How can philosophy contribute to science?

I've written quite a bit about the perceived conflict between science and philosophy and defended my view that science is best described in broad terms as a way of knowing that requires evidence, skepticism, and rational thinking. As far as I know, there is no other way of knowing that has produced true knowledge.

In this sense, the proper practice of philosophy has to involve science—and by that I mean evidence— if the results are going to produce knowledge. There's lots to debate on this topic, including discussions about the meaning of "knowledge" [Is science the only way of knowing?].

But that's not what I want to talk about today. Today's topic is about the contribution that philosophers can make to science. I'll focus on philosophers of biology and on scientific topics that I'm knowledgeable about and I'll assume that most philosophers agree with Elisabeth Lloyd when she says, "As a philosopher of science, I have always been oriented towards addressing problems that scientists have, not so much problems that philosophers have. That is how to do good philosophy of science."¹

Now, let me be clear about the issue. It is blindingly obvious that philosophers could use their deep understanding of logic and argumentation to make significant contributions to biology, especially in cases where scientists are misusing logic. The question is not whether philosophy is incapable of ever contributing to biology but whether it is actually fulfilling that potential.

Protein concentration in bacteria is regulated primarily at the level of transcription initiation

The amount of a given protein in Escherichia coli depends on a number of factors such as the amount of mRNA and the rate of translation. The standard model of regulation is based on decades of study of individual genes and it reveals that the amount of protein is mostly dependent on the amount of mRNA that was translated. This, in turn, indicates that most regulation occurs at the level of transcription initiation.

It's now possible to look simultaneously at the characteristics of large numbers of protein-coding genes to see whether this generality holds. That's what Balakrishan et al. (2022) reported in a Science paper a few years ago. They looked at the characteristics of 1900 protein-coding genes in E. coli to see how protein concentration was regulated.

Predatory journals are helping to spread misinformation in the scientific literature

At the end of last year (2024) I posted an article about distinguished molecular biologist William Hasletine who published an article in Forbes about A New Dogma Of Molecular Biology: A Paradigm Shift. The article was about overthrowing the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology because of the discovery of thousands of non-coding genes. There is no paradigm shift. It's a paradigm shaft. [William Haseltine misrepresents molecular biology and calls for a paradigm shift]

Is AI really "intelligent"? Here are 13 biology questions to test the latest AI algorithms.

Last night I attended a talk by Chris DiCarlo who warned us about the dangers of AI. I'm sure he's right to be worried but I'm skeptical about some of the hype surrounding AI. For example, Chris said that just a few years ago the best AI algorithms were performing at high school level but now they are at Ph.D. level. The implication is that it won't be long before AI is smarter than humans.

Here's the problem. I can only access the cheap versions of AI such as ChatGPT and Scite Assistant but I can also see the results of Google's Generative AI whenever I do a Google search. Chris has access to more sophisticated versions so that's what he might be referring to when he says they operate at the Ph.D. level of intelligence.

Why Trust Science?

Bruce Alberts,¹ Karen Hopkin, and Keith Roberts have published an essay on Why Trust Science.

In this essay, we address the question of why we can trust science—and how we can identify which scientific claims we can trust. We begin by explaining how scientists work together, as part of a larger scientific community, to generate knowledge that is reliable. We describe how the scientific process builds a consensus, and how new evidence can change the ways that scientists—and, ultimately, the rest of us—see the world. Last, but not least, we explain how, as informed citizens, we can all become “competent outsiders” who are equipped to evaluate scientific claims and are able to separate science facts from science fiction.

Most of the essay describes an idealized version of how science works with an emphasis on collaboration and rigorous oversight. They claim that the work of scientists can usually be trusted because it is self-correcting.

William Haseltine misrepresents molecular biology and calls for a paradigm shift

William Hasletine is a well-respected molecular biologist with an outstanding track record dating back to the time when he was a graduate student under Jim Watson and Wally Gilbert where he studied the regulation of gene expression in bacteria (Ph.D. in 1973). This is why I was surprised to see his recent article in Forbes where he seems to have fallen hook-line-and-sinker for postgenomics gobbledygook. It looks like Haseltine is losing the ability to think critically as he concentrates more on technology and public policy.

A New Dogma Of Molecular Biology: A Paradigm Shift by William A. Haseltine

Santi Garcia-Vallvé reviews my book

Santi Garcia-Vallvé has reviewed my book in the journal Mètode. It's written in Catalan but Santi was kind enough to send me a translation.

OUR GENOME HAS NOT YET SPOKEN ITS LAST WORD

What's in Your Genome? 90% of Your Genome Is Junk. Laurence A. Moran. Aevo University of Toronto Press (UTP). May 2023. 392 pages.

