biological facts are so unimaginable that a crystal ball would be required to predict them.
I was completely banned from Panda's Thumb and Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars for the same kind of reason.
Comments on blogs are directed not just at the bloggers but at the visitors as well. In fact, on Panda's Thumb, most of the bloggers participate very little or not at all in the discussions that follow their articles.
Posted by: Larry Fafarman | July 22, 2006 1:05 AM
steve s: "Check out Salvador's comment. Have you ever seen anyone misunderstand something that completely?"
What do you expect from somebody who "explains how intelligent design helped him resolve his own spiritual crisis" (Nature. 2005 Apr 28;434(7037):1062-5). If science were about finding some spiritual comfortableness it would not require experimental research and we would rest satisfied in a state of sophism as ID (vulgo creationism) does. Thus this is not a case of mis-understandig or lack of understandig but rather a cas of refusing to accept realities.
Posted by: sparc | July 22, 2006 1:27 AM
I recommend Dembski and friends to check which other articles the authors have published. A quick look through PubMed abstracts would have helped. If this is not sufficient to convince them that this is definitely not about ID they should please contact the authors. Addresses are availbale in PubMed as well.
Posted by: sparc | July 22, 2006 1:53 AM
The word "design" needn't suggest ID. The authors were using it in a general sense of "an underlying scheme that governs functioning, developing, or unfolding" (m-w.com).
I second sparc's recommendation.
Posted by: dcb | July 22, 2006 1:56 AM
"Actually, this practice needs a name"
dysaboutness?
Posted by: snaxalotl | July 22, 2006 2:07 AM
Posted by: steve s | July 22, 2006 2:19 AM
I've been following Uncommon Descent for a while now, and I get the impression that Dembski spends most of his time Googling 'intelligent design' and whenever he finds anything even remotely relevant he triumphantly posts it, usually with only 1-2 sentences as in the example above. You have to wonder if he ever bothers to read anything
As to the new moderator, Denyse O'Leary time will tell if she is a better moderator than the previous bulldog DaveScott; but so far none of my attempts to post a comment have ever materialized, no matter how reasonable I try to be. I guess it's also a reflection of the state of ID and how Dembski thinks that he chose a journalist (and a fairly obscure one at that) to be his moderator, rather than, say, a real scientist.
Posted by: timcol | July 22, 2006 2:23 AM
You have to understand, it's like the bible codes. If you look hard enough and quotemine dishonestly enough, the evidence for design clearly emerges. For instance you wrote,
...while obviously what you really meant was:Obviously that's what you really meant to say, in the mind of an IDiot anyway.
Posted by: ben | July 22, 2006 6:25 AM
All "sophisticated design principles" is saying is that evolution is capable of sophisticated design through application of principles - or, if you wish, that it produces design through application of sophisticated principles.
So evolution follows sophisticated rules and produces sophisticated results. Well, d'oh. Darwin's key insight.
The very phrase 'intelligent design' implicitly accepts that design can happen without intelligent input. Dembski et (ever more desperate) al cannot just appropriate any mention of design and claim it for themselves.
Well, they can. They do. It's an utter abdication of any attempt to build a coherent scientific case with the intent to convince, but there's not been much evidence for that for a while.
R
Posted by: Rupert | July 22, 2006 7:12 AM
dcb said ( July 22, 2006 01:56 AM ) --
Jason Rosenhouse's interpretation of the paper does not show that the word "design" was not intended to mean "intelligent design." Jason claims that the evolutionary principle applied by the paper is natural selection, which is not disputed by ID -- Jason says,
Anyway, all Dembski has shown is that the authors perhaps support the idea of ID, but ID's level of support among scientists should be determined by formal opinion polls and not by quote mining scientific papers, and there have been far too few formal polls of scientists' opinions on evolution and ID.
BTW, I never heard the term "quote mining" before I started studying the evolution controversy.
BTW, I dispute this idea that ID's "failure" to predict the results of this paper is a serious shortcoming of ID. Jason wrote, "Never mind that this work was done by biologists working firmly within an evolutionary paradigm and that the ID folks, in their decade plus of bloviating about the great discoveries to be found from ID research, never said a word anticipating the results in this paper." Where is the evidence that evolution theory predicted the results of this paper? And when I say predict, I mean predict -- I don't mean just a retrospective finding that the results of this paper are consistent with evolution theory. Also, there are some things in biology that are just too unimaginable to predict -- for example, no one could have predicted the following example of pollination by masturbation:
-- from http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio303/coevolution.htm
It is going to be hard to convince me that that relationship arose just by chance.
