Conservapedia on Creation Science! Woot!
Creation science
Creation science is science free from atheist and evolutionist bias, which shows that supernatural creation of the material universe by God is consistent and compatible with scientific evidence.
That's an encyclopedic definition?!?
So if we had a scientific theory that was free of "evolutionist bias", showed the universe was made by God in a supernatural event, but had "atheist bias", that isn't creation science, right?
How about we have "atheist bias" and "evolutionist bias" but the universe was created by some competing god down the street? Would that be creation science?
And lest we forget, here is the list of the creaionist theories that are free of "atheist and evolutionist bias", show God to have created the universe, and are compatible with all scientific evidence:
None.
Yep! That's right! Throw in the "all" clause - meaning that the theory has to meet all evidence, not just a few pieces here and there and the entire subject washes away with the tide.
Most advocates of creation science believe the earth is approximately 6,000 years old
This isn't even true if we just talk about creation scientists. It's only the bible literalists that hold to the Y6K motif like a drowning man clutches to a life preserver.
In addition, scientists in the discipline of creation science state that the first law of thermodynamics and second law of thermodynamics argue against an eternal universe.
That would be the same ones that state the Earth is 6,000 years old.
They also claim that these laws point to the universe being created by God.
Great hypothesis! Too bad it failed the testing protocols. Bummer.
Creation scientists also assert that naturalistic processes alone cannot account for the origin of life and that the theory of evolution cannot account for the various kinds of animals and plants.
Can I be a creation scientist, too? Making stuff up and just stating it or asserting it sounds way easier than what real scientists do!
Both evolutionary scientists and young earth creation scientists believe that speciation occurs;
So they don't just state that speciation occurs? How quaint!
however, young earth creation scientists state that speciation generally occurs at a much faster rate than evolutionists believe is the case. Many scientists in the field of creation science, such as the scientists at Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis, assert that the Bible contains an understanding of scientific knowledge beyond that believed to exist at the time the Bible was composed.
Ah, back to the assertions. And here I thought we were moving forward!
In addition, Christianity profoundly influenced the development of modern science.
For example, torturing Galileo did, in fact, have a profound influence on him.
Creation Science and Genetic Programs and Biological Information
Scientists in the area of creation science and intelligent design advocates state the genetic code, genetic programs, and biological information argue for an intelligent cause in regards to the origins question.
Broken record time, here, but really just stating stuff isn't science any more than holding your hand over the bible is theology.
Dr. Werner Gitt, former director and Professor of Information Systems at the prestigious German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt), wrote that human beings are the most complex information processing systems on earth. Dr. Gitt estimated that the human body processes thousands of times more information than all the world's libraries contain.
This part might be true. We'd need to see his evidence, but the fact is the human brain is an amazing information processing organ.
Dr. Gitt has written several points regarding the origin of biological information:
It's story time!
1. In his work In the Beginning Was Information Dr. Gitt stated that “There is no known law of nature, no known process and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter.”
He might want to read Dawkins, sometime. He has a book or two on this subject. I'm sure it's just an oversight on Dr. Gitt's part to not know of a 159 year old theory.
2. Dr. Gitt argued that the density and complexity of DNA information is millions of times larger than mankind's current technology
Might be true!
and this means a supremely intelligent being was the author of this information
Completely false!
What it really means is that there has to be some mechanism to create this complexity. It's completely false to say that only a god could do that, especially since there are other alternatives.
Similarly, Dr. Stephen C. Meyer in his 1996 essay The Origin of Life and the Death of Materialism, wrote that "the information storage density of DNA, thanks in part to nucleosome spooling, is several trillion times that of our most advanced computer chips.
We're amazingly complex, yep!
3. Gitt stated that the author of the information encoded into the DNA molecule, who constructed the molecular biomachines to encode, decode and run the cells was supremely intelligent.
So another axiom that we either believe or don't. Here a hint, scientists, the ones that actually follow the scientific method and test their theories and other weird stuff that you haven't heard of - like independent reviews - don't believe this axiom. They've even come up with other ways that this could happen. And then tested those ways and found that they work!
Isn't real science fun?!? Yeah!
4. Dr. Gitt asserted that because information is a nonmaterial entity and does not originate from matter, the author of biological information must be nonmaterial (spirit).
And is spooky!
Dr. Walt Brown concurs in regards to the supernatural origin of biological information and states that the genetic material that controls the biological processes of life is coded information and that human experience tells us that codes are created only by the result of intelligence and not merely by processes of nature.
Evidence! *whistles like whistling for a dog* Where are you evidence! Come on over, Evidence! Show yourself...someday!
Dr. Brown also asserts that the "information stored in the genetic material of all life is a complex program. Therefore, it appears that an unfathomable intelligence created these genetic programs."
Appears? Perhaps. Did? No.
It really doesn't matter how many times you state or assert something. Until you show evidence of that something you've got nothing more than a bunch of unsupported hopes and wishes.
To support his creation science view regarding the divine origin of genetic programs,
Look, ma! They might get around to showing us some evidence!
Dr. Walt Brown cites the work of David Abel and Professor Jack Trevors who wrote the following:
“No matter how many "bits" of possible combinations it has, there is no reason to call it "information" if it doesn't at least have the potential of producing something useful. What kind of information produces function? In computer science, we call it a "program." Another name for computer software is an "algorithm." No man-made program comes close to the technical brilliance of even Mycoplasmal genetic algorithms. Mycoplasmas are the simplest known organism with the smallest known genome, to date. How was its genome and other living organisms' genomes programmed? - David L. Abel and Jack T. Trevors, “Three Subsets of Sequence Complexity and Their Relevance to Biopolymeric Information,” Theoretical Biology & Medical Modelling, Vol. 2, 11 August 2005, page 8"
Creation Science and the Evolutionary Science Community
Nope. No evidence here. Just an unanswered question. Bummer!
Creation science is not accepted by most scientists either in terms of its claims or as a science, on the pretext that it cannot be disproved and therefore cannot be considered "science".
Yep, that's really, really important.
However, Dr. Walt Brown argues that the field of creation science is scientific.
Okay! State your evidence of this.
Also, creation scientists state the evolutionists' objections to creation science are due to the worldviews and preconceptions of the scientists, rather than on the basis of scientific evidence or the scientific validity of the idea.
Oh, of course. You're not going to give any evidence. How silly of me!
Also, Karl Popper, a leading philosopher of science and originator of falsifiability as a criterion of demarcation of science from nonscience, stated that Darwinism is "not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme." Michael Ruse, a leading Darwinist and philosopher of science, conditionally acknowledged Popper's statement: "Since making this claim, Popper himself has modified his position somewhat; but, disclaimers aside, I suspect that even now he does not really believe that Darwinism in its modern form is genuinely falsifiable."
