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Convergent Evolution Upends Honeyeaters' Taxonomy
grrlscientist writes in with a beautiful piece of science, beautifully explicated. The poignant bit is that the birds in question are all extinct. "Every once in awhile, I will read a scientific paper that astonishes and delights me so much that I can hardly wait to tell you all about it. Such is the situation with a newly published paper about the Hawai'ian Honeyeaters. In short, due to the remarkable power of convergent evolution, Hawai'ian Honeyeaters have thoroughly deceived taxonomists and ornithologists as to their true origin and identity for more than 200 years."
There have been debates over the taxonomy of odd creatures (with similarities to other known creatures) forever. Sometimes simple physical resemblence just doesn't really tell the tale. Of course, evolution producing similar looking/behaving birds is nothing new either (just look at how similar African parrots and South American parrots are to one another).
The really great debates come when zoologists get into trying to classify an animal that looks like (or behaves like) two DIFFERENT known creatures. One of my personal favorites is the Red Panda. The bottom of its body and claws look like a bear's (you can see it clearly in this picture) and it eats only bamboo, just like a Giant Panda. But the rest of it looks like a raccoon. This cute little furball finally had to be given its own unique family, because no one was quite sure where to put the little bastard. And it's still debatable if it truly deserves its own family.
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Proposed text: "Evolution, like gravity, is just a theory. Please act accordingly."
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I realize that in this case (being dead for 200 years) it is more difficult, but why don't they _just_ use DNA sequencing to determine the classification of animals?
Observation (of both behaviour and appearance) is influenced by the observer and is variable. Two people never see the same thing the same way. Ask a man and wife what colour the living-room couch is and you will get two different answers! =)
The DNA sequence will never lie, and that sequence will tell us FAR more about common evolutionary traits then our eyeballs will.
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Ah, thanks for the kind invitation to join your discussions. i wish i had more time to do so, but alas, i have only a few hours per day of internet access, so i spend most of that time looking for papers to write about and answering emails as well as publishing my essays and images. but i will try to make more of an effort to comment here now and again!
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I was always impressed by the similarities between sharks, dolphins, and icthyosaurs. Similarly, there's a phenomenal similarity between the flying reptiles such as the pterodactyls and bats with finger bones modified with flaps of skin to make wings. There's also the similarities between various species of gliding tree mammals, the flying squirrels and lemurs and the like. One can also talk of amazing developments with marsupials which had armored herbivores similar to a rhino and carnivores like a leopard-form. (and let's not forget that a Triceratops is built awfully similar to a rhino down to the armored hide, horns, and heavy, stocky legs.) All of these from obviously unrelated lines of descent converging on similar forms to satisfy ecological niches. If I recall correctly, there's also a type of fish that developed a false-placenta for live-birthed young -- it's not a true placenta because it isn't a placental animal but it serves the same purpose. I believe this fish was in the extended shark family.
The other thing that really amazes me is how the theory of evolution makes certain predictions that you'll simply not see contradicted. For example, there's the general rule that animals will adapt existing limbs for various purposes so you might see a rodent develop forelimbs into wings but you will not see a rodent sprout brand new wings from its back while retaining the previous four limbs. Even the weirdest body parts you can find can be seen to be modifications, not wholly new structures sprung forth from nothing. You won't see a bird suddenly come with three eyes or an elephant with a cyclopean eye or a cat with eight legs like a spider (barring genetic defects that will be unable to reproduce).
What's also amazing is how the lines between species get blurry. The old definition is that two populations are split as a species when they cannot interbred and create viable offspring. But we've seen from zoos that populations that don't mix in the wild can produce viable offspring such as ligers, tygons, then there's the blonde grizzlies that are a hybrid of grizzly and polar bear that did occur in the wild... All of these animals come from common ancestors if you go back far enough and it makes you wonder just how freely genes could be traded back and forth with the right technology and a proper understanding of genetics.
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This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I think you need to look up what "law" means in a scientific context. The only "Law" of gravity I'm familiar with is Newton's Law of Gravity, which is known to be inaccurate and has been supplanted (at the theoretical if not all practical levels) by Einstein's Theory of Relativity. So tell me how a law is something more than a theory again?
The scientific community is completely open to other explanations that have actual evidence behind them. Debate about evolution happens all the time, and is ongoing as further evidence is accumulated. Now if you mean that science hasn't embraced whatever non-evolutionary theory you think is being neglected, well that's probably because outside of some blogs there's little to no evidence for it. We've watched evolution* happen in controlled environments. If you've got anything resembling the tiniest fraction of the evidence for evolution, your theory would be considered. If it had as much evidence as evolution, you'd up-end biology (much like evolutionary theory up-ended it).
