Professor Dumped Over Evolution Beliefs

http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/3/112003a.asp ^ | March 11, 2003 | Jim Brown and Ed Vitagliano

[Remedy]

A university professor said she was asked to resign for introducing elite students to flaws in Darwinian thought, and she now says academic freedom at her school is just a charade.

During a recent honors forum at Mississippi University for Women (MUW), Dr. Nancy Bryson gave a presentation titled "Critical Thinking on Evolution" -- which covered alternate views to evolution such as intelligent design. Bryson said that following the presentation, a senior professor of biology told her she was unqualified and not a professional biologist, and said her presentation was "religion masquerading as science."

The next day, Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Vagn Hansen asked Bryson to resign from her position as head of the school's Division of Science and Mathematics.

"The academy is all about free thought and academic freedom. He hadn't even heard my talk," Bryson told American Family Radio News. "[W]ithout knowing anything about my talk, he makes that decision. I think it's just really an outrage."

Bryson believes she was punished for challenging evolutionary thought and said she hopes her dismissal will smooth the way for more campus debate on the theory of evolution. University counsel Perry Sansing said MUW will not comment on why Bryson was asked to resign because it is a personnel matter.

"The best reaction," Bryson says, "and the most encouraging reaction I have received has been from the students." She added that the students who have heard the talk, "They have been so enthusiastically supportive of me."

Bryson has contacted the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy and is considering taking legal action against the school.

[VadeRetro]

Dinosaurs were not true reptiles.

Some of them--many of the theropods--were experimenting with warm-bloodedness so that they could hunt at night and pursue (rather than just stalk) prey. You can't draw a sharp line and say "These are true reptiles and these aren't." For some scientists, the answer is to move the clade Aves, formerly a class of its own, under Reptilia. That is, birds are thus considered warm-blooded reptiles. Here's a tree putting them under the coelurosaurs.

BP, this kind of readjustment happens because the Linnaean system of categories was originally developed 250 years ago based one man's view of the then-known forms which life had taken. There is no reason to think that every "bin" he created then would be bordered with an uncrossable, inviolable barrier or that his bins themselves were magically "correct." The bin assignments, and the number and nature of the bins, are arbitrary. That said, however, the very nature of the enterprise will tend to make the classifications correspond to the branchings of a real historical tree of life as understood by evolution and ignored or misunderstood by people who think the bins are "created kinds."

As you go back in time (or down in the sediments) the bin boundaries "blur" as forms start getting harder to tell from the forms in other bins. Looking back in time reverses divergence.

[VadeRetro]

What are you gonna do when they find this one is another fake?

What are you gonna do when they don't?

[AndrewC]

There is strong evidence they were warm blooded or sem-warm blooded. Reptiles are cold blooded.

Dinos did not have turbinates, and therefore, were cold blooded.

Does this prove that dinos were warm-blooded? Unfortunately, no. It does suggest that they were more advanced than modern lizards in that they could keep the temperature constant throughout their entire body

Both sides, take your pick.

[Right Wing Professor]

For someone who claims to be a professor which knows it all you sound pretty ignorant!

Yes indeed. I have this problem that when someone shows results without stating methods, I am entirely unable to determine by extrasensory perception what they did. Most scientists have the same deficiency. That's why we put 'methods' sections in papers. I can see that, having a direct line to God, you must find it hard to empathize.

[Junior]

Turbinates do not necessarily speak of warm-bloodedness; cross-sections of dino bones compare favorably in blood-vessel density to warm-blooded animals. This is a far more valid test of warm-bloodedness.

[Con X-Poser]

X: What are you gonna do when they find this one is another fake?
V: What are you gonna do when they don't?

Absolutely nothing - did you read the rest of the post? Feathers on a dinosaur does nothing to prove transition or evolution.

Bats have wings, does that mean they're a transition to or from a bird? No, bats are bats, always have been as far back as they are found in the fossil record.

A duckbill platypus has characteristics of several different kinds of animals, yet it isn't a transition to any of them, it is a platypus.

A feathered dino would just be a featherd dino, no big deal.

[VadeRetro]

This web page is wrong, then. It should say, "If you're a mouth-breather, you're not viable."

[js1138]

blue skipping placemarker

[VadeRetro]

Absolutely nothing - did you read the rest of the post? Feathers on a dinosaur does nothing to prove transition or evolution.

Exactly. Creationist calls for physical evidence ("Where o where is the missing link?") which you already have lawyered away as meaningless are a simple rude waste of everyone's time. You demand the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West, with the implication that you would acknowledge such a thing as proof. You won't, and anyone who has watched the Creationist Dumbshow before knows it.

[VadeRetro]

... you're not viable.

Or maybe you're just cold-blooded.

[balrog666]

I guess you missed it.

Nope. The point was for you to do your own research because nobody can understand it for you. If you prefer to believe otherwise, you'll just end up like Anti-Pope GoreMMM, skull-full-of-mush, lacking-Data-man, or weasel-wording-AC.

[Right Wing Professor]

If I read the values correctly, Danio(zebrafish) and Sparus (Gilthead Bream another fish) are represented by sequences which are more significant by 100 than Branchiostoma floridae and by 1 million than Branchiostoma lanceolatum.

OK. The evolutionary model (see p. 2158 of the Ciona reference) shows urochordates diverged first from cephalochordates and vertebrates; cephalochordates and vertebrates diverged from each other shortly thereafter. So, to first order, you would expect about the same distance between Ciona and Branchiostoma as between Ciona and Danio.