Here's another quote from Karl Popper: “I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation”. You see, Karl found out that he was wrong and so, like a good scientific mind, when he was presented with new data, he changed his mind.
Although a belief in God does not automatically imply a belief in creation science, it is interesting to note that a poll among United States scientists showed that approximately 40% of scientists believed there is a God, while a similar survey found that 93% of members of the United States National Academy of Sciences do not believe there is a God.
And thank you, Conservapedia, for staying on topic!
Showing posts with label conservapedia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conservapedia. Show all posts
Monday, July 14, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Conservapedia on starlight
Eight days ago, we had a guest replier here on the Rational Reply and I mentioned a few things about the insanity that is Conservapedia. What is Conservapedia? We'll no amount of simple introduction of mine will suffice to truly explain the insanity that goes on there, but I'll give it a shot.
Imagine an encyclopedia where the actual stated goal is to be biased. Imagine an encyclopedia where all articles are filtered through one person. If he says that article is good, it is. If he says that article is bad, it is. Imagine an encyclopedia where people are banned regularly for the act of talking about the articles they are writing.
That can't possibly work, can it? Of course not. It's a flaming train wreck of site, a testimony to religious stupidity, and absolutely hilarious to read!
Today, we delve into one of their works - the Starlight Problem!
What is the Starlight Problem? Well, it's that pesky detail that Albert Einstein brought to our attention: the speed of light is a constant. Since we can measure that speed and we can measure the distance to various stars in the cosmos and we find that those things are more than 6,000 light years from Earth, anyone who believes that the Earth is only 6,000 years old has a rather large problem on his hands. Rational people, on the other hand, don't have a problem at all.
Here is, and remember I'm not making this one up, Conservapedia's article addressing this "problem".
Starlight problem
The starlight problem, or starlight travel-time problem is an objection against the young-Earth creationist argument that the universe is only 6,000 years old, in which the age of the universe is based primarily on the Genesis narrative. The problem is that if the universe is only 6,000 years old, one has to explain how light from stars more than 6,000 light years from Earth has reached us in the time available.
This so feels like the Spanish Inquisition Monty Python skit!
* cheesy inquisitor voice *
The problem is how light reached us in only 6,000 years...and measuring the age of the universe from a religious book!
The problems are how light reached us in only 6,000 years, measuring the age of the universe from a religious book, and choosing the bible for that book!
The several problems are...how light reached us in only 6,000 years, measuring the age of the universe from a religious book, choosing the bible for that book, and not checking the accuracy of that book against the rest of the universe!
Amongst these issues are such diverse problems as how light reached us in only 6,000 years, measuring the age of the universe from a religious book, choosing the bible for that book, not checking the accuracy of that book against the rest of the universe, and actively making up bizzaro world theories that kinda, sorta fit in with that book!
Despite this frequently being put as an argument against young-Earth creationism, light travel time is also a problem for the Big Bang theory.
There's stuff we don't know about the Big Bang theory?!? That's it! Young Earth Creationism must be completely correct!
Creationists have proposed a number of solutions. The currently-favoured solutions involve time dilation, in which time passed slower on Earth than in other parts of the universe.
Okay! That makes perfect sense! It's not the ancient goat herders that were wrong, it's that time itself has been altered! It's all clear now.
The size of the universe
Big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it really is.
Using parallax calculations, the Milky Way galaxy alone can be directly observed to have a diameter of approximately 80-100,000 light years. Calculations based on the observed brightness of supernovae of known energy output can determine the distance to more distant objects. The most distant object known is a star cluster approximately thirteen billion light-years away from Earth, observed by the Hubble Telescope using gravitational lensing.
Although creationists have at times disputed the size of the universe, virtually none propose that it is less than 12,000 light years across.
That's a refreshing breath of sanity scented air!
Suggested solutions to the problem
That the book is wrong? Nah! What was I thinking?!?
Several solutions have been proposed by creationists to explain how a young universe may be reconciled with these observations.
* pulls up a chair *
* gets some Doritos *
Oh boy! I can't wait to hear this!
They also point out that there is a logical fallacy in the argument, as the observation that many stars are millions of light years away is one of distance, not time. No matter how reasonable, it is a deduction, not an observation, that the starlight from stars millions of light years away would have required millions of years to reach Earth.
All except for that pesky "speed of light in a vacuum is a constant" thing. Curse you, Albert!
Light created in transit
Some creationists have proposed that the light we see from stars more than 6,000 light years away was not emitted by those stars, but was created 'in transit' by God.
Godidit! But did he use His Noodly Appendage?
However, most creationists reject this explanation,
Because they're not completely stupid.
as the light contains images of events that would therefore never have actually happened, including supernovae, meaning that we are seeing an image of a star exploding, even though the star never existed. This would make the creator a deceiver.
And He would never invite us to the really good parties ever again. He's kind of vicious that way with a really, really, really long memory for those kinds of slights.
Moon-Spencer theory
Some creationists promoted an idea by Parry Moon and Domina Spencer that light somehow takes a shortcut through "Riemannian Space", taking no more than 15 years to reach Earth from the outer limits of the universe. However, this idea never really caught on and appears to no longer have adherents.
And is therefore included in this article for what reason?
Decrease in the speed of light
Creationist Barry Setterfield has proposed that the speed of light was faster in the past. This idea initially found wide acceptance by creationists, but is now widely rejected, although some still hold to the idea.
And, of course, an encyclopedia is the place to postulate widely discredited ideas.
One criticism of it by anticreationists
What is an anticreationist exactly? Is that anyone who disputes any creationist idea? Or is it a code word for evolutionist? Or perhaps a code word for scientist?
was that if the speed of light had changed, we should see the difference in the Fine Structure Constant as measured by nearby stars versus distant stars, but this was not observed. Yet in 1999, John Webb, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues reported astronomical observations suggesting that the value of the fine-structure constant may indeed have changed. They subsequently published this in Physical Review Letters. However, although this showed that mainstream scientists are prepared to entertain the idea of a change in the speed of light when it suits them, the size of the change did not provide specific support for Setterfield's idea.
In addition, there were other problems with the theory, leading most creationists to drop the idea, although some credit it with stimulating further research.
Which leaves us 0 for 4 with 4 strikeouts so far with the theories! And we're not saying that the scientists have rejected these ideas, it's the creationists that are saying they don't work!
Not to point out the breathtakingly obvious again, but if no one believes these theories - why are they in an alleged encyclopedia?
