…and this is a 
Remember that horrible, stupid, no-good article about chickens and eggs, the one that used the identification of a protein important in egg shell formation to claim chickens had to have come before eggs, with no comparative data, no appreciation of the logic of evolutionary theory, and absolutely no respect for the evidence? Yeah, that one. The article that ought to have embarrassed both the journalist and the scientist involved.
Well, somebody liked it. They liked it a lot. Guess who?
He likes it because he thinks it means that chickens couldn't have evolved, that their putative non-chicken ancestors wouldn't have been able to lay eggs, so his god had to have abracadabraed them into existence. Then he makes this prediction:
I wouldn't be surprised if atheist scientists will loudly complain that this study actually supports the creation account in Genesis and then try to attack the research.
No, we're complaining about this study because its interpretation was mangled beyond belief by the reporter and scientist. It says nothing about the ancestors of chickens or their closest relatives, and so can't really come to the conclusion that the protein examined appeared de novo in Gallus gallus. It can't support Genesis. It can't support anything, because it is bad science.
Comments
Posted by: Brian, Defender of Tone Trolls
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July 17, 2010 10:29 AM
That man is a gravity well of idiocy. Stupidity in every known form - written, audio, video, finger painting; falls toward him at the terminal velocity of dumb.
Why do you torture us with it?!
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM, CR
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July 17, 2010 10:33 AM
The story was a verbal mess,
As aimlessly it ambled;
The one thing eggs can tell us, is
That Ken Ham's brains are scrambled.
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake
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July 17, 2010 10:38 AM
Why is an enormous picture of that man plastered on top of the page? He has just the face for radio.
But yeah, the stupid is strong on this one.
Posted by: llewelly
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July 17, 2010 10:38 AM
The reporter will be congratulated. The reporter attracted controversy, which probably generated hits for advertisers. Hooray for balanced reporting!
Posted by: Ben Goren
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July 17, 2010 10:39 AM
Wait a moment…because some reporter fucked up his job even worse than a particular scientist fucked up his…we’re supposed to think that life originated in a magical garden with talking animals and an angry giant?
The dude needs to step away from the crack pipe….
Cheers,
b&
Posted by: Shala
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July 17, 2010 10:44 AM
Green eggs and ham, anyone?
I wonder if Ken's ever been right about anything?
Posted by: ereador
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July 17, 2010 10:53 AM
Ah, my little Gallic chicken, shouldst I cook thee prior to eating? Wait! Wot's this? A tannish ovoid? Methinks I shall cook thee prior to eating....
-- from Balance, in Reporting and Dining (My soon-to-be-foisted woo-Zen book)
Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa)
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July 17, 2010 10:58 AM
(emphasis)So what makes him think that it's his god that did it? Using that fucked up reporting, any other gods could be responsible.
Posted by: Ben Goren
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July 17, 2010 11:00 AM
Shala, I’m sure he’s made many true statements in his life. Of course, half of them begin with, “I feel,” and the other half, “The Bible says,’ so it’s not like any of those truths have had any sort of profundity to them, but still….
Cheers,
b&
Posted by: jay.sweet
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July 17, 2010 11:01 AM
My car requires gasoline to run.
But the gasoline that's in the tank right now, well, I put it there yesterday at the gas station.
But how could I have gotten the car to the gas station in the first place if I didn't already have gas in the tank?
An evolutionist might suggest that, perhaps, I had different gas in my gas tank a few days ago.
Ken Ham, on the other hand, is quite certain that this is proof that the Genesis-based account of how my car got to the gas station must be literally true. God poofed my car over to the Hess. Probably because I prayed enough or something.
Posted by: ereador
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July 17, 2010 11:18 AM
jay.sweet, yes your car (or gas) was clearly divinely inspired. Would that it were true -- a car with an omnipotent, omnipresent fuel source.
Posted by: sjburnt
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July 17, 2010 11:30 AM
I hate to say it, but it has been covered over at Mooneyville, er, Discovery as well: http://news.discovery.com/tech/computer-simulation-cracks-chicken-egg-puzzle.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1
Posted by: Mbee
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July 17, 2010 11:32 AM
Shala, You beat me to the green eggs and ham comment, now I'll have to scramble around for a better yoke.
Posted by: nonsensemachine
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July 17, 2010 11:38 AM
One of the definitions of "opportunist" says "see 'creationist'."
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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July 17, 2010 11:54 AM
Ken Ham is very familiar with the goings on with Chickens and Eggs as much time as he spends on the farm chasing piglets.
