Posted on 04/11/2006 5:11:24 PM PDT by LibWhacker
The article didn't say the effect was for humans - it is for the benefit of the poppies. And I'm not the one to argue with over those findings anyway. Take it up with the researchers that published the paper.
Again, perhaps if you read the article before commenting this would actually make sense to you.
best, ampu
Look up the definition for 'crony' ...
I'll be happy to educate you. Tuition is $20K a semester. I'll get back to you when your check clears.
I'll do it for $19K a semester!
Again, perhaps pimping for an editorial by promoting it to an "article", doesn't make it anything other than a dispeptic diatribe. And pompous, dismissive gesturing somewhere else doesn't make you any less the author of the disdaneful characterization of science as a hotbed mindless establishment orthodoxy being constantly rescued by brave outsiders. At best, one can consider this inobservant.
First of all, at least 317 people read the article on FR. Second, it seems rather disingenuous for a professor at MIT to be saying that people lose their jobs for saying what he is saying. Has he lost his job? I'm sure climate critics are disappointed that their policy recommendations are not being accepted, but that is politics, not science.
If it were not for the public policy aspect, climate science would not be perceived as unusually contentious.
Does this mean you also read the editorial essay in todays WSJ?
js,
I wasn't aware that anyone even posted the WSJ editorial on FR today. Could you provide a link? You do know I'm referring to a different article than the one at the top of this thread?
ampu
ps - tenured profs don't lose their jobs - which was one of the points in the editorial... that few are senior enough to withstand - aw , just read it.
Going at least by the history of the discipline, this is simply not true, regardless of what may (or may not) happen in climate science.
Look at the various programs that have been used to deduce phylogenies from genetic sequence data. My Lord, the debate went on and on and on (and still does) about rooting trees, seeding trees, what constitutes a least probability tree and the probability of it being found, the relation between the models and what actually happens in evolution, etc, etc. Every aspect of these programs has been examined in the most excruciating detail, and continues to be.
The inference of ancestral sequences is a closely related problem. To arrogantly and sweepingly assert it isn't/won't receive the same treatment is bigoted and unjustified.
Besides, just a quick glance at the literature indicates (unsurprisingly, at least to anyone who follows science) that the presuppositions involved in infering ancestral sequences are being examined. Here's just one example. It's not chosen for any particular reason, just the first one I happened to google up:
Ancestral sequence alignment under optimal conditions
BMC Bioinformatics 2005, 6:273
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/6/273
Abstract (full text available at link)
Background
Multiple genome alignment is an important problem in bioinformatics. An important subproblem used by many multiple alignment approaches is that of aligning two multiple alignments. Many popular alignment algorithms for DNA use the sum-of-pairs heuristic, where the score of a multiple alignment is the sum of its induced pairwise alignment scores. However, the biological meaning of the sum-of-pairs of pairs heuristic is not obvious. Additionally, many algorithms based on the sum-of-pairs heuristic are complicated and slow, compared to pairwise alignment algorithms.
An alternative approach to aligning alignments is to first infer ancestral sequences for each alignment, and then align the two ancestral sequences. In addition to being fast, this method has a clear biological basis that takes into account the evolution implied by an underlying phylogenetic tree.
In this study we explore the accuracy of aligning alignments by ancestral sequence alignment. We examine the use of both maximum likelihood and parsimony to infer ancestral sequences. Additionally, we investigate the effect on accuracy of allowing ambiguity in our ancestral sequences.
Results
We use synthetic sequence data that we generate by simulating evolution on a phylogenetic tree. We use two different types of phylogenetic trees: trees with a period of rapid growth followed by a period of slow growth, and trees with a period of slow growth followed by a period of rapid growth.
We examine the alignment accuracy of four ancestral sequence reconstruction and alignment methods: parsimony, maximum likelihood, ambiguous parsimony, and ambiguous maximum likelihood. Additionally, we compare against the alignment accuracy of two sum-of-pairs algorithms: ClustalW and the heuristic of Ma, Zhang, and Wang.