* knock knock knock *
UPS delivery man, sir!
* Front door opens *
Yes?
I have a letter for you from a Brother William of Ockham
Thank you!
* Opens the letter *
"Jim, thanks for taking the time to listen to the advice of a friar who's been dead for 660 years! The answer to your question is really, really simple. It's not really an encyclopedia.
Have fun watching the fireworks show tomorrow!
Brother Bill"
You know that guy is so helpful sometimes! He rocks!
Humphreys' model
In 1994 Dr. Russell Humphreys proposed a new cosmology that includes a bounded universe with a center and an edge, that God had created 6,000 years ago as a much smaller body than today, then stretched it out, making it much larger. In Humphreys' model, because the universe has a center and an edge (unlike the unbounded model of the Big Bang universe), the center of the universe is also the center of a gravity well, meaning that gravity is stronger at the center of the universe than at the edge.
As gravity can affect the rate at which time passes, he calculated that while the six days of creation week were passing on Earth, billions of years' of time was passing at the edge of the universe. According to this idea, the Biblical references to time are according to an observer (real or imaginary) on Earth, so ages are given in "Earth time".
This model receives cautious but wide support among creationists.
By jove, this one is just wacko enough to confuse people who a) want to believe him and b) aren't actually scientists! Woot!
Time dilation field
Dr. John Hartnett, a creationist physicist, spurred by Humphreys' model, has proposed an alternative time dilation model, by theorizing the Earth was in a time-dilation field during the first few days of creation, from Earth's point of view, while billions of years passed for the rest of the universe. According to the Bible, God "stretched out" the heavens (space), and this movement during creation week caused time to travel faster for those objects, in accordance with Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, adding to the time dilation caused by gravity, per Humphreys, in accordance with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
When all else fails, lets just go back to the old standard of the Earth being the center of the universe and really, really special!
Starlight Problem for the Big Bang Theory
Despite the use of the Starlight Problem in arguing against young-Earth creationism, the Big Bang theory has its own light travel problem, known as the horizon problem.
The Big Bang model proposes that the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) would have varied considerably from place to place early in the universe, yet because the speed at which this radiation can disperse from hotter to colder parts of the universe is limited by the speed of light, there has not been enough time for the radiation to even out, yet observations today show it to be extremely uniform (with fluctuations at the part-per-million level).
The problem is this: even assuming the big bang timescale, there has not been enough time for light to travel between widely separated regions of space. So, how can the different regions of the current CMB have such precisely uniform temperatures if they have never communicated with each other? This is a light-travel–time problem.
A number of solutions to this problem have been proposed, including several versions of an "inflationary model", in which space itself expanded faster than the speed of light early in the Big Bang, but after different areas exchanged radiation to even out the temperature. However, there is no consensus on which explanation is correct, and each of the proposed solutions have their own problems.
Which is why the Cosmic Background Explorer's findings completely blow away the Big Bang theory! Oh wait a minute...they don't. It's data actually has shown a great fit with the predicted black body curve.
Still! It's not like they know everything! So that makes one thing crystal clear....Godidit! Yay! Is it time to declare victory and rush back to the church? Of course it is!
Imagine an encyclopedia where the actual stated goal is to be biased. Imagine an encyclopedia where all articles are filtered through one person. If he says that article is good, it is. If he says that article is bad, it is. Imagine an encyclopedia where people are banned regularly for the act of talking about the articles they are writing.
That can't possibly work, can it? Of course not. It's a flaming train wreck of site, a testimony to religious stupidity, and absolutely hilarious to read!
Today, we delve into one of their works - the Starlight Problem!
What is the Starlight Problem? Well, it's that pesky detail that Albert Einstein brought to our attention: the speed of light is a constant. Since we can measure that speed and we can measure the distance to various stars in the cosmos and we find that those things are more than 6,000 light years from Earth, anyone who believes that the Earth is only 6,000 years old has a rather large problem on his hands. Rational people, on the other hand, don't have a problem at all.
Here is, and remember I'm not making this one up, Conservapedia's article addressing this "problem".
Starlight problem
The starlight problem, or starlight travel-time problem is an objection against the young-Earth creationist argument that the universe is only 6,000 years old, in which the age of the universe is based primarily on the Genesis narrative. The problem is that if the universe is only 6,000 years old, one has to explain how light from stars more than 6,000 light years from Earth has reached us in the time available.
This so feels like the Spanish Inquisition Monty Python skit!
* cheesy inquisitor voice *
The problem is how light reached us in only 6,000 years...and measuring the age of the universe from a religious book!
The problems are how light reached us in only 6,000 years, measuring the age of the universe from a religious book, and choosing the bible for that book!
The several problems are...how light reached us in only 6,000 years, measuring the age of the universe from a religious book, choosing the bible for that book, and not checking the accuracy of that book against the rest of the universe!
Amongst these issues are such diverse problems as how light reached us in only 6,000 years, measuring the age of the universe from a religious book, choosing the bible for that book, not checking the accuracy of that book against the rest of the universe, and actively making up bizzaro world theories that kinda, sorta fit in with that book!
Despite this frequently being put as an argument against young-Earth creationism, light travel time is also a problem for the Big Bang theory.
There's stuff we don't know about the Big Bang theory?!? That's it! Young Earth Creationism must be completely correct!
Creationists have proposed a number of solutions. The currently-favoured solutions involve time dilation, in which time passed slower on Earth than in other parts of the universe.
Okay! That makes perfect sense! It's not the ancient goat herders that were wrong, it's that time itself has been altered! It's all clear now.
The size of the universe
Big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it really is.
Using parallax calculations, the Milky Way galaxy alone can be directly observed to have a diameter of approximately 80-100,000 light years. Calculations based on the observed brightness of supernovae of known energy output can determine the distance to more distant objects. The most distant object known is a star cluster approximately thirteen billion light-years away from Earth, observed by the Hubble Telescope using gravitational lensing.
Although creationists have at times disputed the size of the universe, virtually none propose that it is less than 12,000 light years across.
That's a refreshing breath of sanity scented air!
Suggested solutions to the problem
That the book is wrong? Nah! What was I thinking?!?
Several solutions have been proposed by creationists to explain how a young universe may be reconciled with these observations.
* pulls up a chair *
* gets some Doritos *
Oh boy! I can't wait to hear this!
They also point out that there is a logical fallacy in the argument, as the observation that many stars are millions of light years away is one of distance, not time. No matter how reasonable, it is a deduction, not an observation, that the starlight from stars millions of light years away would have required millions of years to reach Earth.
All except for that pesky "speed of light in a vacuum is a constant" thing. Curse you, Albert!
