Lots of people have been sending me this paper by Erik Andrulis, and most of you have done so with eyebrows raised, pointing out that it’s bizarre and unbelievable; some of you wrote asking whether it was believable, at which point my eyebrows went up. Come on people: when you see one grand cosmic explanation that is summarized with cartoons, which the author claims explains everything from the behavior of subatomic particles to the formation of the moon, shouldn’t you immediately sense crankery?
It’s also getting cited all over the place, from World of Warcraft fan sites to the Discovery Institute (those two have roughly equal credibility in matters of science), so I had to skim through it. I read it with rising concern: Erik Andrulis is a young assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University, and he’s published entirely sensible papers on RNA processing. This paper is so weird and out there that it is either an attempt to Sokal the field of origins of life research, or the man is seriously mentally ill. Either way, this is not going to help his career in the slightest.
The paper is titled Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life, and just the sweeping grandiosity of that title should set off alarm bells. Here is the abstract:
Life is an inordinately complex unsolved puzzle. Despite significant theoretical progress, experimental anomalies, paradoxes, and enigmas have revealed paradigmatic limitations. Thus, the advancement of scientific understanding requires new models that resolve fundamental problems. Here, I present a theoretical framework that economically fits evidence accumulated from examinations of life. This theory is based upon a straightforward and non-mathematical core model and proposes unique yet empirically consistent explanations for major phenomena including, but not limited to, quantum gravity, phase transitions of water, why living systems are predominantly CHNOPS (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur), homochirality of sugars and amino acids, homeoviscous adaptation, triplet code, and DNA mutations. The theoretical framework unifies the macrocosmic and microcosmic realms, validates predicted laws of nature, and solves the puzzle of the origin and evolution of cellular life in the universe.
Having skimmed through all 105 pages of this thing, I can tell you with confidence that it answers none of those questions. Just the fact that it is entirely non-mathematical and non-empirical (there aren’t any observations or experiments described at all), and that the entirety of the theory is built around diagrams sketched out by the author, should also tell you that this is not a useful or predictive theory.
It does not have an auspicious beginning. In addition to being constructed around cartoons and being a non-mathematical Theory of Everything, it has to introduce an elaborate collection of neologisms that make the whole paper painful to read.
In the theory proposed herein, I use the heterodox yet simple gyre—a spiral, vortex, whorl, or similar circular pattern—as a core model for understanding life. Because many elements of the gyre model (gyromodel) are alien, I introduce neologisms and important terms in bold italics to identify them; a theoretical lexicon is presented in Table 1. The central idea of this theory is that all physical reality, stretching from the so-called inanimate into the animate realm and from micro- to meso- to macrocosmic scales, can be interpreted and modeled as manifestations of a single geometric entity, the gyre. This entity is attractive because it has life-like characteristics, undergoes morphogenesis, and is responsive to environmental conditions. The gyromodel depicts the spatiotemporal behavior and properties of elementary particles, celestial bodies, atoms, chemicals, molecules, and systems as quantized packets of information, energy, and/or matter that oscillate between excited and ground states around a singularity. The singularity, in turn, modulates these states by alternating attractive and repulsive forces. The singularity itself is modeled as a gyre, thus evincing a thermodynamic, fractal, and nested organization of the gyromodel. In fitting the scientific evidence from quantum gravity to cell division, this theory arrives at an understanding of life that questions traditional beliefs and definitions.
Here’s a partial copy of his lexicon. It goes on quite a bit longer than what I’ve copied here.
Table 1. Gyromodel Lexicon
Alternagyre A gyrosystem whose gyrapex is not triquantal Dextragyre A right-handed gyre or gyromodel Focagyre A gyre that is the focal point of analysis or discussion Gyradaptor The gyre singularity—a quantum—that exerts all forces on the gyrosystem Gyrapex The relativistically high potential, excited, unstable, learning state of a particle Gyraxiom A fact, condition, principle, or rule that constrains and defines the theoretical framework Gyre The spacetime shape or path of a particle or group of particles; a quantum Gyrequation Shorthand notation for analysis, discussion, and understanding gyromodels Gyrobase The relativistically low potential, ground, stable, memory state of a particle Gyrognosis The thermodynamically demanding process of learning and integrating IEM Gyrolink The mIEM particle that links two gyromodules in a gyronexus Gyromnemesis The thermodynamically conserving process of remembering and recovering IEM Gyromodel The core model undergirding the theoretical framework Gyromodule A dIEM particle in a gyronexus Gyronexus A polymer of dIEM particles linked by mIEM particles Gyrostate The potential and/or kinetic state that a particle occupies in its gyratory path Gyrosystem A gyromodel with specific IEM composition, organization, and purpose IEM Information, energy, and/or matter
I can’t help myself. You knew this was coming.
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Now I know that you are in lexical shock right now, but I’m about to make it worse. Witness the use of these terms in figure 1 of the paper, which will also reveal the kinds of diagrams he’s using.
“The levorafocagyre, in turn, is antichiral to the dextrasupragyre” is a nice sentence that about sums up the experience of reading this thing. Don’t believe me? Here are more excerpts that illustrate the grand, cosmic, and entirely uninformative nature of gyroexplanatory gyrobabble. Andrulis purports to explain everything from learning and memory (learning and memory by gyres, not the poor people trying to understand his paper):
The ultimate state of gyromnemesis is the stably adapted particle or gyronexus in the gyrobase. A particle thus adapts through learning and memory by completing one full cycle—a revolution— around the singularity. Taken together, gyrognosis defines IEM integration and assessment whereas gyromnemesis defines IEM storage and recovery. Finally, although a diquantal IEM (X”) undergoes gyrognosis as the gyrobase of a primary majorgyre, it undergoes gyromnemesis as the gyrapex of an alternagyre. Thus, gyre learning and memory are relative to the gyradaptive singularity.
To the formation of Earth’s moon:
Lunar Formation. The favored hypothesis for the formation of Earth’s Moon is from planetesimal impact on a proto-Earth proceeded by matter ejection, accretion, and gravitational capture [189,190]. However, the question of lunar origin has not been settled since there are competing, albeit antiquated hypotheses [191,192]. I also discovered the stunning admission that, “…shamefacedly, [astronomers] have little idea as to where [the Moon] came from. This is particularly embarrassing… [193].” The oxygyre models the Moon as a macroxyon that has a macroelectron within itself; this simple gyrosystem accounts for the known chemical composition of the Moon surface, oxides [194]. Regarding lunar origin, the macroxyon that is the Moon emerges from the macroelectron that is the Earth, concomitant with the emergence of Earth’s macroxyon [195,196].
Several additional points can be derived from this gyrosystem. First, the oxygyre explains water on and in the Moon [197-199]. Second, the gyrating effects of the macroxygyre model the rotation of the Moon on its axis. Third, the path of a less exergic macroxyon (Moon) around more exergic one (Earth) follows an ohiogyre path, or lunar orbit. Fourth, this oxygyre provides insight into how tidal cycling is linked to lunar orbit and axial rotation [200] since the Earth’s oceans (macroxymatrix) and Moon itself (a macroxyon) exert complementary attractorepulsive forces. Fifth, this theoretical union also helps clarify short-term chronobiological ([201]; see 3.8) and long-term geophysical [202] relationships. Sixth, the craters that cover planetary, lunar, and satellite surfaces [203-205]—most if not all of which are near-perfect circles—bear the signature of the macroelectron singularity and its strong thermodynamic force on the oxygyre [206].
You know what? That doesn’t explain anything!
While the strange terminology and nonsensical claims could be clues that this is an elaborate Poe of some sort, the story I’ve heard from some other sources is that Andrulis is not getting tenure and will be leaving Case next year, and that he seems to have a history of tuning in and out — so what this most likely is is a developing personal tragedy. I hope he gets the care he clearly needs; his other work suggests that this is an intelligent mind that is currently going off the rails.
Setting Andrulis aside, though, there are other problems here. How did this paper get published? It’s terrible: unreadable, incoherent, bizarre, and completely lacking in evidence or mathematical support. This is from the very first issue of a new journal, Life, which also contains a perfectly reasonable general summary of origins of life research by Stuart Kauffman alongside Andrulis’s ghastly dreck. There seems to be a complete lack of editorial discrimination at the journal; this is not the way to build a reputation. Or rather, it is, but not a desirable one.
And then there is Science Daily, which seems to be the source where most of my correspondents found this paper. Science Daily is an incredibly annoying source: all they do is republish, without any kind of intelligent assessment, press releases. They suck. What good is mindless regurgitation?
And finally, there’s Case Western Reserve University, which must bear a share of the blame. Where did the press release come from? Why, from the Media Relations office at CWRU. Somebody wrote the press release that begins like this:
The earth is alive, asserts a revolutionary scientific theory of life emerging from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The trans-disciplinary theory demonstrates that purportedly inanimate, non-living objects—for example, planets, water, proteins, and DNA—are animate, that is, alive. With its broad explanatory power, applicable to all areas of science and medicine, this novel paradigm aims to catalyze a veritable renaissance.
It’s madness stamped with the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine seal of approval. If Andrulis did Sokal the journal, he also Sokal’ed the institution that employs him. Who wrote that bullshit? Do they have anyone competent review their press releases before they mail them out to the whole wide world? Was there anyone thinking in all the steps from crank professor to PR department to journal editor to reviewers? There were so many points where this crackpottery should have been detected and rejected, and it didn’t happen.
(Also on Sb)
Science Daily has informed me that they have removed the press release from their site, and that it should never have made it through in the first place.
Also, apparently Case Western has removed the press release from their listings.
597 comments
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cervantes
27 January 2012 at 11:49 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Well PZ, this is either an elaborate joke or the onset of schizophrenia. If the latter, I think it’s kind of cruel and unseemly to spend so much time trashing it, not to mention pointless. Lots of crazy people write crazy stuff, not worth your time.
I would just leave it that the university’s PR department got pwned, and the journal is not a real journal. (There are lots of those Spamnals out there. I keep getting e-mails asking me to publish and be on editorial boards of bogus journals. You have to be careful, and certainly, they’ll take legitimate stuff as well as garbage, which can end up being embarrassing to the legitimate investigators.)
Antiochus Epiphanes
27 January 2012 at 11:50 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Just the kind of thing that happens when Lawrence Krauss leaves an institution.
jamessweet
27 January 2012 at 11:52 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I am sorry to say, but it reminds me a lot of a developing case of mild schizophrenia. The “everything is connected” delusion can become extremely powerful, and it can become particularly strange for those who are intelligent enough to identify real (but meaningless) patterns.
I had a friend who started claiming to see plus signs and minus signs everywhere, shortly before he had a breakdown and jumped out of his window because he thought the CIA was after him. (And then a later incident where his roommate had to call the cops because he was naked in the basement screaming about being Jesus or something) What was interesting is that he really did find hidden plus and minus signs in the oddest of places, things I wouldn’t even have noticed. It all meant nothing of course — how significant is it that two perpendicular lines shows up in a lot of things? — but the point is, if he and I were both asked to find all of the plus and minus signs in a particular image, during his episode he would have found way more than me.
I suspect something similar may be happening with Andrulis. He has this pattern fixed in his head, and, being a smart guy, is now identifying all sorts of hidden (but meaningless) instances of the pattern. Sad…
bcwebb
27 January 2012 at 11:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
His mind seems to have tranlated everything into a form of pig latin using the syllable gyre – Your first sentence translates as:
Gyrelots gyre peogyreple gyrebeen gyring gyreme pagyrer Erikgyreandrulis….
Very deep waters indeed.
PZ Myers
27 January 2012 at 11:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I think I was very clear in identifying this as either a poor joke or a sign of mental illness, and if the latter, that I hope the fellow gets help now.
However, that most definitely does not mean we should ignore tripe that gets published. It must be publicly criticized, and it must be made clear that this is bad science, because there are people, like those sad gomers at the Discovery Institute, who are reading it as representative of modern biology. That means the work should be trashed, while in this case the author should also be recommended for psychiatric help.
kellykuykendall
27 January 2012 at 12:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Does Ludwig Plutonium know of this?
richardelguru
27 January 2012 at 12:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yeats had a pretty-good theory then?
Mario
27 January 2012 at 12:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The oxygyre models the Moon as a macroxyon that has a macroelectron within itself
Mario
27 January 2012 at 12:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Blockquote fail.
richardelguru
27 January 2012 at 12:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
whoops
Loose me own mind next
submoron
27 January 2012 at 12:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
See Martin Gardner’s first book and the chapter on Lawsonomy.
KG
27 January 2012 at 12:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
John Nash is reported to have said that his (brilliant) work on game theory “came from the same place” as his (ludicrous) delusions of persecution. Sometimes, though by no means commonly, “great wits and madness are most near ally’d” as Dryden had it.
ChasCPeterson
27 January 2012 at 12:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This is sure to draw that commentor–what was his name?–who was explaining all kinds of developmental processes in terms of cell vortices.
pentatomid
27 January 2012 at 12:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
“The ultimate state of gyromnemesis is the stably adapted particle or gyronexus in the gyrobase.”
What? And here’s me thinking that the octogyromnemetic floool is completely supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in the context of inverse timey wimey wibbly wobbly jazz penguin.
Ok, jokes aside, if this guy really is having mental health issues, obviously I hope he gets the care he needs. Honestly I do.
PZ Myers
27 January 2012 at 12:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Fleury. There is a distinct similarity, but Andrulis carries it to an even greater extreme.
Fleury still sends me occasional demands in email.
ChasCPeterson
27 January 2012 at 12:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
yes, right: Fleury
Compuholic
27 January 2012 at 12:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nothing to worry about here:
It’s just an AI-bot training for the Turing test.
yoav
27 January 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
He forgot to add lamb and chicken Gyro to his list.
Tualha
27 January 2012 at 12:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The author cannot tell his ass from his elbow;
Sense falls apart; the theory cannot hold;
Mere gibberish is loosed upon the world.
Poor guy, I suppose it probably is schizophrenia. Can’t imagine how this thing got published.
consciousness razor
27 January 2012 at 12:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Heh, that’s quite an insult to WoW fans.
Gregory Greenwood
27 January 2012 at 12:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So all the complex, pseudo-technical jargon from the paper was simply another formulation of the frankly ridiculous and long discredited Gaia hypothesis?
I didn’t realise there was anyone left who took that pseudoscientific babble seriously anymore.
If, as appears to be the case, Andrulis is suffering from some sort of mental illness then I hope he gets the help he needs, but all the same I fear that the vorpal blade of this unfortunate paper may already have decapitated his career with a snicker-snack…
radpumpkin
27 January 2012 at 12:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The hell is a “macroelectron?!” I’m still trying to figure out what he could mean by that, and I’m a chemist! I’m also having considerable problems understanding what possessed this guy to publish The Theory of Everything (TM) without any mathematical backing. Urgh…time to drink.
Also, new rule: people who do not know how to set up mathematical solutions to quantum mechanical problems are hereby barred from using the term “quantum” on the internet. Under pain of cannonization.
We Are Ing
27 January 2012 at 12:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I read a journal just last year talking about why more and more biologists are signing on to it!
Glen Davidson
27 January 2012 at 12:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I saw this soon after it hit the web. I quit after I hit the “gyres,” which obviously didn’t refer to anything except a pathetic fiction.
It shouldn’t have taken more than a few seconds for the “reviewers” to recognize what a woo salad it was. Instead, I think they must have been completely baffled by the nonsense, and passed it in order to get it out of their sights.
Chopra couldn’t have done worse, I don’t think, although he could have made it sappier.
Glen Davidson
caseyboucher
27 January 2012 at 12:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’ve never heard of a journal called “Life”. I couldn’t find it on google, or in pubmed’s Journal list, or in the University of Michigan Library journal database.
Searching through the other papers in this “journal”, there are such gems as “Is life unique?” (referencing Einsteins “minimum metaphysic”) and “Nature’s capricious character”.
None of the articles contain primary research, they are all just crazy off-the wall pseudo-hypotheses drawing from pseudo-scientific concepts and logical fallacies. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a scientific journal! It’s like it was conceived out of a twisted collaboration between Kent Hovind, Deepak Chopra, and (for added schizo fun) Ken DeMyer!
This kind of thing is why the American public is so confused about science. A handful of charlatans gets the same amount of stage time as the millions of competent, hard-working, and honest scientists.
tomocar
27 January 2012 at 12:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I find it extremely unlikely that this is anything other than a Sokalism, in which case it’s doubly hilarious (first in its cleverness, and secondly in how many people bought into it) and the guy is a genius comic! You clearly nailed it PZ; the word “gyre” in jabberwocky is the dead giveaway. I love science humor!
Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart, liar and scoundrel
27 January 2012 at 12:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ha! Mr Darkheart graduated from Case and he’s always talking about how awesome it is (in terms of research). I’ll have to pass this along.
luke
27 January 2012 at 12:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
He’s been kicking around these ideas and defending them for quite a while on the following forum:
http://www.toequest.com/forum/your-toe-theory/5417-unity.html
DrewN
27 January 2012 at 12:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Gyre; a quantum.
I don’t see what’s so difficult to understand about that. Gyre’s are clearly for selling weightloss gimmics and books about how to increase your luck on daytime tv. There’s also the common emperors-new-suit aproach to, um, science-esque words. If you don’t understand wtf he’s talking about, you’re clearly not as brilliant as the author.
PZ Myers
27 January 2012 at 12:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
#28: AAARGH! The kooks are talking to one another!
We Are Ing
27 January 2012 at 12:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This made me laugh, this means it was a joke right?
luke
27 January 2012 at 12:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I think it’s pretty clear that this is no Poe, anyway. I should also make it clear that I found that message board just now using google, I’m not a reader/contributer there!
shouldbeworking
27 January 2012 at 12:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Is his tenure based on quantity of publications or the quantity of syllables?
Randomfactor
27 January 2012 at 1:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Boy, are you guys going to look silly when this leads to antigravity and flying cars.
juice
27 January 2012 at 1:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I like how in the cover letter he calls his theory unfalsifiable.
We Are Ing
27 January 2012 at 1:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Juice
I thought that made it clear that it was a joke?
Hercules Grytpype-Thynne
27 January 2012 at 1:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Any word yet on the characteristics of the minnesotagyre?
The Lorax
27 January 2012 at 1:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Someone get this guy a job writing Treknobabble! This is pure genius!
romanpolach
27 January 2012 at 1:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This is my favourite part of the study:
“Death is a consequence of gravitational collapse of the cellulogyre into its singularity (genon) due to unobstructed attractive force exerted by, on, and within all subsumed gyrosystems.”
:-))
Dave, the Kwisatz Haderach
27 January 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hmm, I’ve heard this somewhere before. The idea of the gyre, or spiral, as a fundamental property of life… Now where was it?
Oh that’s right. It was an anime series called Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Clearly, he is plagiarizing his ideas from Japanese shows.
Now don’t spoil the ending of the paper for me. Cause if its anything like the cartoon, then the climax is a fight between mecha that are big enough to use galaxies as throwing stars.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
27 January 2012 at 1:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart:
It is awesome.
They have a Center for Origins, and they started giving talks at The Happy Dog, a nice pub that serves hot dogs with a choice of 50 toppings. (Kim chi being one option. Peanut butter is another. It’s great. Just don’t combine those two.)
Talks about the origins of the universe, life, and everything. In a pub. With gourmet hot dogs. What could be fuckin’ better?
We Are Ing
27 January 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Wait…so does this mean Edison’s Necrophone can work?
chigau (同じ)
27 January 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
He’s no John Nash.
neuroturtle
27 January 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Schizophrenic and/or manic wanderings taken seriously by the religious? That’s nothing new. Maybe a new religion will be born of it all.
doktorzoom
27 January 2012 at 1:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Dude went Full Timecube. You never go Full Timecube.
doktorzoom
27 January 2012 at 1:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I wonder if he’s considered recruiting an official Light Jazz band for his theory?
infraredeyes
27 January 2012 at 1:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Speaking of jabberwocky, the Guardian has a review by Mary Midgley of a book by Rupert Sheldrake, he of the “morphic resonance”. Actually, it’s more of a puff piece; Midgley is obviously very impressed by the book, which is cutely entitled “The Science Delusion”.
I wonder how many books have come out under “The [fill in the blank] Delusion” titles in the last few years? Richard Dawkins must be running out of space for all the goats he’s been getting.
peterh
27 January 2012 at 1:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Lewis Carroll would have so loved this! Depak Chopra, eat your heart out!
seleucid23
27 January 2012 at 1:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The WoW forum actually does a good job of taking this apart. Most of the people there called it as bull.
Meanwhile the Discovery Institute use it as a stick to beat peer review.
Antiochus Epiphanes
27 January 2012 at 1:37 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Cleveland rocks.
mudpuddles
27 January 2012 at 1:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Wow, what piques me most about this is the Science Daily thing. I mean, the fact that I didn’t realise how crap Science Daily was – I’ve used it occasionally as a resource to see what people in various sciences are researching, but I didn’t relise that all they do is reprint other people’s press releases with no scientific consideration or assessment whatsoever. I’ve just flipped through about 30 articles on there from the past few days, and every single one is simply a press release regurgitated word for word. At least 10 of those should never have been published on a “science” website – misleading article titles, bold claims of major discoveries before any peer-review and without the “discoverers” providing any support materials to back them up (other than press releases)…
I’m disgusted with myself! That’s one site I will not be trusting again. Science Daily, you fail!
Taz
27 January 2012 at 1:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sounds like he read “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” by Lewis Padgett and incorporated it into his delusions.
(A really good science fiction story, by the way.)
unbound
27 January 2012 at 1:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Read a decent portion of it. I’m reminded of the Dark Sucker Theory more than anything else. Hopefully someone can confirm that this is just a joke…
cybercmdr
27 January 2012 at 1:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Saw this last night at physorg.com. Yes, I know it’s not the best source but they make it easy to keep up on a lot of subjects. I’m kind of interested in everything in science, so that helps.
My first impression was that this would be glommed upon by the ID community, either because they can twist it to support their claims or cite it as to how science gets things wrong. A lot of people fell down on the job for this to get published. Just goes to show that the process is not infallible, and sometimes it is rigged (as in faux journals used by the IDiots).
Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart, liar and scoundrel
27 January 2012 at 1:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nigel,
Oh, I wasn’t saying that Case isn’t awesome, ‘cos it most definitely is. And Mr Darkheart got an amazing education there.
I spent a little bit of time in Cleveland when we were dating and fell in love with the natural history museum. Donald Johanson worked for Case at the time that he disovered Lucy and the museum has a cool replica of her skeleton. Lucy! How fucking cool is that?
I just think Mr Darkheart will get a kick out of this, erm, paper.
Kaylakaze
27 January 2012 at 1:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
As i said on SB:
Anyone who has read Junji Ito’s Uzumaki knows what’s wrong with this guy.
Rasmus
27 January 2012 at 1:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
There’s a blog with, among other things, claims of being God…
Hope he gets the help he needs.
stonyground
27 January 2012 at 1:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
That little nonsense poem reminded me of Stanley Unwin. I would imagine that he will be completely unknown outside the UK, he appeared as one of the evil baron’s courtiers in the film version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. His speciality was talking a kind of gibberish that still managed to communicate meaning. He once did a series of Ads for tyres, Uniroyal I think. The tyres provided Maximost milodes, were outstandifold in the wetty grippers and thriftymost on your banky balancer. It has just occured to me that there are probably hundreds of old black and white clips of him on you tube.
lauradiederich
27 January 2012 at 2:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thanks for writing this post, PZ. My soil science proff mentioned this paper on the first day of class, and I was rather skeptical, but he couldn’t remember the name of the paper, and he misremembered the author. I shot him an email including this, hopefully he’ll respond favorably.
I don’t think this post was mean spirited or a waste of time. It’s the job of the scientific community to call bullshit. It’s how we stay healthy, it’s how we stay confident in our perceptions, it’s how we grow. Andrulis may have been going through some stuff, that doesn’t make him a bad person or even necessarily a bad scientist. But bad papers are bad papers. Andrulis is excused, his paper is not. Any time bad science goes unchecked, it’s like ignoring an infection. If you don’t take care of it quickly, you get sepsis and die.
stonyground
27 January 2012 at 2:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Well I was right about You Tube but wrong about the tyres it was Pirelli.
savaga
27 January 2012 at 2:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I am thoroughly ashamed that such crap has come from my Alma Mater.
To Erik Andrulis,
Stop making an otherwise good research university look bad.
coralline
27 January 2012 at 2:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The very first sentence of the introduction is a strawman, and *wrong*. That doesn’t lend a whole lot of credence to the whole thing.
“How life abides by the second law of thermodynamics yet evolutionarily complexifies [...] is a fundamental mystery.”