Posted by: Larry Fafarman | July 22, 2006 8:16 AM
I guess that depends on how powerful your imagination is.
Posted by: Caledonian | July 22, 2006 8:35 AM
It is going to be hard to convince me that that relationship arose just by chance.
What, are you suggesting that coevolution and symbiosis are somehow misunderstood? There are hundreds of thousands of papers exploring the issue, many focusing on how individual relationships between certain species of bees/wasps and flowers developed.
It shouldn't be hard to convince you at all, unless you're a dunderhead who's unwilling to go put "coevolution" into Google Scholar.
My god.
Posted by: Mephisto | July 22, 2006 9:38 AM
Posted by: Don Baccus | July 22, 2006 9:42 AM
Reed A. Cartwright said ( July 21, 2006 10:13 PM ) --
Stevie steve was banned from Uncommon Descent? His comment on UD is right here --
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1343#comment-48945
The delay when a comment is held up for moderation may give the false impression that a comment was censored. I feel that deleting inappropriate comments after they are posted is much better than holding up comments for moderation. Immediate posting has the advantages that comments are always posted in a timely manner and that commenters do not have to worry about what to do if a comment does not appear in a reasonable time, e.g., should the comment be resubmitted? Should the moderator be queried about what happened to the comment?
Then there is the problem of automatically-delivered repetitive advertising spam, but this problem does not require comment moderation. This problem can be handled by a keyboard-character verification step in the comment submission process.
Posted by: Larry Fafarman | July 22, 2006 9:55 AM
A selectionist causal framework is apparent in initial statement of the authors' thesis:
"In this work, we wish to adapt the view that, at least in some pathways, redundancies are selected for based on some evolutionary advantage that they confer to the wild-type organism" (second paragraph of article text). And later: "The evolutionarily selectable advantage of this redundancy..." (fourth paragraph).
Similarly, descent with modification is integral to the conceptual framework employed by the authors. The first example cited of the conserved redundancies that interest them, a redundancy that has been conserved "all of the way from yeast (Are1 and Are2) to mammals (ACAT1 and ACAT2)," emerges as a phenomenon of interest only if one accepts an unbroken chain of descent from organisms that were ancestral both to contemporary yeast and present day mammals. Otherwise there is no phenomenon to explain. Moreover, the phenomenon is interesting precisely because it occurs against a background of much more common genetic divergence, reflecting the expected destablizing impact of genetic redundancies.
In short, the overarching conceptual framework within which the authors are operating is clearly that of descent with modification driven by natural selection. Should an ID advocate wish to take comfort from this article, it strikes me that s/he must ignore the author's own selectionist causal model and follow them in assuming unbroken chains of descent and divergence throughout the history of life on earth. (From the latter it follows that ID advocates who also embrace "sudden emergence" can take no comfort whatever from this work.)
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill | July 22, 2006 10:42 AM
"It is going to be hard to convince me that that relationship arose just by chance."
Nobody said that it did, nobody believes that it would. It arose by modification followed by selection. Chance plays a part, but only a part.
R
Posted by: Rupert | July 22, 2006 10:49 AM
"Actually, this practice needs a name, as it is sort of like quote mining but on a whole different level." -- N.Wells
I nominate "quote expropriation."
Posted by: Txjak | July 22, 2006 10:53 AM
So I guess the smart money is on "Dembski did read the whole article (or most of it) himself, but figures his fan club will not read it or will not understand it."
Posted by: mark | July 22, 2006 11:32 AM
Larry and others with doubts, take heart! I've taken liberty of e-mailing one of the authors of the PNAS article in question (Dr. Pilpel) and I've asked him to comment on the matter, to wit: "....could you please affirm as to whether your research, which seems well-grounded in evolutionary theory, constitutes an endorsement of any particular creationist view or (alternatively) whether the inference made by Dembski is an unwarranted misrepresentation?"
If Dr.Pilpel replies (and I hope he does) I will share his unexpurgated remarks with all. I suspect he will experience some emotion other than satisfaction in reviewing Dembski's gloss on his work.