Light created in transit
Some creationists have proposed that the light we see from stars more than 6,000 light years away was not emitted by those stars, but was created 'in transit' by God.
Godidit! But did he use His Noodly Appendage?
However, most creationists reject this explanation,
Because they're not completely stupid.
as the light contains images of events that would therefore never have actually happened, including supernovae, meaning that we are seeing an image of a star exploding, even though the star never existed. This would make the creator a deceiver.
And He would never invite us to the really good parties ever again. He's kind of vicious that way with a really, really, really long memory for those kinds of slights.
Moon-Spencer theory
Some creationists promoted an idea by Parry Moon and Domina Spencer that light somehow takes a shortcut through "Riemannian Space", taking no more than 15 years to reach Earth from the outer limits of the universe. However, this idea never really caught on and appears to no longer have adherents.
And is therefore included in this article for what reason?
Decrease in the speed of light
Creationist Barry Setterfield has proposed that the speed of light was faster in the past. This idea initially found wide acceptance by creationists, but is now widely rejected, although some still hold to the idea.
And, of course, an encyclopedia is the place to postulate widely discredited ideas.
One criticism of it by anticreationists
What is an anticreationist exactly? Is that anyone who disputes any creationist idea? Or is it a code word for evolutionist? Or perhaps a code word for scientist?
was that if the speed of light had changed, we should see the difference in the Fine Structure Constant as measured by nearby stars versus distant stars, but this was not observed. Yet in 1999, John Webb, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues reported astronomical observations suggesting that the value of the fine-structure constant may indeed have changed. They subsequently published this in Physical Review Letters. However, although this showed that mainstream scientists are prepared to entertain the idea of a change in the speed of light when it suits them, the size of the change did not provide specific support for Setterfield's idea.
In addition, there were other problems with the theory, leading most creationists to drop the idea, although some credit it with stimulating further research.
Which leaves us 0 for 4 with 4 strikeouts so far with the theories! And we're not saying that the scientists have rejected these ideas, it's the creationists that are saying they don't work!
Not to point out the breathtakingly obvious again, but if no one believes these theories - why are they in an alleged encyclopedia?
* knock knock knock *
UPS delivery man, sir!
* Front door opens *
Yes?
I have a letter for you from a Brother William of Ockham
Thank you!
* Opens the letter *
"Jim, thanks for taking the time to listen to the advice of a friar who's been dead for 660 years! The answer to your question is really, really simple. It's not really an encyclopedia.
Have fun watching the fireworks show tomorrow!
Brother Bill"
You know that guy is so helpful sometimes! He rocks!
Humphreys' model
In 1994 Dr. Russell Humphreys proposed a new cosmology that includes a bounded universe with a center and an edge, that God had created 6,000 years ago as a much smaller body than today, then stretched it out, making it much larger. In Humphreys' model, because the universe has a center and an edge (unlike the unbounded model of the Big Bang universe), the center of the universe is also the center of a gravity well, meaning that gravity is stronger at the center of the universe than at the edge.
As gravity can affect the rate at which time passes, he calculated that while the six days of creation week were passing on Earth, billions of years' of time was passing at the edge of the universe. According to this idea, the Biblical references to time are according to an observer (real or imaginary) on Earth, so ages are given in "Earth time".
This model receives cautious but wide support among creationists.
By jove, this one is just wacko enough to confuse people who a) want to believe him and b) aren't actually scientists! Woot!
Time dilation field
Dr. John Hartnett, a creationist physicist, spurred by Humphreys' model, has proposed an alternative time dilation model, by theorizing the Earth was in a time-dilation field during the first few days of creation, from Earth's point of view, while billions of years passed for the rest of the universe. According to the Bible, God "stretched out" the heavens (space), and this movement during creation week caused time to travel faster for those objects, in accordance with Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, adding to the time dilation caused by gravity, per Humphreys, in accordance with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
When all else fails, lets just go back to the old standard of the Earth being the center of the universe and really, really special!
Starlight Problem for the Big Bang Theory
Despite the use of the Starlight Problem in arguing against young-Earth creationism, the Big Bang theory has its own light travel problem, known as the horizon problem.
The Big Bang model proposes that the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) would have varied considerably from place to place early in the universe, yet because the speed at which this radiation can disperse from hotter to colder parts of the universe is limited by the speed of light, there has not been enough time for the radiation to even out, yet observations today show it to be extremely uniform (with fluctuations at the part-per-million level).
The problem is this: even assuming the big bang timescale, there has not been enough time for light to travel between widely separated regions of space. So, how can the different regions of the current CMB have such precisely uniform temperatures if they have never communicated with each other? This is a light-travel–time problem.
A number of solutions to this problem have been proposed, including several versions of an "inflationary model", in which space itself expanded faster than the speed of light early in the Big Bang, but after different areas exchanged radiation to even out the temperature. However, there is no consensus on which explanation is correct, and each of the proposed solutions have their own problems.
Which is why the Cosmic Background Explorer's findings completely blow away the Big Bang theory! Oh wait a minute...they don't. It's data actually has shown a great fit with the predicted black body curve.
Still! It's not like they know everything! So that makes one thing crystal clear....Godidit! Yay! Is it time to declare victory and rush back to the church? Of course it is!
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Special guest replier: Professor Richard Lenski!
Professor Richard Lenski, as both of my readers know, is an evolutionary biologist who has achieved what creationists claim is impossible - direct evidence of evolution occurring in his lab.
Faced with this horrible blow to their inane beliefs, creationists such as Andrew Schlafly, the chief moron of Conservapedia, have done what they always do when a scientist achieves a landmark breakthrough to help the human race. They attack him mercilessly and stupidly.
Now normally on the Rational Reply, I take the good time and effort to reply to the idiots and their ridiculous claims. But today, we have a special guest star. Professor Lenski himself has taken the time and trouble to reply to the ignorant, impolite, and insane demands of the Schlafly crew. So to see to it that we help the good professor "make sure that [his reply] is made publicly available through other channels", I yield the floor to him to give The Rational Reply.
Take it away Professor!
Dear Mr. Schlafly:
I tried to be polite, civil and respectful in my reply to your first email, despite its rude tone and uninformed content. Given the continued rudeness of your second email, and the willfully ignorant and slanderous content on your website, my second response will be less polite. I expect you to post my response in its entirety; if not, I will make sure that is made publicly available through other channels.
I offer this lengthy reply because I am an educator as well as a scientist. It is my sincere hope that some readers might learn something from this exchange, even if you do not.
