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Corante Blogs examine, through the eyes of leading observers, analysts, thinkers, and doers, critical themes and memes in technology, business, law, science, and culture.
Vin Crosbie, on the challenges, financial and otherwise, that newspaper publishers are facing: "The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn't that your content isn't online or isn't online with multimedia. It's your content. Specifically, it's what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people, who, by the way, have very different individual interests. The problem is the content you're giving them, stupid; not the platform its on."
by Vin Crosbie in Rebuilding Media
There's a problem in the drug industry that people have recognized for some years, but we're not that much closer to dealing with it than we were then. We keep coming up with these technologies and techniques which seem as if they might be able to help us with some of our nastiest problems - I'm talking about genomics in all its guises, and metabolic profiling, and naturally the various high-throughput screening platforms, and others. But whether these are helping or not (and opinions sure do vary), one thing that they all have in common is that they generate enormous heaps of data.
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Now that the Web labor market is saturated and Web design a static profession, it's not surprising that 'user experience' designers and researchers who've spent their careers online are looking for new worlds to conquer. Some are returning to the “old media” as directors and producers. More are now doing offline consulting (service experience design, social policy design, exhibition design, and so on) under the 'user experience' aegis. They argue that the lessons they've learned on the Web can be applied to phenomena in the physical and social worlds. But there are enormous differences...
by Bob Jacobson in Total Experience
Clay Shirky, in deconstructing Second Life hype: "Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn’t, really... I suspect Second Life is largely a 'Try Me' virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use."
by Clay Shirky in Many-to-Many
Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk... Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry... What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not."
by Suw Charman in Strange Attractor
Derek Lowe on the news that the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to Craig Mello and Andrew Fire for their breakthrough work: "RNA interference is probably going to have a long climb before it starts curing many diseases, because many of those problems are even tougher than usual in its case. That doesn't take away from the discovery, though, any more than the complications of off-target effects take away from it when you talk about RNAi's research uses in cell culture. The fact that RNA interference is trickier than it first looked, in vivo or in vitro, is only to be expected. What breakthrough isn't?"
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Andrew Phelps: "Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor..."
From later in the piece: "When I talk about this with people (thus far anyway) I typically get one of two responses, either 'yeah, right on!' or 'hey, it’s war, and war isn’t honorable – grow the hell up'. There is a lot to be said for that argument – but the problem is that war in the real historical world has very different constraints that are utterly absent from fantasized worlds..."
by Andrew Phelps in Got Game
Derek Lowe: "So, you're developing a drug candidate. You've settled on what looks like a good compound - it has the activity you want in your mouse model of the disease, it's not too hard to make, and it's not toxic. Everything looks fine. Except. . .one slight problem. Although the compound has good blood levels in the mouse and in the dog, in rats it's terrible. For some reason, it just doesn't get up there. Probably some foul metabolic pathway peculiar to rats (whose innards are adapted, after all, for dealing with every kind of garbage that comes along). So, is this a problem?.."
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Bob Jacobson, on shopping at his local Albertsons supermarket where he had "one of the worst customer experiences" of his life: "Say what you will about the Safeway chain or the Birkenstock billionaires who charge through the roof for Whole Foods' organic fare, they know how to create shopping environments that create a more pleasurable experience, at its best (as at Whole Foods) quite enjoyable. Even the warehouses like Costco and its smaller counterpart, Smart & Final, do just fine: they have no pretentions, but neither do they dump virtual garbage on the consumer merely to create another trivial revenue stream, all for the sake of promotions in the marketing department..."
by Strange Attractor in Total Experience
Kevin Anderson: "First off, I want to say that I really admire the ambition of the Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free. It is one of the boldest statements made by any media company that participation needs to be central to a radical revamp of traditional content strategies... It is, therfore, not hugely surprising to find that Comment is Free is having a few teething troubles..."
by Kevin Anderson in strange
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Here you will find the latest news from Corante including updates on upcoming events, new initiatives, product and publication launches, and more.
It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen.
I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of doing things to the new. He had his quirks, as we all do, but I greatly valued that he was good-natured, collegial, reliable, quick to adopt, trustworthy, eager to learn, and earnest in his interest in helping others better understand what he wrote about.
He was also, it should be said, a kind and thoughtful soul and it was the rare conversation in which he didn't ask, with sincerity, about what he knew of my life, e.g. our new babe, and we didn't talk as seemingly old friends about our lives and respective paths. I can't say I knew him very well, of course, but in our half-dozen get-togethers over the years and dozens of conversations I got a good sense of the man: he cared about learning and sharing and his bearing was earnest and ego-less and we'll miss him for that and more.
We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society."
Check out the event's website and, if you're interested in attending, be sure to use the code supplied below for a special discount.
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We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so.
The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play."
Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of the day in technology and business. We encourage you to tune in - feel free to comment and even suggest topics and ideas for posts.
The second blog - Mobile Messaging 2.0 - convenes about a dozen top observers of the mobile messaging space for an intense discussion of the industry and where it's headed. Among its contributors are leading commentators, journalists and players in the field - tune in and you'll find them touching on topics such as mobile device design, messaging platforms, market pressures, user-generated content, interface design, and much, much more.
Also, if you visit the site, which is sponsored by Airwide Solutions, this week, you'll find live coverage and commentary from Global Messaging 2007, to which several of our contributors have traveled to hear about the latest developments from a broad spectrum of the industry's players and providers.
Be sure to catch the Office 2.0 Conference and hear from and engage with leading thinkers and doers in this exciting new market. Find out more here and be sure to use the code "GLDRK" for a special discount for Corante readers.
Don't Miss The DrugSafetyHub, a new blog on counterfeit drugs and the evolution of the pharma industry
Last October, word leaked out that something might be seriously amiss with the embryonic stem cell lines approved by President Bush for federally funded research. Today, the full details were published on line in Nature Medicine. It's an important paper, and not only because it points out a grave problem with the current state of stem cell research. It also shows how scientists who do cutting-edge medical research are looking back at two million years of human evolution to make sense of their work. At a time when antievolutionists are trying hard to wedge creationist nonsense into science classrooms, this is something worth bearing in mind.
This new research focuses on the sugar molecules that coat our cells like frosting on a cake. Two of these sugars are common on virutally every mammal. They are abbreviated as Neu5Ac and Neu5Gc. These sugars are clearly essential to survival. When scientists altered the genes of mice so that they couldn't produce them, the mice died. The sugars probably have several vital roles. They probably work as identity badges, judging from the fact that mammal cells also have receptors that can lock onto these particular sugars and only these particular sugars. Cells need to recognize each other for many reasons, such as when they are developing together to form a complex organ like a liver or a brain.
A surprise was in store for scientists who began looking for these two sugars in the human body. They found plenty of Neu5Ac, but they found practically no Neu5Gc. This is no minor difference, abbreviations aside. Neu5Gc is very common in other mammals. In gorillas, our close relatives, it makes up between 20% to 90% of this group of sugars. In us, zip. We are unique, in fact, among mammals for lacking this molecule.
Ajit Varki of UCSD led the research that established that Neu5GC is missing from humans. He decided to figure out how it disappeared. Other mammals make Neu5Gc by tinkering with Neu5Ac. The enzyme that does the actual tinkering is known as CMAH. This enzyme is pretty much identical in mammals ranging from chimpanzees to pigs. In humans, Varki and his colleagues discovered, the gene for CMAH is broken. It produces a stunted version of the enzyme which can't manufacture Neu5Gc, and so our cells end up with none of these sugars on their surfaces.
The CMAH gene is broken the same way in every person that has been studied. That strongly suggests that all living humans inherited the mutation from a common ancestor. Since chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, have a working version of the gene, that ancestor must have lived less than six million years ago. Scientists can even say exactly how the gene mutated. A parasitic stretch of DNA known as an Alu element produced a copy of itself which got randomly inserted in the middle of the CMAH gene.
But Varki didn't stop here. He joined with experts on extracting ancient biomolecules from fossils. They ground up bits of bones of Neanderthals, which split off from the ancestors of living humans about 500,000 years ago. In 2002 they reported that they found Neanderthal Neu5Ac, but no Neu5Gc. Neanderthals probably inherited the same mutation as we carry. Thus, the mutation must have struck hominids before 500,000 years ago.
To narrow their estimate further, the researchers looked closely at the Alu element that had caused the mutation. They compared its sequence to the original version from which it had been copied. They also looked at related versions in other primates. Studies have shown that this parasitic DNA mutates at a relatively steady rate. So by comparing the mutations in the different versions, they could estimate how old the sugar-disrupting mutation was. They came up with 2.7 million years ago, plus or minus 1.1 million years. While this estimate spans a couple million years, it still falls nicely between the range suggested by earlier research.
This study was the first to pinpoint a mutation that produced a signficant biological change in the hominid lineage. Just three years later, we have hundreds to choose from. But the loss of Neu5Gc still remains an important discovery because it is a loss. As I wrote in an earlier post, losing genes may actually be as important to human evolution as gaining new ones. Losing genes can sometimes release us from restraints that prevented our ancestors from exploring new ways of living. Exactly what advantage giving up Neu5Gc provided isn't clear, according to Varki, but he has some suspicions. Parasites have evolved receptors that can grab onto both sugars, an important step in invading a cell. It's possible that losing one of these sugars helped our ancestors become more resistant to some disease.
Varki also points out that the elimination of Neu5Gc might have been particularly important for the hominid brain--which, perhaps not coincidentally--went through a huge expansion roughly around the time that the Neu5Ac mutation occurred. In other animals, Neu5Gc is abundant on the cells of most organs, but exceedingly rare in the brain. It is very peculiar for a gene to be silenced in the brain, which suggests that it might have some sort of harmful effect. Once a mutation knocked out the gene altogether, hominids didn't have to suffer with any Neu5Gc in the brain at all. Perhaps Neu5Gc limited brain expansion in other mammals, but once it was gone from our ancestors, our brains exploded.
This is not merely a just-so story. In Varki's lab, researchers are breeding mice that can't produce Neu5Gc and others that make too much. If Varki is right, the alter mice should wind up with altered brains.
Now for the stem cells.
Varki has been puzzled by the fact that some scientists over the years have reported detecting tiny amounts of Neu5Gc in humans. If, as Varki has found, the genetic machinery for making this sugar is broken beyond repair, how are they getting it? He and his researchers have spent several years attacking the problem. Their experiiments indicate that we pick up the sugars from the foods we eat--in particular beef and other meat from mammals. Our cells absorb the foreign Neu5Gc and stick them on their surfaces, alongside their normal Neu5Ac sugars. It's possible that their similarity fools our cells into making this mistake. This happens only rarely, but often enough that we develop antibodies to Neu5Gc. In other words, our bodies know that Neu5Gc is the enemy.
It occurred to Varki that something similar might be happening in the production of embryonic stem cells. Once these cells are taken from an embryo, scientists traditionally lay them on top of a layer of mouse embryo cells and calf serum, which provide a supply of food for them. This food, it turns out, is loaded with Neu5Gc, and Varki--working with Fred Gage of the Salk Institute--discovered that it ends up on the human stem cells like frosting on a cake. And Varki and Gage found that human antibodies against Neu5Gc readily attack the stem cells.
If these stem cells were put in people, they might well be destroyed by antibodies. And even if they weren't, the foreign Neu5Gc on their surfaces could cause problems. Both Neu5Gc and the normal Neu5Ac help cells recognize each other, which is crucial during development, when cells stick together to form new structures. Confused cells could wind up producing developmental defects.
Now I suppose that opponents of embryonic stem cell research might seize on this research. Most of the embyronic stem cell lines now being studied could never be implanted in people to provide a new supply of neurons or heart tissue, because they'd be attacked as foreign tissue--exactly the sort of trouble that stem cells were supposed to avoid. Better to scrap the whole line of research and just focus on adult stem cells. (This article in Forbes seems to push this line.)
But this doesn't really make sense on strictly scientific grounds. Scientists could just scrap their existing lines of stem cells and start new ones, making sure that they can't take up Neu5Gc. This would be a challenge, but not an impossible one. Varki and Gage suggest feeding stem cells on serum taken from the person who is going to receive them, for example. Since we really don't know whether embryonic or adult stem cells are going to work as cures, why should scientists simply walk away from embryonic stem cells in the face of a challenge?
The irony is that scientists who rely on federal funding have no choice but to walk away. Starting a new stem cell line is expressly verboten under Bush's decree, because it crosses the moral line he has drawn in the sand. Varki and Gage's results will spell certain doom for embryonic stem cell research only if the government wants it to.
I have noticed that members of the Discovery Institute, the headquarters for lobbying for Intelligent Design, are also speaking out against embryonic stem cell research. It will be interesting to see if they try to embrace Gage and Varki's research while still trying to cast doubt on evolution. How on Earth, I wonder, could someone promoting Intellgent Design or Young Earth creationism make sense of these scientific results? How could they explain away so many facts that line up to present us with an evolutionary history taking us down through millions of years, from our common ancestor with other apes, to the first hominids to evolve large brains, to the rise of Neanderthals and our own species, to the latest breakthroughs in medicine? I do try to imagine how they would do this from time to time, but without much luck. I think I'll keep track of real science instead.
Update, Monday January 24, 2005: The paper is not on the Nature Medicine site yet. I will post a good link as soon as one becomes available.
Update, Monday, 3:00 pm: Welcome, citizens of Slashdot and Metafilter. There sure are a lot of you!
Nature Medicine has made the PDF of the Varki paper available for free on their home page. (Scroll all the way down.)
Update, Friday, 5 pm: Here's a follow-up post on why I don't think this proves the handiwork of an Intelligent Designer.
1. christopher on January 23, 2005 10:08 PM writes...
I wonder if anyone has undertaken an earnest study of just the problem Mr. Zimmer postulates- how could flat-earthers possibly believe what they do, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary?
To be more specific, who has studied the anti-rationalist impulse sufficiently to tell us why some h. sapiens simply do not look to rationalism to guide their views?
Great article! One question Carl, you wrote The irony is that scientists who rely on federal funding have no choice but to walk away. Starting a new stem cell line is expressly verboten under Bush's decree, because it crosses the moral line he has drawn in the sand. This confused me. Could a new ESL be started using private funds in the US?
3. Stephen Frug on January 24, 2005 11:12 AM writes...
In answer to Christopher's question, there are lots of reasons that people follow non-rationalist ideals, and you can find them in sources ranging from evolutionary psychology to history to literature. If you're curious, here's a good place to start: Michael Shermer's book Why people believe weird things : pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time.