Lastly, am I supposed to be shocked or dismayed that a textbook contained an error? Scientific knowledge advances, things previously held to be true are corrected, and freshmen-level textbooks often lag behind. And is your argument really that a false "missing link" means that humans (as opposed to all the other life forms on the planet) didn't undergo evolution? That's not the "proof". It's a step in the family tree. Just because you incorrectly identified your grandmother does not mean you have no family tree.
* Deliberate trap for the "Well sure microevolution is observed fact, but that doesn't mean anything about macro" response. Feel free not to take the bait.
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"Just" a shift in population ratios? Nice attempt to drive a wedge into the non-existent space between "micro-evolution" and "macro-evolution".
For the record:
Shift in population ratios = change in allele frequencies = evolution.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
It only seems to contradict global warming if you have only a superficial understanding of it. "Monotonic increase of temperature" was never a theory of global warming, so because a piece of data contradicts your understanding means nothing.
Also, the moth thing is more an example of natural selection than the evolution of a new trait. We've observed evolution in labs with flies and plants. Again, just because a layman's example and understanding doesn't seem to completely explain the theory, that doesn't mean that's all the understanding or explanation possible.
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You quoted from a non-scientific dictionary. Theory is misunderstood by people like you. In the context of science:
1. You make observations.
2. You make a hypothesis based on your observations.
3. You test you hypothesis to see if it holds its ground.
4. If the hypothesis survives the tests, it becomes a theory, if not it's back to square one.
Maximum likelihood phylogram constructed from analysis of up to 421 nucleotide sites of b-fibrinogen introns 5 and 7 combined. At nodes are Bayesian posterior probabilities and ML bootstrap values (100 repetitions).
There are two kind of people in the world...the kind that thinks the new Day the Earth Stood Still is science fiction, and the kind that thinks it would have been if Klaatu had said to Barnhardt something like that.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
The Law of Gravitation and the Theory of Gravity are two related but different things.
The Law of Gravitation is (like most laws) is an equation describing the effect of gravity and nothing else.
The Theory of Gravity goes over gravities existence (or not) and how it actually works.
Theories can never become Laws (and Laws were never Theories) because they are two fundamentally different concepts within science.
Except that axioms, by definition, are not subject to modification based on observations. Theories are. Which is why scientists aren't called "natural philosophers" any more, and why the scientific approach to the world is so useful.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
the moth thing in England was brought up, even though I'm pretty certain everyone agrees that no evolution occurred there, it was just a shift in population ratios
"A shift in population ratios" is evolution by definition. Look it up.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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Well, if you want me to take what is in the next textbook seriously, yeah. Or at least, if you want me to believe in evolution as firmly as most scientists believe it
And you should get beyond that textbook if you want me to take your skepticism as anything more than that of an a-priori prejudice. If you will not believe in anything for which there has existed errors, then you cannot believe in anything, including anything you yourself have reasoned about.
(and I attribute that to having no alternative that matches their religious views or social pressures).
You mean no alternative which stands up to scientific scrutiny. There were alternatives which were hotly debated between until there was sufficient evidence to throw one away. To this day there are hotly debated variations on the theory to evolution. Sorry but as much as the disbelieving like to talk about the "religion" of science, having a scientifically valid way of upending the "orthodoxy" is highly desired, since that's how you get your name in the history books. What do you think Charles Darwin was in his day if not, in your parlance, a "heretic"? Oh and no he isn't a "saint" or "prophet" now, since we've modified and corrected his theories just as we have Newton's.
As for micro evolution, I decline to take the bait. But I will say that the delineation between micro- and macro- evolution appears to come down to a philosophical, rather than observable, difference.
Good for you. There is no observable difference, which is why it's not considered a difference by biologists, and only part of the "philosophy" of deniers who think that's a way to drive a wedge between theory and observed fact. The "trap" involves showing how it is logically impossible to believe in one but not the other.
And, lastly, the evidence of evolution thing... refer back to the interpretation-of-evidence comments that I made. Data does not support this or that theory by simply existing. Data is interpreted into evidence. The question of whether or not evidence is being interpreted correctly appears to be a very poignant consideration in light of the numerous errors that have been latched on to in support of evolution.
Fair enough, though I have to warn you that it's very telling that you yourself latch onto the errors, as if that's the only support of evolution and without those data points, the whole edifice is called into question. There are mountains of evidence for evolution, much of it verified as well as anything in biology can be verified.
As much as I'd like to get into a discussion about evidence for evolution or other theories and against evolution and other theories, I unfortunately don't have time nor is slashdot the best place anyways, hehe... so I'm constraining myself more to the philosophy of science side of things.