What's in Your Genome? exposes a variety of topics and concepts in molecular biology, genetics, and evolution that have been misunderstood by scientists and the general public. Many of these concepts are widely accepted, despite ongoing debate about them. Although the author, Larry Moran, has exhaustively discussed most of these issues on his blog "Sandwalk: Strolling with a sceptical biochemist", discussing them in a book allows for a more in-depth investigation.

One of these recurring themes is Francis Crick 's 1957 proposal of the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology. In his book Molecular Biology of the gene, James Watson adapted this concept by summarizing in a figure the flow of genetic information from DNA to RNA and then to proteins. This version was widely adopted, and many scientists now assume that it was the original definition. However, Crick claimed that once the information had been transferred to the proteins, it could not be returned to nucleic acids. Other controversial topics discussed in the book include the number of genes encoded in the human genome, the concept of Junk DNA and the prevalence of alternative splicing in the transcription of the human genome. Larry takes a certain viewpoint on all these problems, as evidenced by the title of the book, but he also presents arguments from all sides. Throughout the book, he argues that scientists must present evidence in support of and against their findings, as well as contextualise their discoveries in light of the knowledge of the subject. Thus, the first chapters of the book describe in depth the basic ideas of genetics, genetics and evolution that are required to understand the arguments that he will present later, showing also when and how they were discovered.

This is a highly recommendable book that pushed us to think about how research findings are explained and the importance of placing them in their proper context. The media frequently looks for stunning headlines and there is growing demand to assess the social impact of a project, article or scientific project. However, if we exaggerate our findings, we risk exacerbating further diminishing the general lack of interest in scientific news. Everyone is responsible that this does not happen.

Santi Garcia-Vallvé is an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology at Rovira i Virgili University (URV) in Tarragona, Spain, and a member of the Chemoinformatics and Nutrition research group."

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Philip Ball doesn't understand sloppy genomes

... anything found to be true of E.coli must also be true of Elephants.
                                                         Jacques Monod (1961)

This version of the famous statement by Jacques Monod comes from 1961 but he said similar things much earlier and other scientists even predate Monod's earliest use of the phrase (Friedman, 2004). He echoed this same idea in Chance and Necessity (p. 102)

The diversity of types remained even so, and there was no getting around the fact that a great many macroscopic structural patterns, radically unlike one another, coexist in the biosphere. A blue alga, an infusorium, an octopus, and a human being—what had they in common? With the discovery of the cell and the advent of cellular theory a new unity could be seen under this diversity. But it was some time before advances in biochemistry, mainly during the second quarter of this century, revealed the profound and strict oneness, on the microscopic level, of the whole of the living world. Today we know that from a bacterium to man the chemical machinery is essentially the same, in both its structure and its functioning.

Monod was making a case for life as a chemical process and he reflected the view of the 'phage group who were studying bacteria and bacteriophage. He argued that all living things would consist of the same basic chemicals such as lipids, nucleic acids, proteins, and carbohydrates. He also assumed that all living things would have similar networks of metabolic enzymes and contain similar pathways. These enzymes would be regulated by similar mechanisms, such as allosteric regulation, and they would be composed of the same 20 amino acids. He expected all living cells would have similar mechanisms for capturing energy and they would obey the fundamental laws of thermodynamics.

He assumed that the genetic code would be universal and that the process of protein synthesis would be essentially the same in all species. He assumed that the fundamentals of transcription and DNA replication would be the same in all species. He imagined that the basic principles of gene regulation that were worked out in bacteria would apply to eukaryotes. This included the action of transcription factors and more unusual regulatory molecules such as the regulatory RNAs discovered in 'phage and bacteria. He expected that genes, regulatory sequences, origins of replication, and other important genetic elements would be found in the DNA molecules of the genome.

This theme of unity of life at the microscopic level was very important but it did not mean that all living things would be identical. Monod was a firm proponent of evolution and since evolution depended on the random occurrence of mutations the actual history of life is unpredictable. There's nothing profoundly upsetting about the fact that elephants have trunks and E. coli doesn't because that's not the point.

I'm sure that Monod was not upset to learn that some genes had introns or that eukarotic chromatin is more complicated than the DNA-protein complexes found in bacteria. He would not have been shocked to learn that many eukaryotes have more functional RNAs than E. coli or bacteriophage λ. Junk DNA was not a problem for someone who understood evolution.

I think Monod reflected the dominant view of most knowledgeable biochemists and molecular biologists of the 1960s and 1970s.

