George Deutsch was a political appointee, just like his boss Dean Acosta. Political appointees only need to be a crony to be qualified.
Maybe the question should be why there are political appointees in NASA Public Affairs Offices at all. Or why Deutsch or Acosta should tell NASA how to write about science--Acosta's mentioned in the NY Times article agreeing that the word "theory" ought to be used whenever "Big Bang" is mentioned, just because the "The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual" says so. Maybe the press offices, political or otherwise, ought to defer to physicists instead of some reporter's manual.
The molecular weight limit of NMR has been increasing quite a bit and now proteins on the order of 100 kDa are possible, although technically challenging. Lewis Kay's group at the University of Toronto has done a solution structure of an 80 kDa protein, for instance.
Yes, scientists are pretty much like everybody else. We're out for number one*, meaning that professionally (us still in academia) like to get big, fat grants from the government. Private corporations fund basic research at levels somewhere between a pittance and jack squat--we couldn't do basic research at all if it wasn't for government funding simply because private corporations need to turn a profit, and there is no guarantee that a given basic research project will find a way to produce some kind of income next quarter or ever. For example, a system I did my graduate work on has been studied off and on for fifty years, but only in the last four years has it attracted private funding because of potential payoff in antibiotics. Don't worry about public funding though: it's highly competitive and grants are (largely--we're imperfect too) awarded by merit. I've never heard of this "round robin boat race" kind of funding nor can I imagine anyone keeping a lab afloat for very long if they tried it. Fields are small, but there is constant competition amongst members of a field for a limited pool of money. How big a pool is well outside our control, and grants aren't awarded by a single person. Additionally, fields are not fixed and people frequently cross over or dabble in, meaning additional competition. Also egos tend to be huge and rivalries can be intense. My undergraduate advisor had a 50 year rivalry with another professor in the same field. What academics live for is big publications that are widely cited for novelty and of course being right...plus proving that jerk at University of Some State got points XYZ wrong in their last paper. You aren't going to do much back scratching with these things commonplace.
As for scandals like this, they happen occasionally. They're also usually found by people in the same field if an internal whistle-blower doesn't do it first. Any good experiment will produce questions based on the results of that experiment. If the initial experiment was wrong or faked, it will be detected eventually because subsequent experiment based on fraudulent data will produce nonsensical results. That's a part of peer review. I've never understood why someone in science would engage in fraud. You hear about it from time to time, after the person's been nailed, usually not too long after the fraud. Of course their career is over, and anyone unfortunate enough to be associated with them have their reputations tarnished as well. Scientists don't tolerate charlatans.
*That said, academics aren't really in it to make money. If you go the academic route in science here's a pay history: undergraduate: net negative income, graduate: $15-$22k/year, postdoctoral research associate: $35-45k/year, assistant prof $50k/year plus. Keep in mind the times in grade: 4-5 years undergrad, 5-7+ graduate, 3-8+ postdoc.
1. What is the scientific theory of intelligent design (ID)?
2. What evidence supports ID and not a competing theory?
3. What predictions does ID make?
4. How might ID be falsified?
The IDers have had since 1987 (when "intelligent design" was first used as a drop-in replacement for "creation science") to come up with answers for these questions and they've failed to not only make any headway, they've failed to even attempt to answer them. So you'll excuse me and fellow research scientists in biological fields for writing them off as a bunch of charlatans after waiting 18 years for them to get off their asses and actually do some research, or maybe, I dunno, formulate a scientific hypothesis in the first place? BTW, theory in science means more than halfassed guess, and putting the term in allcaps is an indication that you don't know this.
But wait, I've got some more questions for you:
5. Why does ID go directly to the courts and political process to try and get their idea accepted, instead of, doing some actual research?
6. If ID is not an entirely religious objection to established science, then can you explain The Wedge Document?
7. Explain why the Discovery Institute is funded largely by Howard Ahmanson, a person who also funds relgious extremists such as the Chalcedon Foundation, which has the express aim of turning the US into a theocracy?
8. Why is it that prominent proponents of ID frequently speak in churches, just like proponents of creation science?
9. Why was the Dover school board defended by the Thomas Moore Law Center, which is "...a not-for-profit public interest law firm dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life. Our purpose is to be the sword and shield for people of faith, providing legal representation without charge to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square." (from their own website) if ID is not religious?
10. Why was it that "Of Pandas and People," the ID textbook that was a major focus in Dover, written by creationists?
11. Why would Bill Dembski say "Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory," (quoted from wikipedia, refering to Touchstone Magazine. Volume 12, Issue4. July/August, 1999)?
12. Why would Touchstone Magazine, a "Journal of Mere Christianity", devote an entire issue to supporting ID?
Or maybe ID really is just a religiously-motivated argument from ignorance like all of us biological scientists think?
