Atheist Freethinkers Support the Quebec Charter of Values ... with Reservations

There's a debate going on in Canada over the so-called "Charter of Values" proposed by the government of Quebec. The fact that the governing party is a separatist party (Parti Québécois) makes the debate much more interesting. (That's Premier Pauline Marois in the photo below.)

The main issue concerns how public servants present themselves to the public. The new law proposes to ban outward signs of religion on the grounds that public servants should represent a secular government. What this means in practice is that Sikh men won't be allowed to wear turbans and kirpas and Muslim women won't be allowed to wear hijabs or niqabs. Christians can't wear large crosses. Atheists can't wear a large red letter "A" on their lapel.

Opinion in Quebec is pretty evenly divided but most of the rest of Canada sees this (mostly incorrectly) as an infringement on fundamental rights and freedoms.

Atheist groups are struggling with this issue. Here's what the Atheist Freethinkers say in today's press release: The Quebec Charter of Values: A major advance towards secularism.

Montreal, 17th September 2013 — Atheist Freethinkers (LPA-AFT), an association which promotes secularism and supports the rights of atheists, welcomes the intention of the government of Quebec to adopt a so-called Charter of Values which would formally establish the secular status of the Quebec state. The project is outlined on its website www.nosvaleurs.gouv.qc.ca.

The proposed Charter would formally declare separation of religion and state, the religious neutrality of the state and the secular nature of its institutions. It would impose an ethics of restraint and religious neutrality for public servants. It would prohibit obvious religious symbols in the public service. And it would establish clear guidelines for so-called “reasonable” accommodations. Furthermore, it would make it mandatory for any client of public services to have one’s face uncovered in order to be served. All of these measures go in the direction of formalizing the secular nature of the state and assuring the independence and autonomy of the state from religion. This is very good news.

However, like most who support the proposed Charter, we do so with some reservations. Firstly, the title “Quebec Charter of Values” is very badly chosen. What Quebec requires is a Charter of Secularism, a charter which expresses values which have universal, human import, the values of the Enlightenment.

Secondly, it has not been proposed that the large crucifix be removed from the wall of the Quebec National Assembly in Quebec City. This object was installed there in 1936 by the Duplessis government of the day, with the aim of consecrating its alliance with the Catholic Church. If the crucifix is a “Quebec value,” it represents the worst possible value in this context. Its presence in the most important venue of the Quebec state is a blatant violation of secularism, a glaring symbol of non-secularism! The Charter should stipulate its removal – to a museum for instance. To leave it in place would be totally inconsistent and expose the authors of the Charter to charges of hypocrisy. However, it is important to realize that keeping the crucifix in the National Assembly is not explicitly stipulated in the proposed Charter. In fact, this crucifix is not even mentioned there.

Thirdly, the proposed ban on state employees wearing religious symbols while on duty has been poorly formulated. The plan is to include an official dress code in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, this Charter is a quasi-constitutional document and should stipulate only the principle that public servants must exercise restraint – so that public services remains neutral with respect to religion – and establish a mechanism for the implementation of this principle. The dress code and other aspects of the behaviour of public servants belong to the implementation of this principle and should not be included in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms itself. In that way, the details and timing of the implementation would remain open to democratic debate.

The draft Charter was released barely a week ago and we continue to study it. Other aspects of the project may require critical analysis. Moreover, a completely secular charter would include several provisions not included in the announced project – such as cutting public funding to private religious schools; banning prayer at municipal council meetings; banning prayer rooms in government buildings; ending religious accommodations granted for ritual slaughter of animals; prohibiting mutilation of the human body without valid medical reasons and without the consent of the adult concerned; withdrawal of the Ethics and Religious Culture program from public schools; and removal of tax incentives to religious institutions and members of religious orders. These omissions remain to be addressed.

The organization Atheist Freethinkers commends the government for its courage. We note that the government is not responsible for the inflammatory and demagogic excesses of the exaggerated political opposition that arose against its attempt at secularization, even if such excesses could have easily been predicted. This project is not an exercise in identity politics. The numerous accusations of intolerance, xenophobia and even racism are extremely dishonest and even defamatory. Nevertheless, the government could have prevented the worst and minimized the damage by avoiding any measure which the opposition might use as an excuse. Excluding religious symbols is necessary in order to ensure not only the religious neutrality of the public service but also the perception of neutrality. By the same token, the government must not only avoid identity politics but also the perception of such politics. If the proposed Charter had specified the removal of the crucifix from the National Assembly, if its authors had chosen a title with more universal scope, if the plan for gradual removal of religious symbols had been better presented, then the intellectual vacuity of the opposition would have been obvious and that opposition would have been greatly defused.

Despite our reservations, we support the proposed Charter. It could serve as a model for other Canadian provinces and jurisdictions, each adapting the Charter appropriately and provided of course that the model is improved upon – in particular by avoiding the failings discussed above.

As atheists, we greatly value freedom of religion because atheists and apostates are often among the first victims when that freedom is violated. We know that freedom of religion is incomplete or even hollow if it does not include freedom from religion. Thus secularism is important not only for us as atheists but also for believers: it is essential that public institutions, i.e. state institutions, be independent of any religion and, at the same time, that total freedom to practice the religion of one’s choice, or to practice none, be protected in the private sphere and in the public sphere outside of such institutions.

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Replacing Textbooks with MOOCs

John Hawks read the article that I discussed in an earlier post [On the High Price of Textbooks]. he outlines his solution to the high cost of textbooks [Textbook troubles].