Scott Hatfield
Posted by: Scott Hatfield | July 22, 2006 12:31 PM
Here's an example of the kinds of posts we can expect from O'Leary on UD: http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1344
Somehow she believes that because penguins (and presumably other species) exhibit cooperative behaviors, that this is evidence for ID and is damning for evolution. I guess if I had my ID explanatory filter installed I too could scale to such heights of imagination!
Posted by: timcol | July 22, 2006 1:03 PM
I kinda like "pubjacking".
Posted by: MisterDNA | July 22, 2006 2:15 PM
Reciprocating Bill said ( July 22, 2006 10:42 AM ) --
As I said, ID does not dispute natural selection. I feel that the paper as a whole is neutral in regard to ID. Dembski's claim that the paper supports ID seems to be based just on the paper's expression "sophisticated design principles," which he highlighted in his quotation. Dembski even claims that the paper's alleged support for ID is "unwitting" -- the title of his article on Uncommon Descent is, " Unwitting Pro-ID Peer-Reviewed Articles on the Increase ."
Mephisto said ( July 22, 2006 09:38 AM ) --
I have no problem with symbiosis because symbiosis is a fact. As for coevolution, I feel that if scientists really understood it they would not believe that it is possible.
Thanks for telling me about "Google Scholar" -- I have been using regular Google, which has turned up very little about coevolution.
Posted by: Larry Fafarman | July 22, 2006 2:16 PM
ID does not dispute natural selection?
So what about IC and CSI, which are its main arguments?
IC stipulate that some structures couldn't have evolved by natural selection, while CSI claims basically the same thing.
Posted by: jeannot | July 22, 2006 2:25 PM
From whatever: "Actually, mturner laughably claims to understand the important conclusions and scientific methods employed in papers that he has never even read."
Yes, I've been at pains to demonstrate that over at ARN. I didn't intend "misread" to mean "read in its entirety and then misconstrue". FWIW, I suspect that Dembski is barely skimming the papers, and certainly not with comprehension. Citing papers with little in the way of comments or analysis is the way lazy & incompetent students try to scrape through seminars and term papers.
"Precognizant misinterpretation" is witty but obscure. "Quote expropriation" misses the point that they are hijacking the entire publication rather than just lifting a sentence out of context. "Dysaboutness" is charming and succinct and could have a future in phrases like "Dembski suffers from dishonesty, incompetence, and terminal dysaboutness", but suggests the incapability of directly addressing a topic, question, or criticism. I'm still fond of "publication piracy", but I could definitely live with "pubjacking". (One word beats two, and its meaning is crystal-clear.) Does anyone else have any other creative alternatives?
Posted by: N.Wells | July 22, 2006 4:24 PM
Something derived from "monday morning quarterbacking" (sorry, non-USAans) would be nice, except that phrase implies that what happened over the weekend was in error, so that's out. Something derived from "freeloading" or "welfare" might work, since if there's one thing conservatives whose holy book mandates they perform charity hate with a passion, it's the recipients of charity. Something from "leeching" would be up to date for bittorrent users, but it still implies that the leech was able to obtain actual nourishment, which is not the case with this sort of shenaniganism.
"Pubjacking" is the best, although I wonder if the abbreviation preserves enough of the meaning to have resonance with non-academics. Could the slightly longer "publication-jacking" still catch on?
Posted by: Andrew Lee | July 22, 2006 5:09 PM
See also these posts by William Dembski at UD:
IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security and How's this for ID research ...
Posted by: steve_h | July 22, 2006 5:11 PM
On Uncommon Descent, there are at least two other occasions of ?selective reading? of publications in the last week or so (I couldn't bear to read more). The first incident makes me think Dembski is willingly misinterpreting the literature, the second makes me think he's clueless.
The evolution of dogs article pulls a line from a UK newspaper "How man?s best friend overcame laws of natural evolution" citing this as evolution natural selection is false! Not only does the article support evolution, but he fails to even mention the primary source:
Bjornerfeldt S, Webster MT, Vila C.
Relaxation of selective constraint on dog mitochondrial DNA following domestication.
Genome Res. 2006 Jun 29
The second is a bit funny. July 14, 2006
Dembski asks:
"Is this an ID article? (July 14 entry)
Emergence of protein fold families through rational design
Feng Ding1, Nikolay V Dokholyan
http://compbiol.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020085.eor
To which the answer is clearly, no. (Third Paragraph!)
"Here, we postulate that subtle structural changes, which appear due to accumulating mutations in the homologous families in a course of evolution, lead to distinct packing of the protein core and, thus, novel compositions of protein core residues. The latter process leads to differentiation into distinct families of homologs and, ultimately, the formation of families of analogs."
