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Avoiding the Word "Evolution"
jakosc tips us to a disturbing article in PloS Biology on the avoidance of the word "Evolution" in scientific papers and grants. From the paper: "In spite of the importance of antimicrobial resistance, we show that the actual word 'evolution' is rarely used in the papers describing this research. Instead, antimicrobial resistance is said to 'emerge,' 'arise,' or 'spread' rather than 'evolve.' Moreover, we show that the failure to use the word 'evolution' by the scientific community may have a direct impact on the public perception of the importance of evolutionary biology in our everyday lives... It has been repeatedly rumored (and reiterated by one of the reviewers of this article) that both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have in the past actively discouraged the use of the word 'evolution' in titles or abstracts of proposals so as to avoid controversy."
Adapt. Kinda like how the borg say it.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
Gravity is a theory, as well. Both are known facts.
SHE does throw dice.
Actually the egyptians had electricity - they used it for electro plating gold onto stone or wood - quite an advanced process really - it does make you wonder what else they were capable of.
(The evidence of this is from hyroglyphs found picturing the process if you want to try and verify it)
A lot of what was known in science 2000+ years ago has been lost only to be rediscovered far more recently, through war, genocide, various cultural dark ages in different regions but 1 person can be given quite a large part of the blame - that rather famous (and egotistical) arsonist, Alexander the Great
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Heaven is just the concept of release from wordly suffering. Heaven is that last brain impulse before you shut down for good. Not eternal excistence, and not even close to eternal life beyond death.
This is what I believe. I sure hope I am wrong tho.
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
The thing that's intriguing me at the moment though, is the question of at what level the human race is circumventing the 'selection' part of the evolutionary process. There's quite literally very high odds that 'almost any' specimens of humanity will end up able to reproduce. So you have tendancies like poor sight, diabetes, mental disorders that breed true, since we can compensate for them.
Worse is when we consider the 'skew' on child rates - in the modern world, it's inhumane to not support parents who don't want to work for a living, and would much rather have lots of sex without any forms of birth control. And of course, give 'support' to the families in question too, so if you work the system right, you quite literally get a better house and more income the more sprogs you drop.
Where you have the more traditional 'professionals' waiting later and later in life to have children, with gradually diminishing success rates, and probably not many children, leading to a net negative growth within the particular social strata.
I can't help but wonder if that's going to really hurt us as a species if we don't correct the trend.
You're forgetting that in the phylogenetic history of man, osteogenesis imperfecta was VERY detrimental to survival and reproduction chances.
With respect to eyesight, check out the wikipedia link for more info on how this particular mechanism might plausibly have evolved. Note how evolution works in tiny incremental steps. Whenever such a reduction in tiny steps has not been found by science for some body part or animal as whole, the promise of evolution theory is that it will be found whenever more details of the phylogenetic history of species are found
"Does this mean that whatever happens to organisms/populations is an evolutionary process?"
As far as there is a notable change compared to the ancestral organisms, by definition, yes.
"What is then "the concept of evolving" according to these "real, hardcore, scientific guys" whose knowledge you know so well?"
Evolution is the observable phenonmenon of changes in the allele frequencies of a given population.
"Your message reminds me of the Popper's objection to evolution: it is impossible to disprove it since whichever way organisms turn out is fine from the evolutionary standpoint. He concluded then that evolution is not a scientific theory according to his definition."
Popper's criticism wasn't towards evolution per se, but towards darwinism (that is, natural selection as the main mechanism behind evolution). However, I didn't say anything like "whichever way organisms turn out is fine from the evolutionray standpoint". I said change in organisms/populations, whether good or bad for the evolutionary fitness of said organisms/populations, is evolution by definition.
Popper's opinion of scientific process would have more force if he had been a scientist.
In fact Popper's barely concealled objective was to provide a definition of science that Marxist and Freudian pseudoscience would be unable to meet. In particular he objected to the fact that both claimed to be 'scientific' while declaring their core theories to be absolute truth beyond the possibility of doubt.
Scientists of the day were happy to go along with Popper's definition because they didn't like the specious nonsense from the followers of Marx, Freud, Jung et al either. In point of fact neither did Marx by the end 'all I can say is that I am not a Marxist' (letter to Engel).
It took another couple of decades for folk to start noticing that what scientists did didn't meet the standards Popper had set either. Or rather it took that long for people to start mentioning the fact. By then the 'scientific' claims of the Marxists and Freudians had been effectively buried and the original political ibjective had been met.
Popper himself accepted that according to his definition there had been perhaps two genuinely falsifiable theories in the history of science.
The falsification canard is regularly trotted out by folk trying to push intelligent design but they miss the entire point. Popper's definition is based on intent. Except in very rare circumstances it is generally not possible to fully meet the falsifiability criteria in full. The real question is not whether the criteria are met but whether the practitioners have the intention of seriously testing their theory by attempting to disprove it or not.
In the case of evoloution the historical theory that we are the product of evolution is inherently untestable, but so is the theory that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. What is testable is the volumes of evidence that support the claim that evolution is the simplest method of interpreting and explaining the fossil record, the one that has provided the greatest predictive power with respect to new discoveries and the one that is consistent with modern experiments that do meet the falsifiability criteria.
Intelligent Design on the other hand is exactly the type of nonesense concocted to support a preconceived notion that the practioners have no intention of seriously testing that Popper was trying to eliminate.
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Evolution doesn't have a standpoint. Would you claim that ohm's law is false on the grounds that whatever happens to the current is fine from the voltage's standpoint?
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Could it be that the scientists are adapting (by changing their wording) in response to their environment (increased hostility to evolution)?
