The ID Report

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

Earlier this year Johan Bollen and colleagues from the Los Alamos National Laboratories unveiled a much-publicized 'Connections Map' that shows how researchers navigate online between science journals and those of other academic disciplines (1). With access to as many as 1 billion 'user interactions' from 35,000 journals in the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, the study was unique in its sheer scale (1,2). Furthermore, unlike other such studies that have mined inter-article citations data (papers that cite each other) to map connections, the work carried out by Bollen and colleagues relied on up-to-date internet usage and navigation information supplied by reputable online publishers such as Elsevier and Thomson Scientific (2).

The work of Bollen's group appeared to be in every sense revolutionary. In their paper to PLOS One, for example, they drew attention to the rather biased nature of studies that use inter-article citations data, concluding that, "existing citations databases over-represent the natural sciences" (2). Other factors, such as the lengthy time that it takes for papers to get published, lent support to the claim that internet navigation provided a more temporally-accurate picture of traffic between journals. In contrast to citations data that focuses only on published authors, internet navigation information also reflects the activity of 'a larger community' that includes practicing scientists who do not necessarily publish (2).

In order to maximize the accuracy of their study Bollen and colleagues selected only those user interactions that involved requests for article abstracts or fully-published articles (2). The overall distribution of the interactions that they mapped ranged from 47 and 41 percent in the social and natural sciences respectively to 8 percent in the humanities (2). Bollen and colleagues were able to access individual 'click streams'- that is, temporal sequences that show how researchers navigated between journals. The resulting Connections Map classified journals into 'course-grained disciplines' such as cognitive science, architectural design, international studies, religion, music, geology and plant genetics to name but a few (2).

While the timing of interactions in such maps are accurate to the second, some still question whether internet navigation-based connections really provide valuable information on the future trends of cross-discipline navigation. Anthony van Raan, director of the Leiden Centre for Science and Technology Studies suggested that Bollen's approach may do nothing more than supply snapshots of current navigation fashions (1). Nevertheless data on such fashions can in itself be valuable for tracking "contemporary trends in scientific activity" and monitoring how such trends vary over time (1).

Bollen and colleagues admit that there is much work that can still be done (2). Future projects might include comparing connections maps with inter-article citations data, deconvoluting the different navigation patterns through which researchers move between journals and identifying the most influential journals in given areas of research (2). Indeed, if used correctly there is no denying that data from connections mapping could help improve the way online journals are made available to the research community.

Literature Cited
1. Declan, B. (2009) Web Usage Data Outline Map Of Knowledge. Nature News (accessed 3/23/3009).

2. Bollen, J. et al. (2009) Clickstream Data Yields High-Resolution Maps of Science. PLoS ONE 4, e4803.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Apparently, Breakpoint's Chuck Colson likes Steve Meyer's Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009):

I'm going to warn you up front: Signature in the Cell is not light reading. If you are not conversant in molecular biology, you might feel a bit overwhelmed at times.

But this is a profound, hugely important book for anybody interested in the scientific debate of our times - the origins of life. I feel it's so important that we have posted an excerpt of the book at our website, BreakPoint.org, along with links to materials that will help you understand the main points of Signature in the Cell.

So what lies at the heart of Dr. Meyer's Signature in the Cell is the concept of information. And, as scientists have learned, the very building block of life - molecular DNA - is a vast storehouse of information. Information in the form of a four-character chemical alphabet that, when precisely arranged, provides the "instructions" for forming proteins and the structures that living cells need to survive.

Don't be intimidated. I am really glad that this concept is percolating down to the public because it is immensely important.

Darwin knew nothing of this, because the very concepts did not exist until World War II in Britain, when scientists were trying to figure out how to break Nazi code. His tax burden followers perpetuate his ignorance with simple, reductionist theories about how life develops, but it won't do you any good.

I'm still getting through Signature, not because it is especially difficult but because I must concurrently read a number of other books and materials.

Also just up at the Post-Darwinist:

Darwinism and popular culture: Darwinists resort to whining when they are not popular (Also, this just in, water runs downhill)

David Berlinski: So that inconvenient math guy who lives in the oldest building in France is back?