What I find especially amusing is that evolutionnews.org seems to be clueful enough to catch on, too: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/01/oh_now_we_under055641.html
Sili
27 January 2012 at 2:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Whatever happened to the dude who suffered some kind of schizophrenic breakdown halfway through composing a poster? He showed up in the comments, but never to Fleuryan degrees.
Poor fellow.
Irene Delse
27 January 2012 at 2:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ stonyground:
Oh, that Stanley Unwin? Amusingly, it’s also the name of the original editor of The Lord of the Rings. Still the domain of fantasy, though ;)
Ragutis
27 January 2012 at 2:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I lived near Cleveland as a lad, and I can’t say that I remember anything about the rocks that was better than gourmet hot dogs. Then again, I’m not a geologist. ;p
That was my favorite place as a kid up there. I was constantly bugging my mom to go again and again. Somewhere around here I have a pic of me on the Stegosaurus statue outside.
Oh, and gyre. Gyre gyre quantum gyre. Gyre.
Sili
27 January 2012 at 2:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ah. Lambertsen.
benco
27 January 2012 at 2:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’s like he looked at Feynman diagrams and thought, “Hey! I can draw too!” without understanding that there is a solid wall of math behind each of Feynman’s cute little pictures.
Daz
27 January 2012 at 2:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
To quote from the forthcoming General Theory:
Anisopteran
27 January 2012 at 2:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@infraredeyes #47
I nearly choked on my “Fruit’n'Fibre” the other meaning when they had Rupert Sheldrake (who I hoped had long ago disappeared up his own morphic assonance) “proving” that people’s pets were telepathic. On the BBC. But mysteriously, this story appears not to be mentioned anywhere on the BBC’s website.
Odd, that.
khops
27 January 2012 at 3:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This is all very concerning; I’m leaning towards the developing mental illness theory. I just met Erik Andrulis this summer at an RNA processing meeting. He seemed really nice, gave what I thought was a good and interesting talk (about the exosome and RNA degradation, none of this horseshit), and I’ve thought his work in the past has been good science. I just cited a paper or two of his in a grant. Interestingly he doesn’t look anything like that picture on his Case Western site. He pretty much looks like the Dude now from Big Lebowski… I sort of assumed it was more of an aging hippy chill guy thing and not a mental breakdown. I hope he gets help.
Azuma Hazuki
27 January 2012 at 3:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Don’t be so quick to dismiss this idea…while it may be only one small pearl in 100+ pages of decaying oyster mantle, this idea of our reality having an inherent handedness or chirality isn’t so far-fetched.
If the string/M-theory stuff is true, what we may be seeing here is the order and handedness with which our extended dimensions unravelled from what’s left of the Calabi-Yau spaces. Obviously I can’t properly visualize something in six dimensions (what I get looks like one of those loofah sponges, and bright blue to boot), but it’s a possibility. If nothing else, there may have been a handedness or chirality to the big bang “seed.”
Richard Smith
27 January 2012 at 3:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Not so much Lewis Carroll as Pierre Culliford…
lordofsporks
27 January 2012 at 3:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Reading this made me want to eat a gyro.
DaveL
27 January 2012 at 3:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You know its going to be bad when the second sentence of the abstract includes a cognate of “paradigm.”
Antiochus Epiphanes
27 January 2012 at 3:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ragutis, nigel, Audley: I lived in the Cleveland are for 6 years, and worked at Case for three of them. Great place. I loved the museum, the symphony, little Italy*, and the Grog Shoppe**. CWRU is a really good school. I’m surprised that any of this flew.
*Mama Santa’s!
**The weather is another fucking story entirely.
Gwynnyd
27 January 2012 at 3:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Noooooo! I thought we were supposed to be WICCAN? Here I’ve spent the last month practicing saying “Principle of Plentitude” without giggling and now I’ve got to start adding gyre to everything to really, really describe reality? “Princigyre of Plentitude”? “Principle of Plentigrye”?
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
27 January 2012 at 3:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Antiochus Epiphanes:
I saw Bob Mould there. It’s a great venue. I need to get down there more often.
I’m not sure how any of this flew, either. It seems a bit … how shall I say it … stupid? The comparison to Timecube was not inapt.
I think during the talk on dark matter next month, I’ll create a hot dog and call it “the gyre.” It’ll be the most ridiculous combination of things ever to top a hot dog.
Oh, and I’ll have another peanut butter porter.
Or three.
And then I’ll gyre.
briandavis
27 January 2012 at 3:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I wonder where the dividing line is between ending up homeless explaining your theories to passersby, and ending up on the lecture circuit as the next Chopra.
Gregory Greenwood
27 January 2012 at 3:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
We Are Ing @ 23;
Aha! It is in a journal, so it must be true, amiright?
;-P
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
27 January 2012 at 3:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
briandavis:
Simple. The first expounds on their beliefs because they think them true. The second preaches their beliefs because it makes them rich.
fafhrd
27 January 2012 at 4:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@We Are Ing, #31: Wow, yeah, that statement does sound like a clear signal of intentional irony. Every one of those adjectives literally means “anti-scientific.” He’s going pretty damn far for the sake of a joke, though. I don’t know that much about the world of science publishing, but it seems to me like writing a paper runs a lot more risks than trolling a pseudoscience forum. Maybe he got bored with the latter?
cybercmdr
27 January 2012 at 4:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
#62: I’m sure the Intelligent Design people are going to use this one bent nail to refute the structure of peer reviewed science for decades. What they will refuse to understand is that peer review is the first step. Then the scientific community gets to look at it, and they can cry foul if the science is invalid (which has happened in this case). The process works, but this kind of crazy horseshit (horsegyre?) should never have gotten this far.
I propose that from now on, if someone proposes a batshit pseudo-scientific idea, we can say that he/she is gyreating.
Orac
27 January 2012 at 4:37 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This guy totally reminds me of Lionel Milgrom’s proposed “mechanism” of homeopathy:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/06/your_friday_dose_of_woo_the_circle_is_co_1.php
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/12/your_friday_dose_of_woo_when_a_mad_mathe.php
Chris Booth
27 January 2012 at 4:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This reminds me of a pet peeve of mine; well, perhaps not a peeve, but a lot of people don’t seem to be aware of this, and it does irk me at times: Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) did not make up the words “gyre” and “gimble” (the spelling is actually gimbal, but they are homonyms; gimble is a deliberate mis-spelling that turns it into a portmanteau of “gimbal” and “gimbled“, which is an old variant of “gimlet”). Lewis Carroll made up lots of other cool words, but not those two.
Here is a peeve: the “g” “gyre” is pronounced as “j” as in “By Jew Jesus’s gyrating gingivitis, Ginger, Joe’s in the jakes!” Not as “g” in “Gosh, Greg, go grab some grog and grok Griselda’s gams!”
In other words, the “g” itself gyred and gimbal’d in its sound, shifting from one side to the other so to speak: it gyres from “j” to “g” and gimbals from “g” to “j”. It is not strictly onomatopoeia or assonance, but it is a delightful example of Lewis Carroll’s playful transformations of sounds and words as he moves through forms and meanings….
Chris Booth
27 January 2012 at 4:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Wow. Clearly this chap is going to have an uphill battle fighting the reactionary oppression of Big Math.
(One thing Big Math has more than even Big Pharma: millions.)
:-)
'Tis Himself, OM
27 January 2012 at 4:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Andrulis should have spent more time resting by the tum-tum tree in uffish thought.
Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart, liar and scoundrel
27 January 2012 at 4:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
AE,
Mama Santa’s! Best. Pizza. Ever!
Jesus, now I wish that I lived closer to Cleveland.
chrislawson
27 January 2012 at 5:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Chris @85:
Millions? You’re thinking too small, son. I say you’re thinking too small. Big Math has googols! And if they’re too small for you, there’s googolplexes. Googolplexes, I say! Not even Big Physics has googolplexes!
Ichthyic
27 January 2012 at 5:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The whole thing sounds like Stuart Pivar and John A. Davison got together and created an artificial love child, who then wrote this paper.
skgt
27 January 2012 at 5:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This isn’t the first thing he’s published on the topic.
“Good advice austintorn! This should help significantly!
Unity: Theory of Everything, Life, and the Universe
http://www.scribd.com/doc/44194861
I uploaded the theory to scribd.com as a PDF.
I must advise the reader that this version of the model is from May of 2009; I have built substantially on it but have not updated the presentation. In other words, I have had to amend parts of the theory to suit facts I had not originally incorporated. Not major overhauls, but important nonetheless. Any questions that you might have about the gaps in the presentation I would encourage you to cite. I have dealt with many questions (raised by My bright Mind) already in a book that elaborates on this—indeed, most of my recent energies have been directed towards putting it into a book format for general audience; but you know this from my posts here and those at my blog.
As the story goes, I have worked for the last six years on putting together an irreducible theory of everything. I started building models to understand results I got working with RNA and ribonucleases and then applied these models to major unsolved problems in physics, cosmology, linguistics, economics, theology, philosophy, psychology, and biology. The theory is incommensurable with the current worldview. Hence, it is controversial and revolutionary.
I must warn anyone who downloads the PDF: the theoretical framework is quite dense, and, as such, may be rough going. It is not a manuscript, but a model in presentation format. A fast forward to the end of the document will provide a theoretical summary and implications. If you are willing to look at the whole work, I would be grateful for any comments or advice.
As I have been unable to falsify the model, nor have I identified anyone who has been able to falsify it, by all estimations it is the correct model of reality. In other words, the Truth. Just like the great mystics have said, “I am the Truth.” Another way of saying this would be “Everything is Me.” Theory validates these claims. I, the Theoretician, am as skeptical any reader of the theory. I know and understand this skepticism as there is Only One I.
Oh, and you are welcome to share it with anyone.
Peace,
Ik (Erik)
And, thusly, I am no longer anonymous. ”
From http://www.toequest.com/forum/your-toe-theory/5417-unity-18.html#post133889 – note that the scribd file has been deleted.
While it would seem that this could be any Erik, the post used to contain his full name, and has since been edited out. Another poster quoting that post has copied
“One. There is only One I, God, and it is the I we each use to refer to our self. There is Unity found in the One I. I is/am the Creator and the Creation.I is/am the source of all love. I is/am the source of all goodness. Knowing who I is/am is peace.Erik D. Andrulis 55″
It’s the same guy, and he’s been working on this for a long time, having his views reinforced by a bunch of internet idiots obsessed with the Theory of Everything.
chrislawson
27 January 2012 at 5:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
coralline @62:
I love how that Evolution News post sticks a bomb under peer review…and then uses a scene from Expelled to argue the case!
What the DI is trying to say is: “peer review is a sham that stops our work from being published in respected journals”. What they are really saying, without meaning it, is: “it’s unfair that this crap gets published when our crap doesn’t.”
truthspeaker
27 January 2012 at 5:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Chris Booth, your the last sentence of your post was wonderful. It’s even more fun when said aloud.
It wasn’t until saying it aloud that I realized English “j” and “g” are pretty close together in the mouth. “J” is a labiodental affricate so the tongue is at the top of the mouth, close to the front. With “g” the tongue is at the top of the mouth, towards the middle or back.
And you’re right, playing with that is something Lewis Carrol was good at.
skgt
27 January 2012 at 5:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Since I cant edit, I’ll add here – so, it’s definitely not a joke, nor a short term mental deviation. This is somethign the guy would consider his lifes work, with the rest of his research serving to add a veneer of respectability. He appears to have also had a long running blog at http://thetheoryblog.wordpress.com/ – which again has been deleted since the publication of the paper.
Other postings include
“And now I have theoretical proof, derived from all of the available scientific, philosophical, psychological, theosophic, economic, political, etc. data. ”
“Hi, I have been blogging for about three months now about the theory I have compiled. Here’s the cover letter I sent to publishing houses about the book I intend on publishing. The cover letter gives an overview of the theory, called Unity.
Dear Editor,
Throughout history, many have come forward to claim to have solved the riddles of the Universe – only to be proven wrong. I am humbly submitting my book proposal in hopes that you will permit me to substantiate and defend my incommensurable, unfalsifiable, complete and consistent theory of everything. T__ is a book that proves the Unity of the Universe, explains the origins of spacetime, chemical elements, Life, Man, and civilization, unifies the four fundamental physical forces, elucidates the true relationship among consciousness, mind, and matter, and resolves all extant anomalies, enigmas, and paradoxes. As the theoretical framework subsumes yet overturns entrenched worldviews and dogmas, T__ is controversial.
T__ emerged from my own research on ribonucleic acid metabolism. As the story goes, I obtained inexplicable results, so I built models. Upon creating a heuristic, reified model with robust explanatory power, I applied the model to solve the major problems in cosmology, physics, chemistry, genetics, ontogeny, medicine, ecology, anthropology, linguistics, economics, law, psychology, religion, and epistemology, among other fields. What qualifications do I have that may engender confidence in the validity of this bold assertion? I have a tenure-track appointment at a prestigious American medical school, have 20 years experience in basic biomedical research, and have published 16 peer-reviewed manuscripts, including two first-author publications in the high-impact international journal Nature. Moreover, as part of research for T__, I read and became well versed in the theories, ideas, and observations of the most respected scientists, philosophers, theologians, mystics, and thinkers in the history of Humankind.
T__ is a unique book in its scope and genre. Although this nonfictional publishing niche harbors works like A THEORY OF EVERYTHING by Ken Wilber (Shambhala, 2001), THE ROAD TO REALITY by Roger Penrose (Vintage, 2007), and NEW THEORIES OF EVERYTHING by John Barrow (Oxford University Press, 2008 ), none of these or kindred oeuvres delivers a theoretical synthesis of rationalism and mysticism, subject and object, noumenon and phenomenon, masculine and feminine, biotic and abiotic, and microcosm and macrocosm. In contrast, T__ presents this information and answers to quintessential ontological questions.
—
I thought it might be a good idea to get commentary from members of this forum, as it appears there is an interest in such matters here.
Just yesterday, I posted on how the theory, Unity, explains the origin and nature of CHNOPS and biogeochemical cycles in My Body and My Planet. Here is the link:
http://thetheoryblog.wordpress.com/2…aning-to-life/
I have spent the first three months on the blog introducing the core model, the axioms and principles that undergird it, and the Laws of Nature that emerge from the theoretical synthesis.
I have already explained the origin, emergence, and evolution of water, carbon compounds, phospholipids, RNA, protein, and DNA. In the next few months, I will be discussing the elements of the model that deal with cosmology, astrophysics, particle physics, and metaphysics.
Comments and criticisms are welcome either here – in this forum – or there, in the context of the blog.
See y’all around.
Peace,
Ik”
Something is seriously wrong here, and it has only been revealed now thanks to Life’s lack of publishing standards.
truthspeaker
27 January 2012 at 5:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
As for the paper in question, I rate it 0.7 timecubes.
truthspeaker
27 January 2012 at 5:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You can’t really say peer review is broken in this case. As PZ pointed out, Life is a brand new journal. It may have been created by someone unscrupulous to make a quick buck or it may have been created by another crank to publish crank stuff, I mean theories that run so counter to the dominant paradigm that the establishment won’t publish them.
As for Dr. Andrulis, I suspect personal tragedy. Or maybe he’s pissed at not getting tenure and is Sokaling the institution that he thinks screwed him over. This only works if he’s quitting the field altogether.
Ichthyic
27 January 2012 at 5:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
theoretical proof
*danger, Will Robinson, danger*
jjgdenisrobert
27 January 2012 at 5:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Reminds me of this French astrologer, Dom Neroman, who created this whole world schema based on platonic solids (but you see, Kepler used them to, so it *must* be scientific, no?) in a book called “La Lecon de Platon” (the absence of a cedilla on my keyboard is really bothering me right now). It’s just as nuts as what this guy did, but it at least has the advantage of being related, distantly, to the work of a real scientist (although not related in any meaningful way to his actual scientific work).
Ichthyic
27 January 2012 at 5:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Since I cant edit, I’ll add here – so, it’s definitely not a joke, nor a short term mental deviation.
doesn’t require it to be a short term mental deviation for schizophrenia to be involved; it sure sounds very similar to other writings from people I know to have suffered from mild schizophrenia.
When you literally spend YEARS building an entirely new vocabulary, in order to describe things that are really just imagined views of already known things, there is a problem there.
When it gets to the point where it DISPLACES your normal behavior and your career path? It’s gone beyond “problem” into the realm of thinking there is an underlying psychopathy involved.
It’s sad to think that he had a crew of basically strangers on the internet enabling him as he moved further and further from reality, but it also wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
I, like PZ mentioned, hope he at least gets himself checked out, and if there IS a problem, he still has time to restart his career.
let this go on too long, and he ends up in the ranks of cranks like John Davison and his “prescribed evolutionary hypothesis”, as they rant from their computers in a lonely house.
Hate to see it.
Tualha
27 January 2012 at 5:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ah, Mary Midgley. Poor Mary Midgley. She criticized The Selfish Gene and praises Sheldrake’s gibberish. In two hundred years, some grad student will write their thesis on the poor misguided Mary Midgley, and everyone will say, “Who?”
Daz wins the thread.
Googolplexes? Pah. I sneer at your googolplexes. You want a big number? Here’s a big number.
Matt Penfold
27 January 2012 at 6:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I think someone might have been playing a cruel practical joke on Midgely her entire academic life by substituting every book she plans to read with one with an identical title and cover, but with a text that the total opposite of that of the real book. What else could explain her persistent inability to understand these books ? Simple answer: She has not been reading the same books!
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
27 January 2012 at 6:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart:
Me too, Audley.
Me too.
XXIst Century (updated) Vole
27 January 2012 at 6:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
chrislawson#88:
Aaahh — Senator Claghorn and Foghorn Leghorn.
Thanks for the memories!
rorschach
27 January 2012 at 6:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Science Daily is kinda handy, when you don’t want to read through all 500 PLOS articles that get published each day to find the one that might interest you. I always go and look up the original release for anything I see on SD.
As to Andrulis, he uses word salad, neologisms and associative loosening. All 3 clinical features of schizophrenia. A creative brain going off the rails, I’d say from a distance.
Unbelievable this could get published.
crissakentavr
27 January 2012 at 6:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thinking of physical reality based upon orbits and attractions to repeating patterns isn’t entirely bunk, but breaks down in several places, especially empirically if not observationally.
There is probably some benefit to dreaming in lingua like this, if not directly applicational to the real world. Reading it is like a trip out of reality.
It would be nice if there were some patterns we’d find like this, but as far as I know, there aren’t; it just appears to be to the human brain when it is trying to pattern match without enough base information.
timberwoof
27 January 2012 at 6:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
My head is spinning. This forum has turned into a circle of misogyrist meanies!
F
27 January 2012 at 7:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Looks like his blog has disappeared down the rabbit hole now.
Susannah
27 January 2012 at 8:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Why am I thinking of balloons?
Russell
27 January 2012 at 8:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If gyrognosis makes the mostest of the gonads of the monads, how come Liebniz didn’t discover DNA instead of calculus ?
Stay tuned for DI Fellow Tom Bethell’s magisterial summary of this flummery for the dummery.
WhiteHatLurker
27 January 2012 at 9:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
To paraphrase a previous poster, my first reaction was “the journal Life? What is that?”
To correct PZ, this is in the second volume of this, um, journal. The first volume was 48 pages, including a paper on making DNA movies (via bacteria) to communicate with life in the future or far away.
One thing is that this paper has done a great deal to increase the journal’s notoriety. This paper alone has received a great deal of attention. (Much more than it is worth. I’ve been tempted too write a paper so bad that it would be cited by thousands of other papers fighting to destroy it. The impact would be impressive. I can’t decide what to do it on though.)
While the author’s blog is gone, it is still in Google cache.
ArsTechnica has a nice article on this story. Well okay, not nice, but … From their perspective all would have gone swimmingly, if it wasn’t for those
kidsresearch communication people at Case Western. If it weren’t for that press release, nobody would know about this. Maybe that was a cry for help.scottplumer
27 January 2012 at 10:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m embarassed for the institution I work for. I should print this out and post it in the med school.
totalretard
27 January 2012 at 11:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Who would have suspected that live must evolve from quantum gravity, and the realization that diquantal effects are required is not short of pure genius. But don’t you think that some credit is due to Deepak Chopra and Maharishi Mahesh for inspiring such breathtaking wonders? Really, the only thing that Andrulis has added is his brilliant gyromodel, but again, that was probably cribbed from Elvis Presley.
PZ, I think you’re just jealous that Andrulis beat you to the idea. You probably ignored it because this is what homeopathists have be trying to explain for centuries. Now I see how it all fits together.
This will certainly be the quickest Nobel prize ever awarded.
chigau (同じ)
27 January 2012 at 11:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Schizophrenia just gets funnier and funnier.
DLC
27 January 2012 at 11:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Wow.. . That’s some serious Jabberwocky. I wonder if his CHNOPS is sharper than my Vorpal Sword ?
Snicker-snack!
isochron
28 January 2012 at 4:35 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’s an open access journal. The author pays the journal to publish the paper. The journal reviews the paper but it’s business model is diametrically opposed to the rejection of offered papers.
I, for one, shall never publish in any journal that I have to pay to accept my papers.
Midnight Rambler
28 January 2012 at 6:02 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You’ll have a somewhat limited selection then. Even many good subscription-based journals have page charges, and there is general movement towards open-access publishing. Bear in mind that many of the major journals from Wiley and Elsevier charge several thousand dollars per year for library subscriptions.
That said, there are a lot of online-only “journals” like this one that have sprung up in the last few years, that are essentially worthless. I get spam from them soliciting papers all the time, invariably totally unrelated to my own field. Hindawi Publishing and International Scholars Journals are the worst offenders. Anything called “International Journal of …” is almost guaranteed to be one of these. They publish anything, claiming to do peer review but usually doing about as much as Cosmology, and making money off of open-access fees. The sad thing is that they do publish some real research, but it not treated seriously because it’s in one of these flimsy journals.
jackrawlinson
28 January 2012 at 7:05 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I, too, believe that this guy is non-harmonious four-cornered educated stupid.
mudpuddles
28 January 2012 at 8:52 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
infraredeyes #47, Anisopteran #69 & Tualha #99
I picked up Sheldrake’s “The Science Delusion” in a book shop and opened it. Holy crap…. I actually felt significantly more stupid after just half a page.
I then made the monumental error of looking him up and visiting his website (in a fit of morbid curiosity). Now the interwebs has done its magic and on every website I go to that has banner ads I’m plagued with Sheldrake adverts, including here on FTB. I have Sheldrake’s creepy head floating beside a line saying “What if Sheldrake was available to answer your questions now?”
Mum got a shcok this morning when she heard me shout “I’d throw him through the fucking window!”
mmLilje
28 January 2012 at 9:12 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So, according to him, the universe was created by Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre?
These new-age religious beliefs keep getting sillier and sillier.
davem
28 January 2012 at 9:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
“All your gyrobases are belong us”
Draken
28 January 2012 at 9:51 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Talking about Fleury, he seems to have left a fairly recent reply.
richarddawkins
28 January 2012 at 10:43 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Although Jabberwocky is the obvious literary allusion, the following line of W B Yeats has always puzzled me:
“Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre”
Yeats, great poet though he was, was also a mystic, who believed in fairies.
isochron
28 January 2012 at 10:50 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Not in my field, fortunately. I did pay for extra pages (over the page limit) once or twice but out of 70 papers none was ‘pay to publish’. I have no objection to electronic journals (and have published in them on occasion) or to open access as a concept but ‘pay to publish’ is just very dangerous to peer reviewed science.
I agree about the Hindawi and ISJ journals. They are crap. They keep sending e-mails asking me to join the editorial boards for some of their newer e-pamphlets. They just won’t take *Never!* for an answer.
calis
28 January 2012 at 11:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This sheds some additional light on it:
http://tinfoilpalace.eamped.com/2011/12/23/theory-of-the-origin-evolution-and-nature-of-life/
I have spent the last 7 years or so working on a complete and consistent theory of the universe. I initially started out with a book, but that was a tough sell. So, I compiled a book proposal. That proposal was rejected by ~30 different publishing houses. I then tried literary agents. ~200 rejections ensued. I pared my theory down to a scientific manuscript that addresses topics ranging from quantum gravity to the origin and nature of cellular life. That manuscript was sent to and through 12 different peer-reviewed journals and article servers (arXiv) — where I had 4 decision appeals, 15 total rejections, and 1 retraction.
Ichthyic
28 January 2012 at 1:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Now the interwebs has done its magic and on every website I go to that has banner ads I’m plagued with Sheldrake adverts, including here on FTB. I have Sheldrake’s creepy head floating beside a line saying “What if Sheldrake was available to answer your questions now?”
*sigh*
it’s cookie based.
-clear your cookies
-clear your browser cache
other choices:
-disable scripting for any site you don’t like the adbanners on.