Nah, simpler to assume there's some kind of invisible mastermind in the background planning it all.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Perhaps that's why the phrase, "In God We Trust" was placed on money in the first place - to remind people to trust in God rather than money.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I'm curious where your moral philosophy came from. Who taught you what right and wrong was?
There is no "right" and "wrong". There's only my behaviour, and the consequences of my decisions. An example: I could rape a sedated patient - there's nothing to stop me. However if I did that I would a) be breaking my hippocratic oath and not be the physician I'd like to think that I am b) probably get caught, go to jail, lose the respect of my children, my license to practice, etc c) have to live with guilt after seeing the impact of my action on that person's life. On the whole, it just ain't worth it. "Right and Wrong" doesn't come into it, see?
It's just a rational form of selfishness. One would argue that the selfish person goes for the quick reward/advantage/gain. Not true. The SMART person goes for the long term reward. In this game, the reward is self preservation.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
As usual, it's all about how much we the minority are putting the christian majority down. Non-religious people never have to take crap from overly religious fundamentalists; they give our opinions weight, and treat us with respect. They don't try to actively undermine the teaching of scientific thought, while at the same time accusing us of trying to kill religion. They don't kill people who don't believe what they believe.
Oh wait, my bad, they do. What was your point again?
I'm not an atheist, though I am agnostic. I don't give a damn about your religion...I can't come up with a word for how little I care. You can do whatever you like, you can believe whatever you like. I don't care if you choose to believe in god, I don't care what you do on Sundays.
But when you start trying to force your beliefs down my throat, you damn betcha I'm going to get pissed, and try to defend what I believe.
And then you'll start crying about how the bad atheist is trying to kill christmas, or saying you're descended from monkeys, or saying the earth isn't the center of the solar system, and then I'll have angry irrational protesters bussed into my neightborhood by some goddamn fundie organization that specializes in bussing whackjob fundies from place to place to protest people who have the audacity to believe in scientific truth and a material universe
And it'll all be because the scary atheist minority is trying to kill religion.
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. Matthew 7:5
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Nope. It was placed on coined currency around the time of the Civil War by the request of many Americans who found religious fervor. It became standard in 1938. Then in 1956 (Thanks, McCarthy), it became a motto of the USA. The US Treasury has a page on it. Oh, and the scientific community's lack of usage of evolution is primarily because it's a general term. It's like using the word "Hinduism" when talking about the Vedic traditions that were precursors to modern Hinduism....or like using "science" to refer to a subset of empirical sciences (say, Chemistry)....or using "philosophy" to refer to a subset of it (e.g. 20th century post-structuralism). "Evolution" is a fine word for the masses, but when someone learned is supposed to be specific, a vague word isn't the best choice. It has nothing to withing appealing to religion any more than it is appealing to middle school math teachers. But isn't that what Slashdot is all about?
Also, you can't evolve slowly to resist antibiotics.
;-). It's happening right now with the "antibacterial" soaps that are widely sold in the US.
Sure you can (at least if you're a bacterium
What happens is typical with such chemicals: When you apply some of it to a body part such as hands, there may be enough to kill the bacteria right there. But at the edge of the treated area there is a gradient of the antibiotic's concentration, which falls to zero over some distance. Within this gradient, there are bacteria with differing susceptibility to that particular antibiotic. Thus, withing the gradient zone, the more susceptible bacteria die, while the less susceptible bacteria live. This slightly increases the frequence of whatever genes provided the slightly better resistance of the survivors.
The bacteria in question have generation times that may be under an hour in good conditions. So over weeks or months, they can produce thousands of generations. If you are repeatedly applying the same antibiotic to small areas of your body, you are repeatedly producing gradient zones that further select for slightly better resistance to that antibiotic.
It's the evolutionary process at work right on the surface of your body, and it should be no surprise that the end result is a population of bacteria with good resistance to the antibiotic in your soap.
This process is one of the better examples of why the article's topic is significant. By suppressing understanding of "evolution", we haven't just dealt with an abstract academic theory. We have also created a society in which people are actively selecting bacteria for resistance to antibiotics. People are doing this because they don't understand how bacteria evolve such resistance. Most of them don't even believe in evolution. But the evolutionary process doesn't care whether you believe in it or not. Like gravity and many other abstract academic theories, evolution works even if you don't believe in it.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
When my doctor comes to me and tells me, "Look man, you've got cancer," I don't wan't him to stop there. I want to know what form(s) of cancer I have, where I have them, etc. When a biologists writes about evolutionary processes, he should be specific as to which process and where. He shouldn't be using "evolution" when there is a more appropriate word. OTOH, he should use "evolution" if it is the most appropriate word. Let's leave the oversimplification to the news media. If my original comment was construed as an attempt to bring politics or religion into the fray, my apologies as that was not my goal.
The question still remains, when option C is taken, where does the guilt come from?
Guilt comes from knowing that I have intentionally done someone harm and caused suffering. Only a psychopath anti-social doesn't give a damn about other people. Atheists are not psychopaths. Guilt comes from compassion and empathy with the other person - not right or wrong.
I have NO qualms cutting someone open in order to save their life - even if this causes them a great deal of pain in an extreme situation where anaestesia isn't available. Even if by doing so I put their life at significant risk - if the possible benefits outweight the risks. Because I know that my goal is to HELP. If I did everything right, but the patient died - then I did everything I could, and I don't feel guilty. He was going to die anyway. I tried to help, increase the odds, but it wasn't enough.
But inflicting pain for pain's sake - I don't get my kicks that way. Religion has nothing to do with it.
If guilt is the punishment and contentment is the reward, what biological fracture dictates the line between punishment and reward?
You're the one who introduced punishment and reward, not me. Then you ask me questions in those terms. That "bait and switch" doesn't make for a logical argument. I have no time for you if what you are going to do is argue with yourself to "prove" your point.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.