The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Not 98% or 99%, as every motor mouth on Hoax TV can tell you, between 9-11 hair fixes.

A friend writes to say:

In 2008 I made the prediction (based on data available from the draft chimpanzee genome) that the human and chimpanzee genomes were about 70% the same overall. This has now been confirmed for the Y chromosome in a detailed study.

The study found

As expected, we found that the degree of similarity between orthologous chimpanzee and human MSY sequences (98.3% nucleotide identity) differs only modestly from that reported when comparing the rest of the chimpanzee and human genomes (98.8%)15. Surprisingly, however, >30% of chimpanzee MSY sequence has no homologous, alignable counterpart in the human MSY, and vice versa (Supplementary Fig. 8 and Supplementary Note 3).

In aggregate, the consequence of gene loss and gain in the chimpanzee and human lineages, respectively, is that the chimpanzee MSY contains only two-thirds as many distinct genes or gene families as the human MSY, and only half as many protein-coding transcription units (Table 1).

He cautions that the authors of the Nature paper do not think that their findings for the Y chromosome are true for the whole genome.

Perhaps not, but it is nice to see sane people working on genetic similarity issues for once.

The paper is: Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure
and gene content, Nature 463, 536-539 (28 January 2010) | doi:10.1038/nature08700

The human Y chromosome began to evolve from an autosome hundreds of millions of years ago, acquiring a sex-determining function and undergoing a series of inversions that suppressed crossing over with the X chromosome1, 2. Little is known about the recent evolution of the Y chromosome because only the human Y chromosome has been fully sequenced. Prevailing theories hold that Y chromosomes evolve by gene loss, the pace of which slows over time, eventually leading to a paucity of genes, and stasis3, 4. These theories have been buttressed by partial sequence data from newly emergent plant and animal Y chromosomes5, 6, 7, 8, but they have not been tested in older, highly evolved Y chromosomes such as that of humans. Here we finished sequencing of the male-specific region of the Y chromosome (MSY) in our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, chieving levels of accuracy and completion previously reached for the human MSY. By comparing the MSYs of the two species we show that they differ radically in sequence structure and gene content, indicating rapid evolution during the past 6 million years. The chimpanzee MSYcontains twice as many massive palindromes as the human MSY, yet it has lost large fractions of the MSY protein-coding genes and gene families present in the last common ancestor. We suggest that the extraordinary divergence of the chimpanzee and human MSYs was driven by four synergistic factors: the prominent role of the MSY in sperm production, ‘genetichitchhiking’ effects in the absence of meiotic crossing over, frequent ectopic recombination within the MSY, and species differences in mating behaviour. Although genetic decay may be the principal dynamic in the evolution of newly emergent Y chromosomes, wholesale renovation is the paramount theme in the continuing evolution of chimpanzee, human and perhaps other older MSYs.

Did you get that? “Wholesale renovation.” No doubt there’ll be more real news to come.

But don't expect to hear it from Hoax TV. 70%? Doesn't quite have the same ring as 99%, does it.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

Shattered assumptions, broken rules and overturned beliefs. The science media seems eager these days to emphasize science's capacity to shift paradigms. And it was such a handful of descriptives that was used to convey the implications of a new study that redefines our view of genome architecture (1). At the heart of such excitement lay a tunicate organism called Oikopleura dioica that carries in its genetic armory "several peculiarities" (1). Weighing in with its 70 million base pairs of DNA Oikopleura is today venerated as the animal with the smallest known genome (1). But what stands out for biologists who have dedicated years to unpacking Oikopleura's treasure box genome is the 'odd ball' physical location of many of its genes (1). The Scientist's Megan Scudellari remarked that "Oikopleura's genes appear to have been shuffled like a deck of cards" (1).

At the apex of this presumed shuffling is that all-elusive but much loved patch-all process called evolution. "UV rays and other mutagens" that bombard Oikopleura as it ekes out its existence just below the ocean surface are the suggested deck dealers of this particular shuffle (1). But apart from this rather misty association between cause and effect, there is precious little in the evolutionary inferences of this study to satisfy an appetite for robust scientific argumentation. To be fair, there are observable facts that we can latch onto and embrace as the products of rigorous science:

(i) Oikopleura's genome is extremely small containing the same number of genes found in humans (18,000) but compacted into a genome that is 1/40th of the size (1). Genome compactness is reflected in small intergenic distances (53% are less than 1Kb)(2).

(ii) While the Oikopleura external phenotype is clearly in line with that observed in other tunicates, the intronic organization of its genome is vastly different (introns are very small peaking at 47 base pairs in length)(2).

(iii) Oikopleura is unique amongst the tunicates in having both male and female individuals (2).

(iv) Oikopleura exhibits high mutation rates and low dN/dS ratios per each 4-day long generation (dN and dS being the rate of substitutions in non-silent and silent sites respectively)(2).

But there is also fact-less guesswork. For example, since this new study found that many of Oikopleura's introns display high sequence homology, the follow-on assertion put forth by the authors is that introns multiplied in the genome in a hap stance, 'by chance' fashion and that genome architecture across the animal kingdom is therefore inherently plastic and unconnected to morphological/developmental complexity (1,2). Such a grossly overstated endpoint does not appear to be supported by anything close to a thorough examination of intron location and animal morphological variability.

Twenty years ago scientists began to understand the intimate role that introns play in gene regulation in higher order animals (3). We now know that intron splicing involves "the precise deletion of an intron from the primary transcript" so that exons on either end can be joined in readiness for protein translation (4). The choice of specific splice sites depends on the surrounding sequence and structure of the RNA (5). Three types of sequence- the 5' splice site, the 3' splice site and a branchpoint sequence- are almost invariably found in pre-mRNA introns of higher eukaryotes although these elements alone are insufficient to account for the specificity of the splicing reaction (5). Additional signals in abutting exons not only ensure that accurate splicing is maintained but also prevent exon 'skipping', which would of course adversely impact the functionality of the translated product (6).

In some cases more than one mRNA can be coded for by a "single stretch of DNA" as a result of different splicing pathways, different intron cleavage sites and selectively active promoters (3). The mouse salivary amylase gene is perhaps the archetypal example of the multi-variant role that introns play in gene regulation. In this instance alternative but nevertheless nucleotide-specific splice sites are used depending upon whether expression is required in salivary glands or the liver (3). Stephen Meyer writes: "like Russian dolls stored within Russian dolls, exons and introns encode multiple genetic messages within themselves and are themselves part of a larger genetic message" (7).

Genomic mapping has shown that "of 5589 introns mapped by interspecies protein alignments, 76% had positions unique to Oikopleura" (2). It is therefore assumed evolutionarily speaking that Oikopleura's single major spliceosome made up of U1 snRNP and U2AF proteins is capable of recognizing donor and acceptor sites in the genome and shuffling introns around accordingly (2). Such a proposed transposition and propagation seems to fly in the face of what we know about the contextual requirements of intron splicing as outlined above. For instance, if differing intron splicing pathways are active in distinct parts of an organism then we would expect their transposition to novel genome sites to be extremely disruptive to gene function within their new context.

Evolutionists' intron-splicing magic is rife with factless guesswork. Even the briefest of considerations as is offered here makes that plain.

Further Reading

1. Megan Sculellari (2010) Who Needs Structure Anyway? The Scientist, 18th November, 2010, See http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57814/
2. France Denoeud et al (2010) Plasticity of Animal Genome Architecture Unmasked by Rapid Evolution of a Pelagic Tunicate, Science, Vol 330, pp.1381-1385
3. Benjamin Lewin (1990), Genes IV, Oxford Cell Press, pp.484-486
4. Christopher Wills (1991) Exons, Introns & Talking Genes: The Science Behind The Human Genome Project, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, p.112
5. Adrian Kramer & Tom Maniatis (1990) RNA Splicing, in Transcription And Splicing, Eds B.D. Hames & D.M. Glover, IRL Press, Washington DC, pp.141-145
6. Ibid. p.159
7. Stephen Meyer (2009) Signature In The Cell: DNA And The Evidence For Intelligent Design, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, p.463

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

Buried in the most recent scientific literature there is a story of love, sex, and intrigue that has all the makings of a hearty Mills & Boon novel. The central characters of this plot are not lovers wrapped in each others arms but fruit flies that choose their sexual partners according to the microbiota that line their guts (1,2). Lactobacillus plantarum is the 'cupid gut bug' that seems to have greatest influence on sexual preferences (1,2) And it appears to do so by influencing the release of a class of Drosophila pherormones known as cuticular hydrocarbons (1,2). For evolutionists this finding is cited as one possible avenue through which speciation might take place in Drosophila (1,2). For those of us who are critical of such work however there exists one small but important catch. That is that the sexual preferences observed are easily eradicated by simply treating fruit flies that have been raised on different diets, with antibiotics (1,2). In other words, no genetic changes that would ensure irreversible reproductive isolation, and hence speciation, have taken place.

The late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould was convinced that for speciation to occur, so-called peripheral populations would simply have to become 'locked up'- isolated from the gene flow of their larger ancestral stocks- in such a way that new adaptations would become stable and not watered down by interbreeding (3). Gould's close colleague Niles Eldredge posited that new species could form, "by the mere accumulation of genetic differences in the two segments of a single ancestral species" on the basis of some sort of hypothetical, (however slight) change in the reproductive system (4, p.116). As he went on to add, "some modification of the reproductive system is required for speciation to occur" (4, p. 121).

Unfortunately for Gould and Eldredge such an exit glossed over key mechanistic questions. After all what mechanism could we come up with that ensured irreversible reproductive isolation from ancestral stocks? Attempts to correlate speciation events with some sort of unguided change in the genetic makeup of an isolated population have proved largely unfruitful. In their studies on fruit flies Laura Reed and Therese Markow suggest that reduced sperm motility as well as sperm storage, recovery from storage, or ability to penetrate the micropyle might play an important role in the hybrid incompatibility that results from interspecial crossings (5). But they readily admit that the lack of a known genetic causality for speciation today represents "a major challenge to evolutionary biology" (5). They further add that "no study has yet characterized levels of naturally occurring variation for factors causing postzygotic isolation in any animal taxon" (5). Such a challenge is of fundamental importance if, as Darwin did, evolutionary biologists are to confidently claim that speciation is merely an extension of population variation.

Today some scientists have posited that a small number of genes in individual species might somehow maintain populations as reproductively isolated units. Biologist Daniel Barbash and his colleagues from Cornell University put forward a gene called "Hybrid Male Rescue" (hmr) as a possible candidate speciation gene in fruit flies (6,7). They demonstrated that hmr was responsible for hybrid incompatibility between different species, seemingly acting in concert with an unknown autosomal factor (7). Yet they also recognized that the 13% interspecial amino acid divergence observed in the HMR DNA Binding protein was a tall order for "relaxed selective constraints" to have achieved on their own (7). According to their statistical analysis of mutational frequencies and in line with the Dobzhansky-Muller (D-M) speciation model, they were adamant that some sort of positive selection must have been at work although they were unable to suggest what selective pressures might have acted to favor reproductive isolation (6,7).

Darwin himself recognized that whatever factors might be involved in ensuring reproductive isolation they could not have arisen through natural selection. He wrote in The Origin of Species that "the sterility of species when first crossed, and that of their hybrid offspring, cannot have been acquired...by the preservation of successive profitable degrees of sterility" (8, p.361). As he subsequently noted "it could clearly have been of no advantage to such separated species to have been rendered mutually sterile, and consequently this could not have been effected through natural selection" (8, p.379). In other words whatever genetic factors had maintained reproductive isolation would have had to have been found purely through chance alone- a blind walk through genetic space in search of those mutations that would prevent reproduction between some individuals and allow reproduction between others (9).

Rather than supporting evolutionist dogma the picture of coordinated changes being effected in individuals numerous enough so as to ensure the creation of novel species resonates more closely with the tenets of intelligent design. It is the height of irony that evidence-lacking meanderings over evolution and speciation should become most apparent in the 'gut feelings' of the humble fruit fly.

Further Reading

1. Jeff Akst (2010) Gut Bugs Affect Mating, The Scientist, 15th December, See http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57793/
2. Gil Sharon, Daniel Segal, John M. Ringo, Abraham Hefetz, Ilana Zilber-Rosenberg, Eugene Rosenberg (2010) Commensal bacteria play a role in mating preference of Drosophila melanogaster, Proc Natl Acad. Sci USA Vol 107, pp. 20051-6
3. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory The Belknap Press of Harvard University, Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp.800-802
4. Niles Eldredge (1985) Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian, Evolution and the Theory of Puctuated Equilibria, Published by Simon and Schuster, New York
5. Laura Reed, Therese Markow (2004) Early events in speciation: Polymorphism for hybrid male sterility in Drosophila, Proc Natl Acad. Sci USA Vol 101 pp. 9009-9012
6. A Gene Responsible for Hybrid Incompatibility in Drosophila, PLoS Biology Vol. 2, Issue 6, p. 709
7. Daniel A. Barbash, Philip Awadalla, Aaron M. Tarone (2004), Functional Divergence Caused by Ancient Positive Selection of a Drosophila Hybrid Incompatibility Locus, PLoS Biol. 2004 Jun;2(6):e142.
8. 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
9. Darwin stipulated that in order for speciation to have segregated populations into reproductive isolates, so-called "disturbances" in the genetic makeup of offspring must have occurred whenever there were crossings between species. But natural selection could not have been the mechanism that led to hybrid incompatibility. Since natural selection favors those traits that are advantageous to an individual within a population, what advantage could be gained from one individual becoming reproductively isolated from the rest of its neighbors? Without the ability to reproduce no genes would be carried over to successive generations. Several individuals would have had to evolve their speciation genes in precisely the same way as to give a genetic constitution that was sexually compatible, this through chance alone.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Just wondering. Have you seen examples from recent textbooks that match these examples from the 1990s through 2001?:

From Joseph S. Levine and Kenneth R. Miller, Biology: Discovering Life (D.C. Heath and Co., 1st ed. 1992, p. 152:

Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless--a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit.

Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.

(My source tells me that this language was not removed for the 2nd ed. in 1994.)

From Douglas Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology (1998, 3rd Ed., Sinauer Associates), p. 5:

Darwin showed that material causes are a sufficient explanation not only for physical phenomena, as Descartes and Newton had shown, but also for biological phenomena with all their seeming evidence of design and purpose. By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous. Together with Marx's materialistic theory of history and society and Freud's attribution of human behavior to influences over which we have little control, Darwin's theory of evolution was a crucial plank in the platform of mechanism and materialism…"

From William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, H. Craig Keller, Life: The Science of Biology (2001, 6th Ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co.), p. 3:

Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that evolutionary change occurs without any ‘goals.’ The idea that evolution is not directed towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.

Hat tip Stephen E. Jones

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In Science , we read:

Altering the Past: China's Faked Fossils Problem

Richard Stone

Specialists and collectors around the world have long decried the flood of sham fossils pouring out of China. But Science has learned that many composites and fakes are now finding their way into Chinese museums, especially local museums. One paleontologist estimates that more than 80% of marine reptile specimens now on display in Chinese museums have been "altered or artificially combined to varying degrees." One consequence of the fakery is an erosion of trust in museums, which are supposed to enlighten—not con—the public. Scholars, too, pay a price: They waste time sifting authentic specimens from counterfeit chaff. And a genuine blockbuster fossil can be destroyed by attempts to enhance its appeal. (Caution: Subscriber wall)

Besides which, the past can be faked to support whatever thesis an establishment likes ...

It is high time many became more critical of museums. As Michael Ruse writes*,

Evolution after Darwin had set itself up to be something more than science. It was a popular science, the science of the marketplace and the museum, and it was a religion—whether this be purely secular or blended in with a form of liberal Christianity.

*For an informative account of the role of museums in the spread of evolution as
a religion, see Michael Ruse, The Evolution Wars: A Guide to the Debates (Santa Barbara,
CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000), pp. 103–05. For his own ambivalent view, see pp. 113–14.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Molecular biologist Douglas Axe, whose specialty is proteins, has published TheLimits of Complex Adaptation: An Analysis Based on a Simple Model of Structured Bacterial Populations in BIO-Complexity, assessing whether current standard models of evolution are plausible.

A friend writes to explain,

This is a very important paper. It takes on a major problem in population genetics, a problem that has provoked a number of recent papers from our opponents, precisely because they know this issue must be solved before neo-Darwinism can work on any level except the trivial.

Warning: heavy sailing ahead, but the introductory section that challenges Lynch and Abegg is worth reading carefully.

The take home message: gene duplication and recruitment as a model for the evolution of new genes is very limited. It works only if very few changes are required to reach a new selectable function. If the duplicated gene has a slightly negative fitness cost, the maximum number of mutations (in addition to the duplication itself) that a new innovation in a bacterial population can require is two or fewer. If the duplication is cost-free the number of mutations jumps to six or fewer.

Ann Gauger at the Biologic Institute draws attention to this paper as well:

Evolutionary Algorithms: Are We There Yet?

Yes, heavy sailing - in more senses than one, as trolls armed with their iron rice bowls pile on. Author Axe takes a relaxed view of the smoke, mirrors, and noise:

Some people are bothered by the craziness that surrounds the Darwin-v-Design controversy, but I take a more relaxed view. Don’t get me wrong. If I thought there were nothing but craziness, I’d be as frustrated as anyone. But serious science is being done on both sides of the debate, and that should give us confidence that a truer picture of biology will become visible as the smoke clears.

Gauger continues:

In the recent past, several papers have been published that claim to demonstrate that biological evolution can readily produce new genetic information, using as their evidence the ability of various evolutionary algorithms to find a specific target. This is a rather large claim.

It has thus fallen to others in the scientific or engineering community to evaluate these published claims. How well do these algorithms model biology? How exactly was the work done? Do the results make sense? Are there unexamined variables that might affect the interpretation of results? Are there hidden sources of bias? Are the conclusions justified or do they go beyond the scope of what has been shown?

A new paper by Montañez et al. [1], just published in the journal BIO-Complexity, answers some of these questions for the evolutionary algorithm ev [2], one of the computer programs proposed to simulate biological evolution. As perhaps should be no surprise, the authors found that ev uses sources of active information (meaning information added to the search to improve its chances of success compared to a blind search) to help it find its target. Indeed, the algorithm is predisposed toward success because information about the search is built into its very structure.

These same authors have previously reported on the hidden sources of information that allowed another evolutionary algorithm, AVIDA [3-5], to find its target. Once again, active information introduced by the structure of the algorithm was what allowed it to be successful.
These results confirm that there is no free lunch for evolutionary algorithms. Active information is needed to guide any search that does better than a random walk.

Abstract of Douglas Axe’s paper:

To explain life's current level of complexity, we must first explain genetic innovation. Recognition of this fact has generated interest in the evolutionary feasibility of complex adaptations--adaptations requiring multiple mutations, with all intermediates being non-adaptive. Intuitively, one expects the waiting time for arrival and fixation of these adaptations to have exponential dependence on d, the number of specific base changes they require. Counter to this expectation, Lynch and Abegg have recently concluded that in the case of selectively neutral intermediates, the waiting time becomes independent of d as d becomes large. Here, I confirm the intuitive expectation by showing where the analysis of Lynch and Abegg erred and by developing new treatments of the two cases of complex adaptation--the case where intermediates are selectively maladaptive and the case where they are selectively neutral. In particular, I use an explicit model of a structured bacterial population, similar to the island model of Maruyama and Kimura, to examine the limits on complex adaptations during the evolution of paralogous genes--genes related by duplication of an ancestral gene. Although substantial functional innovation is thought to be possible within paralogous families, the tight limits on the value of d found here (d = 2 for the maladaptive case, and d = 6 for the neutral case) mean that the mutational jumps in this process cannot have been very large. Whether the functional divergence commonly attributed to paralogs is feasible within such tight limits is far from certain, judging by various experimental attempts to interconvert the functions of supposed paralogs. This study provides a mathematical framework for interpreting experiments of that kind, more of which will needed before the limits to functional divergence become clear.

A note about the journal BIO-Complexity:

BIO-Complexity BIO-Complexity is a peer-reviewed scientific journal with a unique goal. It aims to be the leading forum for testing the scientific merit of the claim that intelligent design (ID) is a credible explanation for life. Because questions having to do with the role and origin of information in living systems are at the heart of the scientific controversy over ID, these topics—viewed from all angles and perspectives—are central to the journal's scope.

To achieve its aim, BIO-Complexity is founded on the principle of critical exchange that makes science work. Specifically, the journal enlists editors and reviewers with scientific expertise in relevant fields who hold a wide range of views on the merit of ID, but who agree on the importance of science for resolving controversies of this kind. Our editors use expert peer review, guided by their own judgement, to decide whether submitted work merits consideration and critique. BIO-Complexity aims not merely to publish work that meets this standard, but also to provide expert critical commentary on it.

Apparently, there are no vacancies for trolls in the foreseeable future.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

NASA Science News for Dec. 17, 2010

Northern winter is beginning in a special way. On Dec. 21st, the winter solstice, a lunar eclipse will be visible across all of North America.

The luster will be a bit "off" on Dec. 21st, the first day of northern winter, when the full Moon passes almost dead-center through Earth's shadow. For 72 minutes of eerie totality, an amber light will play across the snows of North America, throwing landscapes into an unusual state of ruddy shadow.

The eclipse begins on Tuesday morning, Dec. 21st, at 1:33 am EST (Monday, Dec. 20th, at 10:33 pm PST). At that time, Earth's shadow will appear as a dark-red bite at the edge of the lunar disk. It takes about an hour for the "bite" to expand and swallow the entire Moon. Totality commences at 02:41 am EST (11:41 pm PST) and lasts for 72 minutes.

If you're planning to dash out for only one quick look -? it is December, after all -? choose this moment: 03:17 am EST (17 minutes past midnight PST). That's when the Moon will be in deepest shadow, displaying the most fantastic shades of coppery red.

FULL STORY here. And here's the lunar eclipse photo gallery.

Entertain children the old-fashioned way. Don't buy them something. Show them a wonder that belongs to everyone. Then give the money to children's education in developing countries.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Some have suggested that intelligent design theorists should consider Darwin's much-neglected co-theorist, Alfred Russel Wallace (January 8, 1823-November 7, 1913), an inspiration. Some seem to be taking up the challenge.

Wallace came up with the same "survival of the fittest" idea as Darwin. But - because he found order, meaning, and purpose in the universe - Wallace was not a racist and did not claim that Darwinism was the best idea has ever had, as best-selling authors do today (because it explains the history of life, supposedly).

A key change in the intelligent design controversy in recent years is this: Just what Darwinism really does is slowly but surely becoming a subject of rational enquiry, rather than tax-funded, court-ordered worship.

A friend wrote recently to say,

On Nov. 7, 1913, Alfred Russel Wallace died. Once again, we didn't pay tribute to him in our blogs. I usually wait one day, read the newspapers and magazines, and then post something to remember this date and call attention to the fact that Wallace should also be remembered.

Ah yes, do pay tribute - as long as it is not the ridiculous and appalling hagiography that surrounds Darwin, such that he, his theory, and his tax-supported followers are immune from rational examination.

For the record, Wallace is not a liberator equivalent to Abraham Lincoln, or should it anything like this be said of him:

Darwin revolutionised the biology of his day; he fashioned a new concept of humankind; he challenged basic philosophical and religious ideas about the nature and meaning of life; so profound was his insight that his thought remains relevant to contemporary biology. These surpassing achievements brought a “revolution” equal in importance to the Copernican revolution. Smitten with reverence, my eye falls on the dust jacket to contemplate the photo of the dignified aged Darwin: yes, he looks like a prophet!

Satirical but just. A Wallace admirer would evade this nonsense not because Wallace wasn't a great biologist, but precisely because he was. He deserves a better remembrance than to focus neuroses, as Darwin does, for people who would really be happier swinging from the trees.

My friend advises that a small, old biographical booklet on Wallace can be downloaded free here. He reminds me that this month is the centennial of Wallace's book The World of Life, wherein he lays out his own approach to evolution. Wallace scholar Michael Flannery provides an introduction. Flannery is also shortly to publish a new biography of Wallace with Discovery Institute Press, accompanied by a Web site explaining his intelligent evolution approach. The guardians of the Wallace cult don't like it, and promptly get everything wrong But what would one expect? Science history is too important to be left to cultists.

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

Alfred Russel Wallace comes in for some long
overdue recognition

Darwinian atheist Michael Ruse a "practicing Anglican"?

Book Santa will keep for himself: The Nature of nature

Mike Behe replies to detractor Jerry Coyne ...

Neanderthals are people too, it turns out

It's been a while since I have heard from the Sky Is Falling department

Tsk tsk design language: Watch out for those lawyers

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Mike Behe's reply (excerpt):

Yes, complex gain-of-FCT events would not be expected to occur, but simple GOF's would. Yet they didn't show up.

Professor Coyne then proceeds to put words in my mouth:

What [Be]he's saying is this: "Yes, gain of FCTs could, and likely is, more important in nature than seen in these short-term experiments. But my conclusions are limited to these types of short-term lab studies."

