Evolving the Musculoskeletal System

Nwr,
You are correct, my statement of calling him vile was over the line. I should have stated that I felt his behaviors in the thread were reprehensible but i should not have made a personal attack.His behavior in has disgusted me, but I should have maintained the high ground. Thank you for calling me out on it.

You know what? You want to take your gloves off and gang up on me with all these deep insults over this stupid issue? Go right ahead. It doesn't faze me in the slightest. I will stand behind any chance factor number that adds up to showing the ToE is utterly impossible in every way shape and form.
You think you are all high and mighty because you have biology knowledge and yet your conclusions are so far off you are nothing more than a bunch of well educated fools!Frankly, any person who can stand there and look at the skeletal system configuration and
HONESTLY think it could have formed by way of lucky accidental mutations is in my opinion
as dumb as random mutation and natural selection itself.I emphasize the word honestly because I know most of you are "willingly ignorant" because of your rebellion against your maker.I forgive the mean and hateful things you feel against me,ICDESIGN

Speaking to you as a Christian and certainly not someone in rebellion against my maker, once again you are simply wrong.I will once again present you with a few quotes from the Clergy Project letter, signed by over 12,000 Christian Clergy.

quote:

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We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as one theory among others is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children.

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quote:

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We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris.

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quote:

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We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge.

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The Theory of Evolution is not only the best explanation for the Musculoskeletal System, it is the only model out there.I understand that YOU see some conflict and that this is a threat to your belief, and if so, then use whatever is needed to support your weak faith and as Paul suggests, as a Christian I will "Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters."I will though pray for your enlightenment and that your hubris be forgiven.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Hi ICDESIGN,There was a lot of constructive advice in what people said. Evolution is just a theory about the real world. If it's wrong then evidence from the real world will tell us it is wrong. At heart all the criticism you're receiving is because you so determinedly ignore real world evidence. Your focus should be on alleviating your ignorance of real world evidence instead of finding excuses to avoid it. Stop feigning outrage. It was your blatant plagiarism followed by denial that invited all the criticism. You brought it on yourself by your own behavior, so suck it up.My Message 286 continues the discussion about new functions/features possessed by apes but not fish.--Percy

Then let's see those numbers and the formulas that you used to calculate those numbers with respect to the evolution of the musculoskeletal system. What are you basing this opinion on? Then surely you can present this evidence for the creation of the musculoskeletal system by this maker. If you can not present this evidence then perhaps it is you that is ignorant.

But the one "chance factor" you mentioned in this thread isn't about the ToE. Ok, you'll have to run me though this one. You say we have "knowledge" of biology. Which would mean that we know, if not a great deal, than at least an appropriate amount about t. However, you then say that this knowledge, which I assume you do not posses, is making our conclusions wrong. This sounds very weird to me. Are you saying that the less knowledge one has, the more accurate his conclusions will be? Should we stop informing juries in courts? Afterall, the less knowledge they posses, the more accurate their conclusion will be? And yest hundreds of thousand, if not millions, of people, who are very educated, and went to college (certainly nothing a dumb person could do?), agree with all the findings of biology. What makes you think they're dumb? Your ow incredulity? Plenty of the people I menioned above are religious in one way or another. Does Francis Collins strike you as a man in "rebellion to his maker", for example?

I don't think you're stupid. I think you're ignorant. Ignorance is fixable; you just have to go and learn stuff. How many times? We don't think it resulted by way of lucky accidental mutations. We know it resulted by the combination of random mutations and natural selection.

Hi ICDESIGN,Sorry for replying twice, but I should have reinforced my comments about how determinedly you maintain your ignorance by commenting on this: How many times have we told you that they are not "lucky accidental mutations?"Concerning yesterday's Koonin's paper, how many times have we told that evolution proceeds gradually in tiny steps?If evolution is wrong it isn't because it asserts that "lucky accidental mutations" happen, because it doesn't.If evolution is wrong it isn't because it asserts that evolution proceeds in giant leaps, because it doesn't.And if you're ever going to have a prayer of making progress promoting your position it won't be by continuing to be wrong about what evolution says.Your problem is ignorance. I'm sure in school you found that the more you knew the better you did. It's the same here and in most things in life.Let's continue the discussion of new functions/structures that developed between fish and ape.--Percy

Well many review processes ask you to suggest someone people you think would be a suitable reviewers already so as far as 'picking' reviewers goes I think there is already an established element of this.As to comments being made public, I don't see why it should necessarily change what they say, in some ways this is a reflection of the way the system is organised. Because the reviewers need to be on the editorial board many of them are not in a position to be cowed. These aren't necessarily people just starting out on their research careers who need to avoid treading on the toes of big guns. When Nature and others did some experimental testing of open peer review in the 90's they found that a lot more people refused to review papers when asked, but the editorial board of Biology Direct already know the score and have signed up for it.I'm not sure why the opportunities for abuse of anonymous review are only occasional and those for reviewer timidity in open review are ever-present. I would have thought that the opportunities are ever present in both cases, but similarly often not pertinent. But the opportunity existing seems to be all you are going on, and I have to say that the reviews for the Koonin paper don't seem all that timid to me.I certainly think there is room for a diversity of different approaches to editorial review and it certainly doesn't hurt the vigour of scientific research if we don't just limit ourselves to one review model.TTFN,WK