Over the next 50 years we learned a lot more about complex eukaryotes and the dominant theme at the molecular level is that they contain lots of junk DNA and lots of overly complex structures that only make sense in light of evolution. There's a lot of sloppiness in eukaryotes, including genomes full of transposon fossils, aberrant transcription, pseudogenes, inefficient splicing, and promiscuous enzymes. A lot of this sloppiness was apparent in the 1970s, including the fact that junk DNA must contain thousands of ineffective transcription factor binding sites. We learned in the 1980s that some structures, such as the spliceosome, could only have arisen by evolution since no designer in their right mind would have built such a thing.

I would be quite proud to have served on the committee that designed the E. coli genome. There is, however, no way that I would admit to serving on a committee that designed the human genome. Not even a university committee could botch something that badly.                                                          David Penny

I got this quote from Dan Graur who credits it to David Penny as a personal communication. Graur used it in his scathing criticism of ENCODE researchers after they declared the death of junk DNA (Graur et al., 2013). The meaning is clear. The E. coli genome is compact and carries all the information needed to ensure the survival and evolution of the bacterium. It has one copy of most protein-coding genes, two copies of ribosomal RNA genes, and a minimal number of tRNA genes. The regulatory sequences are just big enough for efficient transcription under the appropriate conditions. Many genes are clustered in operons to save space. There's only one origin of replication and one terminator sequence. There's only one chromosome and it is efficiently segregated to each daughter cell after DNA replication and cell division. There are only a small number of regulatory RNA genes in E. coli.

The human genome is a mess. 90% of it is junk and it requires complicated features like centromeres and telomeres. There are 100,000 origins of replication and tens of thousands of pseudogenes. The protein-coding genes are full of useless introns and they take up 40% of the genome even though the functional parts only occupy 1%. Every cell has thousands of incorrectly spliced transcripts. The genome is littered with fossil transposons and viruses and many of them still have partially active promoters churning out junk RNA. Useless transcription factor binding sites and chromatin alterations are ubiquitous. The abundance of junk DNA means that you need tens of thousands of copies of every transcription factor just to make sure the right genes are regulated. A large part of the genome is transcribed but the vast majority of those transcripts are useless junk.

This is why David Penny would not be proud to have served on the committee that designed the human genome. Neither would I, and that's why I spent so much time explaining sloppy genomes in my book. The idea of a sloppy genome is a difficult concept to grasp so I devoted the final chapter (Chapter 11) to the art of coping with this issue.

Now let's look at how Philip Ball handles this information on pages 116-117 of his book How Life Works.

These differences in the relative proportions of coding and non-coding DNA for simpler and more complex organisms reflect fundamental distinctions in how these organisms work. The problem has been delightfully, if inadvertently, stated by theoretical biologist David Penny. "I would be quite proud to have served on the committee that designed the E. coli genome" he has said. "There is, however, no way that I would admit to serving on a committee that designed the human genome. Not even a university committee could botch something that badly."

I'd suggest that can be rephrased: "I can understand how the E. coli genome works. I cannot make any sense of how the human genome works." So the corollary of Penny's comment is rather profound: how E. coli works is not how humans work. But his quip betrays an understandable frustration that the workings of the human genome are inscrutable to us. And I fear that the remark carries the same bias as that which leads us to insist that a foreign language we find difficult to learn is unnecessarily perverse and even absurd.

This shift in perspective challenges a famous statement by Jacques Monod: "What is true for E. coli is true for the elephant." In fairness, Monod had in mind here the notion of how DNA encodes proteins—for indeed it does so in (roughly) the same way in bacteria as in pachyderms, insofar as it uses the same genetic code. But the implication in Monod's comment is that this is what really matters in the same spirit as Crick's Central Dogma. We can now see that Monod's quote is misleading in an important sense, because what matters for E. coli is not the same as what matters for an elephant. The bacterium has a genome dedicated mostly to making proteins. The elephant has a genome dedicated mostly to making noncoding RNAs with regulatory functions. To truly understand how the elephant—and the human—works, we need to untangle the mechanisms governing this regulation.

As Morris and Mattick say,

It appears that we may have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the genetic programming in complex organisms because of the assumption that most genetic information is transacted by proteins. This may be largely true in simpler organisms, but is turning out not to be the case in more complex organisms, whose genomes appear to be progressively dominated by regulatory RNAs that orchestrate the epigenetic trajectories of differentiation and development.

Or as biochemist Danny Licatalosi and neuroscientist Robert Darnell put it, biological complexity "has RNA at its core."