No, that is not what I was saying at all. I was saying that, no matter what causes gain-of-FCT events to sporadically arise in nature (and I of course think the more complex ones likely resulted from deliberate intelligent design), short-term Darwinian evolution will be dominated by loss-of-FCT, which is itself an important, basic fact about the tempo of evolution.
Above I quoted Coyne talking about "complex FCTs, which take time to build or acquire from a rare horizontal transmission event." Yet cells aren't going to sit around twiddling their thumbs until that rare event shows up. Any mutation which confers an advantage at any time will be selected, and the large majority of those in the short term will be LOF. Ironically, Coyne seems to underestimate the power of natural selection, which "is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest...." A process which scrutinizes life "daily and hourly," as Darwin wrote, isn't going to wait around for some rare event.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

"This study reports evidence consistent with the 'deliberate fraud' hypothesis. The results suggest that papers retracted because of data fabrication or falsification represent a calculated effort to deceive.":

Med Ethics doi:10.1136/jme.2010.038125

Research ethics

Retractions in the scientific literature: do authors deliberately commit research fraud?

R Grant Steen
Correspondence to
R Grant Steen, Medical Communications Consultants LLC, 103 Van Doren Place, Chapel Hill, NC 27517, USA; g_steen_medicc@yahoo.com
Received 31 May 2010
Revised 29 July 2010
Accepted 13 August 2010
Published Online First 15 November 2010
Abstract
Background Papers retracted for fraud (data fabrication or data falsification) may represent a deliberate effort to deceive, a motivation fundamentally different from papers retracted for error. It is hypothesised that fraudulent authors target journals with a high impact f actor (IF), have other fraudulent publications, diffuse responsibility across many co-authors, delay retracting fraudulent papers and publish from countries with a weak research infrastructure.

Methods All 788 English language research papers retracted from the PubMed database between 2000 and 2010 were evaluated. Data pertinent to each retracted paper were abstracted from the paper and the reasons for retraction were derived from the retraction notice and dichoto mised as fraud or error. Data for each retracted article were entered in an Excel spreadsheet for analysis.

Results Journal IF was higher for fraudulent papers (p<0.001). Roughly 53% of fraudulent papers were written by a first author who had written other retracted papers (‘repeat offender’), whereas only 18% of erroneous papers were written by a repeat offender (?=88.40 ; p<0.0001). Fraudulent papers had more authors (p<0.001) and were retracted more slowly than erroneous papers (p<0.005). Surprisingly, there was significantly more fraud than error among retracted papers from the USA (?2=8.71; p<0.05) compared with the rest of the world.

Conclusions This study reports evidence consistent with the ‘deliberate fraud’ hypothesis. The results suggest that papers retracted because of data fabrication or falsification represent a calculated effort to deceive. It is inferred that such behaviour is neither naï ve, feckless nor inadvertent.

For comments go here "The highest number of retracted papers were written by US first authors (260), accounting for a third of the total. One in three of these was attributed to fraud.", or here (An excellent example of either crappy science reporting or crappy science ...), for the view that it's all a bum rap.

One site also offers a number of articles on the shortcomings of peer review. Also an article on self-plagiarism and one on self-plagiarism and bogus authorship.

Self-plagiarism? If I plagiarize myself, can I sue myself?

Self-Plagiarist dies of his pains,
When "Been done!" the reviewer complains.
He was suing himself
In a courtroom in Guelph,
And his spectre now sues his remains.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

My Salvo 15 Deprogram column:

LUCY SPEAKS
Evolutionary Psychology Is Now Taking Your Questions

When Britain's Guardian newspaper first introduced its "evolutionary" agony aunt (advice columnist in America) in 2009 - to honor 150 years of the culture birthed with Charles Darwin's 1859 book, On the Origin of Species - I thought, "Aha! a send-up, to be sure." I was wrong, but in fairness, when the evolutionary psychologist speaks, even an expert can't always tell.

No spoof. The Guardian burbled proudly about Carole Jahme, author of Beauty and the Beasts: Woman, Ape and Evolution and winner of the Wellcome Trust Award for Communication of Science to the Public. For the 2009 Darwin bicentennial celebrations, Jahme, who holds an M.A. in evolutionary psychology, put together a comedy show titled Carole Jahme is Sexually Selected, which was described as a combination of Charles Darwin and Charlie Chaplin.

The Guardian touts her column as "shin[ing] the cold light of evolutionary psychology" on readers' problems, thus apparently offering welcome relief from the "Aw, just dump the dweeb!" froth churned out by glossier rags and mags.

For more, go here.

And treat yourself or a friend to a year-long Salvo of light-hearted fun at the expense of publicly venerated nonsense.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

At Slate, Daniel Engber offers another slam at peer review:

When journal editors are asked about these ideas, they often quote Winston Churchill's line, "Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Or rather, they quote other journal editors quoting that line. But it's a poor analogy, since few alternatives to peer review have been tried in modern times. And democracy isn't really a good description of peer review, either. Sure, peer review allows scientists to participate in a system of self-governance. But wouldn't BMJ's policy of open review or Ginsparg's proposal for Web-published preprints be far more democratic?

So far, though, the Churchill quoters are winning.

You know, "The worst system , except for all the others." The trouble is, any system can exhaust the benefits for which it was brought in- in this case, to cope with the flood of post-World War II science efforts. In my own view, it has become the same sort of drag on fresh thinking as reliance on Aristotle was in the early modern period of science.

If the object is to do good science while pleasing all possible reviewers, and the gist of the paper is an idea that disconfirms their theories, one may have to downplay findings, quit the field, or go nuts. Michael Behe is a rare example of someone who stood up to all the garbage, just to make a simple point or two about the shortcomings of Darwin's Rice Bowl.

Other peer review stories:

Peer review: How much more believable than fortunetelling?

"Peer review, mere review, and smear review"

"Peer review: Life, death, and the British Medical Journal"

Science: A year-end wad of fraud, falsified data, and other award-winning tenure strategies ...

Peer review: What if your peers would have to be otherconspiracy theorists? (No, really!)

Peer review: Gold standard or gold in "them thar hills"

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Apparently, Jerry Coyne is now attacking me, re Behe's recent paper. To judge from his blog post's title, he has me confused with Discovery Institute.*

(Behe's paper is available for free download here).
.
Dr. Coyne claims that Behe's findings apply only to artificial selection in the lab. But, at the feet of the great Richard Dawkins, I learned that artificial selection like human breeding of dogs, has proved Behe both wrong and ridiculous, in Edge of Evolution. That is precisely because dog breeding is equivalent to the process that applies throughout nature:

Don’t evade the point by protesting that dog breeding is a form of intelligent design. It is (kind of), but Behe, having lost the argument over irreducible complexity, is now in his desperation making a completely different claim: that mutations are too rare to permit significant evolutionary change anyway. From Newfies to Yorkies, from Weimaraners to water spaniels, from Dalmatians to dachshunds, as I incredulously close this book I seem to hear mocking barks and deep, baying howls of derision from 500 breeds of dogs — every one descended from a timber wolf within a time frame so short as to seem, by geological standards, instantaneous.

All you have to do, it seems, is leave out intelligent design.

Dawkins said this in the Bible, and all the wise nodded in assent.

Well, either artificial selection is relevant or it isn't. Maybe Coyne and Dawkins should talk more.

*We share some initials, it's true. My middle name is Ileen. The confusion is inevitable.

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

Could Darwinists be running low on insults?

But I really DO think that Christian Darwinism is an oxymoron

You'd rather watch this than passing trains

Saturday morning coffee break: Frosty the Snowman was not designed, he evolved

Listening: Michael Behe crosses the (not!) warm little Pond

f you are a Darwinist, can you be a Christian if people just say so ... ?

From the quote mine: Themisunderestimated virtues of skepticism

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Mike Behe,
widely hated author of Edge of Evolution has been on the road recently, in Britain.

Behe's most recent heresy has been to detail what Darwinism can and can’t do, as shown in experiments and evidence. For some reason, that man has a problem with rehabilitating magic and calling it Darwinian evolution - but that is just what heretics are like.

Apparently, he got quite a bit of response, and not only from Darwin’s rice bowls. Here’s a radio program with a British Christian Darwinist, Keith Fox. Go here for the mp3 podcast and here for Itunes.

The skinny:

It was a shock to people of the nineteenth century when they discovered, from observations science had made, that many features of the biological world could be ascribed to the elegant principle of natural selection. - Michael Behe

It is a shock to us in the twentieth century to discover, from observations science has made, that the fundamental mechanisms of life cannot be ascribed to natural selection, and therefore were designed. But we must deal with our shock as best we can and go on. - Michael Behe

Read more here.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

Unlike Darwin's bicentennial, here is one anniversary that is certainly worth celebrating. Unlike Darwin's rock pile, here is one example of how the science of today is building on the solidity of yesteryear's durable substructure. Anti-evolutionists are not anti-science. But they are opposed to the beligerence of those who contumaciously refuse to accept the broader implications of science's beautiful procession towards the truth.

Written by Felipe Aizpun Vines, OIACDI; 2010, ISBN 10-1452800790; Review by Carlos Javier Alonso, University of Navarra, Spain (see original review in Spanish at OIACDI); Translation by Robert Deyes

Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional (Evolution and rational thought) presents a thoroughly comprehensive analysis of both the arguments in favor and against evolution and demonstrates the author's deep understanding of scientific literature published over the last few decades on the subjects of life's origins and the evolution of man. This timely volume deals with the subject matter in extraordinary depth through its coverage of both classical and contemporary viewpoints from the various schools of evolutionary thought. The 622-page text of Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional is divided up into 21 chapters that systematically unpack the following topics: Darwinism, Evolution: fact or theory, materialist prejudices, creationism, fundamentalism, rational thought, science and philosophy, routes of reason, shortcomings of the scientific method, the 'new biology', intelligent design, evolution and creation and the philosophy of life.

Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional stands out as a resource that brings together the core elements of the topics it covers and thus provides an avenue for readers to assess the current state of debate. In this regard Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional can be seen as the 'evolution bible'. Rather than giving the impression of a rapidly assembled collection of facts put together for the sole purpose of disseminating information, the book bears all the hallmarks of a well thought out literary masterpiece. Most notable is the rich collection of arguments through which each of the evolutionary hypotheses are expounded and systematically considered. And yet Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional is not exclusively directed towards specialist readers. On the contrary. In my assessment, it is easily accessible to those who have a basic training in philosophy and science and a firm grasp of the multi-faceted problems surrounding evolutionary reasoning.

Understood in a purely biological context, evolution is not a fact in itself but rather an interpretation of the facts as we find them. To be sure, no scientific specialty can claim to faithfully reconstruct what happened hundreds of thousands let alone millions of years ago. The relevant disciplines only allow us to make conjectures or presumptions regarding the journey that evolution has taken. It therefore follows that evolution carries with it an inherent (not necessarily false) bias and constitutes a hypothesis lacking the empirical support so necessary to establish it as a scientific theory.

Criticisms of the Darwinist paradigm and its neo-Darwinist reformulation are sufficiently convincing, not easily refutable and solidly rigorous. As Felipe Aizpun shows, Darwin's lack of understanding of genetics prevented him from drawing up a mechanism through which evolution could run its course. But the neo-Darwinist revision fares no better. The proposed combination of favorable random mutations preserved by natural selection falls short in every aspect.

The author compellingly asserts that the chance assessment of events exists nowhere other that in the minds eye. There are numerous causal factors that can affect the outcomes of natural processes and there is no way to predict which factors will act to produce a given outcome. The complexity of nature makes such predictions very difficult if not impossible given that causal factors that act in one instance might be absent in others. An appeal to 'chance' is an appeal made from ignorance of what causal factors are at play in the manifestation of a reality that we observe. Only in relation to a partial cause can we talk about chance. For these reasons the Darwinian paradigm, defined in Kuhnian terms, is one that is rife with anomalies and thereby one that is on the verge of a revolutionary crisis. While the alternative offered by Professor Maximo Sandin and biologist Lynn Margulis amongst others still carries with it significant gaps in understanding and points of contention (these are discussed with noteworthy precision and clarity in chapters 17 and 18) it could still unseat the official paradigm in the short term not only because of its more coherent consideration of the facts but also because the causal factors it invokes better explain the phenomenon of evolution.

Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional supplies an accurate analysis of scientific naturalism which at its core reduces all understanding to that which is experimentally demonstrable. Scientific naturalism is a theory that states that only experimental science can provide a valid understanding of reality and that scientific investigation alone meets the needs of human intelligence. In accordance with this doctrine there has been a pinning down that unjustifiably restricts all human understanding to the confines of science. Nevertheless we cannot lose sight of the fact that science is not the only system available to us for acquiring knowledge. Undoubtedly a large part of what we know and what we have achieved has come to us from sources outside the scientific enterprise. The avenues along which man can understand reality are many. Beyond genetic inheritance, traditions and personal experience as well as art, crafts, religion, poetry and philosophy can provide a basis for understanding diverse aspects of our experience. While scientism claims that knowledge of our world is limited to that which is obtainable through experimental science, reducing all objectivity to that which is experimentally acquired blinds us to the fact that the scientific/natural picture is only one branch of the total human experience.

Another matter deserves our attention- the criticism (in my opinion questionable) of Tomist metaphysics and of the evidential force of his five arguments for the existence of God. According to the author such arguments imply the possibility of demonstrating the existence of God deductively. The author displays a partiality towards inferring the existence of God in probabilistic terms in accordance with the abductive line of reasoning put forward by Charles Sanders Pierce. A consideration of God's existence through probability rather than certainty, the latter being in accordance with a deductive mode of reasoning, has important ramifications. For example, a discourse on the foundations of morality on God would only fit into the religious context of revelation and would require from us additional efforts if we were to find an exclusively rational explanation, understood as an unavoidable commitment to action that could elude the subjectivist and relativist trap to which we would be destined.

Regarding this point the author reveals himself to be a partial doubter of the Kantian epistemology and criticism of the Tomist arguments. In his view, the Kantian criticism is made up of two parts that need to be differentiated. On the one hand we are to reflect on the fact that the deductive process for a cosmological argument is inconsistent given that it assumes an identification of the ideal concept of the necessary being with the being of realism even though such a connection is not rationally admissible. On the other hand, Kant concludes equivocally, taken by an arbitrary epistemological limitation, that transcendent ideas are inaccessible to reason. Although accurate the Kantian criticism of the Tomist approach, notes the author, the idea that God is not foreign to our rational state and the Kantian conclusion of unknowability, does not necessarily follow. What needs to be defined is an adequate method of reasoning that takes us to a primary cause and its connection with sensible knowledge.

One has to specifically acknowledge that there is something that is simply erroneous in the statement that knowledge exists exclusively as a function of sensible knowledge. Such a stance implies a rejection of formal abstraction and the separation of diverse aspects of being such as the modes of cognitive access and reality. To negate such an abstraction and separation is to obstruct the pathway towards God, given that we will not be able to access the being of those creatures.

Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional falls firmly within the paradigm of Intelligent Design. Seen from our vantage point, the design inference that comes from the study of living creatures is a completely logical one (one has to be blind not to see this); this is the inference that the latest theories- both theistic and more recently those of intelligent design- have put forward both in philosophical and scientific circles; such theories have generated much animosity amongst Darwinists, with their fundamental assumption of natural selection acting on random mutations. In any case, one has to recognize that all theories categorized under the ID umbrella play on two fields: that which argues strictly on scientific grounds (the work of Behe and Dembski concerning irreducible complexity and specified complexity in addition to their critique of the neodarwinist explanation, are paradigmatic examples of this) and also that which argues on philosophical grounds since they postulate the existence of a Designer as the causal agent that is necessary for the design. Within this perspective, ID theories do not fit strictly into the experimental scientific method and can therefore be considered as non-scientific. Nevertheless this does not mean that they are false since reality is not confined to that which we can observe through experimental science. Rather it means that these theories are at the same time both scientific and philosophical in nature.

In view of these points, Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional is a must-read for those wishing to remain up-to-date with contemporary evolutionary theories and the arguments that support them.

Dr. Carlos Javier Alonso obtained his PhD in philosophy from the University of Navarra in Spain. He also holds a degree in hispanic philology from the University of Leon and is an associate professor at the Instituto de Educacion Secundaria Ordono II in Leon. He is the author of several books on science including El Evolucionismo y Otros Mitos: La Crisis del Paradigma Darwinista (transl. Evolutionism And Other Myths: The Crisis Of The Darwinist Paradigm)

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

My review of Cordelia Fine's new book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference:

The gender wars take no prisoners. In 2005, suggesting that there might indeed be innate differences between men and women derailed the career of Harvard president Larry Summers. He reemerged, years later, as President Obama’s sometime finance guru). Meanwhile, a host of neuroscientists report differences between the brains of men and women that, they say, account for different abilities and career choices.

Psychologist and author Cordelia Fine disagrees with the neuroscientists. In Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, she has no time for the "special powers" that pop brain science currently imputes to the female brain, reminding us that such claims were made long before the magnetic resonance imaging machine was invented.

She takes aim at books such as What Could He Be Thinking? where we hear that images of male and female brains were "marriage saving" for author Michael Gurian and his wife, to say nothing of Gurian's Leadership and the Sexes which "links the actual science of male/female brain differences to every aspect of business."

And if that doesn't make you feel like Employee Double X or XY clocking in, what will?

For more, go here.

See also:

Evolutionary psychology: Pink for a girl, blue for a ... girl?

Neuroscience: Philosopher rips "drivel" - pop science media's bread and butter

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

Philosopher Cordelia Fine, who wrote a book on the neuroscience and other studies of the differences between men's and women's brains - and found most of them flawed - pauses to target a classic in evolutionary psychology: Why girls prefer pink.

... psychologists and journalists now speculate on the genetic and evolutionary origins of gendered color preferences that are little more than fifty years old.

Little more than how many years old? Read on:

For example, a few years ago an article in an Australian newspaper discussed the origins of the pink princess phenomenon. After trotting out the ubiquitous anecdote about the mother who tried and failed to steer her young daughter away from the pink universe, the journalist writes that the mother's failure "suggests her daughter was perhaps genetically wired that way" and asks, "is there a pink princess gene that suddenly blossoms when little girls turn two?"

Just in case we mistake for a joke the idea that evolution might have weeded out toddlers uninterested in tiaras and pink tulle, the journalist then turns to prominent child psychologist Dr. Michael Carr-Gregg for further insight into the biological basis of princess mania: "The reason why girls like pink is that their brains are structured completely differently to boys," he sagely informs us. "Part of the brain that processes emotion and part of the brain that processes language is one and the same in girls but is completely different in boys ... "

- Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, p. 208.

Okay, but if Dr. Carr-Gregg and other authorities are correct, the pace of evolution has been nothing short of catastrophic in recent decades. Formerly, blue was the colour for girls - and for boys?:

The preferred color to dress young boys in was pink! Blue was reserved for girls as it was considered the paler, more dainty of the two colors, and pink was thought to be the stronger (akin to red). It was not until WWII that the colors were reversed and pink was used for girls and blue for boys... -Dress Maker Magazine

Certainly, in Kate Greenaway's late 19th century illustrations, fashionable girls strut in blue.

Fine also informs us that the early 20th century saw a concerted move to use infant and toddler clothes to reinforce gender differences. But that requires consumer choice. Most children's clothing of long ago was pretty functional - swaddling clothes, smocks, et cetera, and cut down adult clothes. Few people could afford dyes of their choice.

So yes, it's evolution - a very recent evolution of ideas about gender, which might depart with no offspring.

See also: Neuroscience: Philosopher rips "drivel" - pop science media 's bread and butter

More fun from voodoo neuroscience:

Neuroscience and popular culture: Who do voodoo? They do! Social neuroscientists, that is:

Neuroscience shows why women love shopping, why gay guys read maps like women, why jealous guys ... come to think of it, why does social neuroscience only tell us what we already heard from that high school drop-out cousin, shooting pool down in the rec room between his split shifts at the loading dock?

Is this really science? Probably not, say a team of statisticians, who took a look at some of these studies. Basically, many of the claimed correlations were simply too high to be possible. That was because the "social neuroscience" people were cherry picking the data."

Gender Genie: Fritz your wits about which sex you belong to?

Using an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, you can find out whether the genie thinks you are a man or a woman by submitting a sample of your writing.

Given that the genie works best on texts of more than 500 words, I have decided to submit my five most recent columns for ChristianWeek.

Neuroscience: Vive la difference between boys and girls?

What I find really interesting is the way people are always looking for confirmation of weird theories from neuroscience, but they won't accept actual evidence that disconfirms a weird theory. For exmaple, there is way more evidence that boys and girls are different than that weird materialist theories of religion are true.

Incidentally, none of these findings shows that girls can't excel in math and science. They help us understand why many girls do not TRY to excel in math and science. That's useful information, however we choose to use it.

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

Once upon a time there was this bright philosopher and Fine writer who immersed herself in the pop culture sludge of the breathless (this just in!) latest findings of neuroscience on human nature, in this case the supposed differences between the way men and women think. Differences that, Fine argues, are poorly supported.

What I learned from Cordelia Fine's latest book: Add time on an fMRI scanner to a mediocre mind carrying out a conventional research program and you end up with fodder for Cowsmoopolitan. Fine found that the men vs. women studies were too badly done to be conclusive. Her survey removes all doubt as to how many magazine and newspaper editors, stuck for a Sunday featurette, ever even wonder about such matters.

She goes on to challenge neuroscientists on the ethics of passively allowing these shenanigans:

... neuroscientists who work in this area have some responsibility for how their findings of sex differences in the brain are interpreted and communicated. When this is done carelessly, it may have a real and significant impact on people's lives. Many neuroscientists do appear to be aware of this. They are appropriately cautious about interpreting sex differences to the brain, and may also take the time to remind journalists of just how far we are from mapping sex differences in the brain onto the mind. (And of course they may find their work being misrepresented, regardless, others, however, as we have seen, are more cavalier.) " - from Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (p. 173)

On a less heartening note, she adds,

Finally, there's an urgent need for editors, journalists, and schools to develop far more skeptical attitudes toward claims about sex differences in the brain. It is appalling to me that one can, apparently, say whatever drivel one likes about the male and the female brain, and enjoy the pleasure of seeing it published in reputable newspaper,changing a school's educational policy, or becoming a best seller. - from Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (p. 173)

Trouble is, Cordelia, drivel sells. The woman whose boyfriend is running around wants to believe that a brain scan shows that he is merely a less-evolved ape. And she may not have to wait long for "He's a Gorilla, You're a Bonobo, and You Two Make a Great Scream" (Whattafastbuck Press, 2011) to hit her local bookstore's Women's Empowerment Evening ...

It is really a moral question for the journalist, editor, and bookseller, whether - in hard times - to front this neurobullshipping or demand accountability.
Anyway, hats off to Fine for saying something.

Now, do I agree with Fine that there are no significant brain differences between men and women? Well, let's just say I have a different take on those differences, explained here.

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, I advised readers of Jane Harris Szovan's new book on the shameful secrets of social Darwinist eugenics in Canada. The Alberta-based author tells me,

People have been asking me what Eugenics and the Firewall is about. Basically, it is about the history of eugenics in the Western countries. But it looks specifically at what happened in Alberta, how our province's somewhat bizarre political culture allowed it to happen (and why the vulnerable are still at risk for disaster, not just here but worldwide.) Then it compares Alberta to British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario. Then, we look at how Alberta's experience compared to the rest of the Commonwealth, specifically the U.K. where forced sterilization was judged contrary to our shared constitution.(How a province in a dominion was allowed to get away with violating the constitution just shows how far the federal gov. will go in not challenging 'provincial rights.'

Hmmm, yes, it shows that for sure.* But it shows something else too.

Here is the gist of the book:

It's a dirty little secret the heirs to Alberta's populist legacy don't want Canadians to talk about.

In 1928 the non-partisan United Farmers of Alberta passed the first Sexual Sterilization Act. The UFA's successor, the Social Credit party, led by a radio-evangelist William Aberhart, and later by his protégé Ernest Manning, removed the need to obtain consent to sterilize "mental defectives" or Huntington's Chorea patients with dementia.

Between 1928 and 1972 nearly three thousand citizens were sterilized, lied to, experimented on, and subjected to daily abuse at the hands of provincial staff in Alberta. Most Albertans have forgotten the victims whose names made headlines in the 1990s, and politicians and pundits have shown little empathy for the victims.

The Eugenics Board horror story has largely been buried in Canada's mainstream national media. Conservative bloggers and columnists in Canada continue to blame the Liberals and CCF for Canada's barbaric eugenics program. The tar sands, oil royalties, health care budgets, environmental policies, and making sure the province's interests remain high on the federal agenda top the provincial headlines.

But the questions must be answered: How did a province that claims "strong and free" as its motto deny basic freedoms to so many of its own citizens? Why does the extent of Alberta's eugenics past and its link to the UFA/Social Credit legacy remain the unacknowledged moral blind spots in Canadian politics?

It's time to set the record straight.

It is past time. And from the fact that Harris Szovan's Google search stats spiked rapidly over the past 48 hours, I would guess that many know that.