As much as I'd like Cushman and his fellow anti-science zealots out on their asses, I'd say that his zero votes in one precinct has the stench of fraud on it. The vote is disturbingly close, so Cushman would be right to contest the election. This won't effect the results much even if he were to gain a seat, because it would then only be 7 to 1 in favor of science on the Dover school board.
Unless you're talking about Intelligent Falling, then all bets are off. In all seriousness, this is just a little speedbump in the march of progress. The Kansas creationists tried this in 1999, and got voted out. Now they're are back, but they'll be easier to beat this time. Teaching creationism was found to be unconstitutional in Edwards v. Aguillard. In the Intelligent Design (ID) trial in Dover, strong evidence has been presented showing that "ID" is a drop-in replacement for "scientific creationism." For instance, in the ID book "Pandas and People" we have the remains of a word processor search and replace operation with "cdesign proponentsists" being the resulting "transitional fossil," as Pandas' Thumb puts it. The Dover transcripts make for some particularily hilarious reading, especially Mike Behe's testimony, or when members of the Dover school board perjure themselves. We can count on a trial taking place in Kansas very soon, and it will go in much the same manner as it did in Dover. The Kansas Kangaroo Court has already laid the groundwork, providing good evidence on the motivations of the IDers, and how they are indistinguishable from creationists. These guys have shot themselves in the foot so badly that if either Dover or Kansas went to the Supreme Court it is hard to imagine the outcome for ID being any different than it was in the Edwards v. Aguillard decision back in '87. The two dissenters in Edwards v. Aguillard were Scalia (predictable) and Rhenquist, so even with if Roberts and Alito* vote theocratic (unlikely, they seem rational to me, at least) it'll be a 5-4 split with ID losing. IANAL, tho. I think the big take home message of this is that all of us who care about science need to keep up on what the kooks are doing. While I'm fond of following the creationist movement and even have a small collection of creationists books I've picked up from used book stores, I don't have the slightest idea of who is on the local school board and whether they are pro- or anti-science. That's going to change, though.
I'm taking Amtrak later this week from Eugene, OR (2 hours south of Portland) to Los Angeles. It's scheduled to take about 25 hours. However the route is a very heavy freight route, and they really, really hate Amtrak (which is understandable I suppose) so I expect my travel time to be in excess of 30 hours. My ticket however is less than half what airfare would cost, and it's a great way to see the country. I took Amtrak from Eugene to St. Paul for Christmas once and got to see parts of Montana and North Dakota that I'd otherwise never seen. The train stopped at every single station, even at some places where the station was boarded up and there were just a few pickups waiting for travelers comming home for the holidays. But that's vacation travel. Amtrak's completely impractical for anything else here, unless maybe in the high population areas it might work. I'm thinking Tacoma to Seattle or the equivalent in southern California.
Government red tape on drugs seems pretty bizarre, not that I've been involved myself. But barbituric acid (as in barbituates) used to be a common buffer agent (pKa 3.98) in biochemical research. I found a 100 mg bottle of the stuff when an emeritus professor's lab was being cleaned out. Not being interested in anything past a little pot myself and the bottle was probably at least 10 years old, I got our lab tech to call environmental health and safety to dispose of it. The university campus is in an old hippie town, so I give it a 10% chance of actually being destroyed instead of used.
Two have featured protagonists that are probably undead, but non-vampires. High Plains Drifter features stranger riding in town who's tortured by dreams of being whipped to death by the three outlaws in town, while it's a bit more obvious in Pale Rider, where there is a brief shot of Preacher's back, featuring six healed bullet wounds centered on his heart.
"Yes, but it seems to me that sometimes the scientists themselves give misleading information to journalists, possibly to make their work seem more important."
My boss just had the opposite happen. The lab just published a fairly sexy paper, and the university publicist wanted a press release and so sent over a staff writer to talk to the boss and a grad student. The three of them worked on the release together and were all satisfied with it. Then the staff writer's editor decided to "punch it up a little." Sure the new article had no link to reality anymore but it was "punchy." Fortunately the original press release is what actually got out--my boss said that he'd have been humiliated if the punchy version got out. If an article gets out that misrepresents the work, the scientist may be embarrassed to his/her peers; even if they're directly quoted, because I know from personal miserable experience what reporters can do to verbal statements. I think it's often the editors and reporters who want to oversell the work--there's not much push for accuracy because it's not like they're the ones who spent years doing the research, but a punchy article might help sell newspapers. But then I've also been told sometimes that I need to "PT Barnum it up a little" when I'm giving talks or doing some writing...
"And while Kary Mullis made a brilliant discovery (PCR) he came up with it while he was stoned (no joke). This explains a lot of his unconventional theories..."
I've never met him, but he sure does sound...interesting. My graduate advisor told me a story about him once. Just recently after PCR came out, my advisor was a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute, and Mullis was invited to give a talk on PCR...but instead he presented a slideshow of nude photographs. Then there's his book "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field," which according to the amazon.com review mentions PCR of course, but also has his defense of astrology and his recounting of being abducted by aliens. To me, Mullis just points out the differences between the Nobel prize and membership in the National Academy of Sciences: the former is a prize for a discovery, the latter is a recognition by your peers of years of work of major importance.