First, it seems that reading might not be your strongest suit given your initial letter, which showed that you had not read our paper, and given subsequent conversations with your followers, in which you wrote that you still had not bothered to read our paper. You wrote: “I did skim Lenski’s paper …” If you have not even read the original paper, how do you have any basis of understanding from which to question, much less criticize, the data that are presented therein?
Second, your capacity to misinterpret and/or misrepresent facts is plain in the third request in your first letter, where you said: “In addition, there is skepticism that 3 new and useful proteins appeared in the colony around generation 20,000.” That statement was followed by a link to a news article from NewScientist that briefly reported on our work. I assumed you had simply misunderstood that article, because there is not even a mention of proteins anywhere in the news article. As I replied, “We make no such claim anywhere in our paper, nor do I think it is correct. Proteins do not ‘appear out of the blue’, in any case.” So where did your confused assertion come from? It appears to have come from one of your earlier discussions, in which an acoltye [sic] (Able806, who to his credit at least seems to have attempted to read our paper) wrote:
"I think it might be best to clarify some of Richard's work. He started his E.Coli project in 1988 and has been running the project for 20 years now; his protocols are available to the general public. The New Scientist article is not very technical but the paper at PNAS is. The change was based on one of his colonies developing the ability to absorb citrate, something not found in wild E.Coli. This occurred around 31,500 generations and is based on the development of 3 proteins in the E.Coli genome. What his future work will be is to look at what caused the development of these 3 proteins around generation 20,000 of that particular colony."
As further evidence of your inability to keep even a few simple facts straight, you later wrote the following: “It [my reply] did clarify that his claims are not as strong as some evolutionists have insisted.” But no competent biologist would, after reading our paper with any care, insist (or even suggest) that “3 new and useful proteins appeared in the colony around generation 20,000” or any similar nonsense. It is only in your letter, and in your acolyte’s confused interpretation of our paper, that I have ever seen such a claim. Am I or the reporter for NewScientist somehow responsible for the confusion that reflects your own laziness and apparent inability to distinguish between a scientific paper, a news article, and a confused summary posted by an acolyte on your own website?
Third, it is apparent to me, and many others who have followed this exchange and your on-line discussions of how to proceed, that you are not acting in good faith in requests for data. From the posted discussion on your web site, it is obvious that you lack any expertise in the relevant fields. Several of your acolytes have pointed this out to you, and that your motives are unclear or questionable at best, but you and your cronies dismissed their concerns as rants and even expelled some of them from posting on your website. [ http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed] Several also pointed out that I had very quickly and straightforwardly responded that the methods and data supporting the evolution of the citrate-utilization capacity are already provided in our paper. One poster in your discussions, Aaronp, wrote:
“I read Lenski's paper, and as a trained microbiologist, I thought that it was both thorough and well done. His claims are backed by good data, namely that which was presented in the figures. I went through each of the figures after Aschlafly said that they were uninformative. Actually, they are basic figures that show the population explosion of the bacterial cultures after the Cit+ mutation occurred. These figures show that the cultures increased in size and mass at a given timepoint, being able to do so because they had evolved a mechanism to utilize a new nutrient, without the assistance of helper plasmids. … Lenksi’s paper, while not the most definite I’ve seen, is still a very well-researched paper that supports its claims nicely.”
(As far as I saw, Aaronp is the only poster who asserted any expertise in microbiology.) As further evidence of the absence of good-faith discussion about our research, in the discussion thread that began even before you sent your first email to me, I counted the words “fraud” or “fraudulent” being used more than 10 times, including one acolyte, TonyT, who says bluntly that I am “clearly a fraudulent hack.” In the discussion thread that also includes comments after my first reply, the number of times those same words are used has increased to 20, with the word “hoax” also now entering the discussion. A few posters wisely counseled against such slander but that did not deter you. I must say, it is surprising that someone with a law degree would make, and allow on his website, so many nasty comments that implicitly and even explicitly impugn my integrity, and by extension that of my collaborators, without any grounds whatsoever and reflecting only your dogmatic adherence to certain beliefs.
Finally, let me now turn to our data. As I said before, the relevant methods and data about the evolution of the citrate-using bacteria are in our paper. In three places in our paper, we did say “data not shown”, which is common in scientific papers owing to limitations in page length, especially for secondary or minor points. None of the places where we made such references concern the existence of the citrate-using bacteria; they concern only certain secondary properties of those bacteria. We will gladly post those additional data on my website.
It is my impression that you seem to think we have only paper and electronic records of having seen some unusual E. coli. If we made serious errors or misrepresentations, you would surely like to find them in those records. If we did not, then – as some of your acolytes have suggested – you might assert that our records are themselves untrustworthy because, well, because you said so, I guess. But perhaps because you did not bother even to read our paper, or perhaps because you aren’t very bright, you seem not to understand that we have the actual, living bacteria that exhibit the properties reported in our paper, including both the ancestral strain used to start this long-term experiment and its evolved citrate-using descendants. In other words, it’s not that we claim to have glimpsed “a unicorn in the garden” – we have a whole population of them living in my lab! [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unicorn_in_the_Garden] And lest you accuse me further of fraud, I do not literally mean that we have unicorns in the lab. Rather, I am making a literary allusion. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allusion]
One of your acolytes, Dr. Richard Paley, actually grasped this point. He does not appear to understand the practice and limitations of science, but at least he realizes that we have the bacteria, and that they provide “the real data that we [that’s you and your gang] need”. Here’s what this Dr. Paley had to say:
“I think there’s a great deal of misunderstanding here from the critics of Mr. Schlafly and obfuscation on the part of Prof. Lenski and his supporters. The real data that we need are not in the paper. Rather they are in the bacteria used in the experiments themselves. Prof. Lenski claims that these bacteria ‘evolved’ novel traits and that these were preceded by the evolution of ‘potentiated genotypes’, from which the traits could be ‘reevolved’ using preserved colonies from those generations. But how are we to know if these traits weren’t ‘potentiated’ by the Creator when He designed the bacteria thousands of years ago, such that they would eventually reveal themselves when the time was right? The only way this can be settled is if we have access to the genetic sequences of the bacteria colonies so that we can apply CSI techniques and determine if these ‘potentiated genotypes’ originated through blind chance or intelligence. But with the physical specimens in the hands of Darwinists, who claim they will get around to the sequencing at some unspecifed future time, how can we trust that this data will be forthcoming and forthright? Thus, Prof. Lenski et al. should supply Conservapedia, as stewards, with samples of the preserved E. coli colonies so that the data can be accessible to unbiased researchers outside of the hegemony of the Darwinian academia, even if it won’t be put to immediate examination by Mr. Schlafly. This is simply about keeping tax-payer-funded scientists honest.”