I'm building the groundwork for a project that will do something about this, at least in the area of biological anthropology. I've been following stories like this for years. Developing the MOOC, I have the tremendous opportunity to make connections with people all over the world. Most of the people signed up are nowhere near the traditional U.S. college textbook market (MOOC international enrollment numbers). I face a problem that can't be solved by textbooks today, and limited-use "rental" text that will go away at the end of the course is not a valid solution.

So I'm doing something about it. The idea has many moving parts, but at its base is the need to supply quality educational content cheaply, with a way to get articles freely outside the usual college system. I'm going to be calling for help, so keep watching this space.

This is refreshingly honest. Of the many claims about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), the only one that makes sense to me is to use them as a possible replacement for textbooks. They can be used as a supplemental resources in a student-centered classroom.

MOOCs are good at delivering information—the sort of information you can get from a textbook.

Now I'm waiting to see if anyone creates a MOOC that comes close to the depth and quality of university science textbooks. I imagine that it can be done but it ain't going to be cheap.

John Hawks is an expert on anthropology but I find it difficult to imagine that he's going to be able to create drawings and figures of textbook quality for no cost. I don't see how he's going to ensure high quality editing and reviewing for free. I can't imagine how he's going to mount his course on servers and provide easy access for thousands of students without incurring some costs. He's going to have to pay for permissions to use photos and figures just like the textbooks do. Maybe he'll do all the administrative work himself or maybe somebody will work for him for no salary.

It's possible to overcome all these difficulties and provide free high quality MOOCs that will replace textbooks. So far, nobody has come close in any of the subjects that I'm interested in. Most existing biochemistry MOOCs are horrible.

Holding my breath ....

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On the High Price of Textbooks

Once again we have a relatively uninformed journalist writing about the high cost of college textbooks ['Required reading': As textbook prices soar, students try to cope].

I am a textbook author so I'm not totally impartial. However, it's worth pointing out that I don't defend textbooks because I'm a textbook author. Instead, I became a textbook author because I value textbooks. I still have all my college textbooks and I still refer to them from time-to-time. The oldest ones were purchased 50 years ago.

Let's look at what Martha C. White has to say.

Already grappling with skyrocketing tuition and fees, college students also must contend with triple-digit inflation on the price of textbooks. With the average student shelling out $1,200 a year just on books, students, professors and policy groups are searching for ways to circumvent the high cost of traditional textbooks.

It may be true that the average student has to spend $1200 per year on required textbooks but the NBC News Business website didn't do themselves any favors by showing a photo of 21-year-old Priya Shivraj with a stack of textbooks that she presumably had to buy in a single year. She is supposed to be a combined major in biology, Spanish and pre-med and one would guess from her age that she's in her third or fourth year of university.

Here are some of the books in her stack: Introductory Biology, Introductory Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Introductory Biochemistry, and Immunobiology. Is it possible that a student at NYU would take all those courses in a single year?

But let's not quibble. Many science textbooks cost about $150 and I can easily imagine that a student might have to purchase as many as six of them in a single year.

The College Board found that the average student at a four-year public college spends $1,200 on “books and supplies,” or nearly $1,250 if they go to a private school. On the public policy blog of the American Enterprise Institute, where he is a fellow, University of Michigan-Flint economics professor Mark J. Perry highlighted a chart showing an 812 percent increase in the cost of college textbooks since 1978, a jump even higher than the percentage growth in the cost of health care.

This paragraph says that the "average" includes supplies and it appears to cover four years. What does that mean?

Let's use our critical thinking skills to examine the claim that textbook prices have increased by 812% since 1978. According the the US Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Counter there should be a 358% increase in price due to inflation alone. Thus, the real cost has about doubled in 35 years.

I addressed this issue a few years ago in: PZ Rants About Science Textbooks. Here's an updated version of what I said in 2007 ...

So let's understand and agree that the original price of a textbook is not unreasonable. My biochemistry textbook in 1965 was Conn & Stumpf and it cost $9.95. This works out to $73.79 in 2013 dollars using the handy-dandy inflation calculator on the US Dept. of Labor website. The 1965 textbook was much smaller, covered less material, and had no color figures. Modern biochemistry textbooks cost about $150 and they are very much better than the books published 50 years ago.

So the price of biochemistry textbooks has doubled in constant dollars but there's a huge increase in the amount and quality of the material in modern textbooks.

Martha White continues ....

“Students are, in essence, a captive market,” said Ethan Senack, higher education associate at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “The publishing industry is dominated by five companies that dominate upwards of 85 percent of the market.”

“I think part of it is the consolidation… There’s less competition now,” Perry said.

This sort of complaint comes up quite often. It suggests that publishers are conspiring to keep the cost of textbooks at least twice as high as they were decades ago. It also assumes that publishers are making outrageous profits at the expense of university students. Let's use our critical thinking skills to ask whether large public companies in the publishing industry are making huge profits. Since these are public companies whose stock is trading on the stock market, it should be possible to test this idea. One of the quickest ways is to simply look at the stock prices, they should be going through the roof if the assumption is correct. They aren't. The textbook publishing industry is making a profit but it's not much different than the profits made by most other companies.

There may be lots of things wrong with making students buy textbooks but it's ridiculous to pretend that the major publishing companies are ripping off students. It's also ridiculous to pretend that the retail price paid by students at their bookstore goes directly to the publisher. The wholesale price of a $150 textbook may be only $100. The bookstores have to make money too. You can buy my book for about $110 on Amazon.

See also: Free/Cheap Textbooks for Students.