"Unfortunately, seven-day-Creationists have corrupted the term worse than the words "communist" and "hacker" combined."
Except the term was initially used as a drop-in replacement for creationism in the 1989 book "Pandas and People," lately of fame in the Dover Intelligent Design scandal. Here's a review by the Geoscience Research Institute, a young-earth creationist group, from 1992. Notice in the review that "creationism" and "intelligent design" are used more or less interchangeably. Or you can read a 1989 review from the National Center for Science Education that finds the same thing. ID wasn't taken over by creationists. It was founded by them.
I can think of nothing more convincing than the evidence. Such as the nearly complete Turkana Boy skeleton, an example of Homo erectus from roughly 1.6 million years ago, as presented in this textbook on evolution. A few ribs my ass. Or how about this nice picture of a whole bunch of hominid skulls from 2.6 million years ago to the present? Teach it for real, and it doesn't take undergraduate level biochemistry. Show the kids pictures of the fossils. Tell the kids about human DNA: how our chromosome 2 is clearly the result of a fusion event between two mid-sized progenitor chromosomes, which are still seen in chimps, our closest relatives. Tell the kids that 200 years ago christian geologists went looking for evidence of the Biblical flood and instead found evidence that the Earth is ancient. While we're at it, we should show them the evidence for creationism and intelligent design, too: a deafening silence lasting 10 seconds should suffice.
You want to falsify evolution? Okay, find a bunny rabbit in the Precambrian. Sequence a mamalian genome and find out that it is more closely related to a banana than another mammal. Find a lizard that doesn't use the standard genetic code or a very close derivative of it. Find a bird with a different set of 20 amino acids. Find a chimera--for instance, a tree with 100% tree features, except that it's TCA cycle enzymes are identical to those found in mice, or if you don't want any biochemistry or genetics, find a goat with bird feathers--can't happen under evolution. Every day, more fossils are found. More genes are sequenced. More papers published, and more proteins are compared. Every day evolution is tested, as it makes specific predictions about how species are interrelated. As a result, evolution is the most thoroughly tested theory in science. Have a look at the evidence--a small portion of it is easily available for the general audience online at talkorigins . Creationism and intelligent design on the other hand are compatible with all evidence, as one can simply say "goddiditthatway" and you're good...unless you want to call it science. You want things taught in science class that are argeed on, fine. Teach evolution.
Which might become more important as time goes on with global warming--I don't know how much fishing might go on at that latitude. Nations sometimes go all out for fishing rights. Right now South Korea has troops on the Takeshima (as the Japanese call them) or Dokdo (in Korean) island and it's causing a little bit of tension. Of course there's also some oil in the region which probably doesn't help matters either.
Evolution versus creationism would be a perfect tool for teaching about what science is and is not in places that don't have as strong of traditions of anti-intellectualism and religious fundamentalism as the US. Here a better topic for teaching what science is/is not might be heliocentrism versus flat earth or geocentrism, or germ theory of disease versus evil spirits. The scientific disparity between the two propositions is similar to that between evolution and creationism, but with the exception of a tiny minority of fundamentalist extremists neither is a hotbutton issue. I'd agree though that it'd be great if students were taught more about the philosophy of science than just rote memorization of facts.
" I made the mistake in my original post of not stressing enough that it was thought-inducing..."
I'll wager that with only one exception, all of the science you were taught in biology class was taught rather dogmatically: germs cause disease, life is cellular, mitosis, meiosis, photosynthesis, population genetics. The one area that was to be "thought-inducing" was evolutionary biology. Given that evolution is at least as well established as the rest of biology and that there are no valid scientific alternatives, why do you suppose that it might have been singled out?
"But at that particular moment in classes I am refering to my teacher was not refuting evolution, we were merely expressing other views on origins of life."
There is a problem with this statement. Right now there is only one scientifically valid point of view on the origins of the diversity of life and that is evolution. Notice the difference: diversity of life and the origin of life. The two are most definitely not the same. Evolution requires as a starting point some sort of replicator that the factors of mutation and natural selection can act upon, and nothing more. This doesn't even necessarily require something as complex as a cell. Evolution is not concerned with the origins of this first replicator; that falls under abiogenesis, which is a seperate field of study. As far as the theory of evolution is concerned this first replicator(s) could come about by natural means, aliens, or the supernatural and it would have no impact on evolutionary theory at all. If your teacher has implied that evolutionary biology and abiogenesis are synonymous s/he has done your education a disservice.
"As far as covering evolutionary material, we did that, in as much as is expected in a Biology 101 equivelant class, and much more."
It's the nature of that "much more" that draws concern. That your teacher failed to say "this is what happened" in comparing the solid science of evolution versus the disproven pseudoscience of creationism renders his/her intentions suspect.
