Tag: science
Is “Pseudogene” a Misnomer?
The term “pseudogene” may be as inappropriate as the term “junk DNA,” according to the entry on pseudogenes in the 2010 Encyclopedia of Life Sciences, published by prestigious the academic publisher John Wiley & Sons. Written by researchers Ondrej Podlaha and Jianzhi Zhang at UC Davis and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, respectively, the entry includes a subjection titled “Difficulty with the Pseudogene Definition,” and it states that the discovery of multiple functional pseudogenes should negate the standard presumption that pseudogenes are functionless junk DNA: The term ‘pseudogene’ was originally coined to describe a degenerated RNA- or protein-coding sequence that is incapable of being transcribed or translated into functional RNA or protein products. The key in this definition is Read More ›
Article in Philosophy Journal Critiques Self-Organization Models and Darwinian Evolution
University of British Columbia at Vancouver philosophy professor Richard Johns has published an article in the philosophy journal Synthese titled “titled “Self-organisation in dynamical systems: a limiting result,” which argues that there are “limitations on the kinds of structure than can self-organise.” He defines a self-organized object as follows: 1. The appearance of the object does not require a special, “fine-tuned” initial state. 2. There is no need for interaction with an external system. 3. The object is likely to appear in a reasonably short time. (Richard Johns, “Self-organisation in dynamical systems: a limiting result,” Synthese (Sept. 9, 2010).) Johns’ primary argument is to prove a “limitative theorem” that certain types of objects cannot self-organize through the laws of nature: Read More ›
New Peer-Reviewed Paper Challenges Darwinian Evolution
Over recent months, papers challenging key elements of Darwinian theory — the kind of papers which are supposed not to exist — have increasingly been slipping through the net and finding their way into the peer-reviewed literature. One such paper, “Is gene duplication a viable explanation for the origination of biological information and complexity?,” authored by Joseph Esfandier Hannon Bozorgmeh and published online last week in the journal, Complexity, challenges the standard gene duplication/divergence model regarding the origin of evolutionary novelty. The abstract reports, All life depends on the biological information encoded in DNA with which to synthesize and regulate various peptide sequences required by an organism’s cells. Hence, an evolutionary model accounting for the diversity of life needs to Read More ›
Peer-Reviewed Research Paper on Plant Biology Favorably Cites Intelligent Design and Challenges Darwinian Evolution
A new original research paper on mutagenesis comprising 240,000 plants in the journal Floriculture and Ornamental Biotechnology favorably cites to “intelligent design proponents,” including Michael Behe, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, and Stephen Meyer, as advocating one of various legitimate “scientific theories on the origin of species.” The paper was authored by Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, a recently retired biologist from the Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Germany who investigates the origin of certain features of flowering plants, or angiosperms. Citing to skeptics of neo-Darwinism such as Behe and “the almost 900 scientists of the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism,” the paper notes that: Many of these researchers also raise the question (among others), why — even after inducing literally billions of Read More ›
William Dembski and Robert Marks Publish (Another) Peer-Reviewed Scientific Paper Supporting No Free Lunch Theorems
A peer-reviewed scientific paper published in 2010 by William Dembski and Robert Marks of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab supports no free lunch theorems. Published in Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics and titled “The Search for a Search: Measuring the Information Cost of Higher Level Search,” the paper’s abstract states that unless one has information about a target, search engines often fail: “Needle-in-the-haystack problems look for small targets in large spaces. In such cases, blind search stands no hope of success.” Their principle of Conservation of Information holds that “any search technique will work, on average, as well as blind search.” However, in such a case “[s]uccess requires an assisted search. But whence the assistance required for a Read More ›