Fermented nectar - key to primate evolution?

This is sort of a neat observation, based on 3 captive animals, so you know, let's not go crazy and suggest things like preferring fermented nectar has anything to do with primate evolution.  It's just that beetle grubs taste better when served with the correct vintage. Every one knows that. 

A science missionary in dangerous country (state)

Teaching if done well is a difficult task, although it does get easier with practice. Teaching is also easiest when the students are interested, eager, and willing. When they aren't one or more of those, it can be very difficult especially when they view some of your subjects as wrong or even evil, as in evilution. However, for TPP it has never even been slightly dangerous even in those large, non-majors lectures where you almost failed the star basket ball center. Not all of us are so fortunate to live in an area as enlightened (??) as the upper midwest.  Here's a link to a blog of one of my colleagues living in a "different country". Best if you read his story in his own words. He's a brave fellow; personally rednecks are best left alone.

Why does anyone care what politicians think about evolution?

It's only been a dozen days since Darwin's birthday, and evolution is in the news, and not because of some new study, but because a possible presidential candidate punted when asked about it.  Clearly at one level what difference could it possibly make what a politician thinks about evolution? A successful alumnus of our university with a position on the foundation board once asked TPP if he "believed" in evolution.  TPP responded, "It's not a belief; it's a well documented and very useful scientific theory, and yes, I use it all the time". What most people don't understand is that if you could poke a hole in some major component of evolutionary theory (science proceeds by falsification) it could make your career. And what we do for research is constantly testing various components of the theory, and even though biologists have been at it for 180 years, the results have been to improve understandings and add components and nuances to the theory, to meld various fields together, but no holes have been punched.  So why ask a politician what they think about evolution?  An essay in the NYer does a nice job of explaining. "What the question means, and why it matters, is plain: Do you have the courage to embrace an inarguable and obvious truth when it might cost you something to do so? A politician who fails this test is not high-minded or neutral; he or she is just craven, and shouldn’t be trusted with power. This catechism’s purpose—perhaps unfair in its form, but essential in its signal—is to ask, Do you stand with reason and evidence sufficiently to anger people among your allies who don’t?"  And in this context this is a more certain test than asking about climate change. 

Lone Star Science

Well, it don't surprise me none that all of the candidates for Lt. Gov. of Texas wants to teach creationism in schools.  This is a special brand of ignorance that doesn't see any difference between what science knows and what they believe, and no matter what, they want their beliefs to be taught as truth  in public schools even though this is only one of many religious truths.  This means that in teaching creationism the state becomes a de facto promoter of the Christian religion, a constitutional no-no.  And no matter what they really think, none of these politicians want to chance any nuanced position no matter how many times creationism has been ruled a purely religious idea. It's not that creationism or its offspring intelligent design are wrong, it's that they are useless.  You can't use them to do science, which also reflects how badly science is being taught, and this is the all important criterion of science: theories must be useful. As my colleague notes: "Evolution isn’t politics, it’s science. And science is a reflection of our attempts to understand how the Universe works. Evolution isn’t a guess, or a cynical move to promote atheism, or whatever feverishly imagined bugaboo flies around in the heads of these four men." Unfortunately such ignorance far from being a deal breaker, this is how you get elected in Texas, and in a number of other states too. It's no wonder that "red states" are leading education in the USA into further decline.

Hysterical distinction of historical science

Do you know the difference between “historical” and “observational”/experimental science?  Well, it makes a big difference to creationists!   You see in an effort to discredit the fossil record and all of geology, it is necessary to make a big distinction (link to discussion at National Center for Science Education) that doesn't exist.  The assumption here is that you can only know something if it was directly observed.  Amazing!  Creationist students are being taught to ask science teachers “How do you know?  Were you there?”  Without direct observation, you cannot know something.  Think about how much knowledge that rules out.  Inference is just so much wishful thinking.  This is a made up distinction that is just plain silly.  Creationist also made up the distinction between “microevolution” and “macroevolution” because it has become basically impossible to argue that “microevolution” doesn’t happen.  No such distinction is made in biology, but what do you expect?  These people don’t know science and they don’t want to know science.  It further demonstrates that creationism is actually know-nothing-ism. 