Conclusion
We find that allowing ambiguity in ancestral sequences does not lead to better multiple alignments. Regardless of whether we use parsimony or maximum likelihood, the success of aligning ancestral sequences containing ambiguity is very sensitive to the choice of gap open cost. Surprisingly, we find that using maximum likelihood to infer ancestral sequences results in less accurate alignments than when using parsimony to infer ancestral sequences. Finally, we find that the sum-of-pairs methods produce better alignments than all of the ancestral alignment methods.
It is your expressed opinion to which I objected. I'm not your circus monkey, quit trying to think of busywork for me to do before you will deign to defend your balony-ridden argument.
Oh, and by the way, trying to patronize people because they haven't read an ancillary article you couldn't be bothered to post a navigable url to, or relevant piece of, isn't going to win you a lot of admirers here.
Good point. I kind of implicitly went along with aMPU's (wildly false) suggestion that there is something new about inferring genetic sequences, or that this hadn't already been thoroughly examined. I should have noted that inferring ancestral sequences is (sometimes, depending on the specific method being used) an incidental step in other procedures such as inferring phylogenies or aligning sequences.
Correct me if I ere. I'm not terribly educated on the topic. Most of what I know I got from reading Kimura's book on "The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution". It discussed the various methods of inferring phylogenies and the like in a good bit of detail, but it's dated by now I'm sure, and years since I read it.
Not only opium and nicotine, but a huge number of drugs and drug precursors: think of a mouse nibbling on a bit of digitalis, or LSD, or ...
your use of jigsaw puzzle pieces resulted in fakes more times than not.
Please document this claim.
Please document this claim.
Give him time to search out the creo sites.
In the meantime, here is one of the those "fakes" for all to enjoy. This is Mrs. Ples, one of my favorites; we spent hours with her in grad school. (The cast we had looked much better than this photograph.)
Discovered By: R. Broom & J. Robinson 1947 (1)
Estimated Age of Fossil: 2.5 mya * determined by Stratigraphic, floral & faunal data (1, 4)
Species Name: Australopithecus africanus (1, 2)
Gender: Male (based on CAT scan of wisdom teeth roots) (1, 30) Female (original interpretation) (4)
Cranial Capacity: 485 cc (2, 4)
Information: No tools found in same layer (4)
Interpretation: Erect posture (based on forward facing foramen magnum) (8)
Nickname: Mrs. Ples (1)
See original source for notes:
http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=24
Thank you for a reasoned and reasonable post.
best,
ampu
Don,
I asked a serious question. If you don't want to participate in the referred article, that's fine. I am not trying to patronize anyone or make admirors either. I was in pursuit of an actual discussion. I'm not sure why you are so antagonistic. If I offended you, you have my sincere apology. If this has been a particularly difficult day for you, you have my empathy.
best,
ampu
Don,
I asked a serious question. If you don't want to participate in the referred article, that's fine. I am not trying to patronize anyone or make admirors either. I was in pursuit of an actual discussion. I'm not sure why you are so antagonistic. If I offended you, you have my sincere apology. If this has been a particularly difficult day for you, you have my empathy.
best,
ampu
...he says, and then a few sentences later in the same post warns that he's "not buying", which sounds like "I don't care what evidence there is, I've decided in advance to reject it."
what's that? You can't? Oh...
What's that, you *presume* the answer in advance? Ah, I hear the sound of a mind slamming shut.
Hint: There are many more ways to demonstrate the validity of a process beyond "showing it to you in a lab".
Hint #2: We can't recreate the Hawaiian Islands in a lab, either, but we can still verify the processes by which they formed, beyond any reasonable doubt.
This "show it to me in a lab" canard is a frequent cheap excuse for "I'll believe what I want to believe, whatever the evidence overwhelmingly indicates" based on either a) a complete ignorance of how science validates things, or b) a purposely dishonest attempt to ask for something the questioner knows is unworkable EVEN IF THE PROPOSITION IS TRUE and verifiable by other methods.
*Note: feel free to attack me Darwin-bots, but I'm not buying
Funny, *you're* the first one to issue an attack on this thread (e.g. "Darwin-bots").
And I have no interest in attacking you. I feel sorry for you.
(and the usual disclaimer: I am not pro-creationism.)
So your mind is equally closed in every direction?
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