-install something like AdBlock Plus, and never be bothered by ads ever again, period.
Russell
28 January 2012 at 5:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Which will come first?
The Washington Times Op-Ed, the DI conference or the Conservapedia entry?
an3rea
29 January 2012 at 9:50 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
A few more informations from around the web… Erik D. Andrulis seems to have a twitter account
https://twitter.com/#!/TheTheoretician
He published his theoretical “insights” on a blog:
http://thetheoryblog.wordpress.com/
but he seems to have stripped all the content, some of which can still accessed through archive.org:
http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://thetheoryblog.wordpress.com/
There we can find a short history of his theory of everything:
I think this really is some kind of psychosis in progress.
an3rea
29 January 2012 at 9:54 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Here is more of his own account:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100726165015/http://thetheoryblog.wordpress.com/
ladude
29 January 2012 at 4:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The term “word salad” comes to mind.
Ichthyic
29 January 2012 at 4:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The term “word salad” comes to mind.
that’s just it, though. All the energy-oriented reactions he’s talking about involving phosphate cycles are accurate enough, from my recollection.
It’s just that he then starts overlaying a perfectly reasonable explanation of these reactions as “cycles” (which we actually DO use when we teach these things – http://www.doctortee.com/dsu/tiftickjian/cse-img/biology/enzymes/atp-cycle.jpg for example), with this completely inane and irrelevant gyre-jargon he’s invented.
There is a clear conflation in this person’s mind between pattern and process, where to him, the pattern itself explains the process.
It’s like if I gave you a complex matrix equation, and tried to explain how it worked by saying:
“See? SQUARE!”
Indeed, there is a square pattern to a matrix… but it hardly explains what’s going on in it.
I expect with people like this, there is some breakdown in how the mind processes pattern recognition and logic.
makes me wonder if there is not just a chemical imbalance, but a physical one; maybe something interfering with distinct lateral processing?
something like the exact opposite of what is sometimes seen when there is damage to the corpus callosum?
instead of “split brain”, this guy is exhibiting “merge brain”.
Alareth
30 January 2012 at 7:25 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
How the craziest f#@!ing “theory of everything” got published and promoted
thoms
31 January 2012 at 12:30 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I think the he just got carried away and LARPed Genius: the transgression (http://sites.google.com/site/moochava/genius)
Up next: rogue automata!
Chris Booth
31 January 2012 at 1:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
richarddawkins @ # 121:
That line from “Sailing to Byzantium” is quite rich.
To “perne” is to rise in the air like smoke. “Gyre” is a word that has been around since its Greek root “gyro-”, and exists in the word-hoard of English. Neither Lewis Carroll nor Yeats invented it.
Yeats, a follower of Madam Blavatsky believed in cycles of history. The holy fire (remember the text of Handel’s Messiah–”God’s love is like a refining fire”?) refines the soul, allows the dross to be poured away, leaving the pure “gold”. The dross is imperfect flesh (the dying animal). Subject to age, imperfection, degradation, diminution, decline, humiliation, he longs for the perfect, untarnishable purity of a form of gold (“such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make”), a form that is, unlike a poet’s, both artist and artwork (youth and beauty; think Keats here, too). Anyway, the smoke of a purifying fire–or the earthly smoke of goldsmiths’ smithies–will rise from those smithies, gyring–spiraling–outward; the thousand-year cycle that he saw as the pattern of rise and fall of civilizations would be where the spiral returns to the same place on the circle, but in another time: Greece/Rome…Byzantium…20th-Century Europe. He saw the purified artist-creator as being the highest aspiration of humanity, and the sages, having their impure physical limitations burnt off as smoke become the artist and the art. They are the gold mosaic and the goldsmith.
Yeats’ next line is “And be the singing-masters of my soul”. He asks the ideal artists, the Byzantine artists, to teach him to be their equal as a craftsman and pure artist–this is why he asks them to be his singing-masters. Not to teach him singing per se, as they were visual artists. But he admired Byzantine art as art of the highest order, and wished to attain that level of artistry in his Irish-voiced English verse.
[As to Yeats' mysticism: Ezra Pound used to fondly refer to Yeats' talk of these things as "Uncle Willie's spooks".]
The line you quoted is in the imperative. That is fascinating (or is to me, at least). :-) Picture a mosaic of saints, in lovely bright tiles and gold, singing hymns while martyred in fire. Or standing in purgatorial flames singing Hosannas as the refining fire of God’s love painfully purifies them. Yeats sees this as a metaphor for himself. “Singing” as a metaphor for poetry, the purgatorial flames as a metaphor for that which purifies his soul and artistry, the suffering that is the soul of art. (For almost 200 years now, people have trivialized the music of Felix Mendelssohn, whose birthday is Friday, for being too facile, because, talented little rich boy, he never suffered–ha.) The line is in the imperative because Yeats is imploring them to reach out over the millennium that separates them to teach and/or inspire him to be such an artist.
Well, one could go on. “Sailing to Byzantium” is one of the great poems of English, and it is so rich.
But Yeats has two “Byzantium” poems “Sailing to Byzantium” and “Byzantium”, which is an interesting contrast to it. And he uses the word “gyre” in “The Second Coming”–the first stanza, which is also the epigraph to Achebe’s Nobel-Prize-winning novel Things Fall Apart….As an African, you must be familiar with Achebe’s novel. ;-)
TheDancingGeek
2 February 2012 at 3:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Spirals (gyres) as the basis of everything in the universe? Why, this man isn’t crazy. He’s just a big fan of Gurren Lagann!
Alex the Pretty Good
3 February 2012 at 5:47 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So it looks like all the attention given to this publication has not gone unnoticed:
Editorial (published 03 Feb) for this issue of Life: Publication of controversial papers in Life.
lpetrich
8 February 2012 at 8:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Reminds me of George Francis Gillette’s “spiral universe”:
He explains his “backscrewing theory of gravity”:
From Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.
lpetrich
8 February 2012 at 8:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Diagrams? GFG has some also, like of a “laminated, solid, solid, solid, solid” and “the all cosmos doughnut”.
johnclayton
10 February 2012 at 4:25 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sounds like GYREberish to me.
briantarr
10 February 2012 at 6:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
one word: mushrooms.
dovhenis
12 February 2012 at 2:20 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Universe-Energy-Mass-Life Compilation
http://universe-life.com/2012/02/03/universe-energy-mass-life-compilation/
A. The Universe
From the Big-Bang it is a rationally commonsensical conjecture that the gravitons, the smallest base primal particles of the universe, must be both mass and energy, i.e. inert mass yet in motion even at the briefest fraction of a second of the pre Big Bang singularity. This is rationally commonsensical since otherwise the Big would not have Banged, the superposition of mass and energy would not have been resolved.
The universe originates, derives and evolves from this energy-mass dualism which is possible and probable due to the small size of the gravitons.
Since gravitation Is the propensity of energy reconversion to mass and energy is mass in motion, gravity is the force exerted between mass formats.
All the matter of the universe is a progeny of the gravitons evolutions, of the natural selection of mass, of some of the mass formats attaining temporary augmented energy constraint in their successive generations, with energy drained from other mass formats, to temporarily postpone, survive, the reversion of their own constitutional mass to the pool of cosmic energy fueling the galactic clusters expansion set in motion by the Big Bang.
B. Earth Life
Earth Life is just another mass format. A self-replicating mass format. Self-replication is its mode of evolution, natural selection. Its smallest base primal units are the RNAs genes.
The genesis of RNAs genes, life’s primal organisms, is rationally commonsensical thus highly probable, the “naturally-selected” RNA nucleotides. Life began/evolved on Earth with the natural selection of inanimate RNA, then of some RNA nucleotides, then arriving at the ultimate mode of natural selection, self-replication.
C. Know Thyself. Life Is Simpler Than We Are Told
The origin-reason and the purpose-fate of life are mechanistic, ethically and practically valueless. Life is the cheapest commodity on Earth.
As Life is just another mass format, due to the oneness of the universe it is commonsensical that natural selection is ubiquitous for ALL mass formats and that life, self-replication, is its extension. And it is commonsensical, too, that evolutions, broken symmetry scenarios, are ubiquitous in all processes in all disciplines and that these evolutions are the “quantum mechanics” of the processes.
Human life is just one of many nature’s routes for the natural survival of RNAs, the base primal Earth organisms.
Life’s evolution, self-replication:
Genes (organisms) to genomes (organisms) to monocellular to multicellular organisms:
Individual monocells to cooperative monocells communities,“cultures”.
Monocells cultures to neural systems, then to nerved multicellular organisms.
Human life is just one of many nature’s routes for the natural survival of RNAs, the base Earth organism.
It is up to humans themselves to elect the purpose and format of their life as individuals and as group-members.
Dov Henis (comments from 22nd century)
An Embarrassingly Obvious Theory Of Everything
http://universe-life.com/2011/12/10/eotoe-embarrassingly-obvious-theory-of-everything/
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 7:41 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The title is biased — as is the article.
“You know what? That doesn’t explain anything!” This quotation shows that the author either lacks the skills or the mental discipline to even try to understand the preceding excerpt.
“It’s terrible: unreadable, incoherent, bizarre, and completely lacking in evidence or mathematical support.” Ditto. No mathematical support is needed or even wanted. The author clearly is not willing to do the hard work of figuring the paper out.
“It’s madness stamped with the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine seal of approval.” Wrong. It is a radically new interpretation of a variety of systems. The paper is coherent and interlinking — unlike all other theories. For example, we have no overarching theory of chemistry!
Case Western has removed the press release from their listings — because it is cowardly.
Its press office was bullied by two physicists who were “embarrassed” (threatened really) that a non-physicist would dare to trespass in their sacred territory. Science is about defending one’s turf — and getting grants that support pet theories.
The paper is genuine. That’s right. It is an entirely serious work — meant for serious consideration. It requires HARD mental labor to begin to understand it, so most people will take the easy route and dismiss it.
“Well PZ, this is either an elaborate joke or the onset of schizophrenia.” The paper is no joke. I have known Erik for years, and he is in full control of his mental facilities.
To those of you put off by the new words, do you ignore studies that include words such as prednisone and pyridine too? Those words are neologisms — as are most for pharmaceuticals and chemistry.
All of science is loaded with jargon.
Because the paper is heterodox and VERY dense, few people will have an inkling as to what it means. Much more fun to mock something complex and new than to struggle to understand it.
I have advanced degrees in science and have read the paper. I have had extensive exchanges with Erik over several years regarding its contents.
In addition, I have access to additional supporting material which is MUCH more expansive.I have quizzed Erik repeatedly over its contents. He has corrected errors and overstatements and given consistent answers.
Science is about protecting the status quo — and defends it jealously.
Also, for your consideration: http://milesmathis.com/erik.pdf
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 8:18 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
What positive predictions are made by this hypothesis?
KG
13 February 2012 at 9:09 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh well, you must be right, then, even though you haven’t actually told us what the paper is about. End of argument.
KG
13 February 2012 at 9:20 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hark! The distinctive, babbling cry of the lesser-spotted crank!
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 9:21 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
That alone tells me you aren’t a scientist.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 9:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ah a degree in Science! Of course…did you do your grad research on the Ultimate Nullifier Device or the Doomian Chronoengine?
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 9:39 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
The paper is theory, not hypothesis, as it has an enormous amount of supporting facts both in it and in unpublished material. Check some of the references if you are skeptical.
The paper predicts that RNA is the genetic template on which DNA forms. Therefore, the paper predicts that there would be a pool of RNA that has no genomic complement (unannoted RNA). If you find RNAs that have no DNA template, how does the RNA come to be made?
The unannoted RNA is made through polymerization of nucleotides driven by the chemical energy stored in the high energy phosphate bond (and that energy is deposited there by all the metabolic pathways of the cell).
One positive prediction one would would make would be that unannoted RNA should exist in ALL life forms, and one should be able to identify RNAs in organisms that have no genetic complement. There should some level of sequence contraints, structural constraints, specification, and functionality to this unannoted RNA.
So, how does a new gene come to exist?
Another positive prediction is that one should expect to find changes in annoted RNA (made from DNA) that ultimately drives changes in DNA. RNA based mutagenesis of DNA!
That is to say, RNA is the driver of evolution, and evolution is not “random.” Random is a philosophical term adopted by science because “by a method that we don’t know,” while being more honest, reveals the ignorance in much of science.
On a fuller note, the paper is about both how reality is, and WHY it is. Since science explains how but not why, the paper is science because it explains how, but it goes beyond science by explaining why. An enormous accomplishment equivalent to going from medieval thinking, to the Renaissance and, more aptly, to the Enlightenment.
By the way, the Enlightenment met a LOT of resistance (think of poor Galileo), but the Western world now takes it for granted.
Keep in mind, Galileo had only the church to enrage. Now, we have the scientists.
KG
13 February 2012 at 9:46 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Well quite, no new idea has been accepted in science in the last century, has it?
Keep going, please. I’ve still got a few spaces left empty on my crank bingo card at this point.
PFC Ogvorbis (Yes, they are)
13 February 2012 at 9:47 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Er, I do not think those words mean what you think they mean. Theory has a very definite definition for those with degrees in science. And for actual scientists. C’mon, you can do better than that. I mean, I’m just a lowly historian and even I can spot the shit in that statement.
Matt Penfold
13 February 2012 at 9:51 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The unpublished material must be discounted, since it is unpublished. Really, why say something so silly ?
Ariaflame, BSc, BF, PhD
13 February 2012 at 9:57 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The paper is theory, not hypothesis, as it has an enormous amount of supporting facts both in it and in unpublished material.
Evidence. Data. Predictions. Is this hypothesis falsifiable? If not, then fail. And for the unpublished material? That’s like claiming the lurkers support you in email.
Claiming that science supports the status quo really does suggest that you are not a scientist. Sure, science can be slow to accept new theories. Because one of the things that scientists do is to examine hypotheses and proposed theories and see how they stack up against evidence. And for actual experimental things if the effect is reproducible. It may be a slow process sometimes, but it filters out a lot of woo.
Part of the problem is that human beings, and scientists are no exception, are really good at seeing patterns. So good in fact that they see patterns that aren’t actually there. To the point where they can convince themselves that those perceived patterns represent something meaningful. Like the face on mars, or people who see jebus on a piece of toast.
It is important then for a scientist to try to examine their work for any biases or preconceptions they may have brought with them. And to think of every way in which their hypothesis might be wrong and ways to test for that. And then to do those tests. Because the easiest person to fool is yourself.
myeck waters
13 February 2012 at 9:57 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Why say something so silly? Take your pick:
a) They don’t want to but it’s the best they’ve got.
b) They don’t realize it’s silly because they themselves are very, very silly.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 9:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
BWAHAHA
And what, pray tell, does that even mean?
Rev. BigDumbChimp
13 February 2012 at 10:02 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
quack
KG
13 February 2012 at 10:08 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I was betting on the extraction of zero-point energy from unobtanium.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 10:12 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nope, not close. Defineitely not a scientific theory. Has a long way to go to meet that criteria.
Citation to the peer reviewed scientific literature needed, as the science says otherwise.
And where and how does this happen? To form polymers one need to keep feeding growing chains. Nature does this with enzymes. How is this different from what happens now? Actually, as a chemist, this just sound like gobbledy-gook.
Mutation, duplication, and natural selection. Next stoopid question.
Sorry, it is know that mutagenesis of DNA occurs due to errors in replication. You have about 100-150 mutations from your parents due to those errors.
Why isn’t it random? Where does this “order” come from? That bullshit sounds really random.
Which has nothing to do with this pile of bovine excrement. The delusional ramblings of anybody is not real science. Real science isn’t in that paper. Delusional thinking is.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 10:13 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
Thanks for the reply.
I’m not sure what you’re seeing is rage, and there’s a qualitative difference between the church and scientists. While scientists may at first resist new ideas, they are, as a whole, forced by their very ideology to be open to evidence. At the moment, it seems that’s what this idea lacks — supporting experimental evidence.
I’d say resistance is a good thing. In fact, the more revolutionary the hypothesis, the more resistance there should be. This is not only natural, but a necessary part of the scientific method. If an idea can’t stand up to scrutiny (and that includes ridicule), it isn’t much of an idea. If it weren’t for resistance, for a certain intellectual barrier to entry, every crackpot idea out there would have equal weight.
Science is essentially conservative because true discoveries are almost always incremental, building on the knowledge gained before, one small piece at a time. Quantum theory didn’t just spring full-blown from nothing — it built on inconsistencies in research data, and from the descriptive theories already in existence.
And this is the reason there should be a lot of resistance to the idea. There have been a lot of people who make similar claims, and in pretty much all cases, the ideas are crackpottery. The skepticism you see is strictly in proportion to the claims made. As the claims are outrageous (however true they might be), so is reaction. Erik’s presentation (including the press release) reeked of hyperbole and excessiveness, which is one of the hallmarks of a crackpot.
If Erik’s ideas are sound, if they are predictive and useful, he will be vindicated. If his ideas are not sound, if they aren’t congruent with reality, that too will be shown.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 10:22 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Courtier’s Reply.
FIFY. Without results, the coolest idea in the world is a just-so story.
Analogy fail. These are names given to things that had already been confirmed to exist, or at least had strong data upon which the names were based.
Well, that, and there is an order of magnitude between mundane chemistry terminology and the hubris of an unjustifiable grand theory of everything.
Which of you is Pinky and which of you is The Brain?
um
wut
Even if the well-established RNA Hypothesis turns out to be accurate, how is mutation of RNA any less random?
Jesus, you’re a sausage machine of crank, aren’t you?
PFC Ogvorbis (Yes, they are)
13 February 2012 at 10:25 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Keep in mind that Galileo was friends with the Pope. Or at least they had been. But then, Galileo had lots and lots of former friends. What really pissed off the Pope was not that Galileo claimed that the earth orbited the sun, or even that Galileo’s math didn’t accurately predict the orbits (he thought that Keppler’s ideas on elipses were ridiculous (and ridiculed them)). No, the Pope got really pissed when Galileo released his book as a conversation between Simplicis and somebody else, and put the Pope’s writings (the Pope at the time (one of the Barberini Popes, if I recall correctly) had a very good reputation as a natural philosopher) as Simpleton’s argument. And published it in Italian so that everyone would be able to see that the Pope was a simpleton. So enraging the church had as much to do with Galileo’s style (or lack thereof), with Galileo’s ability to piss off other natural philosphers, with Galileo’s take-no-prisoners egotistical way of engaging his fellow philosophers, as it did his writings about a sun-centered system.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 10:36 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m calling Poe.
He has the word “nettle” right in his name ffs
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 11:12 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I am impressed with the hostility and willful ignorance of this forum — but not particularly surprised. Arguing is so much more fun than reasoned debate. Let’s ramp up the hate! Rock on guys!
Clearly, many of you don’t understand the questions at hand.
I wonder if anyone here really made the tough slog of sitting down for hours to understand the paper, so as to be able to make specific critical comments or even come up with substantive questions. For some strange reason, I have my doubts.
Supporting experimental evidence is throughout the paper, so clearly anyone who claims otherwise hasn’t bothered to spend, oh, an afternoon STUDYING the paper. Better just to kick back with a six pack and watch the game!
Matt Penfold
Unpublished material should rarely be discounted. When speaking on the paper, scientists don’t just read their paper. Good grief, this is what the Gordon Research Conference is all about! Talking about unpublished data!
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
Happy to respond to a thoughtful question.
Science is indeed conservative — as much as any religion. Of course science has produced new results and new theories, albeit with a grant funding rate of 8% (!), that rate is decreasing and discoveries are increasingly of peripheral utility. As two scientists told me when I asked them what that funding rate meant, they both said, “the death of science.”
My point about defending the status quo is that scientists are very quick to reject heterodox theory and are also very quick to defend their theory against a colleague’s.
Erik has definitely told me he has been treated with outright hostility, so rage is the right word. By the way, he does have some scientists who support him. One of them told him “Keep in mind, Galileo had only the church to enrage. Now, we have the scientists.” So, I was not expressing my opinion alone.
“If Erik’s ideas are sound, if they are predictive and useful, he will be vindicated. If his ideas are not sound, if they aren’t congruent with reality, that too will be shown.” Neither is necessarily the case. If people want to be willfully ignorant and just stick with “what works good enough,” Erik’s theory will be treated with indifference regardless of whether it is wholly right, partly right, or wrong.
By the way, I really like ale made by trappist monks. It seems you have some in you, if just enough to give you that mild sense of serenity that comes after the first few sips.
For those of you who would deconstruct my posts with slurs, that’s fine. You clearly don’t take the time to consider alternative views — save for ridicule.
Here’s one last nettle for you!
If you can’t explain the theoretical flaws in the paper’s explanation of the cell cycle, then you are intellectually lazy and are totally in your interest in this paper.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 11:20 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’s unfalsifiable according to the author.
That was easy.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 11:38 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
We Are Ing
“It’s unfalsifiable according to the author.”
Falsify it then. Prove him wrong. A simple task, right? Easy?
I notice you ignored the simple task I gave. Was it too hard?
If you can’t explain the theoretical flaws in the paper’s explanation of the cell cycle, then you are intellectually lazy and are totally insincere in your interest in this paper.
myeck waters
13 February 2012 at 11:40 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You don’t even understand what “unfalsifiable” means? What an idiot.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 11:40 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I didn’t
Being unfalsifiable is a fundamental flaw in the paper.
We’re done. there’s no need to start the race when the car lacks an engine.
Ariaflame, BSc, BF, PhD
13 February 2012 at 11:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You claim to be a scientist and do not know what unfalsifiable means? Major major fail.
Chiropractor maybe? They seem to get a lot of woo, or maybe homeopath.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 11:45 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Unfalsifiable means unable to falsify. Not that it cannot be proven but that it is structured in a way that it cannot be tested. Something like that is thus in a universe where it’s truth and untruth are indistinguishable. To test the hypothesis you will have to refine it to have an impact.
If X happened how can we demonstrate it.
Well if X happened we should see Y, do we see Y?
If so go to “do we see Z” if not then X is wrong.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 11:51 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You guys are being silly.
I guess I am simply stirring up the hornet’s nest more.
Of course I know what unfalsifiable means. Geez. English is my first language.
Unfalsifiable means that it can’t be proven false.
Naturally, if “unfalsifiable” is an incorrect claim, the paper can indeed be proven false!
So, prove it false! Come on guys, you can do it. Right?
Actually, judging from the level of discussion here, I think few if any of you can.
I repeat my simple challenge.
If you can’t explain the theoretical flaws in the paper’s explanation of the cell cycle, then you are intellectually lazy and are totally insincere in your interest in this paper.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 11:53 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
We Are Ing
You mean like string theory?
Or perhaps quarks that we can not isolate?
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 11:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yeah. Ain’t that the truth. At least, the death of science in America. Fortunately, some other countries work hard to keep science alive (such as China).
But they still have to defend. It’s not like religious dogma, which is impervious to logic and data. I merely contend your comparison of scientists to the church is hardly warranted. And it’s not like scientists haven’t defended their own pet hypotheses against others in the the long history of science.
More importantly, though, young scientists haven’t staked their territory yet. Ideas that are resisted by one generation are often embraced by the next. I recall the resistance met by string theory (which really isn’t much of a theory even yet) back in the early 80s. Now it is the dominant hypothesis in QM, rightly or wrongly.
Me, I’m not qualified to judge this paper. It’s not as obviously quackery as Timecube, for instance. I do have experience spotting quackery in general, though. And this paper, and the way it was presented, has many of the hallmarks of quackery — grandiose claims, a lack of mathematical rigor, no references to vetted papers, no supporting research, and no proposed tests.
That may change in time, of course. Hopefully Erik will be able to formulate some tests, and demonstrate how QM and relativity are derived from his hypothesis (including the mathematical relationships we’ve observed in nature).
Until then, I’ll throw this into the pile of potentially interesting ideas about the fundamental nature of the universe, somewhere between the holistic universe and causal dynamical triangulations.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 11:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Unfalsifiable=/= true
falsifiable=/= false
In this case falsifiable== more or less verifiable
It isn’t that it’s an incorrect claim. It’s that it’s evident of inherently flawed methodology. Basically you cannot propose a claim that is philosophically a closed loop and proclaim it true because it cannot be falsified.
It’s the problem of the invisible dragon.
As I said before, in science the hypothesis must be falsifiable.
There is no real standard of evidence to prove 100% something, so you try to DISPROVE it and use the process of elimination and strength of it’s stance to show how it conforms to all onslaught of evidence.
In science falsifiable == verifiable.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 12:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
That statement puts it in the classificaiton of so wrong, it’s not even wrong, just bullshit. Obviously no attempt at falsification was made by referring each claim to the peer reviewed scientific literature for confirmation had occurred. The paper would require hundreds, if not thousands, of literature references. This sounds like a crank who thinks their idea is so good they doen’t have to do the necessary “showing the evidence” to back it up.
