The ID Update

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Here. For some reason, that's left out of most accounts of who influenced the guy.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "Critics take aim at NASA 'arsenic life' study" (May 27, 2011), CBC News tells us

Eight articles questioning a controversial study claiming that some bacteria can use the normally toxic substance arsenic to build DNA have been published in the journal Science.

The study, published last December in Science, was led by NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon and claimed that bacteria from a lake in California were able to substitute arsenic for phosphorus, normally an essential ingredient in DNA, fats and proteins.

At issue was a new strain of a new strain of Halomonadaceae bacteria from Mono Lake, Calif., that seemed to use arsenic instead of phosphorus, which is essential for DNA, fats, and proteins. This fact, if it is a fact, was immediately drafted as an origin of life theory. Then, in an unusual move, scientists began to ask questions as if an OOL theory deserved to be taken seriously, at which point ...

Real possible significance of story: Is this the first time one of NASA's flight-by-seat-of-pants origin of life theories took a big hit from within the establishment, and not just from incredulous peasants? Perhaps so, to judge from NASA's reaction:

At that time, NASA said Wolfe-Simon would not be responding to those criticisms, as the U.S. space agency did not feel it was appropriate to debate the science using media and blogs. Instead, it said, the debate should occur in scientific publications.

Well, they got their wish. But would that have happened if it were not for the media and blogs?

File under: NASA discovers the Internet.

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

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

From AAAS's ScienceInsider we learn: "Bill Allowing Teachers to Challenge Evolution Passes Tennessee House" (Sara Reardon, 7 April 2011):

f the bill passes, Tennessee would join Louisiana as the second state to have specific "protection" for the teaching of evolution in the classroom. The effects of the Louisiana law, which passed in 2008, are still unclear.

The bill allows teachers to

"help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught," namely, "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."

Mediocrats appalled: "Asserting that there are significant scientific controversies about the overall nature of these concepts when there are none will only confuse students, not enlighten them."

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

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Here are the edited conference proceedings (.pdf) of a roundtable discussion among leading astrobiologists, to relate atrobiology goals to planning in planetary sciences:

"The Next Phase in Our Search for Life: An Expert Discussion":

Moderator: Christopher P. McKay
Participants: Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Penelope Jane Boston, Inge L. ten Kate, Alfonso F. Davila, and Everett Shock

Some interesting stuff here:

PJB: I served for about three years on the National Research Council (NRC) Complex Panel and just about everybriefng we received from anyone within the planetary programs always included the life question, because it is something that's on everyone’s mind, whether they do this kind of science or not.

This question is one that I have struggled with a lot. To scope out the physical and chemical environment is really inextricably bound to the search for life, and it is true that we have focused a great deal on that because, truthfully, it is a lot easier to measure a physical parameter on Mars than it is to, "search for life," because that latter question is so open-ended. We have a very poor constraint set on what we actually mean by the term "life," and searching for biochemistry and macromolecules that look just like those on Earth is not an efficient approach. It is much more challenging to imagine how we would actually design a real life detection mission.

So people are tempted to shy away from coming to grips with that very difficult epistemological question, which is:

How do we know we have succeeded if we are anticipating looking for life that might be either reasonably different from us or radically different from us?

This was a dilemma that was not successfully overcome with the Viking missions, as we all know. So we had a certain paradigm that informed those missions about what life would do and how it would behave, and the experiments were all designed to that set of precepts. It was the best that could be done then. I am not sure we could do that much better now because we need a design that is openended enough to allow us to really explore, and that openendedness is really anathema in terms of the way space missions are constructed and controlled. We have a real philosophical and methodological dilemma here about how to push in the direction of greater emphasis on actual life detection missions. (P. 4) (ASTROBIOLOGYVolume 11, Number 1, 2011)

Yes, it does help to know what we are looking for.

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

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent
In response to someone who wondered whether American scientists might be letting their imaginations run away with them about this spectacular new alien life find, Rob Sheldonoffers "absolutely not". Au contraire, the French were onto it and NASA dropped the ball. On why that happened, he says, NASA's attitude is an example of

... "pathological science" and was extensively discussed by Irving Langmuir in 1953 and subsequent publications

I can assure you, nothing in Hoover's [the discovering scientist’s] work comes within a mile or so of being pathological. Hoover has several gigabytes of pictures taken in every single CI meteorite he can get his hands on. The pictures have made him a sensation in the French Academy, the Belgian Academy and the Russian Academy. Experts in microbiology have examined the pictures and not only verified their biological identity, but asked how he obtained such clarity that exceeds what they can accomplish in the laboratory. (Freeze dry for a thousand years...) The only people that continue to shun him are the US and NASA. Ultimately it is ideology that prevent people from taking the pictures seriously, a prior commitment to "life only exists on Earth". Some of those people are conservative Christians, some are dedicated Darwinists. I really don't think it is a well-reasoned position, but still, there' a lot of ideological opposition.

By the way, Fox News is offering updates, comments from relevant scientists, though as of ten minutes ago, I couldn’t yet find them. Keep checking back.

