Mondays' Molecule #139

 
Name this molecule. The common name will do. Briefly describe what it does.

There's a Nobel Prize directly connected to this molecule. If you can name the molecule then you can find the Nobel Laureate(s).

The first person to identify the molecule and name the Nobel Laureate(s) wins a free lunch. Previous winners are ineligible for six weeks from the time they first won the prize.

There are only four ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Philip Johnson of the University of Toronto, Ben Morgan of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Frank Schmidt of the University of Missouri and Joshua Johnson of Victoria University in Australia.

Frank and Joshua have agreed to donate their free lunch to an undergraduate. Consequently, I have an extra free lunch for a deserving undergraduate so I'm going to award an additional prize 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. If you can't make it for lunch then please consider donating it to someone who can in the next round.

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(s) 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.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours. Comments are now open.

---

Who's Smarter, Cats or Dogs?

 
Watch the Beagle escape.

---

[Hat Tip: Greg Laden]

He Gets by with a Little Help from His Friends

 
I'm not a big fan of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper but you gotta admire someone who sings a Beatles song with Yo-Yo Ma.

---

2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

 
The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase."

These scientists were on everyone's short list so there's no great surprise here.

Read all about it on the Nobel Prize website. Here's the press release.

Press Release

5 October 2009

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009 jointly to

Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak

for the discovery of

"how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase"

Summary

This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to three scientists who have solved a major problem in biology: how the chromosomes can be copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation. The Nobel Laureates have shown that the solution is to be found in the ends of the chromosomes – the telomeres – and in an enzyme that forms them – telomerase.

The long, thread-like DNA molecules that carry our genes are packed into chromosomes, the telomeres being the caps on their ends. Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak discovered that a unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation. Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn identified telomerase, the enzyme that makes telomere DNA. These discoveries explained how the ends of the chromosomes are protected by the telomeres and that they are built by telomerase.

If the telomeres are shortened, cells age. Conversely, if telomerase activity is high, telomere length is maintained, and cellular senescence is delayed. This is the case in cancer cells, which can be considered to have eternal life. Certain inherited diseases, in contrast, are characterized by a defective telomerase, resulting in damaged cells. The award of the Nobel Prize recognizes the discovery of a fundamental mechanism in the cell, a discovery that has stimulated the development of new therapeutic strategies.

The mysterious telomere

The chromosomes contain our genome in their DNA molecules. As early as the 1930s, Hermann Muller (Nobel Prize 1946) and Barbara McClintock (Nobel Prize 1983) had observed that the structures at the ends of the chromosomes, the so-called telomeres, seemed to prevent the chromosomes from attaching to each other. They suspected that the telomeres could have a protective role, but how they operate remained an enigma.

When scientists began to understand how genes are copied, in the 1950s, another problem presented itself. When a cell is about to divide, the DNA molecules, which contain the four bases that form the genetic code, are copied, base by base, by DNA polymerase enzymes. However, for one of the two DNA strands, a problem exists in that the very end of the strand cannot be copied. Therefore, the chromosomes should be shortened every time a cell divides – but in fact that is not usually the case

Both these problems were solved when this year's Nobel Laureates discovered how the telomere functions and found the enzyme that copies it.
Telomere DNA protects the chromosomes

In the early phase of her research career, Elizabeth Blackburn mapped DNA sequences. When studying the chromosomes of Tetrahymena, a unicellular ciliate organism, she identified a DNA sequence that was repeated several times at the ends of the chromosomes. The function of this sequence, CCCCAA, was unclear. At the same time, Jack Szostak had made the observation that a linear DNA molecule, a type of minichromosome, is rapidly degraded when introduced into yeast cells.

Blackburn presented her results at a conference in 1980. They caught Jack Szostak's interest and he and Blackburn decided to perform an experiment that would cross the boundaries between very distant species (Fig 2). From the DNA of Tetrahymena, Blackburn isolated the CCCCAA sequence. Szostak coupled it to the minichromosomes and put them back into yeast cells. The results, which were published in 1982, were striking – the telomere DNA sequence protected the minichromosomes from degradation. As telomere DNA from one organism, Tetrahymena, protected chromosomes in an entirely different one, yeast, this demonstrated the existence of a previously unrecognized fundamental mechanism. Later on, it became evident that telomere DNA with its characteristic sequence is present in most plants and animals, from amoeba to man.

