They should rename it again to The Journal of Delusional Rationalization

If you want to take a look at one of the sources of creationist thought, the workshop where the red-hot anvil of pseudoscience and the inflexible hammer of theology are used to forge the balloon animals of creationism, The Journal of Creation (formerly the Creation ex nihilo Technical Journal) is now online … or at least part of it is. They’re working on it. For now, it’s enough that you can browse through several issues and see how they put up this superficially persuasive façade of analyzing matters objectively and scientifically, while somehow coming to the weirdest and most nonsensical conclusions that flout the evidence but somehow always magically end up supporting Christian theology of some sort.

A perfect example, and favorite bit of insanity off their list, is a review of Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful* titled “Evo Devo refutes neo-Darwinism, supports creation”. It’s fairly typical: most of the articles that address modern science do this same process of complaining that nothing means what the science says it does, quote-mining a few fragments that are distorted to support creationist claims, and winding up with a triumphant fist in the air and a victory dance while they insist that evolutionary biology is actually a tent-revival meeting for Jesus.

Anti-creationists should browse it anyway. It’s amazing how many of these arguments will percolate into public discussions of evolution — while they can’t be troubled to read any actual science, creationists will devour the bullshit in The Journal of Creation and regurgitate it for you.

*Hey, I just noticed that my review of that book didn’t make the move over here to scienceblogs. I’ll have to correct that.

Double Molly opportunity!

I was bad. I completely forgot to have Molly nominations for July, and here it is August. So let’s catch up: name your fave commenter for either month right here, or just your favorite for any time, and I’ll tally ’em up when I get back from New York — we’ll have a super-duper double induction ceremony, with both cake and pie.

A day spent traveling

If it’s been a bit dead here today, it’s because I’ve been on an aeroplane most of the afternoon, and am now holed up in the lovely little village of New York for a few days of urban thrills.

While I was cruising through the skies, Vox Day has responded to my rebuke of his pathetic anti-scientific efforts. He’s now claiming that if evolution were capable of rates of 200,000 darwins, then we could turn a mouse into an elephant in 20 years, and since we haven’t, then evolution is bogus.

I trust Pharyngula readers are smart enough to see the obvious logical hole. That evolution does not proceed at an extravagant rate dictated by a creationist does not call evolution into question in the slightest. As I mentioned, those extreme rates are observed in extreme experimental situations and involve changes in size of a few percent over short intervals in small and prolific invertebrates. No biologist claims elephants shot up over the span of decades, and it is entirely inappropriate to pretend that those kinds of rapid transformations should apply to the situation Day invented.

Trying too hard

Jonathan Eisen dresses down university press departments that oversell science, and also hits on one of my pet peeves: the attempt to portray all scientific research as addressing human ills. In this case, it’s claiming that research on shark gene expression will help treat birth defects.

In my own research, I look at the effects of alcohol (among other things) on embryonic development in zebrafish, and it is a kind of animal model of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. People always jump to the assumption that I’m trying to find a cure for FAS, and I have to correct them: I definitely am not. FAS is a developmental disorder, and is not curable … and we already have a solution in the form of public policy and maternal education that can prevent the problem. I use teratogens as a simple tool to perturb the process of development so I can view the interactions involved; I also see development as an event involving both genes and the environment, and just about everyone mucks around with genes, so I’m looking at it from the other side.

So my work with teratogens is much more directly applicable to research on birth defects, and I deny the association; most of the work out there on gene expression in fins is going to even more remote from applied medical uses, not that that will stop PR departments.