The Human Genome and Evolution

EZScienceLook, I get (almost as) irate too when I see pseudoscience. I do not believe however that we are practising pseudoscience. So tell me in which way you think the standard nomenclatures and methodologies are not applicable to determining whether the genomes arrived y common descent or special creation?Isn't it true that you simply just don't like it? Creationists are generating new data sets. But, just as with the human genome, and equally with paleontology and geology, we should all be combnining our datasets and using the entire set to look at the big picture.I'm a theorist who spent 10 years as an experimentalist and it still annoys me to this day when I hear of experimentalists who accuse us theorists of laziness. You htnk we should construct a theory of genomic plasticity that doesn't use concepts like gene duplication, horizontal transfer and mutaiton? I think in retrospect you are aware of the lack of need for us to do this yourself. There's actually an enormous amount of YEC work on this. I'll give you one. A kind collects together organisms related by common descent. I used mainstream terminology and I couldn't think of a better way to say it. I tried to be very honest with GDR and point out my professiona land philosphical background (as well as introduce him to the biology).If we met in the depratmental tea room you would find I am a 'normal' scientist in every other way.

And where is the data being published? The HGP and other such exercises ar having their data published. Websites like Ensembl are making massive collated data sets available to everyone.Are you just saying that individual creationists working in research are contributing to this collated data, which I can totally accept, or that there is a concerted effort amongst the Creation science research institutes such as ICR to build large scale data sets to integrate into the wider scientific community, for which I can see absoloutely no evidence.TTFN,WKThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 06-30-2005 06:23 AM

Mind if I join in?There are plenty of points that you raise that I find a little inconsistant, but I'll let WK and others deal with the technical points about phlyogenetics. This statement on the other hand runs into a number of problems if followed through experimentally: Okey Dokey. Lets run through how an experiment to establish a kind would go. Let's collect possible 'Dog-Kind' DNA sequences and making a phlylogeneic tree, using a suitable out-group.Woo-hoo! They all look like they have a common ancestor. We've established that there is a 'Dog-Kind'. Let's do the same for 'Bears' Woo-hoo! There's a Bear kind too!But what if we compare the 'Bear' and 'Dog' sequences using the same set of experimental factors? Wouldn't it be a bit of bugger to find that there is, after all a 'Bear-Dog Kind'.What is the cut-off point to stop Human Kind turning into Human-Bacteria-Dog-Whale-Fungus-Flatworm-Lizard etc etc Kind, and what is the reason for doing drawing that particular 'Kind Line'? Other than it not agreeing with you own pre-set ideas of what a 'kind' can be, of course.Hope that wasn't too garbled - must stay off the coffee!!

WK ICR is publishing the helium retention work publish in peer-reviewed journals. I would personally prefer mainstream journals but I don't think it will make a huge difference if it is a creationist journal. The existing CRSQ paper on helium retention is about to be exapnded on and everyone will be able to see what has done in full detail (most of theis is already available). And no-one doubts the actaul experiemental results - they were performed by a government lab blindly on contract.The RATE group is expaanding from helium retention into multiple radiodating programs. For example they are dating multiple sites using three different stadard techniques rather than one or two.Most of the other creationist work I'm aware of is primarily simulation, theory and analysis rather than data collection.

Geology isn't really my field.The RATE data seems to be a pretty small collection of data from what is in the Humphreys' papers, not really comparable with even the data produced from a small scale microarray experiment let alone something like the HGP. Well it makes a difference if all the peers reviewing the work are themselves creationists. Such a limited form of 'peer-review' surely only leads to a somewhat incestuous situation and is never going to win the research wider scientific credibility. Do you mean that no one thinks that the data were actively manipulated, I'm sure that is the case. There seem to be some people who doubt the reliability of the results however raising issues of contamination, misclassification of samples and general applicability of the experimental results to the corresponding natural situation.TTFN,WK

