A question for Dr. Michael Mann – Would a professional scientist behave this way?

Steve B says: March 25, 2013 at 2:10 pm
“…Evolution is one of those fields where it’s proponents have shut down debate and yet I see no scientific evidence (via scientific method) that it is a valid theory…”
I suggest you read Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”, examine a little the later discoveries relating to genetics and DNA, and have a good look at some modern breeding programs … chickens, pigs, dogs and all their breeds, grain crops..
Read about the experiments of Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev set up in 1959… domesticating fur foxes using behavior towards humans as the selection factor (yes, he kept a control group). The end result was marked behavioral, developmental and physical changes … He ran the trial for the last 26 years f his life, and it was still running 14 years after his death (article below is 1999)
American Scientist
March-April 1999 Volume 87, Number 2 Page: 160 DOI: 10.1511/1999.2.160
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/1999/2/early-canid-domestication-the-farm-fox-experiment/1

Belyaev’s Hypothesis
Belyaev began his experiment in 1959, a time when Soviet genetics was starting to recover from the anti-Darwinian ideology of Trofim Lysenko. Belyaev’s own career had suffered. In 1948 his commitment to orthodox genetics had cost him his job as head of the Department of Fur Animal Breeding at the Central Research Laboratory of Fur Breeding in Moscow. During the 1950s he continued to conduct genetic research under the guise of studying animal physiology. He moved to Novosibirsk, where he helped found the Siberian Department of the Soviet (now Russian) Academy of Sciences and became the director of the Department’s Institute of Cytology and Genetics, a post he held from 1959 until his death in 1985. Under his leadership the institute became a center of basic and applied research in both classical genetics and modern molecular genetics. His own work included ground-breaking investigations of evolutionary change in animals under extreme conditions (including domestication) and of the evolutionary roles of factors such as stress, selection for behavioral traits and the environmental photoperiod, or duration of natural daylight. Animal domestication was his lifelong project, and fur bearers were his favorite subjects.
[….]
Now, 40 years and 45,000 foxes after Belyaev began, our experiment has achieved an array of concrete results. The most obvious of them is a unique population of 100 foxes (at latest count), each of them the product of between 30 and 35 generations of selection. They are unusual animals, docile, eager to please and unmistakably domesticated. When tested in groups in an enclosure, pups compete for attention, snarling fiercely at one another as they seek the favor of their human handler. Over the years several of our domesticated foxes have escaped from the fur farm for days. All of them eventually returned. Probably they would have been unable to survive in the wild.
Physically, the foxes differ markedly from their wild relatives. Some of the differences have obvious links to the changes in their social behavior. In dogs, for example, it is well known that the first weeks of life are crucial for forming primary social bonds with human beings. The “window” of bonding opens when a puppy becomes able to sense and explore its surroundings, and it closes when the pup starts to fear unknown stimuli. According to our studies, nondomesticated fox pups start responding to auditory stimuli on day 16 after birth, and their eyes are completely open by day 18 or 19. On average, our domesticated fox pups respond to sounds two days earlier and open their eyes a day earlier than their nondomesticated cousins. Nondomesticated foxes first show the fear response at 6 weeks of age; domesticated ones show it after 9 weeks or even later. (Dogs show it at 8 to 12 weeks, depending on the breed.) As a result, domesticated pups have more time to become incorporated into a human social environment.

…enter the mindnumbingly narrow and monolithic troll…
see ya in the next thread guys!

I’m always amazed that, when this subject breaks out, and given the plethora of smart scientists and engineers here, no one comments on Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity or the Age of Spiritual Machines (unless I’ve missed such comments). The importance of time stopping should not be underestimated in the grand scheme of science and religion, and yet it is only one scientific event (albeit not an easy one) away now, namely the downloading of the human brain to a hard drive.