Give the BushCo injunction against new lines and the amount of money already invested in existing ones, I'd guess that one of the first lines of enquiry to open up as a result of this study will be into ways to rid the cells of acquired antigens.
Could the ES cells be cultured on a human-derived substrate long enough to lose the exogenous sugars? That is, what's the turnover rate for acquired cell surface carbohydrates?
In answer to Sennoma's question, the researchers tried feeding the contaminated stem cells on Neu5Gc-free substrates. While the Neu5Gc was reduced on the stem cells, it still remained pretty high. They say the only real solution is starting from scratch. I wish I could point you to the original article, but it hasn't been posted yet.
In response to Monty--the ability to synthesize vitamin C actually disappeared long before we split off from chimpanzees, as evidence by the fact that other primates also lack the ability.
"Are there really any flat-earthers? I thought the Flat Earth Society was a joke."
Yes, there indeed are, although most that I'm personally aware are part of very closed communites, such as Amnish communities. I saw an interview with a man who left his community. He mentioned something about travelling around the world to his minister, who promptly screamed at him, "The earth is flat! God and the holy book say there are "four corners of the earth" !"
There are even more bizarre beliefs out there. One of my uncles is a big speaker for some of the weirder conspiracy-theory groups out there. (The guy's a nutcase, seriously. And has _lots_ of people that believe his spew.) One of his theories is that the world is indeed round, but that we live on the inside of it. He has an interesting experiment to prove it, as well, although I've never personally bothered to try it. It has to do with laying buoys with vertical flat faces in a straight line on the ocean spread over several miles, and sight them using a telescope. If the earth is convex then, logically, you'd expect to see the edges of the further buoys below the closer ones, but apparantly it's just the opposite. Again, no clue if that's actually true, and even if it is, I'd expect there's a far more rational explanation... but that's the kind of nutcases we have in this world.
This creationist "science" they are trying to get in the classroom is only an American issue, the rest of the world is not burdened by this sad fundamentalism.
If this actually gets into schools, I pity future generations in America.
I have read many articles about the current administration hamstringing scientists and even suppressing research, especially if that research could possibly cast bad light on current policies.
11. Walt Pohl on January 24, 2005 03:33 PM writes...
Wow. The internet, if nothing else, should have taught me that no opinion is so weird that no one actually holds it. (Though I do believe that the Flat Earth Society actually was a joke.)
As a reluctant student of zoology at "the most conservative campus in the nation," I regrettably confirm that there are flat-earthers among us. And oh, they are abundant and ferocious in nature.
One of the favored Kiplingesque tales explaining the loss of ascorbic acid synth concerns a fruit-rich primate diet rendering the metabolic pathway superfluous and expensive. However, when considering this or other just-so stories (as Carl noted with this article and the loss of Neu5Gc), be constantly aware of the dangers of panadaptationism that Gould and Lewontin strongly argued against. It could be, as Crick said, a "frozen accident."
"To be more specific, who has studied the anti-rationalist impulse sufficiently to tell us why some h. sapiens simply do not look to rationalism to guide their views?"
I'd like a study on why some h. sapiens vehemently object to a moral code of ethics...
Quite simple, really, how people who believe intelligent design explain all this:
They've assumed an intelligent designer creating the system. Said designer is usually assumed to know an awful lot (in the rare cases where it isn't omniscient).
Thus, it makes complete and total sense, according to the intelligent crowd's perspective, that the human body wouldn't have any Neu5Gc. If we're assuming it's bad (seems to be the implication of this article), and we assume that there's a designer with large amounts of knowledge, then the designer likely wouldn't include it in the system it's designing.
Why would it not use it in humans, but in all the other mammals? Possibly to differentiate us from the others, at a guess; clearly, if you assume that there was an intelligent designer that structured and implemented the world as we know it, humans are the most impressive piece of work it did, and it might like to set them apart from the others. Or maybe it designed us last, using what it had learned from doing the others first to improve our biological systems.
I know a couple folks who believe the intelligent design thing (not all of them are Christians, by the way; various religions have been getting into it, like Judaism), and this is, I think, how they might explain it. You can apply a pretty similar argument to just about any quirk of biology as far as intelligent design goes, if you feel like it; I've seen them do it.
16. Tim Wright on January 24, 2005 03:42 PM writes...
The inverted earth test using a telescope and two bouys in the ocean would probably work - assuming you're standing up and not on the same level as the bouys. You'll quite simply see over the first bouy.
To really test that hypothesis, you'd need three equally spaced bouys and measure the distance between them. Or line the first two bouys up perfectly and see where the third one is.
It's a pity that people who are likely to believe that the earth is inverted probably don't have the basic geometry skills to prove themselves wrong.
Very interesting article (yes, I am one of those slashdotters). Have there been any research on what effects (short and long term) of a human accumulating the Neu5Gc sugar has? If this sugar is mainly acquired from eating beef and other meat products, maybe the vegetarians were right all along :)
If the body sees the Neu5Gc as the enemy, maybe this can cause premtaure celular breakdown, or some other consequence.
How dare you even suggest that Bush's stance on the killing of babies to cure adults is wrong. These so called scientists are destroying morality in America.
20. Ronan Cunniffe on January 24, 2005 04:27 PM writes...
Re: measuring curvature of Earth.
I can't lay hands on where I read this: that Alfred Russell Wallace (appropriately!) did this demonstration for flat-earthers in 19C. His method was to use bridges over a straight section of canal (i.e. still water is flat wrt. gravity). To each of 2 (3?) bridges, he fixed a pole with a flag on it at a measured height above the water. The second bridge also had a second flag a pre-computed distance below the normal flag. I can't remember if he flagged three bridges and measured from a fourth or flagged two and used a telescope at the same measured height on a third. Either way, the lower flag of the middle bridge was in line with that on the end bridge, as he expected. The response of the flat-earthers? That this was conclusive proof that the Earth was flat, of course!
Haven't posted here before, was trying to sum up my response to the site (been reading a while)... *never* a dull article yet!
Fascinating article. We know that this is all part of the evolution "theory". But my question is, have scientists even begin to consider the slightest possibility that the absence of Neu5Gc in humans could be a fact to prove that the evolution was all cock and bull after all?
22. Nick Lighfoot on January 24, 2005 04:56 PM writes...
After reading the article, the author appears to be trying to make the leap that somehow having a theory about where the differences in sugar content came from actually had an impact on current research. I see no such indication. Scientists know what animals these sugars exist in and how they affect the immune response to these cells without having any idea how the differences came about. The evolutionary theory behind it has no impact on the current stem cell research. In fact, as far as I'm aware research into evolutionary theory has an impact on only one area of science, and that's evolution.
23. SargeZT on January 24, 2005 05:04 PM writes...
Interesting. However, would this have any effect on the current research done? Even assuming that it's been contaminated since the first lines were created, all research has been done in non-hominids (From what I've gathered).
So, given the near-impossible task of creating new lines, the research would still be good, right?
24. Dark Ager on January 24, 2005 05:04 PM writes...
My main problem with evolution is philosophical. If in fact, there is no purpose to us being here, any moral code ceases to have any meaning as well. Most people are not living their lives without any moral code or values. To assume such a position is to place a hitler in the same category as a ghandi. What's the difference if we are all here by accident. And if there is no meaning to the universe then to what extent can we even say there is any meaning in our conversation or language. Thus evolution is a philosophical impossibility.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, even though I have no particular scientific background. I also find it alarming and somewhat discomforting that creationism persists to this day with such zeal.
Has Mr Zimmer considered that this article isn't particularly far removed from that which might be written by an anti-evolutionist, differing only in bias?
I find it alarming that "creationists" are lumped together in the same manner as "evolutionists", rather than keeping an open mind.
A disturbing amount of "evolution theory" is not exactly cast in stone - by pretending that our current understanding is the one right answer, we limit our ability to actually do science. Instead of blindly believing that all elements of "creationist" theory (and all objections raised to "evolutionist" theory) are wrong, simply because they may contradict current theory or because someone doesn't like the messenger.
A good scientist will always keep an eye out for their own biases, to ensure that they aren't getting in the way of their own understanding.
I don't understand how any human being could possibly believe that killing a little clump of 8-64 cells could be considered taking a human life. It has no brain to feel pain. In fact, it's early enough that it could split into two parts and become identical twins, so it'd be a horribly convoluted theological argument that it already has a soul. (If it does, which twin gets it?)
When is Operation Rescue going to start rioting in front of fertility clinics? That's where embryonic stem cells come from, after all, not abortion clinics. In IVF, they extract multiple eggs, fertilize them all, then only implant the two or three that look healthiest. Over half go to waste. Stem cells come from the runners up that would be thrown in the garbage otherwise.
I want to respond to the individual who commented, "If in fact, there is no purpose to us being here, any moral code ceases to have any meaning as well."
I'm sorry, but that has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. "Since nobody put us here, we don't have a purpose, so all the rules are meaningless." What the hell kind of crap is that? I'm serious, I want a response, what kind of crap is that?
Let's generalize it just a little bit more. Since somebody didn't instruct you to do something, it isn't worth doing. Nobody instructed you to breathe, so why keep breathing? I'll tell you why: because it feels good.
And that's the thing about being a moral person: it makes you feel good. Being nice to people and not robbing them blind or killing them in their sleep gives people a good feeling, and that good feeling is the basis of the ultimate moral rule: do unto others as you wish done unto yourself.
This is the catastrophe of the creationist mindset: "if we're wrong, there is no point." bzzt, wrong, you're totally ignoring all of the potential we possess as a race. The proper mindset is "If we're wrong, the point is anything we want it to be." -- It is very similar to an existing human mindset: "Because we can."
Yes, there indeed are, although most that I'm personally aware are part of very closed communites, such as Amnish communities.
Dear Sean: Amish communities aren't closed at all. Having grown up in Western Pennsylvania, I'm proud to explain that this prejudice is quite false. The Amish, Mennonites and Pennsylvania Dutch communities are wonderful, welcoming people which make an active effort to maintain community relations with the outside world. The tendency is taken to an extreme in Amish communities, who are currently engaging in a program of population exchange in order to prevent the problems typically associated with inbreeding.
There are a number of myths surrounding the Amish. They are a sophisticated, urbane people with a strong understanding of sciences, including technology. They maintain telephone systems and electrical systems in the community and modern medical care, in the name of preventing disaster. The Amish do not actually abhor technology as is so commonly believed; they simply believe that God has chosen a certain amount of work for an individual to survive, and that it is inappropriate to use machinery to avoid this work. Tractors are against their beliefs. Contact with the outside world is not.
This creationist "science" they are trying to get in the classroom is only an American issue, the rest of the world is not burdened by this sad fundamentalism.
Horsepuckey. Joel, this sort of xenophobia is drastically inappropriate. There are more than a dozen governments in Africa and another half dozen in Asia currently resisting the donation of AIDS medication because they believe in an analogue to creationism. There are no fewer than four seperate religious groups currently lobbying the British government to remove natural selection (it's not evolution) from the schoolbooks at the moment.
Please sheathe your anti-american rhetoric. It's ugly and disappointing. Don't think that just because you don't know of something occurring outside the borders that it isn't there; given what you just said, I'm willing to go out on a limb and suggest that you can't even name the British prime minister before Tony Blair. Ignorance isn't absence.
If this actually gets into schools, I pity future generations in America.
There are three states in the US which currently state that natural selection is a theory. Before you go trumpeting how awful and bible thumping they are, please remember that they are correct. Not only is natural selection unproven, but there are still significant flaws and significant events in known biohistory which natural selection does not adequately explain.
Do not take this to mean that I am one of the religious types you seem so happy to discard out of hand; even though I defend their right to believe what you discard without contrary evidence, I tend to believe in natural selection because as a computer scientist I have successfully engaged in experiments which at a small scale model a system superficially related to selection. However, the issue in my eyes is akin to Newtonian physics: the beliefs are compelling and drawn from best data, but once you get the faintest clue what you're talking about, you realize that it cannot be a complete model, because some things remain impossible.
Please do not act as if natural selection is fact, or even as if modern scientists take it as fact; it is a rough and at least partially flawed model. Simply because we do not understand a better system modelling does not mean that natural selection is suddenly correct; there was a point at which Gods provided the most accurate model for the behavior of lightning. (Before you fly off the handle, please note that the observational systems for weather developed around beliefs regarding Thor/Yun Tze/Melios/etc predicted lightning quite well; in one sense they were significantly scientific. Just because the underlying principles are wrong doesn't make them any less scientific; remember, we once believed that Radio operated first on the Phlogiston, then the Ether, then atmospheric resonance. In a thousand years, the Ether will probably also seem borderline religious. Gods were the model by which humanity once understood the world. Religion and science are not mutually exclusive.)
I have read many articles about the current administration hamstringing scientists and even suppressing research, especially if that research could possibly cast bad light on current policies.
With the notable exceptions of stem cell research, which may have attached moral issues, and of environmentalist concerns, whose data is suspect not only from the US but also from all other nations, there are no such tendencies. What you have heard is almost certainly well-intentioned false memory. This is why adults provide reference: merely repeating what you heard is not only irresponsible, but can distract from the real issues at hand.
Wow. The internet, if nothing else, should have taught me that no opinion is so weird that no one actually holds it.
May I take it then, Walt, that you have never been to New Jersey?
(Though I do believe that the Flat Earth Society actually was a joke.)
You believe incorrectly.
It could be, as Crick said, a "frozen accident."
Neil, you took the words right out of my mouth. It worries me that science reporters seem unaware of the principle of commuted error running parallel to important adaptation, and the discarding of the concepts of partial adaptation and middle-ground adaptations.
I'd like a study on why some h. sapiens vehemently object to a moral code of ethics...
Retro, you may begin by showing us a code of ethics or a moral system (the two are fundamentally different concerns) on which we may all agree. Once you've achieved what thousands of years of philosophers, leaders, the revered and the moderate have failed to do, perhaps you'd be so good as to solve world hunger and the Clay Institute prizes?
There's no vehement objection to ethics involved in the multiple millenium debate over core ethics. It can be successfully argued that the world's beliefs regarding allowable and appropriate behavior have come together more in the last two hundred years than the rest of our history summed. Please remember that, as humans, we are limited; it is not so simple to say "this is right" as you seem to want it to be. Before you get onto a rant, please find solutions which we may all agree upon to euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment, religious doctrinal law and class/caste/race/gender equianimity.
This is hubris, pure and simple. One cannot unify ethics without being so arrogant as to believe one has the "correct" system in hand. In order to dissolve my claims of speaking above one's ability or position, you need only provide a list of what the rest of the species has been struggling to put together since the dawn of recorded history. You seem like a smart chap; have at it. I'll give you a dollar when you're done.
