How the Scientific Consensus can hinder Science

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How the Scientific Consensus can hinder Science Intelligent Design is repeatedly dismissed by its critics as being unscientific. Many who make this assertion are not suggesting that it has no empirical data to support its claims but rather that it is completely outside the realm of science. This is because of a narrow definition of science that has been developed. What is scientific, according to this definition, is a matter of ongoing debate. Google “problem of demarcation” and you will get some idea of the extent of this discussion and the difficulty of determining where the parameters should be set.

Others, of course, who dismiss ID do so because they believe that it has no merit. Whether this is based on their philosophical prejudice or their scientific convictions can be hard to tell but they are utterly dismissive and refuse to treat ID seriously. A quick glance at the comments posted in response to ID articles will illustrate the derisory attitude and the scorn that is heaped upon those who dare to hold a different opinion.

Consensus says ID is not science

The Centre for Intelligent Design is well aware that the scientific consensus does not accept ID as science. That is the reason for our existence. It is our purpose to challenge the lines of demarcation that currently prevail. These are not constant and have changed throughout the history of science and should continue to change as our understanding develops. The Centre for Intelligent Design wants to move beyond the mocking contempt that is often expressed and have the empirical data properly considered.

Galileo and scientific consensus

Scientific consensus sometimes get so entrenched that it becomes a hindrance rather than a help to the advancement of science. Galileo Galilei had a bit of a run in with the consensus and concluded, “In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual”. His scepticism of consensus is understandable when you consider the way in which he was treated.

Sadly, Galileo is not the only one to have had his ideas dismissed by the scientific consensus. In 1847 Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that disinfection of the hands significantly reduced the incidence of puerperal fever in obstetric clinics. Puerperal fever was the single most common cause of maternal mortality in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. However, the scientific consensus did not accept Semmelweis’ empirical evidence but dismissed his findings, often with contempt. He did not accord with the established opinion of the day and was considered by some to have no scientific basis for his claims. Others were insulted by the idea that their hands were being described as “dirty”. It was also pointed out that Semmelweis was saying nothing new. In 1843 Oliver Wendell Holmes, had published an essay on the contagiousness of puerperal fever but his views were attacked by the scientific establishment. Sadder still is the fact that in 1795, Dr. Alexander Gordon had published a paper on the contagious nature of puerperal fever and the importance of the right hygiene practices in order to prevent its spread. His paper acknowledged the strong opposition he confronted and the attempts to suppress the truth.

How many lives could have been saved if the scientific consensus had not been so stubborn? Nobody in the scientific establishment today would dare to describe the findings of Gordon, Holmes or Semmelweiss as stupid but it was not always so.

USA Epidemic of Pellagra

Between 1906 and 1940 there was an epidemic of pellagra in the United States with some 3,000,000 cases reported and 100,000 deaths. In 1915 Dr. Joseph Goldberger discovered the cause to be directly linked to poor diet but his empirical evidence was vilified by those who were persuaded the disease was caused by infection. The scientific consensus said no! They leaked some of his secret research to the news media and then impugned his motives. For 25 years an epidemic continued that could have been prevented and offers of federal help from the President were refused. There were major political and social implications involved but surely the scientific establishment were not influenced by these? Perhaps you might investigate the issue yourself to judge whether or not the scientific consensus is ever influenced by factors outside of empirical data.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra for more details of this disease and also the image at the end of this article.

USA Symposium opposes Continental Drift

On January 6^th 1912, Alfred Wegener presented his hypothesis on Continental Drift but the scientific consensus was unimpressed. He was unable to support his circumstantial evidence with a specific mechanism that explained it. He speculated that centrifugal force might be responsible or the astronomical precession. In spite of the opposition of the scientific consensus he continued to develop his ideas and a symposium was specifically organised in the United States in opposition to his hypothesis. In 1943 the noted palaeontologist George Gaylord Simpson strongly attacked Wegener’s position in the American Journal of Science and this influenced those who had been sympathetic to change their views. Once again the scientific establishment backed the wrong man. Wegener’s inability to posit the right physical mechanism did not mean that his hypothesis was wrong, but it was the primary reason the consensus was against him. In addition he committed the cardinal crime of not actually being an expert. Wegener was not a geologist so his evidence apparently lacked authority.

It's not the empirical data

The history of science is littered with occasions when the scientific consensus has wrongly challenged the minority voice and in so doing has impeded the progress of science. Obviously any scientific theory has got to be robust enough to withstand the most detailed scrutiny and inquisition. However, the examples cited demonstrate that time and again the problem was not with the empirical evidence. Closed minds, personal offence, political and social constraints have all played their part in preventing proper consideration of the data. This was then exacerbated by the way professional credibility was questioned, motives were misrepresented and individuals were vilified.

Peer Review

Although Intelligent Design theory is not accepted by the scientific consensus, its proponents are often asked to list the peer reviewed articles that are in its favour. While there are in fact some such papers, contrary to critics’ claims, the reason that there are not more will be obvious to any intelligent reader. The scientific establishment has not always proved itself to be in open and objective pursuit of empirical evidence. The US Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow determined that the peer review process could be flawed in certain circumstances. Research by Rothwell and Martyn also raised questions about the credibility of the process and Casadevall and Fang, though offering no sympathy to ID acknowledge, “In fact studies of peer review have identified numerous problems, including confirmatory bias, bias against negative results, favoritism for established investigators in a given field, address bias, gender bias, and ideological orientation”.

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Neanderthals cooked and ate plants and vegetables

When will evolutionists finally realize that there were no "primitive men"?

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Hunter, gatherer, vegetarian masterchef?

Neanderthals cooked and ate plants and vegetables, a new study of Neanderthal remains reveals.

Researchers in the US have found grains of cooked plant material in their teeth.

The study is the first to confirm that the Neanderthal diet was not confined to meat and was more sophisticated than previously thought.

The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The popular image of Neanderthals as great meat eaters is one that has up until now been backed by some circumstantial evidence. Chemical analysis of their bones suggested they ate little or no vegetables.

This perceived reliance on meat had been put forward by some as one of the reasons these humans become extinct as large animals such as mammoths declined due to an Ice Age.

But a new analysis of Neanderthal remains from across the world has found direct evidence that contradicts the chemical studies. Researchers found fossilised grains of vegetable material in their teeth and some of it was cooked.

Although pollen grains have been found before on Neanderthal sites and some in hearths, it is only now there is clear evidence that plant food was actually eaten by these people.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what”

End Quote Professor Alison Brooks George Washington University

Professor Alison Brooks, from George Washington University, told BBC News: "We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what.

"But here we have a case where a little bit of the plant is in the mouth so we know that the Neanderthals were consuming the food."

More like us

One question raised by the study is why the chemical studies on Neanderthal bones have been wide of the mark. According to Professor Brooks, the tests were measuring proteins levels, which the researchers assumed came from meat.

