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To: count-your-change; CottShop
Oh.

Wow.

You're really sticking with this line of argument?

Really?!

Earlier I made a joke about rank and file creationists refusing to hold creation scientists accountable. But your performance here, count-your-change, proves it was no joke.

So, O.K. If you insist...

Let's look, in careful detail, at just one tactic you employ to dismiss Pitman's dishonesty (or incompetence, as the case may be):

Had you read the first citation you see the researchers used the word “identical” and why they said so. But you know better than they.

Again (for, what? the third time now? the fourth?) Pitman wrote:

For example, mammalian and amphibian "luteinizing hormone – releasing hormone" (LHRH) is identical.

Note this is a full sentence. He writes that the hormone -- not some partial aspect of the hormone, not data from some immunological probe indirectly detecting the hormone -- but just the hormone "is identical".

However the paper he cites says NO SUCH THING. It says only that they are "similar". That similarity was detected NOT by sequencing the peptide (not even by fully isolating it!) but by probing it with a few antigens (made from a synthesized pig hormone) that could only indirectly detect (bind to) four sites on the hormone.

This is a primitive method by current standards. By its very nature, this test CANNOT POSSIBLY confirm that two molecules are "identical".

Probably you do, but just in case you don't understand antigen reactions, this test only consists of the antigen "saying," in effect: "Hey, I found a particular spot, on some molecule in this solution you put me in, that I can stick myself to. I only know a part of me fits a part of this molecule well enough to stick to it. I have no idea what the whole molecule looks like."

Heck, we don't even know, not for sure, what molecules the antigens were binding to, since the GnRH (LHRH, whatever) hormones were never even isolated. There are, btw, other complexities as well. Unfortunately I'm not expert enough on the subject of neuronal hormones, or biology generally, to sort them out. But, for instance, I'm given to understand that the hormone is not created from the underlying gene directly. Instead a precursor is created. Also, if I understand correctly, and as you would expect of just about any hormone, it's not produced constantly. Indeed its production has to be shut off at certain times and elevated at others (pulsed) just in order for it to do what it does (primarily regulate reproductive functions). Also, although I haven't found a reference on this, I would imagine that levels of the type 1 and type 2 vary on different cycles. (Else why two types produced?)

In any case, there would seem to be many reasons that various affinities might be detected at various times when all you're doing is basically mashing up the hypothalamus and putting the "crude hypothalamic extracts" into a test tube, and injecting some antigens, or doing other INDIRECT tests along similar lines, never really isolating the target hormone. We have no way of knowing, for instance, if the production of GnRH was turned "on" in some of the samples and "off" in others, or if one type was being produced in some hypothalamic tissues at the time the "crude extracts" were taken, and another type in others.

This very dated research JUST ISN'T ANYWHERE REMOTELY NEAR GOOD ENOUGH to be making ANY claims in 2004 (when Pitman wrote his article) about the genomic affinities of mammals and amphibians with respect to this hormone.

But I digress from the specific issue, which is you actively helping Pitman lie about the "identical" bit. So back to that.

Here's where you pretty much give away the game, when you introduce an additional article (the 1982 paper, Structure of Chicken [LHRH]) by the same authors as the 1980 paper Pitman cites.

Up to this point you might have been excused on grounds of missing the point. But by introducing this article -- which is NOT cited by Pitman, nor referenced anywhere in his article, nor anywhere in CottShop's post, nor anywhere else in this thread -- you indicate that you DO get the point: That Pitman DID lie (or incompetently err) about the hormone being "identical" in mammals and amphibians.

So you bring up this additional article out of the blue (which you smugly pretend I dismissed) because it contains the magic word, "identical". But does even this article say the hormone is identical in mammals and amphibians? Not quite:

We have shown that immunoreactive amphibian hypothalamic LH-RH is identical with the mammalian decapeptide in chromatographic properties and in its interaction with region-specific LH-RH antisera, while immunoreactive LH-RHs from avian, reptilian, and piscine hypothalami are structurally different (King and Millar, 1979, 1980, 1981). These structural differences of LH-RH-like peptides in submammalian vertebrates have not been determined

So it turns out this is only referring back to the research done in connection with the 1980 paper. They are not saying the hormone is identical, full stop. They are saying it is identical in certain properties. Certain antisera bind with it, as previously discussed. And "chromatographic properties" (high pressure liquid chromatography, we find from the earlier paper) match, which only means there are similar compounds and concentrations thereof, close enough that identical patterns are produced on the plates. Neither of these findings entail that the hormone is sequence identical.

So, all that trouble and nothing to show. In fact you had to engage in a small deception, misdirection (or error?) yourself, by slipping in the additional article and coyly pretending it had been there all along.

Wouldn't it have been easier to just admit Pitman blew it?

Or is it just always, "creationist MUST be right, evolutionist MUST be wrong" with you?

135 posted on 08/02/2009 9:08:45 PM PDT by Stultis (Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia; Democrats always opposed waterboarding as torture)
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To: Stultis
“Probably you do, but just in case you don't understand antigen reactions, this test only consists of the antigen “saying,” in effect: “Hey, I found a particular spot, on some molecule in this solution you put me in, that I can stick myself to. I only know a part of me fits a part of this molecule well enough to stick to it. I have no idea what the whole molecule looks like.”

Antigens are quite specific to antibody sites and the tests are accurate despite your comments.

Calling someone dishonest or incompetent is not holding them accountable and so far you've struck out with no one’s help at all. And you clearly do not understand the tests that were used and which you so easily dismiss.

As for Mr. Pittman, he may say whatever, he is not my concern here. It isn't that those who bend their knee to Darwinism and its doctrines MUST be wrong, they just are.

136 posted on 08/02/2009 11:20:00 PM PDT by count-your-change (You don't have be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: Stultis

I appreciate your spending so much time on this—it’s very illuminating. As a layman myself, I sometimes read these things and only have a nagging sense that something’s not right but don’t have the time or expertise to figure out exactly what. Like here: I had a suspicion that “behaved the same way in a certain test” was not the same as “are identical.” I could drop a basketball and a tennis ball and record that they both bounced to the same height—that doesn’t make them the same.


137 posted on 08/03/2009 8:32:37 AM PDT by Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
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