Death of science by multiple organ system failure


Science fairs usually have a few pleasant surprises, a lot of ho-hum projects done by rote with little thought (sometimes clearly done the night before), and a few stinkers that reveal nothing but the student’s ignorance. The science teachers are supposed to screen the project proposals to prevent that from happening, though, so the really bad projects usually don’t get through. There’s also a hierarchy: local to county or regional to state, and only the best are supposed to progress. State science fairs usually have some very impressive work and some that might be naive, but at least the student has enthusiasm. This description of a state level science fair project is disturbing, not just because the student’s work was substandard, but because it somehow made it through what should have been multiple levels of screening.

Then I saw it. “Creator or Not? YOU DECIDE”

The title claimed we could decide, but the project left no room for vacillation. It started with a hypothesis that “The universe was created by an intelligent designer.” It went on to make the standard big number argument, and closed with the conclusion, “The universe was created by an intelligent designer.”

The big number argument: there are twenty amino acids. The average human protein has around 460 amino acids in it. Thus the number of possible combinations is a huge number. The age of the universe in seconds likewise is a huge number, but less huge than the number of possible amino acid combinations. Thus you would have to have been randomly generating these protien chains at the rate of bunches every second from the Big Bang to now before you got human protein chains. Clearly that didn’t happen; therefore, an intelligent designer did it. Quod erat demonstratum.

That’s extremely distressing. It’s sad that some kid has such a poor knowledge of logic and evidence, but it is even more troubling that the educational system has rotted out so much that shoddy work like that can actually advance that far. We should worry about individuals, of course, but this is a sign that the educational infrastructure that leads to good scientists isn’t working—there was a complete failure from parents to science teacher to fair judges, and all of those people ought to be ashamed of themselves. This is not how we get kids into the Siemens Westinghouse competition.

(via The Scientific Activist)

Comments

  1. says

    ugh…

    how is it science? He’s not proving or disproving anything, just asserting. just like a preacher.

    i bet he’s got some snake oil to sell you too. and it won’t even be something interesting like actual oil made from a snake.

  2. says

    Yes, it would. Give me a break, man…I was up until 2AM last night trying to finish my grading, I had an 8:00 class, and I haven’t had any caffeine yet.

  3. Alopex Lagopus says

    Hmm, any ideas for a first science fair project for a kindergartner with a pretty good attention span? (It’s a first for Daddy too – didn’t go to school in the US).

    *Not* a prestige “look at what my daddy did” kind of project, but something she can do and understand herself.

  4. Bruce Thompson says

    The question is, if you had a chance to discuss the project with the student, how would you approach his reasoning without turning him off to science? The ideas were not his own, so how do you show him how science actually works without grinding him to a pulp and completely embarrassing him?

  5. Ronald Taylor says

    Maybe if teachers stop letting academically-successful-but- ignorant-nonetheless high school students judge science fairs this wouldn’t happen. At my school I overheard one of the future student science fair judges say something to the effect of: “If their poster is colorful I’ll give them a good grade” in a really self righteous tone.

    Also I think my bio teacher is an evolution denier, she keeps mentioning how brief our evolution unit will be and she gave us a warning at the beginning of the year, something like: “Right now we’ll just cover the stuff everyone agrees on, like everyone agrees that birds can turn into other birds but does that mean birds came from reptiles? well maybe not we’ll cover that when we get to our whole evolution debate.”

    And she made sure to mention that some people would say carbon dating is not reliable because “we don’t know the rates were always constant.”

    That is all.

  6. NonyNony says

    PZ – why are you so suprised? Folks get big money from think tanks doing work like this at a much higher level than “state science fair”. The author doesn’t mention the school that the student was from, but it wouldn’t suprise me at all to find out they were from somewhere with an agenda and that was why they were sent along to the state level.

    (I’m more suprised that it didn’t get weeded out at the regional level, but I’m not sure what state the fair was in, so the regional level judges could very well have been similarly sympathetic).

  7. says

    It almost sounds like this one was deliberately slipped through, greased with a lot of hidden agenda. It wasn’t from my state of Kansas, was it?

  8. says

    The author doesn’t mention the school that the student was from, but it wouldn’t suprise me at all to find out they were from somewhere with an agenda and that was why they were sent along to the state level.

    … no doubt with a backer prepared to scream bloody murder about the “war on Christians” if a teacher or competition judge weeded out the poster from the next round of competition.

  9. Skeptyk says

    Yecch. I wonder, as others here, if the judges were playing CYA in letting this project in? Better to allow the entry than risk the whole fair being buried in bad publicity when some IDiot cries that the kid is being oppressed by “Darwinists” afraid to “teach the controversy”?

    It may be a tough call to risk all the other projects, the worthy ones, getting lost in the cacophany of a mini-Dover flap, but, IMO, the science-defenders, the students who did real science work, would be better served with a rigorous bunch of judges dropping this kid’s ID project early on, with a simple explanation of why it was substandard.

    It would likely have never become an issue, but even if it did, even if the kid – or, more likely, the kid’s blustering ministerial supporters – publicly argued with the decision, it would be a lesson in the notion that scientific work must stand on its own merits, not popularity of an unexamined premise like ID.

  10. Don Culberson says

    Pablo asks:
    “It wasn’t from my state of Kansas, was it?”

    /weep… nope it was from my state of Alabama.

    Uncle Don

    /sigh

  11. wamba says

    The average human protein has around 460 amino acids in it.

    That sounds high to me. Does anyone have the real answer handy?

  12. Don Culberson says

    I looked up the results of the Alabama Science and Engineering Fair. Most of the winning submissions were as described, typical science fair fare with a few intriguing titles, no abstracts, unfortunately. The project under consideration here doesn’t seem to be mentioned, so if the title was correct, it presumably fell at this level, anyway.

