The One Percent Myth, and the Open Puzzle of Macroevolution

Once upon a time, Mary-Claire King and the late Allan Wilson published a paper — that became a widely-cited classic — about the genetic similarity of chimps and humans. “Evolution at Two Levels in Humans and Chimpanzees,” Science 188 (1975):107-116 was, alas, cited far more for proving the genetic near-identity of chimps and humans than for its much more interesting, deeper and more disturbing message...

Also see:

The Chimp-Human 1% Difference: A Useful Lie

06/29/2007

Jon Cohen made a remarkable admission in Science this week.1 The popular notion that humans and chimpanzees are genetically 99% similar is a myth, and should be discarded. Since 1975, textbooks, the media and museums have emphasized this close similarity; but now, Cohen quoted a number of scientists who say the number cannot possibly be that small and probably cannot be quantified. Since the statistic has outlived its usefulness, it should be discarded.

The original claim by Allan Wilson in 1975 came from studies of base substitutions when genes were compared side by side. Other comparisons, however, yield very different results. Human and chimp genomes differ markedly in:

Chunks of missing DNA

Extra genes

Number of chromosomes and chromosome structure

Altered connections in gene networks

Indels (insertions and deletions)

Gene copy number

Coexpressed genes

In this last measure, for instance, a 17.4% difference was found in genes expressed in the cerebral cortex. Cohen recalled the December 2006 paper from PLoS One where Matthew Hahn found a “whopping 6.4%” difference in gene copy numbers, leading him to say, “gene duplication and loss may have played a greater role than nucleotide substitution in the evolution of uniquely human phenotypes and certainly a greater role than has been widely appreciated.” (see 12/20/2006 entry).

But even that number is misleading. Different measures produce such different results, it is probably impossible to come up with a single percent difference that wouldn’t misrepresent the picture. Scientists are not sure how to prioritize the measures to study, because “it remains a daunting task to link genotype to phenotype.” Sorting out the differences that matter is “really difficult,” said one geneticist. A stretch of DNA that appears meaningless may actually be vital for gene regulation.

What’s most remarkable about this confession is how certain evolutionary biologists are evaluating the claim in hindsight. In the 1970s, it was considered a “heretical” view that our genomes could be that similar, but Cohen comments, “Subsequent studies bore their conclusion out, and today we take as a given that the two species are genetically 99% the same.” But “Truth be told,” he begins in the next sentence, the inaccuracy of the statistic was known from the start:

“But truth be told, Wilson and King also noted that the 1% difference wasn’t the whole story. They predicted that there must be profound differences outside genes—they focused on gene regulation—to account for the anatomical and behavioral disparities between our knuckle-dragging cousins and us. Several recent studies have proven them perspicacious again, raising the question of whether the 1% truism should be retired.”

“For many, many years, the 1% difference served us well because it was underappreciated how similar we were,” says Pascal Gagneux, a zoologist at UC San Diego. “Now it’s totally clear that it’s more a hindrance for understanding than a help.”

At the end of the article, Cohen quoted Svante Paabo, who said something even more revealing. After admitting he didn’t think there was any way to calculate a single number, he said, “In the end, it’s a political and social and cultural thing about how we see our differences.”

1Jon Cohen, News Focus on Evolutionary Biology, “Relative Differences: The Myth of 1%,” Science, 29 June 2007: Vol. 316. no. 5833, p. 1836, DOI: 10.1126/science.316.5833.1836.

This is a very disturbing article. We have basically caught the Darwinists in a bald lie that has hoodwinked the world for over 30 years. Gagneux says, “For many, many years, the 1% difference served us well” – stop right there! Who is “us”? Was it the millions of school children and laymen who were lied to? Was it the majority of people who believe God created mankind, suffering under an onslaught of lies told in the name of science?

No! “Us” refers to the members of the Darwin Party, the dogmatists who shamelessly lied to advance their agenda. They had a strategy to portray humans and chimpanzees as similar as possible, in order to make their myth of common descent seem more plausible. Now, 32 years later, they have come clean, without any remorse, only because the usefulness of that lie has run out, and needs to be replaced by new lies. They had a political, social and cultural agenda that, in many cases, worked for 32 years. “Truth be told,” he said. Too late. These guys wouldn’t know Truth if it bit them on the lips. Truth that evolves, or that is an emergent property of material particles, is not the Truth.