I’m impressed by your willful ignorance, and the inability to consider the paper comes from a crank. You also appear to think that outsiders make big revolutions in science. No, they don’t. The scientists who make the paradigm shifts have a thorough understanding of the subject. That is not the case here.
Already done above. But, in science, we don’t have to prove such idiocy wrong. The burden of proof is on the author, not those refuting him. The author must show they are right by copious citations to the scientific literature that contains the evidence that backs up their claims. You again show a failure to understand how science operates, and how the scientific method really works.
PFC Ogvorbis (Yes, they are)
13 February 2012 at 12:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yup. Hostility to your willful ignorance.
And arguing is debate. And you have, so far, given absolutely nothing on your side.
If a paper is unpublished, it doesn’t actually exist to the scientific community. If it has been published, that means that it has been subjected to rigorous peer review. Which means others can read it. And respond to it.
Wait. If we are not immediately swayed by the paper, or your defence of the paper, we are drunk? That’s your argument?
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 12:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Um, no-one is saying that unfalsifiable is an incorrect description of the paper, dullard.
They’re saying that the fact that it is unfalsifiable makes it effectively useless.
But I’m still betting that despite being able to regurgitate a superficial definition of the word ‘unfalsifiable’, you still don’t grok it. Perhaps if you put in the HARD mental labor required, though.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 12:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
Ah, man. I thought you were arguing in good faith.
You claimed to be trained as a scientist, and yet you don’t seem to understand the basic principles of the scientific method. Your defense of the proposal as a theory should’ve given me my first clue. Your inability to grasp the importance of falsifiability, though, is inexcusable.
That’s one of the most fundamental attributes of science.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 12:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Are these unfalsifiable?
Hmm?
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 12:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
I think you don’t know the history of Judiasm and Christianity.
Rabbis would repeatedly debate — and defend — various position. Thus, we have not just the Jewish Bible, but also the Midrash, and most important for this subject the Mishna (not sure about the spellings). The Mishna is specifically about Rabbis defending various positions and interpretations.
As for Christianity, we have the Jesuits, an order with a specific duty to debate positions within Catholicism. Moreover, the Catholic Church itself debates a variety of positions. To wit, less than 100 years ago they changed dogma from “Jesus was killed by the Jews.” They finally acknowledged that previous position was not helping the Jews, you see.
Coincidentally, in science we had the ultraviolet catastrophe, where black bodies would emit more energy than they absorbed once exposed to UV (all is mathematical theory). Science clung to this broken theory (it had nothing else to use) until Planck came up with the idea of quanta of photons.
Science will stick with broken theory until something better comes along AND is understood. As I recall, Einstein’s general theory of relativity (incredibly radical at the time) took about 10 years to be accepted!
“Until then, I’ll throw this into the pile of potentially interesting ideas about the fundamental nature of the universe…”
Yours is a good mind. Why are you even on this forum?
We Are Ing
Yours may be a good mind, but you don’t appear to want to use it much.
The problem of the invisible dragon sounds less clever than string theory. The difference is that invisible dragons would have bulk, cause disturbances in the air, potentially make noise, give off heat,etc. So, we can test for those. We can’t test for string theory. Neither have we isolated a quark. Sure, we can measure for quarks, but measurements necessarily change the system. So, again, we have not isolated a quark, we just see something moving through a barrier and call it evidence — whatever it is.
Science is not about proving — only about disproving and removing what is demonstrably not true. Notice that science is not about removing what is NOT demonstrably not true.
You clearly are not capable of the challenge I put forth, so don’t worry about it. Chill out, and have a fine day.
To others, I repeat the simple task.
If you can’t explain the theoretical flaws in the paper’s explanation of the cell cycle, then you are intellectually lazy and are totally insincere in your interest in this paper.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 12:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Nettle
I have been patient with you and explained without insults or vitriol or hostility. And you respond to me very rudely. Please explain or defend yourself before I bother to repeat it for you again.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 12:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The dragon can phase at will. It’s hiding because you scare it.
The invisible dragon is a thought experiment to demonstrate why hypothesis have to be testable/falsifiable in order to be taken seriously. The invisible pet dragon is unfalsifiable, it’s existence is indistinguishable from it’s falseness.
String theory is mislabeled and I have heard people argue that it is of questionable falsifiability but it has inherent claims to it, and inherent potential experiments that can be done to disprove it.
You’re just wrong on quarks as the wiki documents the history of their evidential proof
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 12:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
Good grief, man. Claiming that something is unfalsifiable does not make it unfalsifiable! It’s just a claim and claims can be wrong.
PFC Ogvorbis (Yes, they are)
Arguing is not debating. The two words are different.
“The scientists who make the paradigm shifts have a thorough understanding of the subject.” Sure. And that is the case here. Erik has a clear understanding of his subject.
“If a paper is unpublished, it doesn’t actually exist to the scientific community” Wrong! The Gordon Research Conference is SPECIFICALLY for the discussion of unpublished work.
“I’m impressed by your willful ignorance, and the inability to consider the paper comes from a crank.” You clearly have not STUDIED the paper, so your criticism has no value.
Mr. Fire
How do you test a mathematical description of something unmeasurable? Neater trick: how do you isolate a quark?
You guys are intellectually lazy to an incredible degree.
Antiochus Epiphanes
13 February 2012 at 12:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting: I read the paper and couldn’t detect much of an explanation or the identification of something needing explaining. Maybe I missed the point, but Andrulis is certainly at least partly to blame. Many of the most important scientific papers in history were over abstruse concepts, and yet even a novice could detect in general what was being communicated.
I’m glad that you have provided some more succinct context. However, I don’t find that what you have written sheds as much light on the paper as you may have hoped.
Certainly, we know that this occurs in isolation (retrovirus lysogeny), but we also know that the vast bulk of DNA is replicated from DNA template. I’m not sure whether you are referring here to the RNA-world hypothesis, simply because the prediction appears to be in relationship to things that are happening now.
Thousands of EST libraries have failed to detect any such thing to my knowledge. It would certainly be big news if they did, but this hardly speaks to the central role of annotated RNA in directing *gag* evolution.
All cellular processes requiring catalytic energy rely on energy in phosphate bonds. However, in the case of the polymerization of RNA nucleotides, RNA polymerase is required for this transformation to take place. Does Andrulis propose a mechanism?
But we have no evidence of that and new transcriptomes are sequenced daily. The preponderance of evidence is against this “theory”.
Duplication and divergence.
OK. But we don’t find annotated RNA. Even if we did, with no sequence-sequence correspondence with existing DNA, it is difficult to imagine a mechanism by which this might happen.
You haven’t provided a mechanism for the directing action of your non-existent annotated RNA to “drive” the evolution of anything. But whatevs. Two points. 1) That isn’t really what random means. Mutation is said to be a random process in evolution, not because we don’t understand the mechanism by which it occurs, but because mutations occur without respect to the function of the loci in which they occur. The are random in regard to phenotype and by extension selection pressure. 2) Evolution is not a completely random process anyway. At least according to orthodox evolutionary theory.
Why what? What does this paper purport to explain?
Has Andrulis been put on house arrest or something? His ideas are being attacked, not because they are heterodox, but because they are incoherent.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 12:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
Very true.
It’s just very troubling that the person who formulated the hypothesis claims it is not falsifiable. If the person who understands the proposition best cannot think of a way to falsify the proposition, it’s a claim with some weight behind it.
PFC Ogvorbis (Yes, they are)
13 February 2012 at 1:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Why don’t you argue with what people actually write? If you are going to randomly assign statements under my ‘nym, you are populating both sides of the debate. And you are correct. This is not a debate. This is not even an argument (no matter what definition you use). This is you makeing shit up and then arguing against it.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 1:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
What you don’t understand is that I and probably most other people are of a similar sentiment to nigel’s. I shall accept Andrulis’ hypothesis when he a) makes it coherent; b) provides a mechanism for testing it; c) validates it thoroughly with meaningful results. Until then, it’s garbage.
Repetition of a bullshit demand doesn’t make it any less bullshit.
He doesn’t have theory. He has manic, unfounded, ridiculous assertions pulled from nowhere and justified with nothing.
Oh, and:
Let’s get some meat on that:
So, um, yeah.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 1:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Not that I see, and I’m a chemist. Incoherant crank all the way. You need to back up your assertions with evidence too. I see nothing.
Antiochus Epiphanes
13 February 2012 at 1:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting: I will also say that it would appear that Andrulis purposefully made is manuscript, Sokalish, by redefining words in strange ways. For example
The word “amino” has never generally referred to sulfur compounds. When amino acids have sulfur in them, the sulfur is restricted to side-chains. There are only two canonical* amino acids that incorporate sulfur.
Or
Rather than indicating negative charge.
Or,
Rather than indicating a ribose component, which is strangely enough a sugar devoid of nitrogen.
Also, there is a lot in that paper that has nothing to do with whatever it is you were trying to explain.
*See. I can do it too.
PFC Ogvorbis
I have an idea for a new blog.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 1:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Anyone else think nettleingenting might be the author or a good friend of the author? Hence its resistance to the “crank” epithet, no matter how well deserved?
PFC Ogvorbis (Yes, they are)
13 February 2012 at 1:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Do tell.
Antiochus Epiphanes
13 February 2012 at 1:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You know…I make shit up and then argue against it. It’s so easy, really.
PFC Ogvorbis (Yes, they are)
13 February 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You could call it Strawman.com.
It isn’t taken.
Yet.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 1:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Antiochus Epiphanes,
you seem to be particularly reasonable, so I will share with you a thoughtful explanation of part of the paper that I made else where.
By the way, the neologisms and atypical use of words (such as amino to mean containing sulfur) were necessary because Erik is defining a new paradigm. In the case of amino, the amino acids cysteine and methionine are the biochemicals where sulfur first emerges in his heirarchy of gyres. Very logical.
To those of you unfamiliar with biochemistry, don’t even try to understand what follows. Really. You won’t stand a chance of understanding, and I’m mostly talking about contemporary biochemistry, nothing special, but inscrutable to the non-biochemist.
The query made to me was as follows.
Otherwise you seem to be playing the “I can understand Andrulis’s paper because I have advanced degrees in science” ploy. But I (and lots of others too) have advanced degrees and quite a few years of research into relevant subjects (Chemistry, Biochemistry, Mol. Biol.). Of course that doesn’t rule out the possibility that I can’t recognize paradigm-shifting brilliance when I see it, but it’s usually the case that remarkable insights in molecular life sciences are amenable to rather simple explanations (by far the hardest part of obtaining astonishing insight in molecular biology in its broadest sense is in overcoming experimental/technical issues).
So Andrulis’ states (using straw-man, and non-sequitur type illogic) in his introduction : “Finally, the RNA (ribonucleic acid) world hypothesis posits that ribonucleotide-based genetic systems evolved prior to protein and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). This hypothesis does not fit well with the central dogma and is unable to resolve precisely how the translation apparatus, genetic code, and biometabolic pathways evolved [7-9].”
Yor task, nettle, (since you understand Andrulis’ paper very well), is to explain to us in simple terms how Andrulis’s hypothesis “resolves precisely how the translation apparatus, genetic code, and biometabolic pathways evolved”.
To which I replied as follows.
Nice, you and I both have similar experience, as I have worked in chemistry, biochemistry in molecular biology laboratories in Cambridge and Southern California. I didn’t mean it as a “ploy.” I meant it to be genuine. But I digress.
Frankly, I don’t see the illogic nor do I see the non-sequitur nature of that quote you gave. Perhaps that’s because I can see quite clearly that the RNA world hypothesis says nothing about the flow of genetic information in an extant cell (central dogma) and the central dogma says nothing about the origin and evolution of RNA. The point Erik was trying to make is that current models/theories/hypotheses/ideas are ad hoc and thus should be considered provisional at best and wrong at worst. Could you point out the illogic there?
As for how theory treats those three problems (translation apparatus, genetic code, and biometabolic pathways), I would call your attention to where these problems are treated:
- p. 43 Origin of the genetic code
Erik’s core model shows that systems organize in units of threes, creating a system that has high potential energy but less exergy than the evolutionarily prior system. The tri-quantal system (as he calls it) is the tri-nucleotide, with each component of the system having a relative amount of energy (see section 2.4.5, pp. 13-14), “(i) a high energy (exergic), unstable, excited form; (ii) an intermediate energy, quasi-stable, transition form; and (iii) a low energy, stable, ground form.” My read of this is that the first nucleotide is the most stable, the second is the quasi-stable, and the third position of the codon is the least stable. His model echoes what I know about the wobble hypothesis and the variability of the genetic code. Is there a problem with the interpretation that I am missing?
Erik has proposed that the code evolved autocatalytically, from the metabolism of the orthophosphate bonds between the 2nd and/or 3rd nucleotides. Perhaps the reason why I don’t find Erik’s proposal so outlandish is that it is fully consistent with mainstream scientific ideas: both the Nobelist Eigen and complexity theorist Kauffmann argue that the origin of RNA involved autocatalytic systems. I assume you are familiar with their work.
- pp. 45-48 Specificity of genetic code; origin of translation apparatus.
Three RNA classes (mRNA, tRNA, rRNA) are required for the formation of a polypeptide. Erik models these RNAs as being the tri-quantal state that drives the emergence of and exists in a quarternary complex with one or more amino acid(s). Again, points for Erik, as this is, in fact, what one observes in existing cells (in fact, to the best of my knowledge, RNA scientists have shown that the peptide bond can form sans accessory ribosomal proteins; more points). The cycling of one RNA (the rRNA) leaves a ternary complex of the amino acid (linked to the tRNA, Erik calls it aa-tRNA) and the mRNA. And, just as the rRNA can cycle in and out of the quarternary complex, Erik models the mRNA cycling in and out that previously mentioned ternary complex. Both cycling phenomena are depicted accurately by the gyre and the latter of the two reveals a co-adaptational relationship between the aa-tRNA and the mRNA.
My only problem in understanding is how the genetic information of RNA is transferred to the link between the amino acids that make up the polypeptide chain. Erik points out that the formation of the amide bond is, first, a consequence of loss of mRNA and rRNA relationships with the aa-tRNA. (I think he means after the tRNA passes from the A site to the P site in the ribosome.) Next, the nitrogen link imports information from the tRNA into the amide bond as is subsequently cycled out, too. (I think he means after the tRNA passes from the P site to the E site in the ribosome.) He relies on an axiom (the tenth one) to take this position. Seeing as this axiom applies to all systems in his theory, and finding no experimental evidence to refute it, I cannot dismiss it outright as wrong.
- pp. 30-60 Biometabolic pathways
Other than page 35, Erik does not use the term “biometabolic pathways” (because he did raise it up front, points against Erik). Perhaps the reason for this oversight is that every single pathway in the cell is a biometabolic pathway? In this regard, these 30 cited pages contain a large amount of discussion of many distinct aspects of cellular metabolism. If there’s one particular example you wanna go over, lemme know.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 1:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
PFC Ogvorbis:
Oh. This could be good. This could be very good.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 1:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Look at the link I provided and you’ll see what has been said about that.
More bullshit demands. Ing referred to this above.
There is evidence for their existence, in fulfilment of the predictions. Deep Inelastic Scattering, for example. You don’t need to catch a quark in a bottle to have good reason to think it exists.
Can you isolate an electron?
While you’ve been Gish Galloping across the fields of chemical nomenclature, the RNA World Hypothesis, particle physics and more, all while not having a clue what you’re talking about nor answering any of the objections to the intellectual skidmarks that you’ve left behind in each case.
Antiochus Epiphanes
13 February 2012 at 1:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
big eye, small eye.
I’m going to have to come back to this later.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 1:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Mr. Fire
You don’t have an inkling of biochemistry, and I suspect a you have avery poor grasp of science in general.
I don’t know why you make yourself look so ignorant with such statements of “While you’ve been Gish Galloping across the fields of chemical nomenclature, the RNA World Hypothesis, particle physics and more, all while not having a clue what you’re talking about” when I have repeatedly demonstrated that I do know what I’m talking about. Your comment would be funny were it not a reflection of someone willfully ignorant.
By the way, you can isolate an electron. Thus, we can study an electron.
Up and down quarks can’t be isolated singularly, therefore we can’t study them.
If deep inelastic scattering is correct, then why is the idea of color confinement used to say that we can’t isolate up and down quarks, and therefore therefore they can not be directly observed?
You can’t have it both ways!
The more you spread your ignorance, you more foolish you look. Please stop, if only for your own sake.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 1:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
From Erik Andrulis’ own webpage:
Extending upon this RNA research, I recently compiled an incommensurable, trans-disciplinary, neologistical, axiomatic theory of life from quantum gravity to the living cell.
incommensurable = incapable of being judged, measured, or considered comparatively.
++++++++++++++++
nettleingenting:
How does one go about showing that gyres exist and are meaningful for science?
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 1:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Mr. Fire,
It is incommensurable, as it compares with no extant theory, yet subsumes all of them. Geez, you clearly don’t want to study the paper. Too hard, I guess
“How does one go about showing that gyres exist and are meaningful for science?
You look.
Fingerprints
waves
tornados
cell cycle
metabolism
circadian rhythms
Utility: gyres unify all of science, thus we see how the turnover of high energy phosphates, for example, is tied in to the cell cycle.
You would know all this if you just read the paper, but you didn’t. So, you remain ignorant. Your choice.
Why bother trying to learn something difficult, I guess.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 1:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Along with deep inelastic scattering, there’s also the evidence provided by electron/positron annihilation. So far, the quark model has proven effective at predicting new an unique features of the universe, not least of which is the standard model family of particles.
While it might eventually prove to be an inadequate model, it has proven itself useful. That’s an important hallmark of a good theory.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 2:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You lie. We know quie a bit about them. And Mr. Fire is a chemist. He smells bullshit when it is presented, even by you.
Easy, mathematical models describing their behavior. QuantumChromoDynamics.
You can’t keep making unscientific assertions like the above without being called a liar and bullshitter. You aren’t showing any scientific understanding.
So speaks the ignorant fool who fails to understand the need for a theory to be supported by citations to the evidence, hence falsifiable.
But you have already put the hole well ever your head. You need to remember the first rule of holes.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 2:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
me:
Uhm, that should be “holographic” universe.
How embarrassing.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 2:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
Your points are well taken. I am not arguing that present theory predicts nothing. I am simply pointing out that while we can theorize about these particles, we can make measurements relating to them, but we can’t isolate them.
“While it might eventually prove to be an inadequate model, it has proven itself useful. That’s an important hallmark of a good theory.”
A theory is good until it is broken. Again, think black body radiation and the ultraviolet catastrophe. The theory of light had pretty darned good predictive power — with the nasty exception that uv light shined at a black body would give off more energy than was put in!
Below uv, theory predicted that the energy that went in would be the same that the black body radiated out. Seems fine to me. All we have to do is ignore uv and higher energy radiation, and the theory held together.
Of course, it was hopelessly broken, but science had no alternative, until a guy named Planck suggested that photons had quantum, steps, of energy. Problem solved.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 2:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Studying the effect of particle is not the same as studying the isolated particle.
So, my comments regarding quarks are correct.
I am not sure why you confused the two ideas.
Too, mathematical models are as good as the data on which they are based. They’re only models that are intended to predict and describe. They are not observations.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 2:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
Absolutely true. I’m just not clear on the point you are attempting to make, I guess. I’d gathered it was something along the lines of, “You can’t isolate quarks, so what proof do you have that quarks exist?”
But I guess that’s not what you’re saying.
Or until something with more predictive power comes along. But yeah — we’re definitely in agreement on that.
Yep. And that’s how it typically works: a theory or hypothesis is found to be in opposition to observed reality, people scratch their heads a bit, and someone thinks up something clever based on the observations that caused the conundrum.
While I’m having trouble grokking all the jargon in Erik’s paper, I thought maybe I’d be able to figure out exactly which inadequate models were being addressed by the paper. So far it seems he’s saying, “Things in the universe exhibit cyclic patterns, so it’s cycles all the way down.”
I’m hoping to have that “Ah-HA” moment where the jargon starts fitting together in my head. But I think it’s going to take a bit more time.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 2:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So, my comments regarding quarks are correctNope.They’re only models that are intended to predict and describe. They are not observations.They are based on observations ,and can have predictive power, and have been used to look for new particles. Unlike the alleged scientiic theory you are defending. It isn’t a scientific theory until fully back up by solid and conclusive evidence, which appears to be lacking.
KG
13 February 2012 at 2:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Crap. Whether you are “defining a new paradigm” (there’s another square of my crank bingo card filled!) or not, you do not seek to redefine well-established existing terms in ways that are inconsistent with current use unless you are either seeking to confuse your audience, or are yourself confused.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 2:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Dang, blockquoe fail #203.
Nope.
They are based on observations and well accepted scentific theory, and can have predictive power, and have suggested the existence of new particles. Unlike the alleged scientific theory you are defending. It isn’t a scientific theory until fully back up by solid and conclusive evidence, which appears to be lacking.
It isn’t a theory just because you call it one. I don’t and won’t call it a scientific theory until it meets my professional criteria, as it lacks (and I suspect will always lack) the proper evidence to back it up.
I’ll simplify it for you. Ideas =/= scientific theory. The paper had an idea. Ideas + evidence = scientific theory. The paper lacked the evidence.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 2:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
More desperate grasping from the crank.
Would that be in bullshit factual, epistemological, and reading comprehension fails like:
And then the hemorroid cherry on the shit sundae:
Wow. Just-so, self-fulfilling circular bullshit and confirmation bias. Keep crankin’!
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 2:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ok Nettle. This is gone on far enough. You have been treated with undeserved understanding and patience and responded with insults. You’re playing a game and I’m done playing now. Why don’t you go nettle somewhere else now?
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 2:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I am done with him, but this one I missed and especially irked me.
There are RNA viruses RIGHT NOW…they evolve. This is not even wrong.
pentatomid
13 February 2012 at 3:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
What the hell is so very logical here. The word amino has always, as far as I can tell anyway, referred to the presence of nitrogen (mor specifically an amine group). ‘thio-’ is generally used to refer to stuff containing sulfur. Why does Andrulis feel that his ‘introduction of new concepts’ requires completely redefining existing concepts. Why doesn’t he just use existing terms. Listen nettleface, if this is your idea of very logical, then you’ve got issues.
Also:
Ok, now I know it. You’re a liar. Why do I say this? Well you claim to be a scientist, yet you have no idea what the term unfalsifiable means. Unfalsifiable=untestable=scientifically worthless. A good scientific theory is falsifiable, but not false. For example Darwin’s theory of evolution can be falsified, for example by finding a fossil rabbit in Cambrian strata. However, it has never been falsified and has the evidence on it’s side, making accurate predictions about the natuural world.
But in any case, please tell me how you became a scientist without understanding the basic concept of falsifiability? That is if you really are a scientist.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 3:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nettleingenting, what do you think of the work of Vincent Fleury and Stuart Pivar, who have similar groundbreaking theories of lots-of-stuff?
If so, do you consider them more substantiated or less substantitiated than
yourErik’s seminal paper?nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 3:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
Good for you that you have the intellectual curiosity to read the paper. Hopefully, you have the mental fortitude to make it through. I find it a tough slog.
I find it easier first to ignore most of the neologisms and focus on the quasi-scientific diagrams (or equations if you prefer).
KG,
you are being foolish. All of science is neologisms and newly defined language. The words Sodium Azide and Wittig Reaction would mean nothing 300 years ago. Hell, science has gone through several paradigm shifts where new words have had to be defined, but I suspect you don’t know or care. For example, the phlogiston theory was replaced (a paradigm shift) by the idea of oxygen. What the heck is oxygen? A word that was invented by early chemists to explain what allows fires to burn and animals to breath. Not good enough for you? How about the idea that an oxidizer DOES NOT HAVE TO BE OXYGEN! I presume you think such an idea to be baloney, but you clearly have your mind set on the bizarre idea that language is immutable. The linguistic term for such an insipid idea is “the etymological fallacy,” where one presumes that a word means what its root means.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
The paper is loaded with evidence. You clearly lack both the interest and probably the intellectual ability to even read the paper, let alone understand it. In a previous post (scroll up) I gave a long list of evidence. Again, you probably either ignored it or didn’t understand it because it was biochemistry.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 3:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Amino is not a neologism. That issue what polkadot are trying to orgy you!
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 3:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Just pointing out.
pentatomid
13 February 2012 at 3:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oi, nettleface, amino is an existing term. It refers to compounds containing an amine group. Why is it ‘very logical’ for Andrulis to start using it for things containing sulfur, something for which there is already another term: thio?