Having followed with morbid curiousity the creation movement in the US for a number of years now, there are several key words that render the actions of your teacher suspect.
First, the "very religious" comment. This wouldn't raise my eyebrows except for the rest, as many very religious persons do not have a problem with the theory of evolution. Unfortunately a very vocal subset do. Also the very religious comment just begs the question of how you know this? Bumping into the teacher out in public or through their actions at school? The latter may be inappropriate depending on the circumstances.
Second: "...tought not to enforce biblical references..." Why should religious references even be mentioned in a science class?
Third: "taught the controversy" WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!There is no scientific controversy as to whether or not evolution occurs or new species appear, or as to the fact that humans and the other great apes share a common ancestor. The scientific debate that occurs is over the exact mechanisms of evolution and their relative importance. These are the real debates in evolution and represent the cutting edge of science. We don't teach the cutting edge in high school science classes, or even most undergraduate classes for that matter. "Teach the controversy" is simply a creationist code word for a religiously motivated attack on evolution that attempts to skirt the establishment clause.
Fourth: And right after that, we've got your statement that the teacher mentioned "both" and didn't point out the great differences between evolution and creationism. Evolution is the bedrock of biology and is the most thoroughly tested theory in science. It's been around for 150 years and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Creationism on the other hand is either a religious concept (actually several different and often incompatible concepts) or refers to pseudoscience, creationism having been removed from the realm of scientific possibility about 200 years ago and as such has no business in a high school science class.
So how does this hinder science? Well, it hinders science because your teacher wasted your classes' time by introducing unscientific ideas into a science class and removing time from actually teaching established science--the entire *point* of a science class. Worse, not by not highlighting the enormous differences between creationism and evolutionary biology your teacher implicity equated them. This is an attempt by your teacher to put you and your classmates on the path of hurtling American biology backwards two hundred years. Now while I think it'd be great if high school students could demonstrate full knowledge of what the scientific community knows and what current evolutionary biology entails, it looks pretty clear that this was not your teacher's intent.
Is what I first thought you wrote. It's really easy to picture Torquemada as an SCO lawyer. I see him shouting "Confess! Linux is of the Devil!" and threatening Linux users with litigation and burning at the stake if they don't pay SCO their licensing fee.
"I think some people have fewer "religious" objections to evolution and more "it just doesn't seem possible" ones than most scientists would like to admit."
First, neither religiously motived reasons nor arguments from personal incredulity are valid arguments for the rejection of sound science. Second, spend some time online reading what people who reject evolutionary biology write. It's been a hobby of mine for quite a few years now, and in my experience the overwhelming majority reject evolution because of literalistic interpretations of the Bible. Third, this really isn't earthshattering news. At the University of Oregon we've got a professor working on DNA methylation for about the last 25 years or so--DNA methylation being part of the epigenetics mentioned in the article. It's long been known that the environment can alter DNA by methylating nucleotides which can alter gene expression, and that these methylation events can be inheritable. This is a minor addition on the IMHO already elegant theory of evolution--for a quickie look check out wikipedia's page on epigenetic inheritance.
As others have mentioned, 1. Amtrak gets funded just barely enough so that big oil, automotive companies, trucking companies, and the aviation industry can point to it and say "see, passenger rail doesn't work!" 2. Amtrak doesn't have straight track of the quality required for high speed rail or the funds (see 1) to get it. What's been missed is that the FRA (Federal Railway Administration) mandates regulations that really don't make any sense. Japanese and European trains can't run on American tracks--issues of proper guage etc. aside because they don't meet our safety standards. According to the East Bay Bicycle Coalition (I hadn't heard of them before either, caveat emptor, blah blah blah), the FRA basically requires American passenger cars to be built like tanks, which apparently means 50-year old tech meets the spec, but modern, well-designed composite structures used in other countries are "unsafe," even though they are superior in actuality.
"This is why I always hope for at least a divided congress (one house controlled by each party) or a congress controlled by the party opposite of the president's. It's a lot harder to railroad legislation through when everyone's determined to fight each other."
Yeah, I mean I always like it when those corporate whores in the Republicrat party fight those big business whores in the Democan party!
From TFA: "innovative activity is greater at younger ages, although great achievement before the age of 30 is not typical. Rather, a researcher's output tends to rise steeply in the 20's and 30's, peak in the late 30's or early 40's[emphasis added], and then trail off slowly through later years (Lehman, 1953; Simonton, 1991)."
I was pretty sure when I read the write-up on/. that this 20's stuff was nonsense because it certainly isn't true in my field (biochemistry). Most people are pushing 30 when they get their Ph.D.'s; I'm the youngest of my entering class at U. Oregon to get my Ph.D. (in June) and I turn 30 in October. Hell I know a guy here who didn't get his until he just turned 40!
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George Deutsch was a political appointee, just like his boss Dean Acosta. Political appointees only need to be a crony to be qualified.