I think this is an excellent illustration of the differing viewpoints of Philip Ball and many biochemists and molecular biologists. David Penny and the rest of us don't disparage the human genome because we don't understand it. Quite the contrary. We think we DO understand evolution and the basic principles of molecular biology and that's why we recognize a sloppy genome when we see it. Philip Ball just can't get his head around the fact that we aren't ignorant of functional non-coding RNAs ... we just don't believe Mattick and ENCODE when they claim, without evidence, that the human genome is full of non-coding genes modulating some sophisticated regulation of the protein-coding genes.

Not only does such a model lack support but it doesn't make any sense. Why would all the 10,000 or so housekeeping genes require such regulation in humans and not in yeast? Why would evolution have selected for regulatory RNAs acting on the genes for the glycolytic enzymes? What kind of selective advantage would there have to be in order to evolve a regulatory RNA gene that could tweek expression by a few percent?

"Ball is one of the most meticulous, precise science writers out there. He is the antithesis of hypey, "dumb-it-down" reporting. He is MUCH more credible than you are, Laurence."

John Horgan July, 2024Philip Ball even wants to twist the Monod quote to fit his agenda on the importance of proteins. That's not what Monod meant. But let's think about this for a minute. The biochemists of the last century discovered a complex network of metabolic pathways with reactions that were catalyzed almost exclusively by protein enzymes. That hasn't changed. It's true of E. coli and it's true of elephants.

They also discovered that the expression of genes, especially at the level of transcription, was mostly controlled and regulated by proteins; namely, RNA polymerase and transcription factors. That hasn't changed. The expression of elephant and human genes is also regulated by transcription factors and RNA polymerase. Hundreds of studies of particular mammalian genes have demonstrated beyond a doubt that we can explain most regulation by such a model.

That doesn't mean that proteins are the only players in regulation. Over the past several decades we've discovered a variety of regulatory RNAs and we now know that there are more of these non-coding genes in humans than in bacteria. We don't know how many but so far the number of well-characterized examples amounts to fewer than 2000 genes and probably less than 1000. Note that I said "well-characterized" examples and that means that the individual RNA molecule has been studied and its biologically relevant function has been confirmed. That's not the same as a genomics study that simply identifies candidate transcripts that may or may not have a function.

Proteins still play the most important functional roles in metabolism and gene expression but they are not the only players. We've known that for 50 years. The only thing that's changed is that there may be as many as two thousand non-coding genes in humans and only a dozen or so in E. coli and the human genome may be a lot more sloppy than bacterial genomes. That's not a paradigm shift.

Note: Philip Ball was an editor at Nature and that's ironic because it's the failure of Nature editors to do their job in 2012 that got us into the mess we're in today. The editors not only allowed ENCODE researchers to make exaggerated claims about junk DNA but they actively supported and participated in the publicity campaign that sold those false claims to the general public. Nature editors have never apologized for their behavior in 2012; in fact, one of them, Magdalena Skipper, has been promoted to editor-in-chief. [The 10th anniversary of the ENCODE publicity campaign fiasco]

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Friedman, H.C. (2004) From Butyribacterium to E. coli: An Essay on Unity in Biochemistry. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 47:47-66. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2004.0007

Graur, D., Zheng, Y., Price, N., Azevedo, R.B., Zufall, R.A. and Elhaik, E. (2013) On the immortality of television sets:“function” in the human genome according to the evolution-free gospel of ENCODE. Genome Biology and Evolution 5:578-590. doi: doi: 10.1093/gbe/evt028

Philip Ball strikes back

Philip Ball believes that we are in the middle of a revolution in our way of thinking about how life works. His ideas are complex but part of his case involves molecular biology and how things work at the molecular level. Ball believes that the old view of molecular biology placed far too much emphasis on coding DNA and ignored all the other functional regions of genomes. He also says that most of our genes specify non-coding RNA instead of mRNA and implies to his readers that a very large fraction of our genome is functional (i.e. not junk).¹

In order to build the case for revolution, he tries to demonstrate a paradigm shift in our view of molecular biology by showing a huge gap between the understanding of previous generations of molecular biologists and the post-genomic view. I believe he is wrong about this for two reasons: first, he misrepresents the views of older molecular biologists and, second he misrepresents the discoveries of the past twenty years. I tried to explain why he was wrong about these two claims in a previous post where I discussed an article he published in Scientific American in May 2024: Philip Ball says RNA may rule our genome.

Philip Ball responded to my criticism in a comment under that article.

Older molecular biologists were really stupid

I said ...

Ball begins with the same old myth that writers like him have been repeating for many years. He claims that before ENCODE most molecular biologists were really stupid. According to Philip Ball, most of us thought that coding DNA was the only functional part of the genome and most of the rest was junk DNA.

In the comment section of my earlier post, Philip Ball says,

I’m sorry to say that Larry’s commentary here is dismayingly inaccurate.