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Monday's Molecule #215

Last week's molecule was malonate (propanedioic acid). A derivative of malonate called malonyl-CoA is a key intermediate in fatty acid synthesis. Bill Chaney was the first person to identify the molecule and describe its function [Monday's Molecule #214].

Recently I've been having a discussion with the Chair of my department about whether undergraduates in introductory biochemistry courses should memorize structures. He thinks they should. I wondered whether all the professors in my department could draw the structures of some important molecules. Here are a couple of molecules that you might be able to recognize. How many of you can identify them without checking a textbook?

How many of you can identify them even with a textbook? I'll need a fairly exact identification. Be sure to specify "top" and "bottom" molecules.

Email your answers to me at: Monday's Molecule #215. I'll hold off posting your answers for 24 hours. The first one with the correct answer wins. I will only post the names of people with mostly correct answers to avoid embarrassment. The winner will be treated to a free lunch.

There could be two winners. If the first correct answer isn't from an undergraduate student then I'll select a second winner from those undergraduates who post the correct answer. You will need to identify yourself as an undergraduate in order to win. (Put "undergraduate" at the bottom of your email message.)

Move This Book?

I noticed a couple of books in the Science section of my local bookstore. One was by a guy named Meyer (Stephan C. Meyer) and the other was by someone named Myers (PZ Myers). I bought the one by Myers because I already had the other one.

There are some people who get upset by seeing these books in the Science section. Some of these people even like to move them to other sections, such as religion and/or philosophy. I even did it myself on one or two occasions in the past. Lately, however, I've become somewhat less dogmatic about the creationist books. They are, after all, books about science even though they may try to bring religion into science. That does not mean their view are non-scientific. Many of those books are no worse than some of the other "science" books on the shelf that have nothing to do with religion.

What would you do? Here are the choices ...

1. Move the Meyer books to another section.
2. Move the Myers books to another section.
3. Move both books to other sections.
4. Leave both books in the Science section.

I'm especially interested in hearing from Jerry Coyne and his supporters who supported Diana MacPherson's successful attempt to get Amazon to reclassify Darwin's Doubt as a religious book [Reader gets ID book moved from science to religion section].

Amazon puts The Happy Atheist in the "Religion and Spirituality" category. Does it belong in the Science section of local bookstores?

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Creationist Quotes

"Quote mining" can be fun. Here are some actual quotes taken from online forums. They are spoken by atheist actors.


Someone recently asked me why I mock creationists when I should be giving them more respect.

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Sean Carroll: "What Is Science?"

I've been meaning to comment on Sean Carroll's post from last July (July 3, 2013) but there always seems to be something else that commands my attention. The issue is important, in fact I've just finished an entire book on the question (Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem edited by M. Pigliucci and M. Boudry).

Sean Carroll (the physicist)¹ has a view that's quite similar to my own. Read his post at: What Is Science?. Here are some key points.

Better Biochemistry: Teaching ATP Hydrolysis for the MCAT

I'm digesting the idea that many American biochemistry courses teach to the MCAT exam [see Better Biochemistry: Teaching to the MCAT?]. What this means is that the scientists who teach biochemistry are willing to let the curriculum be established by a group of American medical schools (AAMC). That organization has put up a website to guide faculty members and students in preparation for the 2015 MCAT exam [MCAT2015: Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems].

One of the links takes you to a chemwiki at the University of California, Davis: Biological Chemistry. From there you can click on several topics. I picked ATP/ADP to see what kind of information the MCAT thinks is appropriate. The information on the ATP website is provided by Tiffany Lui of the University of California, Davis so it's not something that AAMC created. Nevertheless, it is presumably indicative of the sort of thing that might appear on the MCAT exam.

Humans Are Still Evolving

Sir David Attenborough said something stupid the other day [Sir David Attenborough: Humans have stopped evolving]. (Not for the first time.) He said ...

Because if natural selection, as proposed by Darwin, is the main mechanism of evolution – there may be other things, but it does look as though that’s the case – then we’ve stopped natural selection.

We stopped natural selection as soon as we started being able to rear 95–99 per cent of our babies that are born.

We are the only species to have put a halt to natural selection, of its own free will, as it were.

The headline says that humans have stopped evolving. If that's what he really said then it's easy to prove him wrong by showing that there's a lot more to evolution than natural selection [Have Humans Stopped Evolving?].

But what about his specific claim that natural selection doesn't work on humans any more? I covered that in earlier posts but John Hawks has corrected him today [Humans are still evolving, and soon we'll know a lot more about it]. I love it when I agree with John Hawks! (That's me, visiting him in his lab in Madison, Wisconsin.)

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Better Biochemistry: Teaching to the MCAT?

Theme

Better BiochemistryI view science education as a way of teaching students how to think critically. In that sense, it's not any different than education in the arts and humanities. In my opinion, biochemistry should be taught as a bunch of fundamental concepts and principles that will help students understand the basics of life at the molecular level. The course will demonstrate how to think critically and how we come to know what we know—if we teach it correctly. I believe that biochemistry should be taught from an evolutionary perspective since that's the best way to achieve fundamental understanding.

The last thing we should be doing in an undergraduate biochemistry course is to ask students to memorize enzymes, structures, and pathways and regurgitate them on an exam. We should not just be teaching the biochemistry of humans since that does not provide students with a broad view of life and where humans came from. Such an approach also makes biochemistry seem like it's only important because it can contribute to health. We have plenty of evidence that this is the wrong way to teach.