Maybe the question should be why there are political appointees in NASA Public Affairs Offices at all. Or why Deutsch or Acosta should tell NASA how to write about science--Acosta's mentioned in the NY Times article agreeing that the word "theory" ought to be used whenever "Big Bang" is mentioned, just because the "The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual" says so. Maybe the press offices, political or otherwise, ought to defer to physicists instead of some reporter's manual.
The molecular weight limit of NMR has been increasing quite a bit and now proteins on the order of 100 kDa are possible, although technically challenging. Lewis Kay's group at the University of Toronto has done a solution structure of an 80 kDa protein, for instance.
Yes, scientists are pretty much like everybody else. We're out for number one*, meaning that professionally (us still in academia) like to get big, fat grants from the government. Private corporations fund basic research at levels somewhere between a pittance and jack squat--we couldn't do basic research at all if it wasn't for government funding simply because private corporations need to turn a profit, and there is no guarantee that a given basic research project will find a way to produce some kind of income next quarter or ever. For example, a system I did my graduate work on has been studied off and on for fifty years, but only in the last four years has it attracted private funding because of potential payoff in antibiotics. Don't worry about public funding though: it's highly competitive and grants are (largely--we're imperfect too) awarded by merit. I've never heard of this "round robin boat race" kind of funding nor can I imagine anyone keeping a lab afloat for very long if they tried it. Fields are small, but there is constant competition amongst members of a field for a limited pool of money. How big a pool is well outside our control, and grants aren't awarded by a single person. Additionally, fields are not fixed and people frequently cross over or dabble in, meaning additional competition. Also egos tend to be huge and rivalries can be intense. My undergraduate advisor had a 50 year rivalry with another professor in the same field. What academics live for is big publications that are widely cited for novelty and of course being right...plus proving that jerk at University of Some State got points XYZ wrong in their last paper. You aren't going to do much back scratching with these things commonplace.
As for scandals like this, they happen occasionally. They're also usually found by people in the same field if an internal whistle-blower doesn't do it first. Any good experiment will produce questions based on the results of that experiment. If the initial experiment was wrong or faked, it will be detected eventually because subsequent experiment based on fraudulent data will produce nonsensical results. That's a part of peer review. I've never understood why someone in science would engage in fraud. You hear about it from time to time, after the person's been nailed, usually not too long after the fraud. Of course their career is over, and anyone unfortunate enough to be associated with them have their reputations tarnished as well. Scientists don't tolerate charlatans.
*That said, academics aren't really in it to make money. If you go the academic route in science here's a pay history: undergraduate: net negative income, graduate: $15-$22k/year, postdoctoral research associate: $35-45k/year, assistant prof $50k/year plus. Keep in mind the times in grade: 4-5 years undergrad, 5-7+ graduate, 3-8+ postdoc.
Some questions for Intelligent Design:
1. What is the scientific theory of intelligent design (ID)?
2. What evidence supports ID and not a competing theory?
3. What predictions does ID make?
4. How might ID be falsified?
The IDers have had since 1987 (when "intelligent design" was first used as a drop-in replacement for "creation science") to come up with answers for these questions and they've failed to not only make any headway, they've failed to even attempt to answer them. So you'll excuse me and fellow research scientists in biological fields for writing them off as a bunch of charlatans after waiting 18 years for them to get off their asses and actually do some research, or maybe, I dunno, formulate a scientific hypothesis in the first place? BTW, theory in science means more than halfassed guess, and putting the term in allcaps is an indication that you don't know this.
But wait, I've got some more questions for you:
5. Why does ID go directly to the courts and political process to try and get their idea accepted, instead of, doing some actual research?
6. If ID is not an entirely religious objection to established science, then can you explain The Wedge Document?
7. Explain why the Discovery Institute is funded largely by Howard Ahmanson, a person who also funds relgious extremists such as the Chalcedon Foundation, which has the express aim of turning the US into a theocracy?
8. Why is it that prominent proponents of ID frequently speak in churches, just like proponents of creation science?
9. Why was the Dover school board defended by the Thomas Moore Law Center, which is "...a not-for-profit public interest law firm dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life. Our purpose is to be the sword and shield for people of faith, providing legal representation without charge to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square." (from their own website) if ID is not religious?
10. Why was it that "Of Pandas and People," the ID textbook that was a major focus in Dover, written by creationists?
11. Why would Bill Dembski say "Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory," (quoted from wikipedia, refering to Touchstone Magazine. Volume 12, Issue4. July/August, 1999)?
12. Why would Touchstone Magazine, a "Journal of Mere Christianity", devote an entire issue to supporting ID?
Or maybe ID really is just a religiously-motivated argument from ignorance like all of us biological scientists think?
As much as I'd like Cushman and his fellow anti-science zealots out on their asses, I'd say that his zero votes in one precinct has the stench of fraud on it. The vote is disturbingly close, so Cushman would be right to contest the election. This won't effect the results much even if he were to gain a seat, because it would then only be 7 to 1 in favor of science on the Dover school board.
