Tom English: (If Mung does not know that authors at Evolution News and Views often disagree with one another, but never point out their disagreements, then I’ve given him way too much credit. For instance, Dembski told us that “evolutionary search” really does search for targets. But Meyer and Axe have both gone out of their ways to explain that “evolutionary search” actually does not search.)
Did Tom ever reveal his sources?
New article up at Evolution News and Views:
Douglas Axe on Evolution’s Search Problem
Are they flat out lying?
Rumraket,
Can you share a few of these experiments?
Yes, it will have to wait to tomorrow or at least later today.
Quick hint: Even the Keefe & Szostak paper refutes Axe’s number. But there are many more like it.
Rumraket,
The molecule types and conditions of these experiments are very different.
CharlieM,
Many cancers are caused by low vitamin d levels in the blood. About half the population is vitamin d deficient. Our life styles have taken us out of the sun which is out primary source of vitamin d. When UV light hits our skin cells it creates an inactive form of vitamin d which gets modified in the liver and kidney and gets transferred to our cells as a nuclear molecule. One of its roles is to down regulate a complex protein called beta catenin by turning on a destruction mechanism. Beta catenin has several roles in the cell one is transcribing cell cycle molecules like MYC. Beta catenin needs to be active in the cell cycle during embryo development but mostly inactive in mature adults. Low vitamin d puts the cell in embryo mode and the excess cell and cancer stem cell production is where the tumor is initiated.
No, they really aren’t. That’s some complete absurdity Gpuccio made up and you unquestioningly swallowed because you’d rather believe what he says, than what I say.
But suppose they are different, ask yourself this question: Why should the conditions have any impact on the frequency of function in protein sequence space? So instead of ATP binding in cytosol, it’s ATP binding in a buffer solution of some sort. So fucking what? Are the biophysics of protein binding so radically different in vitro? No, they aren’t. How do we know this? We use this elementary fact every day in laboratories, in hospitals, private companies and educational institutions everywhere in the world. Basic things like antibodies binding epitopes are used to screen for literally hundreds of thousands of things. I use this elementary fact in my work multiple times a week when doing simple stuff like Western Blots. Antibodies purified from various animals bind perfectly well in all sorts of artificial solutions with little resemblance to blood serum or cytosol.
I’m sorry, this excuse you bought into simply is not good enough.
Did you know they actually sequenced the proteins in the Keefe & Szostak experiment and found that they all had a common ATP binding motif? If it’s an ATP binding motif, it can bind ATP in vivo. That’s what ATP binding motifs do.
Then you ran to Gpuccio again who then started flailing that mere ATP binding isn’t a biologically useful function. Apparently blissfully unaware that ATP binding for example one way enzyme activities are regulated (in allosteric regulation).
Your excuses fail at every level. Literally you are telling yourself lies to avoid a proven empirical truth. You run to people you know agree with you to have them tell you stories to comfort you when real world facts are uncomfortable to you.
The other papers I bring will be more of the same. Some of them will be in vivo experiments (meaning the functions are tested in living organisms, what will your excuse be there?), some of them will be in vitro in various buffer solutions. You’d better call your friends already now to start concocting ingenious excuses that invalidates them all. So far, you haven’t offered a single valid one.
Rumraket,
I am trying to understand the arguments you both make. Enzymes bind but also catalyze chemical reactions. The reactions are based on molecular vibrations that are range bound.
colewd,
An empirical truth? Are you a marketing guy or a scientist?
colewd,
Lest me ask you once again. Do you accept universal common descent or not?
Rumraket remarks above:
Does sound more like lab work than marketing. I do also sense his growing exasperation with you.
I have never found the term “search” to be even remotely useful or accurate in terms of thinking about what evolution does. It is no different than saying that rain “searches” for holes to create puddles or that tornadoes “search” for homes to knock over.
Evolution is simply the term used to label a complex set of processes.Those processes combined allow organisms to diversify such that some of them are better suited to adapt to and take advantage of differences across vast dynamic environmental landscapes. That’s it, simply put. There’s no searching for anything; simply a reaction to given environmental conditions based on available traits.
The word search is used by creationists because it implies a target and a direction.