An enzyme that builds telomeres

Carol Greider, then a graduate student, and her supervisor Blackburn started to investigate if the formation of telomere DNA could be due to an unknown enzyme. On Christmas Day, 1984, Greider discovered signs of enzymatic activity in a cell extract. Greider and Blackburn named the enzyme telomerase, purified it, and showed that it consists of RNA as well as protein (Fig 3). The RNA component turned out to contain the CCCCAA sequence. It serves as the template when the telomere is built, while the protein component is required for the construction work, i.e. the enzymatic activity. Telomerase extends telomere DNA, providing a platform that enables DNA polymerases to copy the entire length of the chromosome without missing the very end portion.

Telomeres delay ageing of the cell

Scientists now began to investigate what roles the telomere might play in the cell. Szostak's group identified yeast cells with mutations that led to a gradual shortening of the telomeres. Such cells grew poorly and eventually stopped dividing. Blackburn and her co-workers made mutations in the RNA of the telomerase and observed similar effects in Tetrahymena. In both cases, this led to premature cellular ageing – senescence. In contrast, functional telomeres instead prevent chromosomal damage and delay cellular senescence. Later on, Greider's group showed that the senescence of human cells is also delayed by telomerase. Research in this area has been intense and it is now known that the DNA sequence in the telomere attracts proteins that form a protective cap around the fragile ends of the DNA strands.

An important piece in the puzzle – human ageing, cancer, and stem cells

These discoveries had a major impact within the scientific community. Many scientists speculated that telomere shortening could be the reason for ageing, not only in the individual cells but also in the organism as a whole. But the ageing process has turned out to be complex and it is now thought to depend on several different factors, the telomere being one of them. Research in this area remains intense.

Most normal cells do not divide frequently, therefore their chromosomes are not at risk of shortening and they do not require high telomerase activity. In contrast, cancer cells have the ability to divide infinitely and yet preserve their telomeres. How do they escape cellular senescence? One explanation became apparent with the finding that cancer cells often have increased telomerase activity. It was therefore proposed that cancer might be treated by eradicating telomerase. Several studies are underway in this area, including clinical trials evaluating vaccines directed against cells with elevated telomerase activity.

Some inherited diseases are now known to be caused by telomerase defects, including certain forms of congenital aplastic anemia, in which insufficient cell divisions in the stem cells of the bone marrow lead to severe anemia. Certain inherited diseases of the skin and the lungs are also caused by telomerase defects.

In conclusion, the discoveries by Blackburn, Greider and Szostak have added a new dimension to our understanding of the cell, shed light on disease mechanisms, and stimulated the development of potential new therapies.

Elizabeth H. Blackburn has US and Australian citizenship. She was born in 1948 in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. After undergraduate studies at the University of Melbourne, she received her PhD in 1975 from the University of Cambridge, England, and was a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University, New Haven, USA. She was on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, and since 1990 has been professor of biology and physiology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Carol W. Greider is a US citizen and was born in 1961 in San Diego, California, USA. She studied at the University of California in Santa Barbara and in Berkeley, where she obtained her PhD in 1987 with Blackburn as her supervisor. After postdoctoral research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, she was appointed professor in the department of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore in 1997.

Jack W. Szostak is a US citizen. He was born in 1952 in London, UK and grew up in Canada. He studied at McGill University in Montreal and at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he received his PhD in 1977. He has been at Harvard Medical School since 1979 and is currently professor of genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He is also affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

References:

Szostak JW, Blackburn EH. Cloning yeast telomeres on linear plasmid vectors. Cell 1982; 29:245-255.
Greider CW, Blackburn EH. Identification of a specific telomere terminal transferase activity in Tetrahymena extracts. Cell 1985; 43:405-13.
Greider CW, Blackburn EH. A telomeric sequence in the RNA of Tetrahymena telomerase required for telomere repeat synthesis. Nature 1989; 337:331-7.