Unless you're talking about Intelligent Falling, then all bets are off. In all seriousness, this is just a little speedbump in the march of progress. The Kansas creationists tried this in 1999, and got voted out. Now they're are back, but they'll be easier to beat this time. Teaching creationism was found to be unconstitutional in Edwards v. Aguillard. In the Intelligent Design (ID) trial in Dover, strong evidence has been presented showing that "ID" is a drop-in replacement for "scientific creationism." For instance, in the ID book "Pandas and People" we have the remains of a word processor search and replace operation with "cdesign proponentsists" being the resulting "transitional fossil," as Pandas' Thumb puts it. The Dover transcripts make for some particularily hilarious reading, especially Mike Behe's testimony, or when members of the Dover school board perjure themselves. We can count on a trial taking place in Kansas very soon, and it will go in much the same manner as it did in Dover. The Kansas Kangaroo Court has already laid the groundwork, providing good evidence on the motivations of the IDers, and how they are indistinguishable from creationists. These guys have shot themselves in the foot so badly that if either Dover or Kansas went to the Supreme Court it is hard to imagine the outcome for ID being any different than it was in the Edwards v. Aguillard decision back in '87. The two dissenters in Edwards v. Aguillard were Scalia (predictable) and Rhenquist, so even with if Roberts and Alito* vote theocratic (unlikely, they seem rational to me, at least) it'll be a 5-4 split with ID losing. IANAL, tho. I think the big take home message of this is that all of us who care about science need to keep up on what the kooks are doing. While I'm fond of following the creationist movement and even have a small collection of creationists books I've picked up from used book stores, I don't have the slightest idea of who is on the local school board and whether they are pro- or anti-science. That's going to change, though.
The smiley-face bomber took place in May 2002 and was done by a mentally ill 21-year old named Lucas Helder.
See, it could be worse.
I'm taking Amtrak later this week from Eugene, OR (2 hours south of Portland) to Los Angeles. It's scheduled to take about 25 hours. However the route is a very heavy freight route, and they really, really hate Amtrak (which is understandable I suppose) so I expect my travel time to be in excess of 30 hours. My ticket however is less than half what airfare would cost, and it's a great way to see the country. I took Amtrak from Eugene to St. Paul for Christmas once and got to see parts of Montana and North Dakota that I'd otherwise never seen. The train stopped at every single station, even at some places where the station was boarded up and there were just a few pickups waiting for travelers comming home for the holidays. But that's vacation travel. Amtrak's completely impractical for anything else here, unless maybe in the high population areas it might work. I'm thinking Tacoma to Seattle or the equivalent in southern California.
Is the phonetic spelling here. You even see it on bumper stickers.
Government red tape on drugs seems pretty bizarre, not that I've been involved myself. But barbituric acid (as in barbituates) used to be a common buffer agent (pKa 3.98) in biochemical research. I found a 100 mg bottle of the stuff when an emeritus professor's lab was being cleaned out. Not being interested in anything past a little pot myself and the bottle was probably at least 10 years old, I got our lab tech to call environmental health and safety to dispose of it. The university campus is in an old hippie town, so I give it a 10% chance of actually being destroyed instead of used.
Two have featured protagonists that are probably undead, but non-vampires. High Plains Drifter features stranger riding in town who's tortured by dreams of being whipped to death by the three outlaws in town, while it's a bit more obvious in Pale Rider, where there is a brief shot of Preacher's back, featuring six healed bullet wounds centered on his heart.
"Yes, but it seems to me that sometimes the scientists themselves give misleading information to journalists, possibly to make their work seem more important."
My boss just had the opposite happen. The lab just published a fairly sexy paper, and the university publicist wanted a press release and so sent over a staff writer to talk to the boss and a grad student. The three of them worked on the release together and were all satisfied with it. Then the staff writer's editor decided to "punch it up a little." Sure the new article had no link to reality anymore but it was "punchy." Fortunately the original press release is what actually got out--my boss said that he'd have been humiliated if the punchy version got out. If an article gets out that misrepresents the work, the scientist may be embarrassed to his/her peers; even if they're directly quoted, because I know from personal miserable experience what reporters can do to verbal statements. I think it's often the editors and reporters who want to oversell the work--there's not much push for accuracy because it's not like they're the ones who spent years doing the research, but a punchy article might help sell newspapers. But then I've also been told sometimes that I need to "PT Barnum it up a little" when I'm giving talks or doing some writing...
"And while Kary Mullis made a brilliant discovery (PCR) he came up with it while he was stoned (no joke). This explains a lot of his unconventional theories..."