This is the analysis of ADH3 sequences from the paper of Canestro et. al. that I cited previously

Pair compared           time of divergence (fossil evidence)     ADH3 'evolutionary distance'
primates/rodents                  65-100 MY                                  0.06
Reptiles/mammals                 288?310                                     0.12
Fish/tetrapods                     400                                       0.23
Hagfish/gnathostomes               555                                       0.30
Cephalochordates/vertebrates       -                                         0.37

As I understand it, the 'evolutionary distance' is largely a function of the number of amino acid substitution rate. They then estimate from the correlation line that the Cephalochordates and vertebrates diverged around 690 MY ago. They didn't analyze the Ciona ADH3 (probably didn't have it when they wrote the paper), and so I can't tell you how it would fit in. Note, however, that quoting numbers generated by a canned program without a full understanding of the methods they've used, and the limitations of the results, is notoriously dangerous. As a chemist who does a lot of computation, I'm perpetually wary of it. I would strongly recommend looking at the data by hand, aligning the sequences, and then counting substitutions before drawing conclusions from BLAST; if you get about the same number it does, you're on safe ground. I started to do that last night with the Ciona/Branchistoma data with a consensus alignment of all ADH genes, and I got between 249 and 252 Ciona/Branchiostoma identities over a 340 amino acid consensus aligned seqeunce, and 264 and 192 identities between Ciona and two Danio genes.

Remember, standard theories claim that there was a massive increase in the genome around the beginning of the vertebrate line, and that one Ciona ADH3 gene gave rise to several ADH vertebrate genes. So, of the two I tested; one was a little more similar to Ciona, and one was a lot less similar. When you pick an ADH3 gene from a vertebrate, you're picking the protein from a family of daughter proteins that is most like the protein in Ciona. So, understandably, there is a little selection bias. The vertebrate ADH1s are also daughters of the Ciona ADH3 gene, and they're a lot less similar. ADHs are also an atypical family of enzymes; they have an enormous variability of substrates between different species.

One solution might be to pick a more conserved protein. I started with cytochrome b5 last night; it's short, has both highly conserved and variable regions, and is found in most every organism, and as far as I can recall retains the same function in almost all organisms. Unfortunately I have two papers to give at an ACS meeting in ten days time, and I don't have the time at the moment to explore this further. However, I promise I will return to it in early April.

[Right Wing Professor]

You are going to bank on another find from the Liaoning Province of *atheistic* Communist China? What are you gonna do when they find this one is another fake? You don't think an atheistic, communistic country might have an ulterior motive to try to eradicate God, do you?

Plus, I hear tinfoil is almost impossible to come by in Liaoning province.

[Nataku X]

You're absolutely correct that a scientific theory is garbage if there is no evidence supporting it. Cheers.

[ml/nj]

Nope. The point was for you to do your own research because nobody can understand it for you. If you prefer to believe otherwise, you'll just end up like Anti-Pope GoreMMM, skull-full-of-mush, lacking-Data-man, or weasel-wording-AC.

Why is that discussing the origins of life with you and your fellow travelers here, is like discussing politics with a Liberal?

ML/NJ

[Nataku X]

Rather than clarifying what I meant, I'll remind you of the original point I was making...

ml/nj was arguing that SAT scores made one more of a scientific authority. My brother got a 1590 on the SAT, but he was only a lawyer by training and made the very common mistake of confusing a scientific theory with a scientific hypothesis. Someone educated in science would not make that argument. He's a brillant budding lawyer, not a scientist.

I, too, don't like semantics, and I'm not going to get into an argument on (law vs. theory vs. hypothesis). You and Alamo-Girl usually make high quality arguments, my brother did not, and the original point was that having a 1590 SAT did not put him on the level of Gould. So what? Cheers.

[ml/nj]

ml/nj was arguing that SAT scores made one more of a scientific authority.

Really?

Can I guess that English is not your mother tongue?

ML/NJ

[Boiler Plate]

Say other than birds there are no other known feathered reptiles correct?

[Con X-Poser]

<< Exactly. Creationist calls for physical evidence ("Where o where is the missing link?") which you already have lawyered away as meaningless are a simple rude waste of everyone's time. You demand the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West, with the implication that you would acknowledge such a thing as proof. You won't, and anyone who has watched the Creationist Dumbshow before knows it. >>

No matter how many times you resort to your "better arguments" (those devoid of fact, ad hominem, and insults), the TRUTH remains that just because one creature resembles another in some ways is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that either is a transition.

This is obvious to any rational man because of how many living things have common features, yet we know they are not transtions to each other. Bats have always been bats, but if they did not exist today, you would surely be offering them as a transition to birds, flying squirrels, or maybe F-16's.

If there were no actual platypuses and you found one in the fossil record, you know you would herald it as a transition and evidence for evolution. You try to do it with creatures with less common features than a platypus has - like your proposed feathered dinosaur.

Snakes have scales, fish have scales. Is one evolving into the other?

Octopi have eight legs, spiders have eight legs. Will we see an octupus spinning a web in a few kazillion years?

Horses have manes, lions have manes. Is it moving up the neck or down?

So if some dinos have feathers, then some dinos have feathers. Some mammals have wings, that doesn't make them transitional.

Yell and fuss and kick and whine and mock all you want, similarity doesn't indicate transition. Similarity indicates common plan of design. The answer will be the same for EVERY creature you offer as a transition because it is valid for every creature you offer. Transition is your *interpretation* of the facts, it's not a fact itself.

[balrog666]

Yell and fuss and kick and whine and mock all you want

The only yelling, fussing, and whining is from you and your fellow seminar posters - in fact, it seems to be all that you do. And even three-year-olds quickly learn that it's unproductive.