Jane has quite reasonably been thinking/hoping that people won't go after her, but ... A straight record can mean crooked bunch. If you care about setting the record straight, spare a thought for her, and buy the book for a library and/or for yourself.

* They say this about us: If a Canadian species were in danger of extinction, the British would come up with matchless essays on the crisis, the French would fly Brigitte Bardot to scream up a storm on the ice pack, the Germans would write an encyclopedia about it, the Americans would set up a plan to save the species that cost three trillion dollars and employed one hundred thousand people ... And the Canadians? Oh, we'd spend ten years arguing about whether the species' woes are a federal or a provincial responsibility. That's part of how big problems get started here, when they do.

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

Jane Harris-Zsovan's book, Eugenics and the Firewall: Canada`s Nasty Little Secret n Shillingford, 2010) is now in print. It details the surprising reach of the compulsory sterilization movement in early twentieth century Canada. Many across the political spectrum participated, until the practice was finally derailed by informed public opinion and the courts.

The book's national launch will be Wednesday, November 17, 2010, 1:30-3:30, Galt Museum & Archives Store, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Harris-Zsovan chose that locale because "the Galt archives have been helping me from time I wrote my first history paper at University."

Harris-Zsovan, who spent many hours poring over decades-old newspaper clippings, is bracing herself for controversy:

I'm inviting everyone I know and that includes people on the left, right and centre in Canada. I can't wait to see them all chit-chatting in the gallery at the Galt! I've warned them all that they will be uncomfortable with parts of this book. They seem okay with that so far. But I hope that discomfort leads to a healthy discussion.

Well, I hope so too. Many of us have found that discussion of eugenic sterilization - discussion that includes any mention of the social Darwinism that underlies it - often leads to the frantic defense of some Shrine to Evolution. To say nothing of attacks on anyone who offers evidence. Indeed, the spin now turns so fast that in the United States, museum goers are informed that Darwin was not a racist or eugenicist, when there is simply no escaping the facts of the case.

Anyway, Jane's is hardly a "take no prisoners" approach to unsavoury history:

I treat my home province, Alberta, B.C., and the architects of the only Sexual Sterilization Acts in the British Empire fairly gently. They made bad decisions, but we make worse ones. This behaviour continued from 1928 until 1972. (Actually it continued well after that until the Supreme Court put a stop to it.)

My sense is that too many people in Canada, generally a"low threat" society, assumed that it Couldn't Be Happening Here. Surprise, surprise.

Harris Zsovan is confident that

The lesson of the book: As bad as our past was, especially in Western Canada, we can be an example to other countries, most particularly the U.S. and Western Europe, if we own up to this.

Sure, Jane, if all Hull doesn't break loose first.

And if you think what happened in Canada was bad, consider what happened when social Darwinism hit Africa ...

Also just up at the Post-Darwinist:

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

When Social Darwinism found Africa ...

But then cats use a more subtle method for everything ...

Al Mohler vs. Mark Sprinkle: Is all this about being right or being nice?

Coffee!!: The evolutionary theory of why you feel smarter after a few beers

The very idea of design in the universe utterly obliterated: Chronicle 4382

New book: God and Evolution confronts the fan club of Darwin's unemployed God

At last: Chinese translation of By Design or by Chance? (But a question as well ...)

Top pundits: How can they score consistently higher than chance at being wrong?

Don't you feel better already, knowing that your innards are accidental globs of goo?

Very Weak Anthropic Principle: Is the Principle going, going, gone?

Christian Darwinism: Now you see the "Creator" and now you don't, but believe anyway

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

In "Creationism lives on in US public schools" (New Scientist 20 October 2010), John Farrell revisits the Dover trial:

IN DOVER, Pennsylvania, five years ago, a group of parents were nearing the end of an epic legal battle: they were taking their school board to court to stop them teaching "intelligent design" to their children.

But the monster never sleeps, it seems:

None of this means that the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based think tank that promotes intelligent design, has been idle. The institute helped the conservative Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), headed by Christian minister Gene Mills, to pass a state education act in 2008 that allows local boards to teach intelligent design alongside evolution under the guise of "academic freedom".

Who told these Cajuns that they have the same right to question Darwin as the Altenberg 16 or philosopher Jerry Fodor? Actually, no one should have the right, but definitely not Cajuns. And it gets worse all the time:

Five years after the landmark case, the battle for science education continues. But for the plaintiffs and their representatives this does not detract from the achievement. Their lead attorney, Eric Rothschild, sums it up: "If we'd lost, intelligent design would be all over the place now".

Earth to planet Rothschild: It already is.

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 post was about an atheist facing death, and it is inspiring. This one is about an atheist blowhard - an evolutionary biologist who seems determined, so far as I can see, to collapse in the ruins of Darwinism. Some excerpts from Jerry A. Coyne's "Religion in America is on the defensive" (USA Today, October 11, 2010):

Atheist books such as The God Delusion and The End of Faith have, by exposing the dangers of faith and the lack of evidence for the God of Abraham, become best-sellers. Science nibbles at religion from the other end, relentlessly consuming divine explanations and replacing them with material ones. Evolution took a huge bite a while back, and recent work on the brain has shown no evidence for souls, spirits, or any part of our personality or behavior distinct from the lump of jelly in our head. We now know that the universe did not require a creator. Science is even studying the origin of morality. So religious claims retreat into the ever-shrinking gaps not yet filled by science. And, although to be an atheist in America is still to be an outcast, America's fastest-growing brand of belief is non-belief.

As neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and I demonstrate in The Spiritual Brain, materialist explanations have utterly failed in explaining the human mind. They continue to ail even as I write and you read, with one limp speculation after another.

Soft! There is ancient evil about:

But faith will not go gentle. For each book by a "New Atheist," there are many others attacking the "movement" and demonizing atheists as arrogant, theologically ignorant, and strident.

Well, if so, you just heard from Exhibit 1.

It gets better:

Science operates by using evidence and reason. Doubt is prized, authority rejected. No finding is deemed "true" - a notion that's always provisional - unless it's repeated and verified by others. We scientists are always asking ourselves, "How can I find out whether I'm wrong?"

To that, I can only reply Climategate, which made clear that a number of key climate scientists were willing to manipulate the system to insert their opinion contra evidence. And in the age of Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009), Expelled (about attempts to suppress findings that contradict atheist materialism) did not help the new atheists' image.

My favourite lines are

And this leads to the biggest problem with religious "truth": There's no way of knowing whether it's true. I've never met a Christian, for instance, who has been able to tell me what observations about the universe would make him abandon his beliefs in God and Jesus. (I would have thought that the Holocaust could do it, but apparently not.) There is no horror, no amount of evil in the world, that a true believer can't rationalize as consistent with a loving God. It's the ultimate way of fooling yourself. But how can you be sure you're right if you can't tell whether you're wrong?

Well, if one does not believe that one's mind has an independent reality, one cannot tell whether anything at all is right or wrong. After all, if morality is all about survival of the fittest, then there is no morality, only survival of the fittest.

The funniest part is this:

Out of 34 countries surveyed in a study published in Science magazine, the U.S., among the most religious, is at the bottom in accepting Darwinism: We're No. 33, with only Turkey below us.

Well, the United States put men on the moon, mapped the outer planets, and generally leads in science. And it is more religious than other countries. So, if religion makes a difference, bring it on.

The real lesson is that leading nations lead. They can lead in both science and religion. There are nations out there having a fit about both.

More on the new atheism (atheism on stilts):

The new atheists: Santa's sleigh came and went, and never gave them what they needed

Salvo 7: Just released edition features batty bioethicists, suckered scientists, senseless psychologists ...
(And we don't mind sayin' it either.)

Imagine no Religulous

Also just up at The Mindful Hack, my blog on neuroscience and spirituality issues:

African religion: Begin by trying to understand

Media and religion: If people cannot safely say what they think, what effect can media have?

Christopher Hitchens: Attempting the good death without God

Branded but stranded? How seriously does Generation Y really take brands?

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 blogosphere is brimming with commentaries over the ever-visible changes that usher in the arrival of Autumn in the northern hemisphere (1). The beckoningly bright colors of the foliage on our trees and the seasonal appearance of pumpkins that adorn our porches and abound in the fields around our cities serve as reminders of a festive transition. Throw the occasional honking of migrating Canadian geese into the mix and it is easy to see why many of us cannot help but momentarily stop in awe. The geese in particular are my gaze-catchers. Craning my neck as I look straight up I have become obsessed with capturing the flight of these birds on camera.

But there is more that interests me about Canadian geese than simply their migratory 'order of business'. Unknown to many a bird watcher, Canadian geese are one of several 'gold mine' species that harbor a strain of bacteria called Bacillus licheniformis in the tufts of their plumage (2). These feather-degrading bugs are prevalent in all manner of ground-foraging birds and occur in greatest numbers during the late autumn and winter months. Because of their tough keratin-rich microfibril composition, feathers are extraordinarily resistant to biodegradation (2). But not so tough that keratinolytic bacteria such as B. licheniformis cannot break them down (2). And biotechnologists are exploiting this ability to the full.

B. licheniformis has spawned much excitement in the agricultural world (3). Bird feathers are routinely used in animal feed. But until the early 1990s steaming was the only means by which they could be made more digestible (3). Scientific acumen and ingenuity changed all that. By putting B.licheniformis to work on a feathery meal, an inter-disciplinary group from North Carolina State University generated "appreciable degradation products" of digestible protein (3). In so doing they opened the door for a commercially-viable process that improves on the nutritional value of traditional steaming methods.

And its agricultural relevance has not stopped there. This multi-purpose bacterium is also finding application in pest control as a pre-harvest treatment for eradicating diseases that attack fruit (4). Mangos, which today constitute "one of the most important fruit crops grown in tropical and subtropical regions" have been targeted for trials against bacterial blackspot (Xanthomonas campestris), anthracnose and soft rot (4). Chemical treatments such as Copper Oxychloride have been heavily legislated against because of their detrimental effects on soils (4). B.licheniformis has proven to be an effective antagonist against these diseases and is therefore gaining traction as the way of the future for pest control.

Enzymes are commonly deployed in laundry products where they function as potent digesters of dried-on grime. And those of B.licheniformis are best-in-class when it comes to getting the job done. Look down the ingredients list of most brands of washing powder and you are likely to find two components- alpha-amylase and Subtilisin-A- that respectively perform the job of breaking down starch and proteins (5). Thankfully detergents do not adversely affect the ability of these enzymes to get to work on food splurges (6). Microbially-derived proteases form more than half of the industrial enzyme market (6). And those of alkaline-dwelling organisms such as B.licheniformis are particularly attractive given the high pH of laundry detergents (9.0-12.0) (6).

B.licheniformis has also joined a fast growing club of microorganisms able to synthesize gold nanoparticles which are used in the development of pharmaceuticals (7). Microorganisms such as B.licheniformis carry periplasmic proteins on their outer surface that bind and reduce Aureum Chloride and in the process generate 10-100nm sized nanoparticles that can be isolated from the bacterial fraction as a dried powder (7). The microorganismic approach to gold nanoparticle production has the unique advantage of being more ecologically sound than current procedures that use harmful reducing agents (7).

From our houses to our farms and onwards into the pharmaceutical development lab B.licheniformis is fast becoming an indispensable workhorse. Its many secrets are being exploited in novel ways. And its revolutionary attributes continue to amaze. Higher eukaryotes sport elaborate olfaction mechanisms to detect gas molecules (8). Up until earlier this year there had been no reports of similar mechanisms in bacteria (8). All that changed with the news that a couple of European biotechnologists had incontrovertibly demonstrated olfaction in B.licheniformis cultures (8). By putting B.licheniformis adjacent to inducer strains of B.subtilis, M.luteus and E.coli, Reindert Nijland and J. Grant Burgess observed notable color changes and a tendency for formation of dense pellicles (known in the trade as biofilms) (8,9). Some simple experiments gave Niijland and Burgess the clues they needed to home in on the molecular exchange that lay at the heart of this response- a rise in concentrations of gaseous ammonia (8,9).

Seen in the wider context of the discoverability of our planet that authors such as Guillermo Gonzalez, Jay Richards and Michael Denton have exposed in their best-selling tomes, B.licheniformis is just one of a vast number of available resources that are helping us reshape the way we live. "The stupendous success of science since 1600" writes Denton "is testimony enough to the remarkable fitness of our mind to comprehend the world" (10). "We've seen that scientific progress and discovery depend on nature being more than meaningless matter in motion...It's an exquisite structure that preserves vast stores of information...We in turn possess the materials and the physical and intellectual capacity to create technologies...As eyeglasses and light bulbs have improved our ability to read written texts so the microscope and telescope have allowed us to read the book of nature more deeply...The myriad conditions that make a region habitable are also the ones that make the best overall places for discovering the universe in its smallest and largest expressions" (11).

Whether the olfaction aptitude of B.licheniformis can be translated into a useful application that aids in the "betterment of human life" (in accordance with the biotechnologists' mantra, 12) remains to be seen. Yet the story of this robust microorganism seems far from over. And as the geese continue to pass overhead during this year’s autumnal leaf-fall I cannot help but see it as a bacterial 'high-flyer' that has taken center stage in the biotechnology arena.

Further Reading

1. Sara Klink (2010) A Time For Harvest, Promega Connections, September, 24th, 2010, See http://promega.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/a-time-for-harvest/

2. Edward Burtt, Jann Ichida (1999) Occurrence of feather-degrading bacilli in the plumage of birds, The Auk, See http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3793/is_199904/ai_n8834646/

3. C.M.Williams , C.S Richter, J.M. MacKenzie Jr, Jason C.H. Shih (1990) Isolation, Identification and Characterization of a Feather-Degrading Bacterium, Applied And Environmental Microbiology, Volume 56 (6), pp. 1509-1515

4. Evaluation of pre-harvest Bacillus licheniformis sprays to control mango fruit diseases, Crop Protection, Volume 26, pp. 1474-1481

5. Measurement of endo-Protease and Þ±-Amylase in Biological Washing Powders & Liquids using AZO CASEIN and AMYLAZYME TABLETS www.megazyme.com/GetAttachment.aspx?id=17e0f84c-9ba1

6. Nedra El Hadj-Ali, Rym Agrebi, Basma Ghorbel-Frikha, Alya Sellami-Kamoun, Safia Kanoun and Moncef Nasri (2007) Biochemical and molecular characterization of a detergent stable alkaline serine-protease from a newly isolated Bacillus licheniformis NH1, Enzyme and Microbial Technology, Volume 40, pp. 515-523

7. Kalimuthu Kalishwaralal, Venkataraman Deepak, Sureshbabu Ram Kumar Pandian, Sangiliyandi Gurunathan (2009) Biological Synthesis Of Gold Nanocubes From Bacillus Licheniformis, Bioresource Technology, Volume 100, pp. 5356-5358

8. Reindert Nijland and J. Grant Burgess (2010) Bacterial Olfaction, Biotechnology Journal, DOI 10.1002/biot.201000174

9. Janelle Weaver (2010) Bacteria sniff out their food, Nature 16 August 2010, See http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100816/full/news.2010.411.html

10. Michael Denton (1998) Nature's Destiny: How The Laws of Biology, Reveal Purpose in the Universe, 1st Edition Published by the Free Press, New York, p.260

11. Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards (2004) The Privileged Planet, How Our Place In The Cosmos Is Designed For Discovery, Regnery Publishing Inc, Washington D.C, New York, p.334

12. Abdelali Haoudi (2003) New Forum for Innovative Research in Biomedicine and Biotechnology, J Biomed Biotechnol. 2003, Issue 3, p.161

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

A number of red flags have shot up recently about comfy relationships between science, media, and corporate interests. Here's a small batch to contemplate:

- Elizabeth Landau asks at CNN, "Where's the line between research and marketing?" (October 13, 2010):

JAMA, one of the premier peer-reviewed health publications in the United States, published the Jenny Craig-funded study that had to do with -- surprise! -- women losing weight in the Jenny Craig weight-loss program. The study found that women in the Jenny Craig program lost between three and four times as much weight as those who dieted independently.

Fontanarosa says the study passed the journal's requirements for a privately funded study: the sponsor - Jenny Craig - tried to minimize its influence over the management analysis of data and reporting of the findings. An academic investigator had access to all data, and an academic biostatistician conducted the analysis.

But some experts say the public should have extra skepticism than when viewing the results of a study like this.

The experts' further advice, as properly recounted by Landau, is no substitute for plain old hardline skepticism. Here's some skeptical advice on weight loss programs in general.

- In "Lies, damn lies, and medical science"(The Atlantic, November 2010) David H. Freedman reports on the shifting sands of health dangers uncovered by peer-reviewed studies:

That question has been central to Ioannidis’s career. He’s what’s known as a meta-researcher, and he’s become one of the world’s foremost experts on the credibility of medical research. He and his team have shown, again and again, and in many different ways, that much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies—conclusions that doctors keep in mind when they prescribe antibiotics or blood-pressure medication, or when they advise us to consume more fiber or less meat, or when they recommend surgery for heart disease or back pain—is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong. He charges that as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed. His work has been widely accepted by the medical community; it has been published in the field’s top journals, where it is heavily cited; and he is a big draw at conferences. Given this exposure, and the fact that his work broadly targets everyone else’s work in medicine, as well as everything that physicians do and all the health advice we get, Ioannidis may be one of the most influential scientists alive. Yet for all his influence, he worries that the field of medical research is so pervasively flawed, and so riddled with conflicts of interest, that it might be chronically resistant to change—or even to publicly admitting that there’s a problem.

[ ... ]

It didn’t turn out that way. In poring over medical journals, he was struck by how many findings of all types were refuted by later findings. Of course, medical-science “never minds” are hardly secret. And they sometimes make headlines, as when in recent years large studies or growing consensuses of researchers concluded that mammograms, colonoscopies, and PSA tests are far less useful cancer-detection tools than we had been told; or when widely prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil were revealed to be no more effective than a placebo for most cases of depression; or when we learned that staying out of the sun entirely can actually increase cancer risks; or when we were told that the advice to drink lots of water during intense exercise was potentially fatal; or when, last April, we were informed that taking fish oil, exercising, and doing puzzles doesn’t really help fend off Alzheimer’s disease, as long claimed. Peer-reviewed studies have come to opposite conclusions on whether using cell phones can cause brain cancer, whether sleeping more than eight hours a night is healthful or dangerous, whether taking aspirin every day is more likely to save your life or cut it short, and whether routine angioplasty works better than pills to unclog heart arteries.

Go here for more.

- And don't expect the legacy mainstream media to run to help. Too many of them are part of the pattern themselves, as Paul Raeburn at Knight Journalism Tracker points out:

Yesterday, I criticized the foundation for taking funding from Pfizer for its “all-expenses-paid” annual cancer conference for reporters.

This morning, I looked at the press foundation’s donors. In its 2009 annual report, the foundation said “nearly 300 journalists benefitted from our training in Washington, around the world, online and through webinars. And it boasted that “in one of the tumultuous years in the U.S. media business, we did all this without charging journalists a dime, with programs that received some of our highest evaluations ever.”

How did the National Press Foundation do it?

Raeburn figures they did it because pharmaceutical corporations contributed about one quarter of the money and the journalism organizations' contributions were "far smaller." He adds,

When the National Press Foundation says in its annual report that it is funded, in part, by “concerned corporations,” it’s right on the money. You can bet that Pfizer, Merck, and the others are concerned about what appears in the press!

No kidding. The corruption here isn't open, it's insidious. The questions one does not ask, the research one does not do, the people one knows better than to confront, the backing down and the sliding away ... Sound familiar, anyone?

Do I say peer review is bad? No, but it can be useless or misleading. The key problem is that it is treated as a seal of approval. Yet it can often be the means by which third rate stuff gets attention and serious stuff is suppressed. The system is now corrupt enough that one can no longer take seriously claims like "Orthodox science doesn't accept this." My immediate response is, "Is THAT all you got by way of objection?"

I have written about the peer review scandal elsewhere:

"Peer review, mere review, and smear review"

"Peer review: Life, death, and the British Medical Journal"

Science: A year-end wad of fraud, falsified data, and other award-winning tenure strategies ...

Peer review: What if your peers would have to be otherconspiracy theorists? (No, really!)

Peer review: Gold standard or gold in "them thar hills"

* In fairness, journalism has been hit hard in recent years by layoffs, etc. But that's when we should just hold cheaper conferences and lump it until good stories start making money again.

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

In "Looking for Life in the Multiverse: Universes with different physical laws might still be habitable" Scientific American Magazine (December 16, 2009) By Alejandro Jenkins and Gilad Perez make clear what is and is not accepted in science (as they understand it) and why:

The laws of physics-and in particular the constants of nature that enter into those laws, such as the strengths of the fundamental forces-might therefore seem finely tuned to make our existence possible. Short of invoking a supernatural explanation, which would be by definition outside the scope of science, a number of physicists and cosmologists began in the1970s to try solving the puzzle by hypothesizing that our universe is just one of many existing universes, each with its own laws. According to this"anthropic" reasoning, we might just occupy the rare universe where the right conditions happen to have come together to make life possible. Amazingly, the prevailing theory in modern cosmology, which emerged in the1980s, suggests that such "parallel universes" may really exist-in fact, that a multitude of universes would incessantly pop out of a primordial vacuum the way ours did in the big bang. Our universe would be but one of many pocket universes within a wider expanse called the multiverse. In the overwhelming majority of those universes, the laws of physics might not allow the formation of matter as we know it or of galaxies, stars, planets and life. But given the sheer number of possibilities, nature would have had a good chance to get the "right" set of laws at least once. Our recent studies, however, suggest that some of these other universes-assuming they exist-may not be so inhospitable after all. Remarkably, we have found examples of alternative values of the fundamental constants, and thus of alternative sets of physical laws, that might still lead to very interesting worlds and perhaps to life. The basic idea is to change one aspect of the laws of nature and then make compensatory changes to other aspects.

Our work did not address the most serious fine-tuning problem in theoretical physics: the smallness of the "cosmological constant," thanks to which our universe neither recollapsed into nothingness a fraction of a second after the big bang, nor was ripped part by an exponentially accelerating expansion. Nevertheless, the examples of alternative, potentially habitable universes raise interesting questions and motivate further research into how unique our own universe might be.

Well, the supernatural may be "outside the scope of science," but universes whose existence is not demonstrated, which are imagined principally to get out of a jam with the evidence from this universe, are reasonably doubted, despite thought experiments. The tentative tone here is well justified. It should be used more often.

See other multiverse and fine tuning stories:

Cosmology: If you needn't worry about paying the rent Friday, you can worry about this stuff

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

Cosmology: Crisis of the month: gravitation

Cosmology: Multiverse - getting comfortable with a zillion of everything that is unique.

Cosmology: I seem to have yanked particle physicist Lawrence Krauss's chain

Cosmology: Wow. It takes guts to wage war with Stephen Hawking. He appeared in Star Trek

Cosmology: Arguments against flatness (plus exposing sloppy science writing)

Cosmology: If the universe has free will, where do I go to file a claim for damages?

Anr2

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

A recent news story featured an astronomer whose personal feelings about the chances for life on a recently discovered planet orbiting a star other than our sun were 100%:

Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent," said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a press briefing today.

"I have almost no doubt about it.”

He might have done with a few doubts about planet Gliese 581 g, which has a 37-day orbit around a dim, red dwarf star. The
latest story is that other astronomers can’t establish that Gliese exists.

Two weeks after one team of astronomers announced finding the habitable planet Gliese 581 g, another team says it can find no evidence of the world in its data.

Last month, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of the first alien world that could host life on its surface. Now a second team can find no evidence of the planet, casting doubt on its existence.

[ ... ]

But it might be too early to claim a definitive detection. A second team of astronomers have looked for signals of Gliese 581 g in their own data and failed to find it.

"We easily recover the four previously announced planets, "b", "c", "d", and "e". However, we do not see any evidence for a fifth planet in an orbit of 37 days," says Francesco Pepe of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. He presented the results on Monday at an International Astronomical Union symposium in Turin, Italy.

Although the Geneva team cannot find evidence for the new planet, they cannot exclude the possibility that Gleise 581 g exists. "We are not trying to prove the nonexistence of a planet," Pepe says. "It's really difficult to prove that something does not exist. We are just saying we do not see a significant signal that is really different from noise."

- Rachel Courtland, "First life-friendly exoplanet may not exist", 1(3 October 2010)

Well, as we, and they, all know, one cannot prove that a physical thing really does not exist. One simply reaches the point where one considers its existence too improbable to spend more time looking.

If Gliese is not found, the episode will demonstrate one important thing: Many people badly need to believe in life on other planets, and many more people are eager to hear them tell about it. The legendary caution of science stands no chance against the onslaught of such yearnings.

See also Exoplanets: The recent pilgrimage to Darwin's shrine.

Does our solar system occupy a unique position in the universe or just an ordinary one?

Rare? Solar systems like ours are rare?

Astronomer argues that we can test whether Earth is fine-tuned as a science lab

Serious push to find more exoplanets

Exoplanets: Will intelligence be common or rare?

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).