How to determine science textbook content in Texas

Just recently TPP wrote about efforts to alterscience textbooks in Texas.  Here’s a comment from one of the people, Karen Beathard, who was appointed to the panel to review the content of science textbooks.  "Creation science based on biblical principles should be incorporated into every biology book."  Well, that’s clear enough.  To Karen the Bible is authoritative, but in science?  Does she care to explain?  “Any statements made were my own personal beliefs.”  Now isn’t that the way to determine the content of science textbooks?  You can see what expertise Karen brings to the textbook panel discussion.  Dear Karen, what makes your own personal beliefs so extra special that they should be presented to every student in Texas?  Does everybody get to have their personal beliefs taught as science?  How about math?  Do you have any personal beliefs about the value of Pi?  The Bible does say that King Solomon had a vase whose circumference was exactly three times its diameter, so on biblical principles pi = 3.  Yes, it’s just an endless non-repeating set of decimals dropped off, so what does it matter?  Once again, like creationism, it just isn’t wrong, it’s useless. 

Texas and textbooks

Oh, Texas, don’t ever…evolve

By Cuttlefish

The bible is my textbook;
It’s the only one I need
It’s got all the information
That a person ought to read
Any open-minded scientist
Would certainly concede
It’s a better book than Darwin’s is, by far!

It’s the universe’s history—
All several thousand years—
And it shows how evolution’s
Not as strong as it appears
(Cos it’s atheistic scientists
Just covering their fears);
God created things exactly as they are

So it’s time to put the bible
Into all our Texas schools!
It’s against the constitution,
But they always say, of rules,
That they’re there for us to break them,
So watch out, you godless fools
We will have our way, through providence divine!

Yes, we’ll earn our reputation
As a stubborn, backward state
Though it’s really not the people,
It’s the board that guards the gate
So the people watch in horror
As creationists debate…

See, it’s what you call intelligent design.
________________
Once again the science textbook debate focuses on Texas.  Some Texans want science textbooks to be written in such a manner that children can decide for themselves if evolution is a valid explanation or not, as if the experts really don’t know, and kids could think so critically.  The critics of science don’t want textbooks to say that anything is known; they want analysis, they want science evaluated, as if this never happens in science itself.  Said one textbook evaluator (from the Huffpo), “I’m just looking for evolution to be presented honestly and not be given a materialistic slant that’s not warranted by the evidence”.  That’s quite a statement.  Science is operationally “materialistic”, that is science acts as if the supernatural doesn’t exist, and given the evidence that’s a reasonable enough position, but science operates this way because no one has yet been able to figure out how to do science any other way.  In other words materialistic science works.   There are no examples, no studies, no breakthroughs, no advances in knowledge, in medicine, in agriculture that have used a non-materialistic, let’s call it magical, approach.  So this fellow thinks a materialistic approach that works is a “slant” and he prefers that be balanced by a magical approach, and for the purpose of enhancing science education.  How ironic then that this fellow thinks evolution is not being presented honestly, although certainly in textbooks the presentation is often overly simplistic, and over the years no one has been more critical of how science is presented in textbooks thanTPP.  Of course, that statement is meant to sound reasonable, like who can argue with balance, analysis, honesty, and evidence?  When you dig deeper you find out that critics of evolution don’t want evidence to be presented if they don’t like its implications.  After all you hear over and over and over again that the fossil record doesn’t support an evolutionary explanation, which is so totally at odds with what you actually know, which means that a subtle dishonesty is being presented here where you make the skeptics, real scientists, sound dogmatic, while the religiously dogmatic are made to sound reasonable, as if by magic reversing their true positions.  Yea, Texas! Oh, wait, isn't that Ted's state? 

Botany confernence symposium generating more PR for Louisiana

Oh, gosh!  OK, it's just the Huffington Post, but it's more real good PR for Louisiana and its Governor Bobby Jindal.  Here's the link to what the HuffPo had to say about the symposium "Yes, Bobby, Evolution is True".  Quite a few highly complementary comments follow the article.  But what else is there to say?  Oh, yes, one commenter brought up the old "it's only a theory, not a fact" objection to evolution.  Well, many, many parts of the theory of evolution are facts, i.e., natural selection, and so on, and evolution works.  We use evolution in agriculture and medicine; stop and think about why you need a new flu shot each year.  There is no creationist/ID medicine or agriculture because it's a useless idea.  So we have a scientific explanation that works supported by lots of evidence, and a religiously based explanation with no supporting evidence that doesn't work, and then we get politicians that want us to spend time on the latter at the expense of the former.  How great is that for science education?  TPP is having some fun here at the meetings with all his colleagues.