The Happiest Countries

Why do the people of these countries think they are happy? Why isn't the USA in the top ten? [World’s Happiest Countries In 2013, According To The UN]

I recently visited #1, #2, #5, #7 and #9 and I can confirm that the citizens of those countries do, indeed, think they are happy. I also visited #17 a few months ago and the citizens of that country do not seem happy. It's probably worse today than it was a few months ago.

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Science and Mystery

One of the criticisms of science (narrow definition) is that its reductionist approach is simplistic and materialistic. Here's how Jesus and Mo dealt with that issue last month.

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What Is "Science" According to George Orwell?

I'm about to start teaching my course on "Scientific Misconceptions" and one of the most important issues is defining science and dealing with the demarcation problem. Vincent Joseph Torley is also interested in this question—for a different reason—and he discovered an 1945 essay by George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950)).

It's worth quoting the relevant passages.
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them.

George Orwell

In last week’s Tribune, there was an interesting letter from Mr. J. Stewart Cook, in which he suggested that the best way of avoiding the danger of a “scientific hierarchy” would be to see to it that every member of the general public was, as far as possible, scientifically educated. At the same time, scientists should be brought out of their isolation and encouraged to take a greater part in politics and administration.

As a general statement, I think most of us would agree with this, but I notice that, as usual, Mr. Cook does not define Science, and merely implies in passing that it means certain exact sciences whose experiments can be made under laboratory conditions. Thus, adult education tends “to neglect scientific studies in favour of literary, economic and social subjects”, economics and sociology not being regarded as branches of Science, apparently. This point is of great importance. For the word Science is at present used in at least two meanings, and the whole question of scientific education is obscured by the current tendency to dodge from one meaning to the other.

Science is generally taken as meaning either (a) the exact sciences, such as chemistry, physics, etc., or (b) a method of thought which obtains verifiable results by reasoning logically from observed fact.

If you ask any scientist, or indeed almost any educated person, “What is Science?” you are likely to get an answer approximating to (b). In everyday life, however, both in speaking and in writing, when people say “Science” they mean (a). Science means something that happens in a laboratory: the very word calls up a picture of graphs, test-tubes, balances, Bunsen burners, microscopes. A biologist, and astronomer, perhaps a psychologist or a mathematician is described as a “man of Science”: no one would think of applying this term to a statesman, a poet, a journalist or even a philosopher. And those who tell us that the young must be scientifically educated mean, almost invariably, that they should be taught more about radioactivity, or the stars, or the physiology or their own bodies, rather than that they should be taught to think more exactly.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

George OrwellI agree with Orwell when he prefers the broad definition of science. I see it as a way of knowing that can be applied to any discipline. I think that everyone should become more scientifically literate but by that I don't mean they should lean more about metabolic pathways or quantum chromodynamics. I mean that they should become more familiar with the scientific approach to acquiring knowledge. That's the fundamental skill that we need to learn.

Clearly, scientific education ought to mean the implanting of a rational, sceptical, experimental habit of mind. It ought to mean acquiring a method – a method that can be used on any problem that one meets – and not simply piling up a lot of facts. Put it in those words, and the apologist of scientific education will usually agree. Press him further, ask him to particularise, and somehow it always turns out that scientific education means more attention to the sciences, in other words – more facts. The idea that Science means a way of looking at the world, and not simply a body of knowledge, is in practice strongly resisted. I think sheer professional jealousy is part of the reason for this. For if Science is simply a method or an attitude, so that anyone whose thought-processes are sufficiently rational can in some sense be described as a scientist – what then becomes of the enormous prestige now enjoyed by the chemist, the physicist, etc. and his claim to be somehow wiser than the rest of us?

A hundred years ago, Charles Kingsley described Science as “making nasty smells in a laboratory”. A year or two ago a young industrial chemist informed me, smugly, that he “could not see what was the use of poetry”. So the pendulum swings to and fro, but it does not seem to me that one attitude is any better than the other. At the moment, Science is on the upgrade, and so we hear, quite rightly, the claim that the masses should be scientifically educated: we do not hear, as we ought, the counter-claim that the scientists themselves would benefit by a little education. Just before writing this, I saw in an American magazine the statement that a number of British and American physicists refused from the start to do research on the atomic bomb, well knowing what use would be made of it. Here you have a group of sane men in the middle of a world of lunatics. And though no names were published, I think it would be a safe guess that all of them were people with some kind of general cultural background, some acquaintance with history or literature or the arts – in short, people whose interests were not, in the current sense of the word, purely scientific.

Where did the George Orwells of this world go? Why don't we have more people like him today? Have they just been drowned out by idiots with access to a microphone?

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Irony Upon Irony

For those (few) of you who are interested in the pathology of IDiots, you have to read Irony of the Day. It's posted on Uncommon Descent and the author is Barry Arrington.

This is a satirical summary of his point.

Many skeptics say that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is imaginary. However, it's impossible to prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist. Even Richard Dawkins says that you can't prove a negative.

Therefore, when you say that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is imaginary, you aren't being a true skeptic. Instead, you are expressing "uncritical arrogant dogmatism that would make the most committed fundamentalist blush. And that, my friends, is the irony of the day."

You can't make this stuff up.

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Reviews of Darwin's Doubt: Keeping Score

Several scientists have reviewed Stephen Meyer's latest attack on science [see Slaying Meyer’s Hopeless Monster]. Don't think the IDiots haven't noticed ... they've responded to several specific criticisms (and ignored others).

I know it's hard to keep score so David Klinghoffer has done it for us in: More Evidence of Darwinian Short-Term Memory Loss.

As far as I'm aware, no reviewer has yet genuinely laid a hand on "Darwin's Doubt," not for lack of trying. Well, there's always tomorrow.

