Scientific Rules Of Evidence.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
[B]^ The truth is that there are no such rules. Every referee of a paper and every editor of a journal decides themselves what is admissable. One does not learn any such rules in BSc or PhD courses - at least at one of Australia's premier mainstream universities.http://www.evcforum.net/Images/Smilies/smile.gif>

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
[B]^ The truth is that there are no such rules. Every referee of a paper and every editor of a journal decides themselves what is admissable. One does not learn any such rules in BSc or PhD courses - at least at one of Australia's premier mainstream universities.A pity Australia's premier mainstream universitites don't teach science properly anymore. Guess you have not bothered to look at the information for authors in most academic journals either.If I wanted to, as a stunt, I could write a genomics paper that suggests that the pattern of protein family distribution in genomes is reminiscent of creation kinds and the referres would have absolutely no scientific reason to force me to withdraw that line.As a stunt I could right a genomics paper on 18S rDNA sequence variation in Puff the Magic Dragon and his relatives and get it rejected as the stupidity it is as well. Have fun trying.Protein families appear in higher life forms without a hint of where they came from - they are very suggestive of creation. It would only be utter mainstream bias that could allow such an interpretaiton to be withheld from publication.It would be utter ignorance to think that the data is suggestive of creation. Define protein family...in another post you said that DNA is unimportant as well which is interesting for someone who keeps calling themselves a molecular bio scientist. Also define higher life form...bacteria are more numerous and have a more efficient genome than mammals...they are a higher life form....Can you see that the scientific, mathematical and computational methods I would use would be no different to that of any other mainstream scientist. I would use sequence alignment tools and clustering and citations to show that protein families occur in conserved blocks and that new blocks of proteins appear from nowhere in higher taxa. It is simply the interpretaiton at the end that you don't like.If the blocks came from nowhere there would be nothing to align in the first place and how do you use clustering algorithms to demonstrate appearance out of nowhere? Nothing clustering with something? It is simply your utter lack of comprehension of molecular biology and basic science that you don't like.You are on an utterly futile witchhunt.You are a fundie zealothave a nice day

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
^ Tell me when you find hemoglobin in a prokaryotic genome.

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What would be the selective pressure for evolution of hemoglobin in a prokaryote? What would be the selective pressure for maintaining it if it was there originally? Cave dwelling animals lose pigmentation and the eyes become vistigial because there is not selection to maintain them...why would the genes not do the same? ...as to generation of a new protein...ever hear of exon shuffling? Basic bio 101

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Perhaps it might be lack of sequence hits that might indicate a new protein family?

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And this contradicts evolution how?

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Evoltuion/creaiton aside, if you think there is no 'order' to life, that there are not higher life forms then you have probably watched too much Star Trek.

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If you think that there is a direct progression from lower to higher in the biological world then you really need to go back and take some basic biology classes. Bacteria make up a larger portion of the biological mass of the planet...I guess they are more successful and "higher" than us...oh yeah, that goes for ants to.

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I think you need to study comparative genomics and you'll discover that the simplest life forms are essentially just metabolic machines.

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I have studied it and if you think the simplest life forms are non-developed metabolic machines you obviously have not studied microbiology.

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Multicellular creatures have these core genomes + swags of receptors

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I am fairly underwhelmed by this description of multicellular creatures..and what is a core genome?

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and signalling moelcules for cell-cell interactions. Higher life ends up with up to about 300 differnetiated cell types. Organisms with brains have brain proteins. Organisms with immune systems have immune system proteins.

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And BMW drivers drive BMWs....the last two sentences don't say very much.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-09-2002]

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
^ From a genomic point of view we know that genes appear in large blocks. Some life forms don't have many of these blocks. Others have lots of these blocks. We, and most vertebrates for example, have more blocks of genes than anything else. A core genome is sort of like the minimal genome for metabolic life. There are people working on how small this core genome could be - about 200 genes perhaps.

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Please define "large blocks", do you mean like the Hox clusters...do you mean genes only appear in blocks? It is not clear to me what you mean by this.....most vertebrates do not have many more genes than a fruit fly or fugu.

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Your point about the minimal genome is well taken. I have been hearing about both calculations and experimental work to determine minimal genomes...interesting stuff.

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Once you get into comparative genomics the Star Trek-like idea that maybe bacteria are as complex as us is seen for what it is - an utterly ludicrous myth. We have just about everything that bacteria have and many times over this - not just copied but dozens of times more brand new systems. We are more complex than bacteria. Drop the PCness, the bacteria really can't hear you - trust me.

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Actually bacteria are more complex than you give the group credit for....but you could replace the "We" in each sentence with mice, hedgehogs, etc and not change the meaning. How does this define a progression?

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Genomics has completelyt blown away the 1980s idea of 'we can't really say what is complex and what isn't'.

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Define complex and what specific 1980's idea you are referring to. A volvox or a hydra are complex. Corn is complex....water is complex...complex loses it's meaning. Some frogs have larger genomes than mammals. Does this make them more complex? Since we really don't know what repetitive DNA and retroelements really do they cannot be dismissed as junk (about the only point that Peter Borger and I agree on). You seem to be using complexity as some sort of a value statement and implying (falsely) that evolution is a progression with humans at the pinnacle.

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Cheers,
Mammuthus

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-10-2002]

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
^ I'll define genomic complexity with complete confidence:

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Genomic complexity is proportional to the number of distinct protein families.

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I suspect this definition will turn out to be roughly equivalent to the number of cell types. If you don't like that that is fine with me. Most genomic evoltuionists would agree with me that this is a useful definition.

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1) Please provide a citation that supports this definition.
2) Please answer the rest of the question I asked you.

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I don't have a problem that it puts us at near equal complexity with mice and apes. It just doesn't bother me. My definition of complexity has no creationist agenda.

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glad to hear it...but a "progression" of complexity does not logically follow what is seen in nature. And you assume many systems are "simple" when they clearly are not.