When you get down to brass tacks, the only thing about evolution that is completely unacceptable to all creationists is its lack of directionality.
Paley strongly implied that existing adaptions were intended by a designer.
Chardin made it explicit, with diagrams, in Phenomenon of man.
Which is why, even theistic evolutionists are creationists.
The term creationist does not necessarily YEC or twiddling with mutations. It could simply imply that the Designer built a space in which humans and such necessarily evolve, even if mutations are random.
So theistic creationists are asserting that existence is either subject to interventions, or a big weasel.
Alan Fox,
I am sorry but I don’t find his arguments from personal incredulity convincing. He is accusing a Cal tech phd of publishing a bull shit experiment. Then he claims he can falsify it without repeating the experiment under the same conditions. If there is a real argument to challenge Axe’s work I am very interested.
Why would anyone repeat an Axe experiment. No one has challenged his technical competence.
The bullshit is implicit in his mischaracterization of evolution, not in his lab work.
dazz,
I accept that UCD is an inference argument based on similar morphology and biochemistry of living organisms.
If sequence generating mechanism could be demonstrated I would be more convinced of its validity. The current speciation hypothesis is not very strong.
What the eff do you mean by a sequence generating mechanism?
petrushka,
Can you explain the mischaracterization?
colewd,
A non random mechanism that generates new functional sequences like Shapiro’s NGE hypothesis.
Apparently not to you.
Axe’s experiment does not explore an evolutionary scenario.
It’s pretty much that simple.
phoodoo,
Did you ever meet an ID argument you didn’t like?
He does read UD for learning.
So “If sequence generating mechanism could be demonstrated I would be more convinced of its validity”
That means that you would believe that novel features in organisms can only be created by a “sequence generator” that I presume would be the Designer, right?
Let me ask you the same question I asked Mung: if that makes UCA a valid inference, then it follows that the designer would intervene at certain points in the tree of life to insert novel sequences. And if you accept that IC systems can’t evolve gradually, that means that when those sequences were inserted, some organisms produced descendants that looked nothing like it’s parents, with fully formed blood clot systems for example, that never existed in any other organism.
So do you believe this version of “dogs giving birth to cats” of evolution Bill?
colewd,
You have already been ‘shared’ several. My suspicion is that you will emerge anew asking the same questions, insisting you are only a humble seeker of the truth, somewhere down the line.
WTF does he mean by a sequence generator.
How about a specific before and after scenario that requires a sequence generator.
colewd,
You are accusing everyone else of publishing bullshit experiments. I share Rumraket’s frustration with you. I’m a molecular biologist, or I was. But you’d rather just dismiss the opinion of actual molecular biologists, and go instead with some flavour of engineer, endlessly pushing an argument that originated with an astrophysicist, with virtually no appreciation of actual protein chemistry. You don’t want to learn protein chemistry from evolutionists. Why would that be?
petrushka,
You don’t consider finding a sequence that can produce an enzyme that can produce antibiotic resistance an evolutionary scenario?
I guess he believes any IC system must require some intelligence to generate the sequence with the purpose of creating the system. But those who also buy the “highly integrated, interdependence of systems in an organism” can’t possibly believe it’s enough to generate one system at a time: all of them must be integrated at one fell swoop.
That only leaves two options: special creation or massive saltation with dinos giving birth to birds and stuff
Just a truth seeker, who will accept evolution if everything is answered, documented, and settled.
Until then, ID will do fine, as it doesn’t explain, answer, or document anything being done by the unperceivable Designer at all.
The truth is good, so long as it’s ID Truth.
Glen Davidson
What you are ignoring is more telling then what you are asking.
Allan Miller,
You don’t think I am frustrated with both of you? Where have I accused any one of publishing a bullshit experiment? You guys are proving to be strong in rhetoric and light in substance.
It’s implicit in your rejection of 99.99999999% of published work in evolutionary biology in favor of nonnense.
colewd,
You buy Axe by the yard; you dismiss everyone else.
