Vorkosigan

is your list of bad designs around? I need it.

V

Valentine Pontifex

I don't know about Oolon's but you might want to look at the one at The Talk.Origins Archive:

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jury-rigged.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jury-rigged.html</a>

Coragyps

And while we're here, does anyone know anything about the plantaris muscle? Well developed in monkeys, sometimes absent in humans... any info?

Oolon Colluphid

Here ya go V. It's about time I posted this again, as it contains some updates. One of these days I'll get this online! It draws on the TO list, obviously, but there's quite a few different ones here. (Note the spelling, too, of the whiptail lizard's genus name: it's wrong on TO.) And, sorry, I'm too lazy to go through it putting all the latin names into italics!)[*] The non-functioning eyes of cave-dwelling creatures which live in total darkness: hundreds of species, from fish (eg Astyanax mexicanus) to insects (eg the Hawaiian cave planthopper Oliarus polyphemus), spiders (eg Neoleptoneta myopica), salamanders (eg Typhlomolge rathbuni) and crayfish (eg Cambarus setosus) ...[*]... and of burrowing animals, such as marsupial moles (order Notoryctemorphia) (no lens or pupil, reduced optic nerve), amphisbaenians and naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber).[*]Whilst on eyes ... is it not strange that the creator, having given the nautilus an otherwise very good pinhole camera eye, chose not to give it a lens?[*]The human post-auricular muscle, which in other mammals moves the ears to point towards sounds. The ability of some people to wiggle their ears being one of God’s lesser-appreciated gifts to us, of course.[*]Haemoglobin, which has more affinity for carbon monoxide than for oxygen.[*]The aquatic embryos of land salamanders, which live on the land from hatching ...[*]... and aquatic creatures such as sea turtles, which have come onto land to lay their eggs.[*]The lungs of snakes, such as blindsnakes and colubroids – one normal, one atrophied. Why waste material with the small one? More surface area could be available if the space the atrophied one’s non-gaseous-exchange tubing takes up were given over to a larger volumed single main lung – and this is what is found in other snakes.[*]The pelvis remnants of pythons...[*] ... and the pelvis and hind limb bone remnants of whales. Even if (as is sometimes claimed) they do have a function, why are the bones in question bits of pelvis and limb?
[*]Apes and humans requiring vitamin C in their diets. Not only can most animals synthesise their own; the great apes do all have the gene for this – but it is broken. And it is rendered non-functional by the same mutation in all the great apes. How kind of God to give people without adequate diets scurvy.[*]The famous thumb of the giant panda. Why is its 'thumb' made of an altered wristbone (the radial sesamoid) rather than the normal digit? If six 'fingers' are better than five for grasping, why do only pandas have this feature?[*]The phenomenal waste of life in nature, everywhere you look. Oak trees produce thousands of acorns, and fish thousands of eggs, in the hope that a few will survive; tons of pollen are cast into the air (cf Genesis 38:9-10 – wasting your gametes was a serious enough sin (though almost everything was in Yahweh’s eyes in those days) for Onan to be killed in punishment, yet the Good Lord is supposed to have created things which by their nature spill so much seed on the ground?); approximately a third of human pregnancies miscarry in the first trimester; male elephant seals battle so furiously for females that great numbers of them die of bloody wounds; when a male lion takes over a pride, it will usually kill the cubs of the previous top male; the boom and (catastrophic for the individuals) bust of lemming populations...[*]Marsupial infants being born from the usual opening and having to wriggle arduously through their mother’s fur to reach the pouch and nourishment. Why not be born either more fully developed (like placental mammals) or even straight into the pouch? And why is such a set-up present in such diverse creatures as kangaroos, koalas and thylacines – and why are (were) they found only in Australasia?[*]The foetal teeth of cows, anteaters and baleen whales, which are made, only to be reabsorbed.[*]The tails and gill bars of human embryos.[*]The tails of peacocks, which are so long that the birds (which are a favourite food of tigers) can barely fly – just so they can attract females and ensure the survival of the kind?[*]The tails of guinea pigs, which are present but which are so short (reduced?) they do not extend outside the body.