---

Richard Dawkins on Tapestry

 
Here's a link to an interview of Richard Dawkins.

The world's most famous atheist sat down with Tapestry - a programme about religion - for an hour-long conversation. His chat with Mary Hynes encompassed evolution, Darwin, creationists, wildflowers, atheism and Dawkins' lingering affection for the Church of England(?!). Richard Dawkins is the author of The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, published by Free Press.

This is a really good interview. Mary Hynes did her homework and she asked some really good questions.

Listen, at the 20 minute mark, to Dawkins talk about Francis Collins and how he reconciles science and religion.

At 40 minutes Mary Hynes asks about the Newsweek interview and accommodationism. In case you don't want to listen to the podcast, I can assure you that Dawkins is not an accommodationist. She follows up with a discussion of "respect" and how religion should be treated.

Click on "Podcast" to hear the whole thing.

---

Richard Dawkins on Bill Maher's Show

 
Here's Richard Dawkins appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher. Dawkins does a fine job of discussing evolution—it's very entertaining.

Equally entertaining is the second part where Maher gets politely raked over the coals for his silly views about Islamic terrorism. Now that I've been alerted to Maher's kooky ideas about medicine I'm seeing more and more examples of his strange way of thinking.

Richard Dawkins on Real Time with Bill Maher (10-2-09)
by Xrunner17

---

[Hat Tip: RichardDawkins.net]

Ardi and Ida

 
"Ardi" is the nickname of Ardipithecus ramidus, the recently described hominid fossil. "Ida" is the nickname of Darwinius masillae, an early primate fossil that made a big splash last year.

The "Darwinius" affair has become notorious as a bad example of scientists getting into bed with book publishers, movie producers, and PR professionals [see The dangerous link between science and hype].

The "Ardi" publicity campaign seemed to be different. Sure, there's the 11 papers published simultaneously in Science—this clearly involves a coordinated attempt to maximize the impact of this fossil—but this seems like only a minor trangression. Coordinating publication happens lots of times.

But now there's the Discovery Channel documentary that's going to air next weekend.

A DISCOVERY CHANNEL EXCLUSIVE, WORLD PREMIERE SPECIAL BRINGS YOU THE STORY OF THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT HUMAN EVOLUTION

DISCOVERING ARDI airs Sunday, October 11 at 9 PM (ET/PT)

Following publication in the journal Science on the discovery and study of a 4.4 million-year-old female partial skeleton nicknamed "Ardi," Discovery Channel will present a world premiere special, DISCOVERING ARDI, Sunday October 11 at 9 PM (ET/PT) documenting the sustained, intensive investigation leading up to this landmark publication of the Ardipithecus ramidus fossils.

UNDERSTANDING ARDI, a one-hour special produced in collaboration with CBS News will air at 11 PM (ET/PT) immediately following DISCOVERING ARDI. The special is moderated by former CBS and CNN anchor Paula Zahn and includes research team members Dr. Tim White, Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Dr. Giday WoldeGabriel, Dr. Owen Lovejoy, and science journalist Ann Gibbons

The scientific investigation began in the Ethiopian desert 17 years ago, and now opens a new chapter on human evolution, revealing the first evolutionary steps our ancestors took after we diverged from a common ancestor we once shared with living chimpanzees. "Ardi's" centerpiece skeleton, the other hominids she lived with, and the rocks, soils, plants and animals that made up her world were analyzed in laboratories around the world, and the scientists have now published their findings in the prestigious journal Science.

"Ardi" is now the oldest skeleton from our (hominid) branch of the primate family tree. These Ethiopian discoveries reveal an early grade of human evolution in Africa that predated the famous Australopithecus nicknamed "Lucy." Ardipithecus was a woodland creature with a small brain, long arms, and short legs. The pelvis and feet show a primitive form of two-legged walking on the ground, but Ardipithecus was also a capable tree climber, with long fingers and big toes that allowed their feet to grasp like an ape's. The discoveries answer old questions about how hominids became bipedal.