Yes. If you actually had evidence for an alternative theory, /. is the last place you should post it. A scientific journal would be the ideal place, as it would be the start of your ascent into the history books. Of course when this doesn't happen, it's because the religious cabal rejected your "truth" for their own "religion", and not that your idea fails scientific rigor. It couldn't be that coming up with a better hypothesis is excruciatingly difficult because the current theory is very, very good. Oh no. That's impossible. It must be that you are Galileo and science is the Catholic Church.
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Thank you for making this post. It's good to see that someone out there understands this basic concept. Although, as a sister post notes, we do have a pretty good idea as to the cause of gravity.
Law of gravity: Objects attract each other according to their mass and the square of the distance between them. (F = GMm/R^2)
Theory of gravity: Gravity is caused by the interaction of gravitons at the quantum level, making gravity one of the basic forces.
Notice that theories describe the how and why of things, laws make concrete facts about the way things are.
Neither scientific laws or scientific theories (not to be confused with traffic laws or layman's theories, which describe different things entirely) are above being revised. In the case of laws, becoming more precise as our instruments become more precise, for instance, I believe that the universal gravitational constant (G, above) has been changed at various times as we are able to get better measurements. Theories, are often refined, partially revised, or scrapped altogether, often, we will use different theories depending on the model we are using (once again, scientific model, not like a car model, or like a car in general, get your analogies away from me! ;-) ).
The most important distinction between laws and theories, is that laws can be proven: measure the gravitational pull between two masses, if it fits the formula, voila! Gravity still works as predicted, the aprocralypse is not upon us yet. Theories, however, can only be disproven, you can say, "Gravitons cannot be the cause of gravity, here is my evidence, which the theory doesn't explain," but you cannot say, "Here is my proof that gravitons cause gravity." (you can try to get proof, but at most you will have a very strong correlation, which, as every slashdotter is fond of pointing out, does not prove causation.
"But," you say, "that means that everything we know could be a lie!" To which I reply, "Yes, yes it does, but that is unlikely, because most theories that actually have a name, have been shown to correlate with the facts very, very consistently, and although this doesn't prove causation, it's a pretty good indication that most of science is true."
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
For example - if this or that was proven in science, makes it into a science book, and is proven wrong later... what would you call it?
I'd call it not math. Math is the only place where you can prove things; everywhere else, you can only falsify things.
Look at global warming. Both sides think it's proven.
Ahh, but all the scientists are on the side that thinks it's happening and are arguing a bit over how much is due to us.
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AC cowardly says...
This, of course, is why most things ending in *ology aren't real science.
I'd be very curious to know how you managed to decide that from an article and a comment about taxONOMY (i.e. the study and method of naming the taxa)...
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
When your theory is defined such that it includes both sides of interpretation of any given piece of data, it is hard to argue against. (e.g., I heard on the news that it was getting colder and certain ice caps or something were growing, not shrinking, and that that is "exactly what is expected with global warming, because with something like global warming, the unexpected is going to occur."
If that is actually what the "scientist" said, that is indeed moronic. Can you provide a reference? What do you mean by "the news"? Sounds more like some anti-global-warming moron trying to create a straw man.
OTOH, last I looked, there were good (ie. they have made accurate predictions) climate models that predict increasing average global temperatures while simultaneously predicting cooling around the poles. This is good science: show that your model fits some data and then try to understand what's going on. If your model does not make correct predictions (give it (today-n) years of data, and see if it can predict the last n years correctly), you need to change your model. That is exactly what science is.
Evolution is harder, since the physics is infinitely more complex--there are no precise predictive models of evolution in the physics sense, so whatever we see has to be incorporated into the theory without predictive testing. Evolution is thus more useful as a series of observations and a way of explaining them, rather than a proof in any mathematical sense. That doesn't make it wrong.
Elementary evolution theory does make a claim like "All complex life evolved from simpler life." If you now find a fossil of something complex that has no simpler ancestors, then evolution is wrong. Not that you can easily prove the bit about ancestors, but you get the idea. Finding that some complex life has simpler ancestors doesn't prove evolution, but it certainly makes it more plausible. Excuse the very shallow example, but you get the point.
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I very much beg to differ there. If you think scientific "proof" doesn't include, at the very least, some amount of belief, I think you are very wrong. For example - if this or that was proven in science, makes it into a science book, and is proven wrong later... what would you call it? Was it proven? 100% sure? It was wrong, so it apparently wasn't actually 100% sure.
You seem to be living up to your handle. Others have tried, and failed. I figure, I'm bored, waiting for some code to compile, so I'll take a whack at the pinata!
As someone else eloquently explained, scientific theories can never be proven, only disproven.
