I was reading the comments on Moran’s post, and there’s a creationist there challenging people to come to his youtube channel, where he has apparently refuted all of evolution. So I did. It was…pathetic. You can suffer through it if you want, but let me spare you some time with a summary of the entirety of the content.
This ignorant fellow, Tommy Hall, declares that he’s going to present a list of the failed predictions
of evolution. Right away, there’s a conceptual problem: science makes failed predictions all the time. It’s how it works. We’re supposed to make predictions, and test them, and if none of them were to fail, what would be the point of testing them? So sure, I could put together a long and accurate list of failed predictions, and how we progressed from testing them.
But here’s the next problem: none of his listed failures
are actually failures. He gets everything wrong.
And another problem: he doesn’t explain anything. All he does is assert “Here’s something evilutionists claimed, and it’s WRONG!” With a loud, continuous laugh track. Hint: it doesn’t make sitcoms funny, and it doesn’t make creationism true.
Tommy Hall really has nothing to say. Besides his list of vacuous assertions, he spends 3½ minutes of a 10 minute video telling us how stupid evolution is and how he likes making fun of it, before even trying to make an argument
. You’re missing nothing if you skip it, but here’s basically the entire content in a simple list.
These things are supposedly all wrong.
Junk DNA
No, there really is junk DNA, and it makes up a substantial chunk of the genome. If you want, I’m in a youtube video discussing it.
Appendix has no function
No one said it had no function. We said it was vestigial — learn what it means.
Genes and genomes don’t change throughout the lifetime of individual
Uh, what? Cancer, for example, is caused by genetic changes during our lifetime. We know about this. The thing is, changes to somatic tissues are not heritable.
Neandertals couldn’t breed with modern humans
Was that ever a specific prediction? I don’t think so. It was a reasonable hypothesis.
Inheritance of acquired characteristics was impossible
Yes? Show me an example. I assume this was a garbled conclusion from misunderstanding epigenetics.
The almost totally abandoned concept of population genetics
Oh. Now I get the laugh track. That is absurd.
one gene=one protein=one trait
Cool. Beadle & Tatum’s “one gene, one enzyme” hypothesis. That was a really fruitful idea that explained a lot of phenomena, so I wouldn’t exactly call it “failed” — but it did have to be extensively modified with time. By scientists, not creationists.
Humans have 100,000 genes
Nope. There was a mob of patent lawyers who went nuts trying to preemptively patent all kinds of possibilities, and put together these claims. The scientists, especially those population geneticists who no longer exist, were quite definite about the numbers: 10,000-30,000 genes. That’s what I learned in the 1970s, and it was the likely estimate since the 1930s.
darwin’s tree of life
Sorry, still valid for many organisms, especially us multicellular beasties. Bacteria don’t pay much attention to it.
genetic determinism
OK, that one is wrong. Hasn’t been widely held for a long time, but I will admit that some scientists still cling to it.
the molecular clock
Yeah? What’s wrong with it? Still valid, still useful.
horizontal gene transfer rare
Yes, it is. The highest number I’ve seen reported for humans is that possible 100+ genes were introduced by HGT. That number is disputed (and I think highly unlikely), but even if we accept it, it still says that it’s a rare event.
macro=micro+time
Nope. Mass extinctions, for instance, are an example of a macroevolutionary phenomenon that isn’t applicable on a microevolutionary scale.
collapse of the central dogma, the foundation of modern biology
He even gets the definition sorta right: information can’t pass from protein back to DNA. Which is still true. Can he name any examples where it’s not?
Weismann’s barrier
Weismann’s barrier is the isolation of the somatic cell line from the germ cell line; that is, only gametes are passed on to the next generation, with no contribution from other cells of the body. Unless you’ve got evidence that your liver donated cells to your progeny, it’s still true.
DNA is a blueprint
Well, if you’re going to trot out every overly-simplified analogy used to try and explain complex concepts to simple-minded creationists, this is going to take forever.
all adaptive traits happen via random mutation & natural selection.