I've never met him, but he sure does sound...interesting. My graduate advisor told me a story about him once. Just recently after PCR came out, my advisor was a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute, and Mullis was invited to give a talk on PCR...but instead he presented a slideshow of nude photographs. Then there's his book "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field," which according to the amazon.com review mentions PCR of course, but also has his defense of astrology and his recounting of being abducted by aliens. To me, Mullis just points out the differences between the Nobel prize and membership in the National Academy of Sciences: the former is a prize for a discovery, the latter is a recognition by your peers of years of work of major importance.
"Unfortunately, seven-day-Creationists have corrupted the term worse than the words "communist" and "hacker" combined."
Except the term was initially used as a drop-in replacement for creationism in the 1989 book "Pandas and People," lately of fame in the Dover Intelligent Design scandal. Here's a review by the Geoscience Research Institute, a young-earth creationist group, from 1992. Notice in the review that "creationism" and "intelligent design" are used more or less interchangeably. Or you can read a 1989 review from the National Center for Science Education that finds the same thing. ID wasn't taken over by creationists. It was founded by them.
I can think of nothing more convincing than the evidence. Such as the nearly complete Turkana Boy skeleton, an example of Homo erectus from roughly 1.6 million years ago, as presented in this textbook on evolution. A few ribs my ass. Or how about this nice picture of a whole bunch of hominid skulls from 2.6 million years ago to the present? Teach it for real, and it doesn't take undergraduate level biochemistry. Show the kids pictures of the fossils. Tell the kids about human DNA: how our chromosome 2 is clearly the result of a fusion event between two mid-sized progenitor chromosomes, which are still seen in chimps, our closest relatives. Tell the kids that 200 years ago christian geologists went looking for evidence of the Biblical flood and instead found evidence that the Earth is ancient. While we're at it, we should show them the evidence for creationism and intelligent design, too: a deafening silence lasting 10 seconds should suffice.
You want to falsify evolution? Okay, find a bunny rabbit in the Precambrian. Sequence a mamalian genome and find out that it is more closely related to a banana than another mammal. Find a lizard that doesn't use the standard genetic code or a very close derivative of it. Find a bird with a different set of 20 amino acids. Find a chimera--for instance, a tree with 100% tree features, except that it's TCA cycle enzymes are identical to those found in mice, or if you don't want any biochemistry or genetics, find a goat with bird feathers--can't happen under evolution. Every day, more fossils are found. More genes are sequenced. More papers published, and more proteins are compared. Every day evolution is tested, as it makes specific predictions about how species are interrelated. As a result, evolution is the most thoroughly tested theory in science. Have a look at the evidence--a small portion of it is easily available for the general audience online at talkorigins . Creationism and intelligent design on the other hand are compatible with all evidence, as one can simply say "goddiditthatway" and you're good...unless you want to call it science. You want things taught in science class that are argeed on, fine. Teach evolution.
Which might become more important as time goes on with global warming--I don't know how much fishing might go on at that latitude. Nations sometimes go all out for fishing rights. Right now South Korea has troops on the Takeshima (as the Japanese call them) or Dokdo (in Korean) island and it's causing a little bit of tension. Of course there's also some oil in the region which probably doesn't help matters either.
Evolution versus creationism would be a perfect tool for teaching about what science is and is not in places that don't have as strong of traditions of anti-intellectualism and religious fundamentalism as the US. Here a better topic for teaching what science is/is not might be heliocentrism versus flat earth or geocentrism, or germ theory of disease versus evil spirits. The scientific disparity between the two propositions is similar to that between evolution and creationism, but with the exception of a tiny minority of fundamentalist extremists neither is a hotbutton issue. I'd agree though that it'd be great if students were taught more about the philosophy of science than just rote memorization of facts.
" I made the mistake in my original post of not stressing enough that it was thought-inducing..."
I'll wager that with only one exception, all of the science you were taught in biology class was taught rather dogmatically: germs cause disease, life is cellular, mitosis, meiosis, photosynthesis, population genetics. The one area that was to be "thought-inducing" was evolutionary biology. Given that evolution is at least as well established as the rest of biology and that there are no valid scientific alternatives, why do you suppose that it might have been singled out?
"But at that particular moment in classes I am refering to my teacher was not refuting evolution, we were merely expressing other views on origins of life."
There is a problem with this statement. Right now there is only one scientifically valid point of view on the origins of the diversity of life and that is evolution. Notice the difference: diversity of life and the origin of life. The two are most definitely not the same. Evolution requires as a starting point some sort of replicator that the factors of mutation and natural selection can act upon, and nothing more. This doesn't even necessarily require something as complex as a cell. Evolution is not concerned with the origins of this first replicator; that falls under abiogenesis, which is a seperate field of study. As far as the theory of evolution is concerned this first replicator(s) could come about by natural means, aliens, or the supernatural and it would have no impact on evolutionary theory at all. If your teacher has implied that evolutionary biology and abiogenesis are synonymous s/he has done your education a disservice.
"As far as covering evolutionary material, we did that, in as much as is expected in a Biology 101 equivelant class, and much more."