Intellectual freedom in Canada: Inquisitor is now himself inquisitioned

Coffee!! Politician "gets" the design inference

Fan mail for Richard Dawkins from, of all places, New Scientist

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Here are 100 Ivy League lectures I am told you shouldn't miss. Some of the science and medicine ones (#15-30) do look quite interesting. Anyway, whatever they provide is free.

Okay, okay, some of them may be missable. That is not my fault.

Also just up at Colliding Universes, my blog on theories about our universe:

Lynn Margulis challenges neo-Darwinists and teaches somewhere now - but she has
interesting ideas

Mars: The endless kvetch about life on Mars

My favourite science fiction author, Rob Sawyer, writes to say ...

Cosmology: Science's leader in things that don't make sense?

New podcasts on fine tuning of the universe

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

StephenB, at 50, won, for the appended comment in response to the question: Is accidental origin of life a doctrine that holds back science?

The prize? A free copy of Steven Meyer's Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009).

Go here for more.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

The NOVA documentary The Incredible Journey Of The Butterflies, which aired on public television earlier this year, details a phenomenon that in recent years has captivated biologists worldwide- the North American Monarch butterfly's 2500 mile long migration to the Mexican Sierra Madre mountains. Both the sheer scale of the journey and the paucity of models in the scientific literature that adequately explain its evolutionary origins are plainly evident (1).

The late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould took a rather nebulous stab at explicating the origins of another migratory feat- that of the green turtle's trans-Atlantic breeding trek from Brazil to the 'pinpoint of land' we now call Ascension Island (2). Having soundly carved up biologist Archie Carr's migratory drift hypothesis (which would have us believe that the migratory distance used to be much shorter and extended gradually as continents moved apart), Gould treated us to his own momentary reliance on obscurity. In Gould's words "the mechanism of turtle migration is so mysterious, that I see no barrier to supposing that turtles can be imprinted to remember the place of their birth without prior genetic information transmitted from previous generations" (2). It seems that for Gould at least, the bigger the evolutionary mystery, the more scope one would have for assuming what one wished to assume.

The rock pigeon, a favorite of Darwin's and a center piece in his treatise on artificial selection, uses the sun as a compass to get around (3-5). Equipped with an extraordinary capacity to perceive UV and polarized light, as well as a keen ability to detect the earth's magnetic fields, the rock pigeon is today considered to be a champion of directional orientation. As Fred Ryser noted in his textbook account, "the [pigeon's] sun compass employs the apparent movement of the sun along an arc across the sky -the ecliptic-during the day...On overcast days or when its capacity to see the sun is eliminated...the pigeon practices directional orientation by using geomagnetism...the pigeon's magnetic compass somehow senses [the] downward inclination in the magnetic field and the brain interprets it as north"(4). Underpinning such a phenomenal capability are numerous crystals of iron oxide that in the pigeon's brain align with the earth's magnetic field "like the iron needle in a compass" (5).

Just as remarkable is the Arctic Tern's aptitude for long distance precision flight. Flying in flocks of 12-25 individuals at altitudes of 30-150 meters, terns cover 40,000 km each year between their polar wintering and breeding quarters (6). One might assume that for these and other migratory birds, land masses en route could provide necessary resting points and navigational aids to keep them energized and on track. And yet some notable cases defy such a facile dismissal of the facts. The American golden plover, for example, can fly over the Atlantic from Canada to the northeastern coast of South America with sparse visual cues and without so much as a touchdown or a re-supply of food (7). Similarly, many ruby-throated hummingbirds fly 500 miles non-stop in their annual northward migration across the Gulf of Mexico. According to one review, such a compulsion to fly is ingrained in the very fabric of the young 'hummer': "there's no memory of past migrations, only an urge to put on a lot of weight and fly in a particular direction for a certain amount of time, then look for a good place to spend the winter" (8).

McGraw Hill's third edition of The Nature Of Life carried details of a study that confirmed the homing abilities of a long-winged seabird called the shearwater: "When experimenters transferred an individual shearwater...from its home in Great Britain to a new location in Massachusetts, the remarkable bird was back on its nest in 12 days, having crossed 4800 miles of trackless ocean" (5). Key experimental data corroborates the assertion that an established endogenous circannual clock is critical for ensuring appropriate pre-migratory fattening, moulting and reproduction. Writing on the common warbler, for example, Max Planck Institute's Eberhard Gwinner emphasized how "rhythmic waxing and waning of nocturnal [circannual activity]...is usually accompanied by variations in migratory fattening (indicated by an increase in body mass) and followed by a moult in winter and a phase of reproductive activity in summer" (9). Most remarkable of all is the finding that the circannual clock is responsible for setting not only the timing but also direction and duration of migration (9). Day length (or photoperiod) provides a critical trigger for getting migration started (9).