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 3:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
We Are Ing
“Amino is not a neologism”
I will graciously assume that you are intelligent and have simply misunderstood me.
About the word Amino, I did not state it was a neologism. Rather, I said Erik uses the word to focus on sulfur as opposed to the amine. He does so because cysteine and methionine are the first molecules to incorporate sulfur. So, Erik is just trying to emphasize that while nitrogen emerges biologically with RNA, sulfur emerges biologically with amino acids.
You would know all this if you read the paper, but for reasons known only to yourself, you clearly would prefer to argue from a position of ignorance.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 3:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
Well, frankly it’s not entirely intellectual curiosity. I’m really quite a dullard with more interest in shiny things and things that move quickly and erratically. There’s a lot of, “What the hell is nettleingenting talking about?” going on. Also, I’m a bit masochistic.
So far, though, from what little I can glean, the evidence presented isn’t terribly persuasive. It still seems an exercise in pattern recognition rather than a cohesive hypothesis. But that could just be me. It’s reeeeeeaaalllly hard to tell.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 3:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
We Are Ing
“Oxidizers are compounds which are capable of reacting with and oxidizing (i.e., giving off oxygen) other materials”
Have you not taken basic chemistry? Your definition is nonsensical.
When you oxidize something, like coal, you do NOT give off oxygen. You give off carbon dioxide, which is not oxygen. Don’t believe me? Try breathing pure carbon dioxide.
Another example is rust. Try breathing rust.
Yet another example is the oxygen used in the space shuttle main tank. It oxidizes the liquid hydrogen to form water. Try breathing water.
Afterwards, try breathing oxygen. Big difference, hunh?
That’s because your body needs oxygen to perform oxidative reactions.
Other oxidizers include fluorine and chlorine.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 3:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No, it is loaded with allegations and sophistry. For example, what is the evidence (citation) that RNA causes DNA mutations? Put up or shut up.
You don’t get it. This is evidence: Lenski. A citation to the peer reviewed scientific literature. A citation for each questionable claim that is made is required. The fact you don’t get it, tells me you aren’t a scientist, which I am.
Citation needed! (see how that works)?
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 3:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
sodium azide and the Wittig olefination were not terms expropriated from a pre-existing usage and then confusingly redefined, the way ‘amino’ was here, moron.
An embarrassing fail for someone who claims to be a chemist.
You can see why the generalization of the phrase oxidation came about historically: it was a specific phenomenon thought to be traceable to one source, that ended up having a number of sources.
There is no such excuse for ‘amino’ – where the term is specifically associated with the nitrogen atom.
Hence KG’s inference that Andrulis was either ignorant or disingenuous.
You were a crank from your first post, but now you’re really starting to show fatigue.
KG
13 February 2012 at 3:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You are being dishonest. Inventing new terms may be necessary; redefining old ones in ways which are both idiosyncratic and completely inconsistent with their existing meaning is not: as I said, it indicates either confusion, or the desire to confuse.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 3:37 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I suspect it would first emerge as an anaerobic energy source. At least I’ve seen articles to that effect. Again, citation needed.
pentatomid
13 February 2012 at 3:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yeah, I’ve been trying to get that point accross, but apparently nettleface doesn’t read my posts. Maybe it’s because I called him nettleface. Meh.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 3:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yeah so Ing’s point there had a mistake.
You then see fit to rub it in with several repetitive paragraphs, rather than adressing more substantial things.
Someone’s trying to puff up their credentials.
Bored now.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 3:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, and nettles, the reason Einstein’s theory took 10 years to be accepted was that he made predictions in his publication that would falsify his general theory of relativity. It took that long to prepare and make the actual empirical measurements (gravitational lensing by the sun). They were made and found to correspond to his theory. Now, what falsifiable predictions are in the cranks paper?
pentatomid
13 February 2012 at 3:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Again, nettleface, why does Andrulis use an existing term (amino) for something different from its common usage (compounds containing sulfur, apparently) for which there is also an existing term (thio)? Why, according to you, is this so ‘very logical’? Is he deliberately trying to be confusing?
pentatomid
13 February 2012 at 3:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
just for clarity, the ‘compounds containing sulfur’ in my previous comment refered to the ‘something differet from its common usage’, not to the ‘common usage’-part. sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 3:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Seriously, nettleingenting, you have demonstrated no more of an understanding of Andrulis’ paper than we have.
Your references to experimental support through RNA and other things give no reference to gyres, but at best simply reassert existing findings and try to link them together through these mysterious and unfalsifiable shibboleths.
When pressed for how they connect to gyres, the best you can vomit up is this laughable, circular horseshit:
I mean, are you not embarrassed with yourself for writing this?
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 3:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
“No, it is loaded with allegations and sophistry. For example, what is the evidence (citation) that RNA causes DNA mutations? Put up or shut up.”
I already explained the evidence in a previous post, but you were not capable of understanding, I suspect. Either that, or you didn’t care. I suspect the former.
Study the paper, then I will dignify your question with an answer.
Mr. Fire
“sodium azide and the Wittig olefination were not terms expropriated from a pre-existing usage and then confusingly redefined, the way ‘amino’ was here, moron.”
You are willfully confusing my explanations, and using an ad hominem remark for some strange reason. The first two words I explained as neologisms. The word amino I explain as have a a shifted meaning.
Words are redefined all. the. time. You graciously provided me with a perfect example. Moron used to be a scientific term referring to the most mentally retarded individuals. Thus, it was a classification, not an insult. Psychiatry and psychology have long since stopped using the term. So, does that mean moron still has its original meaning>? Clearly not. It is now meant as an insult, not a neutral description. But then, you knew all that right?
In a related vein, Erik is shifting the readers’s attention from the amine part of the amino acid to the emergence of sulfur in biological systems. He does this because nitrogen emerges earlier, in RNA.
I told you this, but you willfully twisted my statements in a way that serves your petty (and bizarre) point of view. I would presume you would just be teasing me if you weren’t so spiteful. What’s wrong, dude?
KG
You are being presumptive. The idea that the Earth was the center of the solar system was redefine to be that the Sun was the center of the solar system. A “solar-centric” viewpoint was a new term necessary to describe a new paradigm.
More important, redefining old terms is both necessary and happens all the time. See my explantation of moron above. Its redefinition was bizarre and inconsistent with its preceding meaning. Previously, a moron was a psychological term referring to an individual incapable of anything but assisted living. Now, a moron can, as I proudly demonstrate, debate with even people on the internet like you.
So, which is it? Is a moron a neutral, scientific term referring to a person incapable of basic human interactions?
Or is moron a negative term referring to someone with whom you disagree because you think their point of view invalid?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 3:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nettles, get back to us when one of the unevidenced predictions in the paper is properly falsified with empircal evidence. Until then, all it is, is an idea, not a proper scientific theory.
pentatomid
13 February 2012 at 4:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And this is a good reason to use words in a confusing way… Why exactly? Why should the ‘fact’ that sulfur emerged in aminoacids first matter to the use of the word ‘amino’? After all, amino acids are so called because they have an amine group, not the other way round. I don’t care what Andrulis is trying to amphesize. Amino has a meaning in science, and it’s not ‘containing sulfur’ (for which there is already a word ‘thio’).
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 4:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ha.
You do not understand what an ad hominem is, nettleingenting. I can therefore assume that you do not understand anything else.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 4:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Troll
Get back to me when string theory is falsified with empirical data.
pentatomid
Yes this usage is important. Yes thio exists, so does mercapto. The point of the usage, as I have explained, is to emphasize that with amino acids comes sulfur. It’s the sulfur that is special, so Erik focusses on that. It just happens to emerge with amino acids, so that is what should define them — not the amino or the acid. Focus on the emergence of sulfur which, critically, happens with amino acids. He’s saying that the attention to the amino acid is misplaced and that the incorporation of sulfur in cellular systems is key. Confusing, yes. Logical, yes.
Mr. Fire
You are confused — and making yourself look foolish again.
pentatomid
13 February 2012 at 4:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
See, to me, what Andrulis is doing by redefining the meaning of ‘amino’ to ‘emphasize the fact that sulfur arose first in aminoacids’(citation needed, nettleface) is something like the following (and I know the analogy I’m about to give isn’t perfect).
Suppose I’m writing a paper on some Mirid bugs. The species I’m writing about is a bright green species with white stripes all over its body. However, the particular bright green color arose first in a different species, which doesn’t have white stripes, but has black dots all over its body. Hence the color green shall now be refered to as ‘having black spots’, to emphasize this fact.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 4:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
pentatomid
An elaboration/clarification
Mercapto is inherently confusing. I have worked with, say, mercaptoethanol. Fun for pranks sure. But, I have never, ever used it with mercury. Maybe its just me, but I think mercaptoethanol would make no sense to a layman, were you to say, you see, the mercapto means it has sulfur.
feralboy12
13 February 2012 at 4:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ah, there you go again, thinking language is immutable.
Keep in mind that nettleingenting reserves the right to re-define words willy-nilly as required by his new paradigm. And English is his first language, not his last.
“To control the infinitive is to rule the entire compost!”
–Xeres Furd
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 4:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
pentatomid
1, you want a citation? Read the paper and then will talk.
2. nettleface? Flattery will get you nowhere.
3. Heck, even the present “central dogma” shows that sulfur is nowhere to be found in the cell until the production of cysteine and methionine. This is basic biochemistry.
4. You do not have to like Erik’s reasoning and focus on sulfur. I’m just the messenger.
5. Shoot the messenger if you don’t like the message.
pentatomid
13 February 2012 at 4:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m sorry, but I still don’t see how any of this makes changing the meaning of ‘amino’ a usefull exercise. Using a word in a different way from the rest of the world, even if it would ‘make more sense’, is, as a behavior, not a logical thing to do, as it is detrimental to getting your message accross. Especially in this case, since there is no obvious need to do so.
Therrin
13 February 2012 at 4:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No no, Erik’s the only one allowed to redefine words. Nettle is merely the self-referential glossary that leaves one flipping between Dunning and Kruger for hours.
KG
13 February 2012 at 4:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting,
That is not a redefinition of an existing term. It is utterly absurd and dishonest to refer to a new theory as a redefinition.
More dishonesty. That was not a redefinition within science, let alone an attempt by one person in a single paper to redefine existing scientific terms that have clear, commonly understood and current scientific meanings. It was the adoption of a scientific term into everyday language, parallel to those of “ecology” and “quantum” more recently. None of these adoptions changed the scientific meaning of the terms.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 4:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
pentatomid
words change meaning all the time — and in important way.
For example, the world used to use the word homosexual as the description of a disease. Only slowly did the concept emerge that the word homosexual did not refer to a disease. The word was slowly being used in a different way than the rest of the world (some parts still hold homosexuality to be some sort of illness).
So, how was this not a logical thing to do? Is the new usage of the word homosexual detrimental to getting your message across? Should we return to its old usage just because “it seems to work fine and everybody understood it”? Seems illogical.
More logical is to accept its new meaning and realize that there will necessarily be confusion, as indeed we find with the word homosexual. Michele Bachmann’s husband claims to be able to “cure” homosexuality. So, is it back to being a disease? Confusing!
Keep in mind, Erik is defining a new paradigm. Much as the word ether changed its meaning in the shift to modern science, so are words changing to fit Erik’s paradigm.
KG
13 February 2012 at 4:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’d currently be willing to make a small but significant bet that “nettleingenting” is none other than Erik Andrulis.
Therrin
13 February 2012 at 4:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Um. Did you notice that shark passing below you?
pentatomid
13 February 2012 at 4:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
3. Heck, even the present “central dogma” shows that sulfur is nowhere to be found in the cell until the production of cysteine and methionine. This is basic biochemistry.
It may well be basic biochemistry (even though I don’t remember ever having encountered this claim when I took basic biochemistry at university, but that could be me. It never was my strongest subject), nevertheless: Provide citation please. Shouldn’t be too hard to find, if it’s so basic. Right?
pentatomid
13 February 2012 at 4:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
crap, blockquote fail.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 4:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
KG
You remind me of Galileo’s comment on his critics.
Looking at the moon through a telescope, he found it was not a perfect sphere but covered with craters. His critics did not believe him — and refused to look through his telescope because they KNEW the moon had to be a perfect sphere. They said, well, if you see craters, then we know the moon must be surrounded by a perfect INVISIBLE sphere. Galileo, who was wonderful with this kind of stuff replied, well then, how do you not know that the perfect invisible sphere is surrounded by an invisible sphere of craters.
Their reply, with ire, was that we KNOW things are immutable.
To which Galileo said, I wish they were all like their beliefs. Immutable, unchangable, and incapable of spreading their ignorance.
KG, you are very much like Galileo’s critics. Perhaps, you are a fan of retro-futures.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 4:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nope, nettleingenting. You just really don’t understand what an ad hominem is.
I was hoping you’d be the first to get it, but I guess the quest continues.
+++++++++++++
In more relevant vein: nettleingenting, why do you insist on using circular arguments and just-so stories, such as tornadoes and fingerprints, justify the existence of gyres?
pelamun
13 February 2012 at 4:58 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m no scientist, but as a linguist I can tell that nettle has trouble understanding the difference between concept and word.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 5:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
pentatomid
check any biochem textbook. sulfur is nowhere to be found until you get to cysteine and methionine.
I have taught biochemistry, so it is one of my strong subjects.
Asking for a citation or reference on this subject is like asking for a reference on DNA having genes. Silly.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 5:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Mr. Fire
More silliness from you. You refuse understanding and thus can never be satisfied with any statement I make.
pelamun
Educate me, please.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 5:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The homosexual gambit has to be the most bizarre strawman I’ve seen in a long time.
Therrin’s right. You’re really starting to melt down into grandiose, deranged rambling, nettleingetting.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 5:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Still waiting for your evidence nettles. Silent as far as peer reviewed scientific literature citations for gyres in biology, cosmology, etc. I wonder why that is???
Nope, KG is a realist, unlike you. There is no evidence for gyres, as you haven’t presented any. Putting an idea out is not the same as putting out a true scientific theory, which requires solid and conclusive evidence. Oh, and give up the sockpuppeting Andrulis.
pentatomid
13 February 2012 at 5:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
As has been pointed out to you, yes we know words change their meaning, but hardly in this manner. This has all been pointed out to you, in particular by KG. Also, the analogy with homosexuality fails completely: homosexuality still means being sexually attracted to the same gender. This used to be regarded as a disease and now it isn’t anymore, but the basic meaning (sexual attraction or behaviour between individuals of the same gender) hasn’t changed. Now if homosexuality had suddenly come to mean ‘the color blue’, then that would be closer to what Andrulis is doing here. Surely you can see that someone referring to smurfs as homosexual is not exactly productive if all he wants to do is make a statement on the color of smurfs.
Seriously, changing the meaning of amino from ‘containing an amine group’ to ‘biochemical compound containing sulfur’ is in no way logical. I, and others here, have given you reasons why. You’ve failed to adress them and only repeated why Erik Andrulis apparantly chose to execute this change. Having a reason to do something, however, does not equate to having a logically sound and good reason to do something.
pentatomid
13 February 2012 at 5:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Okay, it’s getting pretty late here, so I’m out of here. Maybe I’ll check up again tomorrow.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 5:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Mr. Fire
“grandiose, deranged rambling”
You are not making sense again. I presented a coherent change in the meaning of a word. What is grandiose about that? Absolutely nothing, but you see so full of outright hatred, that logical won’t stop you from making untenable comments. Weird.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
“There is no evidence for gyres”
I prvoided some simple ones here, and the paper is loaded with evidence. But you don’t care, I know.
There are those that see; there are those that see when they are shown; and there are those that refuse to see.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls, you are the last.
You have been shown the paper, but gosh it’s hard to understand!
Far easier to just argue for its own sake about something about which you remain willfully ignorant.
Why bother learning anything difficult and new, right?
Just watch Dancing with the Stars with a bowl of popcorn. Now that’s more like it.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 5:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nope fuckwitted idjit, it is easy to understand, as a 30+ year practitioner of science, and a 25+ year skeptic. It is crankdom at its best. Full of sound and fury, but not proper scientific evidence, lacking the scientific rigor to make it into even a bad paper, which is the best it can hope for. Nothing but inane ideas badly expressed. Boring and irrelevant, just like all your posts to date. Care to play some more?
KG
13 February 2012 at 5:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting@245,
You can’t answer my point, so you babble nonsensically about Galileo. A sure sign of the crank.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 5:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Actually I’m wrong but not wrong
I made the mistake because I tend to think of Oxidizers as the safety classification while thinking of oxidizing agents as those involved in redox.
pelamun
13 February 2012 at 5:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nah, since you seem to know everything about everything, I’ll be glad if you get back to me after you’ve read an introductory book on semantics.
(My comment was merely a popcorn eating from the sidelines kind of statement anyways.)
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 5:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It still is my point that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Because I find it hard to believe someone could actually be around chemicals and not have noticed this usage.
KG
13 February 2012 at 5:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Even if it were coherent, it would still be the height of grandiosity for a single scientist to presume that they could, unilaterally, completely alter the meaning of a well-understood scientific term.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 5:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
pentatomid
Your criticisms are mostly fair. The reference to the color blue is strange. The change of *focus* is the key to what Erik is doing. You don’t have to like it, but he is simply saying we should notice the emergence of sulfur.
The fundamental meaning of homosexual HAS changed, but I guess you don’t consider the idea of a sick person becoming totally healthy after a bunch of psychologists voted on the idea to be a dramatic change. I can’t think of any physical disease cured by a bunch of psychologists voting.
Sure, part of the original meaning of homosexual persists, and you may consider it to be the core part. But then, I suspect if you were a homosexual subjected to “treatments” you would probably be thinking that you were sick first — and that your sickness was the homosexuality. Just my speculation, I admit.
Again, I just explained Erik’s reasoning for the focus on sulfur. I can understand why you disagree. Not really a big deal.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 5:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I strongly suspect this is a lie.
I can’t imagine anyone other than a troll looking for lulz or the author themselves going around in circles this long in impotent defense
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 5:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
FFS. The definition didn’t change at all, the prognosis that it was a disease did.
Red Pandas and Great Pandas both have the definition Panda, since we started investigating we’ve corrected an error and seen that red pandas are not bears and are closer to weasels and skunks while Great Pandas are bears. Their definition is the same they just go on a different shelf.
feralboy12
13 February 2012 at 5:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This is where I start to have problems with the theory. If a gyrapex is not triquantal, would not any vit in nearby paravot be less than instantly regfo? And any new vit be inverted due to the excessive plig?
It would also seem to imply a central grand knusp zilping a massive and glorious whonbley. And this is indefensible, given the mighty philharmonic gesticulative nature of the emissions and the 641-faceted implosion that results when a fejrath strikes a non-anti fejrath.
Or is everyone too lazy to understand?
Therrin
13 February 2012 at 5:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The etymological part? Yeah, I consider that pretty “core”.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 5:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Forsooth gyro is berry bananascope in the revitatalist lemon drop!
IN YOUR FACE NETTLE! TOTAL BURN ON YOU!
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 5:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
FTFY. What is a big deal Erik is your lying about who you are. Little lie, big lie.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 5:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Anyone else here watch Adventure Time? I’m reminded of Ricardo
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 5:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
pelamun
A strange, sarcastic comment that contradicts your earlier one. But ok.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
“Nope fuckwitted idjit,” such flattery makes me blush.
“it is easy to understand, as a 30+ year practitioner of science, and a 25+ year skeptic”
No. With your experience you have too much invested in the present theories of science to spend precious time on a radically new theory. You have absolutely every reason to stick to “what works” and avoid the radically new.
This paper is not for you.
KG
“Even if it were coherent, it would still be the height of grandiosity for a single scientist to presume that they could, unilaterally, completely alter the meaning of a well-understood scientific term.”
Ah, so you are redirecting your criticism toward Erik and now. Well, here I can agree with you. I’ll go further. The entire paper is grandiose.
We Are Ing
Your comment doesn’t really make sense. Just to be clear, an oxidizer causes oxygen to bind to something. Sure, oxygen may be released first, but then it has to bind to something to be an oxidizer. A tank of oxygen that just is releasing oxygen into a room is not an oxidizer.
In contrast, a tank of oxygen feeding an acetylene torch, IS an oxidizer because it is oxidizing the acetylene to form a flame.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 5:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Wait wait wait wait wait…this is the definition that right before you said was wrong and that I was an idiot for making? You realize that right?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 5:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Erik, you do realize that defending your inane paper like you have all afternoon is utterly and totally unprofessional. Do you really want your department head to hear about it?
truthspeaker
13 February 2012 at 5:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yes, that’s the idea. That’s the strength of science.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 5:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
We Are Ing
We are misunderstanding each other on this subject. The whole point of oxidation is NOT the release of the oxygen, as oxygen can be released without any effect. The point is the binding of the oxygen to something. It is the binding that is the oxidation.
I hope that explanation clears the matter of oxidizer up.
truthspeaker
13 February 2012 at 5:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
• Galileo
• You haven’t taken the effort to understand my radical new theory.
• Anybody who ignores my idea has a vested interest in stifling innovation.
• I’m being persecuted or silenced because my idea is so radical.
Did I miss any? I only need one more for Bingo.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 5:58 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
“Erik, you do realize that defending your inane paper like you have all afternoon is utterly and totally unprofessional. Do you really want your department head to hear about it?”
Your comment made me laugh a bit.
I don’t think the department head will care, since I am not Erik, though I’m flattered you would think so.
I do know Erik well, as I have indicated before.
myeck waters
13 February 2012 at 6:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ing, I’m not familiar with Adventure Time or Ricardo, but if you spent, say, a paragraph talking about them it would contain more real, useful information than Eric/Nettles entire output here.
truthspeaker
13 February 2012 at 6:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’s the science equivalent of Cockney rhyming slang. As a student of linguistics, I approve.
KG
13 February 2012 at 6:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m assuming that you are Erik.
You do realise that “grandiose” is not generally a term of approbation?
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 6:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Nettle
Noooooooooooooo…in the safety classification an oxidizer is something that contributes to combustion typically by yielding oxygen.
In chemistry oxidizers remove electrons.
Your original point seemed to be that one would think oxidizing equations needed oxygen.
I’m baffled with how you’re now getting the definition wrong. Because now you seem to be imply that oxidation requires some oxygen in the equation.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem03/chem03893.htm
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 6:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
truthspeaker
• Galileo
I don’t know what you mean here. I will presume you are saying that it is the height of arrogance to compare a radical new theory to a historical figure who created radically new theories. Not sure why this comparison is an issue at all, though.
• You haven’t taken the effort to understand my radical new theory.
It’s HARD to learn the radically new. Why bother trying? Hell, why continue to learn anything after graduation?
• Anybody who ignores my idea has a vested interest in stifling innovation.
This claim is absurd. Most people either won’t care or try. Those who wish to stifle innovation are the minority.
• I’m being persecuted or silenced because my idea is so radical.
I would say Erik is being ostracized and you do know that CWRU retracted their publicity because two physicists were “embarrassed” (threatened) by having a mo bio professor have the audacity to tread on their sacred ground.
Did I miss any? I only need one more for Bingo.
I would say you missed the entire point of the paper, and that you probably will choose to ignore its content rather than do the tough mental labor of trying to understand it.
So, Bingo!
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 6:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The scene this reminds me of
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 6:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The definition of homosexuality changed due to changing social attitudes. The label, though somewhat offensive due to the original definition, would still apply to the exact same people. The target objects (in this case, people) remains the same. Our social attitudes about those objects (in this case, people) has changed.
It seems the re-definition of amino changes the group of objects to which it applies. This is a radical and senseless re-definition, one that is far more confusing than helpful, most especially to those who use the term precisely — that is, practicing scientists, the very audience Erik hopes to target.
It doesn’t make the concepts clearer. Instead, it obfuscates and misdirects. This will tend to have the exact opposite effect intended.
Unless, that is, obfuscation and confusion is the intent.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 6:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
We Are Ing
It’s simply a matter of focus. “Put another way, the oxidant (oxidizing agent) removes electrons from another substance; i.e., it oxidizes other substances, and is thus itself reduced. And, because it “accepts” electrons, it is also called an electron acceptor.” That is the oxidative process.
I already said that fluorine and chlorine can also act as oxidizers.
KG
I’m assuming that you are Erik.
Assume away.
I will assume you are the Queen of Norway.
I know with certainty that you are wrong in your assumption, as I am not he. I’ve already said that I know him, though.
I have no idea if you are indeed the Queen of Norway, though.
You do realise that “grandiose” is not generally a term of approbation?
yep.
Ariaflame, BSc, BF, PhD
13 February 2012 at 6:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
In any case, unless Erik provides some indication of what it would take to prove his hypothesis or idea wrong it can be safely put on the shelf with the other interesting, or in this case baffling ideas about the universe. If the is no way to test it, then we have no obligation to take it seriously.