Also recombination. But other than that, what’s your example of an additional source of adaptive variation?
DNA is everything
I don’t even…
DNA is the sole container of information
Isn’t that what you just said? Why is a creationist’s ignorant misconceptions considered a failure of evolution?
All mutations are random
Define “random”. We’ve got a few tools for site-directed mutagenesis, for instance, that are not random, but otherwise, yes, mostly random.
That’s about it. He just zips through all that nonsense with hyenas laughing excessively in the background. Ironically, at the beginning he claims that evolutionists will only reply with insults, but at the end he say of evolutionists
preprogrammed circus monkeys, playthings for satan
I would encourage Mr Hall to show up here, and present one of his favorite examples of an evolutionary failure, and back it up with something other than canned laughter. I doubt that he will, though. I doubt that he can.
Oh please, let him come here. I haven’t seen a good chew toy at Pharyngula in a while.
I’ve never suffered fools well, especially when I’m certain that they’re disingenuous in the extreme. Alas, I suspect that the latter condition is true here, he’s playing a fool, but knows better and his beliefs cause him to create rectally produced evidence.
Let’s see now, for fun, we’ll follow what humans have done, a group that is nearing evolutionary failure, due to over modification of their environment. :P
The domestic turkey is a bird produced from its wild and substantially different cousin, the wild turkey. A fine drink. Oh, wait, we’re speaking of the bird. ;)
In less than a human generation, the wild turkey was domesticated into a bird quite close to what we eat on Thanksgiving.
But, mutation is slow, to that village idiot.
As the domestic turkey was bred long before genetic manipulation, hell, before we even could figure out what a gene is, that’s astonishing. Assuming genes are immutable or some other bullshit on rye being called a Reuben sandwich is true. It isn’t. Things can happen rapidly in genetics, in nature, those sports aren’t selected to survive to reproduce. Humans deep six selected precisely what should survive and killed anything that the humans breeding the animals didn’t like.
No religion there either, just brutal humans being brutal humans, all to get what they wanted.
I’m guessing that our insipid youtube warrior never saw a wild turkey, let alone even learned of it and the development of the domestic turkey. A bird enjoyed globally.
But then, creationists are fact free people, so having invented “facts”, they’ll create new “facts” from the issue of their rectums.
For those thus far unclear, that means that they pull “facts” out of their collective asses. I just had to drop code for honest hypothesis, which has thus far, been fully convergent with observation and exploration of the observation.
Hence, why I’ll not waste my time watching the intentional idiot’s videos.
That said, I’ve far too often joked that the creator has a sense of humor, best displayed by the platypus.
While enjoying the genetics of that living “missing link”, derived from multiple species that went extinct while the platypus was evolving.
Seriously, the morphology is cool in convergence of features, the genetics, even more cool. The fossil history, excellent.
Add in the male’s toxin, beyond cool!
I’d shake the critter’s hand, but I’d likely get spurred and honestly, as they lack true hands, socialization with humans and they’re shy, I’ll not attempt such a stupid task. I will, however, donate to future research and environmental efforts to repopulate that special gift from time.
so
PZ
slow time on campus?
It’s Sunday night, and it’s spring break.