Let’s get this one out of the way first:

“He claims that before ENCODE most molecular biologists were really stupid.”

I have never made this claim and never would – it is a pure fabrication on Larry’s part. I guess this is what John Horgan meant in his comment to Larry: credible writers don’t just make up stuff.

I admit that Philip Ball never said those exact words. I'll leave it to the readers to decide whether my characterization of his position is accurate.

I stand by the statements I made although I admit to a bit of hyperbole. Ball has said repeatedly that the molecular biologists of my generation were wedded to the idea that coding regions were the only important part of the genome and he often connects that to the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology. He also claims that the experts in molecular biology dismissed all non-coding DNA as junk. Here's how he puts it in another article that he published recently in Aeon: We are not machines.

Only around 1-2 per cent of the entire human genome actually consists of protein-coding genes. The remainder was long thought to be mostly junk: meaningless sequences accumulated over the course of evolution. But at least some of that non-coding genome is now known to be involved in regulating genes: altering, activating or suppressing their transcription in RNA and translation into proteins.

I interpret that to mean that older molecular biologists, like me, didn't know about functional non-coding DNAs such as centromeres, telomeres, origins of replication, non-coding genes, SARs, and regulatory sequences in spite of the fact that thousands of papers on these sequences were published in the 30 years that preceded the publication of the first draft of the human genome sequence. This is not true, we did know about those things. I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say that Philip Ball thinks we were really stupid.

Here's what he says in his book, "How Life Works" (p. 85) when he's talking about the beginning of the human genome project.

Even at its outset, it faced the somewhat troubling issue that just 2 percent or so of our genome actually accounts for protein-coding genes. The conventional narrative was that our biology was all about proteins, for each of which the genome held the template. ... But we had all this other DNA too! What was it for? The common view was that it was mostly just junk, like the stuff in our attics: meaningless material accumulated during evolution, which our cells had no motivation to clear out.

Again, his claim is that in 1990 at the beginning of the human genome project the experts in molecular biology thought that non-coding DNA was mostly junk (98% of the genome). I have repeatedly refuted this myth and challenged anyone to come up with a single scientific paper arguing that all non-coding DNA is junk. I challenge Philip Ball to find a single molecular biology textbook written before 1990 that fails to discuss regulation, non-coding genes, and other non-coding functional elements in the human genome.

The truth is that the molecular biology experts concluded in the 1970s that we had about 30,000 genes and that 90% of our genome is junk and 10% is functional. That 10% consisted of about 2% coding DNA (now thought to be only 1%) and 8% functional non-coding DNA. So the "conventional narrative" was that there was a lot more functional non-coding DNA than coding DNA.

The human genome is full of genes for regulatory RNAs.

"Ball is one of the most meticulous, precise science writers out there. He is the antithesis of hypey, "dumb-it-down" reporting. He is MUCH more credible than you are, Laurence."

John Horgan July, 2024The title of the article I was discussing is "Revolutionary Genetics Research Shows RNA May Rule Our Genome." In that article Ball says that ENCODE was basically right and there are many more non-coding genes than protein-coding genes. I pointed out that Ball mentions some criticism of this idea but only to dismiss it. I said that "[Ball] wants you to believe that almost of all of those transcripts are functional—that's the revolution that he's promoting." Philip Ball objects to this statement ...

This too is sheer fabrication. I don’t say this in my article, nor in my book. Instead, I say pretty much what Larry seems to want me to say, but for some reason he will not admit it – which is that there is controversy about how many of the transcripts are functional."

Ball states that "ENCODE was basically right" when they claimed that 75% of our genome was transcribed and he goes on to say that ...

Dozens of other research groups, scoping out activity along the human genome, also have found that much of our DNA is churning out 'noncoding' RNA.

He says that ENCODE has identified 37,000 noncoding genes but there may be as many as 96,000. After making these definitive statements, he mentions that there are "still doubters" but then discuss why these discoveries are revolutionary. Later on he quotes John Mattick suspecting that there may be more that 500,000 non-coding genes.

Toward the end of the article, after discussing all kinds of functional RNAs, he brings up the Ponting and Haerty review where they say that most lncRNAs are just noise. He also mentions that the low copy number of non-coding RNAs raises questions about whether they are functional but immediately counters with the standard excuses from his allies.

Ball closes the article with ...

Gingeras says he is perplexed by ongoing claims that ncRNAs are merely noise or junk, as evidence is mounting that they do many things. "It is puzzling why there is such an effort to persuade colleagues to move from a sense of interest and curiosity in the ncRNA field to a more dubious and critical one," he says.

