Thanks to Dave S for letting me know that the transcript of the first part of Barbara Forrest's testimony is now available. You can download it from this page, along with earlier transcripts. Want a good indication of how important her testimony is at this trial? On top of the major freakout going on among the ID crowd to discredit her, look at the size of the transcript. It's 3 times as long as all the other transcripts combined, and it doesn't even include the cross-examination of her by the defense attorneys, just the direct examination by the plaintiffs and all of the arguing over whether the judge should allow her as a witness (which he did).
More like this
Alex has been pondering the nature of non-protein-coding RNAs. So have the boys at Gene Expression (how appropriate).
Well last night I was invited to dine at Clio's with our Seminar Speaker, James Manley and some of the local transcription gurus, Kevin Struhl,
A long time ago, I think on Pharyngula, Richard Dawkins said something that really pissed me off. Its been so long ago I cant find the right comment thread anymore, but Dawkins said something regarding epigenetics along the lines of "Um...
Newest from PLoS Biology:
Raj A, Peskin CS, Tranchina D, Vargas DY, Tyagi S
Stochastic mRNA Synthesis in Mammalian Cells.
PLoS Biol (2006) 4(10): e309
You can see when the hounding over her qualifications ends (you're not a scientist and Dembski has 3 Ph.D.'s!) exactly why they wanted her off. ID and creationism are like hand and glove, and their own words show it. A couple times the judge had to say "You have to do better than that" to Muise's objections.
I love it.
"...there's no way that this court or even us sitting here when she makes a particular claim can parse out what is the basis, the material that she's relying on to make that claim, and those materials are objectionable and undermine the reliability..."
Having often seen the difficulty that supporters of evolution must go through when responding to "the Gish gallop"; I have absolutely no sympathy for Mr. Muise. He will just have to do the hard work of actually being able to knowledgeably respond to her statements. I love the irony.
I have an etext of the transcript on Antievolution.org.