Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Goodyear's Bad Day
Here's a link to Chris Selley's article on The National Post website [Chris Selley's Full Pundit: Goodyear's bad day].
The article has links to several Canadian journalists. I'm pleased to see that many of them recognize the problem. We can't have a creationist Minister in charge of science.
The Future of Science Blogging
Daniel Brown of Biochemical Soul is looking for feedback on the future of science blogging [Science Blogging: The Future of Science Communication & Why You Should be a Part of it].
Personally I don't think the science blogosphere is going to attract more than a few percent of scientists and science students. Most of them don't have the time or the interest. Most of my colleagues are completely turned off by blogs. They see blogs as a negative influence on science.
The science blogosphere is a fun and interesting playground for those of us who have eclectic interests and are willing to invest the time and effort to read a few dozen blogs a day, but that's not going to appeal to the average scientist. Daniel does a good job of listing all the benefits of blogging and reading blogs but, in my experience, none of these benefits are convincing for the average scientist.
Frankly I think that's a good thing. My experience with newsgroups over the past twenty years indicates that it's much better to have a small number of really dedicated and interested participants than to try and expand to cover everyone. Besides, the more science blogs there are out there, the most difficult it is to read them all.
Four Solar Eclipses on Saturn
The inhabitants of Saturn were recently treated to four solar eclipses on the same day. In the video below you can see the four moons and their shadows crossing Saturn. The photos were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and the video was prepared by National Geographic.
It's exciting to be living at a time when such images are quickly available to the general public. This video would have seemed like magic only a century ago. A century from now it might seem trivial since we may have our own satellites orbiting Saturn.
Liberal Science Critic Marc Garneau Says that Believing in Evolution Is not a Job Requirement for the Science Minister
Marc Garneau (right) is the Liberal science critic in Canada's House of Commons. The same Globe and Mail article that mentioned Goodyear's "clarification" of his position on evolution has the following quotation from Marc Garneau [Minister clarifies stand on evolution].On Tuesday, Liberal science critic Marc Garneau said that believing in evolution is not a job requirement for the science minister.Garneau is dead wrong. If you reject evolution you are anti-science. There's no two ways about it. You cannot deny evolution without attacking the very core of scientific reasoning and evidence-based conclusions. What Garneau is saying is that it's OK for a science minister to be anti-science.
“It is a personal matter. It is a matter of faith.… I don't think it prevents someone from being a good minister,” said the former astronaut, who has been a vocal critic of the government for its cuts to the three granting councils that fund university-based research in Canada.
But Jim Maloway, the New Democratic Party science critic, said that if the minister did not believe in evolution that could influence government policy. “I don't see a commitment to a really broad approach if you are encumbered by the denial of evolution,” he said.
That would be like putting a witch doctor (or a chiropractor) in charge of health care, or a soothsayer in charge of finances.
There may be a place for anti-science creationists in the Federal Cabinet but not in charge of science. Acceptance of the core principles of science is a job requirement because part of the job is gaining the confidence of the scientific community. You can't have a science minister who questions the honesty and integrity of Canadian scientists. Make no mistake about it, that's exactly what creationists do.
We need a new minister of science and we need a new Liberal science critic.1
1. What do other scientists think about this? See Science minister's coyness on evolution worries researchers. Note that the scientists are worried about a creationist in charge of science while the non-scientists don't see it as a big problem.
Gary Goodyear "Clarifies" His Stance on Evolution
Today's Globe and Mail reports that Canada's Minister of State (Science and Technology) has "clarified" his position on the validity of evolution [Minister clarifies stand on evolution].OTTAWA — Science minister Gary Goodyear now says he believes in evolution.Those of us who have been dealing with creationists for several decades will recognize those words. That's a creationist speaking. They're willing to admit to microevolution within kinds but unwilling to admit to common descent.
“Of course I do,” he told guest host Jane Taber during an appearance on the CTV program Power Play. “But it is an irrelevant question.”
