Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Albion · 09-07-2004, 11:46 AM

On the board where IamMoose's creationism discussions are going on, one of the creationists has linked to a PubMed abstract of a recent Behe paper

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q..._uids=15340163

and has quoted the start of the paper itself:

"Although many scientists assume that Darwinian processes
account for the evolution of complex biochemical systems,
we are skeptical. Thus, rather than simply assuming the
general efficacy of random mutation and selection, we want
to examine, to the extent possible, which changes are reasonable
to expect from a Darwinian process and which are
not. We think the most tractable place to begin is with
questions of protein structure. Our approach is to examine
pathways that are currently considered to be likely routes of
evolutionary development and see what types of changes
Darwinian processes may be expected to promote along a
particular pathway. ..."

Has Behe actually got a creationist paper into the peer-reviewed literature?

RBH · 09-07-2004, 12:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Albion

On the board where IamMoose's creationism discussions are going on, one of the creationists has linked to a PubMed abstract of a recent Behe paper

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q..._uids=15340163

and has quoted the start of the paper itself:

"Although many scientists assume that Darwinian processes
account for the evolution of complex biochemical systems,
we are skeptical. Thus, rather than simply assuming the
general efficacy of random mutation and selection, we want
to examine, to the extent possible, which changes are reasonable
to expect from a Darwinian process and which are
not. We think the most tractable place to begin is with
questions of protein structure. Our approach is to examine
pathways that are currently considered to be likely routes of
evolutionary development and see what types of changes
Darwinian processes may be expected to promote along a
particular pathway. ..."

Has Behe actually got a creationist paper into the peer-reviewed literature?

From what I gather an another list, it is a fairly straightforward analysis of time to fixation of of point mutations given some fairly restrictive assumptions (e.g., clonal reproduction). A more complete analysis of the paper and its meaning and limitations is forthcoming soon. I'll post the reference when it's available.

RBH

Prince Vegita · 09-07-2004, 12:42 PM

The relevant portion of the abstract is bolded by me.

Quote:

Gene duplication is thought to be a major source of evolutionary innovation because it allows one copy of a gene to mutate and explore genetic space while the other copy continues to fulfill the original function. Models of the process often implicitly assume that a single mutation to the duplicated gene can confer a new selectable property. Yet some protein features, such as disulfide bonds or ligand binding sites, require the participation of two or more amino acid residues, which could require several mutations. Here we model the evolution of such protein features by what we consider to be the conceptually simplest route-point mutation in duplicated genes. We show that for very large population sizes N, where at steady state in the absence of selection the population would be expected to contain one or more duplicated alleles coding for the feature, the time to fixation in the population hovers near the inverse of the point mutation rate, and varies sluggishly with the lambda(th) root of 1/N, where lambda is the number of nucleotide positions that must be mutated to produce the feature. At smaller population sizes, the time to fixation varies linearly with 1/N and exceeds the inverse of the point mutation rate. We conclude that, in general, to be fixed in 10(8) generations, the production of novel protein features that require the participation of two or more amino acid residues simply by multiple point mutations in duplicated genes would entail population sizes of no less than 10(9).

That's a key phrase. In the absence of selective pressures, all he's doing is detailing that a large population is required to fix the mutations in the population within a certain time frame. My guess is that this paper will be used to say "evolutionists tout the power of gene duplication/mutation, which is a random process. Look how inefficient it is and how long it takes to fix these minor mutations in the population. Random evolution cannot possibly account for the diversity of life". Note that he's stacked the deck in his favor and not directly assailed evolution in its entirety; the utility of selection (if he is indeed talking about natural selection) is deliberately left out of the study design.

That's just the interpretation of an anatomist who has a weak molecular biology and genetics background, without having read the paper.

Jabu Khan · 09-07-2004, 12:46 PM

There can only be one reason they're doing this. As I'm sure most of you figured out already. The articles are so unspecific and devoid of anything insightful or constructive that they have to be publishing these articles to shore up their position with the school boards.

"man your battle stations" I suspect a siege is on its way.
Think the President will step in? Definetly wouldn't be til after the election.
I imagined they moved to Florida because the Faith-based crap seems to be accepted there and Jeb will probably back them up.

