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'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."'"
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.
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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.
My work here is dung.
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.
he 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 ... creationists cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention.
Wait, so is the earth billions of years old, or 6000 years old, as told in the bible?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
So now as a creationist all I need to do is take my least favorite scientific postings, twist their words to say what I want them to and viola they get retracted and denounced! Wow, why didn't I think of this before?
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
If you RTFA, you would see that he reread his paper and found many errors that no one else had found yet. He retracted the paper because of the errors. Of course he might have other motives but that is anybody's guess
The nature of the citations made him re-read it, and realize he'd made factual errors. Those errors were being used to support the arguments of the people citing the paper. So he retracted it to remove those errors from circulation.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
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.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
When will creationists realize that you can't prove divine intervention any more than you can prove flying purple unicorns? Why can't they just stick to a doctrine of faith and belief?
they don't understand evolution. in fact its a lot like compound interest; start with a little and wait a long time and eventually you'll have something. the following statement, for example, amounts to precisely that in my eyes.
;-)
'one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.'
thats all it takes. and yes, given enough time, they could turn into some sexually-reproductive organism, which, to use my earlier example, would be like getting monthly compounding
i frankly see no reason for this retraction. there is no 'ammunition' here in any sense.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
The really pathetic thing is that, if I read the article correctly, the creationists aren't even interpreting his findings correctly. He basically says that as the earth started to cool, chemical compounds could arise that would remain stable in the environment, and that it would take some source of energy to assemble them into something more complex. In contrast, one creationist web site mentioned by the article describes the paper as meaning that "within a few minutes, all the various parts of the living organism had to make themselves out of sloshing water." Nothing like a little creative misinterpretation to give your dogmatic nonsense the air of scientific legitimacy.
Where is your own opinion here coming from? Do you have the knowledge & understanding of the facts of the situation to know that such a slant would be wrong? Or does it just fit your own nice package of preconceived notions?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Read the article: Their citing it made him rexamine it, and spot factual errors he hadn't caught 52 years ago.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Because, if you RTFA, you'll see he found errors in his paper. It just so happens those incorrect assertions are being used by creationists as validation of their beliefs.
Developers: We can use your help.
in 1998 i made an inflammatory post on slashdot in a discussion thread about the merits or lack thereof of windows 98. people have used that post to claim that i am a troll. i am not a troll, i am in fact a lurker. by retracting that post i am able to assert that
thank you for your attention
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...he's retracting his paper?
Is his paper right, or wrong? If he's claiming the first and retracting it, science is harmed, not furthered. If it's wrong, retraction should happen anyway.
This is really irrational. I understand the motivation to find any position of anyone on the planet that decries "creationism" and post it, but do you really want to overtly demonstrate your complete dependence on it in that way, while committing some really obvious non-sequiturs along the way?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
In the 1960s, tectonic plate theory was poo-pooed as being bulshit. The PhDs of the day would ridicule tectonics and instead forwrd their own highly implausable theories. These same learned people later withdrew their claims as anti-tectonic claims became unsustainable..
Folks, science advances and so does knowledge. Material, particularly that based on opinion rather than experiment, is subject to change.
Anyone that relies on old theories may as well sign up as life members of the flat earth society.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Which one has the coolest pictures?
The original retraction letter is inspiring. I am glad that Dr. Jacobson set the record straight, even though it would have been easier for him to ignore his earlier mistakes.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
I tried to argue that if you had material half derived from the decayed original radioactive source and that the other remaining radioactive half has a half-life of 6000 years, then the original piece of material must be 12000 years old. Of course that argument fell on deaf ears, just like the other argument I proposed on the age of the sedimentary layering found in the Grand Canyon exposed from downcutting erosion by the Colorado River, which also took a certain rate to cut through ("with most of the downcutting occurring in the last two million years," according to the wikipedia entry). No matter what the rational argument was, no counter argument was offered or even justified.
Granted creationism is based on religious faith rather than evidence acquired through experiment and observation, it cannot be evaluated by the scientific method. The two "ideologies," if you will, are incompatible as the scientific discipline does not attempt to address issues of supernatural intervention in natural phenomena. Thus we are reduced to a scientific consensus rejecting any attempt to teach creationism as science and visa versa. The classic example of this ideology incompatibility is the creation-evolution belief/theory.
Ignorance is bliss sometimes indeed.