Hi TB,
First, sorry I unloaded on you so vociferously from out of left field (late in the day for me and probably one beer too many) and thank you for your measured response. Let's see if we can't resolve some issues here. I am very curious as to what creation science is actually 'practising'.
I see nothing so far but criticisms of evolutionary interpretations - interpretations that I would argue only evolutionary biologists are qualified to make, given they have been responsible for all the underlying concepts of modern biology, the experimental design, data collection, and analysis.What data have been collected by creation scientists?
What experiments performed?
What practical problems in applied science solved by their insights? The methodologies of evolutionary biology do not address questions of 'final orgins'. Period. The overwhelming preponderance of evidence supporting commonality of descent has nothing to do with whether or not the first spark of life was ignited by some creator or not. Creationists are forced to borrow all the nomenclature from true biological sciences because they have produced no rigorous classification schemes or methodologies of their own. That creationsits borrow all the terminology and data produced by evolutionary biologists and try to warp it to fit their completely unsupported world view? YES. I don't like it one bit. Please produce one. We are all on the edge of our seats. Absolutely. But you guys have yet to bring anything remotely 'datalike' to the table. And I mean data that is reliable, authenticated, adn actually useful for infering a 'big picture'. Again, where are these data sets? I did not accuse you of laziness. I would just like to see your theoretical diligence directed to more profitable pursuits. And let's not forget that theory is only as good as the empirical observations it is based on. This brings us back again to your missing data sets. But I thought you didn't believe in common descent? And if you do accept speciation within 'kinds', then what is it that sets the upper limit one how different organisms can become without crossing over to become some other 'kind' ? And what branching rules are used to determine degrees of relatedness within kinds ? Possibly. You seem very rational on the surface. But once you started defending YEC I would have some serious reservations.How about this.Since you consider yourself both a philosopher and a professional scientist, I challenge you to a Great Debate on these specific contentions of yours:Creation science is not pseudoscience.
Creationists are generating new data sets.
The biblical concept of 'kind' has a valid scientific definition.We can title it "Validity of Creation Science Methodology" or something else of your choosing.
If you accept, I will solicit administration to set everything up.

Or conversely;Well it makes a difference if all the peers reviewing the work are themselves evolutionists. Such a limited form of 'peer-review' surely only leads to a somewhat incestuous situation...

Maybe if instead of asserting only evolutionists are qualified to make criticisms, evolutionists actually went about properly addressing criticisms, evolutionists would have responded to 130 years of creationist criticism of Haeckel's drawings a bit sooner instead of being self-deluded to accept bogus claims like "gill slits" in human embryos.just a thought...

One other note, the fact you thought creationists never accepted limited common descent and speciation is evidence, imo, that you never gave their criticisms a fair hearing.As far as making claims without data-sets, I think evolutionists don't have much ground to stand on vis-a-vis their claims concerning embryonic development, the most basic claim of a phylotypic stage turning out not to be true despite evolutionists insisting they had done the work to verify it was true for well over 100 years.

Hi Randman - we meet again. That's exactly what we do.
Try and publish a paper in a biology journal and you'll learn exactly just how much criticism you have to face to publish ANYTHING remotely involving evolutionary inferences. You have to deal with multiple reviewers and a referee, and not all the criticisms are justified either - you often have to challenge these with the referee.You creationsists seem to think evolutionary biologists are all in this great conspiracy to deny creation interpretations and support each other. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Mostly, we ignore creationists because they have virtually nothing constructive to offer the discussion. On the other hand, debates and arguments about interpretation of real data sets are a constant reality. Evolutionary biology is a cut-throat business. Just ask Mick or Wounded King or Mammuthus or PaulK or any of the other actual scientists in this forum.But its difficult to address criticisms that are either not properly grounded in fact or are based on fundamental misunderstandings of scientific principles. People who insistently repeat such unfounded criticisms without realizing why they are unfounded are going to end up being ignored by scientists, and rightfully so.This message has been edited by EZscience, 06-30-2005 02:18 PM

It's a cop-out in the face of undeniable evidence of speciation. Only a few years ago creationsists denied speciation. Now they have tentatively retreated to higher taxa. Give it a break. You have had a whole other thread on Haekel's drawings to learn about why these archaic ideas have little relevance to modern evolutionary biology.

My response is that if evolutionists are so careful to make sure their claims and actual data are used correctly, and do take criticisms seriously, they would have responded to creationist criticism of the use of Haeckel's drawings long before Richardson finally did a study and a paper in 1997.As an outside observer, I really can find no excuse for 130 years of perpetuating a well-known and well-publicized fraud, except some sort of self-delusion is at work.If evolutionists had ever seriously taken any of the criticism of creationists seriously, they would have known they claimed the drawings were faked, and would have taken the time to properly evaluate their claims.Heck, even a student could have just not assumed evolutionist claims were correct, and looked into this for themselves, (I did) in the 80s, and known this was bogus, but evolutionists refused to do that.I am not saying it is deliberate. It's more like brainwashing themselves.

Can you back this claim up?Maybe you assumed that was their claim, and never really listened to what they had to say?

You need to give this whole Haekel thing a break.
You have flogged it to death elsewhere and it's off-topic in this thread.Also, it would be nice if you could consolidate your responses to one post into a single message so we could actually respond in one message.Got to go - maybe more later.

The big difference being that mainstream scientists are looking for every opportunity to disprove their peers work while "creation scientists" are looking for every opportunity to validate their peers work.There is very little accolade in the real world for just saying, "Yep, they were right!" There is plenty of respect to be earned by exposing flaws, failing to duplicate results, and generally being a participant in the great filter of peer-review that guides scientific progress.

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