They've assumed an intelligent designer creating the system.
Nate, you've assumed quite the opposite. One of the easiest ways to shake an atheist grounding themselves in evidence is to remind them that since the birth of the Universe is not understood, the burden of proof is not actually on the religious to find God, but on the scientific to find an alternative.
As Knuth points out, the physical systems we currently believe in can easily be seen as part of the Great and Ineffable Plan. Until you speak directly with the spirit of Nietzsche, please do us the favor of not pretending you are able to disprove God. If you were, which you are not, the Catholic Church would have drowned you by now.
Thus, it makes complete and total sense, according to the intelligent crowd's perspective, that the human body wouldn't have any Neu5Gc.
You have created this statement; nobody said that but you. It is not good argument to fabricate a quote that you expect someone to be willing to say for the purpose of attacking their beliefs; this is a seemingly characteristically unsubtle case of argumentum ad hominem.
If we're assuming it's bad (seems to be the implication of this article)
The article is careful to imply no such thing.
and we assume that there's a designer with large amounts of knowledge, then the designer likely wouldn't include it in the system it's designing.
This doesn't make any sense. We took the combustion engine out of jet planes to make scramjets; does that suddenly make combustion engines a bad idea? What may be good for a design at point A may not be good for a derived design at point B. You would do well to attempt to design something complex, so that you understand this, before again commenting on complex design, much less the proposed actions of a God.
Why would it not use it in humans, but in all the other mammals?
Wouldn't you like to know? Dozens of possible reasons come to mind. Why not try coming up with more than one unsubstantiated explanation before using this utterly groundless speculation to attempt to attack a position which you initially fabricated besides?
clearly, if you assume that there was an intelligent designer that structured and implemented the world as we know it, humans are the most impressive piece of work it did
Yes, because clearly if some being created the universe, then from our perspective of being familiar with an estimated five percent of the species of a single planet, we're the greatest ever, and sliced bread can go hang itself.
Doesn't it embarrass you to speak in this fashion?
Or maybe it designed us last, using what it had learned from doing the others first to improve our biological systems.
We have evidence of species derived from other species more recently than the most recent known hominid development. By any known measure this is demonstrably false.
not all of them are Christians, by the way; various religions have been getting into it, like Judaism
"Getting into it?" It's built right into the manual. Get a clue please.
and this is, I think, how they might explain it.
Making speculative explanations by putting words into someone else's mouth and then attacking those explanations as if they showed the people you're attempting to speak for as ignorant is utterly reprehensible; this sort of behavior will get you flunked out of any logic, philosophy, discriminatory authoring or debate class, and for a damned good reason.
The Jesuits have an impressively enlightened stance on natural selection, and believe that the mechanism both exists and is in operation. Furthermore, the Jesuits believe that Man descended from the Apes. How can that be rationalized with the Bible? It turns out to not be at all difficult; if you'd bother to learn the things you seem to be so happy to trash, you might discover that nearly a quarter of the branches of Christianity, including the Catholic Church, have adopted natural selection as fact under the suggestion that it is part of God's great plan.
Your arguments fall apart under simple scrutiny. Do not comment on the stances of groups until you're at least casually aware of them; this is slander, pure and simple.
The inverted earth test using a telescope and two bouys in the ocean would probably work - assuming you're standing up and not on the same level as the bouys. You'll quite simply see over the first bouy.
Tim, the effect works at equivalent altitudes, too. It's a lensing effect caused by the tiny density differences in atmosphere over great distances.
To really test that hypothesis, you'd need three equally spaced bouys and measure the distance between them. Or line the first two bouys up perfectly and see where the third one is.
The Navy did this not long after GPS went up, as this effect has been known for centuries.
It's a pity that people who are likely to believe that the earth is inverted probably don't have the basic geometry skills to prove themselves wrong.
It's equally a pity to see people lambasting one another's proficiencies when assuming a well-known curiosity of a more complex system fails under basic scrutiny. Try the experiment before assuming an entire society, once populated by tens of thousands of scientifically aware Victorials, hadn't the temerity to even attempt what they'd claimed to see. Even with basic geometry skills in place, this experiment gives exactly the data they suggest; it's a question of misunderstanding why that occurs, not getting false data as you imply.
Guessing to suggest other people didn't even try is disgusting.
Very interesting stuff intead, but world is a big big place so it can't be very hard to do stem cell research outside the bushland.
Tomppa, as the article explains, stem cell research is not illegal in the United States; rather, there is a moratorium on federal funding for agencies which develop new cell lines. To wit, California has invested three billion dollars in funding stem cell research over the next ten years; that sum represents nearly 30% of the current stem cell funding on Earth, private and public combined.
There is nothing at all unethical about apportioning federal funding according to sciences whose moral considerations are settled; it can in fact be argued that this is the only ethical way in which to behave. It is quite trendy to hate Bush for refusing to fund something until people are certain they think it's right, but in fact here he has done the right thing. There are many legitimate reasons to hate the man; use one of those instead. In this case, he did the right thing. The populace of the United States is hotly divided on the topic of stem cell research, and to fund it federally when nearly half of us believe that it's a moral outrage would be irresponsible in the extreme.
Don't get me wrong: I see this as equivalent to the 18th century debate over the morality of autopsy: silly, extreme conservationist and morally impositional. Nonetheless, as the occupant of a nation which is not driven by my personal belief system, I recognize that my government has the responsibility to act with caution and to err on the side of constraint. California had a vote; California believes 85% that stem cells are right. Therefore, California may ethically fund this research. The nation had a vote; the nation only believes at 55%. That is not enough of a majority to act on such a topic.
Bush did the right thing here, for once.
How dare you even suggest that Bush's stance on the killing of babies to cure adults is wrong. These so called scientists are destroying morality in America.
Um. You don't have to kill a baby to scrape the umbilical cord with a knife, captain informed genius. Would that lysol could eliminate you with the rest of the diseases I would be a happier man.
We know that this is all part of the evolution "theory".
The theory is called natural selection. The word "evolution" simply means "progress from an earlier state," and is tautologically provable: to make a move in chess is evolution, for example. However, you are quite correct to point out that natural selection remains a theory, and I might add one with significant flaws.
But my question is, have scientists even begin to consider the slightest possibility that the absence of Neu5Gc in humans could be a fact to prove that the evolution was all cock and bull after all?
I would be interested to discover what path of logic led you to this exposition.
After reading the article, the author appears to be trying to make the leap that somehow having a theory about where the differences in sugar content came from actually had an impact on current research. I see no such indication.
Perhaps you should investigate the research, then. Knowing about sugar development paths has had a major impact on a variety of branches of medicinal research; a visible example regards salts instead, in that Multiple Sclerosis has a new potential genetic therapy treatment underway because the process of pinning branch differentiation allowed us to more quickly track down a set of genes which we currently believe to be the basis of the broken sodium/chlorine exchange paths.
There is a big difference between being unaware of evidence and evidence not being there; when one is unfamiliar with a topic, that difference baloons into a legitimate reason to keep one's mouth shut.
The evolutionary theory behind it has no impact on the current stem cell research.
False. Read a book.
In fact, as far as I'm aware research into evolutionary theory has an impact on only one area of science, and that's evolution.
Doctors, anthropoligists, historians, breeders, genetic therapists, genetic researchers, exterminators, ecologists, and computational biologists would take issue with this statement. Again, please do not confuse ignorance for lack of validity.
Interesting. However, would this have any effect on the current research done? Even assuming that it's been contaminated since the first lines were created, all research has been done in non-hominids (From what I've gathered).
Yes. Most research has been done in mice and pigs whose immune systems have been largely or wholly replaced with human immune systems. This discovery leads to a better understanding of an entire class of rejections which we once believed to be representation of difficulties in the technique, but which we now understand may simply be a question of contaminated tools. By comparison, imagine attempting to work with antibiotics, only to discover that all your telomere protiens had been denatured by heat or acid. Things which should have worked instead failed. This may be no different (it is as yet unclear.)
So, given the near-impossible task of creating new lines
California currently has more than two hundred new lines, and corporate medical research is estimated to have literally thousands. The Bush moratorium just means you can't get federal funding; there is still state, university, private and corporate funding, and biological research is one of the few areas of cutting edge science which can viably be performed on an individual budget. Remember please that two of the seven known antibiotic families were discovered through individual experimentation on individual hardware and budget. Stem cell research just means a person needs access to an umbilical cord, which is legally available with written permission to any random individual at a hospital in all but two states in the nation.
If in fact, there is no purpose to us being here, any moral code ceases to have any meaning as well.
This is a legitimate and defensible viewpoint with which I strongly disagree. Should it be the case that we came from chemistry instead of God, is it suddenly any less wrong to kill another person? (There is of course the question of genetic imperative.)
To assume such a position is to place a hitler in the same category as a ghandi.
Well said.
And if there is no meaning to the universe then to what extent can we even say there is any meaning in our conversation or language.
Isn't the current conversation, including both strong debate and uninformed whackos, evidence enough? Memes are being exchanged, and there's the good chance that one of us will inform another of us, or change another of our minds. To me, that seems like justification on its own: even if God didn't create us, learning gives reason for discussion, in my opinion.
Thus evolution is a philosophical impossibility.
I strongly recommend you read Kuhn; he discusses this topic both from his own and from historic viewpoints at length.
I also find it alarming and somewhat discomforting that creationism persists to this day with such zeal.
Remember please that the basis of the word "zeal" is "zealot," the name of a caste of Jewish holy warriors (in many ways equivalent to Paladins.) The reference here in my opinion is not coincidence: humans have a tendency to keep to their existing beliefs, even when the current evidence shows otherwise.
This isn't actually nessecarily a bad thing. Many times, dead lines of research seemed quite obviously correct, often for more than a hundred years; my earlier examples of the Ether and the Phlogiston persisted with seemingly good data for more than a thousand years, but it turned out that the earlier elemental model of the Greeks which they replaced was quite a bit closer to what we currently believe to be the truth.
In many ways, the philosophy of the Greek Skeptics can be here enlightening. It is not nessecarily bad to stick to one's guns; it's just that we only notice another sticking to their beliefs when our own are in contrast. It might be worthwhile to look up the spotlight fallacy, a special case of biased sample which I believe to be at play here.
Has Mr Zimmer considered that this article isn't particularly far removed from that which might be written by an anti-evolutionist, differing only in bias?
Well put.
I find it alarming that "creationists" are lumped together in the same manner as "evolutionists", rather than keeping an open mind.
There's no such thing as an evolutionist; the term you're looking for is Darwinist (though it ought to be "selectionist,") and in fact it's correct to lump them together, specifically because neither group is keeping an open mind. To wit, this seems to be the position you yourself later take; I just feel it appropriate to contrast the presumption taken. Otherwise, I quite agree with you.
32. khayyam on January 24, 2005 06:54 PM writes...
One request - could we recognize that evolution and survival of the fittest are separate theories? I think some people are criticizing evolution when they mean to be criticizing survival of the fittest. I don’t understand how this article could be construed as disproving evolution. Evolution is perfectly compatible with the basic idea of an intelligent designer – evolution would merely describe the way in which the intelligent designer achieved his ends.
Fascinating article. I'm curious about the idea of parasitic DNA. Is this a common occurance within the human genome?
As far as a lack of philosophical justification for evolution... Wow. There are so many things wrong with the proposition that without an external purpose, evolution can't exist. First off, it begs the question by assuming that there is a purpose to life, and second, it denies individuals the freedom to decide on their own what that purpose is. It denies the idea that humanism can exist secularly, which it clearly can (see Bertrand Russell). It denies personal responsibility for actions to place everything "philosophically" at the feet of God. If the poster is interested, reading Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism" may be a good start for further discussion on this topic.
As for the idea that evolution is a theory, and that by not examining creationist concepts of, well, creation we somehow short-sheet science... That's flawed as well. You might as well be saying arguing that because we're not examining the possibility that we're all elaborate programs in a Matrix simulation, we're not truly pursuing science.
Dealing with meta-issues like whether or not God exists are matters of faith and philosophy. They cannot be argued in a scientific manner with any credibility and are best left to theologians simply because the methods of evaluating claims cannot be placed within a scientific context. Yes, God may have created fossils to fool humans or to give delightful subterranean texture to the earth, but the argument is fundementally unfalsifiable and thus has no place except as a contrast to the scientific method.
(Sorry for the long comment...)
To John Haugeland: Most of that was well-written, and makes me a little sheepish about my apology for going long. One thing on which I would differ to the point of noting is that you say the burden of proof is upon science to disprove God. This is false in two ways.
First off, even if one assumes that God is an abstract and does not adhere to a literalist view of any religious text, the experiments and mathematical formulations that lead us to what we know about the Big Bang are reproducable and verifiable. Anywhere aside from theology, those are the attributes that we use to evaluate the correctness of a theory. That lays the onus on those who believe in things not verifiable to prove the existence of them, not on those who can show their work in experiments or mathematics.
Second, God cannot be proven or disproven. From a scientific view, the only reason to argue against God controlling every single action and reaction in the universe is that it complicates the system needlessly. Aside from that, all of the arguments are philosophical. Science cannot assume the burden of proof because there is no proof to be had.
That is why faith is the fundement upon which belief sits, rather than knowledge.
I believe in God, but find God to be rather irrelevant with regard to experimental results. The morality of the experiments may be another matter.
One request - could we recognize that evolution and survival of the fittest are separate theories?
No, we cannot. Evolution is not a theory at all, and survival of the fittest is a mechanism. Mechanisms are not subject to verification - it is whether those mechanisms are in use which is subject to verification.
Fascinating article. I'm curious about the idea of parasitic DNA. Is this a common occurance within the human genome?
This is under quite a bit of debate at the moment. The current prevailing belief is that yes, this is extremely common, that this represents the bulk of material espoused in codons, and that in fact hemoglobin is an invader.
It denies the idea that humanism can exist secularly, which it clearly can (see Bertrand Russell).
This is more a matter of debate than as you characterize it. A competing viewpoint, particular to the religious, is that life without faith is meaningless despite the meanings that the live attempt to ascribe to life, as they are in defiance of The Real Plan (tm). Be careful not to make assumptions of your own, even when "verified" by philosophers (which would be argumentum ad verecundiam.)
It denies personal responsibility for actions to place everything "philosophically" at the feet of God.
No, no. He's attacking a specific line of thought there. Simply because the absence of holy justification can be used to defy human accountability doesn't mean that every argument involving the reliance on holy justification leads to the removal of human accountability.
