Get a Job! ... at NCSE

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is looking for a new executive director to replace Eugenie Scott [Help wanted: executive director].

It's gonna be tough filling those shoes.

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More Creationist Stupidity

PZ Myers has discovered an article published in Christian News. The title of the article is: Groundbreaking Genetic Discoveries Challenge Ape to Human Evolutionary Theory. Here's the opening paragraph ...

Fresh findings in the field of genetics have directly challenged yet another key evolutionary hypothesis by showing that the differences between humans and apes cannot be easily accounted for under the theory of evolution.

The paper they are referring to is Farré et al. (2013) and it shows the exact opposite of what the creationists claim. The paper demonstrates reduced recombination rates in those parts of the human and chimp chromosomes where genomic rearrangements have occurred. That's exactly what has been observed for the past 75 years. (See my post on balancer chromosomes, which describes artificial Drosophila chromosomes that were constructed to supress recombination.)

Read PZ's post on the subject to see just how stupid the creationists can be: Do the creationist shuffle and twist!.

I really don't get it. Why does the creationist movement publish material that is blatantly wrong? Even though I mock them repeatedly, I don't really think that every one of them is stupid. Where are the smart ones who review articles like the one published in Christian News? Will we see a retraction or an apology now that their error has been exposed by PZ and by some of the people who commented on the Christian News website?

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Farré, M., Micheletti, D., Ruiz-Herrera, A. (2012) Recombination Rates and Genomic Shuffling in Human and Chimpanzee--A New Twist in the Chromosomal Speciation Theory. Mol. Biol. Evol. 30:853-864.

Name this tree!

There are dozens of trees like this in Venice, California (USA) in the neighborhood where my grandchildren live. Can you name this tree (common name and species name)?

Can you come up with an adaptationist explanation for why this tree is so different from most other trees and bushes?

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RMS Queen Mary

RMS Queen Mary first sailed across the North Atlantic on May 27, 1936. At the time she was one of the largest ocean liners.

Now she lives in "retirement" as a tourist attraction in Long Beach, California (USA) where I took this photo yesterday.

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Naturopathic "Doctors" Graduate from Convocation Hall on the University of Toronto Campus

The Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine is not affiliated with the University of Toronto but naturopath students do study anatomy in my building (Medical Sciences Building) on the downtown campus. The College rents Convocation Hall for their graduation ceremonies. The latest graduation ceremonies were on May 23, 2013 (see Graduation Day!.

In order to graduate, students at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine need to pass courses in a number of areas. Here are two of the things they study ...

Asian Medicine/Acupuncture

Students learn about the philosophy and principles of Asian medicine: Yin and Yang theory, the meridians and channels system, the five-element theory and the symptoms and signs involving the 12 master meridians. Applying these principles in the context of patient assessment and treatment is emphasized, with acupuncture and therapeutic botanicals being the main approaches.

Homeopathic Medicine

The history, principles and philosophy of homeopathy are discussed in depth. Practical application of homeopathic principles in patient assessment and management is emphasized for acute and constitutional cases. Skills are developed in case analysis, repertorization, materia medica search, remedy differentiation and selection and prescribing the appropriate posology.

This is pseudoscience and quackery. The University of Toronto should not be lending its implicit stamp of approval to such nonsense.

I realize that the university rents out Convocation Hall for all kinds of events but most of them are so detached from the university that no one will mistake the event as an endorsement by the university. This is different. Convocation Hall is where the university's own graduation ceremonies take place (the name is a clue!). The average person will assume that the University of Toronto supports the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine and that our faculty has no problem with graduating quack "doctors."

This practice should stop.

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Mutation-Driven Evolution

Back in the late 1980's, I read Molecular Evolutionary Genetics by Masatoshi Nei. He introduced me to the concept that the history of life is driven by mutation and that the old-fashioned view of mutationism needs to be looked at more carefully. A decade later, Arlin Stoltzfus took up the cause and he has published a number of papers on the topic.

If you want to read more about mutationism then you can't find a better source than the series of posts by Arlin on Sandwalk from 2010. The last one, The Mutationism Myth VI: Back to the Future, contains links to all of the others. Be warned, it will be hard to resist the idea of mutationism after you read Arlin's explanation. It will hurt your brain.

I just learned that Masatoshi Nei is about to publish a new book called Mutation-Driven Evolution. Here's the description on Amazon ...
Theme

Mutation

The purpose of this book is to present a new mechanistic theory of mutation-driven evolution based on recent advances in genomics and evolutionary developmental biology. The theory asserts, perhaps somewhat controversially, that the driving force behind evolution is mutation, with natural selection being of only secondary importance. The word 'mutation' is used to describe any kind of change in DNA such as nucleotide substitution, gene duplication/deletion, chromosomal change, and genome duplication. A brief history of the principal evolutionary theories (Darwinism, mutationism, neo-Darwinism, and neo-mutationism) that preceded the theory of mutation-driven evolution is also presented in the context of the last 150 years of research. However, the core of the book is concerned with recent studies of genomics and the molecular basis of phenotypic evolution, and their relevance to mutation-driven evolution. In contrast to neo-Darwinism, mutation-driven evolution is capable of explaining real examples of evolution such as the evolution of olfactory receptors, sex-determination in animals, and the general scheme of hybrid sterility. In this sense the theory proposed is more realistic than its predecessors, and gives a more logical explanation of various evolutionary events.