Perhaps the arguments are so intense because they undercut the way we think our biology works. Ever since the epochal discovery about DNA's double helix and how it encodes information, the bedrock idea of molecular biology has been that there are precisely encoded instructions that program specific molecules for particular tasks. But ncRNAs seem to point to a fuzzier, more collective, logic to life. It is a logic that is harder to discern and harder to understand. ut if scientists can learn to live with the fuzziness, this view of life may turn out to be more complete.

What's remarkable about the quote from a leading ENCODE worker (Gingeras) is that he is "puzzled" by scientists who are dubious and critical about claims in the ncRNA field. Isn't that what good scientists are supposed to do? Isn't that exactly what we did when we successfully challenged the dubious claims about junk DNA made in 2012?

There is no doubt in my mind that Philip Ball has fallen hook-line-and-sinker for the ENCODE claims that our genome is buzzing with non-coding genes. He only brings up the counter-arguments to dismiss them and pretend that he is being fair. Nobody who was truly skeptical about the function of transcripts would write an article with the title, "Revolutionary Genetics Research Shows RNA May Rule Our Genome."

However, as Ball points out in other comments, he does have a sentence in his book where he mentions that perhaps only 30% of the genome is functional. He says in the comment that what he believes is that the amount of functional DNA lies somewhere between 10% and 30%. That's not something that he mentions in the Scientific American article but, if he's being honest, it does mean that I was unfair when I said he believes that "almost of all of those transcripts are functional" but I only know that from what he now says, not from the published article.

If I were to take Philip Ball at his word—as expressed in the comment—then he must believe that most of the ENCODE transcripts are junk RNA. That's not a belief that you get from reading his published work.² Furthermore, if I were to take him at his word, then he must believe that there are some reasonable criteria that must be applied to a transcript in order to decide whether it has a biologically relevant function. So, when he says that ENCODE identified 37,600 non-coding genes he must have these criteria in mind but he doesn't express any serious skepticism about that number. We all know that there's no solid evidence that such a large number of transcripts are functional but that doesn't bother Philip Ball. He thinks we are in the middle of an RNA revolution.

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1. In commenting to my previous post, Ball says he believes that somewhere between 70% and 90% of our genome is junk but he doesn't say this in the Scientific American article. Instead, he says that scientists were surprised to learn that 75% of the human genome is transcribed implying that there's a lot of function. He goes on the say that "ENCODE was basically right." But what the ENCODE publicity campaign actually said was that junk DNA is dead and there's practically no junk DNA. If Ball really believes that up to 90% of the genome is junk then to me this means that ENCODE was spectacularly wrong not "basically right."

2. Ball says that 75% of the genome is transcribed. If Ball believes that as little as 10% may be functional then he must believe that less than 10% is transcribed to produce functional RNAs since he has to allow for regulatory sequences and other functional DNA elements. Let's say that 8% is a reasonable number. Ball seems to be willing to admit that 67% of the genome might be transcribed to produce junk RNA.

Science misinformation is being spread in the lecture halls of top universities

Should universities remove online courses that contain incorrect or misleading information?

There are lots of scientific controversies where different scientists have conflicting views. Eventually these controversies will be solved by normal scientific means involving evidence and logic but for the time being there isn't enough data to settle a genuine scientific controversy. Many of us are interested in these controversies and some of us have chosen to invest time and effort into defending one side or the other.

But there's a dark side of science that infects these debates—false or misleading information used to support one side of a legitimate controversy. To give just one example, I'm frustrated at the constant reference to junk DNA being defined as non-coding DNA. Many scientists believe that this was the way junk DNA was defined by its earliest proponents and then they go on to say that the recent discovery of functional non-coding DNA refutes junk.

I don't know where this idea came from because there's nothing in the scientific literature from 50 years ago to support such a ridiculous claim. It must be coming from somewhere since the idea is so widespread.

Where does misinformation come from and how is it spread?

Philip Ball's new book: "How Life Works"

Philip Ball has just published a new book "How Life Works." The subtitle is "A User’s Guide to the New Biology" and that should tell you all you need to know. This is going to be a book about how human genomics has changed everything.

Two Heidelberg graduate students reject junk DNA

Science in School is a magazine for European science teachers. Two graduate students¹ have just published an article in the November issue: Not junk after all: the importance of non-coding RNAs.

Note: The article has been edited to remove some of the references to junk DNA and the editor has added the following disclaimer to the end of the article: Editor’s note: Some parts of the introduction and conclusion were rephrased to avoid any misunderstanding concerning the nature of ‘junk DNA’, which is not the focus of this article. Here's a link to the revised article: Not junk after all: the importance of non-coding RNAs. More changes are expected.