So, will we share the bacteria? Of course we will, with competent scientists. Now, if I was really mean, I might only share the ancestral strain, and let the scientists undertake the 20 years of our experiment. Or if I was only a little bit mean, maybe I’d also send the potentiated bacteria, and let the recipients then repeat the several years of incredibly pain-staking work that my superb doctoral student, Zachary Blount, performed to test some 40 trillion (40,000,000,000,000) cells, which generated 19 additional citrate-using mutants. But I’m a nice guy, at least when treated with some common courtesy, so if a competent scientist asks for them, I would even send a sample of the evolved E. coli that now grows vigorously on citrate. A competent microbiologist, perhaps requiring the assistance of a competent molecular geneticist, would readily confirm the following properties reported in our paper: (i) The ancestral strain does not grow in DM0 (zero glucose, but containing citrate), the recipe for which can be found on my web site, except leaving the glucose out of the standard recipe as stated in our paper. (ii) The evolved citrate-using strain, by contrast, grows well in that exact same medium. (iii) To confirm that the evolved strain is not some contaminating species but is, in fact, derived from the ancestral strain in our study, one could check a number of traits and genes that identify the ancestor as E. coli, and the evolved strains as a descendant thereof, as reported in our paper. (iv) One could also sequence the pykF and nadR genes in the ancestor and evolved citrate-using strains. One would find that the evolved bacteria have mutations in each of these genes. These mutations precisely match those that we reported in our previous work, and they identify the evolved citrate-using mutants as having evolved in the population designated Ara-3 of the long-term evolution experiment, as opposed to any of the other 11 populations in that experiment. And one could go on and on from there to confirm the findings in our paper, and perhaps obtain additional data of the sort that we are currently pursuing.
Before I could send anyone any bacterial strains, in order to comply with good scientific practices I would require evidence of the requesting scientist’s credentials including: (i) affiliation with an appropriate unit in some university or research center with appropriate facilities for storing (-80ºC freezer), handling (incubators, etc.), and disposing of bacteria (autoclave); and (ii) some evidence, such as peer-reviewed publications, that indicate that the receiving scientist knows how to work with bacteria, so that I and my university can be sure we are sending biological materials to someone that knows how to handle them. By the way, our strains are not derived from one of the pathogenic varieties of E. coli that are a frequent cause of food-borne illnesses. However, even non-pathogenic strains may cause problems for those who are immune-compromised or otherwise more vulnerable to infection. Also, my university requires that a Material Transfer Agreement be executed before we can ship any strains. That agreement would not constrain a receiving scientist from publishing his or her results. However, if an incompetent or fraudulent hack (note that I make no reference to any person, as this is strictly a hypothetical scenario, one that I doubt would occur) were to make false or misleading claims about our strains, then I’m confident that some highly qualified scientists would join the fray, examine the strains, and sort out who was right and who was wrong. That’s the way science works.
I would also generally ask what the requesting scientist intends to do with our strains. Why? It helps me to gauge the requester’s expertise. I might be able to point out useful references, for example. Moreover, as I’ve said, we are continuing our work with these strains, on multiple fronts, as explained in considerable detail in the Discussion section of our paper. I would not be happy to see our work “scooped” by another team – especially for the sake of the outstanding students and postdocs in my group who are hard at work on these fronts. However, that request to allow us to proceed, without risk of being scooped on work in which we have made a substantial investment of time and effort, would be just that: a request. In other words, we would respect PNAS policy to share those strains with any competent scientist who complied with my university’s requirements for the MTA and any other relevant legal restrictions. If any such request requires substantial time or resources (we have thousands of samples from this and many other experiments), then of course I would expect the recipient to bear those costs.
So there you have it. I know that I’ve been a bit less polite in this response than in my previous one, but I’m still behaving far more politely than you deserve given your rude, willfully ignorant, and slanderous behavior. And I’ve spent far more time responding than you deserve. However, as I said at the outset, I take education seriously, and I know some of your acolytes still have the ability and desire to think, as do many others who will read this exchange.
Sincerely,
Richard Lenski
P.S. Did you know that your own bowels harbor something like a billion (1,000,000,000) E. coli at this very moment? So remember to wash your hands after going to the toilet, as I hope your mother taught you. Simple calculations imply that there are something like 10^20 = 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 E. coli alive on our planet at any moment. Even if they divide just once per day, and given a typical mutation rate of 10^-9 or 10^-10 per base-pair per generation, then pretty much every possible double mutation would occur every day or so. That’s a lot of opportunity for evolution.
P.P.S. I hope that some readers might get a chuckle out of this story. The same Sunday (15 June 2008) that you and some of your acolytes were posting and promoting scurrilous attacks on me and our research (wasn’t that a bit disrespectful of the Sabbath?), I was in a church attending a wedding. And do you know what Old Testament lesson was read? It was Genesis 1:27-28[2], in which God created Man and Woman. It’s a very simple and lovely story, and I did not ask any questions, storm out, or demand the evidence that it happened as written at a time when science did not yet exist. I was there in the realm of spirituality and mutual respect, not confusing a house of religion for a science class or laboratory. And it was a beautiful wedding, too.
P.P.P.S. You may be unable to understand, or unwilling to accept, that evolution occurs. And yet, life evolves! [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove] From the content on your website, it is clear that you, like many others, view God as the Creator of the Universe. I respect that view. I find it baffling, however, that someone can worship God as the all-mighty Creator while, at the same time, denying even the possibility (not to mention the overwhelming evidence) that God’s Creation involved evolution. It is as though a person thinks that God must have the same limitations when it comes to creation as a person who is unable to understand, or even attempt to understand, the world in which we live. Isn’t that view insulting to God?
P.P.P.P.S. I noticed that you say that one of your favorite articles on your website is the one on “Deceit.” That article begins as follows: “Deceit is the deliberate distortion or denial of the truth with an intent to trick or fool another. Christianity and Judaism teach that deceit is wrong. For example, the Old Testament says, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’” You really should think more carefully about what that commandment means before you go around bearing false witness against others.
Faced with this horrible blow to their inane beliefs, creationists such as Andrew Schlafly, the chief moron of Conservapedia, have done what they always do when a scientist achieves a landmark breakthrough to help the human race. They attack him mercilessly and stupidly.
Now normally on the Rational Reply, I take the good time and effort to reply to the idiots and their ridiculous claims. But today, we have a special guest star. Professor Lenski himself has taken the time and trouble to reply to the ignorant, impolite, and insane demands of the Schlafly crew. So to see to it that we help the good professor "make sure that [his reply] is made publicly available through other channels", I yield the floor to him to give The Rational Reply.