....
On Tuesday, Mr. Goodyear said twice during the CTV interview that he did believe in evolution.
“We are evolving every year, every decade. That's a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment. But that's not relevant and that is why I refused to answer the question. The interview was about our science and tech strategy, which is strong.”
Goodyear could have easily said that he accepts common descent and the idea that modern species, including humans, evolved over billions of years from more primitive organisms. That's what "believing" in evolution means to most people. He did not say that.
That pretty much settles it for me. Goodyear is a creationist. He rejects one of the fundamental concepts of biology. That makes him anti-science.
The man in charge of science in Canada is anti-science. Heaven help us.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Monday's Molecule #112: Winners
UPDATE:The equation shows beta decay of 14C from Wikipedia. The Nobel Prize went to Willard Libby for developing 14C dating technology.
This week's winner is Dima Klenchin from the university of Wisconsin (again) by two minutes over Ollie Nanyes. The undergraduate winner is Alex Ling of the University of Toronto.
You may have noticed that today's molecule isn't a molecule. Your task is to identify what this equation is describing.
There's only one Nobel Laureate whose discovery is relevant. The first person to identify the equation and the Nobel Laureate wins a free lunch at the Faculty Club. Previous winners are ineligible for one month from the time they first won the prize.
There are six ineligible candidates for this week's reward: James Fraser of the University of California, Berkeley, Guy Plunket III from the University of Wisconsin, Deb McKay of Toronto, Maria Altshuler of the University of Toronto, David Schuller of Cornell University and Adam Santoro of the University of Toronto
A previous winner has offered to donate a free lunch to a deserving undergraduate so I'm going to continue to award an additional free lunch to the first undergraduate student who can accept it. Please indicate in your email message whether you are an undergraduate and whether you can make it for lunch.
THEME:
Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Prizes so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.
Correct responses will be posted tomorrow. I reserve the right to select multiple winners if several people get it right.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Niall Nóigiallach is a very famous man (Nóigiallach is Gaelic for "having Nine Hostages"). He was an Irish King who lived from about 350 to 405 AD. The "nine hostages" refers to hostages that he kept from each of the places that owed him allegiance. Niall was fond of raiding the coast of Roman Britain and on one of those raids he captured a man named Maewyn Succat, who became a slave in Ireland. Succat eventually escaped, returned to Britain, and became a Christian missionary. He then went back to Ireland to convert the Irish heathens to Christianity. We know Maewyn Succat by his Christian name, Patrick, or Saint Patrick.
Aside from converting the Irish heathens to Christianity, St. Patrick is famous for his skill as a magician. One of his most famous tricks was removing all the snakes from Ireland. At least that's what the legend says.
Connie Barlow describes A St. Patrick's Day Parable.(This is the same Connie Barlow I met last summer—the one who edited Evolution Extended.)Ireland is a land of no snakes. It has no slithering serpents. There are no rat snakes in Ireland; there are no rattlesnakes; there are no garter snakes. There are no snakes at all.She goes on to explain why there are no snakes in Ireland but I prefer to swtich to the website of the Smithsonian National Zoological Park for their explanation of Why Ireland Has No Snakes.
The absence of snakes in Ireland seems to cry out for an explanation — but only if one regards or ventures to the island from outside: from England, say, or from continental Europe. To the indigenous Celts, there would, of course, have been nothing to explain. The Gaelic peoples no more needed to explain an absence of snakes on their island home than they needed to explain an absence of kangaroos. To those who came to Ireland from abroad, however, a dearth of serpents was a striking anomaly in need of an answer.
We humans must have answers. And so arose the legend of St. Patrick and the snakes. The reason Ireland has no snakes, the story goes, is that Patrick charmed all snakes on the island to come down to the seashore, slither into the water, and drown. So Ireland did once have snakes, but it has them no more. Patrick charmed them all into the sea.