The IDiots are learning to master the basic skills of propaganda and they're doing a pretty good job. For example, here's a video promotion of Darwin's Doubt. See if you can recognize the lies, the tricks and the deceptions.

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Monday's Molecule #214

Last week's molecule was 6-phosphogluconate, the second intermediate in the pentose phosphate pathway. Nobody got the right answer! [Monday's Molecule #213].

Classes have now started at most universities in North America so let's celebrate by picking a very simple molecule—one that most undergraduates should recognize if they've taken a biochemistry course. Derivatives of this molecule are essential components of several fundamental pathways; which ones? Give me the common name and the official IUPAC name.

Email your answers to me at: Monday's Molecule #214. I'll hold off posting your answers for 24 hours. The first one with the correct answer wins. I will only post the names of people with mostly correct answers to avoid embarrassment. The winner will be treated to a free lunch.

There could be two winners. If the first correct answer isn't from an undergraduate student then I'll select a second winner from those undergraduates who post the correct answer. You will need to identify yourself as an undergraduate in order to win. (Put "undergraduate" at the bottom of your email message.)

Darwin's Doubt: The Genes Tell the Story?

The main goal of Intelligent Design Creationism is to cast doubt on modern science, especially evolutionary biology. Most of the IDiot books are devoted to attacks on evolution. The underlying assumption is that if modern science is discredited then "god-did-it" becomes a viable alternative.

The latest book by Stephen Myer is no exception. The theme is that evolutionary biologists cannot explain the Cambrian Explosion; therefore, God must have created all the animals in the space of a few million years back in the Cambrian Era (about 530 million years ago).

Most of the book is about the lack of transitional fossils that document the slow transition from primitive worm-like creatures to modern phyla such as arthropods and chordates. Others have dealt with this and I'm not going to comment because it's outside of my area of expertise.¹

There is strong evidence from molecular evolution that the major animal phyla share common ancestors and that these common ancestors predate the Cambrian by millions of years. In other words, there's a "long fuse" of evolution leading up to the Cambrian Explosion. Meyer refers to this as the "deep-divergence" assumption.

There are many versions of these trees. The one shown here is from Erwin et al. (2011). It's the one shown in the book The Cambrain Explosion by Douglas Erwin and James Valentine. It isn't necessarily correct in all details but that's not the point.

The point is that molecular phylogenies demonstrate conclusively that the major groups of animals share common ancestors AND that the overall pattern does not conform to a massive radiation around 530 million years ago. Also, it's very clear that the pattern is consistent with evolution and not with God creating all the animals at once.

Stephen Meyer has to address this evidence because it casts doubt on his main theme (God did it). I suppose I don't need to tell you what he says ... it's typical creationist denial. He claims that the evidence doesn't exist. Here are his reasons ...

1. There are no fossils to support the earliest branches in the molecular phylogenies.
2. There are many different molecular trees and they don't all agree with each other in terms of branching order and timing.
3. Evolutionary biologists cherry-pick the data by only picking molecules that give reasonable trees.
4. The trees rely on questionable assumptions; namely, that the molecular clock ticks at a constant rate and that there is a universal tree.
5. The molecules being compared must be homologous but this is what is being tested so the argument is circular.

The conclusion is ....

Comparative genetic analyses do not establish a single deep-divergence point, and thus do not compensate for the lack of fossil evidence for key Cambrian ancestors—such as the ur-bilateran or the ur-metazoan ancestor. The results of different studies diverge too dramatically to be conclusive, or even meaningful; the methods of inferring divergence points are fraught with subjectivity; and the whole enterprise depends on a question-begging logic. Many leading Cambrian paleontologists, and even some leading evolutionary biologists, now express skepticism about both the results and the significance of deep-divergence studies.

I'm hoping to find time to go over each of Meyer's objections since they reveal a lot about IDiot misconceptions of evolution (and science) and a lot about how they employ strawmen, lies, quote-mining, and distortions in order to discredit an entire field (molecular evolution).²

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1. Most IDiots are experts in everything. I'm not as smart as they are.

2. It always amazes me to discover that IDiots like Stephen Meyer think they know more than thousands of expert biologists who do this sort of stuff for a living.

Erwin, D.H., Laflamme, M., Tweedt, S.M., Sperling, E.A., Pisani, D. and Peterson, K.J. (2011) The Cambrian conundrum: early divergence and later ecological success in the early history of animals. Science 334:1091-1097. [doi: 10.1126/science.1206375]

Goodbye Women's College Hospital

My son was born in this building 35 years ago. It will look very different when the destruction/construction is complete (Women's College Hospital).

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Majority Of Americans Approve Of Sending Congress To Syria

From the Onion: Poll: Majority Of Americans Approve Of Sending Congress To Syria

WASHINGTON—As President Obama continues to push for a plan of limited military intervention in Syria, a new poll of Americans has found that though the nation remains wary over the prospect of becoming involved in another Middle Eastern war, the vast majority of U.S. citizens strongly approve of sending Congress to Syria.

The New York Times/CBS News poll showed that though just 1 in 4 Americans believe that the United States has a responsibility to intervene in the Syrian conflict, more than 90 percent of the public is convinced that putting all 535 representatives of the United States Congress on the ground in Syria—including Senate pro tempore Patrick Leahy, House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and, in fact, all current members of the House and Senate—is the best course of action at this time.