Take it away Professor!
Dear Mr. Schlafly:
I tried to be polite, civil and respectful in my reply to your first email, despite its rude tone and uninformed content. Given the continued rudeness of your second email, and the willfully ignorant and slanderous content on your website, my second response will be less polite. I expect you to post my response in its entirety; if not, I will make sure that is made publicly available through other channels.
I offer this lengthy reply because I am an educator as well as a scientist. It is my sincere hope that some readers might learn something from this exchange, even if you do not.
First, it seems that reading might not be your strongest suit given your initial letter, which showed that you had not read our paper, and given subsequent conversations with your followers, in which you wrote that you still had not bothered to read our paper. You wrote: “I did skim Lenski’s paper …” If you have not even read the original paper, how do you have any basis of understanding from which to question, much less criticize, the data that are presented therein?
Second, your capacity to misinterpret and/or misrepresent facts is plain in the third request in your first letter, where you said: “In addition, there is skepticism that 3 new and useful proteins appeared in the colony around generation 20,000.” That statement was followed by a link to a news article from NewScientist that briefly reported on our work. I assumed you had simply misunderstood that article, because there is not even a mention of proteins anywhere in the news article. As I replied, “We make no such claim anywhere in our paper, nor do I think it is correct. Proteins do not ‘appear out of the blue’, in any case.” So where did your confused assertion come from? It appears to have come from one of your earlier discussions, in which an acoltye [sic] (Able806, who to his credit at least seems to have attempted to read our paper) wrote:
"I think it might be best to clarify some of Richard's work. He started his E.Coli project in 1988 and has been running the project for 20 years now; his protocols are available to the general public. The New Scientist article is not very technical but the paper at PNAS is. The change was based on one of his colonies developing the ability to absorb citrate, something not found in wild E.Coli. This occurred around 31,500 generations and is based on the development of 3 proteins in the E.Coli genome. What his future work will be is to look at what caused the development of these 3 proteins around generation 20,000 of that particular colony."
As further evidence of your inability to keep even a few simple facts straight, you later wrote the following: “It [my reply] did clarify that his claims are not as strong as some evolutionists have insisted.” But no competent biologist would, after reading our paper with any care, insist (or even suggest) that “3 new and useful proteins appeared in the colony around generation 20,000” or any similar nonsense. It is only in your letter, and in your acolyte’s confused interpretation of our paper, that I have ever seen such a claim. Am I or the reporter for NewScientist somehow responsible for the confusion that reflects your own laziness and apparent inability to distinguish between a scientific paper, a news article, and a confused summary posted by an acolyte on your own website?
Third, it is apparent to me, and many others who have followed this exchange and your on-line discussions of how to proceed, that you are not acting in good faith in requests for data. From the posted discussion on your web site, it is obvious that you lack any expertise in the relevant fields. Several of your acolytes have pointed this out to you, and that your motives are unclear or questionable at best, but you and your cronies dismissed their concerns as rants and even expelled some of them from posting on your website. [ http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed] Several also pointed out that I had very quickly and straightforwardly responded that the methods and data supporting the evolution of the citrate-utilization capacity are already provided in our paper. One poster in your discussions, Aaronp, wrote:
“I read Lenski's paper, and as a trained microbiologist, I thought that it was both thorough and well done. His claims are backed by good data, namely that which was presented in the figures. I went through each of the figures after Aschlafly said that they were uninformative. Actually, they are basic figures that show the population explosion of the bacterial cultures after the Cit+ mutation occurred. These figures show that the cultures increased in size and mass at a given timepoint, being able to do so because they had evolved a mechanism to utilize a new nutrient, without the assistance of helper plasmids. … Lenksi’s paper, while not the most definite I’ve seen, is still a very well-researched paper that supports its claims nicely.”
(As far as I saw, Aaronp is the only poster who asserted any expertise in microbiology.) As further evidence of the absence of good-faith discussion about our research, in the discussion thread that began even before you sent your first email to me, I counted the words “fraud” or “fraudulent” being used more than 10 times, including one acolyte, TonyT, who says bluntly that I am “clearly a fraudulent hack.” In the discussion thread that also includes comments after my first reply, the number of times those same words are used has increased to 20, with the word “hoax” also now entering the discussion. A few posters wisely counseled against such slander but that did not deter you. I must say, it is surprising that someone with a law degree would make, and allow on his website, so many nasty comments that implicitly and even explicitly impugn my integrity, and by extension that of my collaborators, without any grounds whatsoever and reflecting only your dogmatic adherence to certain beliefs.
Finally, let me now turn to our data. As I said before, the relevant methods and data about the evolution of the citrate-using bacteria are in our paper. In three places in our paper, we did say “data not shown”, which is common in scientific papers owing to limitations in page length, especially for secondary or minor points. None of the places where we made such references concern the existence of the citrate-using bacteria; they concern only certain secondary properties of those bacteria. We will gladly post those additional data on my website.
It is my impression that you seem to think we have only paper and electronic records of having seen some unusual E. coli. If we made serious errors or misrepresentations, you would surely like to find them in those records. If we did not, then – as some of your acolytes have suggested – you might assert that our records are themselves untrustworthy because, well, because you said so, I guess. But perhaps because you did not bother even to read our paper, or perhaps because you aren’t very bright, you seem not to understand that we have the actual, living bacteria that exhibit the properties reported in our paper, including both the ancestral strain used to start this long-term experiment and its evolved citrate-using descendants. In other words, it’s not that we claim to have glimpsed “a unicorn in the garden” – we have a whole population of them living in my lab! [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unicorn_in_the_Garden] And lest you accuse me further of fraud, I do not literally mean that we have unicorns in the lab. Rather, I am making a literary allusion. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allusion]
One of your acolytes, Dr. Richard Paley, actually grasped this point. He does not appear to understand the practice and limitations of science, but at least he realizes that we have the bacteria, and that they provide “the real data that we [that’s you and your gang] need”. Here’s what this Dr. Paley had to say:
“I think there’s a great deal of misunderstanding here from the critics of Mr. Schlafly and obfuscation on the part of Prof. Lenski and his supporters. The real data that we need are not in the paper. Rather they are in the bacteria used in the experiments themselves. Prof. Lenski claims that these bacteria ‘evolved’ novel traits and that these were preceded by the evolution of ‘potentiated genotypes’, from which the traits could be ‘reevolved’ using preserved colonies from those generations. But how are we to know if these traits weren’t ‘potentiated’ by the Creator when He designed the bacteria thousands of years ago, such that they would eventually reveal themselves when the time was right? The only way this can be settled is if we have access to the genetic sequences of the bacteria colonies so that we can apply CSI techniques and determine if these ‘potentiated genotypes’ originated through blind chance or intelligence. But with the physical specimens in the hands of Darwinists, who claim they will get around to the sequencing at some unspecifed future time, how can we trust that this data will be forthcoming and forthright? Thus, Prof. Lenski et al. should supply Conservapedia, as stewards, with samples of the preserved E. coli colonies so that the data can be accessible to unbiased researchers outside of the hegemony of the Darwinian academia, even if it won’t be put to immediate examination by Mr. Schlafly. This is simply about keeping tax-payer-funded scientists honest.”