The international research team weighed in on the scope of the project and its findings:

"These are the results of a scientific mission to our deep African past," said project co-director and geologist, Dr. Giday WoldeGabriel of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"The novel anatomy that we describe in these papers fundamentally alters our understanding of human origins and early evolution," said project anatomist and evolutionary biologist, Professor C. Owen Lovejoy, Kent State University.

Project co-director and paleontologist Professor Tim White of the Human Evolution Research Center at the University of California Berkeley adds, "Ardipithecus is not a chimp. It's not a human. It's what we used to be."

DISCOVERING ARDI begins its story with the 1974 discovery of Australopithecus afarensis in Hadar, northeastern Ethiopia. Nicknamed "Lucy," this 3.2 million year old skeleton was, at the time, the oldest hominid skeleton ever found. As the Discovery Channel special documents, Lucy's title would be overtaken twenty years later by the 1994 discovery of "Ardi" in Ethiopia's Afar region in the Middle Awash study area. It would take an elite international team of experts the next fifteen years to delicately, meticulously and methodically piece together "Ardi" and her lost world in order to reveal her significance.

We all know that this documentary took a long time to make. That means the authors of the scientific papers were cooperating with Discovery Channel (and CBS News?) long before the papers were published. Perhaps even before the papers were accepted.

Something isn't right about all of this. John Hawks senses it too ["Discovering Ardi"].

Oh, my. Well it stands to reason that something this coordinated wasn't just science. I wonder whether anyone will ask the questions about the timing of Science's publication and the documentary release only a week later.

I have to tell you, I've been wondering about all the bogus-looking Darwin paraphrases these guys have been throwing out -- you know, the ones about how Darwin taught us about how chimpanzees changed from their common ancestors, and how fossil humans would tell us about the apes. I can't find anything like that in any of Darwin's publications -- please e-mail if it's there and I'm missing it.

But now I see where they're coming from. It's the tagline from the Discovery show!

I smell a rat.

---

Do Graduate Students Understand Evolution?

 
The other day I was discussing how to teach evolution with one of my colleagues and the discussion turned to the presumed distinction between students who were really interested in science and everyone else. My colleague claimed that students who were science oriented probably managed to acquire a good understanding of evolution in spite of the fact that some undergraduate courses weren't doing a very good job of teaching the subject.

I pointed out that my impression was different. I suggested that most Professors in our department don't have a firm grasp of one of the most fundamental concepts in biology (evolution), and neither do our graduate students. I reminded my colleague of the times when we cringe at graduate student presentations when the topic of evolution comes up.

Ryan Gregory must have felt the same way since he was prompted to do a survey of graduate students in science departments at Guelph University. The result is published in BioScience. You can read about it on Ryan's blog: How well do grad students grasp evolution?.
Here's the press release...

Science Students Could Brush Up On Darwin, U of G Study Finds

October 01, 2009 - News Release

Even students pursuing advanced degrees in science could brush up on their knowledge of evolution, according to a new study by University of Guelph researchers.

The finding reveals that there is room for improvement in how evolution is taught from elementary school up, said Ryan Gregory, a professor in Guelph’s Department of Integrative Biology, who conducted the research with former student Cameron Ellis.

The study was published today in BioScience. It’s particularly timely, given that this year is the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of publication of On the Origin of Species, which underpins understanding of the diversity of Earth’s organisms and their interrelations.

“Misconceptions about natural selection may still exist, even at the most advanced level,” Gregory said.

“We’re looking at a subset of people who have spent at least four years, sometimes even six or seven years, in science and still don’t necessarily have a full working understanding of basic evolutionary principles or scientific terms like ‘theories.’”

Many previous studies have assessed how evolution is understood and accepted by elementary, high school and undergraduate students, as well as by teachers and the general public, Gregory said. But this was the first to focus solely on students seeking graduate science degrees.