Not junk after all: the importance of non-coding RNAs

Originally assumed to be useless ‘junk DNA’, sections of the genome that don’t encode proteins have been revealed as a source of many important non-coding RNA structures.

The central dogma of molecular biology is that DNA is used as a template to create messenger RNA (mRNA), which in turn is translated into proteins that build the tissues in our bodies and carry out the main functions of our cells and organs. In other words, DNA → mRNA → proteins. Interestingly, though, only 2% of the DNA in our whole genome codes for proteins! So, what does the other 98% of the human genome do? In the mid-1900s, it was widely believed that a great part of our genome was useless, repetitive ‘junk DNA’. However, this belief goes against the evolution theory, which suggests that useless sequences would be eliminated from the genome since their maintenance requires energy. In the late 20th century and the early 21st century, this junk DNA has been shown to not only contain important regulatory elements for transcription, but also sequences that encode various non-coding RNAs that have functions in many cellular mechanisms.

I just finshed a podcast interview with Kat Arney and one of the questions she asked was what is the most important thing I'd like scientists to know about this topic. I picked evolution—I'd like modern researchers to understand that there's more to evolution than natural selection. You can see the problem in this example where two students who are working toward a Ph.D. at a top lab in Europe think that junk DNA "goes against the evolution theory."

That's sad. It's also sad that these two students think that 98% of our genome might be devoted to regulation and non-coding genes.

We need to focus on educating the next generation of scientists and that starts with educating science teachers. This is not the way to do it.

Here's the contact information for Science in School. I've written the editor at editor@scienceinschool.org. Please send a message if you are as concerned about the spread of scientific misinformation as I am.

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Zuzana Koskova at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg (Germany) and Miguel Hernandez at the University Hospital, Heidelberg. I tried sending an email message to Zuzana Koskova but got no reply. I was unable to find contact information for Miguel Hernandez.

John Mattick's paradigm shaft

Paradigm shifts are rare but paradigm shafts are common. A paradigm shaft is when a scientist describes a false paradigm that supposedly ruled in the past then shows how their own work overthrows that old (false) paradigm.¹ In many cases, the data that presumably revolutionizes the field is somewhat exaggerated.

John Mattick's view of eukaryotic RNAs is a classic example of a paradigm shaft. At various times in the past he has declared that molecular biology used to be dominated by the Central Dogma, which, according to him, supported the concept that the only function of DNA was to produce proteins (Mattick, 2003; Morris and Mattick, 2014). More recently, he has backed off this claim a little bit by conceding that Crick allowed for functional RNAs but that proteins were the only molecules that could be involved in regulation. The essence of Mattick's argument is that past researchers were constrained by adherance to the paradigm that the only important functional molecules were proteins and RNA served only an intermediate role in protein synsthesis.

James Shapiro doesn't like junk DNA

Shapiro doubles down on his claim that junk DNA doesn't exist.

It's been a while since we've heard from James Shaprio. You might recall that James A. Shapiro is a biochemistry/microbiology professor at the University of Chicago and the author of a book promoting natural genetic engineering. I reviewed his book and didn't like it very much—Shapiro didn't like my review [James Shapiro Never Learns] [James Shapiro Responds to My Review of His Book].

Chapter 8: Noncoding Genes and Junk RNA

I think there are no more than 5,000 noncoding genes but many scientists claim that there are tens of thousands of newly discovered noncoding genes. I describe the known noncoding genes (less than 1000) and explain why many of the transcripts detected are just junk RNA produced by spurious transcription. The presence of abundant noncoding genes will not solve the Deflated Ego Problem.

This chapter covers the misconceptions about the Central Dogma and how they are incorrectly used to try and discredit junk DNA. The views of John Mattick are explained and refuted. I end the chapter with a plea to adopt a worldview that can accommodate messy biochemistry and a sloppy genome that's full of junk DNA.

Click on this link to see more.

Chapter 8: NoncodingGenes and Junk RNA

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ChatGPT lies about junk DNA

I asked ChatGPT some questions about junk DNA and it made up a Francis Crick quotation and misrepresented the view of Susumu Ohno.

We have finally restored the Junk DNA article on Wikipedia. (It was deleted about ten years ago when Wikipedians decided that junk DNA doesn't exist.) One of the issues on Wikipedia is how to deal with misconceptions and misunderstandings while staying within the boundaries of Wikipedia culture. Wikipedians have an aversion to anything that looks like editorializing so you can't just say something like, "Nobody ever said that all non-coding DNA was junk." Instead, you have to find a credible reference to someone else who said that.

I've been trying to figure out how far the misunderstandings of junk DNA have spread so I asked ChatGPt (from OpenAI) again.

