'55 Science Paper Retracted to Thwart Creationists

i_like_spam writes "The New York Times has up a story about a paper published in 1955 by Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College. The paper, entitled 'Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life', speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in the Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, 'one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.' Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, but today it is winning Dr. Jacobson acclaim that he does not want — from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention. So after 52 years, he has retracted the paper. 'Dr. Jacobson's retraction is in "the noblest tradition of science," Rosalind Reid, editor of American Scientist, wrote in its November-December issue, which has Dr. Jacobson's letter. His letter shows, Ms. Reid wrote, "the distinction between a scientist who cannot let error stand, no matter the embarrassment of public correction," and people who "cling to dogma."'"

Comments

Celebration/Mourning

[BWJones]

This retraction is to be simultaneously celebrated and mourned. Celebrated in the sense that we have a true scientist who will hold up the scientific process and make every effort to prove himself and the community of scientists wrong in order to make the science stronger. When we have individuals that fail to attempt to prove their work as incorrect, we have to acknowledge that they are being driven by other motives and they are not to be trusted.

This noble effort is also to be mourned because of the manipulation and steering of science to fill political goals driven by lack of scientific understanding in the wider community.

Re:Celebration/Mourning

[BWJones]

You're right, it should be celebrated and mourned. To me, it is bothersome that the Scientific community would celebrate it as thwarting "those who cling to dogma".

I am unaware of any scientist who is celebrating this as a thwart to "those who cling to dogma". What we are celebrating is the willingness of a scientist to retract his own work when it failed to be held up to scientific investigation and contained errors. The willingness of the classically trained scientist to search for veracity and be enthusiastic enough to put their work up for criticism by ones colleagues while also be willing to retract work that cannot be held as scientific fact is what is to be celebrated.

Re:Celebration/Mourning

[pluther]

Is the assertion "Life arose from non-life around three billion years ago on the prehistoric earth" falsifiable without resorting to some form of the anthropic principle?

Absolutely it's falsifiable.

One way to falsify it would be to show evidence that there was life on the earth before then.

Another way would be to discover life elsewhere, on some other planet, and demonstrate that it has a common ancestor in the evolutionary chain as ourselves. This would not immediately disprove Earth as the origin, but it would indicate that it is not necessarily the origin of all life.

Another way to falsify the statement would be to demonstrate that despite extensive search there has been no evidence of life found in three billion year old strata (I have no idea if we actually have access to any, outside the moon). This would indicate life arose more recently.

There are all sorts of ideas about how abiogenesis may have come about, and a number of people are researching, coming up with theories and hypotheses, and, most importantly of all, ideas on how they can be investigated.

Of course, there is no generally accepted theory of abiogenesis yet, the way there is of gravity, electro-magnetism, and evolution by natural selection. But they're working on it.

Which is more than can be said of any Creationist. In all the years they've been around, they've yet to suggest a single experiment, or come forth with any single thing their "theory" would predict. All they can do is dig up gaps in our current understanding of evolutionary processes and claim they are "proof" of whatever they want to propose.

Futile Effort

[eldavojohn]

The retraction came about when, on a whim, Dr. Jacobson ran a search for his name on Google. At age 84 and after 20 years of retirement, "I wanted to see, what have I done in all these many years?" he said. "It was vanity. What can I tell you?" That's vanity? No, the only thing he's missing is a bottle of Jack Daniels & that's how I spend my Friday nights!

But in all serious, this is going to be a pretty futile effort. It's greatly appreciated but it's probably going to backfire. This could be spun as 'lawyers' forcing a scientist's views out of sight, a scientist that's just trying to tell the truth. The same lawyers that have orchestrated the dinosaur bones found across the world.

And the character assassination from the Creationists will most likely consist of 'waffler' and 'flip-flopper', two terms I have no idea why they even exist.

This is the sign of a man of the highest quality in my eyes. I only wish that everyone--especially the politicians--look to him for guidance in how to 1) take ownership of something when you're wrong and 2) fix it.

Likely result

[TheMeuge]

The creationist zealots will likely take this bit of news, and embrace it as evidence that the scientific community is trying to be deceitful by withdrawing a "clearly correct" paper, for political reasons.

The amount of confirmation bias that people can exhibit when their passions are challenged is incredible.

Re:Likely result

[TheMeuge]

Or we'll just say that nothing is written in stone, and the papers you publish today may be retracted tomorrow when you change your minds.

Papers are retracted when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary of their conclusions... most of the time that happens when new facts emerge as the science progresses.
<blockquote>This is more a blow (in the long term) to the idea that science yields objective truth, IMO.</blockquote>
I think the bigger concern is that you look for "objective truth"(tm)... There is no such thing - there is only "best approximation" based on the evidence thus far obtained. Science and the scientific method just happen to provide the best framework for making reasonable judgments about the real world, based on theories, the only measure of the success of which, is their PREDICTIVE CAPACITY.

If you come up with a better system, let me know. Until then, I'll be happy with an idea, rather than a belief-based "objective truth", thank you.