The study involved nearly 200 graduate students at a mid-sized Canadian university who were studying biological, physical, agricultural or animal sciences. About half of the students had never taken an evolutionary biology course, which is often not a prerequisite.

The researchers found that the vast majority of the students recognized the importance of evolution as a central part of biology. Overall, they also had a better understanding of evolutionary concepts than most people.

“That was encouraging, especially because it was across several colleges — it wasn’t just the biology students,” Gregory said.

But when the students were asked to apply basic evolutionary principles, only 20 to 30 per cent could do so correctly, and many didn’t even try to answer such questions. Of particular interest to Gregory is the finding that many students seem less than clear about the nature of scientific theories.

“This is telling us that traditional instruction methods, while leading to some basic understanding of evolution, are not producing a strong working knowledge that can be easily applied to real biological phenomena.”

Gregory has studied evolution-related topics for years and recently co-organized a workshop designed to improve how the subject is taught in public schools. He is also associate editor of Evolution: Education and Outreach, a journal written for science teachers, students and scientists. He recently created Evolver Zone, a free online resource for anyone interested in evolutionary biology.
He is also helping bring an evolution-inspired art exhibit to U of G this month. “This View of Life: Evolutionary Art in the Year of Darwin, 2009” highlights diverse artists’ views of Darwin’s ideas and evolution in general. It runs Oct. 9 to 30 in the science complex atrium.

Some of us know what the problem is. What are we going to do about it? How are we going to convince professors that evolution education has to change when most of them don't even recognize there's a problem because their own views of evolution are flawed?

---

Denyse O'Leary Making Sense

 
Like they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I'm happy to report that this is one of those days when Denyse O'Leary says something intelligent [Fun with Mark Steyn: But when isn’t Mark Steyn fun?].

Darwinists are forever nagging the keepers of the public purse to generously fund their efforts to sell their story to a disbelieving public, but the money is wasted by definition. The reason people don’t believe a lot of this stuff is that it isn’t believable. More public relations will actually make more people aware of scandals like “Ida” or the fact that there is little or no response to the ridiculous claims of “evolutionary psychology” – which make the science press sound like the National Enquirer.

It's a sad day, actually, when an Intelligent Design Creationist points out something that many scientists are ignoring.

Scientists are very good at self-promotion but that's not compatible with good science. We need more good science journalists.¹ That's the group that has to face up to to their failures in the past and start to clean up their acts.

They will soon be extinct if they don't.

---

1. I do not mean to imply that Denyse O'Leary is an example of a good science journalist.

Map That Campus Returns

 
After a lengthy hiatus, the ever-popular feature on Alex Pallazzo's blog has returned. See Map That Campus XLVII. (Extra bonus points if you can translate XLVII into a real number!)

There's actually three campuses this week. You need to get all three before you can pat yourself on the back. No looking at the comments before giving your answer!

---

Is Richard Dawkins an Accomodationist?

 
Richard Dawkins was recently interviewed by Newsweek: Darwin’s Rottweiler. Here's an excerpt.

Are those incompatible positions: to believe in God and to believe in evolution?
No, I don't think they're incompatible if only because there are many intelligent evolutionary scientists who also believe in God—to name only Francis Collins [the geneticist and Christian believer recently chosen to head the National Institutes of Health] as an outstanding example. So it clearly is possible to be both. This book more or less begins by accepting that there is that compatibility. The God Delusion did make a case against that compatibility in my own mind.

I interpret this to mean that in Dawkins' own mind the two are incompatible as he explained in The God Delusion, but that there are many scientists, like Francis Collins, who think that science and religion are compatible.

But on reading this, the real accommodationists had a conniption. Josh Rosenau thinks that Dawkins may have converted to his side and the side promoted by NCSE (who back Collins over Dawkins) [Richard Dawkins, accommodationist?].

This, for what it's worth, looks like the position NCSE has taken, and is, to the best of my knowledge, the sort of rhetoric Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum have been calling for from folks like Dawkins. It matches my own views, too, though I've been less vocal in these debates than many others.

It will be interesting to see whether the usual suspects go after Dawkins with quite the same vehemence that has met others advancing similar lines of argument.