Posted by: Anubis Bloodsin the third
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July 17, 2010 12:07 PM
Possibly my google zen is up the proverbial, but...
There appears to be no DR Colin Freeman at Sheffield University Engineering Materials faculty.
There is a MR Colin Freeman, but no Doctorate holder under that name apparently.
Maybe someone with better google woo then I can pinpoint the dude?
The inept declaration leaves me sceptical on the supposed conclusion!
Realising that a protein was involved in shell hardening is not a revelation, which protein was actually responsible maybe was the quest.
But hardly a finding of the 21st century!
And certainty any Dr of any repute would invoke a process of evolutionary pressure for the lodging of the protein coding strand via DNA into the genetic make-up of 'Gallus gallus'
So WTF is this nonsense really about?
'according to the Mail'
Might be a clue, but any reporter there has neither the wit nor the intelligence to conceive such a ridiculous statement,they have limits in their dumbfuckery!
Although let us not underestimate them!
Posted by: MarkNS
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July 17, 2010 12:16 PM
It is beyond doubt that the egg came first. At some point along the evolutionary chain an animal similar enough to today's chicken to be called a chicken by biologists hatched from an egg laid by an animal that was not similar enough to today's chicken to be called a chicken by biologists. Ergo, the egg came first.
I don't exactly know all of the criteria an animal must meet to classify as a chicken but it's clear that at some point a pre-chicken laid an egg out of which sprang a proto-chicken.
Posted by: jordan94oneil
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July 17, 2010 12:22 PM
Nice on Cuttlefish. And I always thought it was the egg (after 8th grade bio class) because the things that laid eggs came before mammals and anything can genetically mutate into something else, and if it's good it will sick. So let's say we have Proto-Chicken. Proto-chicken has lots of eggs, and out of most of Proto-chicken's eggs there are other proto-chickens. Then there's that one special egg which a chicken hatches from. Chickens have some leg up on proto-chickens (maybe proto-chickens were too slow to get away from anything). So then chicken surivives. Chicken survives, so it reproduces, making other chickens, who hatch in eggs.
Posted by: Ed S
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July 17, 2010 12:25 PM
The article by Hamm is priceless. Not only does he distort the chicken and egg account, but he also claims that it demonstrates the irreducible complexity of the egg forming process - thus eggs cannot evolve - and throws as a complete non-sequitur the claim that geneticists "discovered" when they sequenced the human genome that all humans were the same race, which he claims confirms that we all descended from Adam and Eve.
He's as smart as he looks.
Posted by: Anubis Bloodsin the third
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July 17, 2010 12:25 PM
As for Ham bone he needed a new display abomination for his tatty tawdry 'museum' of dumbfuckwittery.
Seems he has found one...no matter what the real story actually is!
Posted by: Andrew T
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July 17, 2010 12:26 PM
That Ken...what a ham!
Posted by: natural cynic
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July 17, 2010 12:38 PM
Not quite. The real argument all of this is about is which came first: the chicken or the chicken egg. It could be that a pre-chicken came from a proto-chicken egg or that a proto-chicken came from a pre-chicken egg. The situation is like who was the first Homo erectus? Was mom a habilis and baby an erectus? It all blends together.
As for Ham - who gives a cluck?
Posted by: JB
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July 17, 2010 12:39 PM
What an absolute heap of steaming crap. MSNBC runs a story grabbed from the Daily Mail website (possibly the finest collection of cleavage and garbage in the internet) apparently quoting the (presumably flippant) comment by an author of a simulation of egg-shell formation processes.
Everyone (including Ken Ham) completely ignores the obvious benefits of this sort of research for developing new materials and carbon sequestration - thereby helping solve a problem that may kill us all in a few year's time. Instead they concentrate on the (I assume) flippant comment of one of the paper's authors, presumably about 0.01% of a telephone conversation between him and the Mail 'journalist'.
Layer upon layer of deliberate misinformation and scientific illiteracy.
This is relevant - if nothing else, read the last line.
Posted by: Alice Bluegown
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July 17, 2010 12:43 PM
Shala @ #6 - I DO NOT LIKE green eggs and Ham!
Mbee @ #13 - don't crack another 'til you see the whites of their eyes...
Posted by: ckitching
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July 17, 2010 12:44 PM
Too bad the question wasn't, "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?" That horrible, stupid, no good article might've provided some insight into that.