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Citing overwhelming support from the international community—including that of the Arab League, Turkey, and France, as well as Great Britain, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Japan, Mexico, China, and Canada, all of whom are reported to be unilaterally in favor of sending the U.S. Congress to Syria—the majority of survey respondents said they believe the United States should refocus its entire approach to Syria’s civil war on the ground deployment of U.S. senators and representatives, regardless of whether the Assad regime used chemical weapons or not.

Sounds like a good idea but shouldn't Barack Obama and John Kerry go with them?

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The Importance of Sequence Alignments

There are several required steps in constructing phylogenetic trees from sequence data. The first step is to align the sequences so you can make direct comparisons. It used to be the case that multiple sequence alignments had to be checked manually because none of the available computer programs were as good as an experienced scientist. That hasn't changed. What's changed is that the data sets have become so large and complicated that nobody wants to even look at the sequence alignments to see if they can be improved.

Drew et al. (2013) suggest that sequence alignments should be made available.

Until recently, uploading sequences to GenBank (or EMBL) was generally considered sufficient to ensure reproducibility of phylogenetic studies using DNA sequence data. Increasingly, however, the systematics community is realizing that archiving raw DNA sequences is not adequate, and that the underlying alignments of DNA sequences as well as the resulting phylogenetic trees are pivotal for reproducibility, comparative purposes, meta-analyses, and ultimately synthesis. Indeed, there has been a growing clamor for journals to adopt and enforce more rigorous data archiving practices across diverse disciplines [4]–[8]. As a result, about 35 evolutionary journals [5],[9] have adopted policies to encourage or require authors to upload alignments, phylogenetic trees, and other files requisite for study reproducibility [5] to TreeBASE (http://treebase.org/) and/or other public repositories such as Dryad (http://datadryad.org). Unfortunately, enforcement of such data deposition policies is generally lax, and most journals in systematics and evolution still do not require DNA sequence alignment or tree deposition. As a result, the alignments and trees underlying most published papers in systematics/phylogenetics and evolutionary biology remain inaccessible to the scientific community at large [8],[10].

I sympathize with the goal but I doubt that it can be achieved. I strongly suspect that many scientists don't even bother to produce sequence alignments. They just feed the electronic data directly into their tree-making algorithm.

I wonder how many anomalies could be resolved if they just looked at the alignments? Would they even know if bad sequence data was being used for one or two species in their alignment?

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Drew, B.T., Gazis, R., Cabezas, P., Swithers, K.S., Deng, J., Rodriguez, R., Katz, L.A., Crandall, K.A., Hibbett, D.S., and Soltis, D.E. (2013) Lost Branches on the Tree of Life. PLoS Biol 11(9): e1001636. [doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001636]

Darwin's Doubt: A Synopsis

David Klinghoffer wonders why I'm not criticizing Stephen Myer's new book Darwin's Doubt [see On Darwin's Doubt, Still Waiting to Hear from Big Shots in the Darwin Brigade].

Where is Jerry Coyne in this debate? Where is Dawkins? Even PZ Myers? Or Lawrence Moran, who promised "I'm planning to read [Darwin's Doubt] as soon as I can get a hold of a copy -- probably sometime in August in Canada." (I'm still puzzled by that one. The book was published in June in Canada as well.) It would seem noble for the generals to go into battle alongside the ordinary foot soldiers, putting themselves at risk as well, instead of hanging back at a safe distance.

I preordered the book three months ago and received my copy from Amazon.ca on August 1st. I've been busy with other things for most of the month so I've only turned my attention to the book in the past few days.

David Klinghoffer probably thinks that reviewing another creationist book is my highest priority. That's not the case. In fact, I never promised to review it and after reading it, I never will. There are plenty of others who know more about the subject and some of them are taking the book apart, chapter by chapter [Slaying Meyer’s Hopeless Monster]. If you want details, you can do no better than Darwin’s Doubt – A Review on Skeptic Ink.

For those of you who want a brief summary, I can do no better that point you to the tree of eukaryotes on the left (Keeling et al., 2005). It summarizes tons of molecular data showing the relationships of various eukaryotes. The tree is based on solid molecular evidence that Darwin never knew existed and that evidence is direct conformation of evolution, properly defined. It represents the fixation of nearly neutral alleles by random genetic drift. Of course, you have to read very carefully to find any mention of modern evolutionary theory in Meyer's book—he prefers to focus his attack on mutation + natural selection.

I've drawn a little red circle around the part of this tree that Stephen Meyer discusses in Darwin's Doubt. It's the evolution of animals and, in particular the early fossil evidence of multicellular animals. Most of these appear rather suddenly in the fossil record during the Cambrian (about 530 million years ago). Scientists have long been puzzled about this rapid evolution of complex animals and there are many hypotheses that attempt to account for it. In fact, there's a recent book by Douglas Erwin and James Valentine that summarizes the science behind The Cambrian Explosion. It all seems quite reasonable to me.¹ I don't know exactly why complex animals evolved so rapidly but I don't see any reason to doubt the facts of evolution and I don't see any reason to propose that God must have been responsible for this little bit of the tree of life.

Myer does and that's what his book is all about.

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1. I don't agree with everything in that book.

Keeling, P.J., Burger, G., Durnford, D.G., Lang, B.F., Lee, R.W., Pearlman, R.E., Roger, A.J. & Gray, M.W. (2005) The tree of eukaryotes. Trends in ecology & evolution 20:670-676. [doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2005.09.005]

The Purpose of the United Nations

After two devastating world wars, the nations of the world got together in San Francisco in 1945 to form the United Nations. The goal was to prevent further wars by pledging to resolve conflicts peaceably or, if that were not possible, to act collectively to reign in rogue nations. The fundamental idea was that no one nation could decide on its own to act as judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to making war. This applies especially to powerful nations whose self righteous attitudes often led them to believe that they could ignore the views of other nations.