ah
I understand
Let The Idiots Beware
Maybe these are not “predictions” per se, but more like expectations or “promissory notes.” Karl Popper coined the term “promissory materialism,” which means science likes to issue “promissory notes” in the form of ridged scientific dogmas….these dogmas are to act as the foundation and framework for the theory. So in a sense they are indeed predictions, but these “predictions” form the basic structure of what the theory is. So for example, the theory would “predict” that there should be biological leftovers such as junk dna or vestigial organs…..and sure enough junk dna and the appendix would fit right into those predictions….same with the notion of the impossibility of the inheritance of acquired characteristics….that was a prediction, a basic rule or framework that was established many decades ago when the theory was formed, because adaptive traits were said to be spread by selection and vertical descent, not horizontally due to adaptive internal factors…otherwise phylogenetic trees would have giant question marks all over them…….. Dawkins offered to eat his hat if biology had to return to Lamarckism….”a promissory note” that in my opinion needs to be fulfilled. So maybe the things I listed in my video are not predictions in the typical sense, but they do certainly serve as expectations, which is essentially the same thing. They’re also all easily defendable. Neo-Lamarckism, Weissman’s barrier, the inheritance of acquired characteristics are all confirmed by epigenetic changes and horizontal gene transfer, both of which involve acquiring traits and then passing them on to future generations. “To the surprise of scientists, many environmentally induced changes turn out to be heritable. When exposed to predators, Daphnia water fleas grow defensive spines (right). The effect can last for several generations.” http://bama.ua.edu/~sprentic/101%20Watters%202006.htm The molecular clock is argued and debated as to how to set it….how can the molecular clock be right if people are fighting about how fast it ticks? And how can the molecular clock be right if evo devo is right, which assumes small changes in regulation can alter a myriad of tratis, sometimes without a change in protein coding genes at all? And yes, the appendix was claimed for decades to have no function…as was junk dna….ENCODE shot that down…along with other assorted evidences that the “junk” has function: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070509205719.htm …the idea that genomes are static during the lifetime of the individual is just ridiculous. Have you read Shapiro’s book? Surely I don’t need to defend the notion that genomes aren’t dynamically adaptive.
Why do the pick on the appendix so much? There are enough other vestigial organs. What about the auricular muscles, or the palmaris longus? Do they believe there is a higher meaning in ear wiggling?
@6 prae
There is, when i do it.
Wait, in what sense are mass extinctions evolutionary events? You could call them selection events, I guess, but aren’t they usually so abrupt and violent that adaptation is almost irrelevant?
Am I a bad person for thinking there should be a required test before breeding is allowed?
@9 Grumpy Santa
Yes you are. But you’re not alone.
However, this is one of those things where the slippery slope is real and has been giddily slid down many times in the past to horrific results. So it’s best to just excise the idea from your soul and hope that the many paths of evolution move us away from the human habits that make us think such bleak, misanthropic things.
And if that doesn’t work, there’s always disco dancing your cares away.
(raises hand)
I found a place where we can deport the most annoying creationists:
“The eastern part of the dark area called Cthulhu Regio seems to be saturated with craters” http://www.nature.com/news/weird-and-wonderful-pluto-spills-its-secrets-1.19585
@11, I was thinking of Sagittarius A*. Once below the event horizon, we’d get no further trouble from them.
@8 alkisvonidas
So you are saying that they are not evolutionary events because they only involve selection, but if they involved adaptation they would be?
First off, a mass extinction is not just an steroid falling on the planet thing…it can also be an event spanning through very long periods of time (millions of years).
Mass extinctions are evolutionary events, and massive ones at that, in that they have a huge impact in population genetics, through death, reduction of population size, which modifies the prevalence of drift, changes in selective forces, etc. Anything that modifies genetic frequencies in a population can be safely refered to as an evolutionary event, and mass extinctions not only do that, they modify entire biomes.
@10 williamgeorge
Well, I don’t mind being a bad man for a good cause… but then again… disco…
@13 Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia
I see you point. You are right, I really meant to address cataclysmic effects, such as a mass extinction triggered by a huge environmental change. My point is that in such a case, what we have is essentially random, massive death, without regards to adaptations of individuals or species. If you were looking for a reason why this species survived and that one perished, chances are you won’t find any sensible one.
The usual creationist canard goes “there is microevolution, but no macroevolution”. The typical evolutionist answer is, of course, that there is no clear-cut line between the two: if you can take a step, you can eventually walk around the earth, given enough time. I’m just saying that events like mass extinctions don’t seem to be part of that pattern, and so mentioning them as a counterargument is somewhat confusing.
#15.
*your
“if you can take a step, you can eventually walk around the earth, given enough time.”