Re:Likely result

[ultranova]

Everyone is biased. The difference is between the ones who are aware of their own biases and those who are deluded into thinking that they aren't.

Nah. The difference is between the people who are aware of their biases - namely, me and everyone who agrees with me - and people who are sadly deluded and too caught up in the web of deceit or just plain too stupid to realize it or too stubborn to admit it, or who actually purposefully and maliciously lying and/or engaged in a huge conspiracy against the truth for whatever reason.

If you or the moderators disagree, that's just because your bias of thinking yourself as objective. Let go of your bias and support the objective point of view by modding me up ;).

The thing is, we humans don't actually perceive reality, we perceive an approximation of it, produced by our senses and mental faculties. It is impossible to know how closely your approximation actually resembles reality as a whole or at any particular point, because you have no way of comparing it to reality proper, because the latter is not perceptible to you. That's why people usually assume that their approximation is a good match and anyone who disagrees is wrong or biased. And this is assuming that a particular perception is actually based on some objective reality, which is not at all certain for things like moral values.

What this means is that no one is truly aware of their own biases, since that awareness could only be gained by comparing your approximation of reality to reality proper, which is impossible. You, gentle reader, are biased, and not aware of all of your biases, no matter how certain you are of your own objectivity. You can trust me on this, because I clearly am truly objective, being aware of all this :).

Re:Likely result

[Bellum Aeternus]

"Facts don't change with time"

Really? So the earth is still flat and the sun revolves around it? and matter is seamless?

Get a grip. What we humans call "facts" are our closest approximation of the truth we have now. Once you realize that, facts do indeed change with time. That's the beauty and the problem with science; it's not dogma but a collection of evidence over time accumulated so that current and future generations can make better and better attempts to understand nature. As we accumulate more evidence our understanding changes and things we may have believed to be fact in the past are known to be incorrect now (or things we believe to be fact now may not be considered fact in the future).

Religion's failure has always been a resistance to change and the truth because those in power only remain in power if they have all the keys.

Re:Likely result

[Chris Burke]

If it was wrong, then withdraw the paper because it is wrong. Why mention creationism at all. Oh wait, he didn't realize it was wrong until it was quoted by creationists, and we know THEY can't be right, so it was withdrawn BECAUSE of them, not because it was wrong.

You should withdraw this post because it is wrong.

He re-read the paper because of the quotes by creationists. It was re-reading the paper that revealed the errors in the paper. It was the errors is the paper that caused him to withdraw it.

Do you get it? He withdrew the paper because it was wrong. Creationists drove him to discover that it was wrong, but their quotes are not WHY it was withdrawn.

I don't have a problem with the scientific method. However Evolution isn't PART of the scientific method, because it hasn't predicted ANYTHING.

Of course it has. Experiments done on flies and bacteria have borne out the predictions of evolution, and frequently we discover fossils belonging to an intermediary species predicted by evolution. Hell, DNA itself was predicted by evolutionary theory, in particular a biological method of passing traits from parent to offspring that does NOT include traits acquired during life.

When scientists can create life from inert matter, I'll agree that evolution conforms to the scientific method

Evolution does not attempt to explain the origins of life, it only explains the diversification of life. Stop acting like you respect the scientific method when you can't even apply it.

Re:Likely result

[Chris Burke]

Additional research. There's been quite a lot of that done in the 55 years since the paper was published.

Re:Likely result

[Tack]

Until religion makes claims about the physical universe that contradicts what we have learned through science. Then suddenly coexistence isn't quite as easy.

Why did he do it?

[Cro Magnon]

If he discovered clear errors and retracted it for that reason, that's fine, if somewhat tardy.

If he retracted it just because creationists quoted it, that's an example of the same dogma religious zealots are critisized for.

Re:Why did he do it?

[Merk]

If you RTFA, it says that he was reminded of the paper because the creationists quoted it. Because it was brought to his attention again he re-read it. He discovered it contained embarrassing factual errors, so he retracted it. It's too bad that he only caught the errors after they had been misused, but it's great that he caught the errors eventually and responded appropriately.

Re:i'm confused on the timeline

[feed_me_cereal]

The same faith held by Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Last time I checked, the "scientists" were outnumbered.

Last time I checked, popular belief didn't make things true. A majority of the population of the world used to think the sun revolved around the earth. It was this "scientific minority" you speak of that happened to be right. This was not an isolated incident, either; it has happened fairly regularly throughout history.

Our documentation is far older than anything they have.

...Which only means it was written by less informed people. How does this help you? Guess what, there are religious texts/artifacts that are older than the Bible. Perhaps you should switch to paganism.

Listen, pal, if you don't trust scientists, then give up all your modern conveniences and move into a cave. You should be respectful of the work they've done to provide you with what you have.

Re:When will creationist realize?

