Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Guts · 07-22-2003, 08:45 PM

Lewontin described it pretty good:

Quote:

During the entire history of evolutionary research, there have been research programs that have concentrated on a single polymorphism or observed change in heritable characters of a species in nature, with the aim of explaining the maintenance of the polymorphism or the rapid evolutionary change that has occurred. The locus classicus of such studies was the attempt to explain the dramatic increase in the frequency of the melanic form of the peppered moth in Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The textbook explanation of this evolutionary event is the following story of natural selection involving protection of the moths against bird predators. Light-colored moths resting on tree trunks on which there were patches of grayish lichens were cryptically colored so that bird predators could not see them. The increase in air pollution caused by industrialization resulted in the failure of lichens to grow so that light-colored moths now stood out against the dark lichen-less tree trunks while the dark form of the moth was now cryptically colored and protected. This story was bolstered by field experiments in which noncryptically colored moths were actually observed to be eaten by birds. Unfortunately, for the neatness of the story, the actual rate of bird predation appears to be negligible because moths spend rather little time resting on a tree. The field experiments, it is now known, involving tethering the moths to keep them in place. Moreover, the caterpillars of the genetically melanic forms have a higher survival rate although no melanin has yet been formed.

Directions in Evolutionary Biology, Annual Reviews of Genetics 36 (2002):1-18

S2Focus · 07-22-2003, 10:21 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Guts
Principia wrote:

................

The second link is very Biblical, find me a biblical reference in any ID research (not in the commentary the research itself).

...............

Two requests:

1) Find us some actual ID research (not commentary, but actual research).

and

2) Identify for us an ID "research" funding agency that isn't associated with the religious right.

RufusAtticus · 07-22-2003, 10:32 PM

Hmm, I notice that Guts is no longer trying to defend those scientists from Georgia that "doubt Darwinism."

Quote:

Lewontin described it pretty good

Apparantly I missed the part where Lewontin said that it wasn't an example of evolution.

God Fearing Atheist · 07-22-2003, 10:40 PM

Erm...

As Majerus (1998) pointed out, werent 68% of moths studied in the wild found...on tree trunks?

-GFA

Goober · 07-22-2003, 11:18 PM

Quote:

Gee, someone asks me to list some Biologists that disagree with neo-Darwinism, and then you reply it doesn't matter and that I should give it up.

My apologies then. I must have missed where someone asked you too.

Principia · 07-23-2003, 05:37 AM

Quote:

Principia: In other words, the two articles that "Gutsy" kept citing -- from J. Thermal Biology and J. of Mammology -- were in fact published before Bohlin had a graduate degree (not to mention an undergraduate one). Which all goes to show even more clearly that Bohlin had no research career, and that his motivations for obtaining for a graduate degree were purely for apologetics.

Guts: The two papers that he published in J. Thermal Biology and J. Mammal was research (it was so good that the peer reviewers accepted it for publication). The fact that it was published before his dissertation is irrelevant.

No, the fact that you find it irrelevant says a lot about how a typical ID proponent devalues scientific research and props up rhetorical nonsense in its place. If you're arguing that someone could be an ID "scientist" without having a research career or getting by with publications in Creationist journals, then I guess you also would have us believe that "Biblical creationists" who do not believe in a literal Genesis is irrelevant. Or that "medical doctors" who do not treat patients is irrelevant. Or that "journalists" who do not pursue and report about news is relevant.

At the end of the day, there are two facts I presented which remain uncontested:

1) Bohlin has no research career.

2) Bohlin published in Creationist journals (CRSQ and Creation Ex Nihilo) along with those sterling two articles in mainstream journals before he received his doctorate.

So when Bohlin struts out to Texas to posture as an open-minded scientist who's critical of Darwinian evolution, I think the average person is right to be suspicious or even downright dismissive. That is the relevance.

Quote:

Principia: Yes, less than a dozen links -- all of which exist on Internet forums.

Guts: It was a sample of the research being investigated, then you link to YEC sites, tell me, how does saying that the original cells were designed 3.5 billion years ago and were front-loaded to evolve from protozoans to metazoans not contradict the YEC perspective?

<shrug> ID is whatever the apologist makes it out to be in whatever fashion it suits his rhetorical needs. P. Johnsonl is often fond of preaching to fundamentalist crowds that "In the beginning was the Word..." and that he was agnostic about the age of the Earth, which apparently is not a "scientific controversy" for IDiots. Show me the official ID doctrine that says cells must have been front-loaded 3.5 billion years ago.

That ID is split into many factions is not surprising to me at all. It is merely a sign of ID's incoherence as a scientific theory.

Quote:

The second link is very Biblical, find me a biblical reference in any ID research (not in the commentary the research itself).

Again this is, well, how should I put it ... irrelevant.