Don’t be silly. The Earth is flat. How else do you explain Jesus could see all the world from the mountain when he was tempted by Sauron? Checkmate, Darwinists!
#8:
Yes. Adaptation is totally irrelevant in these phenomena. You can’t gradually evolve to being resistant to being smashed by a massive flaming rock flying at supersonic speeds.
Mass extinctions are not selection events, and they’re not provoking an adaptive response. But they’re still part of evolution. Your mistake is in thinking that selection is the whole of evolution.
#17: I would also point out that at some point in your trip around the world, you’re gonna need a boat.
@19
I have it on good authority that you can walk on water, if you have enough faith.
PZ:
Pfffft, faith! Gotta have faith. Jesus would walk you across the water.
@21
Absolutely.
He’ll also rid you of herpes, genital warts, etc. while He’s at it.
If you believe, that is (and rid yourself of all negative thoughts, of course).
@18.
I certainly don’t think that. There’s genetic drift, for one thing. But would you classify as evolution any event that arbitrarily eliminates some genetic lines and preserves others? In that sense, a mass shooting would be an evolutionary event, albeit a very minor one.
In any case, it is a matter of definition, and I agree that a mass extinction can have dramatic consequences on the history of life. But then again, a creationist would also probably agree. It is on processes that happen between mass extinctions that most of their misunderstandings lie.
At what point did he ask for money?
Oh wow. You “really have nothing to say,” do you?
Congrats for the epic fail, blogger.
Oucher Owl #25
What are you referring to?
@17 – Sauron is Satan? I always thought he is Jahweh!
Yes. Will it change the frequency of alleles in the next generation? But it’s not a selection event.
Have you read Raup’s Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck?? He even talks about mass extinction events as a “hail of bullets scenario”.
@Alkisvonidas: What survives or doesn’t survive a major extinction event, and keep in mind that humans are busily causing one right now, may be rather arbitrary, but the survivors do some rapid evolving afterwards to cope with the changed environment. Maybe it’ll help if you think of it in those terms.
Isn’t that part of genetic drift?
Test
@tommyhall
Fail
Rather vague, Artor. Got a specific thing you’d like to refute? Btw my first response was finally posted and can be found up earlier in the thread if anyone has any comments or rebuttals.
I thought Sauron and Yaweh were analogous but in different narrative universes. Vicious, power-hungry baddies, associated with fire (-mountins, -bushes). Some genetic transfer through virus vectors jumping the multiverse?
@tommyhall
Please be aware that multiple links in a comment sends it automatically into moderation (it’s a spambot protection thing). It will only be posted once PZ personally gets around to releasing it. I think you can do one link without problems.
Ok thanks lykeX
Tommy Hall. Present one argument with citations to the peer reviewed scientific literature. Any referenced papers to web sites where the babble is considered inerrant are religious in nature, not science, and will be dismissed as religious bullshit.
If you intend to claim a creator, you must provide solid and conclusive physical evidence for one before we will even consider the idea, evidence that would pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. To date, not one creationist has done so. Ergo, your creator is a phantasm.
#29.
No. It seems very interesting, I will check it out. I’m probably biased towards considering mass extinction an exception rather than a rule, after having read Dawkins’ Unweaving the Rainbow — he is being rather unfair to Stephen Jay Gould’s ideas.
#30.
Indeed, and the fact that many previously occupied ecological niches are suddenly vacant should speed things up. There can even be made some parallels with how major pandemics, like the Black Death, boosted the social position of surviving members of the lower classes.
alkisvonidas:
I don’t understand. Suppose it’s an asteroid/comet collision that we’re talking about, just to have a concrete example. If a species can survive and flourish in very harsh environmental conditions, last for a long time on a low amount of food/sunlight/whatever, then those features which enable a species to do that are adaptive. I don’t see how it makes a difference what caused the situation those species found themselves in. A large asteroid hitting the planet is a fairly rare event, but the resulting food shortages and so forth are not. There’s been pressure on a species to be able to deal with those things (usually on a less dramatic scale), and that makes them more likely to deal with it no matter what the source happens to be (or how likely the specific source event is).