Evolution meets structural biology.....
Posted by: Robert C | July 22, 2006 5:12 PM
Oh, examples of this sort of thing are legion -- certainly enough to possess a herd of pigs and drive them off a cliff out of madness.
Keep in mind that publication-jacking is not limited to the merely passive. The infamous Axe paper and the Behe & Snoke paper which Behe admitted under oath has nothing to do with ID and which affirms evolution are also on point.
Posted by: Andrew Lee | July 22, 2006 5:19 PM
jeannot said ( July 22, 2006 02:25 PM ) --
Natural selection is actually part of one of Michael Behe's definitions of irreducible complexity: -- from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity#Definitions By "unselected step," I presume Behe means a step that is unselectable because it is nonviable, detrimental or neutral. Anyway, it seems to me that it is pretty hard to argue with the concept of natural selection, which is often considered to be just another name for "survival of the fittest."Posted by: Larry Fafarman | July 22, 2006 5:25 PM
Thank you. I wonder how Behe measures IC in real biological systems. How does he count the unselectable states since he doesn't know the evolutionary pathway leading to the considered structure? Yet another untestable hypothesis for ID. :/
And NS certainly isn't the "survival of the fittest". No true evolutionary biologist would claim that, and Darwin didn't AFAIK. I'm surprised that, after years of arguing against NS, you haven't got a correct definition.
Natural selection is the spread of an allele in a population because of the higher reproduction rate it gives to its bearers in their environment.
Is it so hard to understand?
Posted by: jeannot | July 22, 2006 6:42 PM
I can see it now. The next time the DI cons a school board into trying to sell ID to school children, and then lies saying they only want to teach the controversy, and then lies again saying the controversy is within evolution knowing it's really only in ID over whether they want to accept or deny common descent, Dembski's got a move that isn't just street theater.
When Kenneth Miller testifies there are is no published ID research, Dembski will get the lawyers doing to cross examination to dump a stack of 58 "Unwitting Pro-ID Peer-Reviewed Articles" in his lap. Yes indeed, the ID clown show will be even more amateur than the last time, with Dembski outdoing Behe in the lameness department.
Posted by: alienward | July 22, 2006 7:38 PM
For ten years the ID advocates have been pushing the Irreducible Complexity as pointing to design. IC is tantamount to lack of redundancy - a redundant system is not IC by definition. Isn't it funny they suddenly started pushing redundancy as a sign of design, not noticing the irreconcilable contradiction between two concepts? I am sure their spinmeisters will come up with convoluted arguments "proving" in the vintage Dembskian manner that a biological system can be both redundant and IC at the same time. In their world everything is possible, even hot ice and tall dwarves.
Posted by: Mark Perakh | July 22, 2006 8:18 PM
If ID wasn't funny, I wouldn't be here.
Posted by: steve s | July 22, 2006 10:41 PM
"It is going to be hard to convince me that that relationship arose just by chance." - Larry Fafferman
Larry,
There was a paper in the journals a number of years ago where a guy had a theory that organisms don't evolve by chance, but by random mutation and natural selection. It was a pretty obscure paper that didn't get much attention, so I understand why you might not have heard of it. I could find that paper for you if you want. I think the guy's name was Dabbin or Darbin or something like that.
Posted by: Chiefley | July 23, 2006 12:00 AM
The next thing to happen is that IDists will cite Systems Biology papers as unwittingly proof of their claims. Such papers will provide them with illustrations much more dynamic compared to the boaring ever so often reproduced figure of a bactrial flagellum and lots of mathmetics to play around with. Until now they seemingly missed this new field of biology. This will change as soon as an abstract or the MESH terms of such papers contain the term "design".
Posted by: sparc | July 23, 2006 1:56 AM
Here's the latest post from Dembski on UD:
Evolutionary Theory and Monty Python�s Black Knight
Just as Monty Python�s Black Knight was whittled from a full human to a stump, so evolutionary theory is finally being whittled to its proper size. Where, in the whittling of the Black Knight, is evolutionary theory (stage I, II, III, IV, or V?):
- What follows are pictures of the Black Knight in Monty Python having his limbs removed.