How might evolutionary processes have given rise to migratory behaviors? In their book Nature's IQ, Balazs Hornyanszky and Istvan Tasi are candidly open about their view on the matter- natural selection could not have been the operative mechanism (10). The exactitude of food intake relative to energy expenditure for trans-oceanic birds forms an important platform upon which they develop their rationale- too much food prior to becoming airborne and levels of body fat would be incompatible with effective flying (9). Too little food and the fat reserves would be insufficient for completion of the journey. The end result would be an almost certain death, perhaps an out of control plunge into the merciless seas below. Hornyansky's and Tasi's swathing attack on the evolutionists' 'non-answer' appeals to our deepest intuitions. Analogizing bird migration to human feats of navigation they write:

"Many [innate] complex abilities must be simultaneously present for migratory birds to perform such impressive feats, and these abilities and knowledge have to work in perfect harmony. If we want to climb the highest peak of the Himalayas, Mount Everest, we have to create a detailed plan to be able to reach our goal. It would be foolish to think that merely by a series of fortunate accidents, in time we will suddenly find ourselves there. Not only do we have to make an all-encompassing plan, but we also have to execute every detail of it. If we disregard just a single factor...our undertaking, despite all our efforts, could end in failure. The migratory system of birds, too, is able to function only in its entirety, and the superficial assumptions about its 'gradual evolution' get caught in the filter of logical thinking" (10).

Those in favor of evolution's ways openly struggle to understand the selective advantage afforded by the migratory birds' seemingly deliberate draining of precious resources. By their own admission "Migration exacts a high toll [as] grizzlies wait in streams and gorge on exhausted salmon migrating home from the sea, and falcons feast on fatigued songbirds arriving at their winter home in Africa. Fuel used by muscles to propel wings, fins, and legs is unavailable for reproductive activities, and time spent on the move is time not spent gathering food" (5). They counter their self-imposed quandary by assuming a priori that selection 'favors the brave' and that over time survival benefits must have outweighed such costs. Evolution is after all a 'fact' and so what must have happened must have happened. Such circular reasoning of course gets us nowhere and leaves the above functional challenges unanswered. In short, evolutionists are today caught in their own Gouldean-style reliance on obscurity.

Literature Cited
1. Robert Deyes (2009), Questioning The Role Of Gene Duplication-Based Evolution In Monarch Migration, Access Research Network, See http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2009/03/01/questioning_the_role_of_gene_duplication.

2. Stephen Jay Gould (1992), The Panda's Thumb- More Reflections In Natural History, Published by W.W Norton and Company, New York, pp.31-34.

3. Charles Darwin (1859), The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or The Preservation of Favored Races In the Struggle For Survival, Modern Library Paperbacks Edition (1998), New York, p.42.

4. Fred A Ryser Jr (1985), Birds Of the Great Basin: A Natural History, University Of Nevada Press, pp.290-291.

5. John H Postlethwait and Janet L. Hopson (1991), The Nature Of Life, 3rd Edition, McGraw Hill, New York, pp.922-923.

6. Gudmundur A. Gudmundsson, Thomas Alerstami, Bertil Larsson (1992), Radar observations of northbound migration of the Arctic tern,Sterna paradisaea, at the Antarctic Peninsula, Antarctic Science, Volume 4, pp. 163-170.

7. See American Golden Plover 'Fact Sheet' On The National Wildlife Federation Site http://www.nwf.org/birdsandglobalwarming/birdprofile.cfm?bird=American+Golden-Plover.

8. See Hummingbirds.Net at http://www.hummingbirds.net/migration.html.

9. Eberhard Gwinner (1996), Circadian And Circannual Programs In Avian Migration, The Journal of Experimental Biology, Volume 199, pp.39-48.