PZ:
Maybe I don’t get how the terminology is being used here, but how would you describe what I’m talking about above? I mean, I’m not imagining a rabbit (or whatever) that is adapted to being smashed on the head unceremoniously by a giant rock from the sky. I’m imagining one that wasn’t directly hit on the head, maybe wasn’t even on the same continent, but one that could manage to eat and reproduce and so forth, amid all the chaos and destruction that the giant rock caused all over the planet. Dinosaurs and various other critters didn’t all go extinct because they were hit directly on the head (more like vaporized if they were anywhere in the neighborhood). That is basically the story, isn’t it? So the way you’re putting it doesn’t make much sense to me. It’s obviously not the whole story, but why not say that selection and adaptation are playing a huge role in which species survive an event like that?
@inquisitiveraven, not every survivor gets to evolving like mad. The monotremes didn’t evolve much, if at all, after the dinosaurs went extinct.
Just as long as their niche remains undisturbed, they’ll tool along as they did before the mass extinction.
Tommy @ 6, you’re very good at copying-and-pasting the (Daphnia-related) caption beneath the article. Did you read the article itself?
Nerd,I’m not here to provide a peer reviewed paper for past miracles. Miracles are not scientific by nature. But then again neither are your accidental, fortuitous, haphazard, dumb luck mutations culled by selection. The Neo Darwinian mechanism for adapting populations is nothing but a metaphysical fairy tale. When it comes to how populations actually change I subscribe to The Third Way crowd of Shapiro and company. Adaptive novelty is generated via an interaction with the environment which triggers a myriad of internal mechanisms that serve as a one step adaptive process that bypasses selection. Random mutations creating body parts, or parts of parts, is also a fairy tale and is no less faith based than miracles from God.
consciousness razor, there is still talk about the extinction of the dinosaurs being exclusively asteroid related. One reason is, how did frogs and birds survive such extreme conditions?
Another, the Deccan Traps were still erupting.
It may well be that the dinosaurs were already stressed by new continental configurations, ocean current changes from the new configuration, the erupting supervolcano and the asteroid impact just put the icing on the cake. Smaller animals need smaller food and smaller amounts, whereas the dinosaurs required massive amounts of food or other metafauna to eat.
While the current consensus states that the dinosaurs died from an asteroid impact, it’s just that, a current consensus that fails to explain how birds and frogs, to use two examples, survived an event that otherwise they shouldn’t have survived.
#43
The word-salad is strong in this one.
tommyhall, some organs and organelles were “gifts” from retrovirus infection. The placenta was one such “gift”.
Endogenous retroviral fragments are all over our genome and ignoring those creates major errors in accounting for evolution.
But, for selection, humans have bred very interesting animals from wild originators. The domestic turkey being a fine example. Over a handful of turkey generations, we selected for breast size, physical size and lack of intelligence, to the point where the wild turkey and domestic turkey are extremely difference in appearance.
By selecting, I’m of course being nice. Selection was done by killing any bird that didn’t have the desired traits.
I recall someone mentioning vestigial organs, somewhere about this site and the vermiform appendix was brought up.
That does not appear to actually be a vestigial organ, but actually, an adaptation to recolonize the intestine of the normal flora and fauna that would be flushed from a food borne infection. At least, that’s the current theory, which is supported by the contents of the vermiform appendix.
Wzrd1… Which placenta? Which animal? Did it all form at once? I’d like to see a retrovirus form a placenta. And how did babies develop correctly before placentas? Hmmmmmm
@47 tommyhall
Ever heard of a thing called yolk? You knoe, that nutritious thing stored in a special membrane that we actually still have even though it’s empty because it got progressively abandoned in favour of a new strategy called placental implantation?
tommyhall, all mammals have a placenta, it’s one of the characteristics of mammalia.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22877784
Granted, the NIH isn’t a creationist site, but they do have a lot of really cool and accurate information. :)
Wikipedia also has a decent overview of endogenous retrovirus, indeed, the article uses that very name and there is a discussion in genome evolution. I’d have included additional links, but it’d get trapped in the spam filter.