Uh,oh! Botanists laugh at LA legislators who don't like evolution

Well, it just couldn't be helped.  For no particular reasons that TPP can see, a symposium entitled, "Yes, Bobby, Evolution is true" at our annual ongoing botanical meetings in New Orleans attracted some attention:  Now why would evolution be controversial?  Bobby got an invitation, to attend although his spokesperson said they didn't know about that.  But hey, a governor at a botanical meeting - aint' gunna happen.  Here's what the Times Picayune had to say.  Well, the college student presenter Zach Kopplin, just put up videos of LA legislators in action: defending witch doctors, carping about people with all those little letters after their names (like PhD) telling you what to do, and the like, and yep, a national audience of scientists laughed.  Now of course, this is quite unfair.  Similar videos of our own state (and federal) legislators in action would also elicit laughter, and are there any that wouldn't?  Now what all this was about is a LA law that basically permits teachers to introduce creationism and intelligent design into science classes.  The code phrases are "academic freedom" and "critical thinking".  In and of themselves these are good things, but when used as a smoke screen for pseudoscience, us professional science educators just can't be quiet.  So, yes, Bobby, people from across the nation laughed at you.  How's that work for your aspirations on a national level?  Still want the GnOPe to stop being the party of stupid?  Well, you signed the bill. 

Cretaceous to present - in 4 lectures

Well, as usual when teaching plant diversity, you get to angiosperms just at the end of the semester, but only by moving through gymnosperms rather quickly.  Angiosperms are the last major plant group to appear in the fossil record, and that appearance is about 135 million years ago.  So let's see that's almost 45 million years a lecture. Wow!  Time to get moving; a lot can happen in this period of time.  Consider this, the extinction of the dinosaurs perhaps due to a major asteroid impact occurred 65 million years ago, the event that defined the end of the Cretaceous. The vast majority of mammal evolution has taken place since then. Think about this. Grasses hadn't evolved yet, some thing that was necessary before the large mammalian herbivores could evolve, something that turned little forest understory browsers into the horse you are familiar with today.  Some of the dinosaurs were pretty big browsers too, but their primary food was ferns, conifers, and cycads.  What a change!  And of course the very recent intimate interaction between humans and plants in the form of agriculture has produced some winners (maize, soybeans) and some losers (tallgrass prairie plants). 

Misunderstanding science in Louisiana

In a recent hearing on science education, Louisiana state Sen. Mike Walsworth was questioning a science teacher about the teaching of evolution. He asked if there was an experiment that would prove the theory of evolution “without a shadow of a doubt.” 
How do you answer such a moronic, ignorant question?  TPP would be tempted to respond, “Wow, I don’t know how to respond to someone who understands so little about science that  they would ask that question.”  Actually, the Senator probably knew the answer, and this is the sort of gotcha question lawyers like to use, so attempting to answer it is playing his game, and he’s picking on a high school teacher not an evolutionary biologist.  You’d be tempted to say, “Senator, given that more than enough evidence exists to convince virtually all biologists of the factual nature of evolution, and yet you remain unconvinced, clearly one experiment of any kind, on any subject with any result isn’t going to convince you of anything.”  And when the teacher told the Senator of Richard Linski’s quite amazing experiment in bacterial evolution, a good example for a single experiment, the Senator asks if any of the bacteria evolved into a person.  Yes, and they became a state legislator.  Any biologist who claimed or suggested such a thing would be a certified loonie, so again the Senator is playing games to try to get a proponent of evolution to admit that the experiment didn’t show bacteria could evolve into people even though the theory of evolution never would predict such an event.  What the experiment does show amply is that natural selection can generate surprising amounts of genetic modifications in a very short period of time.  What evolution does say is that much, much earlier in Earth history both humans and bacteria shared a common ancestor. 
It would probably be useless to try to explain to this fellow that science doesn’t try to prove anything; science falsifies the alternatives.  Over 150 years ago Darwin said that evolution was descent with modification and he proposed that natural selection, differential reproduction of genetic variants, was the mechanism by which this modification occurred.  So ever since then, biologists of all sorts have been trying to falsify the idea of descent with modification, and they have failed.  Along the way a lot of hypotheses about specific descents have been falsified, but nothing has shaken this hypothesis at all.  And biologists have been examining natural selection in the lab and in the field such that now thousands of examples of how selection works are well documented, and not only that but biologists have found additional mechanisms that also generate modifications.  So Senator, once you know about all of this mountain of evidence, biologists are quite justified in saying that evolution is true “without a shadow of a doubt.” 
TPP will be in Louisiana this summer and we'll have a special symposium on evolution for people like the Senator where we'll ask the question, "Can people like this demonstrate any ability to learn science, and if they can't, can they just learn to leave the teaching of science to the people who can?"