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
>>The idea that all scientific knowledge is provisional, able to be challenged and overturned, is one thing that separates matters of science from matters of faith. Not necessarily. Blanket statements like this are stupid. Sure, some people refuse to allow their faiths to be challenged, but most of my experience with people of faith has been the opposite. Faith is more like an axiom than blindness--it is believed because with it as a foundation, the rest of the world makes sense, even though there may not be a positive proof for it to stand on. All science is based on axioms as well, which aren't supported either, that's why they're called axioms. Both scientists and people of faith have a hard time when someone questions their axioms. But I see no evidence to show that people of faith are less likely to accept a challenge of their axioms: in fact, they are more likely to accept that challenge, and if truly presented with something that can prove it's falsity, I would say a person of faith is much more likely to overturn that belief than a mathematician would be to overturn one of Euler's axioms.
By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: October 25, 2007
In January 1955, Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College, published a paper called "Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life" in American Scientist, the journal of Sigma Xi, the scientific honor society.
In it, Dr. Jacobson speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in 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, he said in a telephone interview from his home in Tarrytown, N.Y. 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 it.
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?"
He found many entries relating to his work on compounds called polymers; on information theory, a branch of mathematics involving statistics and probability; and other subjects. But others were for creationist sites that have taken up his 1955 paper as scientific support for their views.
Darwinismrefuted.com, for example, says Dr. Jacobson's paper "undermines the scenario that life could have come about by accident." Another creationist site, Evolution-facts.org, says his findings mean that "within a few minutes, all the various parts of the living organism had to make themselves out of sloshing water," an impossible feat without a supernatural hand.
"Ouch," Dr. Jacobson said. "It was hideous."
That is not because he objects to religion, he said. Though he was raised in a secular household, he said, "Religion is O.K. as long as you don't fly in the face of facts." After all, he said, no one can disprove the existence of God. But Dr. Jacobson said he was dismayed to think that people might use his work in what he called "malignant" denunciations of Darwin.
Things grew worse when he reread his paper, he said, because he discovered errors. One related to what he called a "conjecture" about whether amino acids, the basic building blocks of protein and a crucial component of living things, could form naturally.
"Under the circumstances I mention, just a bunch of chemicals sitting together, no," he said. "Because it takes energy to go from the things that make glycine to glycine, glycine being the simplest amino acid."
There were potential sources of energy, he said. So to say that nothing much would happen in its absence "is totally beside the point." "And that is a point I did not make," he added.
Another assertion in the paper, about what would have had to occur simultaneously for living matter to arise, is just plain wrong, he said, adding, "It was a dumb mistake, but nobody ever caught me on it."
Vance Ferrell, who said he put together the material posted on Evolution-facts.org, said if the paper had been retracted he would remove the reference to it. Mr. Ferrell said he had no way of knowing what motivated Dr. Jacobson, but said that if scientists "look like they are pro-creationist they can get into trouble."
"There is an embarrassment," Mr. Ferrell said.
Dr. Jacobson conceded that was the case. He wrote in his retraction letter, "I am deeply embarrassed to have been the originator of such misstatements."
It is not unusual for scientists to publish papers and, if they discover evidence that challenges them, to announce they were wrong. The idea that all scientific knowledge is provisional, able to be challenged and overturned, is one thing that separates matters of science from matters of faith.
So Dr. Jacobson's retraction is in "the noblest tradition of science," Rosalind Reid, editor of American Scientist
When the paper was published in 1955, it wasn't controversial, and there weren't creationists around to parade it as proof of their ideas. This whole giant clusterfuck "debate" where so many people make fools of themselves with this ID/creationism idea, is actually fairly new - let me be clear, what I mean is, the fury of the controversy is new. In 1955, a scientist could publish a paper about evolution and then go to church on Sunday. Science and religion weren't seen as either/or propositions as they are today. The generation that advanced science (arguably) more than any other, the generation that gave us computers and space travel, didn't get its panties in a bunch over evolution or religion.
What seems to have happened is that some creationists decided to make evolution their litmus test. They decided to make it a big controvery. They decided to tell people that "omfg we have to oppose this with every fiber of our being" and I really haven't a clue why they did that (other than being stupid).
This has happened before. There used to be people who believed in geocentrism for the exact same reason taht people reject evolution - because they just honestly WANT to believe the bible. But here's the deal, even creationist don't believe in geocentrism, yet creationist still believe the bible. So what happened? They just changed their interpretation of it. I can't figure out why they don't just do that again.