As for the idea that evolution is a theory, and that by not examining creationist concepts of, well, creation we somehow short-sheet science... That's flawed as well.
No, it isn't. This is a critical requirement of the scientific method: the refusal to accept as fact something for which one has no evidence. Natural selection is a theory, and it is flawed. Regardless of how one feels about creationism, one cannot state that natural selection is fact; not only do we have no evidence, but we haven't had recorded history long enough to even have compelling examples outside the theoretical progress derived from speculation on the fossil record.
It is most certainly in defiance of proper scientific procedure to treat natural selection as anything but theory, especially in the light that there are numerous known flaws in the principle.
You might as well be saying arguing that because we're not examining the possibility that we're all elaborate programs in a Matrix simulation, we're not truly pursuing science.
The Greeks discarded this argument almost 2500 years ago. You would do well to learn about the Skeptics, who made this same mistake. Science is the observation and deliniation of the percieved; it is explicitly within the experienced world, and by definition cannot access or address theoretical possible alternate worlds.
Besides, this is a flawed analogy. Nobody made the argument that because we're not exploring creationism that suddenly natural selection isn't science. The argument made was that natural selection is a theory rather than a fact. The two are not parallel.
and makes me a little sheepish about my apology for going long
This is a bit like getting into a head-on car wreck with someone and feeling sheepish about scratching their paint.
One thing on which I would differ to the point of noting is that you say the burden of proof is upon science to disprove God.
Feel free to learn to read at any time; I go out of my way to show how this is not true. I do not need for you to explain to me a point I already made, and certainly not with the offensively hollow rhetoric of faith guised as science which follows. Please don't bother to comment on anything else I've said, as it's clear you're reading what you want to see rather than what was actually said.
if one assumes
You've already departed from science in the very first sentence of your commentary on the difference between faith and science. The first and foremost tenet of science is that you are forbidden from making any assumptions, no matter how badly you want for them to make your non-point for you.
the experiments and mathematical formulations that lead us to what we know about the Big Bang are reproducable and verifiable.
What the hell gave you this idea? Not even half of astrophysicists believe in the big bang; the currently popular theories in physics are the N-Brane topological model, the superstring giant entanglement model, and the steady-state prevented redestruction quantum noise model.
Just because you can say something is verifiable and reproducible doesn't mean that it actually is. The big bang has never at any point been believed to be concrete and accurate. There is no point in scientific history at which it was not challenged by at least one compelling counter-theory, and it's beginning to look quite false; there are many parts of current known physics which seem to preclude the Big Bang and the original Great Singularity from having been possible in the first place.
Science commentary generally should be reserved for those with an at least high-school level familiarity with science. The Pennsylvania State physics curriculum formally requires that two current alternatives to the Big Bang be taught, and I suspect it's not alone (I know that both California and New York have similar provisions, but am not familiar with the requirements of states beyond those three.)
Read a book.
Anywhere aside from theology, those are the attributes that we use to evaluate the correctness of a theory.
Nice try. Theology is explicitly devoid of theories. This is a very confused thing to say. "But I was talking about science!" The contrast you drew is faulty, and serves no purpose other than defamation.
That lays the onus on those who believe in things not verifiable to prove the existence of them, not on those who can show their work in experiments or mathematics.
1) That's not how you use the word "onus," which implies a pervasive need to support rhetoric. One uses onus when one believes the arguments in question are delivered already known false; the hypothetical you posit as fact is in no such situation. The word you're looking for is "burden," not "onus." Read a book.
2) Mathematical models are approximations; no mathematical model may ever be proof of a physical system by definition. Read a book.
3) Science currently broadly believes that our understanding of the underlying system of physics is fundamentally flawed, and there are many aberrations in data which support that no current model for physics can be correct. No amount of handwavery about supposed experiments which supposedly prove the Big Bang can change that. Read a book.
From a scientific view, the only reason to argue against God controlling every single action and reaction in the universe is that it complicates the system needlessly.
Apparently you're unaware of the difficulties surrounding the nondeterminism in quantum mechanics, the difficulties surrounding distributed causality trees (you probably call those "quantum universes," given that your scientific degrees seem to come from Star Trek university,) and various issues in ethics regarding willpower and self-motivation.
"God does not play dice." -- Albert Einstein, regarding quantum mechanics
"Determinism doesn't affect science" -- Well meaning yokel on the intarweb, arguing something he doesn't understand
Yes, God may have created fossils to fool humans or to give delightful subterranean texture to the earth, but the argument is fundementally unfalsifiable and thus has no place except as a contrast to the scientific method.
Simply because you do not have faith does not mean that exposition and debate of faith is valueless; the arrogance and dismissal esposed herein are frightening. Many scientists hold anger over how much Good Science (tm) was discarded because the theoretical magnates of the day held no belief that the research was valuable; is it really so hard to believe that you might be making the same mistake?
In fact, there is nothing whatsoever fundamentally "unfalsifiable" (try disprovable) about the proposition that fossils were deposited for our benefit; there are many mechanisms by which background radiation signatures open up observational windows into the timeline, and alternately we might discover that God screwed up and left His fingerprints on a T. Rex skull.
Please, please learn to differentiate between something which is impossible and something you don't know how to do. That you're making all of these sweeping generalizations based on these supposed impossibilities is ignorant in the light that virtually none of them are at all impossible.
There was a time at which to get a message from Marathon to Athens was impossible in under the speed of a human's running. To use that form of "impossible" to define what may in the future be possible is both ignorant and defiant. "Not feasable," sure; feasibility changes.
Just because you don't know how we'll do things in 500 years doesn't mean that your current understanding of what's within our reach is suddenly both correct and complete. Given how many impossible things we've already accomplished, such as heavier than air flight, the control of the forces of lightning, the walking upon of the moon, and the alteration of the behavior of the very Sun itself, I should think that most people in this modern era would have the sense not to attempt to define what is possible.
Unfortunately, they apparently do not.
I'll posit a hypothetical, which I suspect you'll also discard out of hand. Consider the case that there is a God, and furthermore that we at some point find a mechanism by which He acts within the universe. At that point, the debates over creationism are not only no longer academic, but in fact would have been critical to our understanding of the world.
Do not wave your hands at how evil it is for everyone else to ignore other people's beliefs (in science,) and then act as if you're not doing exactly the same thing (with regards to religion.) It is all well and good to observe that with current scientific mechanisms God may neither be proven nor disproven, and it is also important to realize that God cannot be disproven.
This does not mean that God cannot be proven, and for you to suggest so by pretending that the pursuit of theology is valueless is a baring of the deepest and most offensive kind of anti-science. You are participating in the attempt to disbar study based on your own beliefs. You are not a scientist.
Aside from that, all of the arguments are philosophical.
The word you're looking for is "academic." Philosophy is the love of knowledge, as coined by Aristotle, and was originally applied to the fight against theology. For you to suggest that theology is philosophical is diametrically opposed to the definition of the word ; theology is faith, and philosophy seeks to eliminate the reliance on faith.
Science cannot assume the burden of proof because there is no proof to be had.
Oh, horseshit. Explain the universe, bearing in mind that the Big Bang isn't even universally accepted by physicists. Why shouldn't physics bear the same burden of proof as do other systems attempting to explain our existence?
The fundamental basis of science is to support the burden of proof. For you to suggest that it isn't there is nothing better than your assuming faith under the guise of science.
That is why faith is the fundement upon which belief sits, rather than knowledge.
If you genuinely believe that all people base their beliefs on faith rather than knowledge, I pity you. If you believe this at the same time as believing yourself a scientifically oriented individual, I openly revile you.
One request - could we recognize that evolution and survival of the fittest are separate theories?
No, we cannot. Evolution is not a theory at all, and survival of the fittest is a mechanism. Mechanisms are not subject to verification - it is whether those mechanisms are in use which is subject to verification.
Fascinating article. I'm curious about the idea of parasitic DNA. Is this a common occurance within the human genome?
This is under quite a bit of debate at the moment. The current prevailing belief is that yes, this is extremely common, that this represents the bulk of material espoused in codons, and that in fact hemoglobin is an invader.
It denies the idea that humanism can exist secularly, which it clearly can (see Bertrand Russell).
This is more a matter of debate than as you characterize it. A competing viewpoint, particular to the religious, is that life without faith is meaningless despite the meanings that the live attempt to ascribe to life, as they are in defiance of The Real Plan (tm). Be careful not to make assumptions of your own, even when "verified" by philosophers (which would be argumentum ad verecundiam.)
It denies personal responsibility for actions to place everything "philosophically" at the feet of God.
No, no. He's attacking a specific line of thought there. Simply because the absence of holy justification can be used to defy human accountability doesn't mean that every argument involving the reliance on holy justification leads to the removal of human accountability.
As for the idea that evolution is a theory, and that by not examining creationist concepts of, well, creation we somehow short-sheet science... That's flawed as well.
No, it isn't. This is a critical requirement of the scientific method: the refusal to accept as fact something for which one has no evidence. Natural selection is a theory, and it is flawed. Regardless of how one feels about creationism, one cannot state that natural selection is fact; not only do we have no evidence, but we haven't had recorded history long enough to even have compelling examples outside the theoretical progress derived from speculation on the fossil record.
It is most certainly in defiance of proper scientific procedure to treat natural selection as anything but theory, especially in the light that there are numerous known flaws in the principle.
You might as well be saying arguing that because we're not examining the possibility that we're all elaborate programs in a Matrix simulation, we're not truly pursuing science.
The Greeks discarded this argument almost 2500 years ago. You would do well to learn about the Skeptics, who made this same mistake. Science is the observation and deliniation of the percieved; it is explicitly within the experienced world, and by definition cannot access or address theoretical possible alternate worlds.
Besides, this is a flawed analogy. Nobody made the argument that because we're not exploring creationism that suddenly natural selection isn't science. The argument made was that natural selection is a theory rather than a fact. The two are not parallel.
and makes me a little sheepish about my apology for going long
This is a bit like getting into a head-on car wreck with someone and feeling sheepish about scratching their paint.
One thing on which I would differ to the point of noting is that you say the burden of proof is upon science to disprove God.
Feel free to learn to read at any time; I go out of my way to show how this is not true. I do not need for you to explain to me a point I already made, and certainly not with the offensively hollow rhetoric of faith guised as science which follows. Please don't bother to comment on anything else I've said, as it's clear you're reading what you want to see rather than what was actually said.
if one assumes
You've already departed from science in the very first sentence of your commentary on the difference between faith and science. The first and foremost tenet of science is that you are forbidden from making any assumptions, no matter how badly you want for them to make your non-point for you.
the experiments and mathematical formulations that lead us to what we know about the Big Bang are reproducable and verifiable.
What the hell gave you this idea? Not even half of astrophysicists believe in the big bang; the currently popular theories in physics are the N-Brane topological model, the superstring giant entanglement model, and the steady-state prevented redestruction quantum noise model.
Just because you can say something is verifiable and reproducible doesn't mean that it actually is. The big bang has never at any point been believed to be concrete and accurate. There is no point in scientific history at which it was not challenged by at least one compelling counter-theory, and it's beginning to look quite false; there are many parts of current known physics which seem to preclude the Big Bang and the original Great Singularity from having been possible in the first place.
Science commentary generally should be reserved for those with an at least high-school level familiarity with science. The Pennsylvania State physics curriculum formally requires that two current alternatives to the Big Bang be taught, and I suspect it's not alone (I know that both California and New York have similar provisions, but am not familiar with the requirements of states beyond those three.)
Read a book.
Anywhere aside from theology, those are the attributes that we use to evaluate the correctness of a theory.
Nice try. Theology is explicitly devoid of theories. This is a very confused thing to say. "But I was talking about science!" The contrast you drew is faulty, and serves no purpose other than defamation.
That lays the onus on those who believe in things not verifiable to prove the existence of them, not on those who can show their work in experiments or mathematics.
1) That's not how you use the word "onus," which implies a pervasive need to support rhetoric. One uses onus when one believes the arguments in question are delivered already known false; the hypothetical you posit as fact is in no such situation. The word you're looking for is "burden," not "onus." Read a book.
2) Mathematical models are approximations; no mathematical model may ever be proof of a physical system by definition. Read a book.
3) Science currently broadly believes that our understanding of the underlying system of physics is fundamentally flawed, and there are many aberrations in data which support that no current model for physics can be correct. No amount of handwavery about supposed experiments which supposedly prove the Big Bang can change that. Read a book.
From a scientific view, the only reason to argue against God controlling every single action and reaction in the universe is that it complicates the system needlessly.
Apparently you're unaware of the difficulties surrounding the nondeterminism in quantum mechanics, the difficulties surrounding distributed causality trees (you probably call those "quantum universes," given that your scientific degrees seem to come from Star Trek university,) and various issues in ethics regarding willpower and self-motivation.
"God does not play dice." -- Albert Einstein, regarding quantum mechanics
"Determinism doesn't affect science" -- Well meaning yokel on the intarweb, arguing something he doesn't understand
Yes, God may have created fossils to fool humans or to give delightful subterranean texture to the earth, but the argument is fundementally unfalsifiable and thus has no place except as a contrast to the scientific method.
Simply because you do not have faith does not mean that exposition and debate of faith is valueless; the arrogance and dismissal esposed herein are frightening. Many scientists hold anger over how much Good Science (tm) was discarded because the theoretical magnates of the day held no belief that the research was valuable; is it really so hard to believe that you might be making the same mistake?
In fact, there is nothing whatsoever fundamentally "unfalsifiable" (try disprovable) about the proposition that fossils were deposited for our benefit; there are many mechanisms by which background radiation signatures open up observational windows into the timeline, and alternately we might discover that God screwed up and left His fingerprints on a T. Rex skull.
Please, please learn to differentiate between something which is impossible and something you don't know how to do. That you're making all of these sweeping generalizations based on these supposed impossibilities is ignorant in the light that virtually none of them are at all impossible.
There was a time at which to get a message from Marathon to Athens was impossible in under the speed of a human's running. To use that form of "impossible" to define what may in the future be possible is both ignorant and defiant. "Not feasable," sure; feasibility changes.
Just because you don't know how we'll do things in 500 years doesn't mean that your current understanding of what's within our reach is suddenly both correct and complete. Given how many impossible things we've already accomplished, such as heavier than air flight, the control of the forces of lightning, the walking upon of the moon, and the alteration of the behavior of the very Sun itself, I should think that most people in this modern era would have the sense not to attempt to define what is possible.
Unfortunately, they apparently do not.