10. Istvan Tasi and Balazs Hornyanszky (2009), Nature's IQ: Extraordinary Animal Behaviors That Defy Evolution, Torchlight Publishing, Badger, CA, pp.93-94

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

"Grr. Sniff. Arf.", Cathleen Shine's review of Inside of a Dog:, by Alexandra Horowitz, tries to help us understand doggy minds:

In one enormously important variation from wolf behavior, dogs will look into our eyes. “Though they have inherited some aversion to staring too long at eyes, dogs seem to be predisposed to inspect our faces for information, for reassurance, for guidance.” They are staring, soulfully, into our umwelts [trying to understand our view of the world and how it affects them]. It seems only right that we try a little harder to reciprocate, and Horowitz’s book is a good step in that direction.

Not that examining eyes always provides an answer:

Dogs respond to baby talk “partially because it distinguishes speech that is directed at them from the rest of the continuous yammering above their heads.”

Yes, that is just the problem for the dog. He simply does not know what is happening in human society most of the time because he has not mastered the facility of language. My favourite cartoon for demonstrating that fact, anthropomorphically, was one in which a dog, driven downtown in a car, yaps happily out the window to his neighbour's dog, "Hey, they're taking me to the vet to be [tutored]!"

Sometimes it is a blessing for them, of course. An irrecoverably sick animal does not know that his people have humanely decided on euthanasia. That was always a comfort to me when I signed vets' releases to have beloved cats put down. The cats never knew and never could know, and could not understand why those decisions were made: Any other possible future would be too hard for an animal with their limited intellectual resources to manage.

See also: More animal mind stories at The Mindful Hack.

Animal minds: Are dogs or wolves smarter?

Hack gets mail: Physicist writes on abuse of spirituality to promote causes

More on neurolaw: The brain as a cement cast?

Neurolaw: Your flawed brain takes the rap

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Recently, we asked Uncommon Descent Contest Question 8: Do the "new atheists" help or hurt the cause of Darwinism?

The new atheists' impact in general is often debated. What exactly have they contributed to atheism? Many traditional atheists or their sympathizers think not much. Bryon R. McCane, Professor of Religion at Wofford College, asks,

Has something gone wrong with the new atheism? For awhile, it was really on a roll. Several best-selling books aggressively attacked religion, calling it a "delusion" (Richard Dawkins), and a "spell" (Daniel Dennett) that "poisons everything" (Christopher Hitchens). Bill Maher's movie "Religulous" warned that humankind must get rid of religion or die. New atheism looked like the wave of the future. But not anymore. "Religulous" got mixed reviews and disappeared quickly. Rebuttals to Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens have appeared, culminating with Karen Armstrong's new book, The Case for God. Sales of atheist books have fallen off the charts, literally. Months have gone by since one appeared on the best-seller list.

To me, the key problem was that they had a new level of hate, not a new idea. I wrote about that here.

Winner announcement: Jerry at 91. I especially enjoyed this observation:

There is an old maxim in marketing. Nothing kills a bad product faster than extensive advertising and good distribution. The faster people realize how bad a product is, the quicker it is rejected. The new atheist movement has accelerated the communication and distribution of their product but in the process open themselves up for intense scrutiny.

I must arrange for more prizes, as I would have liked to offer StephenB and Adel DiBagno a prize for their entertaining and useful discussion; however, I have only five copies of Meyer's Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009), hardcover, and if I burn through 60% of them in one contest, the publisher might not be very anxious to help me restock.

Jerry, I need a snail address for you.

I am a bit behind, judging contests, due to unrelated uproars. But here are the entries that seemed, to me at least, to shed light: Go here for more.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

Review Of The Sixth Chapter Of Signature In The Cell, by Stephen Meyer

Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

A sound approach to scientific investigation does not necessarily bring with it a mandatory requirement to be a 'nose to the grindstone' experimentalist. Indeed scientists can and often do take data that others have amassed and interpret it in light of their own understanding of the matter at hand. Therein lies a lesson that, as science historians will note, is backed by an impressive list of prominent cases. In fact Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and even Charles Darwin challenged the viewpoints of their day through their own theoretical interpretations of reality. For Darwin this meant for the most part collecting data from botanists, breeders, ecologists, and paleontologists and constructing a paradigm-shifting synthesis on the evolution of life that did not necessarily hinge on his own data. Both Einstein's two papers on relativity and Newton's opus Principia were theoretical manifestos that at the time they were published had little experimental support.