"We've tended to assume that if you have a very high value for protein in the diet that must come from meat. But... it's possible that some of the protein in their diet was coming from plants," she said.

This study is the latest to suggest that, far from being brutish savages, Neanderthals were more like us than we previously thought.

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Does Medical School Need Courses in Evolution?

by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

In a recent issue of the journal The Scientist, University of Florida College of Medicine professor Leonid Moroz lamented the current lack of graduate program courses on the supposed basics of evolutionary biology and biosystematics. He attempted to defend the idea that evolution needs more emphasis for those being trained in fields that have made radical progress in recent decades in medicine, molecular biology, and genomics.¹

But if evolutionary biology courses are so fundamental, then how have scientists in those fields made their remarkable discoveries or developed new treatments without them?

Moroz wrote:

It appears that evolutionary biology and biosystematics courses, which deal with the most fundamental concepts in biology, have quietly lost their place of eminence within the biomedical curriculum—"outcompeted" by escalating specialization and the increasingly technical nature of many biological sciences.¹

Biosystematics is the study of which animals are related to which others within an evolutionary framework. Evolutionary biology is the study of changes within populations of organisms. How are either of these relevant to biomedical science? And which medical course(s) should be replaced with evolution-indoctrination classes—the one that teaches doctors how to set broken bones or the one that teaches proper amounts of medicine the body needs in a given situation?

One doesn't have to be either a scientist or a medical professional to agree that doctors should understand more about how to treat a patient's condition rather than ponder that patient's possible evolutionary history from a single-cell organism. Most likely, the "fundamental concepts" of evolution that Moroz suggests be taught have been "outcompeted" by the demands of real-world science. As one medical practitioner noted:

None of the Darwinian explanations integrate (much less are based on tests of) the phylogeny or actual physical evolutionary development of the organism itself. Given the long time to develop new drugs, a real test would be a Darwinist prediction—based solely on human evolutionary phylogeny—of a new, presently unobserved disease for which pharmaceutical companies should start developing a treatment. So far, no such predictions have been forthcoming.

This failure, coupled with increased needs to teach new medical research, is possibly why evolutionary medicine is currently squeezed out of every American medical school's curricula.²

Moroz unwittingly clarified exactly why evolution is irrelevant to real science:

Students of engineering must learn the fundamentals of mathematics and physics. A PhD chemist cannot bypass learning the periodic table and its elements. In contrast, ask a young or even a senior biologist with an active research program to name 15 to 20 animal phyla....Why have we accepted ignorance of evolutionary theory and knowledge of biodiversity in classrooms?¹

Math is fundamental to engineers and the periodic table of elements is fundamental to chemists. But medical practitioners have been demonstrably succeeding without stand-alone courses on evolutionary biology or taxonomy. These observations underscore the uselessness of evolution in the real world.

Medical sciences, engineering, physics, and chemistry move forward through experimentation, a process called "empirical science." In contrast, evolution moves forward only by indoctrination.

References

1. Moroz, L. 2010. The Devolution of Evolution. The Scientist. 24 (11): 36.
2. Guliuzza, R. J. 2009. Darwinian Medicine: A Prescription for Failure. Acts & Facts. 38 (2): 32.

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on December 8, 2010.

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Tiktaalik Roseae: Another Missing Link Myth!

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This post is about the (creature) Tiktaalik and is linked to the following posts:

EP Link

EP Link

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Darwinist media organizations have embarked upon a new wave of propaganda aimed at portraying a fossil recently described in the journal Nature as a missing link. The fossil in question is that of a fish, discovered in Arctic Canada by the paleontologists Neil H. Shubin and Edward B. Daeschler in 2004. Given the scientific name Tiktaalik roseae, the fossil is estimated to be 385 million years old. Evolutionists looking for possible candidates for their tales of a transition from water to land are putting the fossil forward as an intermediate form by distorting its “mosaic” features.

However, the claim of a transition from water to land is no more than a dream, because the physiological gulfs between terrestrial animals and fish cannot be overcome by any of the fictitious mechanisms of the theory of evolution. The latest attempt to make Tiktaalik roseae fit this scenario, which is supported out of blind devotion to the theory of evolution and rests on no scientific evidence whatsoever, is based on preconceptions and intentional misinterpretation. The facts the Darwinist media have concealed in their Tiktaalik roseae propaganda are set out below.

Tiktaalik roseae: A mosaic life form which is no evidence for evolution

There are three well-preserved fossil specimens of Tiktaalik roseae. Some 3 meters long, the creature exhibits various mosaic characteristics. (Mosaic life forms contain features belonging to different groups of life forms.) As in fish, it has fins and scales. Features such as its flat head, mobile neck and relatively powerful rib structure are found in terrestrial animals. The creature, whose name is derived from the Inuit language Inuktitut and means “a large, shallow-water fish,” also has bones in its pectoral fins. Evolutionists distort these mosaic properties according to their own preconceptions and maintain that the animal is a transitional form between fish and terrestrial life forms.

Mosaic life forms, however, are very far from being the intermediate forms required by the theory of evolution. The present-day Platypusthat lives in Australia, for instance, is a mosaic creature that possesses mammalian, reptilian and avian features at one and the same time. But nothing about it constitutes any evidence for the theory of evolution. Mosaic life forms are not what evolutionists need to find in order to back up their claims; they need to find “intermediate forms,” which would have to be with deficient, only half-formed and not fully functional organs. Yet every one of the organs possessed by mosaic creatures is complete and flawless. They have no semi-developed organs, and there are no fossil series that can be proposed as evidence that they evolved from some other life forms.

The theory of evolution hypothesizes that a process based on random mutations, in other words on chance, took place. According to this claim, the millions of living species on Earth must have evolved from a vast number of intermediate forms, all subjected to chance mutations, and as a result had deformed, abnormal structures, and the fossils of these so-called intermediate forms should have been found. To put it another way, the fossil record should be overflowing with the remains of life forms that can only be described as freaks of nature. However, this is known not to be the case. When species emerge, they do so suddenly, with all their distinguishing features fully developed, and with no series of freaks among them. In his 1999 book Fossils and Evolution, Tom Kemp, curator of Zoological Collections at the Oxford University Museum, describes the position as follows:

In virtually all cases a new taxon appears for the first time in the fossil record with most definitive features already present, and practically no known stem-group forms. (Tom Kemp, Fossils and Evolution, Oxford University, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 246)

The general picture concealed by evolutionists

Evolutionists attempt to give the impression that fossils actually support the idea of evolution. Yet the “missing link” concept is one that has been invented solely in the light of the needs of the theory of evolution and has no counterpart in the fossil record itself. The lack of fossil links alleged to connect species to one another has been known ever since Darwin’s time. Excavations by paleontologists since Darwin’s day have also failed to resolve this situation, which represents such a grave impasse for the theory of evolution and, on the contrary, have further confirmed the absence of any missing links among living groups.