Get bent! I pointed you to two 4000-word posts of mine on the protein space argument, and have spent a good deal of time discussing a counter-example to your ‘digital’ intuition, namely the amphipathic alpha helix, and the role of modular transposition in protein evolution. Rumraket has expended many, many words on detailed technical explanations. You act like no-one says anything. “I need to think about that some more”. Then up you pop on Sandwalk having apparently not thought at all.
Perhaps you could find a friend and ask them their opinion on that, after they’ve read this and a couple of other threads? As honestly, that’s not how it looks from where I’m standing.
I can’t figure out how these guys who are strong on substance, aren’t world famous.
Within the ID community, if nowhere else. There seems to be a ready market for this stuff.
Allan Miller,
For what its worth I have read your posts and Rumraket’s carefully. I don’t always agree with you guys but thats what this is about. When opposing views leave these blogs it gets quite boring. And yes Allan, I did read your 4000 words and told you it was one of the best arguments I have seen on the subject. Now, do you care to make an argument that challenges Axe’s work?
It doesn’t take 4000 words to point out that Doug Axe isn’t nearly as smart as Sal.
colewd,
Can you please answer the question I asked in post #22?
dazz,
There are two hypothesis that try to address this:
1. Design
2. Natural Genetic Engineering. James Shapiro’s hypothesis.
All I believe is at this point we have a big unsolved mystery which is the origin of information or sequences. How that happened is only speculation at this point. If Axe’s numbers are accurate and apply across many proteins, I agree with you,
colewd,
the conclusions can get pretty weird.
You seem to have ignored a third possibility.
Thanks for acknowledging it, that was unexpected TBH. Mung was incapable of that.
If Axe and IDists in general claim to be doing science, they should be discussing the conclusions that follow from the arguments they make, and the picture of reality they paint. I don’t see that happening, I don’t see anyone in the ID camp addressing these weird conclusions. Why is that?
How much does a Caltech Ph.D. in chemical engineering know about the biological ramifications of his study? It’s one thing to be competent to perform the lab operations and take data, and quite another to understand the significance of the results in the context of a huge volume of prior biological research. If what Axe is saying now about the ramifications of his one (just one) study is clearly not bullshit, then why didn’t he say it in his publication on the study? (He’s written something to the effect that he doubted he could get it through review.)
By the way, those of us who have earned doctorates think it’s very funny when people make a big deal of them. Although a Ph.D. is completely out of the reach of most people, it’s just a beginning, not an end. There’s no comparison of the computer scientist I was 26 years ago, fresh out of grad school, to the computer scientist I am today. I have 25 years of experience in evolutionary computation. Yet I tell you that you would be a fool to take me as an authority on biological evolution. You’re probably more than willing to take my word for that. So it behooves you to account for your willingness to accept as authoritative the claims of a chemical engineer about biological evolution — claims that he did not submit to the scrutiny of qualified reviewers.
It is such an injustice that the ID movement has invested so heavily in Axe over the past 10 years, and has not paid Salvador’s way through a doctoral program in biology. Indeed, it appears to be footing the bill for Eric Holloway, who is now doing doctoral work in electrical and computer engineering under the direction of Marks at Baylor. ID needs yet another engineer?
I read quite a few such challenges in the past. Have you read what’s out there already?
Salem’s hypothesis says, “why the hell not”?
Perhaps we should crowdfund it! It might be the only way we get a biologist to write an ID paper!
Nice appeal to authority there.
Anyway, no, I’m leveling an accusation of a bullshit interpretation of the experiment’s results. There’s a difference. The technical work I have no reason to doubt at all. It’s that there are glaring flaws in the interpretations. Glaring.
And what about Vincent Torley’s critique?
No, it’s based on the predicted nesting patterns of shared derived characteristics for multiple lines of data, all independently support each other. It is not mere similarity.
That already has been demonstrated, to you, personally, on this very forum, at least five times before. By among others, Allan Miller and myself.
Doing the “my brain has a reset switch”-routine isn’t erasing actual history.
I already explained to you that technically speciation is not a requirement for the inference of common descent from the observed predicted patterns.
It’s like every post you make contains at least three provable falsehoods. Amazing.
That’s what those 4000 words do. For fucks sake.
How is this not IMMEDIATELY absolutely clear to you?
Do you have a link please?