I'll posit a hypothetical, which I suspect you'll also discard out of hand. Consider the case that there is a God, and furthermore that we at some point find a mechanism by which He acts within the universe. At that point, the debates over creationism are not only no longer academic, but in fact would have been critical to our understanding of the world.
Do not wave your hands at how evil it is for everyone else to ignore other people's beliefs (in science,) and then act as if you're not doing exactly the same thing (with regards to religion.) It is all well and good to observe that with current scientific mechanisms God may neither be proven nor disproven, and it is also important to realize that God cannot be disproven.
This does not mean that God cannot be proven, and for you to suggest so by pretending that the pursuit of theology is valueless is a baring of the deepest and most offensive kind of anti-science. You are participating in the attempt to disbar study based on your own beliefs and predjudices, while claiming evidence which does not exist. You are not a scientist, and should not delude yourself into thinking otherwise.
Aside from that, all of the arguments are philosophical.
The word you're looking for is "academic." Philosophy is the love of knowledge, as coined by Aristotle, and was originally applied to the fight against theology. For you to suggest that theology is philosophical is diametrically opposed to the definition of the word ; theology is faith, and philosophy seeks to eliminate the reliance on faith.
Science cannot assume the burden of proof because there is no proof to be had.
Oh, horseshit. Explain the universe, bearing in mind that the Big Bang isn't even universally accepted by physicists. Why shouldn't physics bear the same burden of proof as do other systems attempting to explain our existence?
The fundamental basis of science is to support the burden of proof. For you to suggest that it isn't there is nothing better than your assuming faith under the guise of science.
That is why faith is the fundement upon which belief sits, rather than knowledge.
If you genuinely believe that all people base their beliefs on faith rather than knowledge, I pity you. If you believe this at the same time as believing yourself a scientifically oriented individual, I openly revile you.
39. corey lawson on January 24, 2005 09:01 PM writes...
Morality and Science...
where are the people crying for the government to stop teaching physical anatomy and conducting autopsies?
Remember, back in the 1600's, there was significant moral outrage regarding the few scientists who cut up human bodies to see what was inside. It wasn't Aristotle's 4 humors. It wasn't really all that different than a cow or goat on the inside. But God forbid that anyone found out you had done something like this.
As far as moral outrage goes, why is it OK to genetically engineer a mouse, or pig or sheep, to have its immune system replaced with a human analogue? On one hand, "we're messing with the mechanisms of life", on the other hand, we're doing it without blinking an eye, but it's ok because it's on other animals?
Knowing what we know is good. Knowing what we don't know is also good. Not knowing what we don't know, and making decisions by thinking we do know, is...bad.
41. Nick Thursby on January 24, 2005 09:58 PM writes...
Regarding the very first comment, why did you use the letter 'h' to denote the word 'homo' for Homo Sapiens?
It would seem that there are many conservative viewpoints being hammered into our heads - maybe enough to make one feel that they can't use the correct scientific term to describe a human.
Just because you are a Homo Sapiens doesn't mean you are gay.
Start acting like a real human and stop being so afraid to say it like it should be. Conflict is part of a dualist reality, but you don't have to bend over and take it where to sun doesn't shine just because you are afraid of offending someone.
Three quick points about the ESC contamination story:
1. The NIH registry contains a number of uncharacterized cell lines grown on human feeder cells. They lack the sugar contamination described in the Nature Medicine study. So do a number of private lines created after the Bush ban on federal funding post Aug. 9, 2001 ESC's. NIH chief Zerhouni has made this point in public forums at various points for the last year.
2. ESC research is at such an infant stage that worrying about the effects of using them in clinical trials is premature to say the least. Researchers have few clues about getting the cells to differentiate into useful tissues. Once they solve that one, they can worry about the feeder cells.
3. No one is going to use these contaminated cells in clinical trials anyway. The whole point of therapeutic cloning is to grow cloned cells of a sick person to use as transplant tissues, not cells borrowed from the NIH registry. Cloned transplant tissues will be grown on human sera feeder cells, no doubt, obviating the Varki et al concern.
Basically, this is an interesting but largely irrelevant result. Everyone has known about the murine feeder cell issue for years, so this report adds little to change the big picture.
43. iridium_ionizer on January 24, 2005 11:14 PM writes...
There are several reasons for fundamentalist Christians disbelief in evolution. I think this is mainly a problem of communication between academia and believers. Believers feel insulted when academia marginalizes them as ignoramuses because they don't believe in evolution. Sure some believers are hard headed, some are poorly educated, and some preachers don't want their congregations getting their truth from (and giving their money to) other sources.
But agnostic and atheist academia should realize that they won't convince any believers that science isn't hogwash if they continue belittling their beliefs. Although one shouldn't taint the scientific method with personal beliefs, faith and scientific rigor can coexist in the same mind.
Instead of attacking in non-scholarly public forums by saying, "this is why those people are stupid" one could say "whether you believe in a higher power or not, this evidence leads us to conclude this is how it happened." It seems that too many remember that "Why Earth happened?" is an implicitly religious question, while "How Earth happened?" is not.
1. christopher on January 23, 2005 10:08 PM writes...
I wonder if anyone has undertaken an earnest study of just the problem Mr. Zimmer postulates- how could flat-earthers possibly believe what they do, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary?
To be more specific, who has studied the anti-rationalist impulse sufficiently to tell us why some h. sapiens simply do not look to rationalism to guide their views?
Permalink to Comment2. ~DS~ on January 24, 2005 05:55 AM writes...
Great article! One question Carl, you wrote The irony is that scientists who rely on federal funding have no choice but to walk away. Starting a new stem cell line is expressly verboten under Bush's decree, because it crosses the moral line he has drawn in the sand. This confused me. Could a new ESL be started using private funds in the US?
Permalink to Comment3. Stephen Frug on January 24, 2005 11:12 AM writes...
In answer to Christopher's question, there are lots of reasons that people follow non-rationalist ideals, and you can find them in sources ranging from evolutionary psychology to history to literature. If you're curious, here's a good place to start: Michael Shermer's book Why people believe weird things : pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time.
Permalink to Comment4. sennoma on January 24, 2005 01:45 PM writes...
Give the BushCo injunction against new lines and the amount of money already invested in existing ones, I'd guess that one of the first lines of enquiry to open up as a result of this study will be into ways to rid the cells of acquired antigens.
Could the ES cells be cultured on a human-derived substrate long enough to lose the exogenous sugars? That is, what's the turnover rate for acquired cell surface carbohydrates?
Permalink to Comment5. Carl Zimmer on January 24, 2005 01:50 PM writes...
In answer to Sennoma's question, the researchers tried feeding the contaminated stem cells on Neu5Gc-free substrates. While the Neu5Gc was reduced on the stem cells, it still remained pretty high. They say the only real solution is starting from scratch. I wish I could point you to the original article, but it hasn't been posted yet.
Permalink to Comment6. Walt Pohl on January 24, 2005 02:10 PM writes...
Are there really any flat-earthers? I thought the Flat Earth Society was a joke.
Permalink to Comment7. Monty Williams on January 24, 2005 03:20 PM writes...
I wonder how this (loss of sugar) might be related to the problem that humans are unique in that we cannot manufacture our own Vitamin C.
Permalink to Commenthttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14703305&dopt=Abstract
8. Carl Zimmer on January 24, 2005 03:24 PM writes...
In response to Monty--the ability to synthesize vitamin C actually disappeared long before we split off from chimpanzees, as evidence by the fact that other primates also lack the ability.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=10572964
Permalink to Comment9. sean on January 24, 2005 03:26 PM writes...
"Are there really any flat-earthers? I thought the Flat Earth Society was a joke."
Yes, there indeed are, although most that I'm personally aware are part of very closed communites, such as Amnish communities. I saw an interview with a man who left his community. He mentioned something about travelling around the world to his minister, who promptly screamed at him, "The earth is flat! God and the holy book say there are "four corners of the earth" !"
There are even more bizarre beliefs out there. One of my uncles is a big speaker for some of the weirder conspiracy-theory groups out there. (The guy's a nutcase, seriously. And has _lots_ of people that believe his spew.) One of his theories is that the world is indeed round, but that we live on the inside of it. He has an interesting experiment to prove it, as well, although I've never personally bothered to try it. It has to do with laying buoys with vertical flat faces in a straight line on the ocean spread over several miles, and sight them using a telescope. If the earth is convex then, logically, you'd expect to see the edges of the further buoys below the closer ones, but apparantly it's just the opposite. Again, no clue if that's actually true, and even if it is, I'd expect there's a far more rational explanation... but that's the kind of nutcases we have in this world.
Permalink to Comment10. Joel De Gan on January 24, 2005 03:29 PM writes...
This creationist "science" they are trying to get in the classroom is only an American issue, the rest of the world is not burdened by this sad fundamentalism.
Permalink to CommentIf this actually gets into schools, I pity future generations in America.
I have read many articles about the current administration hamstringing scientists and even suppressing research, especially if that research could possibly cast bad light on current policies.
11. Walt Pohl on January 24, 2005 03:33 PM writes...
Wow. The internet, if nothing else, should have taught me that no opinion is so weird that no one actually holds it. (Though I do believe that the Flat Earth Society actually was a joke.)
Permalink to Comment12. Neil Aschliman on January 24, 2005 03:34 PM writes...
Hello Carl, big fan of your work.
As a reluctant student of zoology at "the most conservative campus in the nation," I regrettably confirm that there are flat-earthers among us. And oh, they are abundant and ferocious in nature.
One of the favored Kiplingesque tales explaining the loss of ascorbic acid synth concerns a fruit-rich primate diet rendering the metabolic pathway superfluous and expensive. However, when considering this or other just-so stories (as Carl noted with this article and the loss of Neu5Gc), be constantly aware of the dangers of panadaptationism that Gould and Lewontin strongly argued against. It could be, as Crick said, a "frozen accident."
Permalink to Comment13. Retro on January 24, 2005 03:34 PM writes...
"To be more specific, who has studied the anti-rationalist impulse sufficiently to tell us why some h. sapiens simply do not look to rationalism to guide their views?"
I'd like a study on why some h. sapiens vehemently object to a moral code of ethics...
Permalink to Comment14. John Haugeland on January 24, 2005 03:35 PM writes...
A well written article, but for one detail: that's not what Irony means.
Permalink to Comment15. Nate on January 24, 2005 03:40 PM writes...
Quite simple, really, how people who believe intelligent design explain all this:
They've assumed an intelligent designer creating the system. Said designer is usually assumed to know an awful lot (in the rare cases where it isn't omniscient).
Thus, it makes complete and total sense, according to the intelligent crowd's perspective, that the human body wouldn't have any Neu5Gc. If we're assuming it's bad (seems to be the implication of this article), and we assume that there's a designer with large amounts of knowledge, then the designer likely wouldn't include it in the system it's designing.
Why would it not use it in humans, but in all the other mammals? Possibly to differentiate us from the others, at a guess; clearly, if you assume that there was an intelligent designer that structured and implemented the world as we know it, humans are the most impressive piece of work it did, and it might like to set them apart from the others. Or maybe it designed us last, using what it had learned from doing the others first to improve our biological systems.
I know a couple folks who believe the intelligent design thing (not all of them are Christians, by the way; various religions have been getting into it, like Judaism), and this is, I think, how they might explain it. You can apply a pretty similar argument to just about any quirk of biology as far as intelligent design goes, if you feel like it; I've seen them do it.
Permalink to Comment16. Tim Wright on January 24, 2005 03:42 PM writes...
The inverted earth test using a telescope and two bouys in the ocean would probably work - assuming you're standing up and not on the same level as the bouys. You'll quite simply see over the first bouy.
To really test that hypothesis, you'd need three equally spaced bouys and measure the distance between them. Or line the first two bouys up perfectly and see where the third one is.
It's a pity that people who are likely to believe that the earth is inverted probably don't have the basic geometry skills to prove themselves wrong.
Permalink to Comment17. Guillermo Castro on January 24, 2005 03:42 PM writes...
Very interesting article (yes, I am one of those slashdotters). Have there been any research on what effects (short and long term) of a human accumulating the Neu5Gc sugar has? If this sugar is mainly acquired from eating beef and other meat products, maybe the vegetarians were right all along :)
If the body sees the Neu5Gc as the enemy, maybe this can cause premtaure celular breakdown, or some other consequence.
Permalink to Comment18. Tomppa on January 24, 2005 04:08 PM writes...
Very interesting stuff intead, but world is a big big place so it can't be very hard to do stem cell research outside the bushland.
Permalink to Comment19. Lysol on January 24, 2005 04:19 PM writes...
How dare you even suggest that Bush's stance on the killing of babies to cure adults is wrong. These so called scientists are destroying morality in America.
Permalink to Comment20. Ronan Cunniffe on January 24, 2005 04:27 PM writes...
Re: measuring curvature of Earth.
Permalink to CommentI can't lay hands on where I read this: that Alfred Russell Wallace (appropriately!) did this demonstration for flat-earthers in 19C. His method was to use bridges over a straight section of canal (i.e. still water is flat wrt. gravity). To each of 2 (3?) bridges, he fixed a pole with a flag on it at a measured height above the water. The second bridge also had a second flag a pre-computed distance below the normal flag.
I can't remember if he flagged three bridges and measured from a fourth or flagged two and used a telescope at the same measured height on a third. Either way, the lower flag of the middle bridge was in line with that on the end bridge, as he expected.
The response of the flat-earthers? That this was conclusive proof that the Earth was flat, of course!
Haven't posted here before, was trying to sum up my response to the site (been reading a while)... *never* a dull article yet!
RC
21. ST on January 24, 2005 04:37 PM writes...
Fascinating article. We know that this is all part of the evolution "theory". But my question is, have scientists even begin to consider the slightest possibility that the absence of Neu5Gc in humans could be a fact to prove that the evolution was all cock and bull after all?
Permalink to Comment22. Nick Lighfoot on January 24, 2005 04:56 PM writes...
After reading the article, the author appears to be trying to make the leap that somehow having a theory about where the differences in sugar content came from actually had an impact on current research. I see no such indication. Scientists know what animals these sugars exist in and how they affect the immune response to these cells without having any idea how the differences came about. The evolutionary theory behind it has no impact on the current stem cell research. In fact, as far as I'm aware research into evolutionary theory has an impact on only one area of science, and that's evolution.
Permalink to Comment23. SargeZT on January 24, 2005 05:04 PM writes...
Interesting. However, would this have any effect on the current research done? Even assuming that it's been contaminated since the first lines were created, all research has been done in non-hominids (From what I've gathered).