E. R. Leach, author of the book Rethinking Anthropology, wrote this in his article in Nature:

Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt sure they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing and seem likely to remain so. (E. R. Leach; Nature, 293: 19, 1981)

A. S. Romer, one of the most eminent paleontologists of his time, said this on the subject:

"Links" are missing just where we most fervently desire them [to point to a transition between species] and it is all too probable that many "links" will continue to be missing. (A. S. Romer, in Genetics, Paleontology and Evolution, 1963, p. 114)

David B. Kitts, professor of geology and the history of science at the University of Oklahoma admits the absence of the intermediate forms required by the theory of evolution:

Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them. (David B. Kitts, "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, Vol. 28, September 1974, p. 467)

The picture that emerges from the fossil record is completely compatible with creation. The record reveals that living things appeared suddenly and lived for long periods of time without undergoing any change at all. These facts can clearly be seen in an evaluation of evolution’s fossil impasse by the American paleontologist R. Wesson in his 1991 bookBeyond Natural Selection. Stating that the gaps in the record are real, Wesson goes on to say that the absence of a record of any evolutionary branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static for long periods. Species and genera never show evolution into new species or genera but are replaced by another, and change is usually abrupt. (R. Wesson, Beyond Natural Selection, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991, p. 45)

Some 250,000 fossil species have been collected to date, and there is absolutely no trace of intermediate forms in any of them. Evolutionists are behaving irrationally and unscientifically by ignoring this and embarking on campaigns of missing link propaganda.

The Error of Biological Inference from Skeletal Remains

When the bodies of vertebrates are fossilized, they generally leave no remains behind apart from bones. However, bones leave traces of only a very limited part of vertebrate biology, about 1%. When evolutionists begin interpreting the fossil remains of an organism, most of the information about its biology has been lost. Evolutionists, with almost no information concerning the organism’s soft tissue biology “fill” the gap in their knowledge according to the demands of the theory of evolution, which they have adopted as a dogma long beforehand.

The intermediate form claims that evolutionists produce solely by looking at bones is no more than vague conjecture. In his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, the molecular biologist Michael Denton makes the situation very clear:

Because soft biology of extinct groups can never be known with any certainty then obviously the status of even the most convincing intermediates is bound to be insecure. (Michael Denton, Evolution:A Theory in Crisis, Burnett Books: London, 1985, p. 180)

Even the most convincing appearing intermediate forms for evolutionists can subsequently let them down very badly. One excellent example of this is the Coelacanthphenomenon.

Sensational reports show that evolutionists have learned nothing from the Coelacanthphenomenon

As with the latest fossil Tiktaalik roseae, the Coelacanth is a fish that evolutionists once fondly imagined to be a missing link in the transition from water to land. Evolutionists examined 400-million-year-old fossil Coelacanths, which was once believed to be extinct, and drew a number of evolutionary conclusions from the remains. For example, they maintained that the bony structures in its fins were feet that helped the animal walk across the sea floor, and they also claimed that it possessed primitive lungs. The important point here is this: All these assumptions were made in the absence of any information about the Coelacanth’s soft tissue biology.

The erroneous nature of producing evolutionary fantasies in the absence of any information about the animal’s soft tissues emerged following an important discovery in 1938. A living Coelacanth was caught, showing that it was not, as had previously been thought, an extinct life form at all.

Furthermore, many more living specimens were caught in subsequent years. Evolutionists immediately set about examining the fish’s anatomy and way of moving in its natural environment, and saw that the missing link assumptions they had ascribed to it were completely incorrect. The fish, which they had assumed to live in shallow waters and to move by crawling over the seabed, actually lived at depths of around 180 meters,and they also observed that its fins never made contact with the seabed at all. The structure they imagined to be an evolving lung turned out to be a fat-filled swim bladder that had nothing to do with respiration whatsoever.

The realization that the Coelacanth, which had once seemed such a convincing-looking intermediate form for evolutionists, was just an ordinary species of fish clearly shows that the intermediate form claim being made about this latest fossil is also based entirely on uncertainties and speculation, because it, too, is based on imaginative interpretation of soft tissues from the fossilized remains of an extinct life form. In short, the ongoing propaganda through the media is based on nothing more than the exaggeration of scientifically vague information in the light of evolutionist dreams.

Evolutionists’ missing link propaganda actually works against their own claims

Whenever a discovery is depicted as a missing link, the evolutionist media always give the impression that a most extraordinary finding has been made, whereas this actually conflicts with their claims regarding the truth of evolution.

Were the theory of evolution true, then the geological strata would be full of fossil intermediates, and their numbers would be far greater than that of all the species living today or that ever lived in the past. Therefore, the discovery of missing links would be such a routine matter that it would have no news value at all.

Alternatively, if, as evolutionists claim, there were as much evidence for evolution as there is for the force of gravity, then reporting on missing link discoveries would be as nonsensical as reporting on a stone thrown into the air falling back to the ground. In the same way that we would regard a news report along the lines of “We threw a stone into the air and it actually fell back to Earth” as utterly insignificant, so we would regard reports reading “Paleontologists have discovered a new missing link” as equally insignificant. In short, if evolution were a “fact,” there would be no need for any missing link propaganda at all.

The evolutionary series in which Tiktaalik roseaehas been placed is based solely on preconception

One can see in some newspapers that the latest fossil has been inserted as an intermediate form between Acanthostegaand Eusthenopteron. By doing this, evolutionists are seeking to give the impression that the fossil record supports evolutionary transitions and that the evidence for this is mounting up with every passing day. The fact is though that these series represent no evidence that the organisms in question evolved at all. For example, laying out a row of screwdrivers in order of size does not show that they are all descended from one another.

In fact there is no known evolutionary line of descent from Eusthenopteron to Tiktaalik roseae or from Tiktaalik roseae to Acanthostega. These life forms are separated from one another by morphological gulfs based on profound differences and millions of years of time. Evolutionists reveal only their own prejudices with the series into which they place Tiktaalik roseae. Henry Gee, editor of the journal Nature and also a paleontologist, admits that “missing links” and evolutionary series are the work of preconceptions:

New fossil discoveries are fitted into this pre-existing story. We call these new discoveries “missing links”, as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices. . . . Each fossil represents an isolated point, with no knowable connection to any other given fossil, and all float around in an overwhelming sea of gaps.(Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time, Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life, p. 32)

(For information on the invalidity of evolutionist claims regarding Acanthostega and Eusthenopteron see, http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/natural_history_1_07.html)

The myth of the transition from water to land: an illusory and dogmatic claim

The theory of evolution maintains that change in living things is based on the selection of beneficial differences among those produced by random mutations. However, it is a known fact that mutations have no power to cause anything to evolve by adding new information to living things’ DNA. Mutations damage the genetic information in living things’ DNA, producing effects that leave them deformed or dead. That is because the DNA sequences are exceedingly sensitive, and the effect on these of any mutation based on chance can only be harmful.