There is nothing about ID which dismisses Creationism outright. In fact, its nebulous epistemology permits Creationism, and even the Creationists recognize this. They only want to get you guys to be more honest and declare that the Designer is God.

Why, just look at a recent thread about ICR (a creationist organization) claiming that hiccups were evidence of Intelligent Design: http://icr.org/headlines/hiccups.html

Quote:

This is already boring. Moving on.

No. You're boring. And I'm quite sure you've pulled out these nonsense before on ARN and ISCID -- so why you would drag the same defeated logic here for us to trash again is beyond me.

Look, I know it must be embarassing to be defending Bohlin against the Darwinian conspiracy by harping on his 1979 and 1982 journal articles, only to have a critic then point out to you that those two were the only peer-reviewed articles published by Bohlin, and they were published before he even had a graduate training. So that you would want to sweep all of this under the rug does not surprise me one bit. I guess if that glaring fact about Bohlin is (as you claim) irrelevant then any undergrad who works with a prolific advisor in college, could churn out one or two papers, then go on to get a graduate degree just for the sake of Xian apologetics, and then use that record to posture as a trained scientist for the rest of his life. How convenient for a movement who needs popular support more than scientific merits.

[Hey Dr. Bohlin -- let me give you some friendly advice. Try a diploma mill next time -- it's much more efficient. And you won't waste grant money better spent on valid candidates.]

edited by pz

NialScorva · 07-23-2003, 08:56 AM

On the issue of the lists, are you seriously comparing the 100 people that the DI solicited who were "skeptical" and thought "careful examination should be encoraged" versus the 400 people named "Steve" who volunteered to sign a statement calling creationism, specifically including ID, psuedoscience?

Quote:

Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools.

Compare the two statements. The DI's is vague and dances around the point: one could easily sign it on the basis that you should always be skeptical and that RM&NS aren't the sole factors driving evolution. NCSE's leaves little room for doubt as to what is being said.

Valentine Pontifex · 07-23-2003, 10:51 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by God Fearing Atheist
Erm...

As Majerus (1998) pointed out, werent 68% of moths studied in the wild found...on tree trunks?

It is not that many. The data is reproduced at:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/#mothrest

Nic Tamzek · 07-23-2003, 11:36 AM

Guts,

Lewontin is poorly informed on the peppered moth issue. He cites no literature to support his assertion, so it looks like he is basically repeating "something I heard somewhere", namely the hubbub in the similarly poorly-informed press about the peppered moth due to Jonathan Wells and Judith Hooper.

In fact, the basic moth hypothesis (differential predation on moth morphs on different-colored backgrounds) is well-supported by numerous independent lines of evidence and is supported by all of the actual peppered moth researchers:

Quote:

Knowledge advances very unevenly. Great bounds forward resulting from a novel insight, or the development of a new technique, are punctuated by smaller advances as details are examined and refined. In many cases ideas are added to or amended. Such additions or amendment to the detail do not invalidate previous work: they endorse it. Thus, while Albert Einstein's view of the universe was more correct than Sir Isaac Newton's, we still revere the latter. More recently, Professor Stephen Hawking has refined and correct some of Einstein's ideas. This is as it should be, and I have no doubt that our current understanding of the mechanisms and processes of biological evolution will be amended and added to in the future. But this does not mean that our current perceptions are wholly wrong, they are just, as yet, not complete or wholly right.

Recent scientific writings in respect of the Peppered moth, which have examined the detail of this classical case and have identified some of the weaknesses in experimental techiques in Kettlewell's work, have been taken by the anti-Darwinian lobby to suggest that the rise and fall of melanism in the Peppered moth does not provide supportive evidence of evolution by natural selection. This lobby has been extremely vocal in the media and on the Web. The arguments used are highly subjective and based on false premises, on data drawn very selectively from that available and on misquotations. It is relevant to point out here that every scientist I know who has worked on melanism in the Peppered moth in the field still regards differential predation of the morphs in different habitats as of prime importance in the case. The critics of work on this case and those who cast doubt on its validity are, without exception, persons who have, as far as I know, never bred the moth and never conducted an experiment on it. In most cases they have probably never seen a live Peppered moth in the wild. Perhaps those who have the most intimate knowledge of this moth are the scientists who have bred it, watched it and studied it, in both the laboratory and the wild. These include, among others, the late Sir Cyril Clarke, Professors Paul Brakefield, Laurence Cook, Bruce Grant, K. Mikkola, Drs Rory Howlett, Carys Jones, David Lees, John Muggleton and myself. I believe that, without exception, it is our view that the case of melanism in the Peppered moth still stands as one of the best examples of evolution, by natural selection, in action.