    There was one in the Junior Division, however, entitled “Divinity vs Man – You Decide” that received an Honorable Mention in the Mathematics Division. This one came from a public middle school. Not sure what it really was about, though it sounds suspiciously like the one blogged above.

    Sometimes it’s not that easy being from Alabama, especially as a scientist. We live on a diet of “Thank goodness for Mississippi” and, recently, “Thank goodness for Kansas and Dover, PA”. Happy to share the occasional dubious scrutiny with other backward places!

    But this one… heh… gotta bite the bullet and submit…
    /sigh
    Uncle Don

  13. compass says

    OK. If it could have happened so easily by chance, set it up!. RUN the experiment!! By golly, if you could get this to come about by “chance” (in a lab setting) just think! Now you REALLY have the evidence in hand.

  14. says

    OK. If it could have happened so easily by chance, set it up!. RUN the experiment!! By golly, if you could get this to come about by “chance” (in a lab setting) just think! Now you REALLY have the evidence in hand.

    Why don’t you bother learning about how evolution actually works, compass, instead of your parody of it.

  15. says

    Hey, compass… if God could’ve done it so easily, why don’t you get yourself a pile of sterilized mud, stick it an aquarium and start praying.

    I promise that if you get God to kick you down any sort of living organisms at all, let alone a female and sans-a-rib male human, I will be first in line to convert.

  16. says

    “Creator or not–you decide!” “Divinity vs. Man–you decide!” These derivate themes having been foisted upon helpless little kids being indoctrinated by doof-duh parents and teachers who watch only a certain cable news channel (which led last night with TWO stories on the “Intolerance of the Left toward Christians” on the O’Reilly Factor)? You decide!

  17. Unstable Isotope says

    There was a mini-controversy last year because a university professor in Alaska managed to get a radioactive-dating denying paper published in Journal of Chemical Education (interestingly enough, run out of my graduate alma mater, University of Wisconsin). I don’t remember the details, because it’s mind-numbingly dull (not my field) but it was an exercise he had his students do that in his mind, somehow, proved that radioactive dating could be wrong.

    After the paper came out, a controversy insued and the professor ended up getting some kind of reprimand.

    I’m dredging this all out of the recesses of my memory, so my details could be off. I’m just surprised the creationist don’t use this triumphantly (a peer-reviewed paper! academic supression!).

    As for this science project, is the kid’s logic that every amino acid combination must exist and be created on at a time? I guess I really don’t see how his paper is evidence of intelligent design at all, what is the “gotcha” he’s going for?

  18. Unstable Isotope says

    Someone needs to steer this kid to a polymer chemist, quick. He could perhaps explain how God is really “super super great” by talking about combinations of short chains of various lengths and how that is not really possible either.

  19. says

    By the apparent logic of this kid and compass, every hand of bridge ever played was designed, instead of the result of random shuffles.

    And, of course, the whole thing ignores the big chunks of non-randomness in evolution.

  20. says

    Kindergarten science fair? Good grief, what school is she in?

    My kids usually enjoyed science experiments involving baking soda and vinegar at that age. Another fave was salting snails and watching them foam. And I think their uncle introduced them to dry ice rockets then (with supervision). Let’s see… gravity, making marble contraptions… simple machines… oh, and magnets were fun then, too, if I remember right.

    There’s always the baking soda volcano, which is way fun. They didn’t get to dissecting squid til third grade though – need some fine motor skills for that one.

    Any time my kids were in trouble for making a mess, I got the same answer: “But mom, it’s a Science Experiment!”

    These days, they are 16 and 20, and we have to have rules when their friends are over “No high explosives in a wood frame house!”

  21. The Brummell says

    Compass suggested: “RUN the experiment!! ”

    Compass, perhaps you could supply a few details of the proposed experimental design?

    I think it was here, a few months ago, that a discussion centred around the evolution of the bacterial flagellum. A proposed experiment there was to set up a population of flagella-lacking bacteria, and apply selection for increased motility. The naive idea was that if a flagellum structure evolved within a certain time frame – I think on the order of 10^6 generations – then the Irreducibly Complex argument would be refuted and we could assume the putative Designer was not involved.

    The obvious flaw in this experiment was pointed out to be: there’s no way to disprove the Designer; the Designer is not a hypothesis because it’s not testable. Either potential result of this experiment (flagellum vs. no flagellum at time T) can be explained by ID. No flagellum – flagella are too complex to evolve. Flagellum present – the designer got into your experiment and helped the bacteria out.

    Long ramble, but, compass (or anyone else), can you please suggest an experiment with at least one possible outcome that would DISprove a specific, testable hypothesis about probability and protein structure?

    Anyone? Please?

  22. says

    I’ll bet his mummy and daddy must have been so proud of their little boy pinch-hitting for Jesus. Gets me right here [points to torso], kind of like ipecac does.

  23. compass says

    Why don’t you bother learning about how evolution actually works, compass, instead of your parody of it. Ah yes. Wiki. The definitive source.

    Try answering the question.

    Hey, compass… if God could’ve done it so easily, why don’t you get yourself a pile of sterilized mud, stick it an aquarium and start praying. Speaking of strawman. The challenge has been made to you. Work it out.

    every hand of bridge ever played was designed, instead of the result of random shuffles. Strawman again. I guess you know whereof you speak more than Wiki does. C’mon. That helps prove my point. Bridge takes place (the chances in the game) because of the designs in place beforehand: the rules of the game, creation of the cards, existence of the participants and so on. None of those components came about through chance.

    Perhaps if you bought a shovel, the hole you are digging yourself would be “created” much easier.