TPP is proposing a new scientific term “Brounian movement” – the directional movement of science from its current state of knowledge to that of the dark ages.  Now the fact that Paul Broun thinks evolution is a “lie straight from the pit of hell”, thereby making biologists such as myself demons spreading Satan’s message, is no big deal because every culture has its atavistic knee-biters, but this fellow is a Republican (no surprise here) congressman, running unopposed for re-election, and here my fellow residents of the world it gets worse, and for this TPP feels the need to apologize for our culture, not because of what it is, but for the undue influence it has on other citizens of the world, because this guy and a bunch of other Bible beaters are members of the House Committee on Science and Technology.  Yes, about 25% of this committee are religious fundamentalists who deny science.  Sorry, world.  People in the USA put foxes in charge of chickens.  One of the problems with our culture is a deep seated anti-intellectualism that thinks good-old-boy street smarts is just as valid as science.  So please, do not look to the USA for much leadership, for much creativity, for much forward thinking, because just as in other countries that we too often denigrate, way too many of our citizens would sell democracy down the river for a theocracy, so long as it was their theology.  What do you say to people who say evolution is a lie straight from the pits of hell?  TPP can think of nothing that would make an impression on such a mind set.  Along with my colleagues we set down the botanical perspective on evolution.  What part does Congressman Broun think is a lie?  Natural selection?  That’s only been demonstrated a few thousands of times.  Do they think descent with modification is a lie?  Then why does every data set, all kinds of fossil data, and all kinds of developmental studies seem to fit with descent with modification?  And as for the Earth only being 6000 years old, well good luck with that one.  Broun claims that as a scientist, something he isn’t although he has science degrees, he has seen evidence of a young Earth.  Want to bet?  The only geologists that might agree also think the Earth is flat.  In fact so much evidence exists it is perfectly reasonable to say that people like Broun are cranks, people who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that science knows anything, until he needs an antibiotic.  So sorry, my fellow citizens of Earth.  The USA may well be letting you down in the area of science, not that there are many shining examples of really scientifically literate countries elsewhere around the world.  Religion holds such a sway upon minds that they are unable to appreciate or accept what is known.  How depressing. 

Planning a symposium in Louisiana

Next summer the botanical meetings will be held in New Orleans, and TPP is looking forward to the food and music, oh, and the botany.  Good planning, go to Louisiana in the summer, but probably that's when academic types, especially students, can better afford it with off-season rates.  So some of us been thinking, how about a symposium on evolution titled "Yes, Bobby (Jindal), evolution is real".  It's hard to believe Jindal falls for the "it's just a theory" line; it's easier to believe he that he would play religious conservatives for political reasons, but why not take him to task?  So we can have some fun with this.  Maybe we invite Dr. Donald Aguillard to speak.  He's the superintendent of the St. Mary Parish School District, but if his name sounds familiar it's because he was the lead plaintiff in the Edwards v. Aguillard Supreme Court Case in 1987 that ruled the teaching of creationism in public school science classes is unconstitutional.  Jindal has made news by giving vouchers, public money, to private religious schools who are under no such prohibition.  They can teach all the anti-science stuff they want.  So maybe the botanists get a bit uppity for a change.  If you want to know what botanists think about all this, here's the link to the Botanical Society's statement on evolution, which is pretty good even if TPP was the primary author.