I suppose some Evolution Sunday clergy will now be preaching sermons about how to adjust to the fact that we now “know” how life got started purely by chance (abiogenesis). Our ID community’s rebbe, Moshe Averick, told me,

I don't think it has any implications at all for abiogenesis. No one really has much of a clue how abiogenesis could have occured on earth, the best that could be said is that not only is life on earth inexplicable, but life elsewhere in the universe is also inexplicable.

Our George Hunter will doubtless comment shortly on his regular blog, but I overheard him say,

It is particularly interesting that this finding rubs just about everyone the wrong way. For evolutionists, this stretches their OOL [origin of life] fairy tales even beyond their own liberal limits. You need the warm little pond, or deep sea vents, lightning, etc. OOL taking place on a meteorite is simply too far out. As Shostak discussed in the story, it forces them actually to take seriously Crick's notion that OOL is so unlikely it must have come from the cosmos. But how did it get onto these meteorites?

Ah, but George may not be counting on the sheer density of TV talk show hosts, to convey the very message that the Darwinists dare not try to convey themselves. There is a pathology in modern media similar to what Sheldon observes for science.

As for Seth Shostak, whom Hunter mentions, he said,

Maybe life was seeded on earth - it developed on comets for example, and just landed here when these things were hitting the very early Earth,” Shostak speculated. "It would suggest, well, life didn’t really begin on the Earth, it began as the solar system was forming."

Seth, Seth, do you have any idea what you are saying? Yes, we know that this will make your career, but it is not only science; it is - much more important these days - "science" - the preserve of tenured mediocrities, miked up bubbleheads, and Darwin’s broomstick. Have a care how you go, man!

Some wrote me wondering why the study wasn't published in Science or Nature, and I think Sheldon explains that above.

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

Denyse O'Leary
ARN Reporter

Here is the "Edge World Question Center", a leading materialist think tank, with 2011's Question:

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER

James Flynn has defined "shorthand abstractions" (or "SHA's") as concepts drawn from science that have become part of the language and make people smarter by providing widely applicable templates ("market", "placebo", "random sample," "naturalistic fallacy," are a few of his examples). His idea is that the abstraction is available as a single cognitive chunk which can be used as an element in thinking and debate.

The Edge Question 2011

WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?

The term 'scientific"is to be understood in a broad sense as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it be the human spirit, the role of great people in history, or the structure of DNA. A "scientific concept" may come from philosophy, logic, economics, jurisprudence, or other analytic enterprises, as long as it is a rigorous conceptual tool that may be summed up succinctly (or "in a phrase") but has broad application to understanding the world.

[Thanks to Steven Pinker for suggesting this year's Edge Question and to Daniel Kahneman for advice on its presentation.]

164 contributors, many whose names you will recognize, participated.

Any thoughts of your own? Go here to comment.

(Note: Interesting, how many key words from medicine easily come to mind, yet medicine has slowly been moving away from a materialist paradigm, as Mario Beauregard and I noted in The Spiritual Brain. )

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The Pope has gone on record as saying “God was behind Big Bang, universe no accident” (Philip Pullella, 2011 01 06):

God's mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident, Pope Benedict said on Thursday.

Most of the Yahoo article is the usual pop media sludge (= Pope grudgingly accepts reality while retaining a tiny corner for dumb people to pray in).

However, to their credit, the Yahooligans couldn’t quite bring themselves to say “the Pope supports evolution”. Instead:

While the pope has spoken before about evolution, he has rarely delved back in time to discuss specific concepts such as the Big Bang, which scientists believe led to the formation of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.

Yes, and the Pope has made quite clear where he stands on the only theory of evolution currently on offer, in the public media, Darwinism: He had prayer cards put out in many languages all over Rome a few years ago, saying “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution.” Some people have a really hard time accepting the significance of that.

Benedict XVI is not heedless of the politically motivated falsehoods circulated about Catholic teachings, always with the intention of confusing Christians who are trying to be faithful. Recently, some American Catholic-label politicians who tried to claim that the Catholic Church has never been certain in its stand against abortion were rebuked by the Vatican.

In fact, most popular culture isn’t sure whether to acknowledge God or the multiverse, and is simply waiting to see who wins the public relations war: Him or Them.

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

From MSNBC we learn that a new study suggests that the universe has 300 sextillion red dwarfs:

A study suggests the universe could have triple the number of stars scientists previously calculated. For those of you counting at home, the new estimate is 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That's 300 sextillion.

The study questions a key assumption that astronomers often use: that most galaxies have the same properties as our Milky Way. And that's creating a bit of a stink among astronomers who want a more orderly cosmos.

[ ... ]

A second study led by a Harvard University scientist focuses on a distant "super-Earth" planet and sees clues to the content of its atmosphere — the first of this kind of data for this size planet. It orbits a red dwarf.

Red dwarf stars — about a fifth the size of our sun — burn slowly and last much longer than the bigger, brighter stars, such as the sun in the center of our solar system, said Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum.

- Seth Borenstein, "Starry starry starry night: Star count may triple" (12/1/2010, updated)

is thought of as "alarmist", if not stinky, and as challenging the idea of a "more orderly universe".

The issue here is that a traditional dictum of cosmology (not a law, just an assumption) is that the universe looks about the same anywhere we look.

Read more!

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

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).