Now snakes are found in deserts, grasslands, forests, mountains, and even oceans virtually everywhere around the world. Everywhere except Ireland, New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland, and Antarctica, that is.
One thing these few snake-less parts of the world have in common is that they are surrounded by water. New Zealand, for instance, split off from Australia and Asia before snakes ever evolved. So far, no serpent has successfully migrated across the open ocean to a new terrestrial home. As the world's oceans have risen and fallen over the millennia, land bridges have come and gone between Ireland, other parts of Great Britain, and the European mainland, allowing animals and early humans to cross. However, any snake that may have slithered it's way to Ireland would have turned into a popsicle when the ice ages hit.
The most recent ice age began about three million years ago and continues into the present. Between warm periods like the current climate, glaciers have advanced and retreated more than 20 times, often completely blanketing Ireland with ice. Snakes, being cold-blooded animals, simply aren't able to survive in areas where the ground is frozen year round. Ireland thawed out for the last time only 15,000 years ago. Since then, 12 miles of icy-cold water in the Northern Channel have separated Ireland from neighboring Scotland, which does harbor a few species of snakes. There are no snakes in Ireland for the simple reason that they can't get there.
[The book cover is from a book by Sheila MacGill Callahan (Author) and Will Hillenbrand (Illustrator). You can buy it on Amazon.com.]
Reposted from St. Patrick Banished Snakes from Ireland with a snippet from Niall Nóigiallach - Niall of the Nine Hostages. You find out how Irish I am by clicking here.
You Can Be Good Without God
I spotted this ad at the Queen's Park subway station in Toronto. Kudos to the Humanist Association of Canada.
NSERC President Praises Gary Goodyear
Gary Goodyear is Canada's Minister of State (Science and Technology). His government has just cut funding of basic research grants by $148 million over the next three years. Gary Goodyear is a chiropractor and he may be a creationist.So, what does the President of NSERC think of this? See the [press release].
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper ventured into the lion's den Monday, defending his government's record on science funding before some of the country's top researchers.I know some people who would disagree with Suzanne Fortier. Two representatives of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) didn't have such a favorable impression [When Chiropractors Get Angry ....].
He emerged without a scratch.
Indeed, he actually basked in praise for Gary Goodyear, his minister of state for science and technology.
Goodyear has been much maligned by some scientists who maintain research was shortchanged in the Jan. 27 federal budget. But there was no criticism Monday at an awards ceremony for the winners of prestigious research prizes handed out by the federally funded Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.
"It has been a real pleasure for us to work with the Hon. Gary Goodyear," said NSERC president Suzanne Fortier.
"He has already proven himself a champion of the science and technology community."
Some people would argue that. as a kind of public servant, the President of NSERC should not criticize government policy. Perhaps, but that doesn't mean she has to suck up to the executioner.
[Photo Credit: NSERC]
Does Canada's Science Minister Accept Evolution?
You might think that's a silly question. How could anyone in Canada become Minister of State (Science and Technology) and not accept the most important scientific fact in biology? Yes, it's true that Gary Goodyear is a chiropractor but he can't also be a creationist, can he? Apparently he can, according to The Globe and Mail [Minister won't confirm belief in evolution].
Researchers aghast that key figure in funding controversy invokes religion in science discussionWe are in far worse trouble than I thought. No wonder the Stephen Harper party is cutting back on basic research. They must think most researchers are really stupid for believing in all those silly theories like evolution.
Canada's science minister, the man at the centre of the controversy over federal funding cuts to researchers, won't say if he believes in evolution.
“I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate,” Gary Goodyear, the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
A funding crunch, exacerbated by cuts in the January budget, has left many senior researchers across the county scrambling to find the money to continue their experiments.
Some have expressed concern that Mr. Goodyear, a chiropractor from Cambridge, Ont., is suspicious of science, perhaps because he is a creationist.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Monday's Molecule #112
You may have noticed that today's molecule isn't a molecule. Your task is to identify what this equation is describing.