[*]The diet of ruminants is composed largely of cellulose, so why do they have to rely on gut bacteria and protozoa in order to digest it? Enzymes are readily apparent in animals to break down other foodstuffs. A good designer would surely have enabled them to break cellulose down for themselves – after all, ‘mere’ bacteria can do it![*]In a similar vein, the Chinese grass carp, Ctenopharyngodon idella, grazes on aquatic plants and, during floods, on land vegetation. It has specialised pharyngeal teeth that enable it to break up leaves, and so access the cell contents. So the creator clearly intended it to be able to eat these plants. Yet like most vertebrates, the cellulose itself and unopened cells pass undigested through the gut. If only it had the appropriate gut bacteria ... (Did God just forget the grass carp when he was giving out the bacteria? Well I suppose there are a lot of species, so he can’t be expected to remember everything.)[*]The mammalian tidal respiratory system, which is less efficient than the avian through-flow one.[*]The non-functional and reduced poison spur on the hind legs of echidnas (functional in the platypus).[*]Flatworms of the species Convoluta roscoffensis are green because their translucent tissues are packed with Platymonas algae. The algae live, grow and die inside the bodies of the worms. Their photosynthetic products are used as food by the worms, and the algae recycle the worms’ uric acid waste as food for themselves. The worms’ mouths are superfluous and do not function after the larvae hatch: worm plus algae plus sunlight is a self-contained unit. For what divine-design purpose do the flatworms have mouths, as other flatworms have? And just how useful would it be in times of hardship if all animals could make their own food? Some chlorophyll (or strategically placed algae!) would do it. But only plants have it.[*]Cell organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts have their own DNA, which is inherited separately from the rest of organisms’ genetic material. Why should the code for small elements within each eukaryotic cell be inherited separately and differently from that which forms the rest of the organism in all its intricacy – the leaves, bone, teeth, eyes, antennae or brains? An odd design – and the numerous structural and biochemical resemblances between these organelles and bacteria are mere coincidences of course. See: <a href="http://www.nature.com/genomics/papers/r_prowazekii.html)" target="_blank">http://www.nature.com/genomics/papers/r_prowazekii.html)</a>[*]The non-functional pistils (female parts) in male flowers. Since most flowers have both sexes of reproductive organs (stamens and pistils), the pistil of a flower with only stamens that are functional is vestigial – or a waste of materials.[*]Flowers on plants such as dandelions, which are self-pollinating, and so do not need to attract pollinating insects.[*]The twisted skulls of bony flat fish, order Pleuronectiformes – around 600 species including halibut, plaice, sole and turbot. If you are a fish and want to hug the contours of the sea bed, there are two ways your body can be flattened. The most obvious is front to back, laying on your tummy, as rays and some sharks are. Sharks are generally already slightly flattened dorso-ventrally. Most bony fish, however, tend to be flattened in a vertical direction (higher than they are wide). No surprise to an evolutionist, then, that those bony flatfish that do swim at the bottom are flattened sideways, and lay on their side. The problem with this is that one eye would always be pointing at the sea bed. They solve this by the skull contorting during development so that both eyes point up. You will notice though that their mouths are still sideways on. They are cartoon stereotypes of what a mutant should look like. How is this ‘intelligent design’, rather than design constrained by history, by the materials it started with?[*]The human appendix. I’ll leave aside the idea that it’s vestigial, and simply wonder why, if it’s part of an intelligent design, it has no known function – other than to be a pocket for bacteria to get trapped in? It is common (7% of the US population, for instance) for it to become distended and blocked, so that the bacteria can invade the wall, leading, untreated (as it would have been for nearly all of our past), to potentially lethal perforation.[*]The nerve ‘wiring’ of the mammalian eye, where the photoreceptor cells are in backwards, so the ‘cables’ are in the way of the incoming light, and have to exit the retina at the correctly-named blind spot (an excellent design feature in an eye). Yet God got it the ‘right’ way round in that pinnacle of His purpose, the squid?! ...[*]... of the African locust’s (Locusta migratoria) wings, where the nerve cells that connect to the wings originate in the abdomen, even though the wings are on the thorax. Nerve signals from the brain have to travel down the ventral nerve cord past their target, then backtrack through the insect to where they are needed ...