Review of Godless -- (Centers on Evolution)

Powells Review a Day ^ | August 10, 2006 | Jerry Coyne

[Diamond]

Which was controlled by Darwins friends

LOL! You realize it's obvious that you're just making this up? Which "friends" of Darwin "controlled" (any more than any member did) The Linnean Society of London? You're just saying this. You don't have the slightest idea who was on the board, or who specifically might have passed on this presentation.

I'm not making anything up, except maybe a little bad syntax. Do you deny that Sir Charles Lyell and Joseph D. Hooker were Darwin's friends and that they had some say in the proceedings? In saying "controlled by Darwin's friends" I did not mean to imply that the entire society was controlled by Darwin's friends, or that he needed some special 'in' to receive a hearing. I was referring to the PROCESS whereby his influential friends fretted over and worked to get his work heard by the Society, which is relevant not in the sense that there was anything wrong with it, but only in the sense that that they were not impartial, anonymous referees. That is the sense in which I intended to identify the control, which is evident by the concluding portion of the very same sentence that you omitted; namely, "...and most certainly not judged by 'impartial' referees"

The Original Papers by

Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace

Read to the Linnean Society, London

July 1st, 1858

On June 18th, 1858, Charles Darwin received an essay written by Alfred Russell Wallace from Ternate in the Malay Archipelago. It outlined Wallace's theory of evolution by natural selection in terms that were strikingly similar to Darwin's own drafts of the theory. After much fretting, Darwin's friends, Sir Charles Lyell and Joseph D. Hooker, suggested a solution: excerpts from Darwin's writings on natural selection, a letter from Darwin to Asa Gray, and Wallace's essay would be jointly presented to the Linnean Society. On June 30th, 1858, Lyell and Hooker wrote a cover letter to the Society and submitted the material. The following day the papers were read by the Society's secretary to the 30 or so members attending the Linnean Society meetings. Neither Darwin nor Wallace were present.[emphasis mine]

http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~bio336/Bio336/Readings/DarwinWallace.html

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didn't say merely that it wasn't published

No, but the sense of what you wrote implied, incorrectly, that The Origin, Darwin's book, was the first publication of his theory.

I neither stated or implied any such thing. As an aside, the publication was pretty much ignored, which is why Darwin wrote the book. My point is that Darwin's idea was not published in what freedumb2003 would consider a "peer reviewed" publication, and neither have a lot of other great scientific theories. The point is so obvious that it borders on being trivial, and indeed you attack it for being trivially true: ("There was no formal peer review system in the 1850's. This is like complaining that Jesus Christ couldn't ride a motorcycle.")

Which is why it is absurd to suggest that unless some scientific idea has been "peer reviewed" it is just "meaningless words".

Cordially,

[Stultis]

Read what you quoted. The "fretting" wasn't about publishing the work on evolution per se, it was about how to fairly handle the issue of priority between Darwin and Wallace.

Remember that Darwin had the natural selection theory for fully twenty years, and had been working out it's implications all that time, when Wallace's letter arrived out of the blue. (Actually Lyell, based on an earlier paper by Wallace, and warned Darwin that Wallace appeared to be working in this direction, but Darwin thought Wallace just another creationist noting variation within created archetypes.)

Darwin was aghast, sickened and at a complete loss on how to proceed. He didn't want to be unfair to Wallace on the one hand, and didn't want to lose his own priority on the other. He turned the matter over to his friends, Lyell and Hooker, who came up with the proposal for a joint paper.

IOW turning to his friends wasn't part of getting his ideas published. Darwin could have handled that without help. It was soley to resolve the matter of Wallace that Darwin turned to his Hooker and Lyell.

[Diamond]

...YEC's flawed analysis of helium leakage in zircons

Do you have any evidence, 'peer reviewed' or not, showing the effect of pressure on helium diffusion in zircon to back up the assertion that using helium diffusion measured in a vacuum to model diffusion in the high pressure environment of deep rocks is flawed?