So, given the near-impossible task of creating new lines, the research would still be good, right?
Permalink to Comment24. Dark Ager on January 24, 2005 05:04 PM writes...
My main problem with evolution is philosophical. If in fact, there is no purpose to us being here, any moral code ceases to have any meaning as well. Most people are not living their lives without any moral code or values. To assume such a position is to place a hitler in the same category as a ghandi. What's the difference if we are all here by accident. And if there is no meaning to the universe then to what extent can we even say there is any meaning in our conversation or language. Thus evolution is a philosophical impossibility.
Grace,
Permalink to Comment25. Colin Fuller on January 24, 2005 05:13 PM writes...
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, even though I have no particular scientific background. I also find it alarming and somewhat discomforting that creationism persists to this day with such zeal.
Permalink to Comment26. Matt on January 24, 2005 05:32 PM writes...
Has Mr Zimmer considered that this article isn't particularly far removed from that which might be written by an anti-evolutionist, differing only in bias?
Permalink to Comment27. Anon on January 24, 2005 05:49 PM writes...
I find it alarming that "creationists" are lumped together in the same manner as "evolutionists", rather than keeping an open mind.
A disturbing amount of "evolution theory" is not exactly cast in stone - by pretending that our current understanding is the one right answer, we limit our ability to actually do science. Instead of blindly believing that all elements of "creationist" theory (and all objections raised to "evolutionist" theory) are wrong, simply because they may contradict current theory or because someone doesn't like the messenger.
A good scientist will always keep an eye out for their own biases, to ensure that they aren't getting in the way of their own understanding.
And that doesn't make me a creationist either.
Permalink to Comment28. Autoversicherung on January 24, 2005 05:55 PM writes...
does that mean they will open up the collection again?
Permalink to Comment29. Chronos Tachyon on January 24, 2005 06:08 PM writes...
Re: stem cells = killing babies...
I don't understand how any human being could possibly believe that killing a little clump of 8-64 cells could be considered taking a human life. It has no brain to feel pain. In fact, it's early enough that it could split into two parts and become identical twins, so it'd be a horribly convoluted theological argument that it already has a soul. (If it does, which twin gets it?)
When is Operation Rescue going to start rioting in front of fertility clinics? That's where embryonic stem cells come from, after all, not abortion clinics. In IVF, they extract multiple eggs, fertilize them all, then only implant the two or three that look healthiest. Over half go to waste. Stem cells come from the runners up that would be thrown in the garbage otherwise.
Permalink to Comment30. Jared on January 24, 2005 06:24 PM writes...
I want to respond to the individual who commented, "If in fact, there is no purpose to us being here, any moral code ceases to have any meaning as well."
I'm sorry, but that has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. "Since nobody put us here, we don't have a purpose, so all the rules are meaningless." What the hell kind of crap is that? I'm serious, I want a response, what kind of crap is that?
Let's generalize it just a little bit more. Since somebody didn't instruct you to do something, it isn't worth doing. Nobody instructed you to breathe, so why keep breathing? I'll tell you why: because it feels good.
And that's the thing about being a moral person: it makes you feel good. Being nice to people and not robbing them blind or killing them in their sleep gives people a good feeling, and that good feeling is the basis of the ultimate moral rule: do unto others as you wish done unto yourself.
This is the catastrophe of the creationist mindset: "if we're wrong, there is no point." bzzt, wrong, you're totally ignoring all of the potential we possess as a race. The proper mindset is "If we're wrong, the point is anything we want it to be." -- It is very similar to an existing human mindset: "Because we can."
Permalink to Comment31. John Haugeland, again on January 24, 2005 06:34 PM writes...
Yes, there indeed are, although most that I'm personally aware are part of very closed communites, such as Amnish communities.
Dear Sean: Amish communities aren't closed at all. Having grown up in Western Pennsylvania, I'm proud to explain that this prejudice is quite false. The Amish, Mennonites and Pennsylvania Dutch communities are wonderful, welcoming people which make an active effort to maintain community relations with the outside world. The tendency is taken to an extreme in Amish communities, who are currently engaging in a program of population exchange in order to prevent the problems typically associated with inbreeding.
There are a number of myths surrounding the Amish. They are a sophisticated, urbane people with a strong understanding of sciences, including technology. They maintain telephone systems and electrical systems in the community and modern medical care, in the name of preventing disaster. The Amish do not actually abhor technology as is so commonly believed; they simply believe that God has chosen a certain amount of work for an individual to survive, and that it is inappropriate to use machinery to avoid this work. Tractors are against their beliefs. Contact with the outside world is not.
This creationist "science" they are trying to get in the classroom is only an American issue, the rest of the world is not burdened by this sad fundamentalism.
Horsepuckey. Joel, this sort of xenophobia is drastically inappropriate. There are more than a dozen governments in Africa and another half dozen in Asia currently resisting the donation of AIDS medication because they believe in an analogue to creationism. There are no fewer than four seperate religious groups currently lobbying the British government to remove natural selection (it's not evolution) from the schoolbooks at the moment.
Please sheathe your anti-american rhetoric. It's ugly and disappointing. Don't think that just because you don't know of something occurring outside the borders that it isn't there; given what you just said, I'm willing to go out on a limb and suggest that you can't even name the British prime minister before Tony Blair. Ignorance isn't absence.
If this actually gets into schools, I pity future generations in America.
There are three states in the US which currently state that natural selection is a theory. Before you go trumpeting how awful and bible thumping they are, please remember that they are correct. Not only is natural selection unproven, but there are still significant flaws and significant events in known biohistory which natural selection does not adequately explain.
Do not take this to mean that I am one of the religious types you seem so happy to discard out of hand; even though I defend their right to believe what you discard without contrary evidence, I tend to believe in natural selection because as a computer scientist I have successfully engaged in experiments which at a small scale model a system superficially related to selection. However, the issue in my eyes is akin to Newtonian physics: the beliefs are compelling and drawn from best data, but once you get the faintest clue what you're talking about, you realize that it cannot be a complete model, because some things remain impossible.
Please do not act as if natural selection is fact, or even as if modern scientists take it as fact; it is a rough and at least partially flawed model. Simply because we do not understand a better system modelling does not mean that natural selection is suddenly correct; there was a point at which Gods provided the most accurate model for the behavior of lightning. (Before you fly off the handle, please note that the observational systems for weather developed around beliefs regarding Thor/Yun Tze/Melios/etc predicted lightning quite well; in one sense they were significantly scientific. Just because the underlying principles are wrong doesn't make them any less scientific; remember, we once believed that Radio operated first on the Phlogiston, then the Ether, then atmospheric resonance. In a thousand years, the Ether will probably also seem borderline religious. Gods were the model by which humanity once understood the world. Religion and science are not mutually exclusive.)
I have read many articles about the current administration hamstringing scientists and even suppressing research, especially if that research could possibly cast bad light on current policies.
With the notable exceptions of stem cell research, which may have attached moral issues, and of environmentalist concerns, whose data is suspect not only from the US but also from all other nations, there are no such tendencies. What you have heard is almost certainly well-intentioned false memory. This is why adults provide reference: merely repeating what you heard is not only irresponsible, but can distract from the real issues at hand.
Wow. The internet, if nothing else, should have taught me that no opinion is so weird that no one actually holds it.
May I take it then, Walt, that you have never been to New Jersey?
(Though I do believe that the Flat Earth Society actually was a joke.)
You believe incorrectly.
It could be, as Crick said, a "frozen accident."
Neil, you took the words right out of my mouth. It worries me that science reporters seem unaware of the principle of commuted error running parallel to important adaptation, and the discarding of the concepts of partial adaptation and middle-ground adaptations.
I'd like a study on why some h. sapiens vehemently object to a moral code of ethics...
Retro, you may begin by showing us a code of ethics or a moral system (the two are fundamentally different concerns) on which we may all agree. Once you've achieved what thousands of years of philosophers, leaders, the revered and the moderate have failed to do, perhaps you'd be so good as to solve world hunger and the Clay Institute prizes?
There's no vehement objection to ethics involved in the multiple millenium debate over core ethics. It can be successfully argued that the world's beliefs regarding allowable and appropriate behavior have come together more in the last two hundred years than the rest of our history summed. Please remember that, as humans, we are limited; it is not so simple to say "this is right" as you seem to want it to be. Before you get onto a rant, please find solutions which we may all agree upon to euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment, religious doctrinal law and class/caste/race/gender equianimity.
This is hubris, pure and simple. One cannot unify ethics without being so arrogant as to believe one has the "correct" system in hand. In order to dissolve my claims of speaking above one's ability or position, you need only provide a list of what the rest of the species has been struggling to put together since the dawn of recorded history. You seem like a smart chap; have at it. I'll give you a dollar when you're done.
They've assumed an intelligent designer creating the system.
Nate, you've assumed quite the opposite. One of the easiest ways to shake an atheist grounding themselves in evidence is to remind them that since the birth of the Universe is not understood, the burden of proof is not actually on the religious to find God, but on the scientific to find an alternative.
As Knuth points out, the physical systems we currently believe in can easily be seen as part of the Great and Ineffable Plan. Until you speak directly with the spirit of Nietzsche, please do us the favor of not pretending you are able to disprove God. If you were, which you are not, the Catholic Church would have drowned you by now.
Thus, it makes complete and total sense, according to the intelligent crowd's perspective, that the human body wouldn't have any Neu5Gc.
You have created this statement; nobody said that but you. It is not good argument to fabricate a quote that you expect someone to be willing to say for the purpose of attacking their beliefs; this is a seemingly characteristically unsubtle case of argumentum ad hominem.
If we're assuming it's bad (seems to be the implication of this article)
The article is careful to imply no such thing.
and we assume that there's a designer with large amounts of knowledge, then the designer likely wouldn't include it in the system it's designing.
This doesn't make any sense. We took the combustion engine out of jet planes to make scramjets; does that suddenly make combustion engines a bad idea? What may be good for a design at point A may not be good for a derived design at point B. You would do well to attempt to design something complex, so that you understand this, before again commenting on complex design, much less the proposed actions of a God.
Why would it not use it in humans, but in all the other mammals?
Wouldn't you like to know? Dozens of possible reasons come to mind. Why not try coming up with more than one unsubstantiated explanation before using this utterly groundless speculation to attempt to attack a position which you initially fabricated besides?
clearly, if you assume that there was an intelligent designer that structured and implemented the world as we know it, humans are the most impressive piece of work it did
Yes, because clearly if some being created the universe, then from our perspective of being familiar with an estimated five percent of the species of a single planet, we're the greatest ever, and sliced bread can go hang itself.
Doesn't it embarrass you to speak in this fashion?
Or maybe it designed us last, using what it had learned from doing the others first to improve our biological systems.
We have evidence of species derived from other species more recently than the most recent known hominid development. By any known measure this is demonstrably false.
not all of them are Christians, by the way; various religions have been getting into it, like Judaism
"Getting into it?" It's built right into the manual. Get a clue please.
and this is, I think, how they might explain it.
Making speculative explanations by putting words into someone else's mouth and then attacking those explanations as if they showed the people you're attempting to speak for as ignorant is utterly reprehensible; this sort of behavior will get you flunked out of any logic, philosophy, discriminatory authoring or debate class, and for a damned good reason.
The Jesuits have an impressively enlightened stance on natural selection, and believe that the mechanism both exists and is in operation. Furthermore, the Jesuits believe that Man descended from the Apes. How can that be rationalized with the Bible? It turns out to not be at all difficult; if you'd bother to learn the things you seem to be so happy to trash, you might discover that nearly a quarter of the branches of Christianity, including the Catholic Church, have adopted natural selection as fact under the suggestion that it is part of God's great plan.
Your arguments fall apart under simple scrutiny. Do not comment on the stances of groups until you're at least casually aware of them; this is slander, pure and simple.
The inverted earth test using a telescope and two bouys in the ocean would probably work - assuming you're standing up and not on the same level as the bouys. You'll quite simply see over the first bouy.
Tim, the effect works at equivalent altitudes, too. It's a lensing effect caused by the tiny density differences in atmosphere over great distances.
To really test that hypothesis, you'd need three equally spaced bouys and measure the distance between them. Or line the first two bouys up perfectly and see where the third one is.
The Navy did this not long after GPS went up, as this effect has been known for centuries.
It's a pity that people who are likely to believe that the earth is inverted probably don't have the basic geometry skills to prove themselves wrong.
It's equally a pity to see people lambasting one another's proficiencies when assuming a well-known curiosity of a more complex system fails under basic scrutiny. Try the experiment before assuming an entire society, once populated by tens of thousands of scientifically aware Victorials, hadn't the temerity to even attempt what they'd claimed to see. Even with basic geometry skills in place, this experiment gives exactly the data they suggest; it's a question of misunderstanding why that occurs, not getting false data as you imply.
Guessing to suggest other people didn't even try is disgusting.
Very interesting stuff intead, but world is a big big place so it can't be very hard to do stem cell research outside the bushland.
Tomppa, as the article explains, stem cell research is not illegal in the United States; rather, there is a moratorium on federal funding for agencies which develop new cell lines. To wit, California has invested three billion dollars in funding stem cell research over the next ten years; that sum represents nearly 30% of the current stem cell funding on Earth, private and public combined.
There is nothing at all unethical about apportioning federal funding according to sciences whose moral considerations are settled; it can in fact be argued that this is the only ethical way in which to behave. It is quite trendy to hate Bush for refusing to fund something until people are certain they think it's right, but in fact here he has done the right thing. There are many legitimate reasons to hate the man; use one of those instead. In this case, he did the right thing. The populace of the United States is hotly divided on the topic of stem cell research, and to fund it federally when nearly half of us believe that it's a moral outrage would be irresponsible in the extreme.
Don't get me wrong: I see this as equivalent to the 18th century debate over the morality of autopsy: silly, extreme conservationist and morally impositional. Nonetheless, as the occupant of a nation which is not driven by my personal belief system, I recognize that my government has the responsibility to act with caution and to err on the side of constraint. California had a vote; California believes 85% that stem cells are right. Therefore, California may ethically fund this research. The nation had a vote; the nation only believes at 55%. That is not enough of a majority to act on such a topic.
Bush did the right thing here, for once.
How dare you even suggest that Bush's stance on the killing of babies to cure adults is wrong. These so called scientists are destroying morality in America.
Um. You don't have to kill a baby to scrape the umbilical cord with a knife, captain informed genius. Would that lysol could eliminate you with the rest of the diseases I would be a happier man.
We know that this is all part of the evolution "theory".