In recent years followers of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement have been called to task over their own perceived lack of direct involvement in experimentation. Stephen Meyer observes that ID's fiercest critics dismiss these same followers as being less than qualified to engage in scientific debate because of their presumed absence from experimental science. And yet in light of what we know about the influences of Einstein, Newton and Darwin one might be excused for countering that such criticisms hardly seem justifiable. Truth be told the Discovery Institute, a key ID nerve center, today supports a facility where scientists are actively involved in laboratory-based research.

As the director of the Center for Science & Culture at the Discovery Institute, Meyer has been personally exposed to a barrage of anti-ID hostility, evidenced for example in his televised encounters with prominent self-asserting secularists such as Eugenie Scott and Michael Shermer. But as Meyer makes clear, his own exposure to anti-ID sentiments extends back much further to his days as a graduate at Cambridge. With the exception of a handful of notable scientists, few at the time were willing to acknowledge ID as a serious alternative to the deeply-entrenched Darwinian orthodoxy.

One might be excused for feeling somewhat baffled by such a reluctance to embrace design in light of the Judeo-Christian framework upon which modern science owes its origins. Others before Meyer have made this point (1). Two years ago, for example, zoologist and biophysicist Jeff Hardin brought the Judeo-Christian influence on science to the attention of his audience during the Science And Christianity conference in Madison, WI (2). According to Hardin historical icons such as Robert Boyle, Johannes Kepler and Newton himself saw the reliability and intelligibility of nature as "testifying to God's glory". Quoting from Nobel Laureate Melvin Calvin's Chemical Evolution, Hardin concluded that "[the Hebrew] monotheistic view seems to be the historical foundation for modern science" (2).

But it is in citing the relevance of a non-religious form of these foundations to ID that Meyer supplies a fresh and unparryable case against those who out of hand wish to exclude ID from scientific circles. His closing remarks on how the singular actions of intelligent agents parallel sudden events in biology, notably the origin of life, draw on inferences made by Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley and Roger Olsen in their exemplary text The Mystery Of Life's Origins (3). In short, one can no longer deny that the design premise represents a foundational 'cross beam' for contemporary science.

Literature Cited
1.Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton (1994), The Soul of Science- Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy, Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL, pp.17-42

2.Jeff Hardin (2007), Thinking Bibically About Nature And The Nature Of Science, in Science And Christianity: Friends Or Foes?; Conference held on the 24th March, 2007, Blackhawk Church, Madison, WI

3.Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley and Roger Olsen (1984), The Mystery of Life's Origin Reassessing Current Theories, Published by Lewis and Stanley, Dallas, Texas

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

On this episode of ID the Future, acclaimed author and Discovery Institute senior fellow David Klinghoffer takes a look at the academic freedom — or lack thereof — for scientists who support intelligent design, scientists who are forced to don disguises and go underground in order to protect their careers.

This podcast is based on Mr. Klinghoffer's commentary in Townhall Magazine, "Evolution's Glass Ceiling."

Go here to listen.

[From Denyse: Yeah, tell me about it. I hear this stuff all the time. It was hilarious to hear people insisting that the Expelled film was false at the same time as expulsions continue, with their approval I suspect. It is hard for materialists to accept a genuine challenge. They are used to continued tactical retreats, usually from well-meaning tenured theists who hope to be treated nicely. Not a chance, if you go by the "new atheists." But things are slowly changing.]

The other podcasts:

Podcasts in the intelligent design controversy 2: Rebutting Methodological Materialism: Interview With Angus Menuge, Part Two

Podcasts in the intelligent design controversy 3: Agents Under Fire: Part One With Angus Menuge

Podcasts in the intelligent design controversy 4: Hitler's Ethic and the Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress in Nazi Policy

Podcasts in the intelligent design controversy 5: Seeking God in Science: An Atheist
Defends Intelligent Design

Podcasts in the intelligent design controversy 6: Back to school with real science

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

This very interesting article by Steve Silberman in Wired ("Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why," 08.24.09) notes

True, many test subjects treated with the medication felt their hopelessness and anxiety lift. But so did nearly the same number who took a placebo, a look-alike pill made of milk sugar or another inert substance given to groups of volunteers in clinical trials to gauge how much more effective the real drug is by comparison. The fact that taking a faux drug can powerfully improve some people's health - the so-called placebo effect - has long been considered an embarrassment to the serious practice of pharmacology.