During the 1990s I had untold opportunities to witness the full exuberance of nature's rich offerings. My parents' house on the southwestern edge of Ecuador's capital Quito was set in a prime location for observing all manner of wildlife. And most memorable of all were the hummingbirds that frequented our garden attracted as they were to the blooming plants that had been strategically potted next to the outside walls of our living room. These veritable masters of flight, the smallest of warm blooded creatures on our planet, arrived with the sole purpose of extracting sweet nectar from the flowers we had laid before them. Their hovering maneuverability was their most striking attribute.

To date over 330 different species of hummingbird have been identified across the expanse of the American continent (1-3). And the mechanisms behind their supreme agility are being dissected out by the likes of UC Riverside biologist Doug Altshuler (1,4). Using revolving feeders filled with nectar and cameras that record minute positional adjustments relative to feeder rotation, Altshuler has uncovered one of the secrets behind these birds' exquisite capabilities: flexible rotating shoulder bones that allow them to hover while maintaining their bills firmly inside flowers (1,2). With little to no opportunity to perch during feeding, their wing anatomy is indispensable for survival (1). On average 'hummers' consume more than half their body weight in nectar extracted from as many as 1000 flowers each day (1). To sustain this extraordinary rate of consumption their berry-sized hearts must beat 600 times a minute during rest and almost double that during flight (1). This totals up to 4.5 billion times during their 12-17 year lifespan (4). A continuous feeding binge supplies them with the energy they need to beat their tiny wings a staggering 80-200 times per second (1,2).

In the mountain forests of Ecuador, not far from where my parents lived, there exists a species of hummer whose popular name, the swordbill, accurately describes the appearance of its feeding accoutrement (1,5). With its four inch beak the swordbill is able to feed on the nectar of the Datura plant (1,5). And it turns out that it is uniquely equipped for the job. Because Datura blossoms hang straight down, a four inch bill is what it takes to gorge on the effusions coming out of nectaries at the very base of the flower. But there is a trade-off. As the bird feeds, it is dusted with pollen that it carries to its next port of call (1).

Although hummers are built to feed on nectar, they cannot sustain themselves on sugar alone. They depend heavily on insects as a primary source of protein (3). It is little wonder then that bugs form 1/4 of their daily diets (1). With deadly accuracy hummers can pick out their prey mid-flight by opening their flexible bills to the widest capture position possible (1). And that is not the only way their bills are so refined for the functions they perform. Today eight thousand plant species depend on the hummer for pollination. Like a lock and key, each bill fits into a limited set of blossoms. The Purple-throated Carib even exhibits marked gender differences in bill length tailored as they are to feed on different species of the colorful Heliconia plant (1).

At nighttime hummers thwart the clutches of starvation by fluffing up their feathers to conserve heat and entering into a low energy sleep state called Torpor (3). By lowering their heart rates to a sluggish 36 beats per minute and their body temperatures from a comfortable 105 degrees Fahrenheit to the 'hypothermic threshold' of life, they barely manage to stay alive (1,3). The process is easily reversed however. And when day breaks, vital signs ramp up to normal in 20 minutes or less in readiness for another day of high cost flying (3).

Flight behaviors amongst hummers challenge even our most optimistic preconceptions of avian aerobatics. UC-Berkeley biologist-engineer Chris Clark has captured the steep death-defying 60 miles/h dive of the male Anna's on camera as they perform a carefully choreographed mating display (6). By taking high definition shots at 500 frames per second Clark estimates that g forces in the Anna's dive match those at which military fighter pilots black out (1). Males descend at such an angle and speed that their tail feathers vibrate at the appropriate acoustic frequency to woo female onlookers (6). When it comes to heroic feats, most hummer votaries will wax lyrical over the seasonal migrations of their feathered icons. Licensed 'banders' devote much time to the study of feeding and migration habits by crimping tiny uniquely-coded metal rings onto the hummers' toothpick-sized legs (7,8). And their work has brought the hummers' continent-wide peregrinations into sharp focus. Some fly as many as 6000 miles between North and Central America breeding in the temperate zones of the north and wintering in the warmer climes of the south (3). One species, the Ruby Throat, even endures an 18 hour, 500 mile long trek across the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico with no place to stop or feed, by storing the extra 2-3 grams of fat it needs to make it across (3).

The hummer story tells of irreducible complexity at key levels of functionality. Anatomically these birds require not only a unique hovering system and long beaks but also a heart that can keep up with their voracious appetites. And the exacting nature of their specific behaviors leaves little room for evolution's undirected mutational 'potshots'. Species like the Ruby Throat, for example, need to binge on the grub that will get them through their sea-crossing expedition. But their food quota must be carefully regulated. Too little nourishment means not enough energy to make it across. Too much nourishment and they risk over-weighting themselves and plunging into the unrelenting waters below.

There is one hummer that is indelibly etched into my wish list of nature's must-sees- the Peruvian Spatuletail (9). The furious waving of its long tail feathers during courtship has recently been captured on camera (9). And like everything else in the hummer, these movements are made at neck-breaking speed (9). The Spatuletail waves the spoon-shaped spatules at the ends of its feathers while hopping on a twig 14 times a second (10). Awakened by such feats, my parents and I indulged in a little ecotourism by traveling down to the Maquipucunia nature reserve about 50 miles to the north of Quito in Ecuador (9). Even though we knew little about the birds that graced the hills of this unspoiled paradise, we were able to appreciate the numerous hummers as they flaunted their iridescent colors. The setting could not have been more visually arresting. And while we never made it down to Peru what we saw more than made up for that particular missed opportunity.

Further Reading

1. Hummingbirds: Magic In The Air, See PBS Nature Special at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/hummingbirds-magic-in-the-air/introduction/5424/

2. Mike Klesius (2007) Hummingbirds: Flight Of Fancy, National Geographic, January 2007, See http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/01/hummingbirds/klesius-text/1

3. How do Hummingbirds survive cold nights? Hummingbirds and Torpor, See http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2006/04/hummingbirds_and_torpor.php

4. Biologist's Lab at UC Riverside Is a Hummingbird Health Spa, See http://newsroom.ucr.edu/news_item.html?action=page&id=2233

5. Mary O'Leary (2009) Local filmmaker captures hummingbirds for PBS, New Haven Register, December 27th, 2009, See http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2009/12/27/news/new_haven/doc4b36ce70697f1930415349.txt

6. Robert Sanders (2008) Anna's hummingbird chirps with its tail, http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/01/30_hummingbird.shtml

7. Like Banding A Toothpick! Talking With Sarah Driver, Hummingbird Bander, See http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/humm/HumBander_Sarah.html

8. Hummer/Bird Banding Research Collaborative (HBBRC) http://www.hbrcnet.org/index.htm

9. The Maquipucunia Reserve: http://maqui.myweb.uga.edu/

10. Matt Walker (2009) A Marvelous Hummingbird Display, BBC Earth News, 3rd November, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8338000/8338728.stm

Review Of Programming of Life By Donald Johnson, ISBN-10: 0982355467
By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

There are some science writers that quite simply have a knack for combining the detail of their subject of expertise with a talent for exposition that a wide audience can easily understand. Donald Johnson is one of them. After carefully defining the various types of information- functional, prescriptive and Shannon- that information theorists have set out in their realm of study, Johnson takes the reader on a tour of cellular gene expression by focusing on the digital code of DNA. Shannon information, which provides a mathematical measure of improbability without regard to functionality does not help us in the description of life since the digital code of DNA is rich in what Johnson terms 'functional prescriptive information'.

While initiatives such as the Origin Of Life Prize have encouraged researchers to find non-super-naturalistic processes that might explain the origins of prescriptive information, no offerings to-date have withstood the test of scientific scrutiny. Indeed all known cases of such information invariably point to the work of a mind. Johnson emphasizes the relevance of probability in his espousal of this inference- the simplest form of life was found to be 10exp80,000 times more likely of having a mindful than a non-mindful source.

Johnson repeatedly stresses how the information content of DNA is analogous to the information carried on a computer disk drive.Within such a schema, each of the enzymes that decode the information can be seen as individual computers that bring meaning to the code through the RNA that is transcribed and the proteins that are translated. 23,000 genes make up the human genome. And the multi-functional nature of these genes in self evident in the way that RNAs are differentially spliced and glued together.

Johnson's perspective packs a might punch on the evolutionary edifice. Computer simulations and evolutionary algorithms such as MeThinksItIsLikeAWeasel and AVIDA have failed to show how evolution can generate prescriptive information since pre-specified targets, unrealistic protection of replication instructions and unrealistic energy rewards abound in each of these systems.

While the battle over the categorization of junk DNA rages on amongst biologists, Johnson gives us a succinct and well-buttressed view on the subject: "Researchers are discovering that what has been dismissed as evolution's relics are actually vital for life". There is no evidence that new prescriptive information can be built up by genetic rearrangements such as transposition, inversion, duplication or point mutation. We can therefore understand Lynn Margulis' reference to the Darwinian claim as a `half truth' grounded in religious ferocity. This half truth forms the foundation for Johnson's final attack as he considers the merits of irreducible complexity and Craig Venter's recently produced artificial genome. Rather than showing how an organism could arise from scratch, Venter's enterprising achievement revealed the need for careful engineering of existing parts into a form that could be introduced into an existing organism.

Johnson's writing style is captivating. The extensive range of resources he draws from only serves to build confidence in the factual accuracy of his case. What a terrific read. Sheer brilliance.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

How do we know?

"Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent," said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a press briefing today.

"I have almost no doubt about it."

Well, that settles it, I guess.

James M. Kushiner points out, at Mere Comments blog, re Odds of Life on Nearby Planet '100 Percent,' Astronomer Says":

Did you hear about the astronomer, who said, get this, that the odds of life on nearby planet are 100 Percent? What was he thinking? What do astronomers know about biological life, and, besides, if the odds are 100 percent, then there are no odds--at least if I go to Arlington Race Track and find a horse that has a 100 percent chance of winning, they probably won't be taking bets on him. No odds there.

[ ... ]

I am not saying this planet could not support life. I am just wondering what are the chances that any given astronomer would peg a planet with so many unknowns or uncertainties with a probability of having life on it at 100 percent? Of course, if a news story is in play with a possible headline, I'd up those chances considerably, whatever they are.

If you want to read science, don't read the news.

Read more here.

Kushiner is editor of the science and popular culture mag Salvo, which publishes my Deprogram column, and many authors you recognize.

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

In, "Document Sheds Light on Investigation at Harvard (Chronicle Review, August 19, 2010)," Tom Bartlett reports that Harvard has told evolutionary psychologist Marc D. Hauser to explain issues around a few of his journal articles:

The experiment tested the ability of rhesus monkeys to recognize sound patterns. Researchers played a series of three tones (in a pattern like A-B-A) over a sound system. After establishing the pattern, they would vary it (for instance, A-B-B ) and see whether the monkeys were aware of the change. If a monkey looked at the speaker, this was taken as an indication that a difference was noticed.

The method has been used in experiments on primates and human infants. Mr. Hauser has long worked on studies that seemed to show that primates, like rhesus monkeys or cotton-top tamarins, can recognize patterns as well as human infants do. Such pattern recognition is thought to be a component of language acquisition.

Researchers watched videotapes of the experiments and "coded" the results, meaning that they wrote down how the monkeys reacted. As was common practice, two researchers independently coded the results so that their findings could later be compared to eliminate errors or bias.

According to the document that was provided to The Chronicle, the experiment in question was coded by Mr. Hauser and a research assistant in his laboratory. A second research assistant was asked by Mr. Hauser to analyze the results. When the second research assistant analyzed the first research assistant's codes, he found that the monkeys didn't seem to notice the change in pattern. In fact, they looked at the speaker more often when the pattern was the same. In other words, the experiment was a bust.

But Mr. Hauser's coding showed something else entirely: He found that the monkeys did notice the change in pattern—and, according to his numbers, the results were statistically significant. If his coding was right, the experiment was a big success.

Well, the long and short of it is that no one in Hauser's own lab could replicate his results.

The research that was the catalyst for the inquiry ended up being tabled, but only after additional problems were found with the data. In a statement to Harvard officials in 2007, the research assistant who instigated what became a revolt among junior members of the lab, outlined his larger concerns: "The most disconcerting part of the whole experience to me was the feeling that Marc was using his position of authority to force us to accept sloppy (at best) science."

Hauser was found to be solely responsible for the discrepancies, and as of the date of the Chronicle Review article, was on leave.

The whole story is testimony to the sheer need some have to prove that apes and monkeys are just fuzzy people or we are just naked apes. Life, whatever it is, is not that simple.

According to Hauser's Edge bio,

MARC D. HAUSER, an evolutionary psychologist and biologist, is Harvard College Professor, Professor of Psychology and Program in Neurosciences, and Director of Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory. He is the author of The Evolution of Communication, Wild Minds: What Animals Think, and Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.

[ ... ]

Along with Irv Devore, he teaches the Evolution of Human Behavior class, a Core Course at Harvard with 500 undergraduate students. The interdisciplinary course, "Science B29" (nickname: "The Sex Course"), has been running for 30 years, was started by Devore and Robert Trivers, and is the second most popular course on campus, behind "Econ 10". Section teachers over the years comprise a who's who of leading thinkers and include people such as John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, and Sarah B. Hrdy. In 1997-98, he sponsored a trial run of "Edge University" in which the students in Science B29 received Edge mailing as part of required reading in the course.

Re his book, Wild Minds: What Animals Think, it was what humans think that proved his undoing.

See also:

Wisdom from your local zoo

Evolutionary psychology: All wrong all the time

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

Dogs more like humans than chimpanzees are?

"Loving" chimpanzee eats its victims alive, new research shows

New assessment of ape language skills is dramatically scaled back

A defense of Apes r us - and insider look at the pygmy chimpanzee enthusiasts

Apes R Not Us, and we have to get used to it

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

Conventional, and fairly obvious, wisdom would suggest that the bear avoids being noticed by its prey by blending in with the landscape and moving through the snow on silent feet. Evolving that way should be easy enough - the colour gene drops out, and ...

We readily assume that the prey is on land, casting a wary eye around. Not necessarily. Some remarkable BBC footage suggests it may not be so simple:

Here, you will hear the bear stomping and see it clearly visible above clear ice - as it would be to a seal approaching a blowhole. Presumably, the seal - apprised of an unexpected caller - goes to another of its many blowholes. But once the bear sits down to wait quietly at one ... which one is it? The bear, observed, is apparently lucky one time in ten, by invisible patience alone. I don't see that anything would change if the bear was green or purple or ...

Is it possible that white coats are favored because they are less conspicuous to other bears, who tend to be crabby and territorial much of the time?

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

Okay, pass on the zinger sauce. There's no insurance against head explosions.

I will be speaking at the God and Evolution event at Biola University in Los Angeles, October 16, 2010, on "Catholics and Evolution", from 10:50 - 11:15 am. They want $25 but the event lasts from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m, seems to include lunch, and a free copy of the book in which I have a chapter, God and Evolution.

Here are the details:

God And Evolution:

Protestants, Catholics, and Jews Explore Darwin's Challenge to Faith
with Marvin Olasky, Ph.D., Jonathan Wells, Ph.D., Ph.D., Jay Richards, Ph.D., Denyse O'Leary, John West, Ph.D., David Klinghoffer, Casey Luskin, J.D., Craig J. Hazen, Ph.D., John Bloom, Ph.D., Ph.D.

Click Here for more details & to RSVP now!

Can you believe in God and evolution at the same time? What is "theistic" evolution, and how consistent is it with traditional theism? What challenges does Darwin's theory pose for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews? Is it "anti-science" to question Darwinian theory? Explore these questions and more at this upcoming conference at Biola University.

Sponsored by the Discovery Institute and Biola's Master of Arts in Science and Religion.

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).

Darwinian "triggers to persuasion and captivation" read more like the seven deadly sins.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

From my recent MercatorNet column:

The Darwinian world of brand marketing

We all know what evolutionary psychology (EP) has meant for sociology, psychology, and religious anthropology: a serious effort to explain human behaviour in terms of ape behaviour or "hardwired" Stone Age genes. For example, you get your selfish genes from your mother, so it's her fault if you don't visit her...

The EP academics, however pernicious their ideas, are doubtless just trying to understand. But what happens when their theories hit the business world? Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally Hogshead (Harper Business, 2010) gives us a glimpse of the Darwinian universe, as opposed to the Judeo-Christian one.

Hogshead is a brand marketing specialist. She helps executives persuade us to pay more for a brand than for a reliable service. Her special theory, gathered from research studies of apes and brain scans, is that the best strategy is "fascinating" people, and she has identified seven triggers for the spells a perceptive marketer can cast on them: lust, mystique, alarm, prestige, power, vice, and trust.

This list vaguely echoes the seven deadly sins, except for the last. But caution! Here, trust is not an intuition about how the universe really works; it is manipulative. We are told, "trust doesn't demand a moral absolute - only absolute consistency." (p. 175)

Hogshead begins by disposing of free will. (MercatorNet, 30 September 2010) And she'll end by disposing of your bank account if you don't look sharp.

For example,

Still more news from the world of privilege: "Not so long ago, the height of epicurean indulgence was a gold box filled with Godiva chocolates ... Then, in an effort to expand, in 1999 Godiva made a fateful decision to distribute in mass retailers such as Barnes and Noble. The chocolates, which for the first time now included preservatives, were no longer a treat to be craved and desired. Now you could buy the gold box in strip malls. (Strip malls!)" (p. 79)

Huh? Does this writer really not know that millions of her fellow Americans crave the goods of strip malls in vain?

Read more here.

So tell me again, Uncle Doddy: Given the stats, how does sin promote survival - for anyone but the rackets downtown?

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

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 and here, historian of Nazi Germany Richard Weikart responds to yet another whitewash of Darwinism's role in helping to create a particularly malignant type of racism, this time by Darwinist Michael Ruse:

Last November at a conference on Darwinism I conversed with a graduate student in philosophy who embraced Ruse's position on the evolution of ethics, which is not all that unusual among evolutionists. He told me he believed that morality is a biologically innate response shaped by evolutionary processes. It has no independent, objective, or universal existence. I pressed this graduate student, asking him how far he was willing to take his ethical relativism. Upon his affirmation that he subscribed to it completely, I asked him if he thought Hitler was morally evil. After explaining that he personally found Hitler's views repugnant, he admitted that he had no basis for condemning Hitler and finally he conceded, "Hitler was OK."

I doubt Ruse would be comfortable saying that Hitler was OK, because Ruse's (and Darwin's) political views are miles apart from Hitler's. However, Ruse's worldview (and Darwin's own) does not, as far as I can see, provide any objective basis for opposing or condemning Hitler (or Stalin or Mao).

Weikart is repeatedly accused of saying things he does not say, principally, one suspects because the things he does say and can demonstrate are so damning that the only alternatives are acknowledgement or obfuscation.

Here's an interview I did with Weikart on how he got interested in Darwin and Hitler anyway (not how you might think?).

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's physicist Tipler's view on Stephen Hawking's recent decision that God is not necessary:

In 1966, Stephen Hawking published his first - completely valid - proof for the existence of God. Over the next seven years, he followed this with even more powerful valid theorems proving God’s existence.

So how did Hawking, who successfully proved God's existence, remain an atheist? Simple. He simply denied that the assumptions he used in his proofs were true. As a matter of logic, if the assumptions in a proof are not true, then the conclusions need not be true. What assumptions did the young Hawking make? He assumed that the laws of physics, mainly Einstein's theory of gravity, were true. In the summary of his early research, namely his book The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Hawking wrote:

It seems to be a good principle that the prediction of [God] by a physical theory indicates that the theory has broken down, i.e. it no longer provides a correct description of observations.

Hawking then began working on quantum gravity, in hopes that God would be at last eliminated from the equations. Alas, it was not to be: God was even more prominent - and unavoidable - in quantum gravity than in Einstein's theory of gravity. In his latest book, The Grand Design, Hawking has pinned his hope of eliminating God on M-theory, a theory with no experimental support whatsoever, hence not a theory of physics at all. Nor has it been proven that M-theory is mathematically consistent. Nor has it been proven that God has been eliminated from M-theory. There are disquieting signs (for Hawking and company) that He is also unavoidable in M-theory, as He is in Einstein’s gravity, and in quantum gravity.

In spite of what the atheist press is telling you, it's looking bad for atheism today. And it is extraordinary the lengths an atheist like Hawking will go to avoid the obvious: God exists.

Tipler is an entertainingly nutty physicist, capable of making some sharp points. The thing to see here is that the new atheists do not need evidence. What they have is much more valuable: They are not officially classed by most people as a religious position, so they can simply impose their view on institutions they did not found, do not own, and negligibly pay for, if at all.

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's a revealing PhysicsWorld paper on peer review:

After running the model with 1000 scientists over 500 time-steps, Thurner and Hanel find that even a small presence of rational or random referees can significantly reduce the quality of published papers. When just 10% of referees do not behave "correctly" the quality of accepted papers drops by one standard deviation. If the fractions of rational, random and correct referees are about 1/3 each, the quality selection aspect of peer review practically vanished altogether.

"Our message is clear: if it can not be guaranteed that the fraction of rational and random referees is confined to a very small number, the peer-review system will not perform much better than by accepting papers by throwing (an unbiased!) coin," explain the researchers.

Daniel Kennefick, a cosmologist at the University of Arkansas with a special interest in sociology, believes that the study exposes the vulnerability of peer review when referees are not accountable for their decisions. "The system provides an opportunity for referees to try to avoid embarrassment for themselves, which is not the goal at all," he says. (September 9, 2010)

The major problem, as I see it, is that peer review is sold to the public as a key determinant of quality, which it isn't and can't be, under the circumstances. Scientists know about and talk about this problem, but nothing much seems to get done about it.

(Note: "Rational" means self-serving enough to reject a paper that might draw attention away from one's own work - I guess they were looking for a polite way to put that ...)

I have written elsewhere about peer review.

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

A friend writes to note a new blog:

The Bubble Chamber is a new blog written by historians and philosophers of science for discussing contemporary issues of science and society through the lens of historical context and critical analysis.

Founded by the University of Toronto's Science Policy Working Group, The Bubble Chamber is a forum for those interested in a critical assessment of science in society and the development, regulation, and trajectory of science.

Much of it would certainly interest ID types; for example, Mike Thicke on "Is Sam Harris on to something: Can science answer moral questions? Thicke quotes Darwinian atheist neuroscientist Harris:

I was not suggesting that science can give us an evolutionary or neurobiological account of what people do in the name of “morality.” Nor was I merely saying that science can help us get what we want out of life. Both of these would have been quite banal claims to make (unless one happens to doubt the truth of evolution or the mind’s dependency on the brain). Rather I was suggesting that science can, in principle, help us understand what we should do and should want—and, perforce, what other people should do and want in order to live the best lives possible. My claim is that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics, and such answers may one day fall within reach of the maturing sciences of mind.

So what do you think? Is Sam Harris just repeating Wilson’s mistakes, or is Hume’s is-ought divide best forgotten? Can we really find new ethical principles by studying biology, psychology, or neuroscience? What would they look like? What do you think of the principles Harris proposes in his TED talk?

Good for Mike for wondering; not as Thicke as some.

(The answer, of course, is no, unless we are zombies, in which case any principles would elude us anyway.There is no "science of mind" that is proof against temptation to do what we know to be wrong, though there could be zombification.)

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 is Clive Copus's review (23 September 2010) of Darwin skeptic James Le Fanu's Why Us?

Le Fanu writes beautifully - almost poetically, at times - but never loses sight of his underlying message. Beginning with an evocative account of the discovery of the artwork of Cro-Magnon man in a French cave, he marvels at the sudden and inexplicable emergence of mankind, with our unique powers of imagination, reasoning and abstract thought. The contrast with our primate 'cousins' should be self-evident, but the distorting lens of the Darwinian paradigm has served only to emphasise and exaggerate our similarities. Consequently, huge areas of potential research into what makes humans 'special' have been largely ignored, with disastrous consequences for the scientific enterprise.

[ ... ]

... both stunning and liberating: stunning because it is the very opposite of what scientists – working, of course, within the constraints of the Darwinian paradigm - expected to find; and liberating because it frees us from the rigid determinism of the selfish gene, with all that that implies for free will and objective moral values.

[ ... ]

... it provides the context for the author's main thesis - that cutting-edge science is providing us with an opportunity to break free of the shackles of materialist reductionism, and re-embrace the concept of the soul. In two areas in particular - genetics and neuroscience - research over the last 20 years has shown that we are much more than the sum of our brain's electrical impulses and our DNA's instructions. This is both stunning and liberating: stunning because it is the very opposite of what scientists - working, of course, within the constraints of the Darwinian paradigm - expected to find; and liberating because it frees us from the rigid determinism of the selfish gene, with all that that implies for free will and objective moral values.