Mutation-Driven Evolution is suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers (both empiricists and theoreticians) in the fields of molecular evolution and population genetics. It assumes that the readers are acquainted with basic knowledge of genetics and molecular biology.

I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of this book. Look for a review in a few months.

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Freedom to Follow the Evidence without Philosophical Restrictions.

Let's look at a recent post on Evolutin News * Views (sic): From Discovering Intelligent Design: Opposition from the Scientific Establishment. As the title suggests, this is an excerpt from one of the books being heavily promoted by the IDiots.

They have a problem. How do the IDiots explain why 99.9% of biologists oppose Intelligent Design Creationism? It's because they all have a materialistic bias that prevents them from following the evidence wherever it may lead. Read this bit ...

ID challenges a reigning scientific paradigm. But as sociologist Steve Fuller says, ID is not anti-science, but rather anti-establishment. ID theorists want more scientific investigation, not less. They simply want the freedom to follow the evidence without harassment or philosophical restrictions.

An ID-based view of science promises to open new avenues of scientific investigation. Without materialist paradigms governing science, perhaps more scientists would have sought function for structures like "junk" DNA and vestigial organs, rather than assuming they were non-functional evolutionary relics.

Let me remind you that the presence of junk DNA in our genome was not anticipated by those who believed in the importance of natural selection. What happened was that the evidence became too substantive to ignore so scientists had to accept the presence of junk DNA in spite of the fact that most of them expected selection to eliminate it.

Now if you insist on believing in an intelligent design paradigm then you simply can't follow the evidence wherever it may lead because junk DNA isn't part of your worldview. In other words, the example used by the IDiots in this post is the exact opposite of the point they are making.

Oops!

Now you know why we call them IDiots.

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Teaching Biochemistry from a Canadian Perspective

I've always been a bit embarrassed to admit that my own department doesn't adopt my textbook in their introductory biochemistry courses. The honors course uses the 4th edition of Voet & Voet but it's only "recommended," not required. The large introductory course for non-specialists recommends several textbooks, including mine.

The arguments against having a required textbook have often focused on the idea that none of the current textbooks covers the material that's being taught—especially in the large course. Our large (1300 students) course tended to emphasize human physiology from a biochemical perspective. Many of the lectures in the metabolism section involved specific case studies.

"The Best Science Book Ever Written"

Some economist named George Gilder has read Darwin's Doubt, the latest IDiot book. Gilder says ...

I spend my life reading science books. I've read many hundreds of them over the years, and in my judgment Darwin's Doubt is the best science book ever written. It is a magnificent work, a true masterpiece that will be read for hundreds of years.

See David Klinghoffer gloat about this at: George Gilder: Darwin's Doubt Is "Best Science Book Ever Written," "Will Be Read for Hundreds of Years".

Are you still wondering why I call them IDiots?

UPDATE: George Gilder is one of the co-founders of the Discovery Institute and the author of the book (Stephen Meyer) works for the Discovery Institute. Just saying .. I'm sure the relationship has no bearing on Gilder's review and I'm sure it's completely above board for someone like George Gilder to be quoted in a blurb on the cover. If there was anything wrong then surely David Klinghoffer would have mentioned it in his blog post. (This is one of those cases where "IDiots" might be too kind.)

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My Visit to High School Biology Classes

Last Monday I went back to my old high school (Nepean High School in Ottawa, Canada) to visit with students in various biology classes. My host was Susanne Gerards who teaches grade 11 biology and grade 12 biology. She's also the lead author on the biology textbook [Biology 12] that the students use in the grade 12 courses.

I was "guest lecturer" in two grade 12 biology classes and one grade 11 biology class. The grade 12 students had just finished the sections on biochemistry and molecular genetics (information flow) so they were up on most things that I blog about. I was surprised at the amount of information they had just leaned—it's comparable to what we teach in our introductory biochemistry course except that there's less emphasis on structures and nothing on enzyme kinetics.

The students were wonderful. Many of them are going to take science courses in university. (They all had their university acceptances.) Only a few of them are interested in medicine.¹

The grade 11 students had finished their section on evolution. Most of them thought that evolution was driven by changes in the environment but they had at least been exposed to random genetic drift. It took a little prompting to that get that out of them. (I think Susanne was a bit embarrassed!). My impression was that the students understood quite a bit about evolution and this was a pleasant surprise.