  24. says

    I propose the following experiment: I’ll mix up a bunch of amino acids in a bucket, and in twenty million years, we can all meet back here to see if a protein has developed.

  25. fusilier says

    NO BAKING SODA VOLCANOES. NEVER!!
    Demonstrations ain’t science.

    When Daughter #1 was in first grade, I borrowed a stethescope and we helped her count the number of heartbeats/minute for various animals. Just simple statements about younger/smaller animals had faster heartbeats. Nothing fancy, although trying to find the heartbeat on a co-worker’s reticulated python was frustrating. ;^)

    fusilier
    James 2:24

  26. george cauldron says

    Hey Compass, since you’re so smart about science, why don’t YOU tell us why we have pygmies + dwarfs???

  27. Blake Stacey says

    D Kruz:

    The “science” fair to whose description you linked made me scream out loud. Something like, “Sweet Jesus, protect me from your followers!” Examples of winning so-called experiments:

    “My Uncle is a Man Named Steve (Not a Monkey)”

    “Pine Cones are Complicated” (teaching faux-complexity garbage to the young — the newest in child abuse)

    “Pokemon prove Evolutionism is false”

    “Using prayer to microevolve latent antibiotic resistance in bacteria” (maybe these prayers are the ones which cancel out all those requests to cure disease?)

    And my personal grand prize goes to Jonathan Goode, grade 7, for his interdisciplinary study demonstrating (deep breath) “Women Were Designed for Homemaking.”

    I couldn’t make shit up: “physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.

    It’s like a Junior Jumble in the Sunday funnies — can you count the number of things wrong in the preceding paragraph?

  28. george cauldron says

    OK. If it could have happened so easily by chance, set it up!. RUN the experiment!

    Aw, compass, that ain’t fair! Why should evolutionists be the only ones who ever do experiments or research?

    Get off your ass and get busy! Posting at leftwing blogs ain’t gonna prove Intelligent Design!

  29. MattXIV says

    BronzeDog – Actually, card shuffles aren’t random, they’re just sufficiently difficult to predict the outcome of that we use them as such. It follows logically that if God is omniscient and omnipotent that everything that ever has or will happen is the product of his explicit desire for it to, because he’d know about it and be able to change it if he wanted to. I’m pretty sure that is the reasoning behind predestination.

  30. says

    Unfortunately, that’s the Objective: Ministries site, and it’s a known spoof. I’m getting a bit irritated with them: lots of people get caught by the satire, think its real, and get upset about it. It misdirects a lot of reasonable anger about what creationists actually do, so I think it is highly counterproductive.

  31. Don Culberson says

    It shows, though, that there is nothing so stupid as to cause most folks rule it out as something that could have emerged from fundieism

  32. george cauldron says

    Hmmm. PZ, did you know you’re being called ‘Old Squiddy’ on the internets?

    Rather a nautical feel to it, I daresay…

  33. thwaite says

    [ Well compass, I see you have more time on your hands ]

    Examples of evolution in action to build proteins in our lifetimes – and in our bodies! – include the AIDS virus, and immune system response to this and other provocations (simple summaries in the talkorigins article below and in Steve Jones’ DARWIN’S GHOST, 2000)

    Evolution of useful structures which would otherwise have to be intelligently (more or less) engineered can be done in computers using “genetic algorithms” and “genetic programming”, e.g.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_antenna

    The general probability arguments for getting proteins assembled via gradualistic evolution with increased fitness at each stage (local adaptive hill-climbing) are conveniently reviewed at
    http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fitness/ – This includes Dawkin’s “weasel” simulation which helps build intuition although it’s only a partial model of evolution.

  34. rrt says

    Don’t play dumb, Compass. I suspect you already know why I would tell you your particular “experiment” as presented is silly. How ’bout discussing that?

  35. AWJ says

    “Objective Ministries” is a parody site–a cleverer version of Landover Baptist. But if they can fool Pharyngulans, I wonder how many genuine fundies they take in ;)

  36. shargash says

    Ack! Deepest apologies to PZ. Noodleous doubleous should have been italicized, of course. You can tell the authors of the paper cited are real scientists, because they used italics. I am not, and so forget unless I remind myself.

  37. shargash says

    Sheesh! Just not my day, I guess. Let me try it again and see if I can get it right.

    When Great Cthulhu rises, you will not be eaten first.

    Hey, PZ — Tell me Wildmon isn’t a Deep One.

  38. j.caesar says

    The project should have been disqualified for bad Latin alone: it should be “quod erat demonstrandum”.

  39. says

    Strawman again. I guess you know whereof you speak more than Wiki does. C’mon. That helps prove my point. Bridge takes place (the chances in the game) because of the designs in place beforehand: the rules of the game, creation of the cards, existence of the participants and so on. None of those components came about through chance.

    Sorry, but that is in itself a straw man: The hand of bridge: i.e. Player number one is holding the 3 of hearts, the jack of spades, etc. The rules of the game, the manufacture of the cards, etc. aren’t part of what I’m talking about.

    Calculate the odds of each player getting their particular combination of cards in their particular order. It’s pretty darn unlikely in the end. Sheer Texas sharpshooter unlikeliness (a negative premise) is no basis to make a positive claim like design.

    Oh, and yes, Matt, I recognize that shuffling isn’t truly random, and the same could be said of most other probability examples of coins and dice. Just go with it for the sake of example. ;)

  40. compass says

    Ah. Here we go. The last refuge of the Left. argumentem ad hominem.

    “Abusing the Man (argumentum ad hominem, arguing to the man; as opposed to arguing ad rem, to the point): there are at least four basic types:
    a. Name-calling
    b. “Let’s-play-amateur-psychoanalyst” (calling into question the opponent’s mental health)
    c. Casting aspersions on the opponent’s moral character
    d. Poisoning the wells (an attempt to discredit the opponent absolutely, to destroy his reliability for anything in the eyes of the audience).”

