Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
5 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,817 Year: 3,074/9,624 Month: 919/1,588 Week: 102/223 Day: 13/17 Hour: 0/1


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Teaching evolution in the context of science
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 61 of 76 (13105)
07-08-2002 9:50 PM
Reply to: Message 59 by Tranquility Base
07-08-2002 9:03 PM


Tranquility Base writes:

And what exactly do you debate?
I haven't been ambiguous. You cited the Erwin abstract in support of a point on which it is silent. This is consistent with your pattern of citing evidence irrelevant to whatever point you happen to be making. I mentioned it only because it provided what appeared to me so clear an example of this pattern that it would be apparent even to you. I guess not, though.

My thesis was passed without a single correction.
LOL! Yeah, what Joe said.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 59 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-08-2002 9:03 PM Tranquility Base has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 63 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-08-2002 9:59 PM Percy has replied

  
Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 62 of 76 (13106)
07-08-2002 9:57 PM
Reply to: Message 60 by Joe Meert
07-08-2002 9:33 PM


Joe, Percy
It's pretty unusual I'll admitt but it was an unusual situation - I completed the last 25% of my nuclear physics PhD (and all the write up) after 4 years of experience as a publishing RA in structural biology. I was pleasantly surprised to not have to rebind.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 60 by Joe Meert, posted 07-08-2002 9:33 PM Joe Meert has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 64 by Joe Meert, posted 07-08-2002 10:01 PM Tranquility Base has replied

  
Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 63 of 76 (13107)
07-08-2002 9:59 PM
Reply to: Message 61 by Percy
07-08-2002 9:50 PM


Percy
We'll just have to disagree about what Erwin could possibly mean about allelic substituion being discontinuous from large-scale evoltuion in a paper about macro not being just lots of micro!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 61 by Percy, posted 07-08-2002 9:50 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 67 by Percy, posted 07-08-2002 10:28 PM Tranquility Base has replied

  
Joe Meert
Member (Idle past 5680 days)
Posts: 913
From: Gainesville
Joined: 03-02-2002


Message 64 of 76 (13108)
07-08-2002 10:01 PM
Reply to: Message 62 by Tranquility Base
07-08-2002 9:57 PM


quote:
Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Joe, Percy
It's pretty unusual I'll admitt but it was an unusual situation - I completed the last 25% of my nuclear physics PhD (and all the write up) after 4 years of experience as a publishing RA in structural biology. I was pleasantly surprised to not have to rebind.

JM: Ahh, rebind! Few of us have to rebind, but that does not mean no corrections. Certainly, your committee had changes before you submitted the final version. I find any claim to the contrary a lie.
Cheers
Joe Meert

This message is a reply to:
 Message 62 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-08-2002 9:57 PM Tranquility Base has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 65 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-08-2002 10:13 PM Joe Meert has replied

  
Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 65 of 76 (13112)
07-08-2002 10:13 PM
Reply to: Message 64 by Joe Meert
07-08-2002 10:01 PM


Joe
Sorry - absolutely zero corrections! It was rather straight forward work - nothing startling or controversial. The referee's comments where not glowing - I just had learned to play the game of writing up. Becasue of the delay between the first 75% and the last 25% my thesis really was a rewrite of 3 published papers + the last bit of work.
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 07-08-2002]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 64 by Joe Meert, posted 07-08-2002 10:01 PM Joe Meert has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 66 by Joe Meert, posted 07-08-2002 10:19 PM Tranquility Base has replied

  
Joe Meert
Member (Idle past 5680 days)
Posts: 913
From: Gainesville
Joined: 03-02-2002


Message 66 of 76 (13113)
07-08-2002 10:19 PM
Reply to: Message 65 by Tranquility Base
07-08-2002 10:13 PM


quote:
Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Joe
Sorry - absolutely zero corrections! It was rather straight forward work - nothing startling or controversial. The referee's comments where not glowing - I just had learned to play the game of writing up.

