”University Park, Pa. — Scientists at Penn State and the National Institute of Genetics in Japan have demonstrated that several statistical methods commonly used by biologists to detect natural selection at the molecular level tend to produce incorrect results.Not only is the math demonstrated to be bad here, but the science itself has deviated away from experiments, into inferences – demonstrably bad ones. The falsification process used here was (admirably) verified experimentally.
"Our finding means that hundreds of published studies on natural selection may have drawn incorrect conclusions," said Masatoshi Nei, Penn State Evan Pugh Professor of Biology and the team's leader. The team's results will be published in the Online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week ending Friday, April 3, 2009 and also in the journal's print edition at a later date.
Nei said that many scientists who examine human evolution have used faulty statistical methods in their studies and, as a result, their conclusions could be wrong”.
This paragraph speaks volumes:
“Nei said that to obtain a more realistic picture of natural selection, biologists should pair experimental data with their statistical data whenever possible. Scientists usually do not use experimental data because such experiments can be difficult to conduct and because they are very time-consuming.”Actually, the process of natural selection based on mutation should first be produced experimentally, and then the before/after data examined, if a scientific process is to be followed rather than a rush to publish inferences and fatuous stories based on belief systems. Given that virtually all “data” presented in support of speciating evolution by natural selection is, in fact, inferential, extrapolatory and not experimental, this is not new, except that the process is under what appears to be a valid mathematical and scientific attack by its own members who apparently are still believers, regardless.
7 comments:
A couple of random thoughts:
a) I often speak of "evolution," but when I do I am thinking of common descent and not necessarily "random mutation and natural selection." Even William Lane Craig makes this distinction, and accepts the first but rejects the second. So when you see me defending evolution, I'm really defending common descent. The shared copying errors (endogenous retroviruses, for example) between related animals makes this incontrovertible.
b) Even if natural selection and random mutation turn out to be true, I don't see how this is even slightly a problem for theism. Which painter is more elegant, one who paints a Mandelbrot set by hand, or one who comes up with the incredibly simple equation (zn+1 = zn2 + c) that can produce an infinite number of Mandelbrot sets? I.e, instead of designing the particulars by hand (an eye here, a brain there), a more powerful and elegant designer could come up with RM+NS to do all the work for him.
Martin,
Viral introgressions are not incontrovertible; two similar populations in proximity at the same time might well incur the same viruses. Retroviral proponents must show why this is not possible; I don’t think they can.
I understand your second point to be an argument for theistic evolution. In essence it is an argument for evolution as an intentional design, where the process is designed but the outcome is not. This is possible. But the plausibility is debatable, and it is not available for physical verification, which makes it a metaphysical argument and not likely to be accepted as valid by Materialists.
I think that your approach is correct, in the sense that comprehension of our existence does require metaphysics: it cannot be explained rationally outside of a non-physical component.
I don't remember you arguing for metaphysics before...
"I understand your second point to be an argument for theistic evolution."
That is, I believe, essentially what the Catholic Church argues. I don't see why this is a problem at all. And in fact I think the rejection of RM+NS conflicts with what I think is one of the best arguments for God: the fine tuning argument. If the universe is fine tuned for the development of life, but God has to design biological beings himself, then it seems that the universe is NOT fine tuned for life.
"Viral introgressions are not incontrovertible; two similar populations in proximity at the same time might well incur the same viruses.
We've been over this before. The viral introgressions are the same viruses, in the same place on the genome, in the same order. On a set of 3 billion base pairs. You, right now, have at least seven of these that match up with chimps, but not with giraffes, as expected.
But more importantly there are also the transposons; viruses that cannot leave the genome at all. We have several that match with chimps as well. Since they can't leave the genome, we and chimps could not have acquired them from outside coincidentally in the same place on our genomes.
The evidence for common descent, if not RM+NS, is very very strong.
I will have to check the transposon numbers. If there are only, say, 14 and there are 9 of those in identical postions, that is indeed a statistical improbability for random occurrence. But if there are a great many, it might not be so improbable. Do you have a link to such numbers?
Martin, Stan-
You might be interested in this-
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091210111148.htm
From the experimental evidence they draw this conclusion--
"Remarkably, we have found many cases of parallel intron gains at essentially the same sites in independent genotypes," Lynch said. "This strongly argues against the common assumption that when two species share introns at the same site, it is always due to inheritance from a common ancestor."
I would agree that the shared intron has been an effective argument for common ancestry, but the experimental (i.e.. scientific) evidence is clear--- shared introns can have other explanations.
The 'inconvertible' has been 'converted'. How about that?
Guys, the thing that really clinches it is how phylogenetic family trees are built.
A paleontologist builds a tree with fossils, using their age and morphological characteristics (yes Stan, admittedly inference).
Then the microbiologist builds a phylogenetic tree using the shared genetic markers like transposons.
And both trees match up (there are exceptions, of course; no science is perfect). This is corroborating evidence for common descent, from two completely different types of data.
In other words, it's not just the shared genetic markers between humans and chimps. It's the number of shared markers between species that are supposed to be closely related, and the absence of same between species that are more distantly related.
Martin,
The whole tree approach seems to be in transition, from trees, not to bushes but to a mesh or fabric with lots of side coupling. I need to get caught up, I haven’t looked hard at any of this for quite a while. However….
You have inspired some thoughts about “Common Descent without Non-Material Interference”.
Evolution, even if it is reduced to merely “common descent” is insufficient to accommodate non-materialist exceptionalism in living things, especially in sentient entities.
In materialist evolution, first life – regardless of its source – is not understood to be sentient, conscious, to recognize a separate self, although it is or should be recognized as being a minimal agent, having both the goals and the means to accomplish goals, including finding nourishment and reproducing. These features are beyond the capabilities of entropic mass-energy, unless magic is invoked.
It is possible to view these exceptional non-material mental features as being added sequentially, e.g. consciousness first, then recognition of self, then sentience, with self-directed agency in the middle somewhere. This set of non-material features would require intervention in the evolutionary process, unless evolution as a process includes a non-material component. Even if these non-material mental features appeared all at once in a single organism, intervention would be required. But evolution is denied any and all non-material components, by Materialist doctrine.
This is the reason that the current phlock of philosophes is trying so hard to eliminate mental exceptionalism from their materialist philosophies: their conjured process is inadequate for the task. But their objectives are self-refuting, and worse they are patently cross-grained to empirical data: intentionality does, in fact, exist; sentience does, in fact, exist; consciousness does, in fact, exist, etc.
But even taking the idea that the process of evolution was designed but the outcomes were not and are random with selection, that idea is insufficient to account for the inclusion of non-materiality in the material organism, unless one redefines reality to include a non-material component.
Mental exceptionalism in higher organisms would seem to be both empirically and logically unquestionable (empiricism and logic would not exist otherwise). So the real task for Materialist evolutionary aficionados is to demonstrate how mental exceptionalism occurred from mere mass-energy interactions, or to emerge from their denials into an expanded reality that is not deniable using empiricism or any other Materialist techniques that are rational.
I can wait until after they have produced replicating life. But they are obligated, nonetheless.
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