Mail from alternative universes

Not everybody is happy with the idea of exporing other planets for evidence of life.  Everything about cosmological biochemistry suggests that life at the simplest level is going to be pretty common in this universe, so any evidence of prior life on Mars would be quite encouraging, but sounds like this is pretty threatening to people who don't rely on biology to explain life.  And how exciting that other people (Faye Flam in this case) get such interesting mail. 

How comforting to know that $2.5 billion of our tax dollars are being wasted (sorry, “invested”) to find evidence of life of Mars. The critical clues will be traces of water. And we all know what that means. Just get yourself some carbon (and a few other things) and JUST ADD WATER, and voila, LIFE!

Silicon is the seventh most abundant element in the universe. The planet Mars apparently has a heavy dose of it. Should NASA then say that Mars has the ingredients for computer chips and laptops, with the intended implication that computer chips and laptops may have self-assembled on Mars in the past, or might in the future?

“There's almost unanimous agreement that Mars once had conditions suitable for life as we understand it, he said. If life never arose, he said, scientists will want to know why not.”

NASA wants to know why life did NOT arise on Mars? As if to say NASA knows why life DID arise on earth? Incredible!

Then, the finale. This unintentional but damning indictment of the evolutionists and origin-of-lifers and all of junk science: “Anderson said he won't be disappointed if Curiosity fails to bring us any evidence of past life. "You have to be careful that you don't confuse what you want to see with what you are seeing."

Here's Faye's response:  Hello. I’d like you to know your letter reached our universe with success. I’ve been particularly conscious of parallel universes in the last week since I started reading “Why the World Exists” by Jim Holt. This book blends physics and philosophy to explore the question of existence. There’s much discussion of parallel universes in which the constants of nature and perhaps the very laws are different from ours.
Do you have philosophy in your universe? Is your universe apparently expanding? Ours is accelerating. Isn’t that the weirdest thing? And we’ve just confirmed that our space is pervaded by a Higgs field which gives elementary particles mass. What kinds of particles do you have in your corner of the mutliverse?
I’m intrigued that in your universe evolution is “junk science”. That’s mind-bending for us here on Earth because natural selection is such an elegant process, it’s hard to conceive of a universe in which life would emerge and not be subject to it. How does it work out your way?
Your universe seems to have quite the negative attitude toward space exploration. Where does that come from? Do you have other planets in your solar system? Do you have solar systems? You must at least have Google translate, since you message reached me in English, though I think you might have a few glitches. Anyway, nice to hear from you. Keep in touch.

Oh, Faye, such a good reply.  So nice to be friendly with alien intellects, but unfortunately such minds are all too common around the USA.

Happy Birthday, Charles!

Today is the anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday 203 years ago.  It's easy for an evolutionary biologist to get depressed these days what with the prospects of getting a GnOPe candidate that has even the slightest regard for science essentially nil.  And even worse when because your understanding of science suggests policies that run afoul of conservative ideology, they label you unAmerican conspirators in undermining the USA.  There was a time in this country when policy was debated, but then politicians found out it was easier to deny the science rather than debate policy, and now the people who do the science are being demonized.  If these ideologues have their way the USA will fall even further under the sway of fundamentalist theocrats, and thus our society will begin to converge on that of Islamic countries charging forward into the past, the distant past, the Dark Ages, at a time when fewer and fewer realize that embracing science is one of the few avenues to maintaining any type of competitive advantage internationally.  This is so depressing the Phactor seldom blogs about it, but he wonders what is going to happen when people who make up their own facts and their own history actually try to use their fantasies to interact with the world at large and run smack dab into a serious dose of reality.  More denial?  More demonization?  So it would seem.  And the worst part is that so many people so readily fall for it.  Depressing indeed.