Now, don't get me wrong, I can find Monty Python very funny, but Dembski's use of it here is not only lame and unfunny, but it is downright peculiar. It's the sort of thing you would expect from a 15-year nerdy kid, but not what I would expect from the bright and intellectual rich person Dembski is supposed to be. And this is not the first time he has made these kinds of posts (look for the Ma and Pa Kettle analogy for an even stranger example). Kind of an interesting insight into how he thinks - considering that he is somewhat a public figure I wonder if he realizes how much he is opening himself to ridicule.
Posted by: timcol | July 23, 2006 2:12 AM
I'm a little curious whether it's necessary to waste so much thought, time and effort on ID folks - preventing them from establishing any influence is a valid reason, but too much analysis makes them feel like relevant scientists, so there could be a line between fighting fire with fire and actually feeding the fire. Effectively, they're an attempt at the 21st century equivalent of the Great Inquisition - what we do not know, we label God's work, and attack any opponents, any reasoning notwithstanding. Their Ph.Ds are meaningless - in the Inquisition times, the folks who ran the whole show had titles and labels defining them as the most educated people of their time, and they knew for a fact that the Earth was flat, happy to stop or kill those who claimed otherwise.
Dembski was almost certainly a marginalized geek as a kid, and is now a bitter old geek with little or no social skills (certainly no humor), seeking attention by making his charlatan claims, and loving the attention obtained through controversy, since he clearly has none based on any scientific contribution.
Says Wikipedia: "He struggled socially at the college level and dropped out at the age of seventeen"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Dembski
All he and his bunch do is proving what CURRENT science cannot prove, to wit:
'In the article, entitled "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories", Dr. Meyer argues that no current materialistic theory of evolution can account for the origin of the information necessary to build novel animal forms.'
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2177
Wow. No mainstream theory of Galilei's time could account for the round Earth. So this current Inquisition, unable to legally threaten, torture and kill people, would kill education instead. Then all "scientists" will be free from having to explore anything, no scientific curiosty required, no need for the courage to question anything, just the old boys' club with all the time in the world to run witchhunts on those who disagree.
But that's all there is to them - social idiots with no creativity and no real scientific drive, just a hateful and vengeful pathetic bunch that deserves no serious discussions to fuel their fire - leave them alone to live on the margin with their "caveman see lightning - caveman not understand - caveman know it must be angry higher being" "science."
Posted by: The Passenger | July 23, 2006 4:51 AM
Mark Perakh said ( July 22, 2006 08:18 PM ) --
I disagree. I feel that adding one redundant part to a system does not make the whole system truly reducible -- for example, having redundant ignition systems does not make an aircraft piston engine a truly reducible system. The engine is reducible only with respect to the ignition systems (and maybe a few other nonessential parts like the alternator -- a typical aircraft piston engine should be able to run indefinitely without an alternator or a battery because the ignition magnetos are not powered by the electrical system).
Also, there are different kinds of redundancy -- there can be redundancy of genes or redundancy of parts or traits.
Also, I don't agree that redundancy -- whether of genes or traits -- necessarily enhances the survivability of a species. The redundancy enhances the survivability of an individual or a small group of individuals but not the species, unless the species population is very low and subject to inbreeding.
Posted by: Larry Fafarman | July 23, 2006 6:31 AM
Also, I don't agree that redundancy -- whether of genes or traits -- necessarily enhances the survivability of a species.
Too bad reality disagrees with you. Reality is really a thorn in your side, isn't it Larry?
Posted by: RealityBytes | July 23, 2006 9:17 AM
Reed Cartwright writes:
True, but the fifth comment below that is:
Posted by: Jon Fleming | July 23, 2006 9:27 AM
RealityBytes said ( July 23, 2006 09:17 AM ) --
Let's use again the example of redundant ignition systems in aircraft. This redundancy enhances the survivability of individual aircraft, but does it really enhance the survivability of aircraft as a species?
Posted by: Larry Fafarman | July 23, 2006 10:53 AM
Steve h:
It's interesting that you should reference the UD post by Dembski on information forensics. My comments under the post got me banned, and all I did in the beginning was ask what the article Dembski linked to had to do with ID. For the hilarious details on the post and comments, go here: The Pee Wee Herman of Information Theory--at it again.