The goals of the United Nations have not always been achieved. We have plenty of examples of nations acting unilaterally by going to war and many examples of groups of nations that ignored the United Nations. In spite of these examples, most nations still profess allegiance to the principles that led to the founding of the United nations.

Here's Chapter 1 of the Charter of the United Nations.

Article 1

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

Article 2

The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
5. All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
6. The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.

Today we are dealing with the possibility that the most powerful nation in the world will attack a much weaker nation in spite of the opposition of many other nations, especially important permanent members of the Security Council. No peaceful resolutions are being explored and very few politicians in that powerful nation are expressing concern that they are ignoring the United Nations. All the rhetoric from that nation seems to be based on the idea that their leaders are judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to policing weaker, more vulnerable, nations. Most of those politicians do not see a problem with bombing another nation in order to punish it for a wrongdoing. Violence and war are viable options and, in this case, the first choice.

To those of us who live in other countries, that is not the kind of behavior one would like to see in the most powerful nation in the world.

I think it's about time that the United States of American quit the United Nations since it clearly has no intention of living up to its commitment to peaceful resolution of conflicts and collective action in cooperation with other nations.

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Carnival of Evolution #63

The latest issue of Carnival of Evolution is hosted by Adam Benton, an undergraduate at the University of Liverpool. He's studying evolutionary anthropology. Adam blogs at Evoanth. Read: Carnival of Evolution: Eclectic September edition.

Step right up ladies and gentlemen, here for one month only under the big top is the one, the only, the carnival of evolution. For your delectable delight we have a range of articles, covering everything from bacterial evolution to Neanderthal hearing to T. rex‘s eating habits.

As someone who spends a lot of time focusing on human evolution it can be rather easy to get tunnel vision and miss all of this excellent writing on non-evoanth subjects. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being given a taste of the world outside my field. I only wish there were some way to get people to send me these stories every month.

But before I start trying to contract out my science reading, I better get round to the reason we’re all here. So without much further ado: Welcome to the September edition of the Carnival of Evolution!

This month's edition highlights the people who SUBMITTED articles as opposed to those who wrote them. This is a reminder that anyone can submit at article—it's not just authors who submit their own works.

If you want to host a Carnival of Evolution please contact Bjørn Østman. Bjørn is always looking for someone to host the Carnival of Evolution. He would prefer someone who has not hosted before but repeat hosts are more than welcome right now! Bjørn is threatening to name YOU as host even if you don't volunteer! Contact him at the Carnival of Evolution blog. You can send articles directly to him or you can submit your articles at Carnival of Evolution although you now have to register to post a submission. Please alert Bjørn or the upcoming host if you see an article that should be included in next month's. You don't have to be the author to nominate a post.

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Join the University of Toronto Secular Alliance (UTSA)

This is Orientation Week at the University of Toronto. There are 10,000 beginning first year students who are just leaning what they got themselves into. Classes start next week.

Today is "Clubs Day." It's the day when all the clubs set up booths around Hart House Circle and the students come to sign up for various activities. That's Cameron Proctor, the Vice President of the University of Toronto Secular Alliance [Facebook] at his booth. I saw his list—there were about 50 people signed up. I had to clear away a huge crowd in order to get the picture.

I didn't count the number of religious clubs but there must have been at least a dozen. Each one had five or six people soliciting new members and each one had more inquisitive students at the tables than UTSA. I don't get it. I figure that half the students are nonblievers but I guess they aren't interested in a club for nonbelievers.

UTSA has a number of programs planned for this Fall and the members meet every second Thursday starting Sept. 28. Maybe I'll see you there?

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Monday's Molecule #213

Last week's molecule was 6-phosphogluconolactone, the first intermediate in the pentose phosphate pathway. The winner was Brian Shewchuck [Monday's Molecule #212].

Today (Wednesday, but who's counting?) we're going to continue with basic metabolism in honor of all students who are just being introduced to the wonders of introductory biochemistry. Give the common name and identify the pathway. Explain briefly why this pathway is important.

Email your answers to me at: Monday's Molecule #213. I'll hold off posting your answers for 24 hours. The first one with the correct answer wins. I will only post the names of people with mostly correct answers to avoid embarrassment. The winner will be treated to a free lunch.

There could be two winners. If the first correct answer isn't from an undergraduate student then I'll select a second winner from those undergraduates who post the correct answer. You will need to identify yourself as an undergraduate in order to win. (Put "undergraduate" at the bottom of your email message.)

James Hood (1776-1859)

We were at a wedding in Orillia (Ontario) on the weekend with my son and his wife. On the way home we took the long route and stopped at the Creemore Union Cemetery in Creemore, Ontario. The town is known mainly for its beer (Creemore Springs Brewery) but we were looking for ancestors.

James Hood was born on April 6, 1775 in Kelso, Scotland but his family moved to the Glascow area a few years later. His father was a Calton weaver and so was James. The recession following the end of the Napoleonic Wars meant that the weavers could no longer make a decent living and the British government encouraged them to emigrate to Canada by offering free passage and free land.

James and his family arrived in Canada on the "Prompt" in 1820. They settled originally in the area around Perth, Ontario. My wife, Leslie (neé Rodger) descends from James' son William whose family remained in Perth. James Hood and many of his other children moved to the Creemore area in 1830 and that's where he died on July 30, 1859.