Here's a bit more on Le Fanu from his site:

James Le Fanu was born in 1950 and spent his childhood in Scotland, East Africa, Yugoslavia and Cyprus. He studied the Humanities at Ampleforth College before switching to medicine, graduating from Cambridge University and the Royal London Hospital in 1974. He subsequently worked in the Renal Transplant Unit and Cardiology Departments of the Royal Free and St Mary's Hospital in London. For the past twenty years he has combined working as a doctor in general practice with contributing a weekly column to the Sunday and Daily Telegraph. He has contributed articles and reviews to The New Statesman, Spectator, GQ, The British Medical Journal and Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. He has written several books including 'The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine' that won the Los Angeles Prize Book Award in 2001 and 'Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves' that was published in Britain and the United States in February 2009.

Two comments:

Reviewer Copus seems to think that another good book exposing Darwinism's weaknesses will help weaken it as a social theory. Not so. We might no more expect that than we might expect astrology to be weakened as a social theory by exposure of nonsense. The Toronto Star, for example - street capo for all things Darwin - has an astrologer as well, Jacqueline Biggar, .

Second, and related, thousands upon thousands of academics and others make a living - often at tax expense - fronting Darwinian nonsense and foolishness. And what makes either Copus or Le Fanu think that these people actually want to be free?

(Note:When Darwin's chihuahua, Britmag New Scientist, went after Le Fanu, he appears to have threatened the mag with Britain's libel laws. The whole affair was a bit murky at first, and I got dragged into it because I was the only other person mentioned in the article - and, as it happens, am a free speech journalist, with little use for Britain's libel laws or libel tourism generally.

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

Adapting to Darkness: How Behavioral and Genetic Changes Helped Cavefish Survive Extreme Environment

Becoming eyeless is an adaptation of sorts, no?

ScienceDaily (Sep. 15, 2010) - University of Maryland biologists have identified how changes in both behavior and genetics led to the evolution of the Mexican blind cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus) from its sighted, surface-dwelling ancestor. In research published in the August 12, 2010 online edition of the journal Current Biology, Professor William Jeffery, together with postdoctoral associates Masato Yoshizawa, and Å pela Goricki, and Assistant Professor Daphne Soares in the Department of Biology, provide new information that shows how behavioral and genetic traits coevolved to compensate for the loss of vision in cavefish and to help them find food in darkness.

This is the first time that a clear link has been identified between behavior, genetics, and evolution in Mexican blind cavefish, which are considered an excellent model for studying evolution.

Actually, to the extent that the cavefish lost a trait rather than gained one, what we are studying here is devolution rather than evolution. Just how the main different types of eye evolved is a fascinating topic. How traits can get lost is interesting too, but not as relevant to the question of how great gains in information really occur.

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

At Intelligent Life (Autumn 2010), in "LIMITS OF SCIENCE," Anthony Gottlieb asks,"Plenty of today's scientific theories will one day be discredited. So should we be sceptical of science itself?":

At the end of her book "Science: A Four Thousand Year History" (2009), Patricia Fara of Cambridge University wrote that "there can be no cast-iron guarantee that the cutting-edge science of today will not represent the discredited alchemy of tomorrow". This is surely an understatement. If the past is any guide-and what else could be? - plenty of today's science will be discredited in future. There is no reason to think that today's practitioners are uniquely immune to the misconceptions, hasty generalisations, fads and hubris that marked most of their predecessors. Although the best ideas of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Darwin, Einstein and others have stood the test of time and taken their place in the permanent corpus of knowledge, error remains inherent in the enterprise of science. This is because interesting theories always go beyond the data that they seek to explain, and because science is made by people. Examples from recent decades of scientific consensus that turned out to be wrong range from the local to the largest possible scale: acid rain was not destroying forests in Germany in the 1980s, as it was said to have been, and the expansion of the universe has not been slowing down, as cosmologists used to think it was.

Physicists, in particular, have long believed themselves to be on the verge of explaining almost everything. In 1894 Albert Michelson, the first American to get a Nobel prize in science, said that all the main laws and facts of physics had already been discovered. In 1928 Max Born, another Nobel prize-winner, said that physics would be completed in about six months' time. In 1988, in his bestselling "A Brief History of Time", the cosmologist Stephen Hawking wrote that "we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature." Now, in the newly published "The Grand Design", Hawking paints a picture of the universe that is "different ... from the picture we might have painted just a decade or two ago". In the long run, physicists are, no doubt, getting closer and closer to the truth. But you can never be sure when the long run has arrived. And in the short run-to adapt Keynes's proverb-we are often all wrong.

Most laymen probably assume that the 350-year-old institution of "peer review", which acts as a gatekeeper to publication in scientific journals, involves some attempt to check the articles that see the light of day. In fact they are rarely checked for accuracy, and, as a study for the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think-tank, reported last year, "the data and computational methods are so seldom disclosed that post-publication verification is equally rare." Journals will usually consider only articles that present positive and striking results, and scientists need constantly to publish in order to keep their careers alive. So it is that, like the late comedian Danny Kaye, professional scientists sometimes get their exercise by jumping to conclusions. Historians of science call this bias the "file-drawer problem": if a set of experiments produces a result contrary to what the team needs to find, it ends up filed away, and the world never finds out about it.

Yes, indeed, and many people - especially older people - either know or sense this sort of thing. The "theory of everything problem is a huge handicap to getting taken seriously. It is evolutionary psychology (how your inner ape runs your life), for example, that makes Darwin's theory sound ridiculous in many people's eyes, not the bare bones theory itself, which is at least debatable:

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

From ScienceDaily, we learn,

Why 'Scientific Consensus' Fails to Persuade

(Sep. 14, 2010) If you are like most people, the answer is likely to be, "it
depends." What it depends on, a recent study found, is not whether the position that scientist takes is consistent with the one endorsed by a National Academy. Instead, it is likely to depend on whether the position the scientist takes is consistent with the one believed by most people who share your cultural values.

This was the finding of a recent study conducted by Yale University law professor Dan Kahan, University of Oklahoma political science professor Hank Jenkins-Smith and George Washington University law professor Donald Braman that sought to understand why members of the public are sharply and persistently divided on matters on which expert scientists largely agree.

An interesting article, but a little too self-pleasing for my taste. The reason people doubt expert science (or other) consensus is that they often know reasons why the consensus might not be correct, not just because they are biased but the experts are not. Sometimes a consensus is just a herd of independent minds, bellowing noisily as they gallop off a cliff. I am sixty years old, and it is interesting to reflect on all the expert opinion extant in my youth, and what happened to it.

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

According to Larry O'Hanlon at Discovery News, "Ancient animal explosion gets bigger with new finds" (9/9/2010),

At least eight new kinds of Earth's earliest animals from the mysterious and controversial Cambrian Explosion have been discovered in a unexpected section of ancient rock 30 miles from the famous Burgess Shale of Canada. The discovery suggests such old, rare fossils are more common than previously thought.

Like the fossils of the original Burgess Shale, the new discoveries are remarkable because they preserve features of animals which had no hard parts — like gills and eyes — and remained intact for more than half a billion years.

That's a time when animals evolved from being very small, simple organisms into a wildly creative, explosive variety of sometimes bizarre creatures.

These were culled by natural selection over time, leaving the more familiar main animal groups we see today.

I don't know how much of that is really due to Darwinism (that is, natural selection acting on random mutation), resulting in greater or less success at competing with other members of the species or other life forms for resources. Changing ecology probably played a big role, especially in massive extinctions, where the environment can just disappear:

Still, I suppose O'Hanlon must tip his hat to Darwin or else.

It would be nice to think that these new near-Burgess finds show that Cambrian explosion fossils are more common than previously thought. But they more likely just show that the Burgess area is not yet tapped out. The new find certainly warrants a wider area search.

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's a vid with Yale psychologist Laurie Santos, who claims that monkeys make stupid economic mistakes, as do humans.

Monkeys should speak for themselves (though they actually can't), but I've never really noticed that the human economy, left to itself, was irrational. It operates on some fairly simple and obvious principles:

1. People want what they want, and if they can pay for it, they will.

2. Everything that rises beyond its sustainable energy starts to fall.

3. As the old Italian proverb says, three women and a goose make a market.

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

Well, of course not. On the main point, he couldn't possibly be wrong,(in Boyles's view)and we are asking the "wrong question". In a linked article by Michael Reilly, his errors are grandfathered, much as if he were the prophet of a new cult, because "Mountains and mountains of evidence" support him. Just when the prophet's mountains are disappearing, too. But I will let you read it for yourself.

A lot of people invested heavily in Darwinism, which - it must be said, is too big to fail, and must now be propped up for the sake of vested interests.

While we are here, Steve Newton advises us at the Huffington Post that Darwin was not wrong when he argued that competition was the driving force ofevolution, suggesting that large-scale changes in ecology played a bigger role. Of course, they did. ... When an ice sheet covered much of Canada for thousands of years, it would not have mattered whether the preglacial creatures (mammoth, mastodon, ground sloth, saber-tooth cat, horse, camel, etc.) competed or not. When the ice melted, they were just gone. Bison, beavers, wolves, maples, and such were the big noise. How? Why? We don't know yet. One thing that sure isn't helping is Darwinism.

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

I was writing about this earlier. Michael Moyer at Scientific American notes,

Once again, the world is about to end. The latest source of doomsday dread comes courtesy of the ancient Mayans, whose calendar runs out in 2012, as interpreted by a cadre of opportunistic authors and blockbuster movie directors. Not long before, three separate lawsuits charged that the Large Hadron Collider would seed a metastasizing black hole under Lake Geneva. Before that, captains of industry shelled out billions preparing for the appearance of two zeros in the date field of computer programs too numerous to count; left alone, this tick of the clock would surely have shaken modern civilization to its foundations.

And more. Well, there is always a catastrophe somewhere; right now, the floods in Pakistan.

It looks like an interesting SciAm issue, though I don't think that fear of catastrophe is - as claimed - the outcome of "pattern-seeking brains." That's just another neuro Darwinism crock. For one thing, for most catastrophes, there is no pattern. That's the problem.

If there are 18 houses down the street from you, and 14 of the owners have been murdered in the last three weeks, I would be surprised if you were still living in #19 tonight. I wouldn't advise it. A decision to move in with your sister for a while would be an instance of pattern-seeking.

Pattern-seeking causes us to buy home insurance and auto insurance. Provided we have enough common sense to realize that bad things happen to heedless people. If we don't realize it, our mortgage bankers and motor vehicle departments usually realize it for us, via their lending rules or regulations.

No, I think the situation is more like this: We know we will die; we just don't want it to happen any time soon. So we seek to rid our lives of risk, sometimes going overboard in risk assessment and reaction, or leaning too hard in one direction vs others. Anyway, many of us do feel better going overboard than under water.

Such people can indeed be a pain in the neck. The guy who smokes two packs a day, but is worried about a supposed "metastasizing black hole under Lake Geneva" is a case in point. The two packs a day are a pattern; the supposed hole would be unique. The pattern is precisely what he avoids thinking about.

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

We are told by Howard Falcon-Lang, science reporter for BBC news, that the fate of the universe is now revealed by the galactic lens and that the universe will expand forever (19 August 2010):

Knowing the distribution of dark energy tells astronomers that the Universe will continue to get bigger indefinitely.

Eventually it will become a cold, dead wasteland with a temperature approaching what scientists term "absolute zero".

Professor Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University, a leading cosmologist and co-author of this study, said that the findings finally proved "exactly what the fate of the Universe will be".

Hmmm. I thought that pulpit-splintering, Bible-whacking fundamentalists had settled that one along time ago. And I give about as much credit to each view.

Also, don't miss this: "Tantalizing Clues as to Why Matter Prevails in the Universe: Surprisingly Large Matter/antimatter Asymmetry Discovered" from Science News Daily:

A large collaboration of physicists working at the Fermilab Tevatron particle collider has discovered evidence of an explanation for the prevalence of matter over antimatter in the universe. They found that colliding protons in their experiment produced short-lived B meson particles that almost immediately broke down into debris that included slightly more matter than antimatter. The two types of matter annihilate each other, so most of the material coming from these sorts of decays would disappear, leaving an excess of regular matter behind. This sort of matter/antimatter asymmetry accounts for the fact that just about all the material in the universe is made of the normal matter we're familiar with.

Which doubtless explains the absence of really unusual events in my neck of the woods.

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

In "Is quantum theory weird enough for the real world?", Richard Webb explains why we might need a new theory of quantum mechanics:

In our day-to-day world, we are accustomed to the idea that two events are unlikely to be correlated unless there is a clear connection of cause and effect. Pulling a red sock onto my right foot in no way ensures that my left foot will also be clad in red - unless I purposely reach into the drawer for another red sock. In 1964, John Bell of the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, described the degree of correlation that classical theories allow. Bell's result relied on two concepts: realism and locality.

Realism amounts to saying that the properties of an object exist prior to, and independent of, measurement. In the classical world, that second sock in my drawer is red regardless of whether or not I "measure" its state by looking at it. Locality is the assumption that these properties are independent of any remote influence.

In the quantum world, these are dangerous assumptions. "It turns out that either one or both of Bell's principles must be wrong," says Brukner. If quantum effects were visible in our everyday world, I might well find that my pulling on a red sock leads to the colour of the sock left in my drawer automatically changing to red.

[ ... ]

A world with this degree of interconnection would be weird indeed. I might find that by selecting a red sock from my drawer in the morning, I had predetermined the colour not just of my other sock, but that of my shirt, underpants and of the bus I ride to work.

( - New Scientist 23 August 2010)

The only time this ever happens in the macro world, in my own life experience, is if someone is fool enough to put dyed clothes in the javel water bleach wash. If you like white, buy it off the rack.

More quantum stories here.

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 is a photograph of Earth and its moon, taken from a distance of 114 million miles, by the U.S. spacecraft Messenger, headed out to orbit Mercury.

If I look really hard, I can see my kitchen sink and a pile of undone dishes.

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

A friend commented on Stephen Hawking's "no boundary" proposal:

The no boundary proposal means that one can picture the origin of the universe as being like the formation of bubbles of steam in boiling water. Quantum fluctuations lead to the spontaneous creation of tiny universes out of nothing.

My friend points out that it is not really 'out of nothing' as Hawking states. Quantum fluctuations require some sort of space-time and energy, even if they different from our own. So we've only traded one problem (get rid of the idea of a beginning) for another (what caused the space-time and energy that gave rise to the tiny universes?).

Basically, something isn't nothing. And nothing comes of nothing.

By the way, here are some varying definitions of "nothing", as seen by a physicist.

Here are some other links to recent posts to Colliding Universes, my blog about differing views of our universe:

Here Stephen Hawking explains why we are doomed if we don't vamoose Earth. Speaking for myself, I would probably be doomed if I did. I'm doomed anyway, but I belong to a culture where people hope to die peacefully in their sleep.

Aliens should be better than termites

Favourite quote on extraterrestrials: "If for some reasons the aliens are actually interested in us, I think they are probably already here, and given a certain level of technology, if would probably be easy to hide from us, even on a daily basis."

Yes, I should think so. Termites do it all the time. So do the rats at a nearby dumpster. (That's why the rule of thumb is, for every rat you happen to spot, there are a dozen.)

Now, what I''’d be interested to know is, the ETs never phone, they never write. Why do we assume they exist?

Most of the reasons I have heard are based on attitudes, values, and beliefs, not 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

I wrote this to an American friend recently, about the importance of intellectual freedom today:

I agree, but respectfully suggest that the main question is whether your country's government agrees.

Against much hostility and opposition, some of us got inserted into the Constitution of another (big and unimportant) country:

"Whereas [don't fall asleep while using heavy machinery] is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:"

As a result, even the worst justices on that country's supreme bench have been forced to acknowledge that truth is a defense to libel.

By contrast, in Holland, which belongs to an EU system Constitution that pointedly excludes God, Geert Wilders was informed that it made no difference if his angry claims against Islam are true, if they "insult" Muslims.

That is precisely the difference we need to note. Excluding God means that truth does not matter.

The trouble with trying to found governments without God is that no one recognizes ideas like truth, let alone the rights and dignities of the human individual.

You might find that your mom is in competition with a baboon for health care - and she might lose, if some sentimental animal rights campaign starts up in favour of the baboon.

Big whoop. Your taxes are paying for the baboon's health care, but not your mom's. Group huggie! Group huggie!, right?

Look, there ARE people out there with nothing better to do, and all day to do it in. It is possible that some are funded by your taxes.

As I see the Comer decision (where a Texas education administrator was fired for advocating Darwinism), it set a limit on the extent to which a lobby can just take over government when most people actually think that the policy is reasonable, and represents a cultural consensus [that reasonable challenges to Darwinism are permissible].

PS: I hold no brief for Wilders - like all free speech journalists, I am concerned about the principle itself. Here, a Muslim is free to argue that Wilders's claims are untrue, in any available forums, most of them free. But the Muslim takes the risk that he had better have an opposing case to offer, other than that he is merely offended. We have been in this battle for a while here and so far, we are winning! - d.

More from The Mindful Hack (Denyse O'Leary's blog on issues of mind and brain):

(Denyse O'Leary's blog on issues of mind and brain):

The New Atheists are God's prophets?

Why we must make sure the Darwinists lose

Single neurons can detect sequences?

Neuroscience journal changes policy on last-minute add-ins

Linguistics and Darwinism: Noam Chomsky

I can't make this stuff up: Magnet impairs morality

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).

In Christian Darwinism: Why Theistic Evolution Fails As Science and Theology (Broadman and Holman, November 2011), mathematician Dembski and journalist O’Leary address a powerful new trend to accommodate Christianity with atheist materialism, via acceptance of Darwinian ("survival of the fittest") evolution.

This trend includes "Evolution Sundays" at churches and endorsements by high administration officials like Francis Collins.

Dembski and O'Leary say it all just doesn't work. How can we accommodate self-sacrifice as the imitation of Christ with "altruism is just another way you spread your selfish genes!" How can we accommodate monogamy as the image of Christ and his church - for which he gave himself up - with "The human animal was never meant to be monogamous!"?

In the authors' view, no accommodation is possible. More to the point, accommodation is not even necessary. There are good reasons for doubting Darwin and good reasons for adopting other models for evolution - or for deciding that there is not enough evidence to make a decision.

Dembski and O'Leary insist that this conflict has nothing to do with the age of the Earth. Darwinism is, as they will show, the increasingly implausible creation story of atheism, which diverges at just about every point from the Christian worldview on which modern science was founded.

Yet Darwinism is publicly funded, and taught, in many jurisdictions, without any criticism permitted.

Reactions - not only praise but criticism - are expected and much appreciated! Regular updates will be provided at www.uncommondescent.com, so persons who wish to comment on the project can post there.

Contact: Denyse O'Leary oleary@sympatico.ca

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

When I first picked up neurobiologist Jerome Siegel's recent Nature review on the evolutionary significance of sleep, I was expecting to find a scientifically-buttressed counter-position to the age-old assertion that describes sleep as "a vulnerable state...incompatible with behaviors that nourish and propagate species". Siegel's evolutionary discussion was nonetheless unconvincing (1). While he supplied a nice primer on the neurobiology of sleep, Siegel gave no real riposte to the outstanding question of survivability posed above other than to iterate a rather uninformative statement: "In each species the major determinant of sleep duration is the trade-off between the evolutionary benefits of being active and awake and those of adaptive inactivity" (1).

To understand why Siegel fell short it is important to re-familiarize ourselves with the rich diversity of sleep behaviors that we find in the mammalian world. Children learn about these behaviors from an early age: giraffes nap for anywhere between 10 minutes to two hours, elephants for five hours and anteaters for as long as fourteen hours (2). Marine mammals exhibit their own unique sleep patterns, notably a unilateral (unihemispheric) slow down of brain wave activity (contrast this with the bilateral (bihemispheric) slow down of non-REM sleep in land mammals) (1,3). And seals make use of both bilateral and unilateral modes depending on whether they are in terrestrial or aquatic environments (1,3). Researchers readily proclaim that "mammalian sleep is extremely diverse" with the unihemispheric sleep of dolphins being "nothing like the rapidly cycling sleep of rodents, or the single daily block of humans" (3).

While a direct correlation between body mass and sleep quantity has been reported in herbivores, the impact of mass and other physiological variables on sleep patterns across the animal kingdom remains highly controversial (1). Moreover there appear to be significant mammalian species-specific differences regarding the lethality of sleep deprivation as well as in hormone release patterns during sleep and wake times (1). In all three subclasses of mammals (placentals, marsupials and monotremes) there are noticeable differences in REM/NON-REM sleep patterns. Extant monotremes for example are unique in their display of brainstem associated REM and forebrain Non-REM (1).

Many mammals and several invertebrate species can regain lost sleep (sleep rebound) in about 30% less time than it would have taken during their normal sleep routine (1). Understandably evolutionists have pondered over the question of why in such cases shorter sleep durations and concomitantly longer wake times have not evolved so as to maximally capitalize on opportunities for hunting and foraging (1). Strikingly dolphins, killer whales and seals can survive the winter months without sleep rebound after extended periods of activity in the open sea (1). In all, these results are at odds with the expectation that sleep would be "physiologically similar across mammals" (1).

Speculation over why animals would spend significant portions of their lives in vulnerable states of dormancy has focused on the benefits of brain energy conservation and the concomitant reduced risks of injury and detection by predators. Siegel defined the adaptive benefits of sleep as the suppression of activity at times that have "maximal predator risk and minimal opportunity for efficiently meeting vital needs" and the allowance of activity at times of "maximal food and prey availability and minimal predator risk" (1). Yet in light of the rather complex and varied sleep behavior patterns described thus far, Siegel's conclusions seem empirically un-testable. How can we truly ascertain whether some poorly defined threshold of ill-timed predatory risks and inefficient brain energy conservation has been reached?

If anything real life observations contravene expectations. A few examples make this plainly clear: the 19th century zoologist James Edward Gray recorded crossing paths with bowhead whales "sleeping so soundly a few meters from the pack ice that they did not even react to his approaching boat" (4). Owls are prone to large mob lynchings from hawks, crows and jays as they doze atop exposed tree trunks (5). Humming birds make themselves susceptible to attack by adopting an almost lifeless state called torpor as part of an energy-recovery sleep regimen (3). And mortality in certain reef teleost fish is higher during the night when resting than during the day when swimming in open waters (6). Such life-threatening vulnerabilities do not support the existence of trade-offs acting as effective evolutionary operatives over the course of time as Siegel might have envisaged.

World-renowned biochemist James Krueger concurs- sleep is by all counts maladaptive unless "a greater need is served" (7). What that need might be remains to be seen although there is no shortage of ideas. Krueger for example believes that sleep may somehow facilitate the integration of new memories into existing neuronal circuits (7). Some speculate that sleep serves the role of removing dangerous free radicals from the brain [6]. Others hold to the veracity of the Null Hypothesis which, simply stated, maintains that sleep is nothing more than "a kind of extreme indolence that animals indulge in when they have no more pressing needs, such as eating or reproducing" [6]. Sleep quite clearly performs a restorative function although the exact details have eluded even the most dedicated of investigative minds [8]. In what way can the current data be reconciled with a picture that shows sleep behaviors evolving as a result of selective pressures across the millennia?

In the June, 2010 issue of PLOS Computational Biology, a cross-disciplinary group from the University of Sydney and Harvard Medical School headed by Amesh Abeysuriya provided what was touted as the definitive answer to this question (3). At the heart of mammalian sleep behaviors is a collection of diverse molecules called somnogens that accumulate during wake times and generate a "homeostatic drive to sleep". Cells in the monoaminergic brainstem nuclei (MA) and the ventro lateral preoptic area of the hypothalamus (VLPA) form what Abeysuriya et al consider to be a sleep-wake switch that functions through antagonistic inhibition (3). For aquatic mammals in which unihemispheric activity is observed, a "mutually inhibitory connection" is thought to exist between VLPA populations that prevents both hemispheres being activated simultaneously. Abeysuriya et al devised a model that they claim accounts for the sleep patterns observed in 17 species of mammals (3).

Krueger is one of a handful of sleep experts who believe that sleep is not an "all or nothing" affair even in bihemispheric-operating mammals (9). Krueger has proposed that in all mammals groups of neurons can be selectively shut down after being used for the tasks they routinely perform (4). What we call sleep might therefore simply be a state in which a large number of neurons have been shut down to the extent that they are no longer able to function (9). Washington State University electrophysiologist David Rector has built up enough hard evidence to support such a proposal. Following experiments with lab rats Rector is confident that "there's no central control, no on-off switch". He remains adamant that the need for sleep arises as a result of the progressive use of neuronal cell clusters over the course of a wake period (9).

Several somnogens have now been extensively reported on in the peer-reviewed literature (3). The universality of the homeostatic drive that results from these somnogens coupled with the MA-VLPA cellular interactions have led Abeysuriya et al to conclude that differences in sleep patterns across species represent nothing more than evolutionary attenuations of a system that existed before mammals roamed the earth (3). But blatantly lacking in this evolutionary picture is a genetic basis for explaining how these attenuations supposedly came into effect. Ever since the early 1970s, when researchers began a frantic search for a mysterious sleep hormone dubbed "Factor S", the idea of a single sleep gene has been gradually but emphatically turned on its head (7,9). There are now over a hundred such genes, most of them encoding a class of immune proteins called cytokines, that in one way or another play a role in regulating sleep patterns (7,9). Of these there are about fifteen big players with TNF, IL-1, Growth Hormone Releasing Hormone (GHRH) and adenosine (with its receptor) being perhaps the best characterized of them all (3,9,10).

