Valentine Pontifex

Wells has retracked the "mutant shrimp" claims in a message reproduced <a href="http://www.arn.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001795.html" target="_blank">here</a>.

The basic excuse is that he did his press release one day before the Nature article was released. His original attack attacked a RUSH to make exagerated claims and yet he could not wait ONE day to read the paper for himself.

Dr.GH

Your point is well taken.

I begin to suspect that PLA is Wells.

theyeti

All in all, it's a pretty pathetic attempt at damage control. The part that got me in his initial response was this:

This is not simply a matter of having the facts wrong. This is about making up facts out of thin air. Had he simply said that he wasn't impressed by a mutant shrimp, it would be a minor (though still embarasing) error. Instead, he made specific claims about the shrimp, when the mutation is expressed, and how the shrimp is "disabled". None of these claims can possibly be based on any study that he's done since the shrimp never existed. What he's demonstrated here is a penchant for dishonesty and the willingness to invent falsehoods whole cloth.

theyeti

Dr Rick

Well's would have done a better job of confusing the issue if he had just been contrite and originally said something such as "this experiment doesn't prove anything." There is so much evidence to support evolution from so many fields of science that there was really no need for him to make such an ass of himself over this one press release.

tgamble

I'm confused. The article states:

"The UCSD team, which included Matthew Ronshaugen and Nadine McGinnis, showed in its experiments that this could be accomplished with relatively simple mutations in a class of regulatory genes, known as Hox, that act as master switches by turning on and off other genes during embryonic development. Using laboratory fruit flies and a crustacean known as Artemia, or brine shrimp, the scientists showed how modifications in the Hox gene Ubx—which suppresses 100 percent of the limb development in the thoracic region of fruit flies, while its crustacean counterpart from Artemia only represses 15%—would have allowed the crustacean-like ancestors of Artemia, with limbs on every segment, to lose their hind legs and diverge 400 million years ago into the six-legged insects."

Since they used a brine shrimp how can you say the shrimp never existed? I must be missing something.

theyeti

Read the NCSE article. There was never a mutant shrimp like Wells claims. The gene came from a shrimp, was mutated, and then expressed in a fruitfly embryo, at least if I understand correctly. I haven't read the paper either, but then again I'm not issuing any press releases making bold claims.

theyeti

Kevin

So his excuse is "Forgive me, for I haven't the integrity to refrain from commenting on an article I haven't even read yet." What's truly frightening is that they will forgive him.

And he still gets his facts wrong, as pz points out. Wells political success shows the true extent of American democracy: even a moron can manage to advise a school board on science standards. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Valentine Pontifex

And it was pointed out that contrary to what he said, the Nature paper was availiable when he issued his press release.

RufusAtticus

Shouldn't we nominate "mutant shrimp" to be our next non-god. Maybe "mutant shrimp" could be IPU avatar on earth?

-RvFvS

Jimmy Higgins

I thought his retraction was great. Not only was his mistake not his fault (somehow), but the experiment which he lambasted that never happened was more progress than the actual experiment done, or so he says.

You can always tell the mindset and bad intentions of someone when they make a mistake of that proportion and then go about blaming someone else for it and not even apologizing for making something up. His retraction was hardly what I'd call heartfelt and sincere. And he wants people to take him seriously?