True in 1875, true today:
Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution as not being adequately supported by facts, seem to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs none. —Herbert Spencer
When I visit my parents, we watch a lot of Food Network. It’s just about the only thing we can all agree on, and it’s also just about the only time I see television commercials. Last time I was up there (in June), this was in heavy rotation:
I believe Nabisco when they say Triscuits don’t contain any genetically modified ingredients. In fact, I know they’re telling the truth. The reason I know that is that Triscuits are made of wheat, and there is no commercially available GMO wheat. You couldn’t buy a GMO wheat cracker if you tried. [Read more…]
Back when I was a cocky grad student, I wrote a paper that was, in some ways, critical of the work of one of the biggest names in my field. David Kirk, who passed away last year, was among the most important figures in establishing Volvox as a model system for development, genetics, and evolution, among other things. He had published a paper that I thought was unnecessarily progressivist, and I said so in terms that, in retrospect, could have been more diplomatic. In response, Dr. Kirk, whom I had never met, sent me a very thoughtful email thanking me for pointing out some of the problems and politely disagreeing on some other points. Its tone was kind and respectful when annoyed and argumentative would have probably been justified.
In that email, he offered a bet, the stakes of which were to be a beer, that one of the things I had suggested would turn out to be wrong. The issue had to do with inversion, a process that the (mostly) spheroidal algae in the family Volvocaceae undergo during development. I have written about inversion many times on Fierce Roller; in a nutshell, these algae start their lives inside-out, with their flagella on the inside, and invert to get the flagella on the outside, where they can be used for swimming. Their relatives in the genus Gonium also undergo a process of partial inversion, changing from cup-shaped (with the flagella on the concave side) to flat or slightly cup-shaped in the other direction. Dr. Kirk had interpreted Gonium‘s partial inversion as a probable intermediate step that led to the complete inversion characteristic of the Volvocaceae. My reconstructions suggested that incomplete inversion in Gonium had evolved separately from complete inversion in the Volvocaceae, and Dr. Kirk bet me that this would turn out to be wrong.
…but they dug it back up!
The backstory here is that I wrote a post a couple of years ago that expressed some not very flattering opinions about a publication called Research Features. A while later, their Editorial Director emailed me that she was “interested and concerned” about what I had written and asked if we might talk on the phone. When I replied that I’d rather discuss it by email, she left the conversation and never came back. I later found out that their writers were only paid £50 for each article, and I wrote about that. This year, I learned that the same people had started a new publication, Research Outreach, that seemed to have cleaned up its act relative to Research Features, and I wrote about that. Their Operations Director responded with a couple of very nice comments, which I posted in their entirety.
It turns out that while I was making nice with Research Outreach, they were bolting the doors and tuning up to play “The Rains of Castamere.” [Read more…]
Inception, Legendary Pictures.
David Klinghoffer has responded to my previous post with a post of his own at Evolution News & Science Today. Right out of the gate, he mischaracterizes the dispute:
Georgia Tech biologist Matthew Herron is still chiding me for sharing synthetic organic chemist James Tour’s statements, a “false narrative,” that we — the public, the media, and yes, scientists too — are “clueless” about how life originated.
It was not Dr. Tour’s statements that I characterized as a false narrative; it was Klinghoffer’s. [Read more…]
I’m not an origin of life researcher. I’m not really a biochemist, either, though I have enough background to muddle through talks and papers on the topic. I do go to quite a few origin of life talks, and read the papers, because I’m interested and because the talks are frequently presented at some of the conferences I go to, such as Evolution and AbSciCon (Astrobiology Science Conference).
There’s a formula to scientific papers and talks, though it’s not always strictly adhered to. The classic formulation is Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion: what did we test, how did we test it, what did we find, and what does it mean. A good Introduction includes some background on the question, explaining what is already known and, crucially, what isn’t. For origin of life work, this usually includes a statement to the effect that we really don’t know how life began. Because we don’t.
So I was surprised to see David Klinghoffer, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, say that the mystery of life’s origin is “widely unacknowledged by origin-of-life researchers.”
The problem isn’t that “We have no idea” how life originated. Admitting ignorance is a good thing! It’s that the mystery of how life began is so widely unacknowledged by origin-of-life researchers. It is really a matter of professional malpractice. https://t.co/PE4Ef4Aetc
— David Klinghoffer (@d_klinghoffer) July 5, 2019
The deadline to register for the Fifth International Volvox Conference is this Saturday, July 13th. The abstract deadline has already passed, and the program is available online. This will be the largest Volvox meeting yet, with 65 registrants as of June 2nd.
Like many pseudoscientists, Denyse O’Leary doesn’t understand how evidence works:
I’ll bet she’s right, in exactly this sense: if there turns out to be a ninth planet, Denyse O’Leary will interpret it as support for fine tuning. There is very little that advocates for intelligent design don’t interpret as support for their worldview. What do you want to bet that if there turns out not to be a ninth planet, she won’t interpret that as evidence against fine tuning?