Posted on 08/07/2006 10:54:34 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
The author says nothing which is not common knowledge in biology and he uses the phrase "...very few...," which means nothing unless he gives it a quantitative value, but he implies that his revelation shows to the world that mutations do not contribute to evolution.
I learned in 1962 in Biology 101 that most mutations are deleterious (e.g., lethal) and, furthermore, whether a non-lethal mutation is "beneficial" depends upon the conditions within the envronment, which is continuously changing.
"He's just mixed up -- he kind of knows what he's talking about but it is words not understanding of the molecules and chemical properties."
Well, his education, even if you throw out the bogus Ph.D. is not an education in cellular biology, DNA research, or anything else. He's an M.D. That's it.
The thing about articles like this is that they're aimed at an audience that doesn't really understand the articles. Had he submitted this to any journal having to do with evolutionary research or cellular biology, it would have been summarily rejected, not because of bias, but because it's inaccurate.
But, for the intended audience, it sounds all academic and stuff, so it's good enough.
Frankly, I'm not well enough educated in the topic to discuss every aspect of the article. In the few areas where I am, however, it doesn't follow well.
To someone who has no background in these disciplines, however, the jibber jabber sounds pretty good. And there you have it.
If he has truly discovered something worth discussing, there are plenty of journals out there.
"I learned in 1962 in Biology 101 that most mutations are deleterious (e.g., lethal) and, furthermore, whether a non-lethal mutation is "beneficial" depends upon the conditions within the envronment, which is continuously changing."
There are also many mutations which are seemingly without any effect at all, good or bad. The whole point is that there are some that are beneficial to the organism. That's all it takes for evolution to proceed. Some.
MD's can know biochemistry.
And I have known people with real PhD's who don't know things that they should (eg that asn is not ionizable).
I love these creation/evolution threads. The creationists trot out their ad hominem descriptions of the evolutionists before the evolutionists even know the thread is started.
Full Dosclosure: I am in the evolutionist camp. Evolution has evidence to back itself up, and religion has only faith. Sorry, but I'll take fact over faith any day. That's how God made me.
To address the point in the article, that seems to say that the vast majority of changes in the genetic code of a species can be harmful rather than beneficial, remember that there are now 7 billion human beings alive today, and that some species feature trillions of living members. If the odds of any particualr mutation being beneficial are 100 million to 1 against, that still leaves a significant number of potential beneficial mutations. If a beneficial mutation provides a survival advantage, the mutatee (mutant?) will have a greater chance at reproducing, and thus a greater chance of adding it to the gene pool. The converse is also true, creating disadvantages. Cancer is one such disadvantage.
It's kind of like elementary school art. Millions of kids all accross the country produce artwork in school on at least a weekly basis. Most of it is pretty lame, except to the child's parents. But every once in a while, some kid is going to draw a really nice picture.
His jibber jabber is not that bad -- but that is the problem on these threads and in these discussion -- that it is jibber jabber in the first place.
It's people talking past each other because they are talking about philosophies and world views, not science and neither side has participants in this rather trivial debate that actually know the science.
There's a quote I can't quite remember but it is to the effect that a little bit of knowledge can be worse than none at all.
But his argument is so obviously stupid, it hardly calls for a rebuttal. Nevertheless, I will make it. Take a genome containing a gene. The gene is duplicated (due to an error in recomibation say) to make a copy - the genome now has two copies of the gene. The copy suffers a further mutation (a single nucleotide change say) so that it produces a different product. Two mutation events, unaided even by selection, have produced new biological information.
>> I'm pretty sure that Aristotle was not a Christian.
>First he was not a scientist, he was a philosopher.
Perhaps. But Aristarchus (310 BC - c. 230 BC), Archimedes (c. 287 BC – 212 BC) and Eratosthenes (276 BC - 194 BC) most assuredly *were* scientists. At the time, the difference between "scientist" and "philosopher" was vague and ill-defined and it has been until argueably sometime in the 19th century.
It was largely through the re-discovery of the works of Greek pagans and agnostics that the Rennaissance was made possible.
It is formulated like a religious dogma. But American National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) do not represent science - they represent school teachers.
The cargo cult of science is called scientism.
Likewise, changes that are beneficial will be selected for, but these helpful changes are close to nonexistent, indicating that the genome was optimal from the beginning.
The conclusion does not follow from the statement. If the genome was optimal from the beginning, then why did the age of reptiles end, and the age of mammals begin? Why are plants, and animals constantly going extinct? They go extinct if their genome does not adapt to environmental changes.
Natural selection operating on mutations may in some cases optimize survival if acting on an existing functional gene, but mutations cannot build-up the code in the first place.
He hasn't stated where he is getting this. Mutations most certainly can build up the code. Anemia is a defense against malaria. The sickle cell variant is deadly. Anemia was a mutation. It is hereditary. Not all humans have it. If not a mutation, then where did it come from?
A preliminary analysis of the DNA finds that the proportion of amino acids existing in genes, introns, and other DNA are not what would be expected by natural selection. When DNA that has no known function, (excluding DNA used for regulatory purposes, for centromeres, for telomeres, and for the production of RNA or tRNA) is examined, the patterns found are clearly in contrast to expected random mutational patterns shown in Table I. This shows that random changes have had only a small role in producing the genome, both in its protein coding and noncoding sections.
Again, it does not follow. He is confusing natural selection with random mutation. Natural selection is not always random. If anemia is a defense against malaria, and it was a random mutation, then why is it only endemic to populations in areas with high levels of malarial mosquitoes? Why is sickle cell anemia not found anywhere else?
Part of the reason is that mechanisms that function to resist change in the DNA genome exist. But these repair mechanisms would not have existed in primitive cells, which would mean that rapid genomic degeneration would have occurred before the repair system had evolved.
Why would they not have existed in primitive cells? He hasn't shown facts to back this up, and that invalidates the conclusion.
One thing that is difficult to follow is that he is using "mutation", "random mutation", and "natural selection" interchangeably. They are not the same thing. He does this throughout the paper. It is not an accident. I don't think that he understands it.
Yes. During the so called Dark or rather Middle Ages the system of modern science was worked out. That is why Copernicus, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein and Heisenberg are quite different from Tales, Archimedes and Pythagoras.
What is his argument?
"MD's can know biochemistry. "
They can, of course. I did not mean to imply that they could not.
The institution of science is something quite different from the Greek philosophy.
In natural science in particular there is a well defined scientific method, formal peer review, hierarchical organization, well ordered division of disciplines and coordinated on international scale.
The science is based on the implicit epistemological and metaphysical assumptions formulated explicitly by the scholastic theologians and philosophers. This was worked out by the Roman Catholic Church during Middle Ages in the form of university system. This is a plain historical fact, although complex one and subtle, requiring some intellectual effort and intelligence to grasp. Sorry.
>>This is a plain historical fact, although complex one and subtle, requiring some intellectual effort and intelligence to grasp. Sorry.<<
what on earth would make you suddenly take that direction in this conversation?
I could understand if you had provided some documentation for your position but this sounds like simply a personal attack.
Way back in my university years I attended a lecture by Owen Gingerich on historical astronomy. After the lecture a number of us retired to a lounge and got to chat with him. I recall I asked about the upcoming potential of the Hubble telescope still at that time years away from launch. Nice guy he was.
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