The theory is called natural selection. The word "evolution" simply means "progress from an earlier state," and is tautologically provable: to make a move in chess is evolution, for example. However, you are quite correct to point out that natural selection remains a theory, and I might add one with significant flaws.
But my question is, have scientists even begin to consider the slightest possibility that the absence of Neu5Gc in humans could be a fact to prove that the evolution was all cock and bull after all?
I would be interested to discover what path of logic led you to this exposition.
After reading the article, the author appears to be trying to make the leap that somehow having a theory about where the differences in sugar content came from actually had an impact on current research. I see no such indication.
Perhaps you should investigate the research, then. Knowing about sugar development paths has had a major impact on a variety of branches of medicinal research; a visible example regards salts instead, in that Multiple Sclerosis has a new potential genetic therapy treatment underway because the process of pinning branch differentiation allowed us to more quickly track down a set of genes which we currently believe to be the basis of the broken sodium/chlorine exchange paths.
There is a big difference between being unaware of evidence and evidence not being there; when one is unfamiliar with a topic, that difference baloons into a legitimate reason to keep one's mouth shut.
The evolutionary theory behind it has no impact on the current stem cell research.
False. Read a book.
In fact, as far as I'm aware research into evolutionary theory has an impact on only one area of science, and that's evolution.
Doctors, anthropoligists, historians, breeders, genetic therapists, genetic researchers, exterminators, ecologists, and computational biologists would take issue with this statement. Again, please do not confuse ignorance for lack of validity.
Interesting. However, would this have any effect on the current research done? Even assuming that it's been contaminated since the first lines were created, all research has been done in non-hominids (From what I've gathered).
Yes. Most research has been done in mice and pigs whose immune systems have been largely or wholly replaced with human immune systems. This discovery leads to a better understanding of an entire class of rejections which we once believed to be representation of difficulties in the technique, but which we now understand may simply be a question of contaminated tools. By comparison, imagine attempting to work with antibiotics, only to discover that all your telomere protiens had been denatured by heat or acid. Things which should have worked instead failed. This may be no different (it is as yet unclear.)
So, given the near-impossible task of creating new lines
California currently has more than two hundred new lines, and corporate medical research is estimated to have literally thousands. The Bush moratorium just means you can't get federal funding; there is still state, university, private and corporate funding, and biological research is one of the few areas of cutting edge science which can viably be performed on an individual budget. Remember please that two of the seven known antibiotic families were discovered through individual experimentation on individual hardware and budget. Stem cell research just means a person needs access to an umbilical cord, which is legally available with written permission to any random individual at a hospital in all but two states in the nation.
If in fact, there is no purpose to us being here, any moral code ceases to have any meaning as well.
This is a legitimate and defensible viewpoint with which I strongly disagree. Should it be the case that we came from chemistry instead of God, is it suddenly any less wrong to kill another person? (There is of course the question of genetic imperative.)
To assume such a position is to place a hitler in the same category as a ghandi.
Well said.
And if there is no meaning to the universe then to what extent can we even say there is any meaning in our conversation or language.
Isn't the current conversation, including both strong debate and uninformed whackos, evidence enough? Memes are being exchanged, and there's the good chance that one of us will inform another of us, or change another of our minds. To me, that seems like justification on its own: even if God didn't create us, learning gives reason for discussion, in my opinion.
Thus evolution is a philosophical impossibility.
I strongly recommend you read Kuhn; he discusses this topic both from his own and from historic viewpoints at length.
I also find it alarming and somewhat discomforting that creationism persists to this day with such zeal.
Remember please that the basis of the word "zeal" is "zealot," the name of a caste of Jewish holy warriors (in many ways equivalent to Paladins.) The reference here in my opinion is not coincidence: humans have a tendency to keep to their existing beliefs, even when the current evidence shows otherwise.
This isn't actually nessecarily a bad thing. Many times, dead lines of research seemed quite obviously correct, often for more than a hundred years; my earlier examples of the Ether and the Phlogiston persisted with seemingly good data for more than a thousand years, but it turned out that the earlier elemental model of the Greeks which they replaced was quite a bit closer to what we currently believe to be the truth.
In many ways, the philosophy of the Greek Skeptics can be here enlightening. It is not nessecarily bad to stick to one's guns; it's just that we only notice another sticking to their beliefs when our own are in contrast. It might be worthwhile to look up the spotlight fallacy, a special case of biased sample which I believe to be at play here.
Has Mr Zimmer considered that this article isn't particularly far removed from that which might be written by an anti-evolutionist, differing only in bias?
Well put.
I find it alarming that "creationists" are lumped together in the same manner as "evolutionists", rather than keeping an open mind.
There's no such thing as an evolutionist; the term you're looking for is Darwinist (though it ought to be "selectionist,") and in fact it's correct to lump them together, specifically because neither group is keeping an open mind. To wit, this seems to be the position you yourself later take; I just feel it appropriate to contrast the presumption taken. Otherwise, I quite agree with you.
Permalink to Comment32. khayyam on January 24, 2005 06:54 PM writes...
One request - could we recognize that evolution and survival of the fittest are separate theories? I think some people are criticizing evolution when they mean to be criticizing survival of the fittest. I don’t understand how this article could be construed as disproving evolution. Evolution is perfectly compatible with the basic idea of an intelligent designer – evolution would merely describe the way in which the intelligent designer achieved his ends.
Permalink to Comment33. js on January 24, 2005 06:58 PM writes...
Fascinating article. I'm curious about the idea of parasitic DNA. Is this a common occurance within the human genome?
As far as a lack of philosophical justification for evolution... Wow. There are so many things wrong with the proposition that without an external purpose, evolution can't exist. First off, it begs the question by assuming that there is a purpose to life, and second, it denies individuals the freedom to decide on their own what that purpose is. It denies the idea that humanism can exist secularly, which it clearly can (see Bertrand Russell). It denies personal responsibility for actions to place everything "philosophically" at the feet of God. If the poster is interested, reading Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism" may be a good start for further discussion on this topic.
As for the idea that evolution is a theory, and that by not examining creationist concepts of, well, creation we somehow short-sheet science... That's flawed as well. You might as well be saying arguing that because we're not examining the possibility that we're all elaborate programs in a Matrix simulation, we're not truly pursuing science.
Permalink to CommentDealing with meta-issues like whether or not God exists are matters of faith and philosophy. They cannot be argued in a scientific manner with any credibility and are best left to theologians simply because the methods of evaluating claims cannot be placed within a scientific context. Yes, God may have created fossils to fool humans or to give delightful subterranean texture to the earth, but the argument is fundementally unfalsifiable and thus has no place except as a contrast to the scientific method.
(Sorry for the long comment...)
34. js on January 24, 2005 07:18 PM writes...
To John Haugeland: Most of that was well-written, and makes me a little sheepish about my apology for going long. One thing on which I would differ to the point of noting is that you say the burden of proof is upon science to disprove God. This is false in two ways.
Permalink to CommentFirst off, even if one assumes that God is an abstract and does not adhere to a literalist view of any religious text, the experiments and mathematical formulations that lead us to what we know about the Big Bang are reproducable and verifiable. Anywhere aside from theology, those are the attributes that we use to evaluate the correctness of a theory. That lays the onus on those who believe in things not verifiable to prove the existence of them, not on those who can show their work in experiments or mathematics.
Second, God cannot be proven or disproven. From a scientific view, the only reason to argue against God controlling every single action and reaction in the universe is that it complicates the system needlessly. Aside from that, all of the arguments are philosophical. Science cannot assume the burden of proof because there is no proof to be had.
That is why faith is the fundement upon which belief sits, rather than knowledge.
I believe in God, but find God to be rather irrelevant with regard to experimental results. The morality of the experiments may be another matter.
35. John Haugeland, yet again on January 24, 2005 08:07 PM writes...
One request - could we recognize that evolution and survival of the fittest are separate theories?
No, we cannot. Evolution is not a theory at all, and survival of the fittest is a mechanism. Mechanisms are not subject to verification - it is whether those mechanisms are in use which is subject to verification.
Fascinating article. I'm curious about the idea of parasitic DNA. Is this a common occurance within the human genome?
This is under quite a bit of debate at the moment. The current prevailing belief is that yes, this is extremely common, that this represents the bulk of material espoused in codons, and that in fact hemoglobin is an invader.
It denies the idea that humanism can exist secularly, which it clearly can (see Bertrand Russell).
This is more a matter of debate than as you characterize it. A competing viewpoint, particular to the religious, is that life without faith is meaningless despite the meanings that the live attempt to ascribe to life, as they are in defiance of The Real Plan (tm). Be careful not to make assumptions of your own, even when "verified" by philosophers (which would be argumentum ad verecundiam.)
It denies personal responsibility for actions to place everything "philosophically" at the feet of God.
No, no. He's attacking a specific line of thought there. Simply because the absence of holy justification can be used to defy human accountability doesn't mean that every argument involving the reliance on holy justification leads to the removal of human accountability.
As for the idea that evolution is a theory, and that by not examining creationist concepts of, well, creation we somehow short-sheet science... That's flawed as well.
No, it isn't. This is a critical requirement of the scientific method: the refusal to accept as fact something for which one has no evidence. Natural selection is a theory, and it is flawed. Regardless of how one feels about creationism, one cannot state that natural selection is fact; not only do we have no evidence, but we haven't had recorded history long enough to even have compelling examples outside the theoretical progress derived from speculation on the fossil record.
It is most certainly in defiance of proper scientific procedure to treat natural selection as anything but theory, especially in the light that there are numerous known flaws in the principle.
You might as well be saying arguing that because we're not examining the possibility that we're all elaborate programs in a Matrix simulation, we're not truly pursuing science.
The Greeks discarded this argument almost 2500 years ago. You would do well to learn about the Skeptics, who made this same mistake. Science is the observation and deliniation of the percieved; it is explicitly within the experienced world, and by definition cannot access or address theoretical possible alternate worlds.
Besides, this is a flawed analogy. Nobody made the argument that because we're not exploring creationism that suddenly natural selection isn't science. The argument made was that natural selection is a theory rather than a fact. The two are not parallel.
and makes me a little sheepish about my apology for going long
This is a bit like getting into a head-on car wreck with someone and feeling sheepish about scratching their paint.
One thing on which I would differ to the point of noting is that you say the burden of proof is upon science to disprove God.
Feel free to learn to read at any time; I go out of my way to show how this is not true. I do not need for you to explain to me a point I already made, and certainly not with the offensively hollow rhetoric of faith guised as science which follows. Please don't bother to comment on anything else I've said, as it's clear you're reading what you want to see rather than what was actually said.
if one assumes
You've already departed from science in the very first sentence of your commentary on the difference between faith and science. The first and foremost tenet of science is that you are forbidden from making any assumptions, no matter how badly you want for them to make your non-point for you.
the experiments and mathematical formulations that lead us to what we know about the Big Bang are reproducable and verifiable.
What the hell gave you this idea? Not even half of astrophysicists believe in the big bang; the currently popular theories in physics are the N-Brane topological model, the superstring giant entanglement model, and the steady-state prevented redestruction quantum noise model.
Just because you can say something is verifiable and reproducible doesn't mean that it actually is. The big bang has never at any point been believed to be concrete and accurate. There is no point in scientific history at which it was not challenged by at least one compelling counter-theory, and it's beginning to look quite false; there are many parts of current known physics which seem to preclude the Big Bang and the original Great Singularity from having been possible in the first place.
Science commentary generally should be reserved for those with an at least high-school level familiarity with science. The Pennsylvania State physics curriculum formally requires that two current alternatives to the Big Bang be taught, and I suspect it's not alone (I know that both California and New York have similar provisions, but am not familiar with the requirements of states beyond those three.)
Read a book.
Anywhere aside from theology, those are the attributes that we use to evaluate the correctness of a theory.
Nice try. Theology is explicitly devoid of theories. This is a very confused thing to say. "But I was talking about science!" The contrast you drew is faulty, and serves no purpose other than defamation.
That lays the onus on those who believe in things not verifiable to prove the existence of them, not on those who can show their work in experiments or mathematics.
1) That's not how you use the word "onus," which implies a pervasive need to support rhetoric. One uses onus when one believes the arguments in question are delivered already known false; the hypothetical you posit as fact is in no such situation. The word you're looking for is "burden," not "onus." Read a book.
2) Mathematical models are approximations; no mathematical model may ever be proof of a physical system by definition. Read a book.
3) Science currently broadly believes that our understanding of the underlying system of physics is fundamentally flawed, and there are many aberrations in data which support that no current model for physics can be correct. No amount of handwavery about supposed experiments which supposedly prove the Big Bang can change that. Read a book.
From a scientific view, the only reason to argue against God controlling every single action and reaction in the universe is that it complicates the system needlessly.
Apparently you're unaware of the difficulties surrounding the nondeterminism in quantum mechanics, the difficulties surrounding distributed causality trees (you probably call those "quantum universes," given that your scientific degrees seem to come from Star Trek university,) and various issues in ethics regarding willpower and self-motivation.
"God does not play dice." -- Albert Einstein, regarding quantum mechanics
"Determinism doesn't affect science" -- Well meaning yokel on the intarweb, arguing something he doesn't understand
Yes, God may have created fossils to fool humans or to give delightful subterranean texture to the earth, but the argument is fundementally unfalsifiable and thus has no place except as a contrast to the scientific method.
Simply because you do not have faith does not mean that exposition and debate of faith is valueless; the arrogance and dismissal esposed herein are frightening. Many scientists hold anger over how much Good Science (tm) was discarded because the theoretical magnates of the day held no belief that the research was valuable; is it really so hard to believe that you might be making the same mistake?
In fact, there is nothing whatsoever fundamentally "unfalsifiable" (try disprovable) about the proposition that fossils were deposited for our benefit; there are many mechanisms by which background radiation signatures open up observational windows into the timeline, and alternately we might discover that God screwed up and left His fingerprints on a T. Rex skull.
Please, please learn to differentiate between something which is impossible and something you don't know how to do. That you're making all of these sweeping generalizations based on these supposed impossibilities is ignorant in the light that virtually none of them are at all impossible.
There was a time at which to get a message from Marathon to Athens was impossible in under the speed of a human's running. To use that form of "impossible" to define what may in the future be possible is both ignorant and defiant. "Not feasable," sure; feasibility changes.
Just because you don't know how we'll do things in 500 years doesn't mean that your current understanding of what's within our reach is suddenly both correct and complete. Given how many impossible things we've already accomplished, such as heavier than air flight, the control of the forces of lightning, the walking upon of the moon, and the alteration of the behavior of the very Sun itself, I should think that most people in this modern era would have the sense not to attempt to define what is possible.
