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Bacteria Make Major Evolutionary Shift In the Lab
Auxbuss sends us to New Scientist for news sure to perplex and confound creationists: scientists have watched a new, complex evolutionary trait develop in the lab. "A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait. And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events."
This is why doctors ask people to finish the entire bottle when prescribing antibiotics. This is also why we should ban antibacterial hand soaps for domestic use - because when you bathe a population of microbes in something for millions of generations, the odds are that eventually a spontaneous mutation will occur.
All the anal-retentive clean freaks will just have to figure out how to live with the notion that they - like everyone else - carry microbes on their skin.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Hell, even for humans it means ~6.7
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
For those of you who didn't RTFA, the new evolution which they claim occurred was the ability to metabolize citrate, a substance in the culture medium that e. coli were previously known to be unable to metabolize, and this occurred in one of twelve populations that were spawned from a single parent bacterium. I think it's pretty interesting :)
Ahem Faith in Prayer Kills Children
Stalin supporting evolution? Oh boy, were you misled. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that whoever told you of the views on evolution in the USSR under Stalin was a creationist, who wanted to villify evolution.
I suggest reading up on Lysenkoism and the effect it had on science in the Soviet Union:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
(You'll probably want to look beyond wikipedia for the in-depth story, but it's a place to start.)
Stalin was strongly anti-religious, but he was equally anti-evolutionary. Neither fit well with the beliefs of communism, and while Stalin probably wasn't an idealist, he needed his citizens to buy into a certain worldview. The notion of heredity doesn't gel well with the notion that all humans can be molded to the communist ideal.
Lysenko's "science" was basically Lamarckism revisited in such a way as better fit communism. Genetics and evolutionary biology were labeled "bourgeois science". Actual evidence-based research was written off in favor of what the people in power would rather believe. Sound familiar?
The parallels between Lysenkoism and Creationism (or Intelligent Design, to use the newspeak name for it) are striking. Both were proposed as alternatives to evolution by those who didn't want to have their worldview challenged by science, both were labeled and taught as science (despite failing to meet the scientific criteria), both had the vocal support of people in high places. The underlying "religion" was different - Lysenkoism was rooted in the quasi-religious views of Marxist-Leninism - but beyond that, they're the same story told in radically different countries.
The major difference is scale - evolutionary biology was all but outlawed in the USSR under Stalin, whereas it has not been similarly repressed in the USA. That can be chalked up to the fact that the US doesn't have, and has never had, a party or ruler with that kind of unchecked authority.
This little adventure into pseudoscience crippled Soviet biology for years to come. It can be argued that Russia still hasn't caught up to the rest of the world. An object lesson in why it is important to leave science to scientists, and keep faith, however deeply held, separate.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.