More importantly, the Wikipedia article has citations one can follow. :)
Where are the “pooferies” used by your imaginary creator? Like him, they don’t exist. Checkmate….
The vast majority of the babies born on this planet develop perfectly fine without a placenta.
Even among mammals, the babies of monotremes develop without any need for a placenta (since they develop in eggs), and the babies of marsupials rely on the placenta far less and for far shorter, than among the placental mammals.
Only if they’re hatched babies. Mammalian babies all require a placenta. Well, save for monotremes, which are both odd remnants remaining from branching off from reptile and mammal and really, really cool. :)
Hence, the full term being placental mammals, so that there is no monotreme confusion. Just as well, really. The poor monotremes are confused enough when they see us. ;)
How in hell did I manage to forget marsupials?!
Good catch, thanks. :)
wzrd1:
I don’t really understand what you’re saying. I don’t care if other factors also caused the dinosaur’s extinction, or if we don’t know or aren’t sure about them. Honestly, I’d be surprised if it were ever that simple. That specific question (“what made the dinosaur’s go extinct?”) isn’t what I’m asking about. And I’m sure there are many, many things we don’t know how to explain about that particular set of events (if something along those lines happened), at least in part because lots of helpful evidence is simply gone or unavailable to us.
Instead, much more generally, I’m just trying to make sense of what PZ wrote. If there were any sort of asteroid impact (for instance), anywhere at any time, it seems wrong to say that selection or adaptation are “totally irrelevant”, that those are “not selection events,” that “they’re not provoking an adaptive response,” and so forth. Like I said, maybe I’m missing something about how the biology jargon works in statements like those, but as a non-scientist who’s just trying to interpret English I don’t get what that kind of talk is supposed to be about. It just sounds like it’s obviously wrong.
What’s different about circumstances like that? The fact that it’s a rock from outer space doesn’t seem relevant (so imagine other kinds of events if you like). You still describe the environment a species is in, even if it’s new or unlikely or unpredictable or whatever else you may want to say about it. A species still has all of the same basic needs as it did before, and some individuals still are more or less capable of surviving and reproducing in whatever their environment happens to be. They’re not adapted “for” a typical environment either (whatever that’s supposed to be like), so however/whenever adaptations are supposed to happen and be useful somehow, it’s not saying much of anything that they’re not adapted “for” an extremely atypical environment. Of course they aren’t.
So it’s still pretty mysterious why anybody would say it’s irrelevant in cases like that. How could it be irrelevant? Unless you’re talking about that specific dinosaur right here which was vaporized by a giant projectile … then in that specific case its adaptive features clearly haven’t helped it. But the real story that you want tell isn’t a biography of that one specific dinosaur anyway, so I don’t get why anybody would’ve imagined that it was supposed to start or end there.
Gah, I should’ve said dinosaurs’ and dinosaurs, not dinosaur’s. I guess I could blame auto-correct, but I don’t use it. I need some rest, I think. But I promise to flog myself repeatedly and write them on the blackboard 100 times each.
Sorry, no papers, no miracles, no deity. You always lose when you can’t/won’t provide real solid evidence for your imaginary delusions….
As usual, you, the creobot, refuse to understand that just criticizing evolution does nothing whatsoever to prove your imaginary deity exists and created the universe and the life therein. You must provide positive evidence for each of your claims, or they fall apart.
Thank you for admitting you have no evidence, and can be dismissed as just another presuppositional delusional asshole.
not necessarily. the original definition for “macroevolution” came from paleontologists looking at very LONG term effects on evolution, not the frequency of alleles within a given population.
things like large meteors, or rapid global warming… cause bottlenecks that affect what comes out of the other side for a long period of geologic time.
it isn’t the way that creationists have redefined the word, as Tommy Hall puts it, as being equivalent to “micro + time”.
it never was.