[*]... and of the mammalian larynx. The recurrent laryngeal nerve, rather than taking a direct route from the spine, instead passes down the neck, round the posterior side of the aorta, then back up again to the larynx. Which in the case of the giraffe, implies a creator so set on the mammalian Blauplan that an extra 10 to 15 feet of nerve is needed.[*]Talking of larynxes, there’s the opening of the human larynx (leading to the trachea) being from the pharynx, so that swallowing impedes breathing (and vice versa). Not only that, but with the wind-pipe coming from off the food-pipe, there is a constant risk of choking. Before the Heimlich manoeuvre was invented, choking was one of the leading causes of accidental death; even so, thousands still die worldwide each year from inhaling their food. Children are more vulnerable because their airways are narrower. Great design.[*]The plumbing of the urethra – a soft tube through the prostate, an organ prone to infection and subsequent swelling?![*]The human spine. Bipedal vertebrates usually carry much of the spine roughly horizontal, and balance it with a tail. Equally, a string of cotton reels with spongy cushions between is a good cantilever bridge type design for flexible quadrupedal running, but a lousy thing to stand on its end and withstand the compression strains of vertical bipedalism. (And why thread so important a feature as the spinal cord through the middle of this, where disc damage can cause anything from pain to paralysis?) Compression strains are best absorbed by pillars. If you want the pillars to be flexible, you put joints in them. In biology, we have examples called ‘legs’. The spine’s divine design thus results in back pain which causes over 80 million annual days off work in the UK alone, 80% of people being affected by back pain at some point in their lives, backache during pregnancy (extra weight pulling in an out-and-down direction it can’t happily support), and why you find, if you’ve ever slipped a disc, that about the only comfortable position is on all fours.[*]The human knee. Ask any long-distance runner.[*]The human coccyx. When the bones of the coccyx are larger and there's more of them, we call that sort of coccyx a tail. If a single bone is required, why does the coccyx start as separate ones that just happen to look like little vertebrae? Why is there an extensor coccygis muscle?[*]Wings on flightless beetles. Numerous beetle species are flightless, such as darkling beetles (Eleodes species), the Kauai flightless stag beetle (Apterocyclus honoluluensis), and many weevils. Darkling beetles, for instance, are ground-dwelling and feed on decaying vegetation such as dead leaves and rotting wood. Females lay their eggs in soil, the larvae hatch, mature and pupate in soil, finally to emerge as adult beetles. Like most beetles, they have wings ... but these are sealed beneath fused wing covers (elytra), and so the beetles are flightless. For darklings, the fused elytra help conserve water; for others they are a better protection for the abdomen. Wings are obviously not needed for flight for ground-dwelling beetles. The question is, why is the shell on their backs made of wing covers, and why are there (often greatly reduced) wings beneath them?[*]Wings on flightless birds. Maybe some species use them for something else, but kiwis (Apteryx, three separate species) barely have wings. Barely being the point.[*]The homosexual stabbing rape reproduction in the bedbug Xylocaris maculipennis. Some bedbug species make use of a ‘mating plug’, where once a male has mated with a female, the male seals her shut, preventing other males from mating with her. Some species have adapted around this by stabbing rape, where the male impales the female and bypasses the mating plug. In X maculipennis, this has been taken one step further, where the male impales and inseminates other males, and the rapist's genes enter the bloodstream to be carried to females by the victim. In this way, the rapist conceives by proxy. A convoluted – and pointless – piece of design. (See: Miranda MacQuitty with Laurence Mound, 1994: Megabugs: The Natural History Museum Book of Insects.)[*]All gastropod larvae do a 90 to 180 degree twist, so that the mantle, kidney opening and anus are sticking out over their heads. Which is an odd design. The really stupid design is the fact that slugs (subclass Pulmonata) and sea slugs (subclass Opisthobranchia) then do an untwist and straighten their bodies out again.