There's only one Nobel Laureate whose discovery is relevant. The first person to identify the equation and the Nobel Laureate wins a free lunch at the Faculty Club. Previous winners are ineligible for one month from the time they first won the prize.
There are six ineligible candidates for this week's reward: James Fraser of the University of California, Berkeley, Guy Plunket III from the University of Wisconsin, Deb McKay of Toronto, Maria Altshuler of the University of Toronto, David Schuller of Cornell University and Adam Santoro of the University of Toronto
A previous winner has offered to donate a free lunch to a deserving undergraduate so I'm going to continue to award an additional free lunch to the first undergraduate student who can accept it. Please indicate in your email message whether you are an undergraduate and whether you can make it for lunch.
THEME:
Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Prizes so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.
Correct responses will be posted tomorrow. I reserve the right to select multiple winners if several people get it right.
Comments will be blocked for 24 hours.
Casey Luskin on Junk DNA and Junk RNA
Intelligent Design Creationists can't abide junk DNA. Its very existence refutes the idea that living things are designed by some intelligent being. This is why the IDiots go out of their way to make up stories "disproving" junk DNA.
The latest attempt is by Casey Luskin [Nature Paper Shows "Junk-RNA" Going the Same Direction as "Junk-DNA"]. Having failed to explain why half of the human genome is composed of defective transposons, he now pins his hope on the idea that most of the genome is transcribed. Luskin seems particularly upset by my statement that most of these transcripts are junk [Junk RNA].
Luskin thinks that a recent paper in Nature supports his view that a large fraction of the genome isn't junk. The paper by Guttman et al. (2009) says no such thing. Here's the important part ...
Genomic projects over the past decade have used shotgun sequencing and microarray hybridization1, 2, 3, 4 to obtain evidence for many thousands of additional non-coding transcripts in mammals. Although the number of transcripts has grown, so too have the doubts as to whether most are biologically functional5, 6, 13. The main concern was raised by the observation that most of the intergenic transcripts show little to no evolutionary conservation5, 13. Strictly speaking, the absence of evolutionary conservation cannot prove the absence of function. But, the markedly low rate of conservation seen in the current catalogues of large non-coding transcripts (<5% of cases) is unprecedented and would require that each mammalian clade evolves its own distinct repertoire of non-coding transcripts. Instead, the data suggest that the current catalogues may consist largely of transcriptional noise, with a minority of bona fide functional lincRNAs hidden amid this background. Thus, to expand our understanding of functional lincRNAs, we are faced with two important challenges: (1) identifying lincRNAs that are most likely to be functional; and (2) inferring putative functions for these lincRNAs that can be tested in hypothesis-driven experiments.In other words, most of the transcripts are probably transcriptional noise, or junk, just as I said. This is the consensus opinion among informed1 molecular biologists.
Guttman et al. wanted to identify the small subset that might be functional. They identified 1,675 transcripts that show evidence of conservation. The average transcript has six exons averaging 250 bp. Thus, each transcript has about 1500 bp. of conserved exon sequence.
Even if every single one of these lincRNAs have a biological function they will only account for 1675 × 1500 = 2.5 million bp. This represents less than 0.1% of the genome. Casey Luskin ain't gonna disprove junk DNA using this paper.
Luskin ends his article with ...
As an ID proponent, I'm still waiting for Darwinists to let go of their precious "junk" arguments for blind evolution and common descent and learn the lesson that you can't assume that if we don't yet see function for a biomolecule, then it's probably just "junk."This is a point of view that creationists share with many scientists who haven't studied the subject. They assume that the only reason for labeling most of our DNA junk is because we don't know what it does. That's just not true. There's plenty of good evidence that most of our genome can't be functional. We know a lot about the part that consists of transposons and defective transposons, for example [Junk in Your Genome: SINES and Junk in your Genome: LINEs]. That's 44% of our genome.