I NEVER EVER heard an evolutionary biologist use the term “macroevolution” outside of a paleontolological context, in the entire time I spent as an undergrad, grad, or as an instructor.
it wasn’t until places like the Discovery Institute got up and running that the term really started to morph meaning in the public lexicon.
… the classic example I was taught at Berkeley was the entire debate about gradualism vs punctuated equilibrium within the fossil record. That was a debate on a “macroevolutionary” scale; it was simply a way of classifying the kind of subject matter being discussed. At that scale, yes, whether selection or drift was more important in the fixation of any particular trait in a given population is irrelevant to the question of punctuation vs gradualism.
maybe that helps clarify?
not even wrong.
how does one even respond to something like that?
it’s like hearing someone claim they’d like to see the color blue sing a broadway show tune.
I can’t even…
Ichthyic, one responds as I did, with citations on the contribution toward a placenta created by a retrovirus. Granted, that’s heavily goobered down, but not totally incorrect and hence, far from not even wrong, just hyper-simplified.
For better and for worse, ERV’s are part of us.
Regarding population bottlenecks, that is indeed true. I recall one such bottleneck in humanity, some theorizing that it was caused by Toba’s eruption, but it isn’t extremely well supported. One ponders how many founder effects were created in the small, isolated groups of surviving humans that have contributed to humanity today.
…ignoring the utterly nonsensical portions of Hall’s diatribe (the vast bulk of it, sadly), I at least can address this (why isn’t poopyhead doing this?):
there are two problems here, tommy:
1. you are relying on the interpretation of a media journalist to tell you that scientists were surprised.
2. you then mistake what the “surprise” was about
3. plasticiity (which is what is happening there), is not an unknown phenomenon.
1. You have to realize that science journalists, and the media in general, are usually NOT scientists. They spin things they discuss with scientists because they are addressing an audience… that are not scientists. There actually was nothing in this that was surprising to scientists from an evolutionary standpoint. In fact, given highly variable environments, we EXPECT selection to favor genotypes that generate traits that can quickly respond to the environment.
2. Any “surprise” generated by scientists would be at how well daphnia exhibits this phenomenon of plasticity, and that nobody had actually published a paper on it sooner.
3. Plasticity has been noted for over 100 years (and unfortunately mistaken for lamarckism in a very famous example with frogs).
my memory is terrible, though… maybe someone else here recalls the old experiment that a famous biologist ran with frogs where they were convinced it was evidence of lamarckism but turned out to be a fascinating case of plasticity?
English biologist IIRC…
grr.
*sigh*
the retrovirus didn’t form the placenta, obviously. it’s just coding. it forms nothing by itself.
you’re just gonna confuse him, really.
getting back to point 3…
phenotypic plasticity is even well covered in wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenotypic_plasticity
and if you think about it for just a second… you can easily see how selection would indeed favor genotypes that produce traits that can adjust to quickly changing environmental pressures
hell, even humans have many of them, the most commonly noted being physiological response to changes in diet.
Ichthyic, I’ll simply say that currently, your memory is superior to mine. Bloody hyperthyroid has all manner of things working out of tune.
I used to have a mind like a steel trap, rusted. Oh, wait. Nevermind. ;)
Actually, my brain leaked out of my ears when our girls were in their teens. :/
So, do excuse the mind/memory jokes. It’s an extremely upsetting experience and the hyperthyroid is being addressed and hopefully, the only permanent feature is a dilated abdominal aorta.