[MightyMartian]

You are aware, I trust, that other than a remotely small number of scientists out there, there is no debate. Creationism and Biblical Literalism were tossed in the trash heap of bad ideas beginning in the 18th century (actually a helluva lot earlier, if you count St. Augustine, and even earlier if you count the fact that the Jews hadn't believed in the Hebrew rip-off of Sumerian cosmography for a few centuries prior to Christ).

There is no debate in the scientific community about whether evolution produced all life or not. There's a cultural and political debate, which scientists have been dragged into. Whatever you make of your opinions and claims, don't pretend for one moment that science is on your side.

Re:Ironic curiosity

[ArikTheRed]

We're talking about evidence here, which has nothing to do with joy or peace. Facts don't care if you feel good about them.

Re:Ironic curiosity

[gomiam]

You miss the point. Faith isn't scientific. If having faith brings you joy and peace, congratulations. But don't try to bring it into science, for faith requires belief without proof, and science requires proof before belief. Taking the concept from Carl Sagan, faith is usually prejudice and science is postjudice.

Re:reversing the burden of proof

[misanthrope101]

The assertion that disease is not caused by demonic possession is not falsifiable--does that cast doubt on the germ theory? My point, loosely, is that many attack evolution through what they consider to be its weak point--abiogenesis. Abiogenesis actually isn't part of evolutionary theory, and Darwin's Origin of Species doesn't even address where life came from, only where the variety came from. Anyway, the attack on abiogenesis is easy because you can turn skeptic and say "you can't falsify this, so it's not science," and my point here is that science deals only with the natural world, and all explanations are going to lie in the natural world, even if they have to remain speculative and even hazy. At no point is science going to throw up its hands and say "we can't prove where life started, so it must've been Shiva|Mithra|God|Zeus!" I've read a bit on abiogenesis, and all of the writers I've seen have cautioned repeatedly that the area is speculative at best. It has no bearing on evolutionary theory.

Re:Ironic curiosity

[Alsee]

the Bible, which is God-Breathed according to 2 Timothy 3:16

I'm really not looking to debate theology, but I'd like to note:
(1) That is obviously circular. If the the Bible is not God-Breathed OR not flawlessly-scribed OR not flawlessly-translated, then it's circular reference to itself obviously doesn't change anything.
(2) The majority of Christians do not see a conflict between evolution and the Bible.

More proof is in nature, in the complexity and creativness of it

Evolution is a proven engine of complexity and creativity. In fact I have done experiments myself and directly witnessed and proven that fact.

I am astounded at the people who presume to tell God how He is and is not allowed to run His universe. We have an amazing universe with awe inspiring laws of physics, and I am baffled at how some people can accept God making perfect and complete mechanisms to run His universe - nuclear fusion to power the sun and provide us light - the spinning earth orbiting the sun to divide day from night and create th3 seasons - the laws of chemistry to provide us food and create DNA and run all of our biochemical processes - yet they insist on telling God that He is FORBIDDEN to have chosen to use evolution to create the diversity of life on earth.

God can use optics as his chosen mechanism to create rainbows, but God cannot use evolution as his chosen mechanism to create His diversity of life?

I don't understand that.

One question I don't have an answer for is, how can scientists reliably speculate the state of this earth millions or billions of years ago with the evidence we have now, in this day and age?

For a moment, imagine a deceiving God. A God planting false evidence to mislead us.

If that were true, you couldn't know or trust anything. You could be a brain in a jar. Everything you see and hear could be a complete fiction. In fact all of your memories could be planted deceptions. The entire universe could have been created three days ago, and everything you think you know and believe could be an elaborate deliberate deception.

*If* one accepts the premise of a deliberately deceiving God, one cannot know or believe anything. Communication itself becomes meaningless. All rational thought and communication is null and void.

The first assumption for rational thought and rational communication MUST be to reject the notion that we are being deliberately deceived by a malicious lying God. If God wants to deceive us with by planting misleading evidence, then We Shall Be Misled.

Some people try to assert that the earth is around 6,000 years old. They assert that the Grand Canyon was quickly carved by a torrent of water after Noah's Flood. You don't need to be any sort of expert to see that is wrong. A huge fast gush of water over a short timespan will carve earth in a straight line. A small slow flow of water over millions of years will carve earth in a meandering snaking path. Aerial photos of the Grand Canyon show not only a winding path, it shows several sharp U-turns. Sharp U-turns that a short fast gush of water would instantly cut straight through. Geologists are not stupid. There are a THOUSAND things that demonstrate the Grand Canyon is millions of years old, my example is simply an obvious point that anyone and everyong can see is obviously true without a geology PhD.

There are only two possibilities. Either the Grand Canyon (and the Earth) really is extremely old, or God went to quite a bit of effort to plant a lot of evidence designed to deceive us into believing it is old. I reject the notion of a lying deceiving God, but in any case if God wants to deceive us then We Shall Be Deceived.

Forensic scientists can establish Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt what happened at a crime scene, even if there was no witness. Scientists can determine a great many things about the past Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt, even if there was no one there to witness it.

There is a chuck of the fossil