Posted by: Jim Wynne | July 23, 2006 11:31 AM
Larry Fafarman said:
"As I said, ID does not dispute natural selection. I feel that the paper as a whole is neutral in regard to ID. Dembski's claim that the paper supports ID seems to be based just on the paper's expression "sophisticated design principles," which he highlighted in his quotation. "
This isn't about whether the article is supportive of ID, natural selection, or something else. It is about Dempsky's mistaken characterization of the article. Dempsky stated, "This research shows how ID is capable of being applied in biology." This suggests that the authors somehow operated out of an ID driven conceptual framework, research logic (application of the IF, etc.), methodology, etc. But there isn't a shred of any of that in the article, and the authors obviously operate from a naturalistic framework (natural selection, descent with modification). Dempsky's appropriation of the article as an "application of ID in biology" is mistaken, and misleading.
With respect to neutrality vis ID, this understates the disconnection between empirical findings and ID. Because ID makes no testable empirical predictions, and any empirical finding may be assimilated by ID, ALL genuine empirical findings will be "neutral" with respect to ID.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill | July 23, 2006 11:47 AM
Jim Wynne: Yes your ban is there in the first of my two links. However, it's not clear to me if you were banned for asking "What has this to do with ID?" or for your next comment which poked fun at one of the few genuine examples of ID research that we've yet seen, as demonstrated by DaveScot in comment #1 of that post.
Posted by: steve_h | July 23, 2006 12:12 PM
Larry Fafarman writes: "BTW, I never heard the term "quote mining" before I started studying the evolution controversy."
That comment deserves highlighting... Larry must be a pretty young pup. I heard the term before I was ten.
N.Wells:"From whatever: "Actually, mturner laughably claims to understand the important conclusions and scientific methods employed in papers that he has never even read."
Yes, I've been at pains to demonstrate that over at ARN."
Not too hard work, actually. You should trust that most reasonable people ('Joy' excluded) understand what mturner is about.
Posted by: Whatever | July 23, 2006 1:00 PM
Aircraft are not self-replicating organisms. They cannot be a 'species'. That question is extremely stupid.
Posted by: Caledonian | July 23, 2006 1:23 PM
Hey, what do you now about it? You should keep an open mind and consider the evolution of aircrafts alongside their design.
;-)
Posted by: Jeannot | July 23, 2006 1:28 PM
Let's use again the example of redundant ignition systems in aircraft. This redundancy enhances the survivability of individual aircraft, but does it really enhance the survivability of aircraft as a species?
Ah, I see. You have removed the thorn from your side by completely disconnecting yourself from reality. Do you find that helpful?
Posted by: RealityBytes | July 23, 2006 1:39 PM
No questions are stupid... misinformed perhaps.
Self replication is not a fundamental requirement for a species status in biological systems.
I can argue, that since first produced aircraft have co-opted humans to replicate aircraft. The replication machinery has introduced variation into aircraft producing new varieties increasing diversity. This increased diversity has allowed aircraft to fill new aviation niches, passenger, transport, surveillance, military, and acrobatic. This has given rise to a whole industry and aircraft production, pilot certification and aircraft maintenance is overseen by the FAA. The analogy is not perfect since it anthropomorphizes aircraft and variation has been the result of both design and error but the general argument has validity. Aircraft can be thought of as species of viruses infecting human populations.
Posted by: Bruce Thompson | July 23, 2006 2:46 PM
No biologist would deny that living organisms exhibit sophisticated design. There is a huge body of evidence demonstrating that evolutionary mechanisms (and genetic algorithms in general) are capable of producing sophisticated designs. The distinction between "sophisticated" design and "intelligent" design is an important one. For example, the mammalian eye exhibits highly sophisticated design--high performance based upon careful coordination of a large number of finely tuned parts. But it does not exhibit intelligent design, because there are a number of "unintelligent" features which reveal the absence of foresight, a key criterion of intelligence. An intelligent designer would never have run the wiring of a photosensor in front of the photosensitive elements, and if through some oversight he did, he would never punched the wiring through near the center, but rather would have run it through around the periphery. Nevertheless, the the design of the eye is quite sophisticated in how it works around these failures of intelligence.
Posted by: trrll | July 23, 2006 2:59 PM
Larry,
By "unselected step," I presume Behe means a step that is unselectable.
Earth shattering inference indeed!!! Even Behe doesn't know what he is talking about! His first cross examination at Kitzmiller was amusing. So many new interpretations. His writing of a section becomes a critical review and his co-authorship becomes so because of it s possibility at some point in the future! BillD, Wells, Luskin, Meyers etc are all believers in discretion over valour. Actually it is BillD who is playing the Black Knight (let us take the gruesome disfiguration as exaggeration and metaphor) It is indeed a descent without end from one level of silliness to the next.