Matt Nisbet is delighted because he's been saying all along that Dawkins needs to re-frame his argument to conform to the Nisbet rules for talking about evolution [Is Dawkins Re-Framing His Position on Science & Religion?]. Chris Mooney—who hasn't completely abandoned the bizarre views of his former colleague (Nisbet)—is also jumping on the bandwagon [Richard Dawkins, Accommodationist].

Sheesh! Come on guys, get a life.

Dawkins wasn't very careful about what he said in that interview but to assume that he's all-of-a-sudden become an accommodationist is really stupid of you.

Now we have the makings of a really Alice-in-Wonderland (or Woody Allen) scenario. Jerry Coyne is currently in Los Angeles at a meeting with Richard Dawkins. He (Coyne) showed the Josh, Matt, and Chris postings to Richard and here's what Coyne wrote on his blog [Richard Dawkins is not an accommodationist].

Well, I know Richard Dawkins. I am at a meeting with Richard Dawkins. I just discussed these accusations of accommodationism with Richard Dawkins. And I can tell you, Chris, Sheril, and Josh, that Richard is not one of you.

Right now I feel like Woody Allen in Annie Hall. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll remember that in one scene Allen is in a movie line with Diane Keaton, and becomes annoyed by some pompous guy trying to impress his date by nattering on about the work of Marshall McLuhan. Allen goes behind a movie sign and pulls out McLuhan himself, taking him over to confront Mr. Pomposity. McLuhan coldly eyes him and says, “Excuse me, but I am Marshall McLuhan, and I couldn’t help overhearing what you said. I have to tell you that you know nothing of my work!” Allen turns to the camera and comments, “Don’t you wish life could be like this?”

---

Jonathan Wells Is a Winner!

 
This week's Egregiously stupid remark of the week by an IDiot goes to Jonathan Wells for his comment about HOX genes.

---

A Julia Child Recipe

 
Posting a video of Julia Child preparing a delicious dish is something you're more likely to find on other blogs. But this is a recipe for "Primordial Soup" so it's appropriate to let Sandwalk readers know about it.

You should definitely try this at home in your own kitchen. But don't eat it.

---

[Hat Tip: Martin Brazeau on The Lancelet]

Good Science? Bad Science Journalism?

It was inevitable that science writers all over the world would screw up the story of Ardipithicus ramidus as reported in a series of papers published in Science [see the special Science webpage: Ardipithicus ramidus].

Everyone will have their favorite example. Mine comes from today's issue of The Toronto Star in an article by Joseph Hall titled Did apes descend from us?

Man didn't descend from apes.

What is closer to the truth is that our knuckle-dragging cousins descended from us.

That's one of the shocking new theories being drawn from a series of anthropology papers published Friday in a special edition of the journal Science.

Scientists say a 4.4-million-year-old fossil called Ardi – short for ardipithecus ramidus – is descended from the "missing link," or the last common ancestor between humans and apes.

The 4-foot, 110-pound female's skeleton and physiological characteristics bear a closer resemblance to modern-day humans than to contemporary apes, meaning they evolved from humanlike creatures – not the other way around.

We did not descend from apes—humans are apes. Modern humans and other modern apes share a common ancestor. It's silly to say that humans descend from monkeys, or apes, and it's just as silly to say that chimpanzees descend from humans.

The second part of the quotation is pretty accurate but it's overshadowed by the unnecessary hype in the first few sentences. There are no "shocking new theories" being promoted.

C. Owen Lovejoy is one of the authors on several of the papers just published (e.g. White et al. 2009; Suwa et al. 2009). He is quoted in the Star article, presumably from a 'phone interview by the author.

"It's transformative. This is a lot closer to anything that you'd call the missing link than anything that's ever been found," says Lovejoy, a biological anthropologist at Ohio's Kent State University.

Among other things, research on Ardi suggests humans are far more primitive in an evolutionary sense than today's great apes – like chimps and gorillas – which have continued to evolve from the missing link.

