Category: Evolution
BIO-Complexity Publishes Article Answering Critics Who Promote Tom Schneider’s “ev” Simulation
Over the years William Dembski’s critics have accused him of allegedly not doing research. A few years back, Wesley Elsberry and Jeff Shallit published a response to Dembski which charged that “intelligent design advocates have produced many popular books, but essentially no scientific research.” Given how much peer-reviewed research Dembski himself has published in the field of evolutionary computation, these criticisms are not credible and hardly worth mentioning. On the other hand, some of Dembski’s harshest critics, such as Jeffrey Shallit, are smart guys that have published extensively in mathematics journals but have not cracked into the literature relevant to this field of evolutionary computation. Is it appropriate for Shallit to posture himself as a prestigious academic critic of Dembski when he has not published in the relevant scientific literature?
Icons of Evolution 10th Anniversary: Archeopteryx
Subtle-But Important-Functions of Junk-DNA
The December 17, 2010 issue of Science has yet another article explaining why the concept of “junk”-DNA should no longer be given much credence: It used to seem so straightforward. DNA told the body how to build proteins. The instructions came in chapters called genes. Strands of DNA’s chemical cousin RNA served as molecular messengers, carrying orders to the cells’ protein factories and translating them into action. Between the genes lay long stretches of “junk DNA,” incoherent, useless, and inert. That was then. In fact, gene regulation has turned out to be a surprisingly complex process governed by various types of regulatory DNA, which may lie deep in the wilderness of supposed “junk.” Far from being humble messengers, RNAs of Read More ›
The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution: A reply to Jerry Coyne
At his blog, Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago, has been analyzing my recent paper, “Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations, and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution,’” which appears in the latest issue of the Quarterly Review of Biology. Although I usually don’t respond to blog posts I will this time, both because Coyne is an eminent scientist and because he does say at least one nice thing about the paper. First, the nice thing. About half-way through his comments Professor Coyne writes: My overall conclusion: Behe has provided a useful survey of mutations that cause adaptation in short-term lab experiments on microbes (note that at least one of these–Rich Lenski’s study– Read More ›
Martin Gaskell and the Argument From Scientific “Consensus”
One needs to hammer and hammer away at the simple but crucial lesson of the scandalous Martin Gaskell case out of the University of Kentucky. A superbly qualified astronomer was rejected for a job because he expressed very modest Darwin doubts. Darwinists and their useful idiots are full of reminders to us to recall that a “consensus” of scientists compels our assent to Darwinian evolution. Yet with the Gaskell story being merely the latest instance, we see again and again how Darwin-doubting scientists are punished for speaking up in even the mildest way. A fortune in research money is at stake, as well as institutional reputations. Anyone who’s had the experience of being penalized by an employer for saying something Read More ›