    Pick on Compass the messenger, and the message becomes invalid. THAT’S sophisticated argument from the left, all right. That would be rrt, Mr. Cauldron, boosterz. Plus ca change, plus c’e la meme chose. Pretty much you guys engage in A-D there. Well done. People living in glass houses and so on. . .

    On the other hand, thwaite, thank you for the resources. Perhaps time will allow examination.

  41. compass says

    The hand of bridge: i.e. Player number one is holding the 3 of hearts, the jack of spades, etc. The rules of the game, the manufacture of the cards, etc. aren’t part of what I’m talking about.

    They have to be part of what you are saying. I am saying that even before the hand of bridge can be formulated, that the odds of particular cards can even be considered, the first two premises (rules, manufacture) have to be in place. Take away the first two premises, and the odds, or the possibility of same, can’t exist.

  42. says

    NO BAKING SODA VOLCANOES. NEVER!!
    Demonstrations ain’t science.

    You could make it science if you wished. Test different kinds of household acids (vinegar, muriatic acid, toilet bowl cleaners, all of which appeal to a kid’s natural desire to mix household chemicals together. On second thought, it might be bset to not encourage this behavior.) See if the concentration of the acid affects the performance of the volcano (an investigation of reaction kinetics), etc.

  43. george cauldron says

    Nice try George. C’mon, you answer mine, I’ll answer yours.

    You actually HAD a question? All I saw was this inane post:

    OK. If it could have happened so easily by chance, set it up!. RUN the experiment!! By golly, if you could get this to come about by “chance” (in a lab setting) just think! Now you REALLY have the evidence in hand.

    …followed by some whining about the mean leftists, and conspicuous ignoring of people’s objections as to why this is a stupid comment.

    See, compass, this is why ID isn’t getting anywhere! Good conservatives like yourself aren’t willing to step up to the plate and get their hands dirty with research, they’re so busy with their ‘culture wars’ and all. Prove to us wicked liberals how bankrupt evolution is! Explain to us why that science project was valid after all. We’re all ears.

  44. Bored Huge Krill says

    Unfortunately, that’s the Objective: Ministries site, and it’s a known spoof. I’m getting a bit irritated with them: lots of people get caught by the satire, think its real, and get upset about it. It misdirects a lot of reasonable anger about what creationists actually do, so I think it is highly counterproductive.

    I followed the source back to objective ministries, and I have to say it took me quite a while to convince myself that it actually is a parody. Parodies get more and more redundant every day…

  45. rrt says

    Yes, let’s spin in circles, Compass. :)

    As you insist on playing dumb, I will be blunt: You make the statement:

    “OK. If it could have happened so easily by chance, set it up!. RUN the experiment!! By golly, if you could get this to come about by “chance” (in a lab setting) just think! Now you REALLY have the evidence in hand.”

    In other words, that formation of a typical human protein “by chance” is so unlikely as to imply a guiding force.

    This statement implies you are not aware of the standard criticisms biologists make of this basic argument from improbability and incredulity. I say quite bluntly that I suspect you are being dishonest in pretending to be so ignorant, and challenge you to abandon the pretense and address those criticisms. If you truly are ignorant of those arguments, then I challenge you to educate yourself…the resources are widely available with 10 minutes’ Googling, at worst.

    You are certainly dishonest in implying that my statement was an attack on your person. It was and is a clear statement of my opinion, and rather than distracting from the topic, indeed encourages you to “cut to the chase” and move the discussion to the details of your argument.

    I’m willing to treat you like an adult. Will you give me the same courtesy?

  46. Graculus says

    NO BAKING SODA VOLCANOES. NEVER!!

    Dang.

    Besides, can you think of anything more likely to interest a kid in science than the possibilities for blowing things up? (Well, it worked for me).

    Hey, compass.. chemical reactions aren’t random.

    And insults are *not* ad hominems.

  47. Jim says

    Can someone correct the way I am thinking about this? (I’m a lawyer with a journalism degree, go easy on me) I have been thinking about compass’ objections and the original referenced science fair exhibit.

    Evolution would hold that amino acid chains in humans would be derivatives, or modifications, from our evolutionary ancestors, correct? Evolutionary theory would hold that these modifications have been going back to . . . abiogenesis? By that chain of thought, it isn’t that human protein chains were produced randomly . . . it isn’t as if all 460 20-sided dice were rolled at the same time and “magically” came up with the correct numbers in the correct sequence–a feat like that would seem to me to be closer to evidence of ID. But it would be more analogous to say that evolution is a series of die rolls, each new one (the identity of the surviving one being a factor of natural selection) only adding roughly one more number of the sequence. Thus, the statistics of it all are greatly simplified. Once you’ve got a chain of 200, getting a surviving example of a chain of 201 is only a matter of 1/20, not a matter of 201 randomly correct die rolls. So if you look back over the whole thing you say wow, how did we get here from there? But during the process it was just one “correct” die roll at a time, with the others behind us no longer being a matter of chance but rather of historical record. I’m sure if I had taken more statistics classes in college I would be better at this kind of thought experiment.

    Under a system like that what you would have to provide evidence of is the ability of natural selection to result in the modification of amino acid chains, right? Once you have that you have the necessary underpinnings to support a statistical model of the development of a human amino acid chain consistent with evolution.

    I dunno, I’m probably all wrong, but I love reading this site anyway. Any help is much appreciated.

  48. Graculus says

    Under a system like that what you would have to provide evidence of is the ability of natural selection to result in the modification of amino acid chains, right? Once you have that you have the necessary underpinnings to support a statistical model of the development of a human amino acid chain consistent with evolution.