Arguing about minutiae and his misappropriation of scientific terms doesn’t address this.
The reference to the uv catastrophe is misleading because in that situation new science was needed to explain something that the established theories failed at. Here there does not appear to be any such failure of current theories.
We Are Ing
13 February 2012 at 6:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I KNOW THAT YOU FUCKING IDIOT! That’s what I said.
You said
Which is wrong in BOTH senses of the term. The strict chemical sense it is wrong because oxygen isn’t required, in the materials safety sense it is wrong because they’re concerned with the YIELDING of oxygen, not it’s binding.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 6:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’s only an idea, not a theory. It does’t have the evidence required to be a theory.
Har. You aren’t being persecuted, as nobody is coming knocking on your door. You aren’t being silenced. Your inane and stoopid paper is still out there. Nobody expects you take it back. We just expect you to take your lumps for being a doofus like any responsible adult should. The best thing you can do is to just lay low and let it blow over. People have short memories.
Galileo had real enemies, who threatened him with torture. You aren’t being threatened at all. Galileo also had the conclusive evidence that you lack. There is no comparison except in your paranoid and delusionally romantic mind.
No, it came about because of arrogance and stupidity on Erik’s part. If he really had the evidence, no problem. But there is no evidence for the gyres…
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 6:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
“It seems the re-definition of amino changes the group of objects to which it applies.”
Only at first blush and for those who don’t know enough biochem to know that the amino acids cysteine and methionine are the primary carriers of sulfur
From the paper: of or relating to sulfur compounds, amino acids, polypeptides
While the introduction of the word sulfur is novel, it is logical as I previously indicated and notice that “amino acids, polypeptides” are there too. So, I think this idea is not really that confusing. The redefinition is merely an expansion on of the definition.
I hope that clears up the amino argument.
KG
13 February 2012 at 6:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The press release is still there, at the other end of PZ’s link. One only has to read it to know that the paper it refers to is almost certainly a complete load of tosh. Just so everyone can judge this for themselves, here it is:
Note the absurd reference to “the creation-evolution debate”. There is of course no such debate within the scientific community; a paper that “synthesizes arguments” from scientists on the one hand, and a parcel of ignorant ideologues on the other, is bound to be drivel. Of course, this could be the ignorance of those responsible for the press release, but if so, Andrulis himself should have, and preseumably would have, protested.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 6:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nettles/Erik, long past time to fade into the bandwidth, which was really prior to your first post. Why are you afraid to do so???
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 6:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
We Are Ing
Ok. I accept your criticism. I have been too narrow in my definition.
Ariaflame, BSc, BF, PhD
In any case, unless Erik provides some indication of what it would take to prove his hypothesis or idea wrong it can be safely put on the shelf with the other interesting, or in this case baffling ideas about the universe. If the is no way to test it, then we have no obligation to take it seriously.
A fair criticism.
Arguing about minutiae and his misappropriation of scientific terms doesn’t address this.
Ditto
The reference to the uv catastrophe is misleading because in that situation new science was needed to explain something that the established theories failed at. Here there does not appear to be any such failure of current theories.
Not true. Present science has plenty of theories that don’t quite work or don’t really work. I am not very knowledgeable about failures and omissions of present science, but if you are curious, check out this post.
http://milesmathis.com/erik.pdf
The author mentions several problems in contemporary science.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Again, the paper presents loads of evidence of gyres, but you don’t care enough to study the paper, and you ignore natural phenonomena like ocean currents, tornadoes, the orbit of the moon, etc. The evidence is overwhelming, but you are willfully ignoring it.
KG
13 February 2012 at 6:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The term “amino” has a precise, agreed meaning in chemistry. It does not include the vast majority of sulphur compounds. Redefining “amino” to include all sulfur compounds because some amino acids include sulfur is like redefining “crustacean” to include all animals with eight limbs, because some crustaceans have eight limbs. It’s nonsense. It’s daft. It’s ludicrous dribble.
I hope that clears up the amino argument.
KG
13 February 2012 at 6:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Can you really be as stupid as you appear? Nobody is denying that there are gyres. That does not imply that gyres explain life, the universe and everything. Really, the claim that they do makes no more sense than the humorous claim in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that the answer to the ultimate question is 42.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 6:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
KG,
“The press release is still there, at the other end of PZ’s link.” Right. I did not say it was totally unavailable.
“Note the absurd reference to “the creation-evolution debate”. There is of course no such debate within the scientific community;” Correct. But there still are people (like those who write scientific textbooks for Texas) who believe and promote creationism. So, there is an ongoing debate.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Again, I am not he. Erik would never waste his time here. In fact, he told me specifically to avoid this hole of hate, but I figured posting here would be fun.
myeck waters
13 February 2012 at 6:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This thread has at least introduced me to Ricardio and Adventure Time, for good or ill. It’s no Dirty Spaceman, but it was still fun.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 6:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
KG,
The majority of biological sulfur is in amino acids. Can you name any other biological molecule that contains as much sulfur as all the cysteine or all the methionine in organisms? No, Most of the sulfur is in those two amino acids. Nothing else comes close.
“Nobody is denying that there are gyres.”
You aren’t paying attention. One of your fellow haters was indeed denying the evidence of gyres.
Now, if you can’t pay attention to others comments in this forum (and my responses), then you don’t stand a chance of understanding the paper.
Don’t try.
Just relax.
'Tis Himself, OM
13 February 2012 at 7:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
We’re not worth Erik’s time so instead we get the second string to try to peddle his bullshit to the intelligentsia.
'Tis Himself, OM
13 February 2012 at 7:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So what? That still doesn’t mean Erik can usurp a legitimate scientific word with a universally (except for Erik) agreed upon meaning just because he’s run out of suffixes and prefixes to stick on the word gyre.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 7:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
‘Tis Himself, OM
“We’re not worth Erik’s time so instead we get the second string ”
Yes. Many of you have clearly indicated you aren’t worth any of his time.
Second string? I am truly flattered! All through HS sports I was usually third string!
“So what? That still doesn’t mean Erik can usurp a legitimate scientific word”
More willfull ignorance. You clearly have not read the paper.
From the paper: of or relating to sulfur compounds, amino acids, polypeptides
The majority of biological sulfur is in amino acids! Why does it make you so uncomfortable to address this simple fact explicitly?
KG
13 February 2012 at 7:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting,
There is, as I said, no scientific debate; and the press release specifically says that the paper “synthsizes arguments” from “both sides” of the debate. So it is saying the paper takes the arguments of the ignorant ideologues seriously, and incorporates them. Either the author approves this implication, or he does not. Which is it?
That’s completely irrelevant. It wouldn’t matter if all biological sulfur was in amino acids, the attempt at redefinition is still daft.
No, he wasn’t. He was denying the existence of the gyres, i.e. those in the paper – the ones that explain life, the universe and everything.
KG
13 February 2012 at 7:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Well, I’m off to bed. Idiot Erik will no doubt continue his dribblings for a few hours yet. Have fun!
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 7:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nobody has to read your idiocy. The paper crankdom, as everybody with half a mind could see from the description.
And this has to do with gyres how???? Irrelevancy and arrogance.
And why should I believe a liar and bullshitter, and confessed troll, who doesn’t understand how science operates? Again, Erik, this is utterly and totally unprofessional, even if he sent a loser like you to defend his sorry ass, which shows his desperation if true.
nettleingenting
13 February 2012 at 7:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ok.
You guys have now bored me.
Your closed minds and bizarre misinterpretations of what I say have grown tiresome.
Also, your need to hurl insults at me just reveals that many of you are terribly insecure. Such a shame.
I’m sure you’ll have fun tormenting the next person trying to contribute constructively!
Nonetheless, I wish you all well.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 7:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh good Christ. Are you still plugging this crackpot bullshit? The post that says utterly demented, paranoid craziness like:
+++++++++++++++++++
In a totally unrelated point, I’d like to ask you what you think an ad hominem is.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
13 February 2012 at 7:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
We were bored from your first insipid post.
Scientific minds that require actual evidence, not just claims. We are tiresome to the liars and bullshitters.
Well, if you ever provided real evidence, and didn’t keep avoiding that issue, your treatment would have been different. But you behaved and responded like a troll, not an honest person in a discussion.
Hopefully they will back up their inane claims with real evidence. It does make a difference. Hint, the links you presented to peer reviewed scientific literature? OH, that’s right, you didn’t link…
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 8:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
And that has to do with the word “amino,” how exactly?
If Erik is that unconcerned with precise language in a field in which precise language is paramount, that’s his business. But he shouldn’t be so surprised when this results in ridicule. And the stupid thing is, he could have avoided that criticism simply by using the “thio” prefix.
Plus, thiogyre has a really great sound to it, don’t you think? I’m sure it’s important. Revolutionary, even.
In any case, I’m a bit confused. Would “amino” still include all amino acids, or only the two with sulfur?
'Tis Himself, OM
13 February 2012 at 9:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Listen, you stupid, smug twit, amino is a term with a specific chemical meaning. So what if a couple of amino acids have sulfur, most amino acids do not. As has been pointed out, there’s another term, thio, used to describe compounds containing sulfur. There’s no reason for Erik to try to redefine a term with an agreed upon meaning when there’s already another term with the definition Erik is trying to use.
No, asshole, the reason you’re insulted is you’re an arrogant, pompous prig defending the indefensible.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
13 February 2012 at 9:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
After an initial read-through, I have to admit I have no fucking clue what the paper is about.
The proposal is put forth not to explain anything unusual. It was not prompted by a specific lack, but a general one: the fact that we don’t have a grand unified theory of everything. It’s like the author realized this lack, and thought to himself, “There’s gotta be an explanation for everything.”
And, seeing that swirls and cycles exist in all kinds of things, from galaxy clusters down to DNA strands and smaller, through magnetic fields to ocean waves, the author decided, “Yeah. Swirls and cycles. It’s all swirls and cycles, all the way down. There’s gotta be a great word for that.”
Unlike Galileo, there are no bits of strange data to explain, that run counter to existing theories. There’s no measurements of the movement of the planets running contrary to accepted models. Unlike Galileo, there is less concern with congruence with reality, and more with the internal consistency of the model itself.
As for the claim of “life,” I’m still not clear on how that’s achieved.
The lack of mathematics is notable. There is no clear way that I can see to draw any of the known relationships from this proposal, let alone a clear path to reconciling QM with general relativity — the ultimate test of any theory of everything.
For some reason, the paper reminded of of the Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything, only without any kind of mathematical rigor. Lisi, at least, has proposed a full model open to analysis and critique (the primary critique focusing on the problem of non-chirality). Also, there is a logical basis for proposing an E8 lie group as the fundamental framework of everything, whereas the gyre concept seems to have no such logical basis.
All-in-all, the crank-index is pretty damned high, mostly due to its non-standard use of standard language (which is fairly pervasive, and not limited to “amino”), special cases, and general lack of predictive power. As for its purported “explanatory” power, I’ll wait to see if anyone can derive general relativity and/or quantum mechanics from it. Without that, it hasn’t explained shit.
Mr. Fire
13 February 2012 at 10:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Post-game analysis:
nettleingenting has not provided any actual evidence that they themselves understand what a gyre is, let alone that it is real.
The initial post @140 contained dismissive and content-free Courtier’s Replies along the lines of:
It was footnoted with a link to a screed from a unhinged crank.
+++
When then pressed for information about positive predictions the paper made, they saw fit @146 to paraphrase a half-baked, bastardized mishmash of facts and hypotheses that already exist (and of course with zero attempt to explain how the fuck gyres come into it).
This was footnoted with the classic crank gambit of comparing the subject to Galileo. It’s like the crank Godwin or something.
+++
The post @160 consisted of whining and more Courtier’s Replies coupled with sneering demands to read the entire paper. All while not making any attempt to divulge what they understand about it.
This was footnoted with the absurd (and gramatically-challenged) attempt to shift the burden of proof on everyone else:
Still no attempt to divulge their understanding of gyres.
+++
Posts 162 and 167 revealed an either embarrassing inability to grasp the idea of falsifiability or an embarrassing fail at reading comprehension.
Footnoted by the same inane demand as in 160.
+++
Posts 176 and 179: some chest-beating and burden of proof-shifting. No light shed on gyres.
+++
Post 190 is where the ridiculous attempt to justify redefining ‘amino’ as ‘a sulfur containing compound’ begins.
There are references to some interesting, pre-existing concepts in biochemistry, such as the Wobble Pairs and autocatalysis. And then with a swish of the hand the insinuation is made that Andrulis’ theory somehow explains these as well as or better what is currently out there. I don’t know whether this is clumsiness, or an underhanded attempt at blinding with science.
Oh, and no mention of gyres.
+++
In 196 they are finally pressed into talking about gyres, which is where they come up with this chestnut:
If only I would just read the whole paper I would understand what this non-explanation means! nettleingenting sure isn’t going to provide any clues! That would involve actually having to say something meaningful!
+++
Things circle around for a bit with the same bullshit getting re-asserted. At 228, nettleingenting makes the signature dumbass move of not knowing what an ad hominem is.
+++
After that, more dancing about the amino bullshit, more pomposity, more something-something-I-don’t-care-because-my-eyes-are-glazing-over.
Oh, and no explanation of what gyres are.
+++
Finally @302: a textbook flounce. Multiple standard sneering parting shots.
Will they stick to it though? Or will the gyres – whatever the fuck they are – bring nettleingenting back?
pentatomid
14 February 2012 at 4:00 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Holy Handgrenade, how dense can you get. Seriously.
First of all, you don’t have to have read the paper to understand that the redefenition of an existing word with a very precise meaning in science is just a very stupid idea. End of. You’re done.
Secondly, noone here is uncomfortable with adressing ‘this simpe fact’, since we have adressed it. Adressed it by saying: so fucking what. Seriously, I don’t care if all the sulfur in the galaxy was in a couple of amino acids. That still would not be a good reson to use a word meaning ‘containing an amine group’ to suddenly denote ‘sulfur compounds, amino acids, polypeptides’. Not in the least because there are still amino-compounds (the real defenition, not Erik’s weird ass nonsense) not covered in the new definition. Aminoacids aren’t the only things ‘amino’, mister I’m so good at biochemistry nettleface.
Also, he has no idea how a language actually evolves.
Asking for sources is NEVER silly, even if that source was a general biochemistry book or website. Given the nonsense nettleface is spouting, I can’t go and assume that he’s corect on this. That’s like assuming Kent Hovind knows something about carbon dating.
When asked about falsifiability, he responds:
Demonstrating that he has absolutely no idea what unfalsifiable means. As I have stated before, a good scientific theory is falsifiable, but not false.
When asked for evidence, he just names random cyclical events and, well basically, things that look sort of roundish. Why exactly are these things evidence for Andrulis’ wonedrfull magical ‘theory’? Oh right, I probably haven’t done enough hard work to understand. Tell me, do I need to have faith as well? Every time someonedisagrees with him, nettleface goes on to claim that they haven’t studied the paper, are ignorant or can’t comprehend him.
Arrogant and dishonest, that’s what this guy is.
pentatomid
14 February 2012 at 4:17 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ha! Thanks. I guess it is a bit like that.
Weed Monkey
14 February 2012 at 4:28 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ingenting is Swedish for nothing. I don’t know what this has to do with nettles.
KG
14 February 2012 at 4:41 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This prime piece of idiocy has not been commented on. “DNA having genes”? WTF is that supposed to mean?
pentatomid
14 February 2012 at 5:33 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nigelTheBold
Yep. I’ve mentioned that to old nettleface a couple of times now. His reply was yet another rehashof Andrulis’ reasons for doing this:
Followed by this, which I don’t really get.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
14 February 2012 at 6:52 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
pentatomid:
Yeah. I basically stole it from you, as it’s been far too long since I’ve taken any chemistry to recall that off the top of my head. As a physics major, I never bothered committing those to memory past the semester.
What I don’t get (and I didn’t quite get from the paper) was why Erik was making such a big deal about it. Sure, biologically it shows up almost exclusively in a couple of amino acids. But so what? What’s the big deal? What was he trying to demonstrate?
There certainly wasn’t an over-arching premise here, other than “gyres are everywhere.” There’s a half-assed attempt at replacing quarks, but without any kind of actual physics. There was no attempt to demonstrate how to adapt a Feynman diagram, for instance, something which should be basic (especially considering there’s little math involved), and that (or something like it) is necessary to demonstrate that the model fits with observed reality.
Anyway. I just don’t get what the paper was supposed to address, and I’m not sure all the things that were big deals in the paper are really big deals in reality.
Antiochus Epiphanes
14 February 2012 at 6:57 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Look, Erik…errrr, nettleingenting, if you are still around: It would seem that the only two people who understand this revolutionary manuscript are you two. I’m not talking about just here. I mean among your colleagues. It is clear that you, ummm, I mean Erik, have failed to communicate something important. It’s not at all like Galileo peering through a telescope and declaring “craters!”‘ but more like if he declared “spaghetti sauce!”. Even, with understanding of the repurposed use of commonplace terms, I quickly get lost in the prose of this MS rather than in the concepts.
KG
14 February 2012 at 7:10 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Now that’s just silly – IIRC, the spaghetti tree hadn’t even been discovered in the 16th century!
We Are Ing
14 February 2012 at 9:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No your definition was just wrong. There were two possible contexts and it was wrong for both of them. Let me point out that your haranged and insulted me for using the definition of one context, while seemingly being ignorant of them.
Now, IIRC the Redox reaction is one of those big important ones in chemistry that anyone seeking to overturn the paradigm of chemistry and physics should be very familiar with.
Jesus fucking christ.
DNA is a chemical structure. Gene is the conceptual unit given to lengths of DNA or RNA
Again note with your odd focus on the RNA world that everyone knows RNA works perfectly fine as a genome medium. In fact IIRC the reason why life on earth probably has selected for DNA medium over RNA is that despite the fact that both have equal coding capacity, DNA as a double strand can be broken while preserving the information and it allows for autocorrecting mechanisms.
pentatomid
14 February 2012 at 10:01 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I hadn’t gone into the ‘DNA having genes’ thing before, since I thought I vaguely knew what nettleface was on about and his main point was that me asking for references was somehow ridiculous,so I chose to adress that. Having thought about it, though, makes me wonder if I did know what he was meant. After all, If netleface really is a biochemist, defending a theory with a lot of focus on RNA and DNA, this seems at best a very weird way of saying things, and at worst (and more likely) yet another display of his complete lack of understanding of, well, anything.
Seriously, DNA has genes is a completely meaningless thing to say.
pentatomid
14 February 2012 at 10:02 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
correction ‘what he meant’ not ‘what he was meant’.
Antiochus Epiphanes
14 February 2012 at 12:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
As usual, I’m not sure what the point was other than to demonstrate that the root “mercapto” was derived from mercury capitans, I guess because sulfhydryl groups bind mercury, but that’s not what that root means anymore.
IDK.
Owlmirror
14 February 2012 at 5:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I have argued against this elsewhere.
The components of the theory of evolution are falsifiable observations about reproduction and survival. But “falsifiable” does not mean that an anomaly would prove the explanation false; the diversity of life on Earth would still be best explained by evolution, and a putative new anomaly would require a parallel explanation.
pentatomid
15 February 2012 at 5:02 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Okay, fine, my example wasn’t the best example out there. But my point about falsifiability still stands: nettleingenting doesn’t know what it means.
nettleingenting
15 February 2012 at 12:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ok. I’m back to offer you more material to misunderstand, ignore, or kick around. With the possible exception of nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks, you guys seem incapable of deep critical thinking but are very skilled with making irrelevant comments and hurling insults.
Bearing you no grudge and as a person who tries to be kind, I offer you an exchange from elsewhere to let you rejoice in your intellectual laziness!
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
“And that has to do with the word “amino,” how exactly?
If Erik is that unconcerned with precise language in a field in which precise language is paramount, that’s his business. But he shouldn’t be so surprised when this results in ridicule. And the stupid thing is, he could have avoided that criticism simply by using the “thio” prefix. ”
As I indicated before, the full definition includes amino acids and peptides. Sulfur is found apart from cysteine and methionine only 30% of the time. So, Erik is emphasizing this critical biological fact by stating that amino includes (but is not only) sulfur. You don’t have to like that association, but a majority of the time, it is true. There is another important reason, but I already explained it. If you missed it, oh well.
So, here is fun stuff for you to misunderstand. I’m sure you won’t let your ignorance stop you from making fools of yourselves. By the way, after these posts, I won’t play with you today.
1. a critical comment
2. my answer
3. a non-response to my answer
4. my final answer to the critic.
1. a critical comment
nettle, my comments identifying very specific examples of illogic were described here:
http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/case-western-explains-why-it-withdrew-press-release-about-andrulis-origin-of-life-paper/#comment-9679
perhaps you might want to address those specifically on that thread.
Otherwise you seem to be playing the “I can understand Andrulis’s paper because I have advanced degrees in science” ploy. But I (and lots of others too) have advanced degrees and quite a few years of research into relevant subjects (Chemistry, Biochemistry, Mol. Biol.). Of course that doesn’t rule out the possibility that I can’t recognize paradigm-shifting brilliance when I see it, but it’s usually the case that remarkable insights in molecular life sciences are amenable to rather simple explanations (by far the hardest part of obtaining astonishing insight in molecular biology in its broadest sense is in overcoming experimental/technical issues).
So Andrulis’ states (using straw-man, and non-sequitur type illogic) in his introduction : “Finally, the RNA (ribonucleic acid) world hypothesis posits that ribonucleotide-based genetic systems evolved prior to protein and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). This hypothesis does not fit well with the central dogma and is unable to resolve precisely how the translation apparatus, genetic code, and biometabolic pathways evolved [7-9].”
Yor task, nettle, (since you understand Andrulis’ paper very well), is to explain to us in simple terms how Andrulis’s hypothesis “resolves precisely how the translation apparatus, genetic code, and biometabolic pathways evolved”.
nettleingenting
15 February 2012 at 12:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
2. my answer
Nice, you and I both have similar experience, as I have worked in chemistry, biochemistry in molecular biology laboratories in Cambridge and Southern California. I didn’t mean it as a “ploy.” I meant it to be genuine. But I digress.
Frankly, I don’t see the illogic nor do I see the non-sequitur nature of that quote you gave. Perhaps that’s because I can see quite clearly that the RNA world hypothesis says nothing about the flow of genetic information in an extant cell (central dogma) and the central dogma says nothing about the origin and evolution of RNA. The point Erik was trying to make is that current models/theories/hypotheses/ideas are ad hoc and thus should be considered provisional at best and wrong at worst. Could you point out the illogic there?
As for how theory treats those three problems (translation apparatus, genetic code, and biometabolic pathways), I would call your attention to where these problems are treated:
- p. 43 Origin of the genetic code
Erik’s core model shows that systems organize in units of threes, creating a system that has high potential energy but less exergy than the evolutionarily prior system. The tri-quantal system (as he calls it) is the tri-nucleotide, with each component of the system having a relative amount of energy (see section 2.4.5, pp. 13-14), “(i) a high energy (exergic), unstable, excited form; (ii) an intermediate energy, quasi-stable, transition form; and (iii) a low energy, stable, ground form.” My read of this is that the first nucleotide is the most stable, the second is the quasi-stable, and the third position of the codon is the least stable. His model echoes what I know about the wobble hypothesis and the variability of the genetic code. Is there a problem with the interpretation that I am missing?
Erik has proposed that the code evolved autocatalytically, from the metabolism of the orthophosphate bonds between the 2nd and/or 3rd nucleotides. Perhaps the reason why I don’t find Erik’s proposal so outlandish is that it is fully consistent with mainstream scientific ideas: both the Nobelist Eigen and complexity theorist Kauffmann argue that the origin of RNA involved autocatalytic systems. I assume you are familiar with their work.
- pp. 45-48 Specificity of genetic code; origin of translation apparatus.
Three RNA classes (mRNA, tRNA, rRNA) are required for the formation of a polypeptide. Erik models these RNAs as being the tri-quantal state that drives the emergence of and exists in a quarternary complex with one or more amino acid(s). Again, points for Erik, as this is, in fact, what one observes in existing cells (in fact, to the best of my knowledge, RNA scientists have shown that the peptide bond can form sans accessory ribosomal proteins; more points). The cycling of one RNA (the rRNA) leaves a ternary complex of the amino acid (linked to the tRNA, Erik calls it aa-tRNA) and the mRNA. And, just as the rRNA can cycle in and out of the quarternary complex, Erik models the mRNA cycling in and out that previously mentioned ternary complex. Both cycling phenomena are depicted accurately by the gyre and the latter of the two reveals a co-adaptational relationship between the aa-tRNA and the mRNA.