A complex network of positive and negative feedback loops called the sleep homeostat forms the molecular foundation of non-REM phase sleep which varies predictably in response to physiological cues such as feeding and illness (10). Importantly Krueger's research has brought into sharp clarity the role of a gene called preproghrelin which is now known to modulate sleep and regulate body temperature as a function of food availability (11). The preproghrelin gene expresses multiple protein products one of which, the ghrelin hormone, acts in suppressing sleep during bouts of hunger (11). Another preproghrelin product, the obestatin hormone, induces sleep and maintains stable body temperatures when food is scarce (11). These antagonistic functions are critical for survival in the wild where "natural shortages of food and low environmental temperature are commonly encountered" (12). Indeed preproghrelin gene knockout mice have been shown to suffer from severely disrupted sleep and uncontrollable hypothermia when doubly challenged by an absence of food and cold external temperatures (12)

Any model that purports to explain the evolution of sleep throughout nature has to account for the multi-layered genetic and cellular complexity that undergirds its panoply of forms. Clearly involved are exquisitely regulated and species-tailored communication systems, with key biological processes and molecular determinants playing an integral role in sleep/wake regulation. None of the work to-date on evolution has given us much beyond deeply-held assumptions served up in a manner that leaves out the full extent of what we now truly know about this captivating topic. It can be said that at its core the current evolutionary story has become nothing more than the materialists' dreamy solution to a nightmare of a problem.

Further Reading
1. Jerome M. Siegel (2010) Sleep Viewed As A State Of Adaptive Inactivity, Nature Rev Neurosci, Volume 10, pp. 747-753
2. Richard and Louise Spilsbury, A Herd Of Elephants, Heinemann Library, p.20; Jennifer McDougall, Giraffes, Scholastic, p.25; Lorien Kite, Anteaters, Grolier Educational, p.30
3. Andrew J. K. Phillips, Peter A. Robinson, David J. Kedziora , Romesh G. Abeysuriya (2010) Mammalian Sleep Dynamics: How Diverse Features Arise from a Common Physiological Framework, PLOS Computational Biology, June 2010, Volume 6, Issue 6, e1000826
4. Jacques Cousteau and Yves Paccalet (1986) Whales, W.H. Allen & Co, London, pp. 219
5. Helen Rodney Sattler (1995) The Book Of North American Owls, Clarion Books, NY, p. 23
6. Chiara Cirelli, Giulio Tononi (2008) Is Sleep Essential? PLOS Biology, Volume 6, Issue 8, e216
7. Tim Steury (2010) Why Do We Sleep?, Washington State Magazine, See
http://researchnews.wsu.edu/health/78.html
8. The New Book Of Popular Science, Volume 5, Grolier Publishing, pp. 405-409
9. Cherie Winner (2006) The Secrets Of Sweet Oblivion, Washington State Magazine, See http://wsm.wsu.edu/s/index.php?id=130
10. James M Krueger, David M Rector, Sandip Roy, Hans P A Van Dongen, Gregory
Belenky, and Jaak Panksepp (2008) Sleep As A Fundamental Property Of Neuronal Assemblies, Nat Rev Neurosci Volume 9, pp. 910-919
11. Eat, sleep, stay warm: How our bodies find the right balance, See
http://www.wsutoday.wsu.edu/Pages/Publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=15160&PageID=
12. Eva Szentirmaia, Levente Kapa, Yuxiang Sun, Roy G. Smith, and James M. Krueger (2009) The preproghrelin gene is required for the normal integration of thermoregulation and sleep in mice, PNAS, Vol. 106, pp.14069-14074

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Here's something worth knowing if you don't want your kids spending a lot of time on Darwin worship when they could be learning something useful:

Last year, during the bicentennial anniversary of Darwin's birth, Nature released a free online packet titled "15 Evolutionary Gems." Its subtitle was "A resource from Nature for those wishing to spread awareness of evidence for evolution by natural selection." It might have been better subtitled 'A evangelism packet for those wishing to spread the good news about Darwinism.' After all, when Nature announced the packet, they said they were heeding a prior call which "urged scientists and their institutions to 'spread the word'" about evolution and "highlight reasons why scientists can treat evolution by natural selection as, in effect, an established fact." The packet is to be used not just in schools, but also in home evangelism or relationship evangelism.

[ ... ]

The packet is simply an extension of Nature's "campaign" for Darwin. But it is quite useful in one important respect: the packet is from the world's top scientific journal and purports to show us "just what is the evidence for evolution by natural selection." So if the evidence isn't very strong, then that should tell you something.

As we'll see, far from being "incontrovertible," most of the "evolutionary gems" in the packet do not show any significant amount of evolution and might be best views as "microevolutionary" gems. A couple of the "gems" have little to do with evolution, but an evolutionary interpretation is added in after-the-fact.

Right now, Darwinism is right up there with "recovered memories" in believability, which is the main reason I would want it minimized in tax-funded schools.

Maybe my local used car salesman can spout it, along with extolling the glories of the used Lada he is trying to unload before it falls to pieces on the sales lot.

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

Must have been a slow news day in Ottawa.

This is a tough one to understand. How could a fish just grow legs? It mystifies us, and so this part of evolutionary theory is a common target for cheap attacks from creationists. Therefore, it's extremely valuable that a scientist has now found a way in which a genetic tweaking makes a zebrafish embryo stop growing fins, and start growing an appendage that looks like a leg. If she can tweak a gene in the lab, maybe one of the many mutations that pop up in nature could do the same.

- Tom Spears, "How the tetrapod got its legs" (June 27, 2010)

Read more here.

Priceless. You can't make this stuff up.

In fairness to journalist Spears, he is properly uncertain about just what has been discovered here, for good reason. "An appendage that looks like a leg" is what, exactly?

It only counts if it acts like a leg. Ask an amputee.

And it better act soon, too, because otherwise the fish is a cripple. What happens when predator fish arrive, as would happen in nature, if not in a lab?

Oh, we did remember to install quills among the gills, didn't we? And a system for making them stand up ...

Obviously, fish moved onto land some time (and do today), but legs are not the point. (If they were, snakes and legless lizards would not exist.) The critical issue is breathing apparatus.

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

Go here for the latest unbelievable research.

Look, read that, but this much I know is true:

I am a faithful daughter who goes out to visit her Alzheimer-riddled, stroke-addled father, 91, every week.

He never at any time changed from his traditional morality.

He knows that his parents are dead. He constantly asks how his sibs, his children and grandchildren are doing. He worries that his wife, joining him in the seniors' home, had to give up some prized furniture. Just what you would expect of him.

He looked after the animals, too. He even has a cat in the apartment.

I guess the magnets must have missed their target in his case.

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).

Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

The Spanish Paseos Por La Naturaleza (A Walk Through Nature) series continues with a review of Biologic Institute researcher Douglas Axe's thesis on the probabilistic barriers that make a neo-Darwinian explanation for the origin of protein folds untenable. Given his scientific background, Axe is well qualified to argue against the undirected origin of protein structure and convincingly counters those who extravagate over the much-heralded modular transfer of folds between proteins.

The Paseos Por La Naturaleza series aims to further strengthen the global influence that the Intelligent Design movement already enjoys and raise awareness of important academic resources that are today challenging orthodox Darwinism and revitalizing the call for a fresh perspective on scientific discourse.

The fifth installment can be found at:

Como los pliegues proteinicos derrumban el edificio neo-darwinista (see also darwinodi.com)

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

As long as it’s NOT about their love for evolution. It is common to hear that the Nazis utterly lacked morality. Of course, that satisfies deep anger. But is it true? University of California professor Richard Weikart’s recent book, Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), offers an illuminating answer: No.

Hitler’s Ethic (a companion to his From Darwin to Hitler, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) demonstrates that the Nazis indeed had an ethic. It flowed directly and painstakingly from evolutionary theory, as understood in Germany at the time.

I wish I had said this stuff. Come to think of it, I at least reported it here. Subscribe to Salvo, one of the few pubs worth reading these days, if you are not a gorilla somewhere.

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 Kevin Wirth, ARN Director of Product Development and Media Relations

Today marks the official publication of Dr. Caroline Crocker's book "Free to Think" (now available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble). As we celebrate our national independence from the the tyrannical rule of King George over the American colonies so many years ago, it's fitting that we be reminded of our need to be free from other forms of injustice that are present with us today. Two of those injustices are, amazingly, freedom of speech and academic freedom. Both of these issues are addressed in Dr. Crocker's autobiographical account of her experience as a professor at George Mason University (GMU).

This long-awaited response to critics of Dr. Crocker puts to rest some of the often unscrupulous hype surrounding her departure from GMU in May 2005 (for example, see my earlier blog post on SKEPTIC Magazine's treatment of her back in October of 2008). Many of her critics have remarked that there was nothing at all unusual about Dr. Crocker's departure, since her contract simply ended and that was that - happens all the time. But Dr. Crocker reveals that the truth of the matter is anything but typical or usual.

Dr. Crocker, who appeared briefly in the 2008 movie Expelled, was an untenured adjunct professor at GMU and had signed a 3-year contract extension, which others also read. In her book, Crocker recounts how her good fortune was short lived, however, as she became the victim of a bait-and-switch scheme in which her original contract was changed to a one-year term shortly after being accused of teaching creationism in her classes - a charge she steadfastly denies. In fact recent evidence has come to light from one of her former students that a student who Dr. Crocker caught cheating retaliated against another student and made allegedly false accusations against Dr. Crocker, which eventually culminated in the loss of her job as a professer at GMU. The appeals process as told by Dr. Crocker was little more than a railroading and a denial of her academic freedom per GMU's own code - and readers are provided with her first-ever complete retelling of what happened in her own words as well as her response to the findings of her grievance committee (all documented in Appendix IV).

Many of Dr. Crocker's critics make the point that she SHOULD have been let go for teaching creationism. However, according to Dr. Crocker, all she did was challenge her students to think outside the box a bit and come to their own conclusions based on ALL of the available evidence, not just the usual consensus views of science. Crocker relates in her book exactly how and what she taught her students, including many in-class interactions. Readers will be left to decide whether they believe her approach was reasonable. I submit most readers will concur that she did nothing to warrant the treatment she received.

The broader question posed by Dr. Crocker (and hence the title of her book) is how far should we go in controlling the freedom we should give educators who desire to stimulate the thinking of their students? And likewise, how much leeway should be given to students who question consensus views of science? Dr. Crocker's story reveals a very disturbing lack of latitude among GMU officials. Unfortunately, the short-leash policy illustrated by GMU is all too common in many academic institutions across America.

But if that was not enough, even more alarming is what occurred afterward as she sought legal redress. According to both Crocker and her attorney Ed Sisson (who also wrote a compelling preface for this book), the law firm representing her interests in the GMU fiasco was being considered for hire by GMU on another unrelated matter with one stipulation - they must first agree to drop Crocker as a client before signing on the dotted line. And the travesty is, the law firm agreed to do so, and soon after dismissed Sisson from the firm after a 14-year career with them.

As Michael Behe, author of the book "Darwin's Black Box" writes in support of Dr. Crocker's account, this story is "guaranteed to make your blood boil."

Seattle area writer and Darwin skeptic Kevin Wirth is a founding member of ARN (formerly Students for Origins Research) and is also the founder of Leafcutter Press.

He is the Senior editor, contributor, and publisher of the book "Slaughter of the Dissidents: The Shocking Truth About Killing the Careers of Darwin Doubters" by Dr. Jerry Bergman (2008). This is the most comprehensive book published to date documenting the extent and types of discrimination against Darwin Dissidents.

In addition, he is also the publisher of Caroline Crocker's book "Free to Think," which addresses her critics and relates her experience as an Expelled University professor from George Mason University.

To read more essays by Kevin Wirth, click here.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Kevin H. Wirth, all rights reserved. Quotes and links to this blog post are welcomed with attribution.

A Review Of The Case Against A Darwinian Origin Of Protein Folds By Douglas Axe, Bio-Complexity, Issue 1, pp. 1-12

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

Proteins adopt a higher order structure (eg: alpha helices and beta sheets) that define their functional domains. Years ago Michael Denton and Craig Marshall reviewed this higher structural order in proteins and proposed that protein folding patterns could be classified into a finite number of discrete families whose construction might be constrained by a set of underlying natural laws (1). In his latest critique Biologic Institute molecular biologist Douglas Axe has raised the ever-pertinent question of whether Darwinian evolution can adequately explain the origins of protein structure folds given the vast search space of possible protein sequence combinations that exist for moderately large proteins, say 300 amino acids in length. To begin Axe introduces his readers to the sampling problem. That is, given the postulated maximum number of distinct physical events that could have occurred since the universe began (10exp150) we cannot surmise that evolution has had enough time to find the 10exp390 possible amino-acid combinations of a 300 amino acid long protein.

The battle cry often heard in response to this apparently insurmountable barricade is that even though probabilistic resources would not allow a blind search to stumble upon any given protein sequence, the chances of finding a particular protein function might be considerably better. Countering such a facile dismissal of reality, we find that proteins must meet very stringent sequence requirements if a given function is to be attained. And size is important. We find that enzymes, for example, are large in comparison to their substrates. Protein structuralists have demonstrably asserted that size is crucial for assuring the stability of protein architecture.

Axe has raised the bar of the discussion by pointing out that very often enzyme catalytic functions depend on more that just their core active sites. In fact enzymes almost invariably contain regions that prep, channel and orient their substrates, as well as a multiplicity of co-factors, in readiness for catalysis. Carbamoyl Phosphate Synthetase (CPS) and the Proton Translocating Synthase (PTS) stand out as favorites amongst molecular biologists for showing how enzyme complexes are capable of simultaneously coordinating such processes. Overall each of these complexes contains 1400-2000 amino acid residues distributed amongst several proteins all of which are required for activity.

Axe employs a relatively straightforward mathematical rationale for assessing the plausibility of finding novel protein functions through a Darwinian search. Using bacteria as his model system (chosen because of their relatively large population sizes) he shows how a culture of 10exp10 bacteria passing through 10exp4 generations per year over five billion years would produce a maximum of 5×10exp23 novel genotypes. This number represents the 'upper bound' on the number of new protein sequences since many of the differences in genotype would not generate "distinctly new proteins". Extending this further, novel protein functions requiring a 300 amino acid sequence (20exp300 possible sequences) could theoretically be achieved in 10exp366 different ways (20exp300/5×10exp23).

Ultimately we find that proteins do not tolerate this extraordinary level of "sequence indifference". High profile mutagenesis experiments of beta lactamases and bacterial ribonucleases have shown that functionality is decisively eradicated when a mere 10% of amino-acids are substituted in conservative regions of these proteins. A more in-depth breakdown of data from a beta lactamase domain and the enzyme chorismate mutase has further reinforced the pronouncement that very few protein sequences can actually perform a desired function; so few in fact that they are "far too rare to be found by random sampling".

But Axe's landslide evaluation does not end here. He further considers the possibility that disparate protein functions might share similar amino-acid identities and that therefore the jump between functions in sequence space might be realistically achievable through random searches. Sequence alignment studies between different protein domains do not support such an exit to the sampling problem. While the identification of a single amino acid conformational switch has been heralded in the peer-review literature as a convincing example of how changes in folding can occur with minimal adjustments to sequence, what we find is that the resulting conformational variants are unstable at physiological temperatures. Moreover such a change has only been achieved in vitro and most probably does not meet the rigorous demands for functionality that play out in a true biological context. What we also find is that there are 21 other amino-acid substitutions that must be in place before the conformational switch is observed.

Axe closes his compendious dismantling of protein evolution by exposing the shortcomings of modular assembly models that purport to explain the origin of new protein folds. The highly cooperative nature of structural folds in any given protein means that stable structures tend to form all at once at the domain (tertiary structure) level rather that at the fold (secondary structure) level of the protein. Context is everything. Indeed experiments have held up the assertion that binding interfaces between different forms of secondary structure are sequence dependent (ie: non-generic). Consequently a much anticipated "modular transportability of folds" between proteins is highly unlikely.

Metaphors are everything in scientific argumentation. And Axe's story of a random search for gem stones dispersed across a vast multi-level desert serves him well for illustrating the improbabilities of a Darwinian search for novel folds. Axe's own experience has shown that reticence towards accepting his probabilistic argument stems not from some non-scientific point of departure in what he has to say but from deeply held prejudices against the end point that naturally follows. Rather than a house of cards crumbling on slippery foundations, the case against the neo-Darwinian explanation is an edifice built on a firm substratum of scientific authenticity. So much so that critics of those who, like Axe, have stood firm in promulgating their case, better take note.

Read Axe's paper at: http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2010.1

Further Reading

Michael Denton, Craig Marshall (2001), Laws of form revisited, Nature Volume 410, p.417

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

This question started out as "science and religion" at another list but the religion part got lost somehow, not because I am unreligious but because I wasn't sure how much religion, as such, you can learn from a serious exposition of the reasons for thinking that design is a feature of our universe.

All you can really learn from books about design is that materialist atheism is nuts.And, not surprisingly, all the materialist atheist mooches and tax burdens do everything they can to try to sink such books in the ratings. Don't usually succeed, of course, but can't blame 'em for trying.

Anyway, here are my five top picks (exempting any book for which - so far as I know - I had anything to do with the text):

1. Michael Denton's Nature's Destiny: Denton discusses the world I know, all the more authentically because he addresses the southern cone, not my beloved northlands. I first got interested in design issues about a decade ago, and Denton's book was a key reason. I was sitting in a bookstore cafe in a northern city, and my brother saw I was interested, so he bought me a gift certificate so I could buy the book. The book just made so much sense. It describes the world I know, where things do not happen simply by chance or survival of the fittest.

2. Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box. When I first encountered the book, I was flush with the success of having landed a science and faith column in a Canadian Christian publication (since, abruptly cancelled). When I first read Behe's book, I was astonished to discover that there is a lot of evidence against Darwinism and little for it - despite endless local obsequious coo's from bible school profs that "there is no conflict between science and religion (even though I knew of theist profs who were at that very time under serious threat.).

The "no conflict" profs really meant, of course, that there is no conflict between Darwinism and Christianity, as the Biologos Institute would have us believe. But, of course, "survival of the fittest" and Christianity are irreconcilable, as I noted when I saw former Biologos golden boy - and still a golden boy in many Christian circles - beaming with joy over human embryonic stem cell research.

I myself was astonished to discover, in interview, how foolish Christian women abandon live human embryos (their early stage children) in fertility clinics, so the kids end up getting processed for - whatever.

And if that is the "religion" part of "no conflict between ...", deal me out right now! Elsewhere, it is called being a "useful idiot." But you will see a lot of it in the Christian press these days.

3. Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial: Still a classic in asking the right, serious questions, principally about the way in which Darwinism became popular culture's icon, and what that actually means.

You can see it if you travel the subway in a major city today - full of tattooed, pierced, unemployable people, absolutely convinced that the "government" owes them a living, because they are the somehow surviving apes. It is hard to know where to begin, in countering this view because it is implicit in their education. Johnson was especially good at skewering "theistic evolution" (= how to sell out to atheism without openly admitting it).

4. Steve Meyer's Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009). Meyer explains how new information about the cell shows that Darwinists and "Christian" Darwinists are simply wrong in supposing that Darwin's ingenious "survival of the fittest" explanation shows how intricate machinery can occur with no design at all. Darwin's claim is a complete imposture, and should have occurred to anyone who works for a living, but many British aristocrats like himself in his day and many civil servants and lobbyists today never did practical work, and wouldn't really know why we cannot create intelligence from mere matter by accident.

5. Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Intelligent Evolution was one of those books everyone heard of - if they work this beat - but no one had read. After all, Darwin's mob did a pretty good job of wasting his co-theorist Wallace, right? And Wallace's only serious crime was not to be a materialist atheist.

In the world according to Darwin, you are either a materialist atheist or a useful idiot for same.

Wallace understood the world I know much better - not at all surprising, because he was a much better naturalist than Darwin. In the world I know, co-operation matters.

Eighty-five years ago, my devout grandmother told my five-year-old father to follow a turkey hen up into the hills and find out where she was caching her eggs. The trouble was, a coyote could get them. The boy - not much taller than a turkey hen himself - had to follow the hen discreetly, because she would turn around and look at him. But he found the eggs, and his mother promptly put them under a broody chicken hen, in the henhouse, so they could be safely hatched.

(Note: Obviously, I have avoided speaking of any book with which I was in any way involved - so far as I know. Because I work in publishing, it is always possible for some Darwinist sponge or tax burden, with no more useful activities to occupy his time, to pretend some case for my involvement with a book, but, as I always say in such cases, ... pffft.

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

I am pleased to announce this book by Jane Harris-Zsovan on the Canadian eugenics scandal. I tried to cover it in the 1970s, from Ontario, but couldn't get very far - literally. It took someone like Jane, who went through box loads of archives in her home province of Alberta, to start putting the pieces together.

It is NOT a pretty picture. People here were all too willing to just accept the beliefs of important Darwinists, with disastrous results.

So what happened? Why did so many professionals believe Darwinism and act on it? The Canadian experience was pretty scandalous.

Eugenics? As someone who has late life parents, I can say that having kids is a real smart idea, provided you intend to live a long life and the kids are willing to help you.

Try to imagine what Darwinism meant for a culture like Jane Harris-Zsovan and I grew up in, a culture we can even find today, in Canada. Please stay awake.

I mean a culture where transit drivers quietly put their hand over the fare box if they think you have arrived from out of town to visit a veteran or an elderly mother in hospital. Or, suspecting a similar errand, taxi drivers may return a tip, claiming that they do not have change.

Darwinism means a whole different universe, and not one we like much here, either. It just feels alien to our culture. Makes you wonder, given how long our culture has lasted.

I know, this is NOT the Canada that US hot talk radio hosts rant about.

But it is the real Canada. Trust me, I live here. And we are starting to speak up about what really happened when eugenics and other fancy ideas were tried out here.

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

Someone tipped me off about this MIT Press book, attempting to explode the "evolutionary psychology" racket:

The claims of evolutionary psychology may pass muster as psychology; but what are their evolutionary credentials? Richardson considers three ways adaptive hypotheses can be evaluated, using examples from the biological literature to illustrate what sorts of evidence and methodology would be necessary to establish specific evolutionary and adaptive explanations of human psychological traits. He shows that existing explanations within evolutionary psychology fall woefully short of accepted biological standards. The theories offered by evolutionary psychologists may identify traits that are, or were, beneficial to humans. But gauged by biological standards, there is inadequate evidence: evolutionary psychologists are largely silent on the evolutionary evidence relevant to assessing their claims, including such matters as variation in ancestral populations, heritability, and the advantage offered to our ancestors. As evolutionary claims they are unsubstantiated. Evolutionary psychology, Richardson concludes, may offer a program of research, but it lacks the kind of evidence that is generally expected within evolutionary biology. It is speculation rather than sound science -and we should treat its claims with skepticism.

I say "attempting" because - from its blurb - the book sounds far too timid to me. (Prove me wrong, publisher, by sending me a copy.)

For one thing, evolutionary psychology is right up there with recovered memories as the kind of nonsense that professors of therapy get into because they don't have anything more useful to do. The trouble is, if anyone takes them seriously, they can cause problems.

Frankly, evolutionary psychologists come up with stuff so stupid that it falls beneath mockery.

I am still mad at Bill Dembski for scooping me on the Big Bazooms theory of human evolution, but I forgave him eventually, and in the meantime there is "why middle-aged men have shiny scalps" and "why dad can't dance" - supposedly, except when he can and does. And in many world cultures, he just must.

Whatever we want to call this stuff, it is not science. Science is about fact, not free-floating, idle speculation. But - as noted earlier - I expect this book to accomplish little because the publisher and maybe the author are far too concerned with placating the tenured profs they should just dismiss. Prove me wrong.

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).

1. Mayday mayday mayday SoS Darwin! Is it really that bad? Guess so, if you go by BioLogos.

The skinny:

" -you have heard about the “massive evidence” for Darwinism, right? No, that is a confusion cleverly created by Darwinist tax and donor burdens.

What they do is they cleverly confuse two concepts: One is evidence for evolution. Few doubt that, in my experience. Does anyone doubt, for example, that the tyrannosaur is no longer among us? Well, a simple question would be, can anyone produce one?

But the Darwinist always conflates it into evidence for Darwinism: That time and chance alone can produce intricate machinery within cells, which accounts for the life we see around us. That is flatly unbelievable. "

The fat:

Go here for the fat.

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

In 2001 Stephen Meyer, Paul Nelson and Paul Chien wrote a lengthy discourse that explored the scientific challenges that the Cambrian Explosion of life poses to the Darwinian account of animal origins (1). Central to their arguments was the idea that biological processes in the organismic context are so tightly integrated that changes in one process invariably require compensatory changes elsewhere (1). Their illustration of this basic premise seemed intuitive enough:

"If an engineer modifies the length of the piston rods in an internal combustion engine, but does not modify the crankshaft accordingly, the engine won't start. Similarly, processes of development are so tightly integrated temporally and spatially that one change early in development will require a host of other coordinated changes in separate but functionally interrelated developmental processes downstream" (1)

Drawing from examples cited in the biological literature and comments made by opinion leaders, notably geneticist John McDonald and zoologist Soren Lovtrup, the verdict they arrived at was that "those genes which govern major changes, the very stuff of macroevolution, apparently do not vary, or vary only to the detriment of the organism" (1).