Posted by: shiva | July 23, 2006 3:18 PM
Whatever said { July 23, 2006 01:00 PM ) --
The Wikipedia article on "quote mining" discusses the term almost entirely in regard to the evolution controversy. Wikipedia says, "The term is particularly used by scientists to denounce proponents of creationism, because creationists present long lists of quotes by scientists allegedly acknowledging their criticisms." So I think that there is a good possibility that people who have not closely followed the evolution controversy have not heard the term. Anti-Darwinists have raised quote mining to an art form -- they have published whole books containing nothing but quote mines. See http://im-from-missouri.blogspot.com/2006/06/quote-mining.html
Caledonian said ( July 23, 2006 01:23 PM ) --
Aircraft are replaced by production instead of reproduction. Big deal.
In an article in Natural History magazine, Michael Behe and Kenneth Miller debate irreducible complexity in terms of a mousetrap -- see http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html Issues sometimes become clearer when discussed in terms of analogies.
Jon Fleming said ( July 23, 2006 09:27 AM ) --
Yes, thanks for pointing that out. I noticed that too and was going to post a correction, but you beat me to it.
I was also surprised that DaveScot said that UD uses IP-address banning -- DaveScot of all people certainly knows the disadvantages of IP-address banning -- one of the problems is that some people can be banned unintentionally because of the sharing of IP addresses.
There are ways of getting around bans, but the problem is that ideas as well as people are banned. Using anonymous proxies, I posted on Panda's Thumb for several months after I was banned there, but finally gave up. The uniformity of opinions posted on Panda's Thumb and Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars is the result of intolerance of differences of opinion.
Stevie Steve's comment on UD, "Did any ID theorists predict this discovery?", sounds innocuous, but it can be interpreted as a taunt. It is like saying, "hey, we thought you ID folks were supposed to have crystal balls. Har, har."
trrll said ( July 23, 2006 02:59 PM ) --
I think that the name "intelligent design" is ill-chosen because of two reasons: (1) the word "design" implies the existence of a supernatural "designer" and (2) a lot of the "design" is obviously unintelligent -- for example, because of poor design, there are many parts of the body that are prone to injury and that heal slowly or not at all. The connotations of the words "intelligent" and "design" expose ID to attack on philosophical -- as opposed to scientific -- grounds.
Posted by: Larry Fafarman | July 23, 2006 5:50 PM
(http:// prefixes have been removed from the URL links to prevent the comment from hanging up on the comment moderation feature)
Whatever said { July 23, 2006 01:00 PM ) --
The Wikipedia article on "quote mining" discusses the term almost entirely in regard to the evolution controversy. Wikipedia says, "The term is particularly used by scientists to denounce proponents of creationism, because creationists present long lists of quotes by scientists allegedly acknowledging their criticisms." So I think that there is a good possibility that people who have not closely followed the evolution controversy have not heard the term. Anti-Darwinists have raised quote mining to an art form -- they have published whole books containing nothing but quote mines. See im-from-missouri.blogspot.com/2006/06/quote-mining.html
Caledonian said ( July 23, 2006 01:23 PM ) --
Aircraft are replaced by production instead of reproduction. Big deal.
In an article in Natural History magazine, Michael Behe and Kenneth Miller debate irreducible complexity in terms of a mousetrap -- see www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html Issues sometimes become clearer when discussed in terms of analogies.
Jon Fleming said ( July 23, 2006 09:27 AM ) --
Yes, thanks for pointing that out. I noticed that too and was going to post a correction, but you beat me to it.
I was also surprised that DaveScot said that UD uses IP-address banning -- DaveScot of all people certainly knows the disadvantages of IP-address banning -- one of the problems is that some people can be banned unintentionally because of the sharing of IP addresses.
There are ways of getting around bans, but the problem is that ideas as well as people are banned. Using anonymous proxies, I posted on Panda's Thumb for several months after I was banned there, but finally gave up. The uniformity of opinions posted on Panda's Thumb and Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars is the result of intolerance of differences of opinion.