My only problem in understanding is how the genetic information of RNA is transferred to the link between the amino acids that make up the polypeptide chain. Erik points out that the formation of the amide bond is, first, a consequence of loss of mRNA and rRNA relationships with the aa-tRNA. (I think he means after the tRNA passes from the A site to the P site in the ribosome.) Next, the nitrogen link imports information from the tRNA into the amide bond as is subsequently cycled out, too. (I think he means after the tRNA passes from the P site to the E site in the ribosome.) He relies on an axiom (the tenth one) to take this position. Seeing as this axiom applies to all systems in his theory, and finding no experimental evidence to refute it, I cannot dismiss it outright as wrong.
- pp. 30-60 Biometabolic pathways
Other than page 35, Erik does not use the term “biometabolic pathways” (because he did raise it up front, points against Erik). Perhaps the reason for this oversight is that every single pathway in the cell is a biometabolic pathway? In this regard, these 30 cited pages contain a large amount of discussion of many distinct aspects of cellular metabolism. If there’s one particular example you wanna go over, lemme know.
nettleingenting
15 February 2012 at 12:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
3. the critic’s non-response to my answer
Frankly, I don’t see the illogic nor do I see the non-sequitur nature of that quote you gave. Perhaps that’s because I can see quite clearly that the RNA world hypothesis says nothing about the flow of genetic information in an extant cell (central dogma)
Nettle, I explained the illogic of that quote in the post to which I linked above. Simply put, the “RNA world” theory is a theory that addresses the early stages of life evolution (i.e. that early RNA molecules played the role of both biological catalysts and carriers of genetic information). The central dogma is a (partial) description of the flow of genetic information in extant organisms in a 4.6 billion year old Earth. It’s a strawman argument and a non-sequitur to insinuate that the “RNA world” theory should explain observations pertaining after 4 billion years of evolution. That illogic ignores the entire contingent nature of evolution over virtually the entire history of the earth. The “RNA world” doesn’t explain the origin of the eukaryote (engulfing of primitive cells to produce mitochondria in extant animal cells), but that also doesn’t make it a deficient theory about life origins; you’d have to be a brutal and committed determinist to consider that everything we see in the natural world around us was effectively pre-determined in the early stages of life’s origins more than 4 billion years ago.
In fact there’s a good bit of evidence in support of the “RNA world” and it’s also a testable theory. Together with the fact that the “RNA world” theory and its evidence can be stated and described very clearly in language that we all use to communicate with each other, the “RNA world” theory is an excellent theory, and it’s sad that Andrulis feels it appropriate to trash it so as to clear a little elbow room for his own effort.
As for your description of Andrulis’s “explanation” for the precise explanation for translation apparatus, genetic code, and biometabolic pathways :
Erik’s core model shows that systems organize in units of threes, creating a system that has high potential energy but less exergy than the evolutionarily prior system……and etc.
That’s nonsense though isn’t it nettles? Systems don’t “organize” in units of three”. Some classes of systems (proteins) organize in units of: one (myoglobin); two (dimeric coiled-coil proteins; transcription factors; glycophorin); trimers (collagen); tetramers (hemoglobin; pyruvate kinase); hexamers (hsp90); heptamers (some chaperonins) and many other discrete states of organization.
The beauty of proper scientific description and theory is that one can understand these different levels of self-organization in terms of simple knowledge of molecular structure and ideas about shape, electrostatics, and hydrophobicity that governs intermolecular interactions. This very hard-won knowledge can be explained in very simple terms in a way that allows the transmission of understanding from one individual to another. It doesn’t rest of obscurant gibberish, protected by claims of priviliged insight.
nettleingenting
15 February 2012 at 12:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
4. my response to the critic
Wow! You asked one specific question. I answered it. And you didn’t respond to the substance of my answer! Amazingly, you don’t even /acknowledge/ that I responded to your question.
You response is very visceral — not thoughtful — and very biased as to what a theory /should/ be.
You don’t raise prior explanations about the genetic code like those from Jukes and Osawa or more modern explanation by Paul Higgs (no relation to Higgs boson).
You didn’t notice that Erik in the paper says systems “tend” to emerge in units of threes — and then proceeds to focus on the available evidence proving the existence of these units of threes in all of those systems.
You bizarrely (but conveniently) ignore “Three RNA classes (mRNA, tRNA, rRNA) are required for the formation of a polypeptide. Erik models these RNAs as being the tri-quantal state that drives the emergence of and exists in a quarternary complex with one or more amino acid(s).”
Um, dude, a quarternary complex is /not/ a unit of three. Why did you not acknowledge that statement but go off on a list of things that organize as other numerical oligomers? Perhaps, you didn’t because to do so would be to admit that Erik DOES show an example here of a unit of four, and for some strange reason you want to trash the entire paper instead of doing the hard mental labor of trying to understand a radical new way of viewing present science. The paper fully acknowledges present science, but you knew that, because you read the paper, right?
Continuing: In summarily rejecting the tri-quantal concept, you dismiss the blatantly obvious organization of units of threes creating high energy systems, to wit, ATP!
Also, you didn’t acknowledge the theoretical profiling of oxaloacetic acid (a tetra-quantal system) in the paper (pp. 36-37, and in figure 3)
You are clearly hard set on the idea of the status quo of ad hoc theories that to a large degree do not interlink and that have nothing to do with each other. Consider these “illogical and non-sequitur” questions that must be addressed when modeling life: What does the mitochondrion have to do with phospholipid bilayers? How did phospholipid bilayers come about? What drove their initial formation? WHY did they form? And what about the golgi body? WHY and HOW did that come about? What does a golgi body have to do with the initial formation of the ribosome? Why do the two have that relationship?
You have no overarching explanation as to how all the organelles came about.
Your response proves that you are very comfortable having no overarching explanation about how or WHY all biological processes and systems came to exist. And please, please don’t embarrass yourself by saying, “natural selection.”
You are fixed on the idea that what we have “just works.” Yet, as an informed scientist, you should know our present understanding of biochemistry /alone/ is shot full of holes.
I am not going to do your homework for you. I already did enough in giving you a studious response that you appear to have barely glossed over. Read the present literature to find the anomalies yourself. You do read other papers more carefully, I hope.
Another point: You reject Erik’s neologisms when you know that science is full of them — and creates more of them all the time!
Pick up any copy of Nature or Science. When you see that a new protein is discovered, it gets a new name! How is this naming of proteins (with associated alphabet soup acronyms) not obscurantist? Have you ever looked at the names of Drosophila proteins? How about “Mothers against decapentaplegic?” “Bicoid?” “Cheap date?” all of which have graced these and other scientific journals. Oh yea, sure those names explain /precisely/ what those proteins do to a layperson. Go ahead, tell yourself they’re not “obscurant gibberish, protected by claims of priviliged insight.”
Here’s another question for ya: What is the inherent meaning of Neuropeptide Y? Neuro means we “know” (really should be “suspect”) that the protein has something to do with neurons or neurological activity, but what does it do? And how did it emerge in the evolution of multicellular eukaryotes? And why the “Y?”
Also, the words purine and pyrimidine have no inherent meaning to a layperson. They are part of the cryptic (!) language of science. Obscurantist!
Do you think you could chit-chat about nucleotides and their functions in a bar over beer with a stranger? Only if she or he was privy to science’s weird language — which largely bears as much resemblance to English as to Finnish.
All the names for organelles I mentioned meant nothing until someone decided to make them up.
All subatomic particles are made up words. All new pharmaceutical products have made up names. If you are consistent, I suppose you dismiss these neologisms, too.
Tell me: Do you believe the meaning of finesteride to be obvious to any trained scientist because semantically it makes inherent sense? You don’t because it doesn’t.
And, hey, while we’re at it, why should we have the word “finesteride?” We could just have the more explanatory (albeit prosaic) hyphenated word, “drug-that-restricts-and-shrinks-an-overgrown-prostate-with-the-positive-side-effect-of-inducing-the-growth-of-scalp-hair.”
Using your phraseology and logic, that hyphenated name “can be explained in very simple terms in a way that allows the transmission of understanding from one individual to another. It doesn’t rest of obscurant gibberish, protected by claims of priviliged insight.”
Summing up this part: What knuckle-dragging contradictory rubbish: defending the use of pharmacological, medical, and scientific obscurant-ish neologisms but attacking the use of theoretical neologisms.
CONCLUSIONS:
I conclude that you did not studiously read the paper or did not read the paper at all. Based upon our exchange, it appears you are unable or unwilling to do so. You like to argue talking points.
The fact that you did not acknowledge or respond to my accurate, thorough, and sincere response to your question is clear indication that you did not read or understand what I wrote. This fact bespeaks to a greater intellectually laziness that one can intuit: you do not have the intellectual capacity that is beyond your little knowledge box.
I conclude that you are unable to carry on conversations in a scholarly and respectable manner. This casts doubt on the scientific experience that you claim to have.
You are welcome to respond. I have nothing further to say to you.
Nonetheless, I wish you well.
nettleingenting
15 February 2012 at 12:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Bonus comment — for those of you who made it this far (or who just blithely jumped to the end and ignored my other substative posts).
“Any time an author needs to provide a new vocabulary for readers to understand a paper, something is seriously wrong.”
Based on that statement, I presume you would, upon reading papers on pharmceuticals (and not being in the pharmaceutical industry), figure something is seriously wrong about the pharmaceutical industry — because its vocabulary is almost entirely based on the generation of new words. For example, Celebrex. Hunh? Where did that word come from. Ask any physician about his repertoire of drugs and he will rattle off pure gibberish. Or do you disagree?
“That’s based on four decades of reading and translating scientific papers.”
And there is your problem. You have spend forty years of your life understanding and studying the present paradigm You have way too much invested in “what we have now” to put in the effort to what we could have that is radically different.
Einstein’s theory of general relativity met with a decade or so of resistance. Why? Because it was radically new and most scientists (with very notable exceptions) had far too much invested in the status quo to study and learn such “gibberish.” Is the theory of general relativity gibberish? It all depends on your point of view.
“No, I haven’t read your posts. I tried to but found them ponderous and far from unemotional, as comments should be.” Your statement is demonstrably false as my first two posts were indeed unemotional. I find strange tha you find my second comment ponderous, as I am largely dealing with pretty basic biochemistry — and not some arcana.
But, when people react with dismissiveness of something that has significance, I should not be frustrated but respond as an automaton? That seems silly, but ok.
After forty years you appear not to realize that ALL of science is ponderous. Pick up a copy of JACS and give an article from it to a undergrad chemistry major. There is no way they will understand it.
“My observation was that the institution, in spite of its reputation as a strong research university, failed in its responsibility to provide the public with understandable information about the research in question, and clearly showed systematic errors in their decision-making process about which research they decide to communicate about.”
Do you know WHY the retraction occurred? Did you think for a moment that if CWRU made an error in putting out the publicity, they may have made an error in retracting it? Possible?
Definite! CWRU was bullied by two physicists who were “embarrassed” (e.g. threatened) by the paper. Why the heck should they care? Well, for starters, they saw a molecular biologist not just trespassing on their sacred ground, but audaciously slaughtering one of their sacred cows.
For instance that the photon resides within the electron. But we KNOW this arrangement to be true. Heck, when an electron and a position “annihilate” they release, whaddya know, photons. Photons are not nothing, so this occurance is not annihilation. For a molecular biologist to be even mentioning the properties of the electron in a fashion alien to physicists is simply unacceptable in the ivory tower.
“I could care less what your opinion could be” It is apparent that my opinion is not the only idea about which you could care less. A radically new theory that is hard to grasp seems to be one two. Suspicion about political games at CWRU’s publicity office is another one.
nettleingenting
15 February 2012 at 12:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Have fun!
'Tis Himself, OM
15 February 2012 at 12:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I have to call bullshit on
Erik’snettleingenting’s claim to have “have advanced degrees and quite a few years of research into relevant subjects (Chemistry, Biochemistry, Mol. Biol.). ” Because if xe did have such degrees, then xe’d understand the objections to Erik inventing new definitions for common chemical terms.Sorry
Eriknettleingenting but I don’t believe any of your pretences.Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
15 February 2012 at 12:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yawn, fuckwit didn’t say anything new, same old boring drivel, and not one citation to the peer reviewed scienitific literature as evidence, so has nothing but same old blather.
The new “idea” must prove itself by citing the peer reviewed scientiific literature that provide conclusive evidence for the inane and insipid claim, and it has failed that criteria. As it goes with science, the “idea” is wrong until it can show itself right. Which it hasn’t, Nettlesome’s claims to contrary. The burden of proof is on the “idea”, not those laughing at the “idea”.
nettleingenting
15 February 2012 at 1:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You guys are too much fun to resist.
“I have to call bullshit on Erik’s nettleingenting’s claim to have “have advanced degrees and quite a few years of research into relevant subjects (Chemistry, Biochemistry, Mol. Biol.)”
The paper is full of biochemistry.
“The new “idea” must prove itself by citing the peer reviewed scientiific literature”
The paper has 800(!) scientific references.
You would know that if you cared to read the paper. But you didn’t because you are intellectually lazy — and meanspirited too.
“Yawn, fuckwit didn’t say anything new, same old boring drivel”
Of course, I said a /lot/ new, but it /intimidated/ you because you don’t and can’t understand it — and won’t even try.
Of course, you can’t /admit/ to being intimidated, being incapable of comprehending biochemistry I wrote, and not looking at one of the 800 scientific references that you hypocritcally claim to want soooooooo badly. You are being dishonest. So, you call me “fuckwit” — such praise!
“The burden of proof is on the “idea”, not those laughing at the “idea”.”
Those laughing at the idea are not interested in understanding it, you know this, as you will continue laughing regardless. So your statement is not just silly, it’s a lie.
feralboy12
15 February 2012 at 2:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If you really want people to stop laughing, don’t write sentences like that.
What mystifies me is why, if there is so much sound science behind this, and we’re so ignorant, you keep coming here and trying to sell the thing to us. Why are you focusing so much on convincing some random internet commenters?
And you keep insisting that Einstein’s General Relativity was “resisted” for a decade or so. This is incorrect; it was developed mostly between 1905 and 1915 and published in 1916. Three years later, it was verified after observations of a solar eclipse–which you kind of have to wait for, and can’t just cook up in a laboratory. There was also a world war going on around that time. You may have heard of it–it was rather disruptive.
I may not be a biochemist, but you’re talking history here, which means you’re wandering into my wheelhouse. And proving yourself ignorant there.
Do gyres explain why you can’t stick the flounce?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
15 February 2012 at 2:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
15 February 2012 at 2:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Dang, blockquote fail #333. First sentence quotes feralboy12. The rest is my snark.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
15 February 2012 at 2:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Here’s something I didn’t quite understand from the paper:
If gyretheory explain the moon, how does it explain the absence of a large moon around Mars or Venus?
That one has me puzzled.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
15 February 2012 at 2:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
Thanks for the possible compliment. Unfortunately, I really am quite as dull as I claim. I was a physics major who never made it to graduate school, and instead ended up programming computers. I am, in general, quite intellectually inferior to most folks here.
If you are friends with Erik, I presume you are possibly in the Cleveland area. If so, are you going to the Origins Institute public lecture at the Happy Dog this month?
nettleingenting
16 February 2012 at 7:18 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
As I understand the paper, a moon can perform a balancing function, but the paper does not say a moon is necessary — because it isn’t.
Thus, Mercury and Venus having no (known) moon(s) is not a problem.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
16 February 2012 at 7:24 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Citation needed to back up the claim. Why not present the citation the paper uses here? That way we can have a good laugh as the citation probably doesn’t back up the claim….
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
16 February 2012 at 7:55 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
That’s what I gathered as well.
It seems there was nothing in the paper that uses gyres to explain the origins of the moon, which was one of the claims (if I remember correctly). So this appears to be another case in which gyres appear to explain everything, but in reality, explain nothing.
Our current best hypotheses about lunar genesis explain not only why we have a fairly large moon, but also explains why other similarly-sized planets (Mars and Venus) do not. I did not get that from the paper. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something.
nettleingenting
16 February 2012 at 7:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
I will not give you any citation because 1. you don’t even try to understand anything I say 2. you are not a critical thinker and haven’t read the paper and 3. you are mean-spirited — like many folks here.
The /only/ person here who merits respect is nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks. Everyone else just wants to argue and insult.
I guess such activity is fun for some people, but I debate. I won’t argue. And I don’t want to insult anyone.
Mean-spirited is descriptive and /highly/ accurate, so it’s not an insult.
nettleingenting
16 February 2012 at 8:04 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks (only, the rest of you can ignore the following)
I am far from cleveland, so no I won’t be attending “Origins Institute public lecture at the Happy Dog.”
Also, Erik forwarded a supportive email to me. I give you an excerpt below.
I have just spent the weekend reading your paper Theory of Origin, Evolution and Nature of Life and feel that I would like to thank you for the experience. I am not a scientist but for the last 20 years I have read all sorts of scientific papers and books that are, quite frankly, just beyond the range of my understanding. It has been a mystery why I get so much pleasure out of this activity. The only way I can describe it is by saying it feels very much like channelling, which is another activity I have encountered in the same 20 years. I would not do it if there wasn’t a pay-off, so I have accepted that I am drawn to anything that shows the scientific status quo to be a dogmatic dead end.
So you will realise that I am broadminded and intuitive. These are the characteristics that led me to your paper. At first I thought that it was a clever and carefully orchestrated joke, the sort of satire a bored professor might come up with as he approaches retirement and has nothing to lose. But I soon realised that you are in fact a young man employed in a prestigious American University with everything to lose(including tenure) by kicking the can. So I figured that it was worth spending some time reading and one way or the other digesting what it is you have to say. I found it perplexing profound and very exciting. My intuitive response is that what you write is true.
While reading it I wondered what is it that gives a young man the courage to take on the orthodoxy (and cyberspace)with this level of passion?
Annie Smith
Bristol, UK
Broadminded and intuitive. Got that? Attributes that are lacking here.
Corporal Ogvorbis (Would that be considered punishment?)
16 February 2012 at 8:13 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
That would be erygtheory. Do try to keep up.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
16 February 2012 at 8:36 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ah, but I am a critical thinker and skeptic, along with being a career scientist. Which is why evidence, not claims, matter. Claims are worthless without evidence to back them up. All those “persecuted” scientists had the evidence or showed where to get the evidence for their claims.
You don’t show the proper respect for evidence, which tells me you know the paper is light on evidence. You pretend that a critical thinker will agree with your fuckwittery (which is how you define critical thinker, their agreeing with you) without the proper evidence to back up inane claims. You are tacitly acknowledging that the paper is so much bullshit by failing to provide evidence when asked.
Broadminded or freethinking does not mean swallowing bullshit without requiring evidence. But those words tend to be used by those, like yourself, who do swallow the unevidenced bullshit to ridicule those, like myself, who do require evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. That means a high bar is set for the evidence. And you have shown none here to date.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
16 February 2012 at 8:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
I’ve read similar letters praising the electrical universe “theory” as well.
Skepticism plays a very important part in science. It helps eliminate the worthwhile from the worthless. Without healthy skepticism (which is really all I see displayed here, save for some frustration in the inadequacy of some of your responses), everything becomes possible.
The grander the claims, the more skepticism should be employed. The claims for this paper are very grand. The level of skepticism here is really quite in-line with the grandiose claims of the paper, I think.
While intuition is important in science (especially in the hypothesis-building stage), reference to real substantiated evidence is far more important. So when people ask for references, they are asking for something vastly more important than simple intuition. They are asking for substantiated evidence to back up a claim. Substantiated evidence comes in the form of existing theories (meaning, hypotheses that have been validated by data), or by new data supporting the new hypothesis. The more controversial the new hypothesis, the more incontrovertible the reference required.
There are two ways a new hypothesis can be controversial. Either it describes a new phenomena which is itself controversial (such as research into psychic phenomena, which haven’t even been established as real phenomena). Or, the new hypothesis can attempt to supplant an established theory. For an example of this, check out Joy Christianson’s disproof of Bell’s theorem.
This paper attempts to do both. In fact, it attempts to replace not a single established theory, but many established theories, using a phenomena that hasn’t yet been established as real. So this paper isn’t just controversial. It’s controversial squared.
Hopefully you can understand why people might be hesitant to accept it at all. It purports to be a framework for everything, but it’s not based on anything that has come before, so it doesn’t automatically have a basis in reality. In fact, it proposes a novel new process without any basis for supposing that process is real. Then it attempts to use that framework to explain, well, everything.
Only in doing so, it really doesn’t really explain anything. At least, not that I can see. The example of the moon is just one instance. It doesn’t really explain the origins of the moon. It just describes how the moon and the earth interact in a gyresystem. I’d like to point out, we already had an decent description of the earth-moon system using standard physics, and an excellent description using general relativity.
As for the claim that it explains the why of it, I think the fact it doesn’t explain why the earth has a large moon, but Venus does not, shows it is inadequate even in that regard.
I love the various propositions that lie at the fringes of science (or way out past the neutral zone, sometimes). Some are just silly, like the electrical universe. Some are crazy and incoherent, like Timecube. Others are truly fascinating, like causal dynamical triangulations, which has at least predicted a universe of approximately three dimensions (a unique accomplishment, to the best of my knowledge).
This is the only reason I’m taking this half-seriously. The fact that it’s a completely novel approach is honestly a strike against it — the greatest breakthroughs in science are almost always built on the works that precede them. The second fact that it is presented as a great breakthrough, rather than just a novel approach, is also a strike against it. It shows the people advocating this aren’t being skeptical of their own results. That shows they don’t take the scientific process seriously. Your comparisons upthread to Galileo furthers this impression, as that comparison is inapt and largely emotional.
The effusive message you quoted talked about intuition. The scientific method is designed specifically to overcome the biases of intuition, because intuition leads to the wrong answer more often than not. This stripping away of intuition is the single most important tool at a scientist’s disposal.
This paper seems based almost entirely on intuition. That is yet one more reason to suspect it is wrong.
There are some things that can be done to support this new proposition, even without direct evidence. First thing, someone should be able to derive QM and general relativity. Do this, and the possible validity of the paper rises substantially. If it reconciles the two, then you have strong support. If it presents a way to test the reconciliation of general relativity and QM, then you are well on your way to advancing this proposition to a theory.
Really, though, that’s about the only way I can see to vetting this proposition. It would take something as dramatic as this to really demonstrate this is anything more than another crackpot proposition.
But if it is the fundamental explanation of everything, it shouldn’t be too hard to derive either QM or general relativity, complete with the mathematical rigor that is a hallmark of both.
nettleingenting
16 February 2012 at 10:29 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks (and to no one else),
your conclusions are fair (as usual), and I agree with entirely, I think.
I wish to clarify my reference to Galileo, which I agree appears overblown. I was not trying to say that Erik was being threatened with torture and then placed under lonely house arrest for having a heterodox idea.
I am saying that Erik /is/ being persecuted for having a heterodox idea, though.
According to my computer dictionary’s definition, persecuted means,
1. To pursue in a manner to injure, grieve, or afflict; to
beset with cruelty or malignity; to harass;
Everyone is attacking the review process. CWRU, and Erik.
Right now, I know of /one/ person in internet forums — other than you and me — who is at least trying to give the paper a critical reading with an open mind — giving criticism that shows he has at least read the paper — if not believed it.
Just like Einstein’s theory of general relativity, you neither have to understand the paper nor believe it. Not understanding is not a good basis for criticism, as many theories are incomprehensible to those outside the field. Nor is it a reason for mockery.
Heck, I know what the theory of general relativity means in a superficial way, but I am ignorant of its underpinnings, so I am in no position to criticize it. I will add modestly, I almost certainly lack the knowledge to even read Einstein’s papers. I admit my ignorance, and remain generally silent on Einstein’s work.
As Wittgenstein said (more or less), “what we don’t understand, we must pass over in silence.”
In this forum, the reverse dynamic is in /full effect/. I have no doubts that only you would not be making fun of Einstein for all his jargon and impenetrable math. Such fun. Such willful ignorance.
Wittgenstein got it right.
Others here wouldn’t even understand Wittgenstein, but that wouldn’t stop them from making fun of him too.
With the exception of you, no one here has intellectual curiosity. They do have spite in good supply, though.
hotshoe
16 February 2012 at 10:53 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Holy shit, the lurkers really DO support him in email.
Corporal Ogvorbis (Would that be considered punishment?)
16 February 2012 at 11:24 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And you think that we have insulted you? I am a professional historian (kind of hard to do that with no intellectual curiousity) and read extensively in palaeontology (outside my field, so the only reason to do it is intellectual curiousity). There are many other people here who are also both well educated and intellectually curious. Very few here are limited to only their particular field in their intelletual curiousity.