One of the classes had just finished a discussion about junk DNA when a student raised it in class. He claimed that recent evidence proved that most of our genome has a function. I think the students were still a bit confused about genomes but at least they talked about it. (We didn't talk about it much when I was there.)

I'm pretty sure that the most important thing the students learned was that you actually get paid to be a graduate student! They were also surprised about the relatively high salaries that professors earn when they're hired. I'm hoping that some of them will pursue a career in science.

Susanne Gerards and I had an excellent lunch in Westboro where the restaurants and shops are quite a bit more upscale than they were in the 1960s when I lived there. We also had a lot of fun talking about science after class. With teachers like that I'm confident that Ontario high school students are getting a good science education.

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1. Hardly any of them were going to the University of Toronto in spite of the fact that it's the best university in Canada. I'm not sure why they were avoiding it. The most popular universities were Queen's, McGill, and Waterloo.

What Does the Bladderwort Genome Tell Us about Junk DNA?

The so-called "C-Value Paradox" was described over thirty years ago. Here's how Benjamin Lewin explained it in Genes II (1983).

The C value paradox takes its name from our inability to account for the content of the genome in terms of known function. One puzzling feature is the existence of huge variations in C values between species whose apparent complexity does not vary correspondingly. An extraordinary range of C values is found in amphibians where the smallest genomes are just below 10⁹bp while the largest are almost 10¹¹. It is hard to believe that this could reflect a 100-fold variation in the number of genes needed to specify different amphibians.

Since then we have dozens and dozens of examples of very similar looking species with vastly different genome sizes. These observations require an explanation and the best explanation by far is that most of the genomes of multicellular species is junk. In fact, it's the data on genome sizes that provide the best evidence for junk DNA.

How Do IDiots Define Evolution?

It's not difficult to find a proper definition of evolution. All you have to do is check your basic introductory textbooks on evolution. Google is not your friend in this case 'cause there's a lot of misinformation out there. If you're really interested in a scientific definition of evolution why not go right to the primary source?

Most textbooks use some version of the following for the minimal DEFINITION of evolution [see What IS Evolution?].

Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations.

Now, we all know that Intelligent Design Creationists are keen on real science. They certainly don't want to mislead their flock. Let's see how they define evolution in the latest book they are promoting [From Discovering Intelligent Design: Define Your Terms].

A Concept-Driven Graduate Education

Like most graduate departments, we are constantly evaluating and modifying our graduate program but rarely do we step back and look at the big picture. What are we trying to accomplish?

Graduate education, like undergraduate education, has been subjected to serious study over the past few decades. Guttlerner and Van Vactor (2013) have just published a brief review in Cell that summarizes the goals and how they are trying to achieve them at Havard.

The authors begin by pointing out the importance of a concept-driven curriculum.

The modernization of science education requires a shift from a content-driven curriculum to an interdisciplinary, concept-driven curriculum (Association of American Medical Colleges and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 2009; American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2009; National Research Council, 2003, 2009). Such a curriculum organizes information around unifying concepts and frees educators from the insurmountable task of presenting the complete breadth of an ever-expanding scientific knowledge base (D’Avanzo, 2008). Concept-driven education is increasingly seen as fundamental for contemporary research scientists and physicians (Association of American Medical Colleges and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 2009).

Inside Higher Ed Weighs in on the Ball State Academic Freedom Controversy

This is getting more and more interesting. Now there's an article in Inside Higher Ed discussing the controversy over whether Eric Hedin of Ball State University should be teaching a science course that emphasizes Intelligent Design Creationism. [see Science or Religion?]

The article discusses the difference of opinion between Jerry Coyne, on the one hand, and PZ Myers and me, on the other. It's very interesting to read the comments. Jerry Coyne has posted on the Inside Higher Ed article at: Ball State agrees to investigate science course infected with Christianity. His readers have lots to say on the issue of academic freedom.

Let's be clear about one thing. I'm not an American so I'm not terribly concerned about the American Constitution. If Eric Hedin were teaching in Canada, the legal issue would never come up. The part of this that I don't like is outsiders threatening departmental chairs to get them to take action against one of their faculty members. Four Creationists have tried to get the administration of my university to shut down Sandwalk and in all cases my university simply filed the letters in the waste basket.¹ I ban people from Sandwalk if I ever hear of them trying to intimidate someone by complaining to their employer. That's unacceptable behavior in my book.

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1. After sending me a copy.

Earthquake!

Epicentre near Ottawa. Two quakes: 5.2 magnitude at 9:43 am and a 4.1 magnitude aftershock 10 minutes later. I didn't feel either of them. Earthquakes like this happen about 30,000 time a year. We feel one of them every few years in this part of Canada. They are mostly harmless, but exciting.

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[Photo credit: CBC News]