Stevie Steve's comment on UD, "Did any ID theorists predict this discovery?", sounds innocuous, but it can be interpreted as a taunt. It is like saying, "hey, we thought you ID folks were supposed to have crystal balls. Har, har."
trrll said ( July 23, 2006 02:59 PM ) --
I think that the name "intelligent design" is ill-chosen because of two reasons: (1) the word "design" implies the existence of a supernatural "designer" and (2) a lot of the "design" is obviously unintelligent -- for example, because of poor design, there are many parts of the body that are prone to injury and that heal slowly or not at all. The connotations of the words "intelligent" and "design" expose ID to attack on philosophical -- as opposed to scientific -- grounds.
Posted by: Larry Fafarman | July 23, 2006 5:56 PM
Jason, the troll you're infected with here is one of the very few people banned from PandasThumb. He's a deranged nut.
Posted by: steve s | July 23, 2006 8:37 PM
Oh you mean Larry, not Michelle Troll. Troll warnings never work, anyway they entertain small children.
Posted by: Bruce Thompson | July 23, 2006 11:41 PM
You are trapped again. This thread drifted away from the paper`s content to semantics. I guess one of the reasons that ID is still alive is due to the usage of terms by Dembski et al. E.g., design implies intelligence anyway and even stupid or bad design require intelligence. Thus intelligent design is just a pleonasm. It does not make sense to discuss if there is a difference between sophisticated and intelligent design if ID propnents mean mere creation.
Posted by: sparc | July 24, 2006 12:30 AM
"I was completely banned from Panda's Thumb and Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars for the same kind of reason. "
Yes La La Larry....you were banned (if you were) because you NEVER answer the question. You always go on and on and rarely are the least bit funny except in a sad way and you never make any sense in a logical way and your self-replicating production line of planes is so far from even a fair picture of what happens with bi0ology I wonder if you are not a mutant-gene human/silicon chip hybrid trying to take over all evolution blogs on the internet..!
Aircraft can be thought of as species of viruses infecting human populations. Posted by: Bruce Thompson | July 23, 2006 02:46 PM
I always thougt that corn was the MOST sucessfull organic life form....having millions of human slaves toiling to produce ever more and more corn...taking over more and more land mass and taking over all aspects of human activity.
Posted by: KFNYC | July 24, 2006 1:03 AM
trrll said ( July 23, 2006 02:59 PM ) --
-- AND --
sparc said ( July 24, 2006 12:30 AM ) --
Regarding the statement that "this thread drifted away from the paper's content to semantics": I think that "semantics" are important here because Dembski highlighted the phrase "sophisticated design principles" in the quote of the paper's abstract. If the abstract had used the phrase "intelligent design principles" instead, I don't think that there would be any disagreement about Dembski's interpretation of the phrase because we all understand what "intelligent design" means. It appears that the problem here is that Darwinists tend to use the word "design" very loosely -- here is what Michael Behe said about their use of the word:
-- from "Whether Intelligent Design is Science -- A Response to the Opinion of the Court in Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District," by Michael Behe, page 10 www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=697
So I think that the term "intelligent" at least serves the useful purpose of distinguishing the beliefs of the ID'ers from the beliefs of the Darwinists in regard to the term "design."
Also, there is the question of what the term "design" covers -- does it cover only systems that appear to be designed because of their great complexity, or can it also cover, say, very simple co-dependent inter-species relationships that supposedly arose from co-evolution? The Darwinists want the term "ID" to cover all criticisms of Darwinism because ID and irreducible complexity were the only concepts that were condemned by name in the Kitzmiller opinion.
As for the content of the paper, all Dembski says about that in his opening post is, "Note that some important principles of evolutionary theory are criticized in the abstract. This research shows how ID is capable of being applied in biology." So Dembski appears to be saying that any argument against evolution theory is an argument in support of ID -- I think that is just "contrived dualism."
KFNYC said ( July 24, 2006 01:03 AM ) --
Kentucky Fried New York Chicken --
Yes, I was banned from those blogs. And since when is never answering a question a banning offense? You are admitting that I was unjustly banned from those two blogs.
Also, I don't dodge questions -- the Darwinists dodge questions.
steve s said ( July 23, 2006 08:37 PM ) --
Being called a "deranged nut" by you is a compliment.
Posted by: Larry Fafarman | July 24, 2006 7:59 AM
Yes, I was banned from those blogs. And since when is never answering a question a banning offense? You are admitting that I was unjustly banned from those two blogs.
Also, I don't dodge questions -- the Darwinists dodge questions.
You are still disconnected from reality. You were banned for breaking the rules. Why do you think rules don't apply to you? Also, since