Mostly Unicellular

"Unicellular organisms are so successful, so numerous, and so diverse that an unbiased description of life on Earth could be summed up with just two words: mostly unicellular." This is the 1st sentence from the 3d chapter of the book the Phactor is supposed to be finishing, soon. This of course paraphrases the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe's description of Earth: mostly harmless. As a big conspicuous organism living at a macroscopic level, it's very hard to understand just how many unicellular organisms there are, but just as a hint, your body harbors more unicellular organisms than you have cells making up your body, and both are really big numbers. The other thing about this is that organisms seem to have become big, and this happened because lots of small cells teamed up to produce big organisms, rather quickly, at least in geological terms, which means over millions of years. Recent research has shown that under selection pressure, yeast, usually a unicellular organism, becomes multicellular rather quickly. Although this seems to be getting a lot of attention, it doesn't actually surprise the Phactor very much for two reasons. One yeast undoubtably has a multicellular ancestry among filamentous fungi, in other words, it was reduced to unicellularity and it isn't unreasonable to think that some of its multicellular genetic heritage still resides within. When dividing quickly, yeast cells divide by budding, an asymmetrical division, that can produce short chains of cells although evetually they separate. Second, research with other unicellular organisms, in this instance a unicellular algae called Chlorella that lives free-floating in its aquatic environment, has shown similar tendencies. If predators are in the environment, the selection pressure upon unicells (getting eaten), selects for larger multicellular organisms where several cells hang together after division rather than separating. This makes them larger and not so prone to predation, and therefore more successful in reproducing. This is just what evolution is about, non-random reproduction. If anyone says they don't understand how random processes can produce biological diversity they have demonstrated that they have no idea at all of what they speak. What is being altered by the selection is developmental timing, the onset of cell wall synthesis, which if it begins prior to cell separation effectively "glues" the two daughter cells together. Note that no new genes were needed, no new genetic information, just a bit of inheritable variation in developmental timing. In the absence of predators, the selection pressure shifts back and unicellular types again dominate because the bigger multicelled algae have a faster sinking rate and aren't as successful as free-floating algae under these conditions. No big surprises here although certainly a very nice piece of research, and when the actual publication is released, we shall see if the algae work is cited in their literature or not.

Teach the controversy column?

Jay Mathews column the other day at the WashPo seemed to be promoting the idea that it would be a good educational idea to teach the controversy, to teach evolution and some form of creationism or intelligent design, so that students could make up their own minds. It's so annoying, annoying enough that the Phactor sent him an email saying, in part: Please, not teach the controversy again. There is no scientific controversy because to be a scientific theory, an explanation, it has to be useful, able to be used to do science. Creationism & ID aren't just wrong; they're useless making no predictions. And gave him the link to the statement on evolution from the Botanical Society of America. And he responds: thanks, but column doesnt say teach the controversy. It says teach the scientific method.---jay. So I re-read his column, and it still sounds like he thinks Santorum's idea to teach the controversy is a good one. Have a look, see what you think.

New Hampster devolving

This is a new twist on the usual state legislative attempts to limit the teaching of evolution. Jerry Bergevin's (R - 17th district) bill would "[r]equire evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists' political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism". The first reaction is, huh? But then Jerry explains, "I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented. It's a worldview and it's godless." Oh, those darned atheistic biologists; let's expose them all! What a mind thought of this! What's going on here, other than blithering ignorance, is that Jerry is projecting his approach for understanding the world onto science, specifically evolution. Jerry thinks you start with an ideology and then make everything fit. Science is operationally materialistic because no one has ever figured out how to do science unless you simply ignore the possibility of supernatural influences. One, this doesn't mean the supernatural doesn't exist, although the success of science in explaining things does create doubts. Two, just because science operates materialistically, it doesn't mean scientists themselves are atheists. Good old Jerry thinks you start with an atheistic world view and then fit all the facts and all the explanations to come out the way you want them to be. The real problem is that science takes all the facts and then constructs explanations for them, and unlike politicians, scientists cannot ignore the facts. Evolution is a far-reaching explanatory theory for the observed natural world. So if people like Jerry don't like evolution, or any science for that matter (why only evolution?), because it offends their delicate religious sensibilities, all they have to do is come up with a better explanation. That isn't so easy because not only do such explanations have to make sense out of all the facts, but the explanation has to be useful, it has to be capable of generating predictions that allow you to do science. HT to the National Center for Science Education.