JM: As I mentioned before, this speaks poorly of your committee. I can't think of a similar claim ever being made except by Hovind. In my own experience, everyone has an opinion of science and a thesis defense gives the committee members a chance to sound off. Is your Ph.D. through an uncredited diploma mill?
Cheers
Joe Meert

This message is a reply to:
 Message 65 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-08-2002 10:13 PM Tranquility Base has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 69 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-09-2002 8:45 AM Joe Meert has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 67 of 76 (13115)
07-08-2002 10:28 PM
Reply to: Message 63 by Tranquility Base
07-08-2002 9:59 PM


Tranquility Base writes:

We'll just have to disagree about what Erwin could possibly mean about allelic substituion being discontinuous from large-scale evoltuion in a paper about macro not being just lots of micro!...
But there is no disagreement on this point. Erwin just doesn't happen to be commenting on anything to do with allelic variation equating to same fold but with SNP(s), which was your original claim from Message 24. You cited him to support a claim concerning protein folds with SNP(s) when he doesn't even use the terms "protein", "fold" or "SNP".
The purpose of a citation is to support your point while obviating the need to repeat the original argument or present the original data. My only purpose was to call attention to your habit of issuing citations irrelevant to your point. Whether you can see it or not, your Erwin abstract citation is a excellent example of precisely this.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 63 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-08-2002 9:59 PM Tranquility Base has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 68 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-09-2002 8:33 AM Percy has not replied

  
Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 68 of 76 (13149)
07-09-2002 8:33 AM
Reply to: Message 67 by Percy
07-08-2002 10:28 PM


OK, I'm glad we can agree on that part.
What I've been trying to say is that I'm combining what Erwin's research on who knows what (pop genetics??, paleontology - we'll see) with standard structural biology knowledge.
To a structural biologist saying that 'allelic variation' is not same fold is like saying that aeroplanes don't fly. I am not kidding.
So, with that in mind, I still take what he is saying as indicating that there is a discontinuity between within protein fold variation (microevolution) and 'large scale' evolution. Via no great sleight of hand I suggest that large scale evolution frequently requires the origin of (i) new protein folds and/or (ii) genes with new functions and (iii) new networks of genes.
So I disagree that Erwin is irrelvant. I simply took a concept he used and translated it into a the jargon of structural biology. The idea of alleles and folds are such that a non-strucutral biologists may never think of it that way and yet they are the same thing in this context. It is precisely the protein folding issue which (i) generates diseases from misfolded alleles and (ii) makes it difficult to go from fold to fold via multiple SNPs.
The human genome simply has no examples where your gene (allele) for trait X has one fold and mine has another well defined fold. Hemoglobin is hemoglobin. Same for Leukemia Inhibitory Factor etc.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 67 by Percy, posted 07-08-2002 10:28 PM Percy has not replied

  
Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 69 of 76 (13151)
07-09-2002 8:45 AM
Reply to: Message 66 by Joe Meert
07-08-2002 10:19 PM


Joe
In Australia we don't have committees like that. The thesis goes out to 2 or 3 referees in different institutes including one O/S. You never see your referees. The supervisor selects the refs I think. I'm not up on the latest as my first PhD students are only half way through. I got my PhD at arguably Australia's finest univesity.
The committees we have within my current department would make suggestions I presume. But in the Physics Dept back then there were no committees. My supervisor himself got my thesis in one hit (unusual but he saw my proposed table of contents and was also aware of my 6 years of experience publishing) and penned in about 20 red marks and asked for one more graph. But I got no requests for corrections at the examination of the thesis which nevertheless was unusual.
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 07-09-2002]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 66 by Joe Meert, posted 07-08-2002 10:19 PM Joe Meert has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 70 by Joe Meert, posted 07-09-2002 9:53 AM Tranquility Base has replied
 Message 75 by Brad McFall, posted 07-14-2002 9:52 PM Tranquility Base has not replied

  
Joe Meert
Member (Idle past 5680 days)
Posts: 913
From: Gainesville
Joined: 03-02-2002


Message 70 of 76 (13158)
07-09-2002 9:53 AM
Reply to: Message 69 by Tranquility Base
07-09-2002 8:45 AM


Well, gee now it's gone from no corrections to 20 red marks and an added graph. Look, no matter how it's done, nobody (except Hovind) gets through without some changes. You've just admitted that there were changes made by your supervisor. In that case, it did not make it through without corrections.
Cheers
Joe Meert

This message is a reply to:
 Message 69 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-09-2002 8:45 AM Tranquility Base has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 71 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-09-2002 9:58 PM Joe Meert has replied

  
Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 71 of 76 (13194)
07-09-2002 9:58 PM
Reply to: Message 70 by Joe Meert
07-09-2002 9:53 AM


Fine Joe, I just found it hard to believe that you really thought I was saying my supervisor never put a pen to my manuscript! The only thing we ever boasted about to each other was howmany corrections the referees made! Corrections by supervisors are taken as given. Are you saying Hovind made the claim his supervisor never made a correction? Ask him again with that in mind. I agree that would be bizaree and lazy on the part of a supervisor.
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 07-09-2002]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 70 by Joe Meert, posted 07-09-2002 9:53 AM Joe Meert has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 72 by Joe Meert, posted 07-10-2002 8:16 AM Tranquility Base has replied

