Audie wrote:Stu wrote:Alleged “Consensus on Climate
Probably the same dirty rats who try to shove that "evolution" bs down everyone's throat.
Or that dirty rat Michael Behe , how dare he show the improbability of chloroquine
By Darwinian evolution and how dare he show that the dogmatic unwavering religion of evolution high priest pz Myers and every evolutionist wrong
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/07/so ... 87901.html
Pz Myers before :And then of course there's PZ Myers. He made much the same criticisms, and also wrote:
Behe isn't just a crackpot who thinks he has a novel explanation for an evolutionary mechanism -- he's a radical anti-evolutionist extremist who rejects the entire notion of the transformation of species by natural processes. ... Most of the arguments are gussied up versions of the kind of handwaving, ignorant rationalizations you'd get from some pomaded fundagelical Baptist minister who got all his biology from the Bible, not at all what you'd expect from a tenured professor of biochemistry at a good university -- throwing in an occasional technical gloss or mangled anecdote from the literature is only a gloss to fool the rubes."""
And high priest pz Myers after
Looks like his magic wand isn't working too well these days
Kenneth Miller: "It would be difficult to imagine a more breathtaking abuse of statistical genetics. Behe obtains his probabilities by considering each mutation as an independent event, ruling out any role for cumulative selection, and requiring evolution to achieve an exact, predetermined result." (Nature, 2007)
Paul Gross: "Behe assumes simultaneous mutations at two sites in the relevant gene, but there is no such necessity and plenty of evidence that cumulativeness, rather than simultaneity, is the rule. As Nature's reviewer (Kenneth R. Miller) notes, 'It would be difficult to imagine a more breathtaking abuse of statistical genetics.'" (The New Criterion, 2007)
Jerry Coyne: "What has Behe now found to resurrect his campaign for ID? It's rather pathetic, really. ... Behe requires all of the three or four mutations needed to create such an interaction to arise simultaneously. ... If it looks impossible, this is only because of Behe's bizarre and unrealistic assumption that for a protein-protein interaction to evolve, all mutations must occur simultaneously, because the step-by-step path is not adaptive." (The New Republic, 2007)
Nick Matzke: "Here is the flabbergasting line of argument. First, Behe admits that CQR evolves naturally, but contends that it requires a highly improbable simultaneous double mutation, occurring in only 1 in 1020 parasites. ... The argument collapses at every step." (Trends In Ecology and Evolution, 2007)
Sean Carroll: "Behe makes a new set of explicit claims about the limits of Darwinian evolution, claims that are so poorly conceived and readily dispatched that he has unwittingly done his critics a great favor in stating them. ... Behe's main argument rests on the assertion that two or more simultaneous mutations are required for increases in biochemical complexity and that such changes are, except in rare circumstances, beyond the limit of evolution. .. Examples of cumulative selection changing multiple sites in evolving proteins include ... pyrimethamine resistance in malarial parasites -- a notable omission given Behe's extensive discussion of malarial drug resistance. ... [T]he argument for design has no scientific leg to stand on." (Science, 2007)
Richard Dawkins: "Trapped along a false path of his own rather unintelligent design, Behe has left himself no escape. Poster boy of creationists everywhere, he has cut himself adrift from the world of real science. ... If correct, Behe's calculations would at a stroke confound generations of mathematical geneticists, who have repeatedly shown that evolutionary rates are not limited by mutation." (New York Times, 2007)
And then of course there's PZ Myers. He made much the same criticisms, and also wrote:
Behe isn't just a crackpot who thinks he has a novel explanation for an evolutionary mechanism -- he's a radical anti-evolutionist extremist who rejects the entire notion of the transformation of species by natural processes. ... Most of the arguments are gussied up versions of the kind of handwaving, ignorant rationalizations you'd get from some pomaded fundagelical Baptist minister who got all his biology from the Bible, not at all what you'd expect from a tenured professor of biochemistry at a good university -- throwing in an occasional technical gloss or mangled anecdote from the literature is only a gloss to fool the rubes.
While these comments were made a few years ago, many ENV readers who follow this debate might remember just how gleefully harsh the critics were towards Behe after his book The Edge of Evolution came out. Even if Behe had been wrong, the critics' extreme incivility would have been unscholarly and inappropriate. But now it turns out all these critics were wrong. You get no resistance to chloroquine whatsoever unless at least two mutations are present to begin with. You might be able to get some cumulative selection after that, where successive mutations improve resistance up to a certain point. It is, however, by definition a multimutation feature.
Behe reasonably inferred that chloroquine resistance requires multiple mutations. He was right. His critics misunderstood his argument and thought this inference was a crucial plank in his reasoning. It wasn't. But it now turns out that the position Behe's critics attributed to him, and then railed against, was itself correct. Even a single CCC apparently requires multiple mutations before conferring any advantage. In fact, it's probably very close to the "edge" of evolution that Behe identified in his book.
And high priest pz Meyers after
Is an apology from Behe's critics then forthcoming? In a world where debates were conducted with the goal of discovering truth rather than scoring points, it sure ought to be. Unfortunately, I'm not sure we live in that world.
What we'll probably get is nothing more than PZ Myers's concession, offered in the context of the rant quoted above:
Fair enough; if you demand a very specific pair of amino acid changes in specific places in a specific protein, I agree, the odds are going to be very long on theoretical considerations alone, and the empirical evidence supports the claim of improbability for that specific combination.
Well, that's more or less what's required to generate chloroquine resistance. We'll gladly take this -- i.e., simply being proven right -- in lieu of an apology.
Wow those unscientific crackpot creationists are at it again . WHATS NEXT Audie ?
I tell you the creationists are coming to declare martial lawwweee!!!