Dear Noelle, science is not for you

Noelle Nikpour just doesn't get science, so it's probably a good things she's in a field where looks go further than smarts. Here she is sounding like a complete dummy on the Daily Show where of course they do their best to help you along and she delivers the dumbth. Unfortunately for Noelle and other people who don't like science, and what science tells us, science just isn't fair or open to a popular vote. It's that tyranny of data thing, that dogged insistence that you must actually deal with what is known, so you can't just make it up as you go along to agree with your preconceived notions. How dare those scientists act like they actually know something and understand things that you don't understand! Scientists have data, evidence, and Noelle has a gut feeling it's all a scam! Well, the Phactor for one just passed his mandatory Lincolnland ethics training course, with honors! Well, perhaps given the source of the training, and our politicians' track records, you are not impressed, but it's just the wrong people taking the training. Nonetheless no one would like it better if science were just a scam because it would all be just so much easier. Where is all this scam money anyways? My lab needs some! The Phactor wants to sign up. Back to Noelle. Is she really that dumb, or is it an act, you know a scam, to make money? If so, based on her experience, scientists are acting the same way she is. You know, that's a testable hypothesis, and if true, then if someone offers Noelle enough money, she'll change her tune. It's a win-win situation except do we want Noelle on our side?

YEC Chemist tells it like it isn't.

Most physical scientists really don't know hardly anything about biology. Chemists take physics and math, physicists take chemistry and math, but most of them, with the exception of biochemists, take no biology at all, and if they do take biology, it's always at the cellular-molecular level and from a reductionist perspective, so no surprise that few chemists know much about the synthetic parts of biology. Here's a couple of excerpts from an interview with a YEC (young Earth creationist) who's a chemist.
What about the contrary evidence from scientific dating methods?
"There are always assumptions behind dating methods. They're not infallible. They can be made to point to a young Earth, as well as an old Earth.
The evidence is not what people think. For example, people think that carbon 14 dating proves millions of years, but carbon 14 dating itself argues against millions of years."
Wow! Now remember, he's a chemist. First he makes "assumptions" sound like 18 impossible things you have to believe before breakfast, but the assumptions of radioactive dating methods can be and have been tested, i.e., rates of decay and their constancy under different environmental conditions. For a chemist to make that statement about carbon 14 dating they either have to be a really pathetic chemist or a bloody liar. Carbon 14 can only date relatively young things because of its rapid decay rate, so beyond 50,000 years carbon 14 dating just doesn't work, and no credible scientist would claim it did. You want to age charcoal from an archaeological site in North America? Fine. Age of the Earth? Millions of years? Ridiculous!
What do you believe are the chief flaws in the theory?
"First, the origin of first life, chemical evolution, makes no sense at all."
This reminds the Phactor of engaging a similar YEC chemist in a discussion/debate about 20 years ago, and he said almost the same thing, and to demonstrate his case, and what is meant by that sentence, he dumps a hand full of paper clips into a can, shakes it (to add energy), and then dumps out the contents, still just a bunch of paper clips, and declares, "No amount of time or energy can add order or information to these paper clips and it's just like that with chemistry. Elements don't combine at random to make something organized."
In response, the Phactor borrowed his demonstration, and asked him, "Are all atoms, all molecules the same shape and size?" "OK rhetorical question because everyone knows that they are different." "So let's say the basic paper clip is carbon." "Well, we know that life is also composed of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorous, different elements with different properties (an aside - It's on your periodic table.) but our chemist only started out with one element which isn't realistic chemistry at all." And after bending paper clips into different shapes, some at right angles, some straightened into an S, and so on to represent different elements, dumped them back into the can, gave it a few shakes, and out pours a tangle of paper clips. "Now there's some organization." "Nothing awesome but maybe useful in some way, to hang something or to wear as a bracelet." "Now imagine you have thousands of such entities, each a bit different, but now the most useful organizations will produce the most copies of themselves." "That's natural selection, Darwin's contribution to biology, and it's through generations of such reproductin, variation, and selection that more useful organizations appear." "Now the only question to ask our chemist is simple." "Is he really such a poor chemist that he doesn't understand this, or is he deliberately trying to deceive you." He left his demonstration and didn't stay around to answer questions at the end. Even the brief responses in this recent interview demonstrate that nothing at all has changed in the unscientific world of YEC chemists.
HT to Dispatches from the Creation wars.