For other examples of the Useful Lie tactic used by Darwin propagandists, see 05/02/2003, 07/25/2003, 11/19/2004, 03/02/2006, 02/01/2007, 05/31/2007 and many others under the chain links Darwin and Education that have been exposed on this website. Liars, we bare. Buyers, beware.

http://creationsafaris.com/crev200706.htm#20070629a

I still had the screen up, so I decided to copy and paste the article here:

2 July 2007

The One Percent Myth, and the Open Puzzle of Macroevolution

Paul Nelson

Gather ’round the fire, children, and I’ll tell you the whole sad story.

In brief: King and Wilson compared the chimp vs. human amino acid sequences of several proteins (such as cytochrome c, hemoglobin, and myoglobin), and found the sequences either identical, or very nearly so. Their conclusion? “…the sequences of human and chimpanzee polypeptides examined to date are, on the average, more than 99 percent identical” (p. 108). And thus was born what Jon Cohen, in the latest issue of Science, calls “The Myth of 1%,” namely, that Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes are “genetically 99% the same.” (See Jon Cohen, “Relative Differences: The Myth of 1%,” Science 316 [29 June 2007]:1836.)

But one cannot hold King and Wilson responsible for what lazy readers did with their powerful paper. The “one percent” message comes on the second page of the paper (p. 108). If being mostly chimp, genetically speaking anyway, is what matters to a reader, chances are he’ll do what Simon and Garfunkel sang about in “The Boxer” — “a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest” — and stop reading.

The real message of King and Wilson 1975 arrives later in the paper, where casual readers don’t bother to follow:

“The molecular similarity between chimpanzees and humans is extraordinary because they differ far more than sibling species in anatomy and way of life. Although humans and chimpanzees are rather similar in the structure of the thorax and arms, they differ substantially not only in brain size but also in the anatomy of the pelvis, foot, and jaws, as well as in relative lengths of limbs and digits. Humans and chimpanzees also differ significantly in many other anatomical respects, to the extent that nearly every bone in the body of a chimpanzee is readily distinguishable in shape or size from its human counterpart. Associated with these anatomical differences there are, of course, major differences in posture…, mode of locomotion, methods of procuring food, and means of communication. Because of these major differences in anatomy and way of life, biologists place the two species not just in separate genera but in separate families. So it appears that methods of evaluating the chimpanzee-human difference yield quite different conclusions. (p. 113, footnote numbers omitted; emphasis added)”

There must be more to macroevolution — e.g., the origin of chimpanzees and humans from a common ancestor — than site-by-site amino acid changes in proteins, which was largely the picture drawn in textbook neo-Darwinism at the time (1975). Chimp hemoglobin is pretty much human hemoglobin, and so on, yet it’s always the chimps behind the bars, gazing out, when one visits the zoo:

“The contrasts between organismal and molecular evolution indicate that the two processes are to a large extent independent of each other. Is is possible, therefore, that species diversity results from molecular changes other than sequence differences in proteins? (p. 114)”

What genetic changes have caused the manifold organismal differences between chimps and humans? After all, that’s really what we want evolution to explain.

King and Wilson speculated about “regulatory mutations,” which is where evolutionary biology finds itself today, 32 years later. Over to Cohen:

“Yet it remains a daunting task to link genotype to phenotype. Many, if not most, of the 35 million base-pair changes, 5 million indels in each species, and 689 extra genes in humans may have no functional meaning. ‘To sort out the differences that matter from the ones that don’t is really difficult,’ says David Haussler, a biomolecular engineer at UC Santa Cruz…(p. 1836)”

Always read a paper through to the end.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-one-percent-myth-and-the-open-puzzle-of-macroevolution/

Darwin did not have the benefit of cell molecular biology. The chimpanzee comparison was used as an evolutionary device by popular culture, but as the article pointed out, it did not mean much to real discussion.

Let’s look at Darwin original 5 tenets and see where DNA can shed light on the discussion. Much contemporary and modern criticism was/has been given of his conclusions from his first and second observations. The third observation/conclusion always sounded very darn reasonable. The forth is often disputed as a micro vs. macro debate. The fifth, at the time of his book, had to be borne out by the fossil record.

With DNA, the third and the fifth tenets can be further examined. The third tenet recently came into question when mutation in certain organism was found to decrease in periods of increased environmental changes and increase in periods of decreased environmental periods. Although Darwin did not have the benefit of DNA, these observations are opposite of a predictive outcome from an evolutionary perspective.

The fifth Trent can be further verified or disputed when DNA samples are available. The most famous was DNA sample that were able to be sampled from a frozen Neanderthal (once in 1995 and later in the early 2000's). Test confirms that Neanderthal was not drainage of modern Homo Sapien man. This puts into question the entire method of using the fossil record as a predictive outcome to the fifth tenet.

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