It wasn't religion that stumbled Einstein (he wasn't religious in any meaningful sense of the word), but it was his sense of aesthetic. He was the last of the Classical Physicists, and in that tradition, he wanted a clockwork universe, and not one that did funky things like expand from some singularity where mathematics broke down, nor did he want one that was at some subatomic level was a chaotic bubbling brew where the arrow of time and causality lost their meaning.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Hasn't this argument been beaten to death already? Maybe I'm wrong, and yes I'm over simplifying but basically it comes down to this: Science tries to explain *how* things happened, Faith tries to explain *why* things happened. At least in terms of planetary history. Personally, I'm interested in both how and why things happen the way they do. Most times, in my experience, science does a better job at explaining how things are happening and sometimes why they happen. I lost my faith in faith around the time I started asking questions and got back a lot of crappy answers. However, I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility of *some* kind of creative force simply because we may not have the tools to demonstrate or understand it fully.
read: http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/56234;jsessionid=aaah7j1zW7KfWl
The relevant portion:
I ask you to honor my request to retract two brief passages, as follows:
On page 121: "Directions for the reproduction of plans, for energy and the extraction of parts from the current environment, for the growth sequence, and for the effector mechanisms translating instructions into growth--all had to be simultaneously present at that moment [of life's birth]."
On page 125: "From the probability standpoint, the ordering of the present environment into a single amino acid molecule would be utterly improbable in all the time and space available for the origin of terrestrial life."
That is all, he is not retracting his entire article. It is impossible to tell this from the headline link, however; said headline presents the story as the scientist retracting his entire paper. Which is wrong, unless my reading comprehension is absolutely nonexistent today, but I don't think that's the case.
Hmm. I think the real question is this: If I put Richard Dawkins and Ann Coulter in a room together, will they annihilate each other? Even if I can't harvest the result as energy, man, sounds like a win/win situation to me!
This whole debate has devolved into a dogmatic pissing match. With "scientific" evolutionist on one side and creationist on the other. There is no knowledge to be gained from this crap - its at the point where "our guy that said something that supported your argument withdraws his statement". In other words it becomes clear that the whole thing is about politics, not science, not religion, not truth.
The best (paraphrased) quote from my highschool physics teacher:
:)
"You can choose any arbitrary point, including yourself, to be the center of the universe. The maths is just easier the way we have it."
So, having chosen myself as the center of the universe, my bias is of course the only one true view. The rest of you are obviously deluded...
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" - Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was quite publicly a self proclaimed atheist.
Of all the purviews into his personal life, it is the fact that HE HATED the rumors that he was a religious man that got the most attention.
You're only making the problem worse.
He was an atheist, get it through your thick skull.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
As an educated, rational person who has been marginalized by loud-mouthed, stupid ideologues, I would like to offer Homer Jacobson my most sincere thanks. By withdrawing his paper, he reminds us of how the scientific method is really supposed to work, and why it is the most powerful problem-solving tool yet created by man. It is this power that both tempts and terrifies religious zealots.
Dr. Jacobson also reminds us that science is more than the current crop of grant-whores chasing corporate bucks with the same intensity as a Congressman chases a teenaged page.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
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.
Hey, neat. You put that there to illustrate the 'bias' point? In the UK, Australia, and maybe some countries that were colonies of the UK until recently it's Maths for Mathematics. Nice, no?
It's pronounced 'math' in North America. In the UK it has always been pronounced 'maths'. I'm not sure about the convention in Australia, New Zealand or South Africa. If you hear 'maths' you are probably talking to a Brit and your pronunciation 'math' will sound odd to him too.
If this is incorrect, I retract the above statement before it is misused in a 'my English is better than yours' debate. In the interests of good science of course...
This story is great news for people who worry about global warming, because however hot the earth gets, even if it gets hot enough to kill us all, when the earth eventually cools it seems that life 2.0 will spontaneously evolve.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Darwinism explains everything we know about the animal kingdom. There are no "missing links", just animals missing from the fossil record (which doesn't contain all the animals that have ever existed, as creating a fossil requires a lot of luck in itself). We can see, just from our DNA, that we are related to the other apes - that we have common ancestors. We have observed evolution in laboratories. What are these evolutionary leaps you talk about that you claim disprove Darwinian evolution? I'd be very interested to hear :)
I did read some of the links you provided, but as it's argument is fatally-flawed from the very outset, reading any more would have been a waste of time.
Of course if you look at the fossil record, it makes no sense. The fossil record is not a record of every species that has ever existed. As I said earlier, to make a fossil takes a lot of luck. It doesn't disprove or even threaten evolution.
Oh, and incidentally, "math" as a shortening of "mathematics" is older than "maths," according to this entry from the Online Etymology Dictionary, which states:
So, the British version is in fact the neologism here. American English is typically more conservative in grammatical constructions and preservation of archaic forms, so it's no surprise that we've stubbornly stuck to "our version" all this time. (I won't go into variant spellings, since some of our spellings are the result of a simplified spelling movement, and that definitely is not "conservative" in the least -- but then again, even when Webster and his cohorts were deciding what American spellings should be like, many spellings were not fully standardized.)
But thank you for that ugly display of provincialism.