[*]Mammalian testes form inside the body, and then have to pass out through the abdominal wall to the scrotum so they can be at a more conducive temperature for sperm formation. Not only is that odd (why can’t sperm be made at body temperature?), but the process leaves a weak spot in the muscle wall. This ‘inguinal ring’ is liable to herniate, which both obstructs or strangulates the bowel and stifles blood flow to the testicles.[*]The vast quantity of junk DNA: pseudogenes, introns, transposons, retroposons, etc. Junk DNA is just that – it does nothing for its owner except get itself copied. Pseudogenes, for instance, are chunks of DNA which have a resemblance to known genes that is too improbable to be coincidence, but which are not prefaced with a ‘start’ codon. Thus the DNA-to-RNA transcription system doesn’t know that ‘here is a gene to be expressed’. This is not just an idle observation: about 95% of human DNA is junk DNA, not coding for any protein. For example, there is a family of junk DNA called Alu sequences that are repeated some million or so times, and this one family alone accounts for about 5% of our DNA. In Drosophila fruitflies, 40% of the genome is taken up by three sets of so-called satellite DNA: pieces just seven 'letters' long, with no 'meaning', repeated eleven million, 3.6 millio0n and 3.6 million times. Again, using more materials than are needed is not good design.[*]One of my favourites: normally non-functioning genes for making hen's teeth, complete bird <a href="http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Hampe_experiment.htm" target="_blank">fibulas and separate tarsals</a>, horse toes, human tails and congenital hypertrichosis. What are genes for making these things doing in creatures that don’t need them, don’t normally have them ... and under creation never have had them? Just how ridiculous does a design have to be in order to refute creation?[*]The genetic code itself. DNA has a remarkable copying fidelity ... yet mutations – errors – are far from rare. If the Good Lord wanted his creations to be separate immutable kinds, all he had to do was make the copying mechanism flawless (the second law of thermodynamics ought not be a problem to its inventor!). Meiotic recombination and outcrossing (sex) would still make different individuals. Hey presto – no evolution. But the system is flawed ... so God must ... want evolution?[*]Sharks hunt, up close at least, by sight. Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus), however, are nearly all blind, due to the presence of parasitic copepods (a subclass of crustaceans) that feed on the skin of their eyes. The sharks benefit because the copepods are bioluminous, and by their wriggling attract other fish which the sharks then snap up. But where is the intelligent design in such a complex set-up, and why does the shark need eyes if they are going to be parasitised to blindness as part of the design? There are other more straightforward ways to lure fish with a bait, as anglerfish (order Lophiiformes – about 210 different species of them) show, rather than first having eyes, then having them go blind.[*]Fake sex in parthenogenic species: whiptail lizards of the genus Cnemidophorus have only females. An individual’s fertility increases when another lizard engages in pseudomale behaviour and attempts to copulate with it. These lizards’ nearest relatives – oh, okay, the ones most similar to them in geography, genetics, anatomy and biochemistry – are sexual species. The hormones for reproduction in these others are stimulated by sexual behaviour. Now, although Cnemidophorus are parthenogenetic, simulated sexual behaviour increases fertility. (See: Crews and Young 1991: ‘Pseudocopulation in nature in a unisexual whiptail lizard’, Animal Behaviour 42: 512-514; Crews and Fitzgerald 1980: ‘"Sexual" behavior in parthenogenetic lizards (Cnemidophorus)’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 77: 499-502.)[*]The human jaw, which is too small for the number of teeth it holds, hence impacted wisdom teeth.[*] <a href="http://www.cayuga-cc.edu/about/facultypages/greer/biol204/heart4/heart4.html" target="_blank">Foetal blood circulation</a>. (Sorry, can't remember precisely why it's inefficient... Mr Darwin posted it some time back...)[*]The hollowness of the bones of flightless birds, from dodo to ostrich and penguin. It is not critical for ground birds to reduce weight with hollow bones of the sort that flying birds have. If the hollowness has some other useful purpose, why is this not shared by other animals?[*]Goose bumps (cutis anserina). Since humans (especially women) generally have little body hair, it is pointless having the same system of muscles (the arrectores pilorum) and sympathetic nerves which in most mammals raises the hairs in response cold or fear. Come to that, if our skin is meant to be mostly bare, why do we have the tiny hairs (and separate muscles and nerves for them) that we do?