Birds of a feather: epigenetics and opposition to junk DNA

There's an old saying that birds of a feather flock together. It means that people with the same interests tend to associate with each other. It's extended meaning refers to the fact that people who believe in one thing (X) tend to also believe in another (Y). It usually means that X and Y are both questionable beliefs and it's not clear why they should be associated.

I've noticed an association between those who promote epigenetics far beyond it's reasonable limits and those who reject junk DNA in favor of a genome that's mostly functional. There's no obvious reason why these two beliefs should be associated with each other but they are. I assume it's related to the idea that both beliefs are presumed to be radical departures from the standard dogma so they reinforce the idea that the author is a revolutionary.

Or maybe it's just that sloppy thinking in one field means that sloppy thinking is the common thread.

Here's an example from Chapter 4 of a 2023 edition of the Handbook of Epigenetics (Third Edition).

The central dogma of life had clearly established the importance of the RNA molecule in the flow of genetic information. The understanding of transcription and translation processes further elucidated three distinct classes of RNA: mRNA, tRNA and rRNA. mRNA carries the information from DNA and gets translated to structural or functional proteins; hence, they are referred to as the coding RNA (RNA which codes for proteins). tRNA and rRNA help in the process of translation among other functions. A major part of the DNA, however, does not code for proteins and was previously referred to as junk DNA. The scientists started realizing the role of the junk DNA in the late 1990s and the ENCODE project, initiated in 2003, proved the significance of junk DNA beyond any doubt. Many RNA types are now known to be transcribed from DNA in the same way as mRNA, but unlike mRNA they do not get translated into any protein; hence, they are collectively referred to as noncoding RNA (ncRNA). The studies have revealed that up to 90% of the eukaryotic genome is transcribed but only 1%–2% of these transcripts code for proteins, the rest all are ncRNAs. The ncRNAs less than 200 nucleotides are called small noncoding RNAs and greater than 200 nucleotides are called long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs).

In case you haven't been following my blog posts for the past 17 years, allow me to briefly summarize the flaws in that paragraph.

• The central dogma has nothing to do with whether most of our genome is junk
• There was never, ever, a time when knowledgeable scientists defended the idea that all noncoding DNA is junk
• ENCODE did not "prove the significance of junk DNA beyond any doubt"
• Not all transcripts are functional; most of them are junk RNA transcribed from junk DNA

So, I ask the same question that I've been asking for decades. How does this stuff get published?

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ChatGPT won't pass my exams!

Here are a few questions for ChatGPT and its answers. The AI program takes the most common information on the web and spews it back at you. It cannot tell which information is correct or which information is more accurate.

It's easy to recognize that these answers were written by something that's not very good at critical thinking. I agree with other professors that they mimic typical undergraduate answers but I disagree that these answers would get them a passing grade.

ChatGPT shares one very important feature that's common in undergraduate answers to essay questions: it gives you lots of unecessary information that's not directly relevant to the question.

It's important to note that (lol) these ChatGPT answers share another important feature with many of the answers on my exams: they look very much like BS!

Protein concentrations in E. coli are mostly controlled at the level of transcription initiation

The most important step in the regulation of protein-coding genes in E. coli is the rate of binding of RNA polymerase to the promoter region.

A group of scientists at the University of California at San Diego and their European collaborators looked at the concentrations of proteins and mRNAs of about 2000 genes in E. coli. They catalogued these concentrations under several different growth conditions in order to determine whether the level of protein being expressed from each of these genes correlated with transcription rate, translation rate, mRNA stability or other levels of gene expression.

The paper is very difficult to understand because the authors are primarily interested in developing mathematical formulae to describe their results. They expect you to understand equations like,

even though they don't explain the parameters very well. A lot of important information is in the supplements and I couldn't be bothered to download and read them. I don't think the math is anywhere near as important as the data and the conclusions.

Can the AI program ChatGPT pass my exam?

There's a lot of talk about ChatGPT and how it can prepare lectures and get good grades on undergraduate exams. However, ChatGPT is only as good as the information that's popular on the internet and that's not always enough to get a good grade on my exam.

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) program that's designed to answer questions using a style and language that's very much like the responses you would get from a real person. It was developed by OpenAI, a tech company in San Francisco. You can create an account and log in to ask any question you want.

Several professors have challenged it with exam questions and they report that ChatGPT would easily pass their exams. I was skeptical, especially when it came to answering questions on controversial topics where there was no clear answer. I also suspected that ChatGPT would get it's answers from the internet and this means that popular, but incorrect, views would likely be part of ChatGPT's response.

Here are my questions and the AI program's answers. It did quite well in some cases but not so well in others. My main concern is that programs like this might be judged to be reliable sources of information despite the fact that the real source is suspect.