Otherwise, my primary tool is blunted and I dread that. Hence, the humor.
so say, I had a wall that was streaming blood, and clouds formed over my house, and there were the sounds of trumpets coming down from the sky….
are you literally trying to tell me that all of those effects… easily visible, are not then testable?
or are you saying that the miracles claimed where things were invisible, inaudible, and otherwise undetectable, and that actually left no measurable effects on the surroundings either… are the only REAL miracles?
or are the only REAL miracles the ones written about in various cobbled-together, 3rd hand (at best) religious texts?
well, which ones are miracles?
because the ones that produce actual effects… namely every modern miracle catholics for example have claimed… are easily tested.
and all those that have indeed been tested have… mundane explanations.
you may not LIKE the explanations… but they exactly fit the evidence provided, every time.
you may not like hearing someone is a killer, but if the blood of the victim is on their hands, they are holding the murder weapon, and they even confess to doing it… is it then reasonable to say the victim was really killed by purple unicorns?
huh. I wonder… I probably should get mine checked, having just passed 50 myself.
hell, google has replaced at least half of my memory these days.
*looks up symptomology of thyroidism*
ummm… holy crap. I indeed might actually be suffering from hypothyroidism instead of hyper.
definitely need to get that checked.
Ichthyic, I had no clue until I ran out of blood pressure pills over the Christmas clusterfuck, erm, holiday, after relocating.
BP upon presentation, 200/100, pulse, 128. 128?! I didn’t get that pulse running for five miles! That’s a rabbit’s pulse!
Mentally freaking out, trying to figure it out. Got flabbergasted, although new doctor was more so, atrial flutter.
I suggested awaiting results on how the reinitiation of beta blockers does, as atrial flutter is common in tachycardia. (I’m a former SF medic)
Annoying: Staff not letting me see the ECG strip.
Got one my last appointment and learned that I have left ventricle hypertrophy. Things were so stimulated that my heart started to remodel itself to compensate.
Oh well, my abdominal aorta is only enlarged in one spot by 2.2cm. 4 cm, would be lethal, nearing 4 similarly lethal.
Caught in time, being managed.
Yeah, things got that bad. Got caught in the cracks of the ACA, insurance company errors, change of income and employment.
Symptoms mentally, late stage: Considering honestly and worse, fantasizing ripping off someone’s face. Literally. Earlier phase, considering ripping out someone’s throat, then reaching into the chest to pull the heart out, to stuff into the gaping mouth of the victim.
All of those gave me a major WTF moment that I considered worrying if it’s dementia.
Previously, intolerance to antivaxers. To the point of actually threatening an entire family’s existence, which also horrified me.
Worrying, there are a percentage that never recover from psychotic symptoms and things got more advanced than I’m comfortable with.
I compensated incredibly, it wasn’t until near new year that I noticed a 20 pound weight loss (I was overweight anyway), end of month reached 40 pounds. Am consuming 4500 – 5000 calories a day to hold weight at 150 pounds.
Yeah, an extreme case.
Want to know what actually brought a tear to my eye? My endocrinologist relating how many mental patients in the local mental ward were cured by treating hyperthyroidism.
Thinking that many people are disposable makes me want to hit the thinker over the head with a Buick. ;)
Doctor and I mutually pondered how many years the condition remained undetected and compensated for until things *really* went south.
Nearly unto my death from an aortic aneurysm.
As this is the gentlest brush with death, it’s not alarming to adrenaline release, but cause for grave concern.
My condition is secondary to autoimmune issues.
Regardless, the endocrinologist suggests thyroid blocking medication (methimazole) got a year or so and things will resolve.
As my experience base is infectious disease, plumbing issues in the human body and some dermatology issues, I’ll let the good doctor tell me what’s what.
Save, if things go seriously off the wire, then doctor will get summoned on the telephone and in doubt, hospital now would be the course of action.
well, at least I have socialized medicine here, so whatever happens, that’s one less anxiety.
all the best dealing with yours; I hear that thyroid problems are still poorly diagnosed, even with how much we know about them now; glad they caught yours in time!
This syndrome
google has replaced at least half of my memory these days
needs a naming.
I propose Ichthyic Syndrome.
I also propose that if it becomes a Thing™, we all refuse to explain it.
I propose it to be Google syndrome.
No need to remember, look it up. AKA, autodialer syndrome.
Even at five months, I honestly won’t recall my own home phone number.
is too easy!
Make ’em work!
typethumb a couplr moar serch termz!