Scientific Rules Of Evidence.

^ 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.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. 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.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.You are on an utterly futile witchhunt.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-09-2002]

^ Tell me when you find hemoglobin in a prokaryotic genome.Perhaps it might be lack of sequence hits that might indicate a new protein family?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. I think you need to study comparative genomics and you'll discover that the simplest life forms are essentially just metabolic machines. Multicellular creatures have these core genomes + swags of receptors 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.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-09-2002]

^ 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.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.Genomics has completelyt blown away the 1980s idea of 'we can't really say what is complex and what isn't'.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 09-10-2002]

^ I'll define genomic complexity with complete confidence:Genomic complexity is proportional to the number of distinct protein families.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.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.