For example, no random changes to the letters comprising a manual for an electronic device will turn it into a novel; it will merely damage the information in that manual. In the same way, it is totally impossible for mutations in a fish’s DNA to acquire it a powerful skeletal structure capable of weight-bearing, to construct temperature regulating systems or systems for the use of water (involving such a complex organ as the kidney), or to cause gills to turn into lungs.

It is clear that if a fish does not undergo rapid change in different ways, such as in terms of its respiratory system, excretory mechanism and skeletal structure, it will inevitably die. Such a chain of mutations must take place that it must immediately acquire the fish a lung, turn its fins into legs, add a kidney onto it, and provide its skin with a water retaining structure. Systems of such vital importance to the animal either have to change instantaneously, or else not at all. Such a change is impossible through evolution, which is proposed as a chance-based and aimless process. Any rationally thinking person can see that the only possible explanation is to accept that fish and terrestrial life forms were created independently.

In short, the scenario of a “transition from water to land” is at a complete dead-end. Evolutionists have no consistent fossil evidence they can point to. In her bookVertebrate History: Problems in Evolution, the evolutionist paleontologist Barbara J. Stahl writes:

None of the known fishes is thought to be directly ancestral to the earliest land vertebrates. Most of them lived after the first amphibians appeared, and those that came before show no evidence of developing the stout limbs and ribs that characterized the tetrapods." (Barbara J. Stahl, Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution, Dover, 1985, p. 148)

Conclusion: Evolutionists have to realize they will never get anywhere with outmoded propaganda techniques left over from Adolf Hitler

As has been demonstrated, the “missing link”notion is an unscientific one with no factual counterpart in the fossil record and used solely because of the requirements of the theory of evolution. The way that the Darwinist media cling so strongly to the idea is a method they resort to in order to spread their own ideologies among the public. Evolutionists have no evidence with which to spread their theory, which is the greatest scientific deception in history. All they can do in the face of the collapse, one by one, of such fossils as the Coelacanthand Archaeopteryx, and equine series once defended as evidences of evolution, consists of frequently and loudly ensuring that the missing link fraud is kept on the public agenda.

All these endeavors are a propaganda technique, as described in the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s statement that a lie would be believed by many if repeated loudly and often enough.

Evolutionists must accept the fact that paleontology demolishes their theory, and must realize that constantly repeating their missing link tales will not alter the fact in the slightest.

Harun Yahya!

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Religious North Dakota and Economic Sucess

In a few years from now, if North Dakota gets infested with atheism, atheists will claim that the economic sucess of the place owes itself to their religious worldview, just like they claim the same for the economic sucess of nothern european nations.

Conservative North Dakota still has the lowest rate of unemployment in the United States. The state unemployment rate is 3%.[1]

Another positive aspect of North Dakota is that according to a CUNY 2000 religious survey, it appeared to have the lowest per capita number of atheists in the United States (people who answered "no religion" on a survey).[2]

The Bible declares, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want" (Psalm 23:1). North Dakota, which contains plenty of Conservative Christians, certainly seems to be a shining example of this Bible verse. North Dakota has more churches per capita than any state in the United States.[3]

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Opinion: New Lesbian Parenting Study Makes Claims Unsupported by the Evidence

By A. Dean Byrd, PhD, MBA,MPH

July 30, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) published byAmerican Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) offers the following conclusion: "Adolescents who have been reared in lesbian-mother families since birth demonstrate healthy psychological adjustment (p. 28)."

Authors Gartrell and Bos generalize their findings to the lesbian population at large, claiming their research offers "implications for - same-sex parenting" (p. 28). Making an enormous scientific leap, they conclude that their study provides scientific proof that there is "no justification for restricting access to reproductive technologies or child custody on the basis of the sexual orientation of the parents" (p. 34-35).

Implied, though not stated, is the notion that fathers are not necessary or important for the healthy development of children. This implication is a throwback to an article published in the American Psychologist in 1999 titled "Deconstructing the Essential Father." Like the authors of the American Psychologist article, Gartrell and Bos are on record as activists seeking public support for homosexual parenting.

However, a cursory review of this study (funded by the Gill Foundation and the Lesbian Health Fund of the Gay, Lesbian Medical Association) demonstrates significant flaws that most first-year graduate students would quickly recognize. Any reasonable observer would easily conclude that the authors overstated their findings and that in this instance, whatever external review process was utilized, was inadequate. Consider the following:

1. The problems inherent in any self-report study. The lesbian mothers' own reports that their children were well-adjusted were accepted by the study's authors uncritically. The authors should have clarified the limitation and usefulness of such qualitative, self-reported data in light of the fact that the lesbian parents knew that the study would be used to further their political cause; in contrast, the control group had no idea how their reports would be used. In addition, most mothers, lesbian or not, would likely report their children's adjustment in a favorable light. Outside observers such as the child's teachers or counselors, if consulted, could have offered a different perspective.

2. The lesbian parents were hardly typical parents: 93% were Caucasian. Most were college-educated (67%). Most were middle/upper class (82%). Eighty-five per cent were in professional or managerial roles. The control sample, however, had significantly more minorities; many more children from the South; they were very different in race composition and socioeconomic status; and the educational level of these mothers was unclear. A statistical adjustment for these differences could have been easily addressed. Had these differences been controlled, they might have been reduced, been proven negligible, or perhaps reversed.

3. The sample was far from random. Participants were recruited from gay and lesbian venues (i.e., lesbian pride events and lesbian newspapers in three major metropolitan areas - Boston, Washington. D.C. and San Francisco). Although the authors acknowledge the non-randomness of their subject pool and the potential problems this situation could pose, this limitation did not seem to limit their conclusions. As a result, a very strong case could be made for selection bias having invalidated the findings.

Despite the obvious study flaws, the authors offer the following generalization: "The NLLFS adolescents are well-adjusted, demonstrating more competencies and fewer behavioral problems than their peers in the normative American population (p.34)."

Notably absent was data about the sexual orientation of the adolescents or the preferences or expectations for the adolescents' sexual orientation (some of this data was, in fact, collected for the 10-year study). Was this data collected and simply dismissed?

Remarkably, the authors report that the relationship-dissolution rate for the lesbian couples was 48% at the 10-year mark and 56% at the 17-year mark. (The average duration of the relationship prior to dissolution was 12 years.) When compared to the relationship-dissolution rates of the biological heterosexual sisters of the lesbians, the rate of relationship breakup is nearly double for the lesbians.

Is the reader to conclude that dissolution of the parents' relationship has no effect upon the adjustment of the adolescents? This conclusion hardly fits the existing research.

Other research, perhaps even more interesting, was released about the same time as the NLLFS study - research conducted by Marquardt, Glenn and Clark, titled, "My Daddy's Name is 'Donor': A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm Donation." The authors' conclusions included the following troubling negative factors: on average, young adults conceived through artificial insemination were more confused, felt more isolated from their families, were experiencing more psychic pain, and fared worse than a matched group of children who were conceived naturally in areas such as depression, delinquency and substance abuse. And the list goes on.