Posted by: Scott
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July 17, 2010 12:49 PM
Ugh, this crap was just on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.
Posted by: JB
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July 17, 2010 12:51 PM
#16
The materials publications attributed to him imply that if he isn't a Dr. yet, then he will be soon. Besides, even if he doesn't have a PhD, it hardly means he isn't a smart guy.
It isn't his conclusion, it's what the the Daily Mail thinks their readers want to hear. For most newspapers, it would be insultingly patronising. For Daily Mail readers, it's probably about right.
Posted by: JB
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July 17, 2010 1:04 PM
...and PZ - the scientists did not claim to have identified the protein, that was done some time ago. They did not claim any evolutionary conclusions - according to their press release (I cannot see the paper from home). The worst you can attribute to the scientists is a corny sentence as reported by MSNBC, reporting the Mail, reporting a press release. You are rather scathing considering you are relying on quarternary evidence.
Posted by: Pandora
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July 17, 2010 1:11 PM
Calling Ham stupid would be an insult to stupid people.
Posted by: ralf.mansson
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July 17, 2010 1:15 PM
Dumb, dumber and dumbest. MSNBC, Ken and Ken Ham! Get it? ;-)
Posted by: Opisthokont
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July 17, 2010 1:25 PM
PZ, to call the original research that was spun out of control here "bad science" is, most likely (since I have not read the original paper and know nothing about its authors), gratuitously insulting and irresponsible. In your earlier post you mentioned that they discovered a new signalling molecule in chickens that was used in depositing calcium in eggs -- there is nothing smacking of poor science in that. The faulty evolutionary interpretation of that is independent of the work itself. I see no reason to impugn the researchers in question for anything beyond a poor understanding of how to communicate evolutionary implications of their research, combined with a hype-based public relations strategy. Their science itself probably does not merit any such attack.
Posted by: VegeBrain
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July 17, 2010 1:29 PM
So if Mr. Ken Ham is correct, god created chickens, and the chickens started laying eggs which hatched into more chickens.
Why did god bother with all this extra complication of reproduction? Couldn't god just make more chickens? That would have been far simpler than the designing whole mechanism in the chicken for self replication.
Why make a reproductive system when god can just poof chickens into existence any time he wants?
Posted by: Maslab
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July 17, 2010 1:44 PM
Love how Ham ignores science up until the point that it just might agree with him in some convoluted way, then it's okay!
@Cuttlefish; You never cease to amaze me.
Posted by: RBH
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July 17, 2010 2:32 PM
natural cynic wrote
That's a common creationist canard, as I'm sure natural cynic knows. Speciation is confusing when put in terms of individuals. But evolution is an incremental population process.Consider this: Start with a population of critters and follow that population generation by generation for, say, 100,000 generations. Each generation is of the same species as its parent generation--they could interbreed freely. But then compare the 100,000th generation with the first: They may well be different species! Speciation occurs via incremental shifts in populations through time without any single generation being a different species than its immediate parent generation on any definition of species one might care to use.
Understand that and one is a little closer to understanding how evolution works.
Posted by: RBH
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July 17, 2010 2:59 PM
I should say that's mainly in sexually reproducing animals. Plants not infrequently speciate in a single generation via polyploidy.
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
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July 17, 2010 3:24 PM
"The reporter attracted controversy, which probably generated hits for advertisers. Hooray for balanced reporting!"
Seems to me that the truth is as controversial as anything, if not more so.
Posted by: DLC
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July 17, 2010 7:41 PM
Puercos Dias.
Posted by: jcmartz.myopenid.com
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July 18, 2010 1:00 AM
Now the question is: who came first Ken Ham or Yahweh?
Posted by: monado
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July 18, 2010 1:13 AM
Another point about the research is that calcium carbonate formed inorganically is a sharp-edged crystal. If we can understand how birds lay down smooth eggshell, we might understand better how tetrapods lay down smooth bone and further our medical prowess.
Posted by: monado
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July 18, 2010 1:17 AM
Calcite. Whatever.
The ad at the top of the page says, "I receive Jesus as my Saviour. I want to become a god's children. [linky]"
Interesting that being saved would make you plural and the children of no particular god.
Posted by: timpanogos.wordpress.com
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July 18, 2010 12:52 PM
Duh!
"Ham and eggs. Eggs and Ham."
It's too obvious.
Best,
Ed Darrell
Posted by: jebus-is-my-dog
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July 19, 2010 1:40 PM
Wow. Y'all need to stop with the jokes. They are really fowl........