Unfortunately, they apparently do not.
I'll posit a hypothetical, which I suspect you'll also discard out of hand. Consider the case that there is a God, and furthermore that we at some point find a mechanism by which He acts within the universe. At that point, the debates over creationism are not only no longer academic, but in fact would have been critical to our understanding of the world.
Do not wave your hands at how evil it is for everyone else to ignore other people's beliefs (in science,) and then act as if you're not doing exactly the same thing (with regards to religion.) It is all well and good to observe that with current scientific mechanisms God may neither be proven nor disproven, and it is also important to realize that God cannot be disproven.
This does not mean that God cannot be proven, and for you to suggest so by pretending that the pursuit of theology is valueless is a baring of the deepest and most offensive kind of anti-science. You are participating in the attempt to disbar study based on your own beliefs. You are not a scientist.
Aside from that, all of the arguments are philosophical.
The word you're looking for is "academic." Philosophy is the love of knowledge, as coined by Aristotle, and was originally applied to the fight against theology. For you to suggest that theology is philosophical is diametrically opposed to the definition of the word ; theology is faith, and philosophy seeks to eliminate the reliance on faith.
Science cannot assume the burden of proof because there is no proof to be had.
Oh, horseshit. Explain the universe, bearing in mind that the Big Bang isn't even universally accepted by physicists. Why shouldn't physics bear the same burden of proof as do other systems attempting to explain our existence?
The fundamental basis of science is to support the burden of proof. For you to suggest that it isn't there is nothing better than your assuming faith under the guise of science.
That is why faith is the fundement upon which belief sits, rather than knowledge.
If you genuinely believe that all people base their beliefs on faith rather than knowledge, I pity you. If you believe this at the same time as believing yourself a scientifically oriented individual, I openly revile you.
Permalink to Comment36. John Haugeland, yet again on January 24, 2005 08:13 PM writes...
One request - could we recognize that evolution and survival of the fittest are separate theories?
No, we cannot. Evolution is not a theory at all, and survival of the fittest is a mechanism. Mechanisms are not subject to verification - it is whether those mechanisms are in use which is subject to verification.
Fascinating article. I'm curious about the idea of parasitic DNA. Is this a common occurance within the human genome?
This is under quite a bit of debate at the moment. The current prevailing belief is that yes, this is extremely common, that this represents the bulk of material espoused in codons, and that in fact hemoglobin is an invader.
It denies the idea that humanism can exist secularly, which it clearly can (see Bertrand Russell).
This is more a matter of debate than as you characterize it. A competing viewpoint, particular to the religious, is that life without faith is meaningless despite the meanings that the live attempt to ascribe to life, as they are in defiance of The Real Plan (tm). Be careful not to make assumptions of your own, even when "verified" by philosophers (which would be argumentum ad verecundiam.)
It denies personal responsibility for actions to place everything "philosophically" at the feet of God.
No, no. He's attacking a specific line of thought there. Simply because the absence of holy justification can be used to defy human accountability doesn't mean that every argument involving the reliance on holy justification leads to the removal of human accountability.
As for the idea that evolution is a theory, and that by not examining creationist concepts of, well, creation we somehow short-sheet science... That's flawed as well.
No, it isn't. This is a critical requirement of the scientific method: the refusal to accept as fact something for which one has no evidence. Natural selection is a theory, and it is flawed. Regardless of how one feels about creationism, one cannot state that natural selection is fact; not only do we have no evidence, but we haven't had recorded history long enough to even have compelling examples outside the theoretical progress derived from speculation on the fossil record.
It is most certainly in defiance of proper scientific procedure to treat natural selection as anything but theory, especially in the light that there are numerous known flaws in the principle.
You might as well be saying arguing that because we're not examining the possibility that we're all elaborate programs in a Matrix simulation, we're not truly pursuing science.
The Greeks discarded this argument almost 2500 years ago. You would do well to learn about the Skeptics, who made this same mistake. Science is the observation and deliniation of the percieved; it is explicitly within the experienced world, and by definition cannot access or address theoretical possible alternate worlds.
Besides, this is a flawed analogy. Nobody made the argument that because we're not exploring creationism that suddenly natural selection isn't science. The argument made was that natural selection is a theory rather than a fact. The two are not parallel.
and makes me a little sheepish about my apology for going long
This is a bit like getting into a head-on car wreck with someone and feeling sheepish about scratching their paint.
One thing on which I would differ to the point of noting is that you say the burden of proof is upon science to disprove God.
Feel free to learn to read at any time; I go out of my way to show how this is not true. I do not need for you to explain to me a point I already made, and certainly not with the offensively hollow rhetoric of faith guised as science which follows. Please don't bother to comment on anything else I've said, as it's clear you're reading what you want to see rather than what was actually said.
if one assumes
You've already departed from science in the very first sentence of your commentary on the difference between faith and science. The first and foremost tenet of science is that you are forbidden from making any assumptions, no matter how badly you want for them to make your non-point for you.
the experiments and mathematical formulations that lead us to what we know about the Big Bang are reproducable and verifiable.
What the hell gave you this idea? Not even half of astrophysicists believe in the big bang; the currently popular theories in physics are the N-Brane topological model, the superstring giant entanglement model, and the steady-state prevented redestruction quantum noise model.
Just because you can say something is verifiable and reproducible doesn't mean that it actually is. The big bang has never at any point been believed to be concrete and accurate. There is no point in scientific history at which it was not challenged by at least one compelling counter-theory, and it's beginning to look quite false; there are many parts of current known physics which seem to preclude the Big Bang and the original Great Singularity from having been possible in the first place.
Science commentary generally should be reserved for those with an at least high-school level familiarity with science. The Pennsylvania State physics curriculum formally requires that two current alternatives to the Big Bang be taught, and I suspect it's not alone (I know that both California and New York have similar provisions, but am not familiar with the requirements of states beyond those three.)
Read a book.
Anywhere aside from theology, those are the attributes that we use to evaluate the correctness of a theory.
Nice try. Theology is explicitly devoid of theories. This is a very confused thing to say. "But I was talking about science!" The contrast you drew is faulty, and serves no purpose other than defamation.
That lays the onus on those who believe in things not verifiable to prove the existence of them, not on those who can show their work in experiments or mathematics.
1) That's not how you use the word "onus," which implies a pervasive need to support rhetoric. One uses onus when one believes the arguments in question are delivered already known false; the hypothetical you posit as fact is in no such situation. The word you're looking for is "burden," not "onus." Read a book.
2) Mathematical models are approximations; no mathematical model may ever be proof of a physical system by definition. Read a book.
3) Science currently broadly believes that our understanding of the underlying system of physics is fundamentally flawed, and there are many aberrations in data which support that no current model for physics can be correct. No amount of handwavery about supposed experiments which supposedly prove the Big Bang can change that. Read a book.
From a scientific view, the only reason to argue against God controlling every single action and reaction in the universe is that it complicates the system needlessly.
Apparently you're unaware of the difficulties surrounding the nondeterminism in quantum mechanics, the difficulties surrounding distributed causality trees (you probably call those "quantum universes," given that your scientific degrees seem to come from Star Trek university,) and various issues in ethics regarding willpower and self-motivation.
"God does not play dice." -- Albert Einstein, regarding quantum mechanics
"Determinism doesn't affect science" -- Well meaning yokel on the intarweb, arguing something he doesn't understand
Yes, God may have created fossils to fool humans or to give delightful subterranean texture to the earth, but the argument is fundementally unfalsifiable and thus has no place except as a contrast to the scientific method.
Simply because you do not have faith does not mean that exposition and debate of faith is valueless; the arrogance and dismissal esposed herein are frightening. Many scientists hold anger over how much Good Science (tm) was discarded because the theoretical magnates of the day held no belief that the research was valuable; is it really so hard to believe that you might be making the same mistake?
In fact, there is nothing whatsoever fundamentally "unfalsifiable" (try disprovable) about the proposition that fossils were deposited for our benefit; there are many mechanisms by which background radiation signatures open up observational windows into the timeline, and alternately we might discover that God screwed up and left His fingerprints on a T. Rex skull.
Please, please learn to differentiate between something which is impossible and something you don't know how to do. That you're making all of these sweeping generalizations based on these supposed impossibilities is ignorant in the light that virtually none of them are at all impossible.
There was a time at which to get a message from Marathon to Athens was impossible in under the speed of a human's running. To use that form of "impossible" to define what may in the future be possible is both ignorant and defiant. "Not feasable," sure; feasibility changes.
Just because you don't know how we'll do things in 500 years doesn't mean that your current understanding of what's within our reach is suddenly both correct and complete. Given how many impossible things we've already accomplished, such as heavier than air flight, the control of the forces of lightning, the walking upon of the moon, and the alteration of the behavior of the very Sun itself, I should think that most people in this modern era would have the sense not to attempt to define what is possible.
Unfortunately, they apparently do not.
I'll posit a hypothetical, which I suspect you'll also discard out of hand. Consider the case that there is a God, and furthermore that we at some point find a mechanism by which He acts within the universe. At that point, the debates over creationism are not only no longer academic, but in fact would have been critical to our understanding of the world.
Do not wave your hands at how evil it is for everyone else to ignore other people's beliefs (in science,) and then act as if you're not doing exactly the same thing (with regards to religion.) It is all well and good to observe that with current scientific mechanisms God may neither be proven nor disproven, and it is also important to realize that God cannot be disproven.
This does not mean that God cannot be proven, and for you to suggest so by pretending that the pursuit of theology is valueless is a baring of the deepest and most offensive kind of anti-science. You are participating in the attempt to disbar study based on your own beliefs and predjudices, while claiming evidence which does not exist. You are not a scientist, and should not delude yourself into thinking otherwise.
Aside from that, all of the arguments are philosophical.
The word you're looking for is "academic." Philosophy is the love of knowledge, as coined by Aristotle, and was originally applied to the fight against theology. For you to suggest that theology is philosophical is diametrically opposed to the definition of the word ; theology is faith, and philosophy seeks to eliminate the reliance on faith.
Science cannot assume the burden of proof because there is no proof to be had.
Oh, horseshit. Explain the universe, bearing in mind that the Big Bang isn't even universally accepted by physicists. Why shouldn't physics bear the same burden of proof as do other systems attempting to explain our existence?
The fundamental basis of science is to support the burden of proof. For you to suggest that it isn't there is nothing better than your assuming faith under the guise of science.
That is why faith is the fundement upon which belief sits, rather than knowledge.
If you genuinely believe that all people base their beliefs on faith rather than knowledge, I pity you. If you believe this at the same time as believing yourself a scientifically oriented individual, I openly revile you.
Permalink to Comment37. Abhi on January 24, 2005 08:24 PM writes...
Very nice explanation. Maybe you should become the spokesperson for stem cell research to all the congressmen(and women).
Permalink to Comment38. Abhi Sharma on January 24, 2005 08:49 PM writes...
Very nice explanation. Easy to understand.
Permalink to Comment39. corey lawson on January 24, 2005 09:01 PM writes...
Morality and Science...
where are the people crying for the government to stop teaching physical anatomy and conducting autopsies?
Remember, back in the 1600's, there was significant moral outrage regarding the few scientists who cut up human bodies to see what was inside. It wasn't Aristotle's 4 humors. It wasn't really all that different than a cow or goat on the inside. But God forbid that anyone found out you had done something like this.
As far as moral outrage goes, why is it OK to genetically engineer a mouse, or pig or sheep, to have its immune system replaced with a human analogue? On one hand, "we're messing with the mechanisms of life", on the other hand, we're doing it without blinking an eye, but it's ok because it's on other animals?
Knowing what we know is good. Knowing what we don't know is also good. Not knowing what we don't know, and making decisions by thinking we do know, is...bad.
Permalink to Comment40. Mike on January 24, 2005 09:40 PM writes...
John Haugeland, you are a testy god of debate. I salute your lucidity.
Permalink to Comment41. Nick Thursby on January 24, 2005 09:58 PM writes...
Regarding the very first comment, why did you use the letter 'h' to denote the word 'homo' for Homo Sapiens?
It would seem that there are many conservative viewpoints being hammered into our heads - maybe enough to make one feel that they can't use the correct scientific term to describe a human.
Just because you are a Homo Sapiens doesn't mean you are gay.
Start acting like a real human and stop being so afraid to say it like it should be. Conflict is part of a dualist reality, but you don't have to bend over and take it where to sun doesn't shine just because you are afraid of offending someone.
There is no political correctness in science.
Permalink to Comment42. Monty on January 24, 2005 10:53 PM writes...
Three quick points about the ESC contamination story:
1. The NIH registry contains a number of uncharacterized cell lines grown on human feeder cells. They lack the sugar contamination described in the Nature Medicine study. So do a number of private lines created after the Bush ban on federal funding post Aug. 9, 2001 ESC's. NIH chief Zerhouni has made this point in public forums at various points for the last year.
2. ESC research is at such an infant stage that worrying about the effects of using them in clinical trials is premature to say the least. Researchers have few clues about getting the cells to differentiate into useful tissues. Once they solve that one, they can worry about the feeder cells.
3. No one is going to use these contaminated cells in clinical trials anyway. The whole point of therapeutic cloning is to grow cloned cells of a sick person to use as transplant tissues, not cells borrowed from the NIH registry. Cloned transplant tissues will be grown on human sera feeder cells, no doubt, obviating the Varki et al concern.
Basically, this is an interesting but largely irrelevant result. Everyone has known about the murine feeder cell issue for years, so this report adds little to change the big picture.
Permalink to Comment43. iridium_ionizer on January 24, 2005 11:14 PM writes...
There are several reasons for fundamentalist Christians disbelief in evolution. I think this is mainly a problem of communication between academia and believers. Believers feel insulted when academia marginalizes them as ignoramuses because they don't believe in evolution. Sure some believers are hard headed, some are poorly educated, and some preachers don't want their congregations getting their truth from (and giving their money to) other sources.
But agnostic and atheist academia should realize that they won't convince any believers that science isn't hogwash if they continue belittling their beliefs. Although one shouldn't taint the scientific method with personal beliefs, faith and scientific rigor can coexist in the same mind.
Instead of attacking in non-scholarly public forums by saying, "this is why those people are stupid" one could say "whether you believe in a higher power or not, this evidence leads us to conclude this is how it happened." It seems that too many remember that "Why Earth happened?" is an implicitly religious question, while "How Earth happened?" is not.
Permalink to Comment44. Carl Zimmer on January 24, 2005 11:23 PM writes...