Ultimately, Merck's foray into the antidepressant market failed. In subsequent tests, MK-869 turned out to be no more effective than a placebo. In the jargon of the industry, the trials crossed the futility boundary.

MK-869 wasn't the only highly anticipated medical breakthrough to be undone in recent years by the placebo effect. From 2001 to 2006, the percentage of new products cut from development after Phase II clinical trials, when drugs are first tested against placebo, rose by 20 percent. The failure rate in more extensive Phase III trials increased by 11 percent, mainly due to surprisingly poor showings against placebo. Despite historic levels of industry investment in R and D, the US Food and Drug Administration approved only 19 first-of-their-kind remedies in 2007 - the fewest since 1983 - and just 24 in 2008. Half of all drugs that fail in late-stage trials drop out of the pipeline due to their inability to beat sugar pills.

More:

After decades in the jungles of fringe science, the placebo effect has become the elephant in the boardroom.

Although longish, this article is indispensable in understanding the damage that materialism and mechanism has done to medicine. The placebo effect should never have been either a problem or an embarrassment. It only became so because of a need to pretend that the patient's mind does not matter, because mind is an illusion created by the buzz of neurons in the brain and causes nothing. Well, they are paying for their mistake now.

The good news is that a new approach is developing, one that harnesses both the placebo response and pharmaceuticals. As Silberman says,

The placebo response doesn't care if the catalyst for healing is a triumph of pharmacology, a compassionate therapist, or a syringe of salt water. All it requires is a reasonable expectation of getting better. That's potent medicine.

Of course, that means that the mind is doing the heavy lifting, but never mind. If you're better, you're better. You want to complain about that? Save it for when you are sick and not getting better.

Go here for the rest.

See also:

Can ideas be reduced to purely material causes?

Neuroscience: Where does it hurt? How?

Finally, an idea! Wow, a real idea. But wait, wait

Brain: If a pill did not cause all your problems, chance are a pill will not fix them all either

Health can sometimes be fun, free, and painless: The placebo effect gets its own Web site

Placebo effect: Your mind's role in your health

Mindand medicine: Did your doctor just prescribe you a quarter teaspoon of coloured sugar?

Beauregard and O'Leary on the Dennis Prager show: A partial transcript

If you do not take your sugar pill placebo are you more likely to die?

Also just up at The Mindful Hack:

href="http://mindfulhack.blogspot.com/2009/09/mario-beauregard-on-neuroscience-of.html" target="another">Neuroscience of Spirituality"

Big mystery: Why you feel sick when doctors tell you you are

Humans are unique - get used to it, or get therapy. Do NOT get a chimpanzee

But you're not nearly smart enough to tell me how to run my life

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

Review Of The Fifth Chapter Of Signature In The Cell By Stephen Meyer
By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

Amidst the many memories that I cherish from my college undergraduate years are the get-togethers that friends and I would have to discuss the core textbook principles of molecular biology. Benjamin Lewin's Genes IV stands out as one of the treasured resources we would pour over as we searched for the facts on the makeup of life. Perhaps most often visited amongst our topics of discussion were those of eukaryotic transcription and translation principally because for all of us there was something deeply unsettling about the naturalistic foundations upon which the emergence of these processes had been presented. So unsettled were we that we could never quite swallow the evolutionary suppositions that accompanied the factual details.

To recapitulate on what we now know about transcription, eukaryotes are furnished with three different RNA polymerases differing primarily in the types of genes that they transcribe. Each RNA Polymerase binds to a class of DNA sequence known as a promoter from which transcription then begins (1). A number of proteins called transcription factors, upon which these polymerases are absolutely dependent, form a functional transcription 'apparatus'. RNA Polymerase II for example requires at least four transcription factors, TFIIA, TFIIB, TFIID and TFIIE for activity - a fact that is self-evident in Stephen Meyer's pictorial outlines in the fifth chapter of his book Signature In The Cell.