No research was cited in the Gartrell and Bos study regarding the outcomes of children conceived through sperm donation, when compared to children conceived through the natural union of a man and a woman. The authors address the issue of donor status in a very cursory fashion, almost dismissively.

It seems an interesting coincidence that earlier this year, another paper authored by Biblarz and Stacey (2010) offered a similar conclusion to that of Gartrell and Bos: "In fact, based strictly on the published science, one could argue that two women parent better on average than a woman and a man, or at least than a woman and a man with a traditional division of labor (p.17)."

Based on these two papers, could one really conclude that a double dose of mothering is superior to a mother and a father? If a double dose of mothering is superior to mother and a father, would it follow that a double dose of mothering is vastly superior to and actually contraindicates the placement of children in homes where mothering is absent (i.e., gay men)?

Nowhere do Gartrell and Bos cite the extensive research demonstrating the importance of gender complementarity to the healthy development of children. Nowhere do these authors cite the extensive, peer-reviewed literature on the importance of both mothering and fathering for the healthy development of children.

To Gartrell and Bos's credit, they do identify some of the reasons for what appears to be politically-motivated conclusions: "The study has implications - for the expert testimony provided by pediatricians on lesbian mother custody, and for public policies concerning same-sex parenting. (p. 34)."

What seems clear is that the flaws in this study render it unsuitable for anything other than the following brief description: "interesting." Gartrell and Blos' conclusions don't rise to the level of support for lesbian parenting that they would like. Certainly, this study does not merit inclusion in any expert witness testimony nor does it rise to the level of policy implications. Until such limitations are addressed and more rigorous research conducted, the sought after conclusions stated by the authors are without substantial scientific support.

Perhaps the study would be better titled, "Preconceived Conclusions Seeking Research Support" or "Activism Masquerading as Science: A Study Suitable for Scrutiny by Beginning Graduate Students."

Silverstein and Auerbach, authors of the "Deconstructing Fathers" article, offered the following disclaimer: "We acknowledge that our reading of the scientific literature supports our political agenda. Our goal is to generate public-policy initiatives that support men in their fathering role, without discriminating against women and same-sex couples. We are also interested in encouraging public policy that supports the legitimacy of diverse family structures, rather than privileging the two-parent, heterosexual, married family." (p. 399).

The same could be said of this study. Gartrell and Bos should have offered the same disclaimer as Silverstein and Auerbach. But they did not.


References:

Biblarz, T.J. & Stacey, J. (2010). "How does the gender of parents matter?" Journal of Marriage and Family, February, p. 3-22.

Gartrell, N. and Bos, H. (2010). "US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents," Pediatrics, Volume 126, Number 1, July 2010 p. 28-36.

Marquardt, E., Glenn, & Clark, K. "My daddy's name is donor." New York: Institute for American Values, p. 1-135.

Silverstein, L.B., & Auerbach, C. F. (1999). "Deconstructing the essential father," American Psychologist, 54, 6, p. 397-407.

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Obama’s NASA Muslim Strategy Echoes His Nutty Cairo Speech

Original

Student of history, Barack Obama, spoke to the Muslim World in Cairo last year.
During his speech Obama congratulated the Muslim World for their many accomplishments.
Obama’s Cairo Speech – The Transcript:

“As a student of history, I also know civilisation’s debt to Islam. It was Islam – at places like Al-Azhar University – that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”

Unfortunately, Dear Leader was once again repeating Far Left talking points and not facts.
Here is what he forgot to mention:

** The compass- The use of a magnetic compass as a direction finder occurred sometime before 1044, but incontestable evidence for the use of the compass as a navigational device did not appear until 1119 in China. The earliest reference to an iron fish-like compass in the Islamic world occurs in a Persian talebook from 1232- Wikipedia.

** The pen- Ancient Egyptians developed writing on papyrus scrolls when scribes used thin reed brushes or reed pens. The quill pen was used in Qumran, Judea to write some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and then introduced into Europe by around 700 AD before the founding of Islam. Ma’ād al-Mu’izz, the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, was provided a fountain pen 250 years later- Wikipedia.

** Printing- Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper- Wikipedia.

** Spread of disease and how it is healed- It’s not clear how Islam contributed to the understanding of disease but today Muslim Sharia Councils in Nigeria and Pakistan have opposed vaccinations in their districts.

** Arches- Arches appeared as early as the 2nd millennium BC in Mesopotamian brick architecture, but their systematic use started with the Ancient Romans who were the first to apply the technique to a wide range of structures- Wikipedia.

** Religious Tolerance- No churches or synagogues have been destroyed in Saudi Arabia since it was established in 1932 —because none are allowed. There is no declared Muslim state, which offers full civil rights to members of other religions. – Front Page.

** Racial Equality- Muhammad and many of his companions bought, sold, freed, and captured slaves. At the end of the 19th century, a shift in Muslim thought and interpretation of the Qur’an occurred, and slavery became seen as opposed to Islamic principles of justice and equality. This interpretation has not been accepted by the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. Slavery claiming the sanction of Islam is documented presently in the African republics of Chad, Mauritania, Niger, Mali and Sudan.- Wikipedia.

A year later after this speech in Cairo we find out Obama’s NASA starategy includes making Muslims feel good about their non-accomplishments and non-contributions to science. Except that now the Obama Administration claims that is not their strategy… Even though it’s been confirmed.

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LA Times Changes Its Mind: Science Doesn't Matter On Climate Bill

Published on NewsBusters.org

By Candance Moore

Created 2009-11-22 19:18

That thumping sound you hear is the Los Angeles Times moving the goal posts in the global warming debate.

On November 22, while responding to the growing scandal [0] about alleged proof that global warming is a hoax, the Times brushed it off with a puzzling claim that science should have no bearing on climate legislation.

What a difference a few leaked e-mail messages could make: just over a month ago, the exact same paper had insisted science was behind the push for regulation. Now with the validity of that science in doubt, the Times was quick to find a different angle.

In an article [1] titled "A Climate Change Dust-up," writers Jim Tankersley and Henry Chu began with reassurance that the scandal was nothing to fear because the hacked e-mail messages would not make a difference either way:

Is it a "Warmist Conspiracy," or a case of an email being "taken completely out of context"?

Regardless, the latest dust-up over the science of climate change appears unlikely to affect the dynamics of either a pending debate in the Senate or international climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month.

The whole point of the meeting in Copenhagen has been to limit pollution that supposedly destroys the planet based on evidence gathered and purported by researchers specifically involved in the email scandal. If the very premise of global warming has possibly been exposed as a fraud, why would that not be of interest to those who want to legislate global warming?