  
Joe Meert
Member (Idle past 5680 days)
Posts: 913
From: Gainesville
Joined: 03-02-2002


Message 72 of 76 (13239)
07-10-2002 8:16 AM
Reply to: Message 71 by Tranquility Base
07-09-2002 9:58 PM


[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
[B]Fine Joe, I just found it hard to believe that you really thought I was saying my supervisor never put a pen to my manuscript! Are you saying Hovind made the claim his supervisor never made a correction? Ask him again with that in mind. I agree that would be bizaree and lazy on the part of a supervisor[/QUOTE]
JM: You bet that is exactly what you implied. Your supervisor is part of your committee! Hovind had no supervisor! Patriot University is a diploma mill that charges $100 for a Ph.D. Look, I am glad that you produced a nice dissertation, but your original claim was misleading. You were attempting to impress everyone here and it backfired.
Cheers
Joe Meert

This message is a reply to:
 Message 71 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-09-2002 9:58 PM Tranquility Base has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 73 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-10-2002 9:48 AM Joe Meert has not replied

  
Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 73 of 76 (13240)
07-10-2002 9:48 AM
Reply to: Message 72 by Joe Meert
07-10-2002 8:16 AM


Not really Joe. A question was raised over the quality of my PhD (I have no problems with that) and I told the truth.
In my country we would still say that my thesis got through without a correction becasue it goes without saying that every thesis is torn apart by the supervisor. The referees corrections are documented point by point on an official document! There is no such thing as that with your supervisor - you walk into his office and he hands you a chapter with red marks on it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 72 by Joe Meert, posted 07-10-2002 8:16 AM Joe Meert has not replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 74 of 76 (13517)
07-14-2002 9:48 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by Tranquility Base
06-26-2002 9:32 PM


It is very important for biology to get beyond, especially in the teaching of it, of the peppered moth and finches. By reading Provine biography of Sewall Wright one can get the impression why it is that these two taxa are not merely the exemplar that Mayr asserts is foreign to his own grown biological thought but the very reason that molecular approaches continue to fall on organcist's deaf ears.
It is still the case that the departments may be divided into 60s schooled organim centered biologists and some shools such as UCF in Orlando Fla are housed mostly with the "older" type of biologist to which crowd my grandfather could also be classed even if his firefly student Jim Loyd would not or rather would in the face of the newer grad students of protenomics and genomics post-Kimura.
The point that binds both the moth and bird here is, adaptation. On the one hand Lack and Mayr agreed to not disagree or simply were not concerned enough with the variation in these birds with respect to what is acutally (as far as any one could know)adapative and non-adaptive and though the moth work is largely even read as targeted to disprove drift even in the sense admitted in some Russian BIOlogy it could more profitably be writ again more narrowly and for the betterment of both disseminating biological change and not the growth of biological thought in terms of the specific question that Fisher posed to Wright about if he had "overlooked" something adaptive in Wrights agreement in certain limited cases with respect to NUMBERS in population genetics. Fisher eventually came to belive that he had not and only went so far as to tell Wright that he was completely "wrong" while Wright maintained till the end. It seems only a theortical development that can handles both taxagenies is needed to bring the teaching up to the social reality that the non-biologist experiences with respect to creation and evolution and thus making the learning experience more meaninful but at least on Provine's history he could not seperate the exportation of Japanese science with the difference of plants and animals which need not show its face in this more limited discussion abstractly on the the shifting of a curve to line up points under a common mutation rate whether a little too slow or a little too fast.
My own feeling then is that the molecular level is even MORE and not less ambiguous than the whole organism one but is even more practical because any social baggage is even more terminated from the discussion. I could not do this with Provine even in extending the reasoning to electric fish plain and simple. So also some change in the the teachers and not the biology is also called for for the learners whether general biology class participants or majors.
In conclusion pracitcality is not the measure of acutal truth in this subject which was for me more strictly "natural history".

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by Tranquility Base, posted 06-26-2002 9:32 PM Tranquility Base has not replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 75 of 76 (13518)
07-14-2002 9:52 PM
Reply to: Message 69 by Tranquility Base
07-09-2002 8:45 AM


Can you state the thesis in one paragraph or so??

This message is a reply to:
 Message 69 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-09-2002 8:45 AM Tranquility Base has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024