RBH · 09-07-2004, 01:01 PM

Jabu Khan wrote

Quote:

I imagined they moved to Florida because the Faith-based crap seems to be accepted there and Jeb will probably back them up.

By "they" do you mean Stephen Meyer? He's moved to Palm Beach Atlantic University, which requires faculty members to "affirm" this statement:

Quote:

To assure the perpetuation of these basic concepts of its founders, it is resolved that all those who become associated with Palm Beach Atlantic as trustees, officers, members of the faculty or of the staff, must believe that man was directly created by God.

As far as I know he's the only major IDist to move to Florida recently.

RBH

RufusAtticus · 09-07-2004, 03:01 PM

I am in the process of reviewing the paper. It ain't notin' special. The authors clearly do not understand (or don't care about) the limitations of the theory they did. Their conclusions, the ones involving "problems" for standard evolutionary explainations, are entirely unjustified by the work they did. This paper emerged from a desire to prove that protein functions that involve multiple residuse are IC/CSI. Their zeal to demonstrate this makes them take leaps in their discussion that a more careful theoritician wouldn't do.

Albion · 09-07-2004, 03:08 PM

Interesting that it got through peer review, then.

RufusAtticus · 09-07-2004, 03:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Albion

Interesting that it got through peer review, then.

Getting published is the first part of peer review, and I can see how this paper made the grade.

Albion · 09-07-2004, 05:00 PM

Even though their conclusions are unjustified by the work they did?

jfryejr · 09-08-2004, 09:19 AM

I don't know how pertinent (or common) this is, as I've never seen it before but:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Protein Sci. 2004 Aug 31 Epub ahead of print

Acknowledgments
The publication costs of this article were defrayed in part by payment
of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby
marked “advertisement�? in accordance with 18 USC section 1734
solely to indicate this fact.

How much does this effect the peer review process, if at all?

09-07-2004, 11:46 AM	#1
Albion Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: US east coast. And www.theroyalforums.com Posts: 2,829	Behe's latest On the board where IamMoose's creationism discussions are going on, one of the creationists has linked to a PubMed abstract of a recent Behe paper http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q..._uids=15340163 and has quoted the start of the paper itself: "Although many scientists assume that Darwinian processes account for the evolution of complex biochemical systems, we are skeptical. Thus, rather than simply assuming the general efficacy of random mutation and selection, we want to examine, to the extent possible, which changes are reasonable to expect from a Darwinian process and which are not. We think the most tractable place to begin is with questions of protein structure. Our approach is to examine pathways that are currently considered to be likely routes of evolutionary development and see what types of changes Darwinian processes may be expected to promote along a particular pathway. ..." Has Behe actually got a creationist paper into the peer-reviewed literature?

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09-07-2004, 12:46 PM	#4
Jabu Khan Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: the impenetrable fortress of the bubbleheads Posts: 1,308	There can only be one reason they're doing this. As I'm sure most of you figured out already. The articles are so unspecific and devoid of anything insightful or constructive that they have to be publishing these articles to shore up their position with the school boards. "man your battle stations" I suspect a siege is on its way. Think the President will step in? Definetly wouldn't be til after the election. I imagined they moved to Florida because the Faith-based crap seems to be accepted there and Jeb will probably back them up.

09-07-2004, 03:01 PM	#6
RufusAtticus Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: NCSU Posts: 5,853	I am in the process of reviewing the paper. It ain't notin' special. The authors clearly do not understand (or don't care about) the limitations of the theory they did. Their conclusions, the ones involving "problems" for standard evolutionary explainations, are entirely unjustified by the work they did. This paper emerged from a desire to prove that protein functions that involve multiple residuse are IC/CSI. Their zeal to demonstrate this makes them take leaps in their discussion that a more careful theoritician wouldn't do.

09-07-2004, 03:08 PM	#7
Albion Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: US east coast. And www.theroyalforums.com Posts: 2,829	Interesting that it got through peer review, then.

09-07-2004, 05:00 PM	#9
Albion Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: US east coast. And www.theroyalforums.com Posts: 2,829	Even though their conclusions are unjustified by the work they did?

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