The first step in the formation of the transcription apparatus involves the binding of TFIID to a DNA sequence upstream of the promoter's own TATA box. TFIIA and TFIIB are then incorporated into the complex allowing RNA Polymerase II to bind to its recognition sequence in the DNA together with TFIIE (1). The functional interdependence of these molecules of course limits the amount of genetic change that can be tolerated by any one of the genes that codes for them. After all, any structural change in any one of the transcription factors would have to be accompanied by concerted changes in other factors within the complex as well as the RNA Polymerase II itself if functionality were to be maintained. This latter point, as relates to functional molecular complexes in general, was heavily emphasized in a seminal paper on Cambrian fauna by Meyer et al in 2001 (2).

In thinking of eukaryotic transcription I am reminded of Alexandre Dumas' three musketeers who, like eukaryotic RNA polymerases, acted in unison in their endeavors. Ribosomal RNAs transcribed by RNA Polymerase I form part of the very ribosomes that then translate messenger RNAs, the latter having been transcribed by RNA Polymerase II. Similarly transfer RNAs (tRNAs), products of RNA Polymerase III, play their role in assuring the correct incorporation of amino acids during translation. Living up to the axiom 'Un Pour Tous', RNA Polymerases can be considered as the three chevaliers of the molecular realm.

As one reads Meyer's summary of how the mechanistic details of transcription and translation were first unraveled, one cannot help but notice the amount of theoretical ground work that had been laid out before the first experimental results began rolling in. Contravening the ideas initially put forward by 'Tie Club' physicist George Gammow (see my review on the exploits of the Tie Club, Ref 3), Crick realized that the inherent structure of DNA could not in itself account for the amino acid sequence of proteins. In Meyer's words "there is nothing about the chemical properties of the bases in DNA (or those in mRNA) that favors forming a chemical bond with any specific amino acid over another" (p.130). There had to exist a code embedded within but existing independently of DNA's structural layout.

Francis Crick realized early on in his career that if DNA were to function as a code, it would require a series of adapter molecules that could in some way mirror the 'letters' or codons in the DNA sequence. Such molecules were later identified as transfer RNAs each of which we now know is coupled to a specific amino acid as a result of the activities of specialized enzymes called tRNA synthetases. Intermediate between DNA and proteins are messenger RNAs- transcripts of the code-rich sequence of DNA that migrate from the nucleus to the cytoplasm where ribosomes are ready in waiting to begin translation.

To this day seemingly unanswerable questions on the evolution of transcription and translation mechanisms continue to rattle the Darwin-faithful. As noted in an earlier review, gradually evolving the genetic code to provide the full complement of amino acid coding triplets would be lethal before it were beneficial simply because such alterations would impact the very proteins that make up the translation machinery (4). Along these same lines, biophycist Paul Davies famously remarked that "a change in the code risks feeding back into the very translation machinery that implements it, leading to a catastrophic feedback of errors that would wreck the whole process. To have accurate translation, the cell must first translate accurately"(5).

Meyer's expository talent is visible in his extension of these same principles to other cellular processes such as DNA replication. Meyer fleshes out a cohesive argument in support of intelligent design garnering support from an extensive body of molecular evidence and expert commentaries. His review of the 'chicken and egg' paradox, as relates to the integral interdependencies of molecular systems such as transcription and translation, highlights once more why it is that evolutionary 'pie in the sky' assumptions are powerless to explain the origins of critical life processes.

Literature Cited
1. Benjamin Lewin(1990), Genes IV, Oxford Cell Press, 4th Edition pp. 543-546

2. Stephen C. Meyer, P. A. Nelson, and Paul Chien (2001), The Cambrian Explosion: Biology's Big Bang, http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/Cambrian.pdf pp.34-35

3. Twenty Men In Matching Ties, And The Eternal Mystery Of The World's Comprehensibility
http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2008/09/07/twenty_men_in_matching_ties_and_the_eter

4. The Pioneers We Cherish: Reviewing The Achievements Of 'Origins' Biology, http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2008/08/06/the_pioneers_we_cherish_reviewing_the_ac

5. Paul Davies (1999), The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and The Meaning of Life, Published by Simon and Schuster, New York, p.111