Because, according to the Times, the fight to stop possibly nonexistent global warming would be about saving the economy:

But advocates of action to curb global warming dismiss those claims, and political leaders and analysts say the Senate bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions will sink or swim based on economics, not science.

"The scientists are going to fight about this for decades," said Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of several Senate Republicans who say they are open to some form of a climate bill. "We should be doing something to curb our emissions that would not harm the economy, and would in fact boost the economy," he said.

So the Times believed in doing something about emissions whether or not we knew that they were harmful. It was suddenly okay for the science to remain unsettled, and in fact, the Senate was encouraged to limit greenhouse gases even if science was unable to prove a connection between carbon dioxide emissions and temperature.

But if the entire logic of this effort to save the economy was based on the hope that green jobs would put Americans to work, someone should have told the Times that President Obama has already been funding green jobs [2] without a climate bill.

Equally preposterous, nowhere did the article explain exactly how limiting a company's carbon dioxide output would cause it to expand payrolls.

Not to worry, for according to global warming activists it would all work with or without the data to back it up.

Most amazingly of all, though, was an explanation about the data offered by Phil Jones, one of the scientists involved in the email scandal. When asked about his use of the word "trick" when presenting data, Jones told the Times it was just clever wording:

In the 1999 e-mail, Jones wrote of using a "trick" to hide an apparent decline in recent global temperatures on a chart being prepared for use by a meteorological organization. But in a statement posted on the university's website Saturday, Jones said that the e-mail had been "taken completely out of context" and that there had been no misrepresentation of the data.

"The word 'trick' was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward," Jones said.

The hard-hitting journalism force at the Times failed to ask how a trick was taken to mean anything other than a trick. What possible "colloquial" use of the word could have implied a trick that was not really a trick?

Thanks to the Times, Jones got away without having to expound.

This whole notion of scientific tricks being irrelevant to a major debate about international climate legislation represented a major change in thinking at the Times. It was just six weeks ago the paper criticized [3] Bush for hiding scientific data that could be used to sway the debate over legislation.

Back then, science had everything to do with it:

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a long-suppressed report by George W. Bush administration officials who had concluded -- based on science -- that the government should begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions because global warming posed serious risks to the country.

The report, known as an "endangerment finding," was done in 2007. The Bush White House refused to make it public because it opposed new government efforts to regulate the gases most scientists see as the major cause of global warming.

When scientific findings were there to warn that global warming would kill the planet, the Times was quick to support it; when science was later found to be riddled with tricks that tainted its credibility, climate legislation was suddenly all about fixing the economy.

This is one more example in the long list of ways the liberal media has played fast and loose with the global warming agenda.

Even when faced with plausible evidence the whole thing might be a fraud, global warming believers simply found a way to assert that evidence was not necessary.

---

Source URL:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/candance-moore/2009/11/22/la-times-changes-its-mind-science-doesnt-matter-climate-bill

Links:
[1] http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-climate-hacker22-2009nov22,0,913036.story
[2] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/18/BUU81AMKET.DTL&type=business
[3] http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/14/nation/na-epa-climate14

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Geology: Where Darwin Went Wrong

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Oldest Known Spider Webs Discovered

Original Article

Silken spider webs dating back some 140 million years have been discovered preserved in amber, scientists announce today.

The viscous tree sap flowed over the spider webs before hardening and preserving the contents, which were discovered in Sussex, England. Other bits sealed up in the amber included plant matter, insect droppings and ancient microbes.

"These turn out to be the earliest webs that have ever been incorporated in the fossil record to our knowledge," said lead researcher Martin Brasier, a paleontologist at the University of Oxford.

Brasier and colleagues used a computer technique called confocal microscopy to reconstruct the webs and examine the interweaving silk threads. Various clues, including threads that were twisted and coated with sticky fluid droplets, suggest the webs were spun by spiders closely related to modern-day orb-web garden spiders.

"These spiders are distinctive and leave little sticky droplets along the spider web threads to trap prey," Brasier said. "We actually have the sticky droplets preserved within the amber."

The web analysis also gave insights about the spider's diet. "I would guess, from the form of the web, that it was feeding on flying insects like flies and the ancestors of bees, wasps and moths," Brasier told LiveScience.

In 2006, scientists reported an ancient web sealed in amber and estimated to be about 136 million years old.

The new web discovery will be published in the latest issue of the Journal of the Geological Society.

Leaving aside the "millions of years" nonsence, this descovery is fascinating. Seems like spiders have always been spiders, exacly what the Biblical Origins Model would predict.

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Much Ado About Nothing

The latest evo post over at Little Green Footballs is even more clueless about actual science than usual. In this one, Charles Johnson links a hyperventilating screed from the Reuters "science" section about the presence of an amino acid in the tail of a comet,

The amino acid glycine, a fundamental building block of proteins, has been found in a comet for the first time, bolstering the theory that raw ingredients of life arrived on Earth from outer space, scientists said on Monday.

Microscopic traces of glycine were discovered in a sample of particles retrieved from the tail of comet Wild 2 by the NASA spacecraft Stardust deep in the solar system some 242 million miles (390 million km) from Earth, in January 2004....

[snip]

....The latest findings add credence to the notion that extraterrestrial objects such as meteorites and comets may have seeded ancient Earth, and other planets, with the raw materials of life that formed elsewhere in the cosmos.

"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare," said Carl Pilcher, the director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute in California, which co-funded the research.

Glycine and other amino acids have been found in a number of meteorites before, most notably one that landed near the town of Murchison, Australia in 1969, Elsila said.

Even for a mainstream media science article, this one is remarkably clueless about the basic science surrounding this issue. The way the article reads, they found glycine - GLYCINE!!!!! - in the tail of a comet, and poof, this practically proves that earth was seeded by extraterrestrial amino acids and *poof* life appeared!

Frankly, they're just lucky it was glycine they found, and not any other amino acid.

The reason is that glycine - which the article correctly notes is the "simplest" amino acid - is also the only amino acid which does not contain a chiral centre. Now, glycine is relatively simple to produce in nature - Miller-Urey produced it primarily when they did their little "lightning in a bottle of ammonia and methane" trick that the evos usually hold up as evidence that early earth conditions could have produced amino acids, which formed proteins, which formed everything else! (I'm simplifying, of course) There's no reason to think that the input of a little solar energy couldn't have done the same thing with ammonia and methane in the tail of a comet, at least enough to produce the "microscopic traces" of glycine the article mentions.

In fact, as the article also mentions, the Murchison strike in Australia yielded evidence for extraterrestrially-produced amino acid production.

But, the problem with using that as evidence is that a number of amino acids from the Murchison strike were non-biological, and all of them, biological and non-biological alike, were present as racemates - meaning that they were present in both left-handed and right-handed chiralities. Problem is, biologically active proteins incorporate left-handed amino acids exclusively. Yet, there is no chemical reason why a protein would selectively incorporate only one handedness of amino acid into a growing polymer chain. What this means is that any proteins that did somehow manage to overcome all the other things that basically rule out the naturalistic arguments for abiogenesis, like ionising radiation in an "oxygenless early earth atmosphere" (think, no ozone layer) and the Le Chatelier impossibility of performing a condensation reaction with water as a product (such as, you know, amino acid polymerisation to form proteins) in an ocean, would still have incorporated both handedness of amino acids, and have been completely useless as evolution-bearing precursors to life on this earth.

This is why I said that the evos got lucky that only glycine was found in the comet's tail, because any more complex amino acids would - if the evidence from every other extraterrestrial source of amino acids we've found to date is any indication - have been enantiomerically mixed, and would have been useless from an origins-of-life perspective. Being achiral, glycine does not have "handedness", and hence does not present the problem for the requirement of enantiopurity that any other amino acid would.

And let's note - merely finding glycine (ONE amino acid) does not prove anything about any evolutionarily-demanded "seeding" of life on earth. You don't build proteins out of just glycine. You need other amino acids as well - and to date, the scattered few that we're found from off-planet would be useless.

Not only is the science underlying the suppositions of the article faulty, but the article itself is written somewhat deceptive, like they're trying to slip stuff past the undiscerning reader. For instance, having admitted early on that "microscopic traces" of glycine were found in Wolf 1's tail, we are later told,

"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare."

So, they're "microscopic traces", but they're "prevalent in space" and show that life in the universe "may be common." Friends, that's not science, that's wishful thinking. And it's not even supported by scientifically-valid evidence. Find trace amounts of glycine in a comet's tail and assuming from this that life may well be common all across this universe is simply non-sequitur.

Articles like this do nothing to actually "prove" the truth of evolution, or even its likelihood. They only demonstrate the scientific illiteracy of so many of the MSM's "science writers" and those who repeat them ignorant, like Charles Johnson at LGF 1.0.

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Homology Does Not Prove Descent

Once again, another in a long chain of "transitional fossils" that supposedly "proves" macroevolution. Fossil Solves Mystery of Dinosaur Finger Evolution,

Bird wings clearly share ancestry with dinosaur "hands" or forelimbs. A school kid can see it in the bones. But paleontologists have long struggled to explain the so-called digit dilemma.

Here's the problem: The most primitive dinosaurs in the famous theropod group (that later included Tyrannosaurus rex) had five "fingers." Later theropods had three, just like the birds that evolved from them. But which digits? The theropod and bird digits failed to match up if you number the digits from 1 to 5 starting with the thumb. Theropods looked like they had digits 1, 2 and 3, while birds have digits 2, 3 and 4.

That mismatch failed to support the widely accepted evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds.

Now, newly described fossilized hands from a beaked, plant-eating dinosaur, called Limusaurus inextricabilis, reveal a transitional step in the evolution of modern wings from dino digits. The finding could resolve a debate over which fingers ultimately became embedded in the wing.

In case anyone is interested, you can see a photo of the dinosaur's hand.

First, the hand. Look, let's be honest here. The same kind of thinking that leads palaeontologists to reconstruct entire proto-human skeletons on the basis of a couple of bones from an extinct peccary is what leads them to assume the presence of a "vestigial first finger" in L. inextricabilis. The thinking in question is called "wishful thinking", and has led many a palaeontologist down the wrong path with all kinds of other supposed "transitional fossils."

More to the point, however, is the unquestioned assumption that homology implies phylogeny - in other words, because two structures look similar, then they must be related. In this type of case, biologists usually assume that if structures between two creatures look homologous, then this must mean that either one is descended from the other, or they are descended from a common ancestor. By that logic, then this,



and




must be evolutionarily related. After all, they're both tall, they look similar, they have hollowed out spaces in their interiors, creatures live in them, etc.

Ridiculous, of course, but then again, so is this current claim about dinosaur hands as they relate to birds' wings. We don't know which dinosaur fingers evolved into those found in birds' wings, but some of them must have, otherwise our theories won't work anymore. That's called "proving the evidence by the theory", which is the opposite of what science is supposed to be about. The assumption of phylogeny from homology in this case, as with other "transition fossils" (like the much ballyhoed Tiktaalik) is entirely gratuitous. There's no reason for it, other than to make the data fit an a priori assumption about phylogeny. And quite frankly, the claim of "homology" (i.e. that the bones in birds' wings and dinosaur hands are structurally similar) in this case is....imaginative....at best.

Homology does not prove the transitional nature of this fossil, despite the claims of the article. From a strictly empirical viewpoint, homology - at best - can suggest that similar structures may be present in different species to perform similar functions. Homology does NOT disprove special creation, either. God is certainly free to have used similar designs across different species, if He intended. That's not a scientific argument, you say? True. But neither is the a priori assumption that evolution must have taken place, so it's okay to fit the data to the theory, instead of vice versa.

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The Evolution of Tickling

[Just when you thought this theory couldn't get even sillier, we get this gem. Try not to laugh as you read it, ok? This is science!! ]

http://creationsafaris.com/crev200906.htm#20090608a

June 8, 2009 — Observation: orangutans seem to laugh when tickled. Conclusion: humans evolved laughter from our ape past. This is the story being promoted by the science news outlets. “At least 10 million years ago, our ancestors may have been laughing it up over the latest stone-age prank or bout of tickling,” announced Live Science.

New Scientist joined in the laugh fest, saying “Laughter is not uniquely human.... laughter dates back some 10 to 16 million years, to our common ancestor.” Science Daily aped this story, and as did the BBC News and Nature News. National Geographic was tickled with it and even included sound recordings so you could hear the laughter of a bonobo, chimp, gorilla, orangutan and a human child.

Each of these articles was accompanied by pictures of apes making funny faces – something that should have been known since the old Bonzo movies. None of the studies claims, though, that the apes laughed at the shaggy man joke.

National Geographic wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week for these punch lines:

But even the most casual listener can tell a human laugh from an ape laugh. Davila Ross points out that human laughter has distinct differences from ape laughter, most likely because humans have evolved much more rapidly than apes during the past five million years.
And at least one great mystery remains: What purpose does ape laughter serve?....
Primates have apparently packed a lot of laughter into the last 10 to 16 million years, but there’s a chance the chuckle originated even earlier: Tickle-induced “laughter” has also been reported in rats.
The idea remains controversial, but it could suggest that our funny bone evolved much closer to the trunk of mammals’ evolutionary tree.

Maybe those squeaks are funnier than people thought. But why stop with mammals? Parakeets seem to tell jokes to each other. Jungles are filled with screeches and whoops that might be interpreted as one big comedy show.

Isn’t The World’s Funniest Animals one of the most popular shows on Animal Planet? Robert Roy Britt extended the possibility of laughter to cats and dogs on MSNBC News but seemed to recognize a limit to interpreting the results: “Just because a bee buzzes, that doesn’t mean it’s laughing at you.”

So this is modern science at work: tickling animals to study the evolution of laughter. Suggestion: don’t try this on grizzly bears.

The storytelling continues (see 11/22/2005). It’s an endless joke at our expense. Don’t be surprised if one of them looks for the laughter gene in bacteria. Maybe these scientists should analyze why common-sensical people are laughing at them for taking themselves seriously.

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Birds Didn’t Evolve from Dinosaurs

Original Link

June 9, 2009 — “The findings add to a growing body of evidence in the past two decades that challenge some of the most widely-held beliefs about animal evolution.” That statement is not being made by creationists, but by science reporters describing work at Oregon State University that cast new doubt on the idea that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs. The main idea: their leg bones and lungs are too different.

Science Daily’s report has a diagram of the skeleton showing how the fixed femur is tied into the avian lung system. Birds use more oxygen than mammals.

Their flow-through lungs would collapse if the femur moved like it does in mammals, reptiles and dinosaurs. “It’s really strange that no one realized this before,” said Devon Quick, professor of zoology at OSU, speaking of the tie-in of the femur to the bird lung. “The position of the thigh bone and muscles in birds is critical to their lung function, which in turn is what gives them enough lung capacity for flight.”

His colleague John Ruben was equally surprised: “It’s really kind of amazing that after centuries of studying birds and flight we still didn’t understand a basic aspect of bird biology.” The article began, “The conclusions add to other evolving evidence that may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-eating dinosaurs.” Key paragraphs put this in context:

“For one thing, birds are found earlier in the fossil record than the dinosaurs they are supposed to have descended from,” Ruben said. “That’s a pretty serious problem, and there are other inconsistencies with the bird-from-dinosaur theories.
“But one of the primary reasons many scientists kept pointing to birds as having descended from dinosaurs was similarities in their lungs,“ Ruben said. “However, theropod dinosaurs had a moving femur and therefore could not have had a lung that worked like that in birds. Their abdominal air sac, if they had one, would have collapsed. That undercuts a critical piece of supporting evidence for the dinosaur-bird link.
“A velociraptor did not just sprout feathers at some point and fly off into the sunset,” Ruben said.

For a claim dinosaurs had air sacs, see the 09/29/2008 entry. The OSU professors are not disbelieving in evolution. Birds and dinosaurs may have had a more distant common ancestor, they said: “It just seems pretty clear now that birds were evolving all along on their own and did not descend directly from the theropod dinosaurs, which lived many millions of years later.”
Oregon State has been at the forefront of challenging the dogma: “OSU research on avian biology and physiology was among the first in the nation to begin calling into question the dinosaur-bird link since the 1990s.” Doubts have also been raised at other institutions. Why has the story persisted? For one, “old theories die hard, Ruben said, especially when it comes to some of the most distinctive and romanticized animal species in world history.” Another reason is museum politics:

“Frankly, there’s a lot of museum politics involved in this, a lot of careers committed to a particular point of view even if new scientific evidence raises questions,” Ruben said. In some museum displays, he said, the birds-descended-from-dinosaurs evolutionary theory has been portrayed as a largely accepted fact, with an asterisk pointing out in small type that “some scientists disagree.”
“Our work at OSU used to be pretty much the only asterisk they were talking about,” Ruben said. “But now there are more asterisks all the time. That’s part of the process of science.”

That being the case, we can expect heated comeback arguments from those committed to the dominant view. Nevertheless, they will have to contend with the problem of evolving a fixed femur from dinosaurs who had a moving one – and in a shorter time than the fossil evidence allows.
The new work was published in the Journal of Morphology and was funded by the National Science Foundation, the article said. This story was also reported by PhysOrg and E! Science News. Time will tell if the other major science reporters pick it up. As of June 10, they did not, but Astrobiology Magazine did.

Sometimes the key to a story is in the asterisks. The OSU professors should be commended for going against a strong current of dogma in their field. Notice how many non-evidential factors producing that dogma were pointed out in the article: careers on the line, museum politics, romanticized notions, and old die-hard theories presented as fact. Those are the same non-evidential factors running rampant throughout King Charles’ domain. He’s the one that needs to go flying off into the sunset – with velocity.
The OSU profs saved their skin, though, by still pinching their incense to Caesar, claiming that the mythical “common ancestor” is just a little further back in the record, and that birds were “evolving in parallel” along with the dinosaurs. That’s all they can do – toss in a few more naturalistic, purposeless, chance miracles to keep the Bearded Buddha shrine operating. Now the museum workers are going to have to figure out what to do with all those feathers (01/21/2009, 07/09/2008, 06/13/2007, 02/08/2006). Maybe they can stick them on the wooly mammoths, as caricatured by Tom Weller in Science Made Stupid, a mandatory lesson on how evolutionary stories are propagated.

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Rush Limbaugh Hates Science!

Well, it seems that old Rushie has fallen from grace in Chuckles' dictionary.

Not being content in attacking pretty much every conservative figure there is (Jindal, Coulter, Glenn Beck, etc), the aging adolescent, has-been jazz guitarrist, Charles Johnson aka "Darwinist Rage Boy" is now angry at Rush Limbaugh. Rush's crime? Not worshipping Darwin.

As I think everyone knows, there has been a huge (darwinian) hype about a lemur fossil found in Germany, and nicknamed as "Ida". To make the story short, it's just a fossil of an animal that looks like modern lemurs. Nothing more nothing less.

Not for darwinists, of course. For darwinists this is the evidence they have been praying for. (Well, not praying, since they usually don't believe in a Personal God)

Rush Limbaugh, like any sane person, is skeptical of this (yet another) "missing link". Charles, who cannot accept that people don't believe that the world created itself, fumes and says:

It’s just pathetic that on a day when such an amazing scientific discovery is announced, possibly one of the greatest finds of all time, Rush Limbaugh gets on the radio and tells his millions of admirers that it’s meaningless bullshit.

Well , first of all, it's not "one of the greatest finds of all time". It's just a freaking fossil, for crying out loud.

Secondly, it is meaningless when we look at what it is suposed to confirm. The theory that postulates that the living world is the result of an undirected natural process, as opposed to intelligent design, is not "confirmed" when we find fossils of extinct animals. Where is the mechanism able to turn this animal into something other than itself? How do we know that this animal burried in there left any offspring? The hype around Ida is more religious fervor than empirical science.

This should be a day when all Americans — all human beings — are proud of what we can accomplish through science and research, and human intelligence. Discoveries like “Ida” happen once in a lifetime.

Hilarious. Notice the on going "boogey man" mentality displayed by Chuckles Johnson aka Darwinist Rage Boy, aka Icarus the Kid: if you deny that those bones are your great great great grandparents, then you hate ALL science. It never dawns on Darwin Boy's mentality that perhaps (perhaps) it is because of "science and research" that people don't buy the Darwian nonsense.

Right wing extremist Savage wrote a worthy article about the Darwin-Ida-Charles Johnson affair.

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