    Close to this is the work with ribozymes. Dr Szostak got a Nobel for that.

  49. says

    MattXIV – Whether shuffling a deck of cards is random or not depends on your definition of random. According to information theory, the degree of randomness is determined by the observer. This means that if the odds of the observer (the participants in the card game) correctly predicting the next card is no better than 1/52, then the deck is completely random for all intents and purposes.

    On the other hand, there is another definition of random: whether all orderings of the deck are equally likely given some starting configuration. By that definition then a simple bridge shuffle is not completely random.

    Now to attempt to be on topic — that some given chemical configurations are far more likely than others (and other configurations are chemically impossible) should be obvious to anyone who has spent more than five minutes in an elementary chemistry class. This science project doesn’t even pass the laugh test. Needless to say, it also isn’t science — there is no hypothesis, no data, and no way to falsify the hypothesis. The anthropic principal — that things are the way they are because if they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to speculate about it — is self-evident, and is doesn’t imply there has to be a creator.

    Along those lines, the argument along the lines of “there chance of life occurring are one is one in a billion trillion, so therefore god created us” don’t hold up either. Astronomy has shown there could be billion trillion stars in the known universe, so why can’t we be the exception, the statistical fluke? Although it would be a lonely universe…

  50. rrt says

    That’s pretty much it, Jim. Which is precisely the point (well, ONE of the points) I’ve been hesitating to spoonfeed to Compass. In particular since, as I’ve explained, I believe he knows this already, and if so, is pretending not to. It’s not an uncommon argument/debating tactic. I’m not saying he may not have many honestly held disagreements with that point, but I am saying I want him to lay them on the table.

  51. compass says

    Prove to us wicked liberals how bankrupt evolution is!

    Here’s the thing: In the end, I don’t think evolution is “bankrupt”. I really have no problem with the mechanisms described. What I DO have trouble with is the idea that some designer (no names given) MUST NOT BE behind it. There is nothing in evolution as described (as I understand it) that can demand this. It CERTAINLY doesn’t do much to prove this creature’s existence, but neither does it disprove it. My apologies if I leave you with this impression.

    And insults are *not* ad hominems. If they’re designed to impeach the messenger, you better believe that they are.

    But it would be more analogous to say that evolution is a series of die rolls, each new one (the identity of the surviving one being a factor of natural selection) only adding roughly one more number of the sequence. Yes. Of course. Fine. I understand and agree. But perhaps I am not being clear in my continuation of the bridge analogy (if that continues to be the source of the dispute for you and rrt): Under what conditions could things come about in the first place for matter to even be in that position? This goes beyond biology and chemistry (in my mind) and returns to physics. What set the table to allow matter to interact as it did to in the end create life? Did we just have hydrogen to begin with? INcluded with oxygen? How did these particles come suddenly to be automcatically attracted to one another so that 2 of H goes with 1 of O, leaving the leftover O natural, the rst combined to make water.

    That’s why I’ve been saying with the bridge analogy, HOW DID THE CARDS AND RULES COME ABOUT? I’ve not seen anything in biology that answers this. (And no, I am not a biologist). Put another way: For chance to even have an opportunity to take place, there had to be an underlying order first. For the bridge player to receive X combination of cards (and the odds for that combo to occur) the underlying order of the cards and rules of the game themselves had to be in place.

    For what it is worth, I am now (and have been for some time) of the following opinion:

    Creationism does not fit in the science classroom (it never has, in my mind).

    And neither does ID as a “scientific discipline.”

    But ID DOES fit in discussions of philosophy; and it is from philosophy that the natural sciences sprang in the first place. And that discussion does need to take place at some point; where the question can be asked that the answer is not (and in all likelihood, cannot ever be) answered.

    Part of what makes this place so intriguing is the inherent and constant refrain: God CANNOT exist, when in fact we do not KNOW. . .and at least evolution has done nothing . . .that I can see. . .to refute this.

  52. Bored Huge Krill says

    On the other hand, there is another definition of random: whether all orderings of the deck are equally likely given some starting configuration. By that definition then a simple bridge shuffle is not completely random.

    OT, but I’d disagree with said definition…

    It isn’t a necessary condition that all outcomes are equally likely for an observation to be random. It is only necessary that it be nondeterministic.

    In any case, I think your first definition of random is probably the relevant one here.

  53. rrt says

    I thank you VERY much for your refreshingly clear and straightforward reply. Can you understand why I was calling dishonesty, and how much happier I am now that this is laid out?

    In response to a couple specific points you make:

    “What set the table to allow matter to interact as it did to in the end create life?”

    Frankly, I don’t care. Now, that’s not an entirely true statement…I very much would like to know the specifics of this. But as a biologist, the only reason I want to know the details of abiogenesis (which is what you’re referring to in part) is so I can better understand the origins and history of the evolution of life.

    Beyond abiogenesis, you’re talking about such things as the anthropic principle, etc., and some other commenters have talked about that somewhat. The “puddle analogy” still holds, as does the point that we have no way of knowing that the laws and conditions of this universe are the only ones under which life is possible. Again, as a biologist, I care little about these details. They contribute nothing to my understanding of the role of Tiktaalik in the history of life.

    In response to this:

    “Part of what makes this place so intriguing is the inherent and constant refrain: God CANNOT exist, when in fact we do not KNOW. . .and at least evolution has done nothing . . .that I can see. . .to refute this.”

    Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I know of no one here who makes this claim. I can’t think of any prominent scientist who does. I’m not clear on what precisely Dawkins says, I should point out…I’m aware that he’s aggressive in his association of science and atheism, but I think (when you use the word “cannot”) that even he doesn’t make that statement. There are many of us who believe evolution can and should contribute to a strictly naturalistic and atheistic worldview or philosophy. You can’t prove the absence of God, but you can ask “if I keep looking everywhere God is claimed to be and consistently find no sign, when do I decide for myself that he may as well not exist?” But I’m not aware of any of us who actively states “evolution or science in general disproves God.” Rather, our fervence is directed at those who claim science PROVES God, or that there is clear material evidence for his hand in creation/evolution/whatever, and insist we teach this as science. I would appeal to our resident philosophers to address this better than I am…

    But regardless, it sounds to me like you and I are largely in agreement, at least in a material sense.

  54. Hamilton Lovecraft says

    For the bridge player to receive X combination of cards (and the odds for that combo to occur) the underlying order of the cards and rules of the game themselves had to be in place.

    That’s a question about cosmology, not about evolution, then. Go read about the anthropic principle. But don’t tell us that because man designed the game of bridge, man must have designed the deal of a particular hand of bridge, because, um, it makes you look like a fool.

  55. says

    Dang.
    Besides, can you think of anything more likely to interest a kid in science than the possibilities for blowing things up? (Well, it worked for me).

    I don’t think the baking soda volcano really qualifies as “blowing stuff up”. For that sort of demonstration, you can’t do much better than thermite. Of course, the chances of a school letting your kid use the thermite reaction in their gymnasium is practically nil.

  56. Edward Braun says

    Unfortunately, that’s the Objective: Ministries site, and it’s a known spoof. I’m getting a bit irritated with them: lots of people get caught by the satire, think its real, and get upset about it. It misdirects a lot of reasonable anger about what creationists actually do, so I think it is highly counterproductive.

    Objective: Ministries has the problem of being too subtle to be effective web parody – I think the subtlety allowed to be effective parody web on the web is pretty limited. Things like the “creation scientist” Dr. Richard Paley are pretty clear signals, but if you just scan quickly most of those signals are easy to miss.

    However, I do recommend looking at the member bios. Not only is the Kyle Goldman bio way too absurd, but they got a photo of a dude with a truly amazing look on his face. Also check out the cafe press items – they have a “Jesus Is The Light Switch Cover” where the light switch is located right at Jesus’ penis. Humor for your inner Beavis and Butt-head.

    Risking the feeding of a troll…

    That’s why I’ve been saying with the bridge analogy, HOW DID THE CARDS AND RULES COME ABOUT? I’ve not seen anything in biology that answers this.

    If by cards and rules you mean elementary particles and physical laws, that is clearly not the province of biology. But there are a number of popular publications detailing the well established portions (big bang nucleosynthesis and the generation of heavy elements). Off the top of my head I would suggest starting one of those treatments (e.g., Susskind’s new book) or going to wikipedia – which has links to the peer-reviewed literature.

    The science fair calculations do prove something – but a very limited something. They prove that amino acids did not assemble into proteins in a random manner. There are other proofs of this (e.g., there is no way to select specific enantiomers in a random model, or exclude amino acids not in the “big 20”). No origin of life specialist would even suggest a random model, so disproving that model is irrelevant, as is “doing the experiment.”

  57. Graculus says

    If they’re designed to impeach the messenger, you better believe that they are.

    No, compass. It’s only if the “impeaching of the messenger” is used to attack the argument (instead of the messenger).

    An ad hominem: John Doe’s arguments suck because he’s a poopyhead.

    Not an ad hominem: John Doe is a poopyhead, and he also faked his data.

  58. Hamilton Lovecraft says

    John Doe has repeatedly faked his data, therefore he’s a poopyhead.

  59. dave says

    I very rarely see this aspect of the ID probability argument refutation: yes, it could take a very large number of attempts to produce a single functioning amino acid or protein molecule given an initial population of precisely those components needed such that nothing is left over when the target molecule is finally produced. BUT all these attempts actually happen in parallel all over the world, wherever there wwas organic soup present. Far more opportunities spread over the soup thatn serially to the present. Indeed, given the size of the Earth, I’m surprised it took so long for a self-persisting molecular family to appear. Borrowing from Murphy, if it can happen, it will. And once happened it is so self-supporting the environment does a phase change to where this kind of molecular arrangement takes over from the soup. From that point on, speciation takes over according to Darwin’s theory (and the 1450 yrs of elaboration and observation since).

  60. dave says

    (pardon my rushed typoes – I’m on a ferry doing this on my lap. What’s as laptop for if not to be used on one’s lap anyway?)

  61. says

    I’m the guy who made the original linked post. Uncle Don, you were correct about the project’s name — I had mis-remembered. I’ll make the update to the original post. I had also missed that it had won an honorable mention in the Math and Computers section. Oy.

  62. compass says

    Rather, our fervence is directed at those who claim science PROVES God, or that there is clear material evidence for his hand in creation/evolution/whatever, and insist we teach this as science. I would appeal to our resident philosophers to address this better than I am…

    But regardless, it sounds to me like you and I are largely in agreement, at least in a material sense.

    How refreshing. An interaction that is civil and informative. Thank you very much, rrt!! And i get the argument. Science (at least to me) argues strongly in favor of a creator, but it doesn’t prove it.

    In fact, those that argue for science as being proof are shooting themselves in the foot. If the proof is so commanding, then what point is there to faith? At that point, the designer is removing much of free will and giving no choice but to believe. Now, I’ve actually not seen much of that type of argument, but maybe I’m moving in the wrong “faith” circles. :P

    But the only reason I can see for you thinking me dishonest earlier was in that I had not provided enough information. Sinning of Omission, so to speak, rather than COmission.

    As for the rest of biology, I am not so interested. Fascinated, yes, in that what of the processes I can understand are quite gripping. But it ain’t my expertise.