None of us, and I do mean none, need someone like you to come on here and insist that, because we ask for evidence, we have no intellectual curiousity. None of us need you to tell us that becaue we are skeptical about a paper that claims, with no actual evidence, to overturn the scientific theories of multiple disciplines, we are intellectually curious. I do not need your smug condescension. I do not need your sneers and putdowns. Seriously. I don’t immediately believe a paper with no citations given, no peer review, no outside evidence, and I am the one who is failing in my skepticism? Go fuck yourself, you condescending asshole.
And you are, when it comes to your historical knowledge, full of shit. Before trotting out your idiocy about Galileo, you may want to read up on the details. They are very different in the historical record than in the popular culture.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
16 February 2012 at 12:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
I know these folks here. There is a lot of intellectual curiosity. One of the things I love about this forum is the diversity of knowledge and interest, with experts on everything from history to economics to physics to philosophy. When a subject comes up, I am guaranteed to be outclassed by at least one of the commentators — and usually by many. So I tend to politeness when the subject isn’t about social issues.
I’m being more polite than others, perhaps, but please don’t mistake politeness for acceptance. I’ve pointed out several reasons why others here ridicule the paper. It has all the hallmarks of a crackpot proposition. Every single one. And it has nothing to support it (as far as I can see, anyway), other than a certain internal consistency. This consistency makes it interesting for me, but only in the way I’m interested in other propositions that fall on the fringe-to-crackpot spectrum. People here have every reason to treat it like a crackpot proposition, and nothing except internal consistency (it seems, anyway) to recommend it.
I tend less to the crackpot end, and more to the “interesting in an abstract way, but currently useless” end of the spectrum. It seems to me that Erik is very earnest, intelligent, not in the slightest bit crazy, but probably quite wrong. I’ve outlined a couple of ways to show he has something truly interesting, and I hope he pursues them if he intends to keep with this proposition. But really, I don’t hold out much hope. Note, though, that I don’t hold out much hope for string theory, either. (Which also isn’t a theory, due to the fact it has no supporting evidence yet. It is, however, falsifiable, so that at least makes string theory an hypothesis. But string hypothesis just doesn’t have a very good ring to it.)
Anyway, my main point is, don’t mistake dismissal of this paper as a lack of intellectual curiosity. That’d be a huge mistake. Even if I fully understood the paper (which I won’t pretend I do), I do understand it enough I can see it lacks theoretical antecedents, and that it has no current supporting evidence. Those two problems alone make it easy to dismiss the proposition out-of-hand.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
16 February 2012 at 12:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If you mean being laughed at for having a fuckwitted idea, then you are right. But nobody is persecuting him, they are merely putting distance between themselves and a public display of idiocy.
Yes there is. It is utter and total fuckwittery. It isn’t a case of not understanding on our part, but rather in Erik’s part. What part of science, like providing clear evidence for your claims, didn’t he (and you) understand? Apparently all of them.
Sorry, no appeal to inane and inapt authority will stop our mockery. Producing the evidence to back up all his claims would. And that isn’t there.
No, science in action. Einstein provide ways to falsify his theory, and it put forward an explanation for Mercury’s precession. No such predictive power is in the paper. In fact, the claim was “unfalsifiable”. Crank territory.
And you show a thorough misundrstanding of intellectual curiosity. You seem to imply that only the “intellectually curious” can understand the paper. Utter tripe. I’m intellectually curious, but not gullible. That is what is needed to think Erik’s paper is anything other than tripe, being gullible. Quit defining any term as implying that acceptance of the inane fuckwittery is required to be considered, like “openminded”, “intellectually curious”, “non-dogmatic”, or “freethinking”, which shows your ignorance and presupposition. Stop embarrassing yourself Erik. Lay low.
nettleingenting
16 February 2012 at 12:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Corporal Ogvorbis (Would that be considered punishment?
Why did you bother to read a post that was directed at someone else? Is it because you were simply looking for something to trash?
“And you think that we have insulted you?”
You are being fatuous and bizarre, as lower in your post you /try/ to insult me liberally. Dude, insults slide off me like water off a duck’s back.
You conveniently ignore the /many/ other insults people have given me here. So, your question is based on a dishonest premise. You prove yourself to be amoral — if not immoral. Dishonesty is not a moral practice, but I suppose you don’t care.
Moreover, I have no insults but rather praise for nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks.
Clearly, you lack the ability for balanced, inquisitive interpretation. I understand. Everyone has his limitations.
“There are many other people here who are also both well educated and intellectually curious.”
There may be well educated people here, but intellectual curiosity is clearly restricted to little boxes of knowledge that “fit” the present paradigm — which as a historian you /should/ know is broken. Why do we have all these wars if not because international relations (and sometimes relations within a nation) are in many places broken?
Apparently, your little box is history and palaeontology. Full stop.
“None of us need you to tell us that because we are skeptical about a paper that claims”
More dishonesty. Once again, the /only/ person to show healthy, reasoned skepticism is nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks. I have many issues with the paper, I admit.
But you are being dishonest, and you know so — and you don’t care. What we have here is trashing and attacking, but you don’t know the difference between that and skepticism. You have reached your intellectual limits and are intimidated. That’s right. You are intellectually threatened by the abstruse nature of the paper (which you clearly have not read) — though of course you are too proud to admit to such.
“I do not need your smug condescension.”
You are right. You probably need a good spanking for your potty mouth and you gross insincerity, but I do not believe in corporal punishment, so I won’t administer the punishment.
“I do not need your sneers and putdowns.”
Correct. You need a more open mind.
“Seriously. I don’t immediately believe a paper with no citations given.”
800 citations. You clearly haven’t read the paper.
So, you prove my statement of lack of intellectual curiosity. Thank you.
“Go fuck yourself” Right-o. I will do so as soon as I figure out how.
“you condescending asshole” You flatter me.
You also prove my point of spite.
I guess the bar is set too high for you. Some ideas are too tough for people to understand. I don’t understand more the the basics of General Relativity, and I readily admit my inability. Moreover, I highly doubt I could understand Einstein’s original papers. Radical new ideas (and many old ones — like quantum mechanics and physical chemistry) are hard to understand. Mockery is easy.
Clearly, you have chosen the intellectual low road of knuckle dragging nonsense. Some ideas are just too tough. Pass over them in silence, dude.
You seem like a fun person to watch at a bar. With your attitude, after a few beers, I’m sure you’d be in a fight in a jiffy.
“And you are, when it comes to your historical knowledge, full of shit.”
Of course I am. I digest my food. I may not be as knowledgeable as you when it comes to history, but I may be judging from you lack of historical facts — not even a link to an explanatory web site. Your intellectual laziness is impressive.
Why do you lamely attempt to put me down instead of correct me? You make me doubt that you are truly a historian, since someone dedicated to his field would be eager to explain a historical figure. You are not eager to discuss your understanding of history — for reasons known only to yourself.
“Before trotting out your idiocy about Galileo, you may want to read up on the details.”
My details on Galileo are from the historian Professor Kors at the University of Pennsylvania. Why don’t you call him and help him out in the error of his understanding? Maybe a tenured and respected professor just makes stuff up. I dunno.
You demonstrate yourself to be a dishonest, mean-spirited person — eager to make a fool of himself by making remarks on a comment not meant for him.
Amphiox
16 February 2012 at 12:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
A rare sight indeed, to see someone quote the correct dictionary definition of a word, and STILL, in the very same post, use the word wrong.
We Are Ing
16 February 2012 at 12:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m sorry, when did this become your fucking private live journal?
nettleingenting
16 February 2012 at 12:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Why did you bother to read a comment clearly not intended for you?
Is it because you just like opportunities to make yourself look more foolish? If so, mission accomplished.
On a different note, I challenge you to explain the math in a clear, simple way behind Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
You won’t because you can’t, and you know so.
It looks like gibberish to a non-physicist because it /is/ gibberish to a non-physicist. You know that, but you won’t admit it because to do so would be a concession that even some /old/ theories that are radical are impenetrable. Such hypocrisy would be breath taking were I not already exposed to so much of it.
Conclusions:
You are dishonest.
You are intellectually lazy.
You are a hostile person who feels the need to resort to profanity.
You haven’t read the paper because it doesn’t fit into your little box of knowledge. You enjoy being ignorant of radically new ideas. To each his own.
Corporal Ogvorbis (Would that be considered punishment?)
16 February 2012 at 12:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nattleingenting:
First off, this is a public thread. Everyone reads all, or most, of the comments. Even the ones not directed at them. To imply that when you accused all but Nigel of lacking intellectual curiousity it was not aimed at me, or any other readers, is just flat out bullshit.
PZ pointed out, up at the top, all of the things that made this look like a crackpot paper. When I, and others, asked where the supporting evidence was, when I, and others, asked about peer review or citations, we were told that it is hopelessly beyond out cabability and that we should stick to things we understand. All you have done in this thread is continuously lash out with thinly veiled insults, allusions to lack of intelligence or curiousity, and, basically, been an ass. When you have been asked for clarification, you have refused.
You are correct, though. Someone is making an arse of hirself on this thread.
And mockery is well deserved in some places.
I heartily invite you to imbibe in that sweet nectar called reality. Or you can fornicate yourself and become biologically inert. Your choice.
We Are Ing
16 February 2012 at 12:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Do you know what an Ad Hom is?
Keep repeating that so it’ll become true. Jackass.
In case you forgot, I was 100% nice to you and you responded with insults. remove your head and shove your self righteous attitude up your ass instead.
nettleingenting
16 February 2012 at 12:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Amphiox,
please, educate me. How is what I said incorrect?
We Are Ing
16 February 2012 at 12:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Amphiox you start, I’ll take over when you get hoarse.
Corporal Ogvorbis (Would that be considered punishment?)
16 February 2012 at 12:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
How many more times are you going to use the Courtier’s Reply rather than actually answering valid questions (not mine because, as you said, I am ignorant, lazy, useless, and incapable of out thinking a Gephyrostegid)?
myeck waters
16 February 2012 at 12:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I have to admit, making comparison to Galileo, getting called on it, admitting it’s off base, and then making comparison to Einstein? Brilliant. That is a brilliant example. I’m not sure what it’s a brilliant example of, but whatever it is, it is all the way. It’s whatever-it-is goes to eleven.
myeck waters
16 February 2012 at 12:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Please excuse the misplaced apostrophe. I shall chastise myself severely.
nettleingenting
16 February 2012 at 12:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
We Are Ing,
You were dismissive of me from the get-go,
I think you mean ad hominem.
Sure.
But to call, say, Obama or Bush dishonest is correct.
So ad hominem remarks can indeed be accurate, you see.
I find it curious that you feel the need to resort to profanity.
To each his own. I bear you no grudge.
myeck waters
16 February 2012 at 1:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If you bear them no grudge, why are you still punishing them with your torrents of verbal diarrhea?
pentatomid
16 February 2012 at 1:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ooh… Nettleface is back. Such fun.
Corporal Ogvorbis (Would that be considered punishment?)
16 February 2012 at 1:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
[Yoda]The passive aggressive is strong in this one.[/Yoda]
pentatomid
16 February 2012 at 1:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nigelTheBold, you are one very patient dude.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
16 February 2012 at 1:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Who the fuck are you to tell me what I can read and respond to? Who gave you that authority? I know I didn’t idjit.
The difference between a gravity well and acceleration can’t be determined, as they both behave the same. I actually read Einstein on relativity back when I took German in college. Still no proving your case, which requires you to supply evidence.
I just love the way trolls try to describe us, but describe themselves instead. You are intellectually lazy, or you would have provided the citations when asked. You are dishonest, trying to define terms to act like you are being persecuted, rather than ridiculed. You are being hostile by not providing the required evidence, and by not answering the skewering questions that put your intelligence where it belongs, in middle of pointed fingers with laughter.
No, I haven’t read the paper as it is utter fuckwittery, from just the abstract and definitions. Bad ideas are obvious to an educated and skeptical person. I don’t argue his delusions, any more than I argue theology. I just challenge them, like you, to prove what they claim has solid evidence. And you don’t.
Sorry, you must prove yourself correct. You are wrong until you do so. And you haven’t.
We Are Ing
16 February 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Because the first response you gave when I explained to you why you were wrong about a core fundamental of the scientific method was to insult me…then you started ignoring me despite continuing a polite tone. Then I got mad and you paid attention to ask why I was so profane.
Because you are ill mannered, rude, arrogant, vacuous, and shallow.
'Tis Himself, OM
16 February 2012 at 1:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Our troll is back.
We Are Ing
16 February 2012 at 1:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh and if I may add a personal opinion. I suspect the reason you’ve latched onto the ‘controversial new paradigm’ isn’t because of some genius or insight (you clearly show that you grapple with even the simplest concepts of chemistry and biology and physics and philosophy) but that you are of the ‘nonconformist niche’ that feels a pathological need to loudly challenge any authority they come across in an effort to mask internal insecurity.
pentatomid
16 February 2012 at 1:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I actually started reading the paper… It makes even less sense to me now… Impressive, I’ll give him that.
pentatomid
16 February 2012 at 1:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Or language for that matter.
We Are Ing
16 February 2012 at 1:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@pentatomid
You’re just too stupid or lazy to understand!
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
16 February 2012 at 1:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nettleingenting:
Einstein’s general relativity came inexorably from the math of other theories. Einstein didn’t just make it up. He was following the work of Lorentz, Maxwell, and Poincare. He took their equations and synthesized them using pure mathematics.
It’s the results of those maths that were staggering, and took even Einstein years to decode. But make no mistake: Einstein did not just make it up wholecloth.
As for the simple explanation, those are fairly common. Motion is frame-dependent. You can’t really say you are going a specific speed. You have to describe your velocity with a frame of reference. However, in all frames of reference, the speed of light does not change. As you increase your velocity with respect to a light-emitting body, the velocity of light remains the same. However, the energy of the light changes by shifting its frequency up or down, depending on whether you are accelerating toward or away from the light-emitting body.
Further, as you accelerate toward a body, and your relative velocities approach that of light, the energy you use to accelerate will not appreciably change. However, the apparent mass of the objects will change, maintaining the basic energy, E = (mv^2)/2. (This looks suspiciously like the derivative of something, doesn’t it?)
This is all pretty much explicit in the basic formulation of the now-familiar e=mc^2. (This is special relativity, rather than general relativity, but general relativity includes quite a bit more math, and would take a book to explain.)
What’s important to note here is that Einstein derived his work from the vetted, accepted works of others. His results weren’t heterodox at all. In fact, they were perfectly within the framework that was already emerging. His work was generally accepted almost immediately on publication. There was some discussion, yes, and some of it heated. However, there was little doubt that his work was solid. And all debate was put to rest when the real-world predictions of his theories were put to the test.
Therein lies the epistemological differences between Einstein and Erik. The theories of special and general relativity were derived from what came before. They made real-world predictions that were later supported by real-world observation. All of that is the very essence of good science.
I suspect most folks here would’ve been very accepting of the possibility that Einstein was correct. It smelled solid, from the derivation from solid previous research to the humble publication to the following scrutiny to the final vindication. All of it worked just as science is supposed to work.
It seems Erik is trying to take a shortcut by ignoring all the work that came before, all the theories that have predicted real-world phenomena. This is quite different from what Einstein did, and is part of the reason I don’t hold out much hope his ideas will prove out.
But in any case, the comparison to Einstein really isn’t that apt.
Ogvorbis: Now With 98% Less Intellectual Curiousity!
16 February 2012 at 1:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You are reading the paper? That shows intellectual curiousity. You don’t understand it? That shows lack of intellectual curiousity.
Rev. BigDumbChimp
16 February 2012 at 1:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I look forward to the wide acceptance of this study along with biophotons, ley lines, steady state theory, and the time cube.
We Are Ing
16 February 2012 at 1:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Rey. Bigdumchimp
You forgot Gaia and Cosmic Creation Prawns.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
16 February 2012 at 1:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
pentatomid:
What’s weird is, there’s a general consistency throughout. And I don’t mean in just the obfuscating and confusing language. (I still make glarey-eyes every time I see “amino” in that paper.) It’s in the strange diversity of the application of gyres. It’s like, everything that has spin can be considered a gyre. And everything has spin. Voilà!
I’ll have to go back to check this out, but it seems he has a 1-to-1 correspondence between different types of gyres and different quark flavors. It seems gyres are a drop-in replacement for quarks. I have to do some math to verify parity, but it seems that way on the second read-through (which is probably about as far as I’ll go).
Not that it means anything. That’s just symbol replacement. Replacing an up quark with a dextragyre (for example) is really just a nomenclature substitution, and doesn’t affect the model at all.
Anyway, I think there are far better models. Hell, the simple model of everything I linked earlier (the one with the E8 lie group model) has a lot more going for it. I just like that, even after all I’ve seen, someone can come up with something new.
None of this has anything to do with correspondence to reality. It just gives me a weird kind of hope, that we really are still inventive.
Ogvorbis: Now With 98% Less Intellectual Curiousity!
16 February 2012 at 1:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
But where does the FSM (blessed be His giant balls) and his daughter fettucine (and her husband, Alfredo) fit into all of this?
pentatomid
16 February 2012 at 1:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Funny little quote from the article:
Ha! Understatement of the year!
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
16 February 2012 at 2:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
pentatomid:
Y’know, that reminds me of a quote from the book Scientology, by L. Ron Hubbard. (Yeah, I picked it up for a $1.50 at a used book store. I was doing research for a story I wanted to write in which Scientologists were a strange cult. In spite of that, it was fiction.)
He said in the preface (and I paraphrase), “If you find you don’t understand something, it means you don’t really know the meaning of a word used earlier. Go back, find that word, and work out your misunderstanding.” Yeah. ‘Cause if something doesn’t make sense, it means the reader is at fault, not the author. It sure as fuck does not mean the basic concept is incorrect, incoherent, or just plain stupid.
It’s a kind of literary “blame the victim” device, I think, used as prior restraint against valid criticism.
nettleingenting
16 February 2012 at 2:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
“You are reading the paper? That shows intellectual curiousity. You don’t understand it? That shows lack of intellectual curiousity.”
I never said or even implied that. In fact, I explicitly said that reading the paper is a hard slog.
nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks,
Erik’s theory is based on the work of many other scientists — and includes loads of science. I explicitly stated so in a previous post, which I reproduce below. But first, a list of explicit examples of Erik’s referring to the work of other scientists (which he backs up in his 800 references).
Note all of the following is contemporary science, so just as Einstein based his theories on existing science so has Erik.
1. translation apparatus, genetic code, and biometabolic pathways
2. the first nucleotide is the most stable, the second is the quasi-stable, and the third position of the codon is the least stable. His model echoes what I know about the wobble hypothesis and the variability of the genetic code
3. Perhaps the reason why I don’t find Erik’s proposal so outlandish is that it is fully consistent with mainstream scientific ideas: both the Nobelist Eigen and complexity theorist Kauffmann argue that the origin of RNA involved autocatalytic systems
4. Three RNA classes (mRNA, tRNA, rRNA) are required for the formation of a polypeptide.
5. to the best of my knowledge, RNA scientists have shown that the peptide bond can form sans accessory ribosomal proteins
6. The cycling of one RNA (the rRNA) leaves a ternary complex of the amino acid (linked to the tRNA, Erik calls it aa-tRNA) and the mRNA
7. Erik points out that the formation of the amide bond is, first, a consequence of loss of mRNA and rRNA relationships with the aa-tRNA. (I think he means after the tRNA passes from the A site to the P site in the ribosome.
8. Next, the nitrogen link imports information from the tRNA into the amide bond as is subsequently cycled out, too. (I think he means after the tRNA passes from the P site to the E site in the ribosome.)
My full comment (which I already posted but I reproduce for your convenience).
The criticism:
you seem to be playing the “I can understand Andrulis’s paper because I have advanced degrees in science” ploy. But I (and lots of others too) have advanced degrees and quite a few years of research into relevant subjects (Chemistry, Biochemistry, Mol. Biol.). Of course that doesn’t rule out the possibility that I can’t recognize paradigm-shifting brilliance when I see it, but it’s usually the case that remarkable insights in molecular life sciences are amenable to rather simple explanations (by far the hardest part of obtaining astonishing insight in molecular biology in its broadest sense is in overcoming experimental/technical issues).
So Andrulis’ states (using straw-man, and non-sequitur type illogic) in his introduction : “Finally, the RNA (ribonucleic acid) world hypothesis posits that ribonucleotide-based genetic systems evolved prior to protein and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). This hypothesis does not fit well with the central dogma and is unable to resolve precisely how the translation apparatus, genetic code, and biometabolic pathways evolved [7-9].”
Yor task, nettle, (since you understand Andrulis’ paper very well), is to explain to us in simple terms how Andrulis’s hypothesis “resolves precisely how the translation apparatus, genetic code, and biometabolic pathways evolved”.
My reply:
Nice, you and I both have similar experience, as I have worked in chemistry, biochemistry in molecular biology laboratories in Cambridge and Southern California. I didn’t mean it as a “ploy.” I meant it to be genuine. But I digress.
Frankly, I don’t see the illogic nor do I see the non-sequitur nature of that quote you gave. Perhaps that’s because I can see quite clearly that the RNA world hypothesis says nothing about the flow of genetic information in an extant cell (central dogma) and the central dogma says nothing about the origin and evolution of RNA. The point Erik was trying to make is that current models/theories/hypotheses/ideas are ad hoc and thus should be considered provisional at best and wrong at worst. Could you point out the illogic there?
As for how theory treats those three problems (translation apparatus, genetic code, and biometabolic pathways), I would call your attention to where these problems are treated:
- p. 43 Origin of the genetic code
Erik’s core model shows that systems organize in units of threes, creating a system that has high potential energy but less exergy than the evolutionarily prior system. The tri-quantal system (as he calls it) is the tri-nucleotide, with each component of the system having a relative amount of energy (see section 2.4.5, pp. 13-14), “(i) a high energy (exergic), unstable, excited form; (ii) an intermediate energy, quasi-stable, transition form; and (iii) a low energy, stable, ground form.” My read of this is that the first nucleotide is the most stable, the second is the quasi-stable, and the third position of the codon is the least stable. His model echoes what I know about the wobble hypothesis and the variability of the genetic code. Is there a problem with the interpretation that I am missing?
Erik has proposed that the code evolved autocatalytically, from the metabolism of the orthophosphate bonds between the 2nd and/or 3rd nucleotides. Perhaps the reason why I don’t find Erik’s proposal so outlandish is that it is fully consistent with mainstream scientific ideas: both the Nobelist Eigen and complexity theorist Kauffmann argue that the origin of RNA involved autocatalytic systems. I assume you are familiar with their work.
- pp. 45-48 Specificity of genetic code; origin of translation apparatus.
Three RNA classes (mRNA, tRNA, rRNA) are required for the formation of a polypeptide. Erik models these RNAs as being the tri-quantal state that drives the emergence of and exists in a quarternary complex with one or more amino acid(s). Again, points for Erik, as this is, in fact, what one observes in existing cells (in fact, to the best of my knowledge, RNA scientists have shown that the peptide bond can form sans accessory ribosomal proteins; more points). The cycling of one RNA (the rRNA) leaves a ternary complex of the amino acid (linked to the tRNA, Erik calls it aa-tRNA) and the mRNA. And, just as the rRNA can cycle in and out of the quarternary complex, Erik models the mRNA cycling in and out that previously mentioned ternary complex. Both cycling phenomena are depicted accurately by the gyre and the latter of the two reveals a co-adaptational relationship between the aa-tRNA and the mRNA.
My only problem in understanding is how the genetic information of RNA is transferred to the link between the amino acids that make up the polypeptide chain. Erik points out that the formation of the amide bond is, first, a consequence of loss of mRNA and rRNA relationships with the aa-tRNA. (I think he means after the tRNA passes from the A site to the P site in the ribosome.) Next, the nitrogen link imports information from the tRNA into the amide bond as is subsequently cycled out, too. (I think he means after the tRNA passes from the P site to the E site in the ribosome.) He relies on an axiom (the tenth one) to take this position. Seeing as this axiom applies to all systems in his theory, and finding no experimental evidence to refute it, I cannot dismiss it outright as wrong.
pentatomid
16 February 2012 at 2:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
That is exactly what’s going on here.
Regarding the paper, though, I was wondering: the introduction opens with:
Which seems to me to be hinting at a conflict between thermodynamics and evolution of the kind creationists like to invoke. Am I misreading here, because this bothers me.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
16 February 2012 at 2:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And not one citation to back up the claims from neettlesome the vapid. Ergo, nettlesome the vapid wasted a post for nothing, as it said nothing scientific without the evidence to back it up. Welcome to real science, where evidence trumps ideas every day of the week and twice when Nettlelsome the vapid ignores it.
We Are Ing
16 February 2012 at 2:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment