I was searching the early edition of PNAS for the abstract of yet another sloppy “science by press release” that didn’t bother to give the the title of the paper or the DOI, and came across this paper, so it wasn’t a wasted effort.
Steve McIntyre recently mentioned:
Mann rose to prominence by supposedly being able to detect “faint” signals using “advanced” statistical methods. Lewandowsky has taken this to a new level: using lew-statistics, lew-scientists can deduce properties of population with no members.
Josh (N=0) humor aside, this new paper makes me wonder how many climate science findings would fail evidence thresholds under this new proposed standard?
Revised standards for statistical evidence
Valen E. Johnson
Significance
The lack of reproducibility of scientific research undermines public confidence in science and leads to the misuse of resources when researchers attempt to replicate and extend fallacious research findings. Using recent developments in Bayesian hypothesis testing, a root cause of nonreproducibility is traced to the conduct of significance tests at inappropriately high levels of significance. Modifications of common standards of evidence are proposed to reduce the rate of nonreproducibility of scientific research by a factor of 5 or greater.
Abstract
Recent advances in Bayesian hypothesis testing have led to the development of uniformly most powerful Bayesian tests, which represent an objective, default class of Bayesian hypothesis tests that have the same rejection regions as classical significance tests. Based on the correspondence between these two classes of tests, it is possible to equate the size of classical hypothesis tests with evidence thresholds in Bayesian tests, and to equate P values with Bayes factors. An examination of these connections suggest that recent concerns over the lack of reproducibility of scientific studies can be attributed largely to the conduct of significance tests at unjustifiably high levels of significance. To correct this problem, evidence thresholds required for the declaration of a significant finding should be increased to 25–50:1, and to 100–200:1 for the declaration of a highly significant finding. In terms of classical hypothesis tests, these evidence standards mandate the conduct of tests at the 0.005 or 0.001 level of significance.
From the discussion:
The correspondence between P values and Bayes factors based on UMPBTs suggest that commonly used thresholds for statistical significance represent only moderate evidence against null hypotheses. Although it is difficult to assess the proportion of all tested null hypotheses that are actually true, if one assumes that this proportion is approximately one-half, then these results suggest that between 17% and 25% of marginally significant scientific findings are false. This range of false positives is consistent with nonreproducibility rates reported by others (e.g., ref.5). If the proportion of true null hypotheses is greater than one-half, then the proportion of false positives reported in the scientific literature, and thus the proportion of scientific studies that would fail to replicate, is even higher.
In addition, this estimate of the nonreproducibility rate of scientific findings is based on the use of UMPBTs to establish the rejection regions of Bayesian tests. In general, the use of other default Bayesian methods to model effect sizes results in even higher assignments of posterior probability to rejected null hypotheses, and thus to even higher estimates of false-positive rates.
This phenomenon is discussed further in SI Text, where Bayes factors obtained using several other default Bayesian procedures are compared with UMPBTs (seeFig. S1). These analyses suggest that the range 17–25% underestimates the actual proportion of marginally significant scientific findings that are false.
Finally, it is important to note that this high rate of nonreproducibility is not the result of scientific misconduct, publication bias, file drawer biases, or flawed statistical designs; it is simply the consequence of using evidence thresholds that do not represent sufficiently strong evidence in favor of hypothesized effects.
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The full paper is here: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/10/28/1313476110.full.pdf
The SI is here: Download Supporting Information (PDF)
For our layman readers who might be a bit behind on statistics, here is a primer on statistical significance and P-values as it relates to weight loss/nutrition, which is something that you can easily get your mind around.
Gross failure of scientifical nutritional studies is another topic McIntyre recently discussed: A Scathing Indictment of Federally-Funded Nutrition Research
So, while some dicey science findings might simply be low threshold problems, there are real human conduct problems in science too.
Those of us who studied the non-belief-based sciences have usually been taught how to recognise appropriate statistical techniques. But we were warned not to try it ourselves for real research. Rather to get a specialist Statistician on the job. Sciences like Climate and Nutrition have shown the stupidity of doing otherwise. Brett Keane, NZ
milodon: “In cladistic phylogeny, that makes the Raoellidae the closest sister group to Cetacea…”
For your response to a), let me just sum that up as “it looks the same, therefore it is the same, therefore the process we didn’t observe occur is the only one that could occur.” Now cast that to climatology. Specificaly to ‘lines that go up’ or ‘treemometers’ and add in a dose of ‘therefore man did it.’
” I don’t see what this has to do with evolution.
None of it has anything to do with evolution. It has to do with what is required for a valid inference. What is it that constitutes ‘proof’? Or disproof, validation, verification, falsification, etc. But it’s all rooted in passive observationals: That is, we cannot slap it on a table an do it, but must hang out peering at the night sky and wait. (Astronomy, this time,)
Validate the inferences based on the constraints of time and passive observationals. If that works, then the gig is up and Climate Science is indisputable.
Jquip says:
November 12, 2013 at 5:57 pm
No, you’re not a new species. You inherited genes from your parents, along with some mutations all your own. Those genes are just reshuffled. It seems that you have never studied the science of biology whose most elementary tenets seem to mystify you. Why then do you feel compelled to comment on the subject?
For sexually reproducing organisms, the usual definition of a species is that its members can normally produce fertile offspring with each other, unlike hybrids like mules. There are many instances of ring species, in which one subspecies can produce fertile offspring with the other subspecies nearest it, but not with those at the extremes of the species’ range. Zebras used to be a good example, but some of its subspecies have gone extinct.
Jquip says:
November 12, 2013 at 6:02 pm
I’ll make one last attempt.
In biology, geology, astronomy, physics, any science with an historical component, the testable assumption is made that processes which we observe occurring now also happened in the past, unless evidence emerges to suggest otherwise.
In the case of evolution, science can now look at genomes & see precisely what the differences & similarities are on the molecular level between different species, genera, families, orders, classes, what have you, from bacteria, archaea & unicellular eukaryotes to sequoia trees, giant fungal rings & blue whales.
The inferences made from the fossil record & other entirely independent lines of evidence are still helpful however, as we complete genomes for few organisms. Similarly the age of the sun can be derived independently in at least two ways, & they both agree closely.
Do you have the same objection to geology as to biology? Geologists inferred from the evidence that the continents were once conjoined, but until the discovery of seafloor spreading in the 1950s lacked a good explanation for the observations that supported this inference. Same was true of evolution before Darwin & Wallace. Scientists inferred that it had happened from fossils & anatomy, but didn’t know how. The falsified consensus was shown wrong by new hypotheses with abundant supporting evidence.
Now compare & contrast these valid sciences with “consensus climate science”, in which what should be subject to investigation is simply assumed, no falsifiable predictions are made, GIGO models based upon false assumptions are accepted as “evidence”, which can be “validated” by comparison with other GIGO models & when models are shown false, the goalposts are simply moved.
Comparing the scientific fact of evolution with CACA does the greatest possible disservice to the skeptical case against CACA. (I prefer “case” to “cause”, since a cause is what the anti-scientific scientivists like Mann have.)
PS: Re “therefore the process we didn’t observe occur is the only one that could occur”. No one says it’s the only one that could occur. It’s just that no one has come up with a better explanation than darwinian directional & 29th century stochastic processes leading to evolution. The alternatives on offer, ie inheritance of acquired characteristics or sequential special creation by a supernatural force or being, have real problems.
This is why I asked if you could come up with a better explanation for observations in the whale lineage. Biology would embrace your hypothesis if it did a better job of explaining observations. Science has looked since 1859 without success. Rather more & more supporting evidence keeps piling up, adding to the theory but not falsifying it, as with Einstein’s improvement on Newton’s conception of gravity.
When CACA advocates like Gore ask, “What else could be melting the ice but man-made CO2”, skeptics have good answers, more convincing than CACA. When people opposed to evolution say it could be something else, they can’t offer any convincing alternatives. Anti-scientific ID is demonstrably just a stalking horse for creationism.
milodon: You seem to be struggling still with what I believe, rather than what the question is. So just assume I’m a true believer of evolution and already know these things. The question isn’t biology or geology: It is what makes the *form of inference* valid. Because it is absolutely certain that our wishes for the topic cannot. Lay down the rules for what makes the argument valid.
Jquip says:
November 12, 2013 at 6:55 pm
I was trying to understand what your objections are to the scientific method. What makes a “form of inference” valid has long been known & used with huge success. First, the inference needs not to have been shown false. Second, it should enjoy support from other lines of evidence or new observations along the same line. Third, it should explain observations better than any competing hypotheses.
Evolution passes these tests with flying colors. CACA fails epically in every case & particular.
Since some of the comments have strayed into the medical lab (where I’ve worked for 25 years) I thought I would throw in a couple of semi-relevant comments. In the lab the terms “95% confidence level” and “accuracy” are both important, but very different. There seems to be a little mixing of the two. For quantitative tests our quality control samples (run at least 3 times per day) must yield results within 2SD of the mean, or corrective action must be taken and documented. For us this statistical 95% level means we can be 95% certain that any deviation from the “true” level of the analyte is caused by randomness in the testing process (equipment, operator, reagents) rather than error such as malfunction, operator error, or contaminated reagents. Accuracy is related but refers to the correctness of the result. In Qualitative tests (pos/neg) such as drug screens (they can also be quantitative, but usually not) I’m pretty sure the accuracy rate is much higher than 95%. I doubt if a test procedure with accuracy that low would ever be approved for use. Usually “false positives”, which are usually interfering substances such as medications, can be sorted out through patient history and confirmation/verification using other methods without certain interferences. I’m certainly no expert on drug testing, I would guess the incidence of people being said to have a drug in them that was not there is much less than 1%. ( I know these are just examples people are using, but it seems as if there is some idea that they are real) I do wholeheartedly agree with rgb@duke about overtesting. There is a huge amount of overtesting. Mostly I think due to defensive medicine and partly due to convenience. I guess this doesn’t have much to do with Bayesian theory (which my basic statistics class did not include), but I have always suspected that statistical significance was somehow being misused.
milondonharlani,
I find your comments on evolution very interesting. I wish I had time to discuss them at length but I do not. I want to draw your attention to an article that I find very interesting:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/17/skull-homo-erectus-human-evolution
The topic of interest is the relationship between natural variability and speciation as these concepts were discussed by Darwin. The context is pre-Mendel and pre-Crick and Watson. The evidence is limited to the fossil record.
Briefly, would you agree that the evidence for several species has been called into question by the discovery in this article?
Milodon sez: “There is no magic genetic barrier that keeps one species from evolving into a new one, given selective pressure to do so or simple reproductive isolation. The processes can be & have been observed all around us.”
Well, there is. At least, as far as I was taught in high school. We learned about sexual reproduction. The chromosomes line up in their pairs, then pulled into two complementary sets, then the cell splits in two, with a set in each cell, if all goes well, and you have two gametes (sorry to get technical with the language); you get a cell that has only half of the otherwise paired set of chromosomes.
A new member of the species results if a male gamete and a female gamete meet and combine, and their half-sets of DNA are able to match up. The resulting double-strand DNA then gets unzipped when and where necessary so that one of the strands can code for proteins. And so on.
If the genes don’t match up one-to-one, all of this may fail. If the chromosomes don’t line up, one to one, then all of this may fail.
So, a puzzle is: how does a gene get added to a strand of chromosome, and find a complementary gene in an opposite-sex gamete, allowing this process to carry on, with the newly added gene?
In short, how do genes get added?
I appreciate the frequent use of the term “assume,” and like terms, in milodon’s comments, making the case for me, that these building blocks of evolutionary theory/of speciation are based on logic and reason, and not on science.
[ ] I will; have to look into these bacteria that have a nylon fetish – if they can reproduce with the original bacteria, I might not consider them a new species.
[ ] conducting generations of reproduction and getting an organism that uses a new energy/food source may not necessarily be proof of a new species. The ability to eat nylon either was latent, and was made prominent by micro-evolution, or was a capability added by a genetic mutation or mutations that carried forward. A site mutation or mutations that has some advantage, but where the genes and the chromosomes can still be described, and replicate, the same way, may not be the same as the theory that explains where new species come from. If the genes are arranged the same way, and the chromosomes also, then it sounds like the same organism.
Great interest is being paid to humans that ought to be suffering from HIV, but are not. They are humans. A wildly rare, latent trait may be being expressed. The organism is still Homo sapiens.
[ ] It could be argued that producing a new species in the lab is proof of intelligent design, not natural selection: it takes quite a lot of purposeful intellectually-guided action to produce that new species. Sure, it helps make the case. The examples of this supposedly happening “in the wild” would be observable evidence of natural selection as the mechanism for the great variety of species we see, with their quite varying number, and pattern, of genes and chromosomes.
Theo Goodwin says:
November 13, 2013 at 7:28 am
Yes. I’ve always been a lumper rather than a splitter in taxonomy. Some paleontologists like to assign new species names to their finds, ie they’re splitters, so that we have for instance H. ergaster in Africa & H. erectus in Asia, with H. antecessor later in Europe. The problem arises with extinct species even more than with extant ones, whose mating behavior & genomes can be observed. IMO all the H. habilis-grade specimens are one species, the H. erectus grade all one & H. sapiens all one, with notable subspecies like H. sapiens neanderthalensis.
Thanks to Darwin & Wallace, identifying species is less important than it was when creationism held sway. Linnaeus wanted to lump humans & chimps together in genus Homo, but knew the consequences would be horrific if he did, so created the genus Pan for our closest living cousins. Biologists today realize that all categorization of living things is fraught with difficulty. Taxonomy now however has systematic means with which to do so, thanks to cladistics, & more tools, like genomics, at its disposal, rather than simply anatomical comparisons.
“I was trying to understand what your objections are to the scientific method. What makes a “form of inference” valid has long been known & used with huge success. First, the inference needs not to have been shown false. Second, it should enjoy support from other lines of evidence or new observations along the same line. Third, it should explain observations better than any competing hypotheses.”
Logic and reason are great tools to use to strive to test claims of knowledge. Inference is a matter of logic and or reason.
Logic and or reason is not the same as the scientific method. Logic/reason, combined with empiricism, by using a priori predictions to be supported or disproven by empiric observations, is science.
Proper inference is great, but is not, itself, “science.” Macro-evolution is, for the most part, very reasonable. Many great arguments can be made.
Arguments can also be made that increasing anti-oxidants will keep me safer from cancer, and that massive doses of vitamin C will keep me safe from a rhinovirus. Until we set up an a priori, disprovable test, then go conduct the test, then if successful hope that others can replicate it, these are just compelling, reasonable arguments.
I make a big point about this partly because our school kids have no ability to evaluate scientific claims – they are not being taught this properly. They are instead being taught another strategy for ascertaining knowledge: not logic/reason, not science, not empiricism, but the Edicts from The Authorities. Ninety Five Percent of all credible scientists are apparently telling my children that man-made global warming has put us on the brink of calamity. “Science” is that which is consensus of the popular scientists.
In the old days, people studied rhetoric, debate, logic (deductive and inductive), science, and natural science.
Nowadays, ask a college kid what rhetoric is. Ask how “science” is the same as or different from “natural science.” Ask them to define a debatable issue, and provide arguments for both sides, with rebuttals. Ask them to note the difference between deductive and inductive logic.
They likely will not have answers to these questions. By “answers,” I mean accurate answers. People need to be able to recognize the difference between a pronouncement from an august panel, a logical argument, and a scientific test.
TheLastDemocrat says:
November 13, 2013 at 8:25 am
Sexual reproduction is not a barrier to forming new species. Quite the opposite. It facilitates it, which you’d know had you read my comments about polyploidy & hybridization, two of the ways in which new species can be created overnight. It also helps make new mutations, since the process often goes awry, as shown by genetic birth defects.
There is no barrier in the total genome that keeps one population of a species from accumulating differences in its genome from that of another population of the same species. Evolution works on the whole genome, which is reshuffled at each generation. The process of sexual reproduction is the mechanism by which that occurs, but the genes & non-coding material are passed down to succeeding generations. It shouldn’t be hard to understand this distinction, but apparently you missed out on population genetics in high school. And also about the genetic code.
Bacteria don’t normally reproduce with other bacteria. Their standard method of reproduction is asexual, by splitting. Don’t know how you missed that part in high school. This fact makes it harder to define species in prokaryotes than eukaryotes, like us. Bacteria do however engage in a form of sex, by transferring genes directly between each other. Based upon how they do this, they can be said to have six “sexes”.
Bacteria Typically have only one circular chromosome, with its DNA arranged in a circle. But not all; some bacteria have multiple circular chromosomes, & many have linear chromosomes & linear plasmids. However their chromosomes don’t line up with those of a mate, as in sexually reproducing organisms. They just replicate & split, one copy going with each daughter cell. Really, before you comment on biology, you should acquire an elementary understanding of its basics.
Chromosomes lining up in the same way is not what makes a species. A wild horse suspecies for instance has one less chromosome than the domestic horses, but the two forms can still interbreed & produce fertile offspring.
Chromosomes line up pretty much the same way in all mammals. When mistakes occur, the resulting animal may still be of the same species as its parent, as for instance with Downs Syndrome children. However when a previously diploid organism goes triploid, a new species might or might not emerge. Humans have polyploid tissue within our bodies, for instance, but new species of important grain crops have arisen both naturally & artificially through polyploid reproduction of the whole genome or through combination of the genomes of two parent species, even from different genera.
The process of trait expression is usually well explained by Mendelian processes, to which recent understanding of other genomic factors has been added. It’s some magical process that just happens to pop up now & then. There are underlying genetic reasons for traits such as suddenly being able to eat nylon or showing resistance to a disease virus. Medical science looks for such genetic variation in order to make new drugs & vaccines.
No, it could not be argued that producing a new species in the lab is proof of intelligent design, not natural selection. For one thing, selection is only one process of evolution. It’s not the one at work when I in the lab or a mutagenic agent in nature remove a base pair from a genome to create a deletion mutation, or replace one with a different base pair to create a substitution mutation.
For another it takes no intelligence for a passing cosmic ray to knock a base pair out of an organism’s genome in one of its gametes. It just happens. It takes no purposeful intellectually-guided action at all to produce a new species. The examples of this happening “in the wild” are not supposed. Natural & sexual selection have indeed been observed repeatedly as the mechanism for the evolution of many species, but also non-directional, stochastic processes have been as well, such as the founder’s principle, reproductive isolation & genetic drift. Again, I don’t know how you missed all this in high school.
There is zero evidence for the anti-scientific religious doctrine of intelligent design in the origin of species & all the evidence in the world against it & in favor of evolutionary processes, about which science learns more all the time.
But please let me know when you decide whether you consider the nylon eating strains of genera Flavobacterium & Pseudomonas to be species. And also the many strains of deadly pathogens which have evolved resistance to antibiotic drugs, like the MRSA that killed one of my best friends at age 61. And the insects which have evolved to eat blood instead of flower nectar, juices & decaying matter. Ditto whether the mosquito Anopheles gambiae is currently undergoing speciation into the M(opti) & S(avanah) molecular forms, since some pesticides that work on the M form will not work anymore on the S form. Thanks.
One of the interesting things about the concept of species is that there are so many of them. There is, in fact, to use Sterelny and Griffiths’ words, a flock of species concepts:
milodonharlani says:
November 13, 2013 at 9:26 am
“There is zero evidence for the anti-scientific religious doctrine of intelligent design ”
Zero?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life#Coenzyme_world
Oh, and maybe you could avoid the word “anti scientific”; it puts you on a level with the average liberal propagandist like this Mooney person; use “unscientific” to describe things that can’t be explained with the scientific method.
“Again, I don’t know how you missed all this in high school.”
You have a very high opinion of public school systems. Do you have evidence for that? Just kidding. I sure knew more about genetics than my biology teacher. He just wasn’t that interested in the topic.
Well, Milodon Harlani. So you are STILL trying the spread the word about Neo-Darwinism. You do realize, don’t you, that in your almost daily promoting of the theory of evolution and of Darwin’s Origin of Species ideas as if they are fact and not conjecture, you are acting like one who is promoting ones’ religion? I am hopeful that your constantly pushing Darwinism is because you have some doubt as to its truth (perhaps, only subconsciously) and will open your mind to the possibility that you are mistaken. Your level of anger when confronted with Intelligent Design is, you know, quite telling… .
It is incredible to me that you could actually have watched the videos featuring Dr. Stephen Meyer and David Berlinski which I posted last summer in response to your assertions and still say that there is “no evidence” for Intelligent Design theory. It is obvious you have not yet honestly evaluated the evidence for Intelligent Design theory. In case you can bring yourself to do that now, here are some fine minds who disagree with your views:
Signature in the Cell — Dr. Stephen Meyer
Critique of Darwinian Evolution 1/3 — David Berlinski
David Berlinski 2/3
David Berlinski 3/3
Best wishes to you, Mr. Harlani, whenever you do set out on a quest for the facts,
Janice
Would it be safe to remark – within the context of the conversation – that many beautiful things have undeniably and incontrovertibly come out of the planet’s poor dust, at a statistically significant rate, since the formation of the earth and the development of the seas?
And for some this is cause to have a little faith and to sing 🙂
The Pompous Git says:
November 13, 2013 at 10:41 am
Quite so. The fact that it’s often hard to define a species is a consequence of evolution. At any one time lots of subspecies are in the process of becoming new species. Species are clearly separate when the transitional forms no longer exist. In human evolution, for instance, there was a time when different forms of genus Homo might have existed, but the boundaries are fairly arbitrary as among H. erectus & H. ergaster, for instance.
Reproductive isolation in ring species isn’t always based upon mate selection. There may be physical isolation as well. Zebra subspecies would mate with either their own or neighboring subspecies, but the most northerly subspecies can’t produce fertile offspring with the most southerly, despite gene flow in between.
As for the new species of Galapagos finches, I might well lump them as subspecies, but the biologists who have studied them consider them separate. As I said, because there’s a continuum, it’s often hard to define species, sometimes impossible. Species are often clear cut but not always. Creationists believe in hard & fast “kinds”, each individually created. Biologists not only don’t, but would expect there to be such definitional problems.
DirkH says:
November 13, 2013 at 10:54 am
Intelligent Design, like CACA, is not just unscientific, but anti-scientific, & for the same reason. ID advocates look at flagella in bacteria & are happy to throw up their hands & give up, saying, “These structures are irreducibly complex, so couldn’t have evolved, therefore a Designer made them.” That’s anti-scientific, just as when Prince Albert says, “What else but CO2 could be causing Arctic sea ice to melt?” The pro-scientific attitude is to look for other explanations, test them & see whether they explain observations better than competing hypotheses, rather than shrug & ask, “What else could it be?”
In fact, there are better explanations for sea ice melt than CO2 & for bacterial flagella than a Designer poofing into existence these structures which, among other advantages, help pathogens infect people.
It wasn’t I who rated US high schools highly. The Last Democrat felt that his high school class equipped him to comment knowledgeably on biology.
Janice Moore says:
November 13, 2013 at 11:33 am
I am not trying to spread the word about “Neo-Darwinism”. I don’t comment on biology daily & to the best of my recollection have only done so in response to erroneous or dubious comments by others.
I have heard all the rubbish in your videos over & over for years. I’ve already repeatedly replied to the only sciencey hypothesis yet presented by ID advocates, ie the cracked concept of “irreducible complexity”. I’ll respond further when you, Janice Moore, yourself make the arguments that you find so persuasive in favor of the anti-scientific religious doctrine of ID, which was promoted only to get around US court rulings against teaching creationism in public schools.
If you believe there is a shred of evidence in favor of ID, please by all means, present it here yourself. You feel qualified to discuss climate science, so why not biology as well? What are you afraid of?
DirkH says:
November 13, 2013 at 10:54 am
It’s a common mistake for non-biologists to confuse abiogenesis, the origin of life, with evolution. They’re two different processes, although evolution kicked in early on in the development of life on earth. As with evolution, the anti-scientific religious doctrine of intelligent design contributes nothing at all to research into the origin of life.
If you’d like to discuss the recent wonderful breakthroughs in the study of abiogenesis, I’d be happy to oblige, moderators permitting.
Zeke says:
November 13, 2013 at 11:37 am
I have nothing against faith, but science is based upon doubt. I suppose you could call the belief that the universe is comprehensible & that processes we see in action today occurred in the past to be forms of faith, but we have evidence that these assumptions are valid, since humans have had success based upon them.
Truly, “many beautiful things have undeniably and incontrovertibly come out of the planet’s poor dust, at a statistically significant rate, since the formation of the earth and the development of the seas”. The question for science is how have these things come about.
Many scientists share a sense of awe & wonder before the universe, & some even think the universe itself might have been designed, however crazy a crock ID is as opposed to the fact of evolution.
Promoting as “science” the baseless, evidence-free, anti-scientific religious doctrine ID on the leading climate skeptic blog IMO just gives ammunition to CACA advocates looking to besmirch it & skepticism.
I hinted above that this probably is not the thread, or the place to debate evolutionary biology, or the origin of life. Biologists disagree among themselves about such things. FWIW, I’m more than happy to provide the resources for such a debate. I recently reblogged some of my thoughts from 2005 here:
http://thepompousgit.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/on-species/
and to whet your appetite I commence by quoting Kevin Kelly, editor of Wired magazine:
The Pompous Git says:
November 13, 2013 at 12:42 pm
There is no such thing as the “laws of neodarwinism”, a cartoonish misunderstanding of biology in general & evolutionary theory in particular. The source of mutations doesn’t have to be from the environment. Just the process of replication introduces mutations in each generation. You & I each have several acquired in this way.
The tendency of organisms to produce mutations has long been recognized. What might come as a surprise to the man in the street is old hat to biologists. Some have indeed tried to argue that this tendency is a form of Lamarackian inheritance of acquired traits, but the “traits” being inherited in this case are mutations, so this is a distinction without a difference from other evolutionary processes.