"In a way we're saying that the old idea that we evolved from a chimpanzee is totally incorrect," he says. "It's more proper to say that chimpanzees evolved from us."

Can you blame the reporter when this is what one of the authors says? Yes you can, because, as Carl Zimmer points out, it's up to science reporters to do a bit of digging to find out the real story behind the scientific papers and the press releases.

But we also need to blame scientists for the sorry state of scientific literacy. That was a remarkably stupid thing for C. Owen Lovejoy to have said to a science journalist. As a scientist he should have known that the "old idea" (we evolved from a chimpanzee) is wrong and the "new idea" (chimpanzees evolved from us) is also wrong for the same reasons.

Maybe Lovejoy was misquoted? After all, he's a member of the National Academy of Sciences so he must know what he's talking about. Let's look at the Kent State University press release [Kent State University Professor C. Owen Lovejoy helps unveil oldest hominid skeleton].

KENT, Ohio -- Oct. 1, 2009 -- Throw out all those posters and books that depict an ape evolving into a human being, says Kent State University Professor of Anthropology Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy. An internationally recognized biological anthropologist who specializes in the study of human origins, Lovejoy is one of the primary authors who revealed their research findings today on Ardipithecus ramidus, a hominid species that lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia.

"People often think we evolved from apes, but no, apes in many ways evolved from us," Lovejoy said. "It has been a popular idea to think humans are modified chimpanzees. From studying Ardipithecus ramidus, or 'Ardi,' we learn that we cannot understand or model human evolution from chimps and gorillas."

Not much better, although Loverjoy does emphasize the fact that "people often think we evolved from apes." However, he doesn't do much to dispel this way of thinking when he says, "apes in many ways evolved from us."

I don't think we can blame our reporter for this one.

What about the scientific papers? What do they say? Remarkably, the papers actually address the idea that humans might have evolved from chimpanzees as though this was a real scientific belief held by real scientists. Here's the conclusion of the White et al. (2009) paper.

Conclusions. Besides hominids, the only apes to escape post-Miocene extinction persist today as relict species, their modern distributions centered in forested refugia. The markedly primitive Ar. ramidus indicates that no modern ape is a realistic proxy for characterizing early hominid evolution—whether social or locomotor—as appreciated by Huxley. Rather, Ar. ramidus reveals that the last common ancestor that we share with chimpanzees (CLCA) was probably a palmigrade quadrupedal arboreal climber/clamberer that lacked specializations for suspension, vertical climbing, or knuckle-walking (24–27). It probably retained a generalized incisal/postcanine dentition associated with an omnivorous/frugivorous diet less specialized than that of extant great apes (22, 23). The CLCA probably also combined moderate canine dimorphism with minimal skull and body size dimorphism (22, 23), most likely associated with relatively weak male-male agonism in a male philopatric social system (22, 23, 31).

Ardipithecus reveals the first hominid adaptive plateau after the CLCA. It combined facultative terrestrial bipedality (25, 26) in a woodland habitat (28–30) with retained arboreal capabilities inherited from the CLCA (24–27). This knowledge of Ar. ramidus provides us, for the first time, with the paleobiological substrate for the emergence of the subsequent Australopithecus and Homo adaptive phases of human evolution. Perhaps the most critical single implication of Ar. ramidus is its reaffirmation of Darwin’s appreciation: Humans did not evolve from chimpanzees but rather through a series of progenitors starting from a distant common ancestor that once occupied the ancient forests of the African Miocene.

Hmmm ... I'm not that familiar with the scientific beliefs of anthropologists. Maybe they really did think that humans evolved from chimpanzees! That's pretty scary.

Owen Lovejoy has a single author paper where he makes the case for just such a mistaken view of human evolution (Lovejoy 2009). It's a good read. He might be right that his colleagues tended toward a ladder-like view of evolution.

Not all of the reporting is bad. Yesterday I linked to the article by Carl Zimmer [Ardipithecus: We Meet At Last] and today we get to see the reports in Science. One of these reports, A New Kind of Ancestor: Ardipithecus Unveiled by Ann Gibbons, is particularly good. It contains important bits of information like this ...