    As for this: There are many of us who believe evolution can and should contribute to a strictly naturalistic and atheistic worldview or philosophy. Perhaps that there is the core of my complaint re-worded. This perspective then leads to behavior (not necessarily outright declarative statements, but definitely observable behavior) that instantly derides and demeans the designer proponents as benighted idiots, unfit to discuss these things at the table. The atheistic worldview might seem logical, from a strictly materialist, biological viewpoint, devoid of philosophy. That doesn’t make it correct.

    And until God is outright disproved -which biology doesn’t seem to be doing- I find the often gratuitous “Fundie slamming” that is so prevalent from members of this site (including PZ) as I said earlier; intriguing.

  63. says

    They have a Math and Computers section now?

    Back when I was in 12th grade in Alabama, my number theory project had to compete in the same category against all the science and engineering projects. Because my proofs were math and not science, all my detailed original work got only honorable mention, while some truly craptacular science projects (not quite baking soda volcanoes, but along those lines) advanced to the next level of competition.

    So *now* they have a separate section for math? Not that 30 years later I’m still bitter or anything…

  64. Unstable Isotope says

    In a polymerization, you will get everyone combination that is possible. If there are 20 different monomers, you will get all combinations of these, assuming all of their reactivities are the same.

    This is why I don’t understand this “science” project’s point. Are they trying to put a time factor on the reactions? That doesn’t make any sense.

  65. Natasha says

    My all time favorite middle school science project caught my attention from the other side of the gym; it’s title was “How long will your colon last?” Wow, I thought… I must check this out. I worked my way over to it only to discover that “colon” was a misspelling of cologne. Eau!

  66. says

    Hmmmph. Chemistry is most certainly a science!

    I conned my kids into cooking stuff by telling them it was chemistry, and hence science.

    Don’t ruin my kid’s fun.

  67. rrt says

    Science (at least to me) argues strongly in favor of a creator, but it doesn’t prove it.

    Rather obviously, we disagree over that point. To qualify for “argues strongly in favor,” I would argue that material evidence would be necessary. Such as very different results from the prayer study recently discussed here. Well, technically I guess that wouldn’t say much about a CREATOR, per se…

    I’d also suggest some atheists would differ quite strongly that it’s a worldview “devoid of philosophy.” But again, that’s not my area.

  68. ConcernedJoe says

    Well I cannot contain myself any longer. So I’ll pop up – make my statement and say ciao ciao. I want to go on record mostly for the “compasses” of the world. Just letting them know that just about anyone who exercises their unfettered brain honestly can and will dismiss them and their culture of negativity. Yup! Another “ordinary Joe” person is on to them.

    Oh “compasses” out there – listen up!! Eventually your supply of suckers will be dried up by sound technology, sound education, sound economics, tastes of freedom, and then simply the realization that there is no good reason to fear life and its diversity of pleasures and people so. Like when people saw that not sacrificing the virgins on the mountain and not giving their toils to witch-doctors doesn’t in and by itself cause all those bad things they always believed would happen. Maybe the cleansing will take 100, 200 years. But if you all with your religion driven ideology of hate, prejudice, artificial ignorance, and fear don’t destroy the world first, enlightenment will win. I’ll leave the factual defense of my humble opinions to scholars that have, can, and should resoundingly provide it.

    No, I won’t stay to dialog because: (1) others are more capable of carrying and presenting the facts, (2) “compasses” don’t have an interest in truth; they are sophists who have ulterior motives, one of which is to keep in check any of their flock that may stray into this site or similar sites; they know their flock will gravitate toward the “compass” posts and will let the “compass” posts do their analysis and thinking for them, (3) they are masters of turning the tables (consummate sophists – wow — “design an experiment to disprove the existence of god” – LOL – that is precious) and thus they refuse to engage in any meaningful scientific discussion or forum; they operate in a world of PSEUDO scientific discussions in which they can ignore facts, contort conclusions, and outright make it up. Hey here’s a challenge (not an original one – but one worth repeating): start legitimately publishing rigorous scientific articles in legitimate (not religious) peer reviewed accredited scientific journals and then I and my infidel brothers will be more than just politely respectful and attentive to what you say. Until then … I respect your way with words but (oh my is it time to be blunt) your fairy tales suck and religion practiced as fundamentally as I suspect you’d like it practiced is deleterious to mankind and always has been (yeah yeah – I know you’ll bring up Stalin as one of our guys and how it shows blah blah blah — save your breath. Putting aside any other good arguments one may make to show that that is a stretch on your part, religious fundamentalism is THE evil at hand now, and that’s what we need to defend ourselves and our children from.

    Well at least I feel better.

  69. says

    Ronald Taylor: Students judge the science fair? What sort of weirdness is that? (I can understand having a peer component, but …)

    RavenT: Number theory project? That’s certainly different. As for the math and computers thing, yeah, it exists here. I did my projects the three years of science fair I did in the computer division. (Two local medals for me, though what I regard as my best of the three projects was curiously the one that didn’t win anything. I did a comparison of features of several programming languages.) Mind you, until the regionals here got up to speed it played havoc with my school’s entries. I think I have heard that the slow integration of different levels of fairs is finally happening.

    I was more recently at my old high school as a judge, rather than a participant, and it was interesting seeing what had changed in the ten years, other than teachers and students. One was that there were a handful of psychology-ish projects, which I don’t remember ever seeing to that extent when I was growing up. This is good, and allowing social science projects into the fair would be the next step. Some students might enjoy seeing how cliques form or something. A second was that there should be a ban on certain generic topics unless a specific new idea can be brought up. (I thought that teachers were supposed to do this sort of thing.) Volcanos, electrolysis, music on plants, and a few other things come to mind.