I'm with Bluegenes on this one, Koonin is grossly overstating the improbability with his 'no-RNA world' scenario and doing so for a specific point. I really doubt for an instant that Koonin considers this any sort of definitive probability calculation for a naturalistic origin of life.As for the paper, as far as biology goes there is basically nothing there to discuss, I'm not qualified to comment on the physics aspects. I don't see how that follows at all, it would certainly be very confusing to have the main manuscript broken up by 4 different sets of reviewers' comments. The usual process is that a manuscript is submitted, sent out to review, the reviewers send in their comments and then the author responds to those comments and makes any appropriate changes to the manuscript that they and/or the editor considers suitable before publication.To me the order of manuscript, reviews, responses, seems prefectly natural and when responding to reviewers comments it is quite common to do it on a point by point basis as Koonin does for the more lengthy reviews.TTFN,WK

Welcome back--I hope you didn't encounter any annoying tourists from Indiana in whatever part of the galaxy you enjoyed. Picking seems different from suggesting, though both would definitely reduce the number of axes to be ground. Speaking for publication is always different. That's more persuasive--but it also sounds like evidence for the notion that making comments public makes a difference. The abuse of anonymous review seems more likely to be only occasional for several reasons. First, in all cases, I assume the likelihood that the folks reviewing the paper are scientists with a personal and professional commitment to good science. Human nature being what it is, I also assume some scientists will exploit the opportunity--for personal grudges or professional rivalries, perhaps. I think that the authors' opportunity to suggest reviewers, the more probably objective perspectives of the other reviewers, and the possible consequences of gaining a reputation as a poison pen would all help to minimize both the occurrence and the impact of abusive anonymous reviews.Allowing authors to select reviewers whose comments will be made public, on the other hand, makes a structural element of the converse difficulty--obtaining reviews that are as sharp and objective as possible. I assume the best of all parties involved in this circumstance, too, but I also assume there will be abuse here as well.The inhibitory effect of published comments, and the inhibitory effect of biting the hand that chose you, seem ever-present and difficult to manage. Appraisers who value homes under the pending purchase price too often don't get repeat business; reviewers who more highly appraise others' work, rather than losing the opportunity like abusive anonymous reviewers, might well instead gain opportunities. You move from a process that would appear to reduce the possibility of an anonymous poison pen to one which would appear to eliminate it nearly completely--but at the price of a constant risk of allowing the selection of sweet pens, with no specific countervailing structure.In the case at hand, I understood the author was an editor selecting reviewers from his own editorial board. I would have thought that, like Caesar's wife, an editor's submission would have more independent review than other authors', even at journals with open review processes. That sounds reasonable, but I wonder how we would gauge any pernicious effect of the change.

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Dost thou prate, rogue?
-Cassio

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Real things always push back.
-William James

The reviewers weren't actual peer reviewers making sure that Koonin's paper satisfied scientific criteria prior to publication. The reviewers were writing reviews that had nothing to do with whether Koonin's paper would be published. Their comments had no influence on Koonin's paper. The reviewers were not anonymous. If this is how things now work in your neck of the scientific woods then you sound like an apologist for a system that has gone badly awry.--Percy

Precisely.It is eye-opening to see some of our own, such as RAZD in his discussions with Straggler, and now WK here, abandon approaches we know work for approaches that have no evidence they work when it is in their own self-interest, in this case reducing the effort required to achieve publication.This lessening of standards is inevitable in retrospect. The practical obstacles to starting a journal are much less in the Internet era, and with more and more "journals" competing for content it is only natural that the bar would be lowered for contributors. With so much of the scientific world in a "publish or perish" situation, scientists would naturally be conflicted between their inherent desire for quality and their natural instincts for survival and self-preservation.But just as with grade inflation where almost everyone getting an A removes grades as a measuring stick, in a world where anyone can publish it removes publication as a measuring stick.Just as RAZD's rationales had a strong creationist flavor, so do WK's. Creationists argue that we don't want to limit students to learning about just one model of creation while ignoring that one of those "models" hasn't proven itself in any way, while WK is arguing that we don't want to limit ourselves to just one review model while ignoring that the one we're talking about here has not proven itself in any way.--Percy

In what way? Because you don't agree with the final editorial decision? The reviewers comments are the basis for an editor to decide if they should publish or not, and if they think it doesn't satisfy the requisite criteria they can say so. This is an arguable point, Biology Direct's system, does mean that the published comments won't neccessarily directly affect publication, but the reviewers need to have agreed to review the paper in the first place after a first look and have the option of reccommending it not be published. Koonin does note some changes he made in response to the reviewers comments, including adding extra explanatory material. Even in blind reviews author's can choose to ignore or rebutt some reviewers points So? Well if you love blind peer review so much why don't you marry it ? But seriously, I don't know why you are so against a bit of heterogeneity in review processes. There are plenty of journals with traditional anonymous peer review, is there really no space in your worldview for any alternative approaches? If the science is bad then it won't be followed up productively and it won't be cited, consequently the journal's impact factor will drop. Biology Direct's current impact factor is 3.3 which isn't bad at all, especially for a journal that is only 4 years old.Peer review in science doesn't begin and end with getting your work published, it is an ongoing process of re-evalution by an entire community of related researchers. I expect to have to explain this to creationists who seem to think that the fact their favourite apologist got something published in a peer reviewed journal once upon a time confers upon them some sort of infallibility, but I'm a bit surprised you seem to see the journal's review process as the be all and end all.TTFN,WK

I have always looked on peer review as but the first and least rigorous step in verification. It's the chance to get someone else to look over your material and see if you made some really stupid and gross error. It is more a matter of "proof reading" for the logic and content than anything else.Peer review is the baby step before something gets tossed into the lions den of challenge. It is only after publishing that the real tests come, when the body of sciences examine the paper, try to refute the paper, try to confirm the results.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!