Note that there are some very specific meanings to these words, in the context of science (which has roots in philosophy). Most people hear about proof for a theory and assume that the theory is being presented as 100% incontrovertible fact. And then these people (yourself included, apparently) crow about the hypocrisy of science and the shams being perpetuated when a theory is disproven. In other words, the thinking seems to be "Well, Theory A was PROVEN last year, and now it's been DISPROVEN! Science is a lie! All theories are equally valid, including my wild idea about how to travel through time/dinosaurs coexisted with humans/noah's ark existed/etc!"
Let's break it down (again):
1. Observe some phenomenon
2. Hypothesize something about said phenomenon
3. Search for evidence which supports/disproves hypothesis
If the body of evidence found (via research) supports the hypothesis and doesn't kill it, then voila, you have your own personal theory. Now go and publish your paper for peer review, which works like:
4. Publish paper with hypothesis + supporting evidence
5. Watch as your scientific peers attempt to eviscerate your theory and prove it wrong, stupid, and otherwise useless as a contribution to the pool of human knowledge
If no one can find evidence to disprove your theory, then congratulations, you have your own theory (hopefully named after you, or something catchy, anyhow). Maybe you'll get a Nobel, or a nice lab somewhere with go-fers, or at least a nice bonus.
Your theory will be used as fact until something comes up to question its usefulness as an explanation for whatever phenomenon was the starting point of this magical journey. Why? Because at some point you have to stop asking so many damn questions and just (logically) assume some things for the sake of argument. Until we build the Omni-Mind 8000 which interfaces with the quantum brane junction and knows everything, we'll just have to deal with the human mind and all its limitations. Having a body of educated guesses about why things do what they do allows folks to get some damn work done without having to build up a whole freaking theory of everything whenever they want to do something.
Now you just have to hope that some aspiring grad student a few years down the road doesn't revisit your theory and blow it all to hell with better equipment that finds inconsistencies with your theory.
As has been pointed out by others, this most certainly does imply that everything we know via the scientific method could be wrong! The thing is, though, that theories which stand the test of time (e.g. Evolution) do so because they are consistent with what we can observe. To date, no one has found credible evidence to support an alternate explanation for the origin of species. If you can cook something up, find evidence for it, and, most importantly, it survives the gauntlet of people looking for any logical reason to kill it, then more power to you!
Get it? It's not a religion. It's not an arbitrary belief system. It's not the same as whatever you go to church for. It is a process which we as a species have reached common consensus on as the best way to advance human knowledge.
Certainly there are those who try
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I'm not sure what you're referring to, but the Arctic ice caps are growing because it is getting colder. This is exactly as expected with global warming. It's still colder in winter and warmer in summer.
Now if, on the other hand, global temperatures showed a long-term (more than ten years) decreasing trend, that would be evidence that global warming is not happening. The problem is that people who don't understand the long-term view hear that there is cooling over a period of a few months or a few years, and think that it somehow disproves global warming. These are the same people who lose big in the stock market because they panic when the market drops and pull all their money out, locking in their losses. It's all about the long term, folks!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
You're quite welcome for the post :)
To stick to true scientific terminology, a theory is never proven or disproven... proofs exist only in the world of mathematics. Theories are validated and invalidated. A prediction is made and a test is administered to a theory (an experiment), and this is what ultimately validates or invalidates a theory (or a portion of it). If the evidence invalidates, then the theory is revised to fit the evidence provided... rarely is the theory itself completely thrown away unless overwhelming evidence completely thrashes it to the point of it not being able to make any predictions whatsoever and it fails every test put forth to it.
This is what many cdesign proponentists fail to understand... our theories reflect all known knowledge on a subject and are being revised and updated damn near every single day. Our theories are not static, and they never will be. Textbooks will be outdated, new evidence will bring about change in our theories as well as reinforce them.
To put it simply, a theory is the logical framework built by all observed facts, data and research. To say something is "just a theory" is quite honestly an insult to the scientific community... one which many of us do not take lightly.
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What I more object to is that 'science' has ruled out anything supernatural, and in doing so, has decided that everything can be explained without the supernatural.
Science has done no such thing. Science is not capable of decoding the supernatural and thus must leave it alone. This is completely different than "ruling out" the supernatural - in fact, it by definition CANNOT rule out the supernatural.
Something like 40% of scientists consider themselves religious, so clearly you have a fundamental misunderstanding here.
and scientific evidence that could point to a, shall we say, "supernatural" explanation (creation) is disregarded on the premise that the theory it supports (creation) is not a scientific theory.
No. This, I think, is the key to your misunderstanding. Science rejects creation as a scientific theory, not as an impossibility. This is why scientists bristle more at "intelligent design" than at creationism... intelligent designers are trying to claim science, when at best you could call it philosophy. Grabbing the title of "science" is analogous to me starting a dog-worshiping cult and then grabbing the title of "Christianity". The Christians would get pretty worked up if it picked up steam.
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