(Majerus 2002, Moths)

Moth resting places are a bizzarre sideshow to the Main Question of bird predation:

(1) Moths have been observed naturally resting on tree trunks, even though the most common resting position is underneath tree branches (see the Wells FAQ at t.o., http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/ )

(2) Kettlewell knew this perfectly well, and Majerus supports his opinion:

Quote:

"So where do Peppered moths usually rest up throughthe day? Data sets are pitifully scarce. For example, Sir Cyril Clarke and his co-workers, writing in 1985, make the extraordinary admission that:

'...in 25 years we have only found two betularia on the tree trunks or walls adjacent to our traps, and none elsewhere.'

The largest data set on the natural resting positions of wild Peppered moths that I am aware of is my own. This comprises just 52 moths found in the wild in situations not affected by artificial lights (for example, moth traps, streetlights) over a period of 37 years (Table 9.4). These data, other data from observed resting sites close to artificial light (Majerus 1998) and experimental work by Mikkola (1984) and Liebert & Brakefield (1987) suggest that Kettlewell's 1958 observation ['I have on many occasions been able to watch this species taking up its normal resting position which is underneath the larger boughs of trees, less commonly on trunks'] is essentially correct. Peppered moths generally rest by day on the underside of lateral branches and twigs in the canopy (Figs. 9.3 and 9.4, Plate 14c), or if they rest upon trunks, they select a position in shadow where a branch joins the trunk."

(Majerus 2002, Moths)

(3) Even if moths never, ever rested on tree trunks, it is bizarre to claim that this changes things radically: first, some of the predation experiments were done on branches as well as trunks, and second, many of the experiments are mark-release-recapture, in which the moths are allowed to fly off wherever they want.

And finally, even if moths always rested underneath branches, so friggin' what??? Does anyone seriously think that insect-eating birds search trunks but not branches? What are bird wings for, for crissakes??

The number of times I've seen "moths don't rest on tree trunks, so birds won't find them" from creationists and the popular press is amazing, and sometimes it has even made it into the mouths of scientists who haven't studied the issue carefully. But no one ever stops to think if it makes any sense.

theyeti · 07-23-2003, 02:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Guts
Just noticed Theyeti's post. I would like to ask you one question. Why didn't the CNN report mention the 100 scientists that disagree with neo-Darwinism, not one word of it.

The report lasted all of what, 30 seconds? Surely you don't expect them to include every little detail. And why is the 100 scientists thing relevant anyway? It's just a propaganda tool that only proves how insignificant the scientific arm of the ID movement is. Had CNN included it, they would have needed to, in all fairness, mention Project Steve or something similar to put things into perspective. And by then they would have run out of time.

Also, doesn't the the DI's presentation of their list kind of put the lie to the claim that they were only there to "correct" the content of textbooks?

Quote:

Why didn't they mention the textbook mistakes? Thats how they misrepresented it. They mention ID, but they call it creationism and then don't mention any of the things that the IDers themselves were actually doing, huh?

Did you really expect them to go over every specific claim made by the DI? The subsequent interview only mentioned a couple of changes desired by the various groups there; obviously, the vast majority of desired changes did not get air time. Why is the DI so special that they should be the focus of the report?

At any rate, you're now shifting the goal posts from your original claim. You first said that the CNN report made numerous "completely false" statements about ID. Now you're faulting it for not including more information about ID, which is not the same thing as making false statements. Could you at least retract your earlier claim?

Quote:

1. Mention ID (call it creationism).

2. The DI was there to correct textbooks, and to get the evidence for and against neo-Darwinian evolution discussed.

3. Other groups were there trying to change the textbooks for their religious and political agenda (i.e. glaciers).

But if you mention 1., leave out 2., and mention 3., it looks like 1. is doing 3. And thats how CNN misrepresented the DI. Anyone reading it wouldn't be able to make the distinction that you and I make.

In this case, 1 is doing 3. The DI is there for a religious and political agenda. I don't think that's a debatable issue; it's made abundantly clear from publications put out by the DI and its fellows (especially their manifesto, the Wedge Document). That they make loud claims to the contrary just shows how insincere they are.

It seems to me that your beef is with the fact that they didn't discuss the specific changes desired by the DI (#2 above). Again, I don't think the report would have had time for that (especially if a rebuttal would have been offered) even if it had been appropriate. Short news segments of this kind are only meant to give people an idea of what's going on, and are not meant to be a comprehensive discussion about all of the relevant issues. I could understand the DI's complaints if this had been an hour long special, but that's not the case by a long-shot.

theyeti

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07-22-2003, 10:40 PM	#64
God Fearing Atheist Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: Massachusetts, USA -- Let's Go Red Sox! Posts: 1,500	Erm... As Majerus (1998) pointed out, werent 68% of moths studied in the wild found...on tree trunks? -GFA

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