So, will we share the bacteria? Of course we will, with competent scientists. Now, if I was really mean, I might only share the ancestral strain, and let the scientists undertake the 20 years of our experiment. Or if I was only a little bit mean, maybe I’d also send the potentiated bacteria, and let the recipients then repeat the several years of incredibly pain-staking work that my superb doctoral student, Zachary Blount, performed to test some 40 trillion (40,000,000,000,000) cells, which generated 19 additional citrate-using mutants. But I’m a nice guy, at least when treated with some common courtesy, so if a competent scientist asks for them, I would even send a sample of the evolved E. coli that now grows vigorously on citrate. A competent microbiologist, perhaps requiring the assistance of a competent molecular geneticist, would readily confirm the following properties reported in our paper: (i) The ancestral strain does not grow in DM0 (zero glucose, but containing citrate), the recipe for which can be found on my web site, except leaving the glucose out of the standard recipe as stated in our paper. (ii) The evolved citrate-using strain, by contrast, grows well in that exact same medium. (iii) To confirm that the evolved strain is not some contaminating species but is, in fact, derived from the ancestral strain in our study, one could check a number of traits and genes that identify the ancestor as E. coli, and the evolved strains as a descendant thereof, as reported in our paper. (iv) One could also sequence the pykF and nadR genes in the ancestor and evolved citrate-using strains. One would find that the evolved bacteria have mutations in each of these genes. These mutations precisely match those that we reported in our previous work, and they identify the evolved citrate-using mutants as having evolved in the population designated Ara-3 of the long-term evolution experiment, as opposed to any of the other 11 populations in that experiment. And one could go on and on from there to confirm the findings in our paper, and perhaps obtain additional data of the sort that we are currently pursuing.
Before I could send anyone any bacterial strains, in order to comply with good scientific practices I would require evidence of the requesting scientist’s credentials including: (i) affiliation with an appropriate unit in some university or research center with appropriate facilities for storing (-80ºC freezer), handling (incubators, etc.), and disposing of bacteria (autoclave); and (ii) some evidence, such as peer-reviewed publications, that indicate that the receiving scientist knows how to work with bacteria, so that I and my university can be sure we are sending biological materials to someone that knows how to handle them. By the way, our strains are not derived from one of the pathogenic varieties of E. coli that are a frequent cause of food-borne illnesses. However, even non-pathogenic strains may cause problems for those who are immune-compromised or otherwise more vulnerable to infection. Also, my university requires that a Material Transfer Agreement be executed before we can ship any strains. That agreement would not constrain a receiving scientist from publishing his or her results. However, if an incompetent or fraudulent hack (note that I make no reference to any person, as this is strictly a hypothetical scenario, one that I doubt would occur) were to make false or misleading claims about our strains, then I’m confident that some highly qualified scientists would join the fray, examine the strains, and sort out who was right and who was wrong. That’s the way science works.
I would also generally ask what the requesting scientist intends to do with our strains. Why? It helps me to gauge the requester’s expertise. I might be able to point out useful references, for example. Moreover, as I’ve said, we are continuing our work with these strains, on multiple fronts, as explained in considerable detail in the Discussion section of our paper. I would not be happy to see our work “scooped” by another team – especially for the sake of the outstanding students and postdocs in my group who are hard at work on these fronts. However, that request to allow us to proceed, without risk of being scooped on work in which we have made a substantial investment of time and effort, would be just that: a request. In other words, we would respect PNAS policy to share those strains with any competent scientist who complied with my university’s requirements for the MTA and any other relevant legal restrictions. If any such request requires substantial time or resources (we have thousands of samples from this and many other experiments), then of course I would expect the recipient to bear those costs.
So there you have it. I know that I’ve been a bit less polite in this response than in my previous one, but I’m still behaving far more politely than you deserve given your rude, willfully ignorant, and slanderous behavior. And I’ve spent far more time responding than you deserve. However, as I said at the outset, I take education seriously, and I know some of your acolytes still have the ability and desire to think, as do many others who will read this exchange.
Sincerely,
Richard Lenski
P.S. Did you know that your own bowels harbor something like a billion (1,000,000,000) E. coli at this very moment? So remember to wash your hands after going to the toilet, as I hope your mother taught you. Simple calculations imply that there are something like 10^20 = 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 E. coli alive on our planet at any moment. Even if they divide just once per day, and given a typical mutation rate of 10^-9 or 10^-10 per base-pair per generation, then pretty much every possible double mutation would occur every day or so. That’s a lot of opportunity for evolution.
P.P.S. I hope that some readers might get a chuckle out of this story. The same Sunday (15 June 2008) that you and some of your acolytes were posting and promoting scurrilous attacks on me and our research (wasn’t that a bit disrespectful of the Sabbath?), I was in a church attending a wedding. And do you know what Old Testament lesson was read? It was Genesis 1:27-28[2], in which God created Man and Woman. It’s a very simple and lovely story, and I did not ask any questions, storm out, or demand the evidence that it happened as written at a time when science did not yet exist. I was there in the realm of spirituality and mutual respect, not confusing a house of religion for a science class or laboratory. And it was a beautiful wedding, too.
P.P.P.S. You may be unable to understand, or unwilling to accept, that evolution occurs. And yet, life evolves! [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove] From the content on your website, it is clear that you, like many others, view God as the Creator of the Universe. I respect that view. I find it baffling, however, that someone can worship God as the all-mighty Creator while, at the same time, denying even the possibility (not to mention the overwhelming evidence) that God’s Creation involved evolution. It is as though a person thinks that God must have the same limitations when it comes to creation as a person who is unable to understand, or even attempt to understand, the world in which we live. Isn’t that view insulting to God?
P.P.P.P.S. I noticed that you say that one of your favorite articles on your website is the one on “Deceit.” That article begins as follows: “Deceit is the deliberate distortion or denial of the truth with an intent to trick or fool another. Christianity and Judaism teach that deceit is wrong. For example, the Old Testament says, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’” You really should think more carefully about what that commandment means before you go around bearing false witness against others.
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