1. I added the qualifier "informed" after a commenter pointed out that most molecular biologists probably don't know enough about the topic to have an opinion. Thus, according to this commenter, the consensus opinion would be "I don't know."
Science Cannot Fully Describe Reality, Says Templeton Prize Winner
Shocking news: the winner of this year's Templeton Prize says that science isn't everything. He proposes a way to reconcile science and religion [Science Cannot Fully Describe Reality, Says Templeton Prize Winner].
The only shocking thing about this is that Science magazine treats it seriously. Don't they know what the Templeton Prize is for? It's for people who advocate reconciliation between science and religion.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Censorship at Uncommon Descent
Barry Arrington posted this message on Uncommon Descent.The moderation policy does not apply to you; you are held to a higher standard. I expect your posts to have at least some tangential relationship to Darwinism, ID, or the metaphysical or moral implications of each. The purpose of this site is not to provide a place for you to jump up and rant on one of your pet peeves. DaveScot will no longer be posting at UD.What in the world did DaveScot do to deserve this?
He posted an article pointing out that religious people were often racist. He challenged the current dogma on Uncommon Descent that was trying to link Darwin to racism. You can read it here but you won't find it at Racism Sans Darwin - other inspirations on Uncommon Descent. Here's an excerpt ...
Since we now seem to be focused on racism instead of design detection and my motto is “When in Rome do as the Romans do” in order to balance the picture of the theory of evolution’s role in racist movements let’s look at some of the other modern history where evolution isn’t the banner around which racists rally.I guess the IDiots at Uncommon Descent don't want anyone to distract from their "Darwin was a racist" campaign.
Selected bits from Religious Tolerance on Christian Identity Movements . Timothy McVeigh, for instance, was a card carrying CIM member.History:
The Christian Identity movement is a movement of many extremely conservative Christian churches and religious organizations, extreme right wing political groups and survival groups. Some are independent; others are loosely interconnected. According to Professor Michael Barkun, one of the leading experts in the Christian Identity movement, “This virulent racist and anti-Semitic theology, which is practiced by over 50,000 people in the United States alone, is prevalent among many right wing extremist groups and has been called the ‘glue’ of the racist right.”
The largest Christian Identity movement has traditionally been the Ku Klux Klan which was reorganized in 1915 by William Simmons, a Christian pastor. He had been inspired by the film The Birth of a Nation which portrayed the KKK as a champion of white civilization. The KKK slid into obscurity by the second World War, but was revitalized in the mid 1950’s as a reaction to enforced racial integration in the southern US.
DaveScot was a big fan of Expelled I wonder if he'll complain to Ben Stein?
[Hat Tip: Afarensis]
What's Up with New Scientist?
Amanda Gefter wrote a nice article in New Scientist pointing out the sneaky tricks that creationists use to discredit science. You can read the article here.
As a book reviews editor at New Scientist, I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to recognise clues that the author is pushing a religious agenda. As creationists in the US continue to lose court battles over attempts to have intelligent design taught as science in federally funded schools, their strategy has been forced to... well, evolve. That means ensuring that references to pseudoscientific concepts like ID are more heavily veiled. So I thought I'd share a few tips for spotting what may be religion in science's clothing.Unfortunately, you can't read this article on the New Scientist website because it has been removed. If you click on How to spot a hidden religious agenda you'll find the following message ....
Red flag number one: the term "scientific materialism". "Materialism" is most often used in contrast to something else - something non-material, or supernatural. Proponents of ID frequently lament the scientific claim that humans are the product of purely material forces. At the same time, they never define how non-material forces might work. I have yet to find a definition that characterises non-materialism by what it is, rather than by what it is not.
New Scientist has received a complaint about the contents of this story. It has temporarily been removed while we investigate. Apologies for any inconvenience.I can't imagine a complaint that would cause a respectable magazine to withdraw that article. It sounds like New Scientist isn't standing behind its writers.
[Hat Tip: PZ Myers]
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