... and so on, and on and on ...

All of these are easily explained if designs are constrained by history, but are anything but indications of intelligent design. It is often asked: what use is half a wing? But here’s a use for half a brain – any human designer with one, starting with a clean slate, could do better than these arrangements.

It is worth bearing in mind what ‘intelligent’ really means in a design context. Manufacturing researcher and consultant Terry Hill, in his 1986/2000 book Manufacturing Strategy, notes that “any third-rate engineer can design complexity”, and goes on to say that the hallmark of truly intelligent design is not complexity, but rather simplicity, or more specifically, it is the ability to take a complex process or product spec and create the least complicated design that will meet all project parameters. Xylocaris maculipennis implies that, at the very least, God the designer has an odd sense of humour.

And it also depends on what one calls ‘perfection’. Under creation, living things would be expected to be each perfectly adapted to its circumstances. Yet the opening of the Suez Canal has led to a massive influx of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean (at a rate of ten new forms per year – and hardly any the other way). Many Mediterranean species are now in decline, and the native prawn is almost gone. Similarly, grey squirrels have driven the native red squirrels to near extinction in these isles in the 150 years since their introduction from America, and in their fifty years here American mink (Mustela vison) have caused a 30-50% fall in ground-nesting birds in Scotland and a “catastrophic” decline in water voles throughout Britain. (Preliminary Water Vole Report, Vincent Wildlife Trust; The mink and the water vole – analyses for Conservation, Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Oxford.) “Unlike in the mink's own native America, our native birds and mammals have no natural defence mechanisms to deal with this predator.” (Government Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs 2000: Mundy: Submission on Mink Hunting.) There are countless other examples of organisms introduced by man to a region where they did not exist before out-competing the local fauna and flora, such as rabbits in Australia, and the devastation on local Galápagos fauna wreaked by man’s introduction of pigs, goats, rats, dogs, fire ants, etc. Thus, creatures designed by God to fit their circumstances are pushed out, even unto extinction, by more-perfectly adapted ones from elsewhere. How can that be?

Also, to quote Nesse and Williams, Evolution and Healing (1995):

“Why, in a body of such exquisite design, are there a thousand flaws and frailties that make us vulnerable to disease? If [God] can shape sophisticated mechanisms such as the eye, heart and brain, why hasn’t [he] shaped ways to prevent nearsightedness, heart attacks, and Alzheimer’s disease? If our [God-made] immune system can recognise and attack a million foreign proteins, why do we still get pneumonia? If a coil of DNA [his preferred method for all life on earth to make offspring, apparently] can reliably encode plans for an adult organism with ten trillion specialised cells, each in its proper place, why can’t we grow a replacement for a damaged finger [after all, lowly salamanders can grow whole new legs]? If we can live a hundred years, why not two hundred? [though many in the Bible apparently did, and more!].”

That is a direct quote, except I’ve replaced ‘natural selection’ with ‘God’ (plus asides of my own). The point of course being that evolutionary theory can explain these things, as the authors spend the rest of their book showing.

Hope that helps.

Cheers, Oolon

[Edited for faulty link]

[ July 15, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

Oh yeah, and there's the grasping reflex in human babies, which only makes sense if we used to have rather more body hair.

And the gills of cephalopod molluscs, which are not arranged as counterflow, and so are less efficient than they could be. Sure, they're good, but they're good despite this disadvantage. Counterflow systems are so useful that they are found in a wide range of situations: lungs, kidneys, cold-adapted animals' circulation (eg penguin feet), and so on. Yet god the designer decided against using this basic arrangement... only in cephalopods...?

Cheers, Oolon

Seth K

It's most likely compensation for giving better designed eyes that the rest of us.

But, seriously, that statement does show the fallacy of using non-natural ID as an explanation in biology. The designs are created according to the arbitrary whims of the designer, which doesn't really explain anything. It is difficult to justify his design choices in any reasonable way.

Seth K

There is also the spine's curvature to consider. A straight, vertical column would be much better than the spine's S-shape, which places extra bending/buckling loads on the spine. Particularly in the lumbar region, where back most pain/injuries occur.

I have two recent (from March) surgical scars that attest to that particular design goof.

Vorkosigan

Swonderful! Thanks, Oolon

V

lpetrich

Or check out my recent post on aphids. Here's a summary:

Aphids, like the rest of the animal kingdom, are unable to make certain amino acids and cofactors -- the "essential amino acids" and vitamins. However, their main diet is plant sap, which is largely various sugars, thus making it junk food for the aphids.

However, aphids get around this problem by hosting colonies of symbiotic bacteria (Buchnera) in special cells, which make the missing molecules. These bacteria are closely related to enteric bacteria like Escherichia coli, but their biosynthesis capability has become reduced to what is missing in their hosts.

This poses a problem for creationism: if aphids were created to live off of plant sap, why this roundabout way of insuring that they would get all the biomolecules that they will need? Why not give aphids complete biosynthesis capability, like what many bacteria and fungi have?

However, this is no trouble for evolution. The missing biosynthesis pathways have several steps, and it would be difficult to re-evolve them in the absence of intermediates to work from -- intermediates that had been abundant in the Primordial Soup.

Furthermore, the pathways are missing because the aphids' ancestors had eaten a nutritionally-complete diet of organism flesh, thus allowing those pathways to atrophy. The ancestors of the animal kingdom could not anticipate that some of their descendants would eat plant sap; land plants were a couple hundred million years in the future.

Valentine Pontifex

The current Natural History has a column on ofactory receptors. A large portion of
those for humans have been deactivated by
mutations: there genes are now pseudogenes.
That is the reason why we don't have to sense
of smell that many other animals do.