It's the nature of that "much more" that draws concern. That your teacher failed to say "this is what happened" in comparing the solid science of evolution versus the disproven pseudoscience of creationism renders his/her intentions suspect.
Having followed with morbid curiousity the creation movement in the US for a number of years now, there are several key words that render the actions of your teacher suspect.
First, the "very religious" comment. This wouldn't raise my eyebrows except for the rest, as many very religious persons do not have a problem with the theory of evolution. Unfortunately a very vocal subset do. Also the very religious comment just begs the question of how you know this? Bumping into the teacher out in public or through their actions at school? The latter may be inappropriate depending on the circumstances.
Second: "...tought not to enforce biblical references..." Why should religious references even be mentioned in a science class?
Third: "taught the controversy" WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!There is no scientific controversy as to whether or not evolution occurs or new species appear, or as to the fact that humans and the other great apes share a common ancestor. The scientific debate that occurs is over the exact mechanisms of evolution and their relative importance. These are the real debates in evolution and represent the cutting edge of science. We don't teach the cutting edge in high school science classes, or even most undergraduate classes for that matter. "Teach the controversy" is simply a creationist code word for a religiously motivated attack on evolution that attempts to skirt the establishment clause.
Fourth: And right after that, we've got your statement that the teacher mentioned "both" and didn't point out the great differences between evolution and creationism. Evolution is the bedrock of biology and is the most thoroughly tested theory in science. It's been around for 150 years and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Creationism on the other hand is either a religious concept (actually several different and often incompatible concepts) or refers to pseudoscience, creationism having been removed from the realm of scientific possibility about 200 years ago and as such has no business in a high school science class.
So how does this hinder science? Well, it hinders science because your teacher wasted your classes' time by introducing unscientific ideas into a science class and removing time from actually teaching established science--the entire *point* of a science class. Worse, not by not highlighting the enormous differences between creationism and evolutionary biology your teacher implicity equated them. This is an attempt by your teacher to put you and your classmates on the path of hurtling American biology backwards two hundred years. Now while I think it'd be great if high school students could demonstrate full knowledge of what the scientific community knows and what current evolutionary biology entails, it looks pretty clear that this was not your teacher's intent.
Is what I first thought you wrote. It's really easy to picture Torquemada as an SCO lawyer. I see him shouting "Confess! Linux is of the Devil!" and threatening Linux users with litigation and burning at the stake if they don't pay SCO their licensing fee.
"I think some people have fewer "religious" objections to evolution and more "it just doesn't seem possible" ones than most scientists would like to admit."
First, neither religiously motived reasons nor arguments from personal incredulity are valid arguments for the rejection of sound science. Second, spend some time online reading what people who reject evolutionary biology write. It's been a hobby of mine for quite a few years now, and in my experience the overwhelming majority reject evolution because of literalistic interpretations of the Bible. Third, this really isn't earthshattering news. At the University of Oregon we've got a professor working on DNA methylation for about the last 25 years or so--DNA methylation being part of the epigenetics mentioned in the article. It's long been known that the environment can alter DNA by methylating nucleotides which can alter gene expression, and that these methylation events can be inheritable. This is a minor addition on the IMHO already elegant theory of evolution--for a quickie look check out wikipedia's page on epigenetic inheritance.
As others have mentioned, 1. Amtrak gets funded just barely enough so that big oil, automotive companies, trucking companies, and the aviation industry can point to it and say "see, passenger rail doesn't work!" 2. Amtrak doesn't have straight track of the quality required for high speed rail or the funds (see 1) to get it. What's been missed is that the FRA (Federal Railway Administration) mandates regulations that really don't make any sense. Japanese and European trains can't run on American tracks--issues of proper guage etc. aside because they don't meet our safety standards. According to the East Bay Bicycle Coalition (I hadn't heard of them before either, caveat emptor, blah blah blah), the FRA basically requires American passenger cars to be built like tanks, which apparently means 50-year old tech meets the spec, but modern, well-designed composite structures used in other countries are "unsafe," even though they are superior in actuality.
"This is why I always hope for at least a divided congress (one house controlled by each party) or a congress controlled by the party opposite of the president's. It's a lot harder to railroad legislation through when everyone's determined to fight each other."
Yeah, I mean I always like it when those corporate whores in the Republicrat party fight those big business whores in the Democan party!
From TFA: "innovative activity is greater at younger ages, although great achievement before the age of 30 is not typical. Rather, a researcher's output tends to rise steeply in the 20's and 30's, peak in the late 30's or early 40's [emphasis added], and then trail off slowly through later years (Lehman, 1953; Simonton, 1991)."
/. that this 20's stuff was nonsense because it certainly isn't true in my field (biochemistry). Most people are pushing 30 when they get their Ph.D.'s; I'm the youngest of my entering class at U. Oregon to get my Ph.D. (in June) and I turn 30 in October. Hell I know a guy here who didn't get his until he just turned 40!
I was pretty sure when I read the write-up on