As far as I can tell, Henke's support for that assertion appears to consist of him likening hard zircon to soft, porous micas, helium to argon, and wet to dry, which is the equivelant of comparing apples to ornges three times over.

Cordially,

[js1138]

Which is why it is absurd to suggest that unless some scientific idea has been "peer reviewed" it is just "meaningless words".

The current version of peer review is relatively recent. In Darwin's time it meant corresponding with your peers and bouncing ideas off them.

Much of Darwin's correspondence is online, and soon all of it will be. Evolution is among the most peer reviewed ideas in the history of science.

[Diamond]

I think you are entirely correct about the circumstances of the publication and Darwin's motives. Again, there was nothing wrong with Darwin turning to his friends to help to resolve the matter of Wallace. There was nothing wrong in the publishing. The point I'm emphasizing is merely that the men who made it happen were not impartial, anonymous referees. Nothing wrong with that at the time, either, but at the same time the publication cannot really be cited as an example of a "peer reviewed" publication in the modern sense.

Cordially,

[js1138]

effect of pressure on helium diffusion in zircon

[freedumb2003]

Nothing wrong with that at the time, either, but at the same time the publication cannot really be cited as an example of a "peer reviewed" publication in the modern sense.

As you pointed out, the question is somewhat moot.

TODAY, scientific findings must be published in recognzied scientific journals and peer-reviewed.

And the document being referenced was neither.

[Diamond]

That's the Henke article to which I referred in my previous post.

Cordially,

[js1138]

I look forward to your detailed rebuttal.

[Diamond]

And the document being referenced was neither.

It was peer reviewed by scientists and published in a scientific journal. Whether you think the journal is "respectable" or not is not by itself dispositive of the validity of any scientific hypothesis or data.

Cordially,

[Diamond]

I look forward to your detailed rebuttal.

It's Henke's attempt to rebut Humphries. And he doesn't seem to have relevant data to prove his point about pressure invalidating the data on zircons. All he has is some experimentation with argon, which is not helium, and mica, which is much softer and more porous than zircon, and wet experiment as opposed to dry. Ask him for a valid comparison of data in rebuttal, not me.

Cordially,

[js1138]

You are seriously misrepresenting a rather long article.

When someone asserts something as absurd as a 6000 year old earth, they at least need to know something about the type of rocks they are testing.

[RunningWolf]

Bravo Touche Bump!

For what I saw (and therefore others) but you articulated so well.

W

[RunningWolf]

But really when closely scrutinized, the current dating methods also fail at asserting a multi-billion year old earth.

'What they know' could well be not true, the history of science proves this.

W.

[MHGinTN]

Placemarker to read later

[RunningWolf]

I also have noticed the same and similar anomalies about the skulls.

Combine that with as many odd and ill fitting fragments the skulls are made up of, then add in margin of error to each fragment as to dating methods and you end up with composites that exist only in the imagination.

This has been proven several times as when a new find is heralded as 'the missing link' only to find out later that an orangutan jaw was added to a human skull and what not.

I have started working on a little project as a starting place to graphically illustrate this. When I get it done I will ping you into it.

W.

[DannyTN]

cool, I'd like to see it.

[bray]

How funny to make fun of Jesus! Insulting 80% of America's religion. You must have been in stitches over the cross in the urine exhibit. Course if your a atheist who worships phony rocks this would pass as humor.

Look at all those well defined dinosaurs complete with transitionary bird-tiles. What a coincidence!

Pray for W and Our Troops

[Boxen]

PETER: As we all know, Christmas is that mystical time of year when the ghost of Jesus rises from the grave to feast on the flesh of the living! So we all sing Christmas Carols to lull him back to sleep.
BOB: Outrageous, How dare he say such blasphemy. I've got to do something.
MAN #1: Bob there's nothing you can do.
BOB: Well I guess I'll just have to develop a sense of humour.