In an effort to model the tight integration of biological processes my sons and I teamed up to assemble a functional multi-component machine better known as the K'Nex Drop-N-Swing. Not only did we successfully demonstrate how the operability of the 'Drop-N-Swing' mechanism was dependent upon the components having precisely the spatial dimensions that they display but we also showed how adjustments to any one of these required concordant adjustments elsewhere in the machine.

The layout of the Drop-N-Swing resembles the sky drop and swing carousel rides one finds in modern amusement parks (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udr-RxcnUFU). On one side a centrally-located motor drives a series of four sequential gears each of which has just enough gear teeth to crank a chain-linked chair lift up a two foot-tall tower. Because a defined portion of the circumference of the largest gear lacks teeth and can therefore not crank up any weight, the chair drops down immediately upon reaching the top of the tower. This 'rise and fall' cycle is made possible through 86 chain links that form a closed chain circuit around two sprockets located at the bottom and top of the tower. The bottom sprocket is connected to the gear system that consequently turns the chain and causes it to lift up the chair.

As my sons toyed around with the Drop-N-Swing they found that they were unable to decrease the chain length and tower height without cutting down on the number of gear teeth. That is, if they were to maintain the rise and fall capabilities of the chair lift, concordant adjustments were needed at more than one location (otherwise the chair would get irreversibly stuck on the top sprocket). Even the tower height could not be facilely altered since the repeating unit of the tower struts did not correspond to an integral number of chain links.

Newsworthy cases in biology testify to the underlying charge brought by Meyer et al that major evo-morphing of structure and anatomy could not have been brought about through random piecemeal changes to already-extant body plans. Famously Nobel Prize winning biologist Ed Lewis elucidated crucial details about the genetics of embryonic patterning in fruit flies (2-4). Focusing on a group of genes known collectively amongst drosophila geneticists as the Bithorax Complex, Lewis built on the pioneering work of his predecessors who had identified homeotic (developmental patterning) mutants in the Bithorax gene that produced insects with an extra pair of wings (2-4). These appeared appended to the front portion of sophisticated flight balance-mediating organs called halteres situated on either side of the flies (2-4). The Bithorax mutant broke thorassic segment identities (ie one segment was replaced by another). But most importantly the mutant larva died early in development (2).

Meyer et al note how this additional wing pair "innovation" was viably unsustainable for the largely self evident reason that "the developmental mutation was not accompanied by the many other coordinated developmental changes that would have been necessary to ensure the production of the appropriate muscles at the appropriate place on the fly's body" (1). Renowned Cambridge developmental biologist Peter Lawrence made his position clear in a review of the overall findings of homeotic mutation research:

"Homeotic mutations are encouraging because they raise the clarifying prospect of a class of controlling genes responsible for large chunks of the body pattern. They also impress because the mutations produce massive anatomical transformations; it was even thought such mutations could allow the sudden generation of new animal groups during evolution - an idea that looks increasingly implausible (individuals produced by such mutations are very unfit!)." (4)

One cannot help but acknowledge the futility of a story that claims that evolution could have brought about beneficial large scale changes to body plan architecture. The evidence speaks for itself. And simple attempts at modeling do nothing less than support the science.

Further Reading
1. Stephen C. Meyer, Paul A. Nelson, and Paul Chien (2001) The Cambrian Explosion: Biology's Big Bang, See http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/Cambrian.pdf, p.36, This article also appears in the peer-reviewed volume Darwinism, Design, and Public Education published with Michigan State University Press

2. Vidyanand Nanjundiah (1996) The 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Resonance, http://www.ias.ac.in/resonance/Mar1996/pdf/Mar1996ResearchNews.pdf

3. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, p.1096

4. Peter Lawrence (1992), The Making of a Fly: The Genetics Of Animal Design, Blackwell Scientific Publications, London, p.211

A friend notifies me to look here re neurolaw and the death penalty. He writes,

The threads of the Jeanine Nicarico murder case are too tangled to attempt even a summary. Suffice it to say that an innocent man was sent to death row, and before it was all sorted out police and prosecutors were charged with fabricating evidence and there hasn't been an execution in Illinois in over a decade. The final act played out last November in a suburban Chicago courtroom where the real killer, Brian Dugan, asked a jury to spare his life. To assist, his lawyers ... presented fMRI images -- a first in a U.S. criminal trial. The pictures revealed that parts of the brain that light up in normal people remained cold and dark in Dugan's brain. The defense expert described these areas as regulating impulse control and emotional reactions. In short, Dugan was a classic psychopath, and the fMRI helped to prove it.

Although prosecutors had tried to keep the evidence out by challenging the science behind it, the judge ruled that under the relaxed standards of mitigating evidence in a death penalty case, it should come in. Fearful of "The Christmas Tree Effect" dazzling jurors with colorful snapshots of Brian Dugan's grim interior life, the judge originally ruled no images could be admitted. Later he reversed himself, and Dr. Kiehl, a New Mexico researcher who hauls an fMRI trailer from prison to prison for grant-fueled research on criminals, was able to show the jury the cold, dark spaces that he claimed correlated to the brutal sexual assault and murder of a young girl. Brian Dugan's brain was to blame and they had the pictures to prove it.

Apparently the jury did not appreciate how being a psychopath worked in the defendant's favor. They sentenced Brian Dugan, broken brain and all, to death. .

The jury may or may not have discounted the science, but they probably bought it to the extent they understood it. The point is, they refused to split Brian Dugan into a legally responsible entity on one hand, and a broken brain on the other. They may have judged him to be a bad person, but they saw him as a package of damaged goods that was nonetheless a person, and one deserving of the ultimate penalty. Arguably, adding advanced neuroimaging to the proof that Dugan was a psychopath may have actually hurt Dugan more than helped him. There was no suggestion that he could not appreciate the wrongfulness of his acts or keep himself from doing them. Scientific proof that Dugan was a cold, remorseless killer is not considered to be the best mitigation, but the defense lawyers had been dealt a bad hand in a high stakes game and thought the broken brain card was worth playing. One of his lawyers said this case was "unique" and did not foresee frequent use of the technology.

Note that this worked out exactly as I predicted the last time I wrote you about the neurolaw fad in academia. In its first real test, jurors shrugged and voted for death. It will never play in Peoria.

My sense of the situation is as follows:

1. Advanced Western democracies do not generally need the death penalty because we can just keep people locked up until they are no longer dangerous. Of course, societies may want it for political, religious, or other reasons. But dramatic strategies, such as the death penalty, do tend to glamorize crime. To see what I mean, consider the old movie, A Place in the Sun. By contrast, a guy who pounds out auto licence plates for 25 years to earn himself packs of smokes, to get him through the night in prison, is not glamorous.

2. I am not surprised that the jury didn't believe it. The key question is not "what is going on in that guy's brain" but "what steps could he have taken such that he would not have committed a fatal assault? If he did not take them, why not?"

3. I don't think "neurolaw" has anything to contribute. If adults are truly not responsible for their actions, they should be living in a supervised group home. At least, that is the usual approach.

Go here for neurolaw and other neurofads.

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack (my blog on neuroscience and design):

So, if you are French, your neurons run your life?

If you believe in God, is it just because you think you are God?

Proof that there is, or is not, free will is worth what, in money?

Thicker foreheads: Meet thickets of Darwinism

(Note: If you follow me at Twitter, you will get regular notice of new Mindful Hack posts, usually when I have posted five or so stories.)

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).

Coffee!!: A message from "so-called Denyse O'Leary" ...

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Yesterday, I was at the Canadian Science Writers' Association convention, held in Ottawa this year, and noted an evolution display by the British Council..

In its obsequies to Darwin, the Council advises the public that

Darwin gathered a mass of information to support his ideas. The types of evidence he used – from fossils to distribution of species – are all much more developed 150 years later. The proliferation of living forms in the so-called Cambrian explosion around 530 million years ago, for example, has been studied in enormous detail.

What I want to draw your attention to is the use of the term "so-called" Cambrian explosion.

I have usually heard the fossil find in Canada's Burgess Shale called the "Cambrian explosion" - where most phyla of life forms appeared in a short period, some went extinct, and others continued. Darwin, famously, knew it was a problem for his gradualist theory of evolution, and blamed the imperfect fossil record. A more perfect fossil record has not helped much.

The big question is why it is so important for the British Council to defend Darwin's theory of evolution on this and other questions, when other theories of evolution might more reasonably account for this sequence of events.

I think I shall take to calling that organization the "so-called British Council".

Oh, and another piece of misinformation on the page is, "The spread of bacteria that can resist antibiotics is a good example of evolution in action." Yes, if evolution means tossing out working equipment, to avoid detection and destruction. But most people want to know how the equipment was created, and - to the handwringing of Darwinists - find their particular theory unconvincing.

Here is an example: You are a pro-democracy dissident in a totalitarian regime, and you type a newsletter. You get a tip that the secret police are coming, and you row out into the middle of a nearby lake and throw your whole system into it.

Of course, the secret police could arrest you without cause, but they would prefer to have a cause, so that the government-supported and -funded media can trumpet you as a villain.

Now you don't have that system any more. You are reduced to getting unwanted books at lawn sales and writing messages at agreed pages, known only to the person whose page it is. Then you arrange discreet delivery at the homes of democracy supporters, by various covert means. Still, you manage. They really want the messages.

But someone rats, under torture. Now, you are reduced to hiding baggie-wrapped messages in grapefruits, delivered by a sympathetic travelling fruit vendor. Soggy, but not without information value. Until ...

Maybe, messages could be hidden in leafy thickets or in their root systems ... I mean, if you inserted them carefully, in plastic - because they grow variously, so they will not likely be watched. But the recipient must be warned. This works, until ...

Still, the system goes on because there is an intelligence that wants to hear the news about dissent from the Totality.

Okay, this is the evolution!! of a communications system - if you, as a total Darwinist, like the British Council - believe that bacterial resistance shows evolution in action.

Sure it does, Amoeba. Now let me no longer detain you, but dump you quickly into your latest new pond.

Otherwise, read Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism.

Note: Behe's title is curious, because - if you go by current science guff - Darwinism explains everything, and taxpayers must be forced to fund it.

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

"Depending on the type of grammar used in forming a given sentence, the brain will activate a certain set of regions to process it, like a carpenter digging through a toolbox to pick a group of tools to accomplish the various basic components that comprise a complex task" (1). This was the descriptive offered by one review on how it is that diverse regions of the human brain are recruited to tease out the meaning of sentences when we communicate with each other (1). Cutting edge research into brain function, using American Sign Language as a platform, has unpacked the detail of exactly how the brain achieves this split-second feat (1,2).

In sign language messages can be expressed in one of two ways. As with English, 'signers' can use ordered words to convey their message (eg: John gives his lunch to Mary). But they can also move their hands in a manner that specifically relays concepts and ideas- what linguists call inflection(2). In languages such as German and French inflections are easily identifiable as suffixes that can be tagged onto the ends of words to denote, amongst other things, the case or the gender of the word or the 'role' that a subject or object in a sentence plays in a given interaction (John giving lunch to Mary in the above example) (2). But sign language, notes Rochester University psychologist Aaron Newman offers "a unique opportunity to directly contrast these two means of marking grammatical roles within the same language" (2).

Newman employed functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to zero in on the spatial-temporal brain activities that accompany both word order and inflection-based communication. What he uncovered was nothing short of remarkable. There exists a network of brain regions including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPC), the superior and posterior temporal sulcus (STS), the caudate nucleus, the middle temporal gyrus (MTG), the angular gyrus (AG) and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) that are operative during both the interpretation of word order and inflection processing (2). Importantly significant differences exist in the "relative weighting" of activation in these regions depending upon which of these two modes of message transmission is being called upon (2). The DLPC and the right hemisphere AG are more dominantly active when word order-critical sentences are put in front of us. In contrast the MTG and the posterior STS are more active during inflection processing (2). The overarching conclusion borne out by the results of this study is that "specific parts of the neurocognitive system recruited for grammatical processing are dependent on the type of information that must be processed" (2).

Over the years my interest in language and brain function has been fueled by my own exposure to cultures outside of those of my native England. I grew up speaking Portuguese, Spanish and to a lesser extent French. Unlike English, these and other Romantic languages display a requirement for word inflection in both verb endings and noun genders. Whereas English leans towards compound verb usage, Portuguese, Spanish and French show complex verb endings (e.g., The English phrase I shall come translates into Portuguese as Eu virei). When I traveled this month to the Brazilian Society of Biochemistry meeting in Foz de Iguassu in southern Brazil, I was relieved to find that I could slip almost effortlessly into both the written and spoken forms of Portuguese. It was a joy to find that, despite the odd non-conformity, my Portuguese had remained unadulterated over the years. Little did I know that I was employing cognitive functions that differed from those that I use in my more usual English setting.

On the flight back I settled down to read about the work of one Evelina Fedorenko who as an MIT psychologist has played an instrumental role in deciphering the functional hotspots of linguistic cognition (3). Her research has concentrated on mapping the 'within language' specificity (linguistic processing cognition) and 'domain' specificity (non-linguistic cognition) areas of the brain (3). Fedorenko and her close colleague Nancy Kanwisher have devised a localizer task approach for studying brain function (3). By asking individual subjects to perform cognitive tasks that place demands on localized regions of the brain (eg: contrasting pronounceable non-words like florp with real words like flop), they have been able to identify those regions that "engage in retrieving the meanings of individual lexical items and in combining these lexical-level meanings into larger meaning structures" (3).

Once back at home I had the chance to ask my father - a linguist by training - for his take on Newman's and Fedorenko's work. His principle observation was that sign language could only serve as a model for written words. Whereas sign language is sequential, spoken forms of language are multi-layered with sounds, grammar, vocabulary, intonation and gesture all acting together to achieve the conveyance of information. But what was plainly obvious to both of us was that through its sheer processing speed, the cerebral linguistic toolbox had no equivalent in anything that a carpenter might find on his workbench. Almost two decades ago brain biologist John Eccles noted that our linguistic capacity was pivotal in ensuring that we became the dominant species on our planet (4). The latest research is confirming Eccles' assessment. And the brain architecture associated with language processing is turning out to be mind-bogglingly complex.

So, what of the evolution of language usage in humans? Perusing through the literature one finds a story that invariably begins with the need for some form of communication amongst early hominids. Having given up the safety of arboreal living in favor of an expansive conquest of terra firma, these hominids, we are told, would have relied on each other for information on the whereabouts of food, shelter and predatory dangers and may have been endowed with the simple descriptive function of language (4). "Cladistic branching with a great genetic change" accompanied the rise of Homo habilis, considered by many as the 'initiator' of spoken language (4). Great genetic advances gave us Homo erectus and finally Homo sapiens sapiens with his expressive, descriptive and argumentative capabilities (4). We are led to the idea that even this climactic achievement was accessible to the un-shepherded roving of natural selection (4).

Of course nothing in this story remotely addresses the question of how the interplay of diverse regions of the brain, such as that which we see above, became so firmly entrenched into the very fabric of how we communicate. The literature is silent about the details. As the twentieth century linguist Noam Chomsky argued language is "a skill that human beings are innately predisposed to acquire" (5). Today evolutionists are hard pressed to come up with an account for the origin of such an innate predisposition. At its core, the cerebral linguistic toolbox is a phenomenon that blows the mind and sabotages the evolutionist's dream of a viable account for the origin of a vital part of our humanity.

References

1. Aaron Blank (2010) Sign Language Study Shows Multiple Brain Regions Wired for Language, See http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3610

2. Newman AJ, Supalla T, Hauser P, Newport EL, & Bavelier D (2010) Dissociating neural subsystems for grammar by contrasting word order and inflection, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107 (16), 7539-44 PMID: 20368422

3. Evelina Fedorenko, Functional localization in fMRI studies of language, See http://www.mit.edu/evelina9/www/funcloc.html

4. John Eccles (1991) Evolution Of the Brain, Creation Of The Self, Routledge Press, London, pp.95-96

5. Steve Blinkhorn (2003) Language Instinct, in The Science Book, ed. Peter Tallack, Weidenfeld And Nicolson Publishers, London, pp. 386-387

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

See the abstract for "Believers' estimates of God's beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people's beliefs" by Nicholas Epleya,1, Benjamin A. Conversea, Alexa Delboscb, George A. Monteleonec and John T. Cacioppoc:

Abstract

People often reason egocentrically about others' beliefs, using their own beliefs as an inductive guide. Correlational, experimental, and neuroimaging evidence suggests that people may be even more egocentric when reasoning about a religious agent's beliefs (e.g., God). In both nationally representative and more local samples, people's own beliefs on important social and ethical issues were consistently correlated more strongly with estimates of God's beliefs than with estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 1–4). Manipulating people's beliefs similarly influenced estimates of God's beliefs but did not as consistently influence estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 5 and 6). A final neuroimaging study demonstrated a clear convergence in neural activity when reasoning about one's own beliefs and God's beliefs, but clear divergences when reasoning about another person's beliefs (Study 7). In particular, reasoning about God's beliefs activated areas associated with self-referential thinking more so than did reasoning about another person's beliefs. Believers commonly use inferences about God's beliefs as a moral compass, but that compass appears especially dependent on one's own existing beliefs.

Well, obviously, people who believe in God would want to take God's side in ethical issues, right? Who wants to be merely on the neighbours' side (obsessed with property values) or on Satan's side ... (evil for the fun of it?).

The authors of this study, having begun by assuming that god does not exist, attempt to reason about why people conform their beliefs to what they think God wants, based purely on private preferences. That goes against everything I know about religious people.

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

A friend notifies me to look here re neurolaw and the death penalty. He writes,

The threads of the Jeanine Nicarico murder case are too tangled to attempt even a summary. Suffice it to say that an innocent man was sent to death row, and before it was all sorted out police and prosecutors were charged with fabricating evidence and there hasn't been an execution in Illinois in over a decade. The final act played out last November in a suburban Chicago courtroom where the real killer, Brian Dugan, asked a jury to spare his life. To assist, his lawyers ... presented fMRI images -- a first in a U.S. criminal trial. The pictures revealed that parts of the brain that light up in normal people remained cold and dark in Dugan's brain. The defense expert described these areas as regulating impulse control and emotional reactions. In short, Dugan was a classic psychopath, and the fMRI helped to prove it.

Although prosecutors had tried to keep the evidence out by challenging the science behind it, the judge ruled that under the relaxed standards of mitigating evidence in a death penalty case, it should come in. Fearful of "The Christmas Tree Effect" dazzling jurors with colorful snapshots of Brian Dugan's grim interior life, the judge originally ruled no images could be admitted. Later he reversed himself, and Dr. Kiehl, a New Mexico researcher who hauls an fMRI trailer from prison to prison for grant-fueled research on criminals, was able to show the jury the cold, dark spaces that he claimed correlated to the brutal sexual assault and murder of a young girl. Brian Dugan's brain was to blame and they had the pictures to prove it.

Apparently the jury did not appreciate how being a psychopath worked in the defendant's favor. They sentenced Brian Dugan, broken brain and all, to death. .

The jury may or may not have discounted the science, but they probably bought it to the extent they understood it. The point is, they refused to split Brian Dugan into a legally responsible entity on one hand, and a broken brain on the other. They may have judged him to be a bad person, but they saw him as a package of damaged goods that was nonetheless a person, and one deserving of the ultimate penalty. Arguably, adding advanced neuroimaging to the proof that Dugan was a psychopath may have actually hurt Dugan more than helped him. There was no suggestion that he could not appreciate the wrongfulness of his acts or keep himself from doing them. Scientific proof that Dugan was a cold, remorseless killer is not considered to be the best mitigation, but the defense lawyers had been dealt a bad hand in a high stakes game and thought the broken brain card was worth playing. One of his lawyers said this case was "unique" and did not foresee frequent use of the technology.

Note that this worked out exactly as I predicted the last time I wrote you about the neurolaw fad in academia. In its first real test, jurors shrugged and voted for death. It will never play in Peoria.

My sense of the situation is as follows:

1. Advanced Western democracies do not need the death penalty because we can just keep people locked up until they are no longer dangerous. Dramatic strategies, such as the death penalty, tend to glamorize crime. By contrast, a guy who pounds out auto licence plates for 25 years to earn himself packs of smokes, to get him through the night in prison, is not glamorous.

2. I am not surprised that the jury didn't believe it. The key question is not "what is going on in that guy's brain" but "what steps could he have taken such that he would not have committed a fatal assault? If he did not take them, why not?"

3. I don't think "neurolaw" has anything to contribute. If adults are truly not responsible for their actions, they should be living in a supervised group home. At least, that is how we have usually done it here, and it works pretty well. I mean, if you go by the fact that my own country, Canada, is a low crime/low threat jurisdiction.

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

Announcing the $4.4 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Alfred Mele,

Do we have free will? FSU philosopher awarded $4.4 million grant to find out

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Since the beginning of time, philosophers, scientists and theologians have sought to find out whether human beings have free will or whether other forces are at work to control our actions, decisions and choices.

Now, Florida State University philosopher Alfred Mele has been awarded a $4.4 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to get to the bottom of this question for the ages. Mele, the William H. and Lucyle Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, will oversee a four-year project to improve understanding of free will in philosophy, religion and science.

"This is an extraordinarily large award in the humanities, which speaks volumes about Al Mele's worldwide reputation as a scholar, the excitement provoked by his newest ideas, and the Templeton Foundation's commitment to the highest standards of creativity in ideas and rigor in scholarship," said Joseph Travis, dean of Florida State University's College of Arts and Sciences. "An award of this magnitude and visibility puts our Department of Philosophy, and Florida State, in a very bright international spotlight."

The first big question I would ask is, what is the practical importance of the question? The people who administer the Highway Traffic Act in my province assume that one has free will. Driving while over the alcohol limit is assumed to be an offence under the Act, whereas going off the road due to a pothole is not. But some want to change this:

The project, "Free Will: Human and Divine - Empirical and Philosophical Explorations," is not quite as esoteric as the topic might suggest. For thousands of years the question of free will was strictly in the domain of philosophers and theologians. But in recent years, some neuroscientists have been producing data they claim shows that the genesis of action in the brain begins well before conscious awareness of any decision to perform that action arises. If true, conscious control over action - a necessary condition of free will - is simply impossible. Likewise, some social psychologists believe that unconscious processes, in tandem with environmental conditions, control behavior and that our conscious choices do not.

Mele argues

"It's not as if in four years, we are going to know. But I want to push us along the way so that we can speed up our understanding of all of this."

[ ... ]

"If we eventually discover that we don't have free will, the news will come out and we can predict that people's behavior will get worse as a consequence," Mele said. "We should have plans in place for how to deal with that news."

Actually, there is no news. Every drunk driver claims drink done him, yet he could not have got drunk except by exercising his free will to drink before driving, instead of going for a walk in the park. Unfortunately, this sort of verbiage tends to promote more and more rules, which the human mind is always capable of getting around.

Other free will stories here.

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 Chapter 13 Of Signature In The Cell, by Stephen Meyer, HarperOne Publishers, ISBN: 9780061894206

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

I never would have suspected that the literary sensation Dr Seuss' The Cat In The Hat Comes Back would be used to make a point about the devastating shortcomings of origin of life theories (1). But when I read one of the later chapters of Meyer's Signature In The Cell which in one foul swoop discredited Hermann Muller's fortuitous origins of DNA, Henry Quastler's DNA self replication hypothesis and Manfred Eigen's ideas on hypercycles I could not help but be fascinated by his use of this children's classic in his exposition. Of course in their own unique ways each of these scientists became steadfastly convinced that they were onto something of great significance that would lead to fruitful avenues on the all important question of how life had begun.

Muller drew inferences from his own work on viruses, in particular bacteriophages ('bacteria eaters'), equating these simple organisms to "a gene that copies itself within the cell" (2). He envisioned these as being somehow analogous to primitive DNA floating around in the chemical-rich soup of the early earth (2). Quastler on the other hand suggested that polynucleotides could act as templates for replication through complementary base pairing (3). And Eigen chose to assume that 'self-reproducing molecular systems' involving RNA molecules and basic enzymes could somehow supply an early form of transcription and translation, later forming hypercycles that would have preceded the arrival of the earliest cells (4).

So how is the Cat in the Hat relevant? Crucial aspects of the above mechanistic propositions, writes Meyer, parallel the antics of our feline friend as he unwillingly redistributes the mess he has created in the house of his none-too-happy hosts. Origin of life scientists have similarly been trying for decades to "clean up the problem of explaining the origin of [biological] information" only to find that they have "simply transferred the problem elsewhere- either by presupposing some other unexplained sources of information or by overlooking the indispensable role of an intelligence" (1). And their modern day brethren, with the apparent sophistication of computer-housed evolutionary algorithms, have fared little better. Meyer's unpacking of the reality behind Ev, for example, described by its author Thomas Schneider as "a simple computer program" that attempts to evolve the information content of DNA binding sites in a hypothetical genome, is a case in point (5). In Ev Schneider specifies the sequence of these DNA binding sites and incorporates the code for the binding site 'recognizer' (protein) into the genome (5). The relative penalties for mis-binding or non-binding of the recognizer to sequences are pre-set into the program (5).