But not everyone agrees with the team’s interpretations about how Ar. ramidus walked upright and what it reveals about our ancestors. “The authors … are framing the debate that will inevitably follow,” because the description and interpretation of the finds are entwined, says Pilbeam. “My first reaction is to be skeptical about some of the conclusions,” including that human ancestors never went through a chimpanzee-like phase. Other researchers are focusing intently on the lower skeleton, where some of the anatomy is so primitive that they are beginning to argue over just what it means to be “bipedal.” The pelvis, for example, offers only “circumstantial” evidence for upright walking, says Walker. But however the debate about Ardi’s locomotion and identity evolves, she provides the first hard evidence that will inform and constrain future ideas about the ancient hominin bauplan.

It's important to remember that the scientific papers are promoting a particular view of human evolution and the importance of the very fossils that the authors have been working on for many years. They have a big stake in this. There will be biases that creep into the conclusions. It would be wrong to conclude that everything we today hear about Ardipithicus ramidus will stand up to subsequent scrutiny.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the most significant finding is the evidence that Ardipithicus lived in a woodland environment and not on a savanna [see Habitat for Humanity]. This could change the way we think about how humans evolved. If early humans were more likely to lived in wooded areas than in open savanna, then many adaptationist explanations for certain characters will have to be revised. (See the Lovejoy (2009) paper.)

Such a result will make it difficult to explain our supposed instinctual preference for savanna-like terrains, for example [E.O. Wilson in New York]. Why would our ancestral population have fixed alleles making us admire savanna when our ancestors lived in the woods?

---

[Image Credit: The map of the Afar Rift is form The View from Afar]

Lovejoy, C. O. (2009) Reexamining Human Origins in Light of Ardipithecus ramidus. Science 326:74e1-74e8. [doi: 10.1126/science.1175834]

Suwa, G., Asfaw, B., Kono, R.T., Kubo, D., Lovejoy, C.O., and White, T.D. (2009) The Ardipithecus ramidus Skull and Its Implications for Hominid Origins. Science 326:68e1-68e7. [doi: 10.1126/science.1175825]

White, T.D., Asfaw, B., Beyene, Y., Haile-Selassie, Y., Lovejoy, C.O., Suwa, G., and WoldeGabriel, G. (2009) Ardipithecus ramidus and the Paleobiology of Early Hominids. Science 326:75-86. [doi: 10.1126/science.1175802]

Creation Astronomy

 
I'm sometimes accused of a bias against creationism and other forms of stupidity. So, in the interests of diversity and political correctness, I present one of the better examples of creationist logic.

This is from The 4th Day Alliance. Don't ever say that I haven't been fair to creationists. This is an accurate, unedited, copy of what's on their website (click on 'Start a Local Chapter"). I'm not making this up. I'm not quote mining.

We are in the midst of a major culture war and we need your help! As you know, one of the foundations upon which great negative change has taken place in our world is the false belief in evolution (naturalism).

While most people are familiar with Charles Darwin’s theory, few realize that an even greater fight is being waged in the area of astronomy. This is because evolution, as it pertains to astronomy, doesn’t just deal with the origin of life, but with the origin of EVERYTHING! If belief in evolution is defeated in the area of cosmology and astronomy, then other forms of evolutionary belief don’t have a leg to stand on. This is why evolutionary astronomers are some of the most dogmatic philosophers in existence today. Their ENTIRE WORLDVIEW rests on the foundation of evolutionary cosmology and astronomy. This is why evolutionists oftentimes feel most threatened by Creation Astronomy and wage the most virulent attacks against Creation Astronomers.

We are requesting your help to combat this problem on a grassroots level. Please consider this opportunity prayerfully.

There are literally hundreds of astronomy clubs around the country, but to our knowledge there is only ONE that is unapologetically Christian and that believes in the absolute truth of the Bible – the 4th Day Alliance. Astronomy clubs are responsible for teaching and introducing the public to astronomy. Unfortunately, 99.99% of the time they are teaching the myth of “billions of years” and false theories like the Big Bang.

---