Posted on 04/22/2004 8:46:34 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
Also, Genesis is the subject of my doctoral dissertation. ["The Roots of the Biblical Worldview in Genesis 1 - 11"]
When I worked at a university research institute, one of the offices had a sign on the wall that read something like "If you're doing something really new, you don't have any peers."
I found that out the hard way when the National Science Foundation rejected one of my proposals for three years in a row, even though I modified it each time to respond to the objections of the "peer" reviewers. I finally gave up on the idea. Later, when personal computers came out, I realized I no longer needed a grant to solve the problem. I could do it at home on my own PC. I completed the research and got two conference papers and two journal articles out of it. The results of the research were valid, as shown by acceptance by the journal reviewers, but the research proposal itself couldn't get through the "starting gate" of peer review.
I never again submitted a proposal to the NSF. Why fight the problem of incompetent "peers?"
I'm currently Associate Editor of a scientific journal. When a paper comes in, I make a point of selecting the reviewers carefully, to assure that the paper gets a fair review and isn't tossed off because it doesn't fit the current research paradigm.
Not. The purpose of a professional research paper is to spell out the researcher's methodology in such a way that it can be replicated by other researchers. If, during the attempts to replicate the research, the peer-reviewers get contradictory results, or if the paper isn't written in such a way as to make the methodology unreplicable (c.f. Pons and Fleischman), then it is typically rejected by the peer-review process. Personal views do not enter into the equation. It's not a perfect process, but it comes as close to being objective as humans have managed to get.
But they're all still guppies. At the end of your "experiment" you mix the two populations and after a while the differences you achieved by your selective breeding will disappear.
ML/NJ
He has published more than 100 scholarly works and received five patents for his discoveries.
But wait: that can't be!
Scientific heretics are supposed to have their careers destroyed, their homes sacked and burned, and their names effaced from the public record unto the seventh generation. What happened to the Code of Suppression that all scientists agree to implement when they are granted their Science Licenses?
Based on this article, it seems they were wrong.
Obviously.
Proving that theory A is wrong does not prove that theory B is right. Proving theory A is wrong, though, increases the incentive to consider theory B.
Two points:
1) That depends on which tank I put them in. When I put them back togther, the final form of the resulting population still depends upon the environment, and on the selective pressures present there. Animals evolve (as best they can) to adapt to the pressures imposed on them. Their final form is determined both by their environment, and their ability to adapt to it.
2) If I continue the experiment long enough, and keep selecting for new attributes, eventually they will be so different that they will no longer be able to interbreed at all. At some point they are no longer guppies, but become some new species.
Except that the literal interpretation of Genesis does not qualify as a scientific theory under any circumstances. So if you are suggesting that Genesis is theory B, I would have to disagree that it merits any consideration whatsoever as a scientific alternative to Darwin.
Really?
You may believe this, but there is no evidence that I know of to support such a statement. Do you think the ones that are not guppies any longer will have a different chromosome count?
ML/NJ
Really?
You may believe this, but there is no evidence that I know of to support such a statement. Do you think the ones that are not guppies any longer will have a different chromosome count?
Well, according to Darwin, this where different species come from. You may or may not choose believe this explanation, but any book which explains the idea of Natural Selection can describe it for you in detail.
There are numerous examples of selective breeding being used to create new species, just as I described. As I understand it, modern corn is now so different from the original plant from which it was derived (maize) that they can no longer pollinate one another. Maize and modern corn are now different species of plants.
WRT the chromosome count, the short answer is that these two groups of fish really will be genetically different. They may or may not have the same number of chromosomes, but it is the composition of the chromosomes, not their number, that really matters. (I'm guessing, but I'm pretty sure that apes and humans have the same number of chromosomes, yet they are clearly a different species).
You wouldn't even have to do that. Just get rid of the artificial manipulations of a selective breeding environment and they would eventually revert to the original.
Okay, I'll bite -- where on earth do you fantasize that you see such a thing in this article?
Could you name a few of those species?
Not if B was proven wrong even earlier than theory A's downfall, *and* doesn't even rise to the level of a scientific theory in the first place.
You wouldn't even have to do that. Just get rid of the artificial manipulations of a selective breeding environment and they would eventually revert to the original.
Actually, no. The population would continue to slowly change as a result of random mutation, but unless their big tails or large size puts them at a disadvantage, there is no reason for them to revert to their earlier form.
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