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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."
This is what happens when you pander to religious fruit loops - it started with the 'In God We Trust' rebrand of the US (in particular, on money) which was the thin end of the wedge and now we have a situation whereby scientists cannot even discuss things properly.
All the major organised religions seem to want is lots of uneducated children who think they are going to go to 'heaven' when they die.
When I get in an argument with my creationist friends, no one disputes what they call 'micro evolution'. The idea that single cells can mutate to become resistant to bacteria, and those are the only ones that survive. Where people have trouble is with something they call 'macro evolution', that these mutations can over time create entirely new species, organs, and reproductive behavior (sexual vs asexual). I believe it because I think people don't understand exactly how many years we are considering here in the long haul. If the scientific community is not calling 'evolution' what most people agree actually takes place, how can they expect to be taken seriously on more controversial aspects of science?
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This same issue came up on a recent episode of NPR's Science Friday (look towards the right side of the page for an mp3 download link). Essentially, biologists were being encouraged by well-meaning people at the government agencies who sponsor them to avoid the word "evolution" so that their research remains uncontroversial and doesn't run afoul of any anti-science policy makers.
This latest article raises a good point, though. By trying to cloak discussion of evolution in other terms, anyone with a grasp of basic evolutionary biology is able to understand what is meant and how the process of natural selection applies to the problem at hand. Politicians and non-scientific observers not familiar with biology, however, don't see that evolution is explicitly referenced and so they don't raise a ruckus over it.
The problem is that this can help feed the general lack of understanding about evolution that creationists exploit. On the one hand, because most schools don't teach a rigorous curriculum on evolutionary biology, creationists can argue pseudo-scientific fallacies (e.g. that the second law of thermodynamics rules out evolution of increasingly complex species. Incidentally, this is false because the second law only applies to closed systems, and Earth's ecosystem continuously receives new energy from the Sun's light and heat). Additionally, because the fact that natural selection, as the basic organizing principle which has guided research in biology for over a century, isn't emphasized in new research reports that come out, many people don't realize that the huge advances we've made in our understanding of life on Earth over the past century, and the great medical breakthroughs that have emerged, nay, evolved from that understanding would not have been possible if we didn't understand evolution. Indeed, many things that we know to be true about biology simply couldn't be true if evolution weren't at work. That's not to say that it's a perfect theory, but like many good scientific theories it is revised and its precision is sharpened as new evidence becomes available (for example, we now know about cycles of punctuated equilibrium in the fossil record, and about patterns in human and other animal genomes, which Darwin didn't know about), in the same way that Einstein's relativity built on and refined Newton's laws of motion.
As loathe as many scientists are to do anything with public relations, I think that we have to do a better job of emphasizing the basic scientific theories behind today's research. So I encourage researchers out there to not be scared of using the word evolution, as it will hopefully contribute to people understanding that it is pervasively important to biology.
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You fool. Why did you tell him the Spanish Inquisition is coming. Now he's going to expect it.
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First at all you founding father were mostly deist, with some being atheist. So if you place any value in what they produced (constitution and all) or their idea, you should be aware of that little fact.
Furthermore you are NOT living in a democracy but in a republic.
Next, you know where this lead this "we live in a democraty, so the majority decide" ? Aside this litle fact about freedom of speech, Well this lead to stuff like persecution of minority. Do you even remmember why the USA had this "freedom of religion" in the first place ? Religious persecution in Europe anyone? And yes non-religion is one form of belief (or rather non-belief in anything). Suppress the freedom of it, then next the cathos will ask the protestant to be muted, the calvinist will ask the last day adventist to be gagged, and the mormon will ask all other to shut up. And in the end nobody open his big mouth because there is always a branch of christianty which is pissed of at another.
I could add more, like the "in god we trust" coming from the darkest era of Mccartysm, but hey, that is not my country so fuck it up as much as you wish, as long as you keep a sane foreign policy of "hand off"....
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"If we are going to teach creation science as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction." -- Judith Hayese
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You would be right, except that's precisely what selection takes care of. Yes, most mutations are NOT beneficial, but this does not matter because the non-beneficial mutations die off quickly, and the rare beneficial ones survive to spread expontentially.
Imagine a species has 100 million members, and lets say it is a large-sized species which experiences a generation turnover every 20 years or so. Lets say there is a low mutation rate of perhaps 1% of offspring having some mutation. Let us also say that 99% of mutations are harmful, or perhaps even fatal, and a mere 1% are beneficial. Now we do the math:
If 1% of the population experiences a mutation, that means 1 million will experience a mutation per generation. If 99% of these are harmful, that means 990,000 will die or fail to procreate, or 0.99% of the total population. If 1% of the mutations are beneficial, that means 10,000 will have some superior trait.
At the end of this cycle, there are still around 100 million members, but 10,000 of them, or 0.01%, have a beneficial mutation. Now by definition of a "beneficial" mutation, from an evolutionary perspective, this means that those 10,000 are more likely to survive and procreate than the other 100 million or so.
Lets say each beneficial mutation is only beneficial by a very tiny amount, such that a pair of members without the mutation can have an average of 1.95 children survive to reproduce, while pairs with the mutation can have an average of 2.05 children survive to reproduce. In this case, within 200 generations, or 4,000 years, the members of the species which have received at least one beneficial mutation from the first generation of mutations will outnumber the unmutated members of the species by 2:1.
Feel free to tweak the numbers however you see fit, and you will see that it will still work out, and the only thing you will change by tweaking numbers is how long it takes. Evolution does not require the balance of the numbers to be in its favor, because the process of mutation and selection is intrinsically in favor of improvement, even when the beneficial changes are extremely rare.
"But it does not "evolve". It may not become better; as a matter of fact, it may become worse."
"Real, hardcore, scientific guys will dislike the word because it implies that every changed population is somewhat better than the previous (unchanged) generations, which is absolutely not true."
Real, hardcore, scientific guys know that the word 'evolve' does not imply objective betterment of the organism/population in question. The idea of evolution as a process of constant improvement is a common misconception among laymen. Organisms just evolve, ie. they become different from their ancestors. Whether this change makes them more or less fit (depends on the conditions) doesn't change the concept of evolving.
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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