  70. Edward Braun says

    And until God is outright disproved -which biology doesn’t seem to be doing- I find the often gratuitous “Fundie slamming” that is so prevalent from members of this site (including PZ) as I said earlier; intriguing.

    Compass – you are clearly missing a major point, although I am not completely convinced that you are missing the point because you aresolely interested in sophistry.

    The simplest framework to think of this in (to my mind) is a Bayesian one. Before getting to “creator hypotheses” I would remind you that the central idea there is that the posterior probability of a hypothesis give data is proportional to the product of the likelihood of the hypothesis given the data and the prior probability of the hypothesis. This provides both a strength and a weakness of a the framework – if one assumes a high prior probability of a hypothesis it takes substantial data to overcome that prior when the hypothesis is in fact wrong.

    But – with the obvious concern that one should attempt to pick priors that are as reasonable as possible – this formalization yields a truly wonderful behavior: as the amount of data gets smaller and smaller, the posterior approaches the prior; as the data accumulates, the posterior approaches the likelihood estimate, As such it represents a way to formalize induction (which is still problematic from a purely philosophical standpoint)

    How do we treat a creator hypothesis in this framework? It might be reasonable to think of creator hypotheses as a multidimensional parameter space describing certain characteristics of the hypothetical creator (along with characteristics of the hypothetical non-intelligent creation processes – e.g., something like eternal inflation for producing regions of the universe that might contain us). Obviously, we don’t know enough to fully populate that parameter space.

    BUT we can stake out regions of parameter space that are defined by some available intelligent designer hypothesis. The extreme “fundie” position – young earth, Noah’s ark and the flood, etc. (and minor variants of that hypothesis) make very specific predictions. And those predictions have never proven correct when examined – so the likelihood of the fundie hypothesis given the available data (remember this is proportional to the probability of the data given the fundie hypothesis) is essentially zero. That along justifies a desire to keep the fundie hypothesis out of science and science classrooms.

    I’m sure nobody wants to read a detailed treatment of all alternative “creator hypotheses” (and I neither desire to provide that treatment nor am I sufficiently schooled in comparative religion to provide it) but I would assert that either a deist position in which an intelligent creator started the process and stepped back thereafter to allow the naturalistic evolution of the universe -or- an universe that began and evolved without any natural intervention are the hypotheses most consistent with the data. Note these two hypotheses would make essentially idential predictions. As such, the element that differs when evaluating them is the prior – which many scientists would suggest to favor the atheistic hypothesis (arguing from parsimony – deism postulates and intelligent designer AND a complex universe while atheism postulates only the complex universe).

  71. Edward Braun says

    Oh, and I would add that a fallacy of many theists is to assume that ANY data interpreted as evidence for a creator is evidence for their favorite Creator. Dembski prattles on about no free lunch etc. – but even if he were correct, the best supported intelligent designer would be NOTHING LIKE the Christian god (I stress that I am not supporting ID – mearly asserting that even if all ID assumptions were correct they would not support Christianity). Indeed, I would futher assert that many of the supposed accomplishments of the god of Abraham et al. detailed in the old and new testaments (and Qur’an) are sufficiently at odds with the available data that we can assign a probability of essentially zero to the hypothesis that the god of Abraham exists.

    This brings us to the other problem most of us have with fundies – they want to tell non-fundies how to live, all on the basis of a hypothesis that is not supported by the available data. I would have no problem with fundies who say “I don’t believe the use of any birth control is moral, so I won’t use any type of birth control” but I do have a problem with fundies who say “I don’t believe the use of any birth control is moral, so birth control should be unavailable in my community.”

    Ditto for gay sex – if you don’t dig gay sex, then don’t have sex with other men if you are a man or other women if you are a woman. Pretty darn simple, isn’t it? Heck, I don’t like gay sex – guess what – that makes me straight. But I wouldn’t dream of telling my gay friends not to have gay sex. Why should I? And more to the point, why should anyone?

    I also don’t object to fundies trying to convince folks not to do things. Billboards decrying abortion dot the American South. I think they are stupid, but if fundies want to blow their money on adverts about how bad abortion is, that is their business. But when they try to limit the availability of abortion they step over the line.

    We object to fundies because there is every indication that they would become an American Taliban if they could. Fortunately, I think it is unlikely that they will gain that level power, but their incessant attempts to gain it still have the potential to infringe upon everybody’s civil liberties.

    END RANT MODE…

  72. says

    Number theory project? That’s certainly different.

    Yeah, I was reading some general-interest-level math books, where I got the modular arithmetic concepts from. In one of them–I don’t remember which, so I’d have a hard time giving credit–they linked the scale to an arithmetic mod 12 system.

    Once I got that concept from the source (wish I could remember which one), it occurred to me that all these principles I was learning as axiomatic in music theory class (chords built on the V are always major, on the VI are always minor, on the VII are always diminished, and so forth) could actually be proven as properties of the mod 12 major scale system, and proceeded to do so. So my 12th-grade science fair project consisted of a bunch of modular arithmetic proofs of the universality of harmonic principles in major scales.

    In retrospect, it was probably a wonder that I got even honorable mention, because it was so off my teachers’ radar. I’m glad they have a math category now, though.

  73. Peter says

    The point that this argument against evo misses is that while there are a huge number of possible combinations of amino acids, it is wrong to assume that only one of those combinations would produce a protein with a specific function.

    For example, Cytochrome C, a vital part of cell metabolism found in all living things. It has been shown that there are over 10^93 (yes, that’s not a typo, 10^93) different combinations of amino acids that would result in a protein with the required properties to perform the function of Cytochrome C. That is also a very big number.

    Thank to Zachery Moore and his Evolution 101 blog and podcast for this. His current series on the molecular evidence for evolution is very enlightening