Ev stands guilty as charged since, as Meyer asserts, it presupposes an unexplained source of information (1). And for that matter so does the much-celebrated evolutionary algorithm Me Thinks It Is Like A Weasel. "[Both] succeed in generating the information they seek" writes Meyer "either by providing information about the desired outcome from the onset, or by adding information incrementally during the computer program's search for the target". The so-called 'active information' imparted by the programmer allowed both programs to assess the proximity of any given sequence to a pre-specified target- hardly a fair representation of the Darwinian mechanism in action.

I had the opportunity to hear Michigan State University philosopher Robert Pennock present on another much-touted algorithm called AVIDA during the 2008 Bioethics Forum in Madison, Wisconsin. The forum carried the promissory title Evolution In The 21st Century. And Pennock certainly did his utmost to adopt the 'Darwin immortalized' slant that the event was promoting (6). From the deliberations that followed Pennock's exposition it appeared on the surface that AVIDA trumped its predecessors by not pre-specifying any sort of evolutionary target (5). But as I found out on further inspection appearances can be deceptive. In fact the AVIDA world is home to a brood of digital organisms that are rewarded with resources and replicate each time they perform logic functions (eg: AND, OR). Meyer's principle criticism is that the inherent complexity of these functions in no way equates to that which we find in genes and therefore unreasonably "diminishes the probabilistic task that nature would face in "trying" to evolve the first reproducing cell".

The problems with AVIDA run deeper still as Winston Ewert, William Dembski and Robert Marks II have made all too clear in their expository dissection of digital organisms. They conclude that "AVIDA generates active information from a number of knowledge sources provided by the programmer and, with respect to an evolutionary strategy, performs poorly with respect to other search strategies using the same prior knowledge" (7). In fact AVIDA organisms are endowed with virtual genomes and the capacity to replicate and operate within a realm of assigned merit values for each of the logic functions they perform (6).

More generally, the thrust of Meyer's attack has everything to do with the law of conservation of information (COI) (6). COI theory supplies us with a critical insight: "all computer search algorithms of moderate to high difficulty require active information" (ie from the programmer) and "the amount of information in a computer in its initial state equals or exceeds the amount of information in its final state" (1). That is, evolutionary algorithms do not furnish us with a means by which to simulate the origin of genetic information through natural selection given that too much information is siphoned into these algorithms from the onset by external intelligence.

For the same reasons already mentioned, the mess left by Dr Seuss' Cat in the Hat is once again proverbially pertinent to the matter at hand. In this regard, Meyer is to be congratulated for his divulgence of biology's foremost skeleton in the closet- the absence of a scientifically plausible explanation for the origin of biological information. On that matter, we should embrace his enthusiasm for change in the way that clenched-fist biologists filter debate over their view of life's unfolding story.

References

1.Stephen Meyer (2009) Signature In The Cell: DNA And The Evidence For Intelligent Design, HarperOne Publishers, pp. 271-295

2.Iris Fry (2006) The origins of research into the origins of life, Endeavour, Volume 30, Issue 1, March 2006, pp. 24-28

3.Robert L. Herrmann (1975) Implications of Molecular Biology for Creation and Evolution, JASA 27 (December 1975): pp. 156-159, http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1975/JASA12-75Herrmann.html

4.Vladimir Red'ko (1998) Hypercycles, Principia Cybernetica, See http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HYPERC.html

5.Thomas Schneider (2000) Evolution of biological information, Nucleic Acids Research, 2000, Vol 28, pp. 2794-2799

6.Robert Deyes (2008) AVIDA As A 'Teleo-LOGIC' Model Of Life, Access Research Network, See http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2008/08/09/avida_as_a_teleo_logic_model_of_life

7.Winston Ewert, William Dembski, Robert Marks II (2009) Evolutionary Synthesis Of Nand Logic: Dissecting A Digital Organism, Proceedings Of The 2009 IEEE International Conference On Systems, Man, And Cybernetics, San Antonio, Texas, USA (October 2009), pp. 3047-3053, See http://evoinfo.org/papers/2009_EvolutionarySynthesis.pdf

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Casey Luskin at the Discovery Institute's explains:

The Smithsonian has a new human origins exhibit, "What does it mean to be human?" specially targeted at swaying student visitors who might doubt Darwinian evolution.

The most amusing part of the exhibit proudly explains that evolution predicted we'd lack evidence for evolution; that's how we know it's true!

That's right, this is how the nation's most prestigious natural history museum presents evolution: evolution predicts that evolution is supported both when we do and when we don’t find confirming fossil evidence. Consider the following from the educator's guide:

Misconception: Gaps in the fossil record disprove evolution.

Response: Science actually predicts gaps in the fossil record. Many species leave no fossils at all, and the environmental conditions for forming good fossils are not common. The chance of any individual organism becoming fossilized is incredibly small. Nevertheless, new fossils are constantly being discovered. These include many transitional fossils-e.g., intermediary fossils between birds and dinosaurs, and between humans and our primate ancestors. Our lack of knowledge about certain parts of the fossil record does not disprove evolution.

Did you get that? Ignoring the fact that transitional fossils are often missing even among taxa whose records are very complete, now Darwin's defenders argue that their theory "predicts gaps in the fossil record."

Luskin has written extensively on this problem.

Darwinists do a great deal to discredit the idea of evolution by engaging in these tactics. Essentially, their theory is unfalsifiable, which means it is not actually science, but rather a belief system. No doubt there is a reasonable explanation for the gaps, but in this atmosphere, progress may be slow.

19th century Darwin believed in long, slow eons of gradual evolution. Great 20th century American paleontologist, Steve Gould, believed evolution happened in short bursts, accompanied by long periods when little happened. They can't both be right, but whichever is, students will be told that "science predicts it". Predicts what? Actually, someone predicted it, not "science". So the other guy was mistaken. And teaching otherwise in order to prevent doubt is no way to do 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 Robet Deyes
ARN Correspondent

If we were to think of the height of the Eiffel tower as representing the age of our earth then the existence of humanity would be nothing more that the skin of paint on the pinnacle knob. This was the opening perspective offered by Professor of Philosophy Sean Kelly whose inaugural lecture at this year's Annual International Bioethics Forum on the science of consciousness kick started a series of talks by a preeminent cast of academic thinkers and speakers. Kelly's ensuing factual inventory set the tone for others to follow. During their brief history, humans have become a force that has incontrovertibly impacted our planet. 95% of that skin of paint of human existence occurred before the advent of agriculture. And during that time humans have shown that they are the only beings with a capacity not only for complex language but also for storing information outside of themselves in the form of books and multimedia. No other species dwells upon historical time like we do. University of Minnesota ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna, who spoke immediately after Kelly's 'opener', concurred. Complex language, he noted, depends on synesthesia-style relationships between spoken words and a corresponding set of symbols that imbue our daily experiences with meaning. When this phenomenon emerged no one knows for sure although the deepest historical evidence to-date, that of the Blombos Cave in South Africa, suggests that it may have existed as early as 75,000 years ago.

University of Wisconsin cognitive scientist Antoine Lutz later presented his summarization of Rene Descartes' Dualistic theory as part of his much-awaited talk. And his delivery of the historicity of cognitive philosophy was received with rapturous applause by an expecting audience. Descartes considered the pineal gland in the brain to be the center of integration of both the body and the non-material mind. Modern science has of course dismissed Descartes' vision of this much-trumpeted 'seat of the soul' by showing the brain to be a highly distributed system of separate functions and reciprocal connectivities. In fact the 'global work space' of the human brain is made of 10exp9 neurons with 10,000 connections. Current neuro-imaging techniques provide a very approximate sketch of this work space which is thought to perform thousands of neurological processes every second. With all of its neuroplasticity, the brain is evidentially built to change in response to experiences. Hot off the press in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences this week is a paper outlining how the brain acts "like a carpenter digging through a toolbox to pick a group of tools to accomplish the various basic components that comprise a complex task" (1,2) (Although I would add at a rate several orders of magnitude faster than any carpenter could ever hope to reach).

Throughout this year's forum there was a noticeable disquiet over how best to define consciousness in terminology that could be assimilated into a scientific framework. Historically Immanuel Kant was the first to argue rationally that the human mind puts forward 'categories of understanding' that define how we view the cosmos. Over a century later the German philosopher Karl Jaspers wrote of the Axial age- a 400 year period of grand synchronicity when philosophers and sages across the globe pondered over the existence of transcendent meaning and spirituality in our world. Forum speaker Sean Kelly chose to talk about consciousness as the permeable boundary that separate us from our surroundings while British author Peter Russell focused on the inherent self-awareness that characterizes consciousness in humans and, to a much lesser extent, monkeys and dolphins. During the panel discussions some merely posited that consciousness inevitably emerges as an evolutionary phenomenon. Of course this latter end-point does nothing to satisfy the explanation-ravenous appetites of the truly scientifically-minded. We may rightly ask why evolution would produce conscious beings that are able to engage in religious experiences?

Functional MRI and contemporary biochemistry are telling us a lot about brain function and providing foundations for understanding at least the molecular facets of consciousness. Purdue University Distinguished Chair of Medicinal Chemistry Robert Nichols took the forum rostrum in earnest and supplied us with a compendious examination of how the brain thalamus processes our senses and gates information that is then sent to columns of pyramidal cells in the frontal cortex. A region of the brain known as the Locus Coeruleus acts as a 'novelty detector' that focuses our attention at any given moment to the events happening around us. We can now map out regions of the brain involved in sensory gating by using a class of compounds called entheogens such as psilocybin that act on serotonin 5HT2A receptors in the frontal cortex. Entheogens also shut down that Raphe region of the brain stem which during our 'awake' hours is rapidly firing electrical impulses and selectively releasing serotonin. Entheogens, noted Nichols, break the mental framework and therefore help the brain to temporarily live 'outside the box'. Some Silicon Valley scientists are rumored to have used similar compounds to achieve new heights of innovative thought.

How have entheogens further aided consciousness research? Johns Hopkins behavioral biologist and Bioethics Forum speaker Roland Griffiths has used psilocybin in his own attempts to mimic mystical experiences. In 1962 Harvard psychiatrist Walter Pahnke performed his famous 'Good Friday' experiment from which he concluded that psilocybin occasioned mystical mimetic experiences. Griffiths revisited Pahnke's work in an investigation involving 37 test subjects who were in one sense or another involved in religious practices. Interestingly all individuals reported experiencing feelings of awe, peace, and ineffable joy. 70% of these test subjects reported that the ingestion of Psilocybin had given them one of the top five most memorable and positive moments of their lives. Psilocybin treatment leads to a preferential processing of positive emotional expression (eg: happy faces) and therefore presents a therapeutic avenue for treating clinical depression.

In 1964, Eric Kant became the first to use entheogens to treat depression in advanced-cancer patients. Later Pahnke showed that these same compounds could be used to improve the psychological outlook for the terminally ill. More recently Franz Vollenweider, the serving Director of the Heffter Research Centre for Consciousness Studies in Switzerland, documented some of the altered states of consciousness (ASCs) that subjects have described as part of his own pioneering experiments. Descriptives such as oceanic self boundlessness, oneness and unity with the universe form part of the eleven ASC dimensions that are commonly found in the associated peer-reviewed literature. Vollenweider's presentation at the forum was perhaps the most data-rich of all showing, amongst other things, how the intensity of ASCs is significantly affected by underlying personality traits.

At a fundamental level consciousness is a phenomenon that is deeply mysterious and to-date has escaped even the most concerted attempts at a simple explanation. According to Peter Russell we are in the throes of a revolution in thought not unlike that which caused the rejection of Ptolomeic epicycles during the Copernican era. The meta-paradigm that exists in science today views the world as one that is fully explainable through recourse to space, time and matter. And yet, notes Russell, this meta-paradigm of materialism through which we are epicycling in no way predicts the advent of conscious beings such as ourselves. Truth be told Russell's own brand of pan-psychism, a doctrine that holds that even the atom is in some lesser degree conscious of itself, is little more than a fanciful cerebration with a materialistic flavor. Thankfully there have been formidable intellectual resistances against it.

Further Reading
1. Sign Language Study Shows Multiple Brain Regions Wired For Language, Science Daily, April 30th, 2010

2. A.J.Newman, t. Supalla, P. Hauser, E.L. Newport, D. Bravelier (2010) Dissociating Neural Subsystems For Grammar By Contrasting Word Order And Inflection, Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, Vol 107, p. 7539

Full details of seminars and presenters who attended the 9th Annual International Bioethics Forum:
Taking the Measure of the Magic Mirror, held on April 22-23, 2010 can be found at: http://www.btci.org/

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Many here will remember Antony Flew as the prominent atheist philosopher who was convinced by design in the universe and life that "There IS a God," the title of his subsequent controversial book.

Here is the New York Times's obituary on the death of Antony Flew, from which we learn:

Although rumors had been circulating for several years that Mr. Flew had begun to question his atheism, “There Is a God” came as a shock. For Christian apologists, it was a welcome counterblast to recent antireligious best sellers like “God Is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens, “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins and “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris.

Some reviewers found Mr. Flew’s reasoning less than impressive. “Far from strengthening the case for the existence of God,” Anthony Gottlieb wrote in The New York Times Book Review, the book “rather weakens the case for the existence of Antony Flew.”

A long article in The New York Times Magazine by Mark Oppenheimer suggested that Mr. Flew, his mental faculties in decline, had been manipulated by his co-author and other Christian proselytizers. Mr. Flew, in a statement issued through his publisher, reaffirmed the views expressed in the book, which did not include belief in an afterlife.

“I want to be dead when I’m dead and that’s an end to it,” he told The Sunday Times of London. “I don’t want an unending life. I don’t want anything without end.”

Now, my favourite line is Anthony Gottlieb wrote in The New York Times Book Review, the book “rather weakens the case for the existence of Antony Flew.”

Did someone really say that? I can understand not believing in the existence of God, but if I am not going to believe in the existence of Antony Flew, whose work I studied forty years ago, I might as well not believe in the existence of the dry cleaning establishment about 30 metres from my home. Admittedly, I would need to come up with an alternative explanation for how people run in with cash and come out with plastic wrapped garments, but ... not being a materialist atheist, I am just not as creative as some people.

No wonder legacy mainstream media is tanking in ratings.

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

Speaking as an editor, I would say that, in general, it is best to be either an upper or a downer, and stick to it. When editing English, being a downer pays off much better, for practical reasons. It is simpler to ask why a phrase should be capped than why it shouldn't be.

"Intelligent Design" doesn't work for me because ID is not an institution. It is an idea and/or a community of thinkers who are not organized into an institution, and probably could not be so organized.

To see what I mean, consider Free Trade Agreement, vs. free market ideology. The former is an international agreement signed by at least four sovereign countries (United States, Canada, Mexico, and Chile) So that's why I use the caps. The latter is an idea, one that likely resulted in the Agreement, but it is not in itself an individual agreement or institution.

Other examples, of the sort of which I have ruled from my editor's chair:

"northern Canada" - a geographical region, generally north of 60. No assumptions are made about its culture or institutionalization, so "northern" is not capped. "Canada" is a recognized sovereign country, therefore an institution, so its name is, of course, capped.

On the other hand, a place can be cultural and historical, as well as geographical, so we get concepts like "the North" or "men of the North". Or, in the United States, it might be "the South".

"men of the north" just would not convey the same idea because the cultural concept has dropped out with the cap.

Similarly, the Deaf Community (I mean the American Sign Language centre down the road, and that is its actual name) vs. "the deaf community" (people who struggle with serious hearing loss).

Of each cap, I ask, why? And I recommend this approach to editors.

Now, with respect to intelligent design, it is a linked series of propositions about the nature of our universe, propositions like "irreducible complexity", "specialized complexity, and "priviledged planet." I have never noted evidence that ID has been institutionalized beyond the level of a community interested in such propositions, pro or con.

Of course, there is a claque of lobby groups and legacy media anxious to cap the phrase to create the impression that something is happening that basically isn't happening. But if you want to believe them, why not just read the tabloids instead?

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

Hey, lucky taxpayer, you will soon get a chance to fund "evolutionary psychology" in English literature departments too:

At a time when university literature departments are confronting painful budget cuts, a moribund job market and pointed scrutiny about the purpose and value of an education in the humanities, the cross-pollination of English and psychology is providing a revitalizing lift.

Jonathan Gottschall, who has written extensively about using evolutionary theory to explain fiction, said "it's a new moment of hope" in an era when everyone is talking about "the death of the humanities." To Mr. Gottschall a scientific approach can rescue literature departments from the malaise that has embraced them over the last decade and a half. Zealous enthusiasm for the politically charged and frequently arcane theories that energized departments in the 1970s, '80s and early ’90s — Marxism, structuralism, psychoanalysis — has faded. Since then a new generation of scholars have been casting about for The Next Big Thing. (Patricia Cohen, "The Next Big Thing: Knowing They Know That You Know", New York Times, March 31, 2010)

You guessed it, the "Next Big Thing" is the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology, which promises to explain "the root of people's fascination with fiction and fantasy."

How about: We like to be entertained and instructed after a hard day's work, and there is nothing better at the fireside than a hot beverage and someone else's story, provided it is well told and interesting. It will be a pity if English literature is derailed by yet another invasion of publicly funded quacks.

Now, here, I must disillusion some readers: Most good storytelling depends on technique. Homer knew this three thousand years ago, and doubtless many knew it before him, before stories came to be committed to writing.

If one must be a storyteller, the alternative to good technique is morphing into target practice for public insults, if not rotten tomatoes. The proper knowledge base of the literature department is the analysis of the techniques actually used in written and oral literature. As to how they ultimately originated, well, let's just say that anyone can make up stuff and insist that it is "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).

Done my taxes. Back to work!!

The longer I live, the more stupid stuff I hear in legacy mainstream media whose only possible value is to front Darwinism. Here’s a good one:

Chimpanzees eat their dead?

"Researchers may have witnessed it, but been unwilling to report it for fear of drawing undue attention to cannibalism among our close relatives, he says. "

If there is any remaining doubt that tax-funded Darwinists are nuts, let it be laid to rest.

When was the last time you were at a funeral where the reception lunch was in fact the deceased?

Oh, wait, this just in: "Chimpanzees and humans share about 99% of their DNA, and are so closely related that some academics have suggested they should be given rights similar to human rights.

PS: and, did you know, “Chimps feel death just like humans? (BBC)

Dr Anderson suggests the treatment of death marks another similarity. "

What utter rubbish, honestly. Chimpanzees do NOT know that they will all die.

For animals like them, that is a mercy. For humans, it is the beginning of philosophy.

That animals may mourn their dead is no surprise.

Read more!

Review Of Probability's Nature And Nature's Probability - Lite, by Donald Johnson
ISBN: 978-0-9823554-4-2

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

Zoologist Richard Dawkins has historically used the concept of 'junk DNA'- those apparently useless portions of genomes- to lead the charge against the creationists' position of purpose in nature. His view on the matter is quite simple: "creationists might spend some earnest time speculating on why the Creator should bother to litter genomes with untranslated pseudogenes and junk tandem repeat DNA". In light of what we now know about DNA, Dawkins' should spend some earnest time reviewing whether his littered genomes are so littered after all. In fact the term 'junk DNA' is now seen by many an expert as somewhat of a misnomer since much of what was originally categorized as such has turned out to be pivotal for DNA stability and the regulation of gene expression. In his book Nature's Probability And Probability's Nature author Donald Johnson has done us all a service by bringing these points to the fore. He further notes that since junk DNA would put an unnecessary energetic burden on cells during the process of replication, it stands to reason that it would more likely be eliminated through selective pressures. That is, if the Darwinian account of life is to be believed. "It would make sense" Johnson writes "that those useless nucleotides would be removed from the genome long before they had a chance to form something with a selective advantage....there would be no advantage in directing energy to useless structures".

Johnson's seemingly unstoppable siege on Darwinian orthodoxy is both well researched and freshly captivating. At the risk of unjustly losing credibility, several distinguished scientists have carried the baton of dissent against the received wisdom of modern day Darwinists. Those who have stayed abreast of the Intelligent Design (ID) claims need no reminding of the powerful arguments presented in their own counter-offensive, particularly regarding the fossil record. Johnson's recapitulation of the Cambrian explosion and the trilobite high acuity visual system at the base of the Cambrian leave the reader wondering why the inclusion of ID has in recent years been so fiercely opposed by those in the biological sciences who carry reputational clout.

It turns out that much of the 'science' buttressing the anti-ID rhetoric is supportive of the very position it claims to counter- that of intelligent design. Computer simulations and genetic algorithms that purport to simulate the process of evolution do nothing of the sort, slipping in acts of intelligent agency at every turn. Summarizing the status quo, Johnson notes for example how AVIDA uses "an unrealistically small genome, an unrealistically high mutation rate, unrealistic protection of replication instructions, unrealistic energy rewards and no capability for graceful function degradation. It allows for arbitrary experimenter-specified selective advantages". Not faring any better, the ME THINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL algorithm is programmed to direct a sequence of letters towards a pre-specified target.

One never tires of reading about the irreducible complexity of the multi-component bacterial flagellum. And Johnson does not disappoint in his engaging overview of this showpiece of ID theory. The icing on the irreducible complexity "cake" appears in his further consideration of sexual reproduction and the integrated aspect of DNA and protein synthesis. The plethora of symbiotic relationships we find throughout nature also form part of Johnson's inventory of examples as he moves the reader decisively to the conclusion that natural processes cannot generate novel genetic information.

What is the price we pay for refusing to bring ID into the science arena? Johnson's summarization of philosopher of science Del Ratzch's answer to this question is a call to rally: "any imposed policy of naturalism in science has the potential not only of eroding any self-correcting capability of science but of preventing science from reaching certain truths". Johnson condemns those who refuse to evaluate the merits of scientific evidence on the basis of philosophical or theological commitments. Indeed the compatibility of ID with differing theological views does not negate the scientific validity of its arguments. "Obviously, ID proponents have the freedom of religion allowed by the country of residence" notes Johnson "but those beliefs should not detract from the scientific evidence".

As Johnson details, the duplicity in standards of the anti-ID lobby was made plain in the charges brought against molecular biologist Richard Sternberg who was removed from office as editor of the Proceedings Of The Biological Society Of Washington after publishing an ID-friendly paper authored by philosopher Stephen Meyer even though Sternberg had faithfully followed the journal's regulations for publication. Cases such as this show that while ID theorists are heavily criticized for not having peer-reviewed publications to support their position they and their entourage are vehemently censured whenever they do attempt to meet their critics' demands. Johnson draws from an extensive list of quotes from reputable scientists and philosophers who have made known their dis-satisfaction with the blind beliefs of Darwinian ideology. The 'knowledge stopper' that is naturalistic evolution has today handcuffed these same scientists to the pillars of 'majority rule' even though invigorating alternatives such as those that invoke intelligent design meet the strictest demands for scientific rigor.

In the last chapter of his book Johnson reviews not only the probabilistic evidence in support of ID but also the uniformitarian nature of ID's conclusions. Occam's razor, neatly summarized by the mantra "The simplest solution is the best" provides us with a fruitful avenue for deciding which theories on the origins and existence of life should be open for discussion. Since many would argue that ID wins the Occam challenge, we can safely conclude that its rejection stems not from its lack of scientific merit but from underlying philosophical prejudices. As with all scientific theories, that of ID remains falsifiable. Johnson concedes that there is no privileged status that somehow locks ID away from disputation. Indeed if natural processes can be shown to produce the fine-tuning of the universe, the origin of life from non-life, the rich diversity of living forms that appeared in the Cambrian and the increasing information-based complexity of life throughout our earth's history, then the 'necessity of design' will have been given its marching orders. But until then ID theory can only serve to enrich the scientific landscape.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Roy Varghese has just notified me of the death of Professor emeritus Antony Flew, the rationalist philosopher who died on April 8 aged 87, and spent much of his life denying the existence of God until, in 2004, he dramatically changed his mind.

Here is Britain's Telegraph's obituary.

I feel lonely now. I remember sitting in the window seat at the U rez in about 1968, studying Flew. He really made people think.

Varghese is kind enough to thank me for contributions I have made to the discussion - essentially defending Flew.

For the record, here are some of them:

Flew calls Dawkins a bigot - and I would say he has a pretty good case. On that point, also here.

New atheists vs the ex-atheist

Response to hit review of Flew’s "There IS a God" in The New York Times.

Antony Flew: Is emotion really better than reason in religious matters?

Antony Flew: The authorship controversy

Antony Flew: Author or puppet?

Antony Flew: Is he too old to believe in God?

Why lifelong atheist Antony Flew decided there must be a God

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<