James Hood is my wife's great, great, great, great, grandfather (and the great⁵ grandfather of Gordon and Jane). He is also the great, great, great grandfather of Mitt Romney [see A Mormon Tale].

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Richard Lenski's Classic Papers: Luria and Delbrück, 1943

Richard Lenski has joined a number of other biologists and blogged about classic "must-read" papers. His first example is Luria and Delbrück (1943)—the Fluctuation Test. It's an excellent description and there's a personal touch.

John Dennehy [The Fluctuation Test and Jonathan Eisen [Luria and Delbrück] also picked the same paper. That means it must really be a "must-read"! (I agree.)

Given that the early history of molecular biology is no longer being taught, I imagine that there are quite a few of you who have never heard of Max Delbrück (1906-1981) or Salvador Luria (1912-1991) in spite of the fact they are Nobel prize winners. Here's some of my posts on them ....

The Velvet Underground of Molecular Biology
Nobel Laureates Max Delbrück, Alfred D. Hershey, Salvador E. Luria

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Core Misconcept: Epigenetics

Sarah C.P. Williams is a science writer. She published an article in PNAS last February: Epigenetics. Here's the opening paragraphs ...

Despite the fact that every cell in a human body contains the same genetic material, not every cell looks or behaves the same. Long nerve cells stretch out the entire length of an arm or a leg; cells in the retina of the eye can sense light; immune cells patrol the body for invaders to destroy. How does each cell retain its unique properties when, in its DNA-containing nucleus, it has the same master set of genes as every other cell? The answer is in the epigenetic regulation of the genes: the control system that dictates which of many genes a cell uses and which it ignores. The same mechanism could also explain why identical twins—who have identical genes—can develop different diseases, traits, or personalities.

Epigenetic regulation consists of chemical flags, or markers, on genes that are copied along with the genes when the DNA is replicated. Without altering the sequence of DNA’s molecular building blocks, epigenetic changes can alter the way a cell interacts with DNA. These changes can block a cell’s access to a gene, turning it off for good.

Statements like that make me cringe. Not only is she ignoring decades of work on the real explanation of differential gene expression, she is also proposing an explanation that can't possibly live up to the claim she is making.

PNAS should be embarrassed.

Fortunately, I'm not the only one who was upset. Mark Ptashne had the same reaction as several hundred other scientists but he took the time to write up his objections and get them published in the April issue of PNAS [Epigenetics: Core Misconcept]. I'll quote his opening paragraph and then let you follow the link and get educated about real science.

Indeed understanding this problem has been an overarching goal of research in molecular, developmental, and, increasingly, evolutionary biology. And over the past 50 years a compelling answer has emerged from studies in a wide array of organisms. Curiously, the article ignores this body of knowledge, and substitutes for it misguided musings presented as facts.

There was a time when every molecular biology student knew how gene expression was controlled. They knew about the pioneering work in bacteria and 'phage and the exquisite details that were worked out in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. That information has been lost in recent generations. Our current crop of graduate students couldn't tell you how gene expression is controlled in bacteriophage λ.

If you are one of those students then I urge you to read Ptashne's book A Genetic Switch before it goes out of print. If the current trends continue, that information is soon going to pass out of the collective memory of molecular biologists just as it has been forgotten (or never learned) by science writers.

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What Happens When a Creationist Argument Is Refuted?

A few days ago, Jonathan McLatchie published an article on evolution News & Views (sic) where he claimed that humans embryos synthesize the enzyme that makes vitamin C [A Simple Proposed Model For Function of the Human Vitamin C GULO Pseudogene]. This is important for creationists because the gene for that enzyme is a classic pseudogene—a formerly active gene that has lost it's function.

Intelligent Design Creationists don't like pseudogenes because they are junk and their intelligent designer would not fill up the human genome with junk. Hence, pseudogenes must have some function that has yet to be discovered.

An Example of a Very Bad Press Release

Cornelius Hunter is gloating over another study that disputes the notion of junk DNA [More Functions For “Junk” DNA, and More Functions For “Junk” DNA]. His article sounded interesting so I followed the link to the press release.

There was something about the press release that sounded suspicious and that prompted me to seek out the original published paper. Here it is with the abstract ...

Wong, J.J.-L., Ritchie, W., Ebner, O.A., Selbach, M., Wong, J.W., Huang, Y., Gao, D., Pinello, N., Gonzalez, M. and Baidya, K. (2013) Orchestrated Intron Retention Regulates Normal Granulocyte Differentiation. Cell 154:583-595. [PDF] [doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.06.052]

Intron retention (IR) is widely recognized as a consequence of mis-splicing that leads to failed excision of intronic sequences from pre-messenger RNAs. Our bioinformatic analyses of transcriptomic and proteomic data of normal white blood cell differentiation reveal IR as a physiological mechanism of gene expression control. IR regulates the expression of 86 functionally related genes, including those that determine the nuclear shape that is unique to granulocytes. Retention of introns in specific genes is associated with downregulation of splicing factors and higher GC content. IR, conserved between human and mouse, led to reduced mRNA and protein levels by triggering the nonsense-mediated decay (NMD) pathway. In contrast to the prevalent view that NMD is limited to mRNAs encoding aberrant proteins, our data establish that IR coupled with NMD is a conserved mechanism in normal granulopoiesis. Physiological IR may provide an energetically favorable level of dynamic gene expression control prior to sustained gene translation.

The authors found 86 genes expressed in mouse granulocytes where there were at least some transcripts that retained an intron. This could be due to mistakes in splicing but the authors prefer to think that intron retention is part of a regulatory step. The transcripts that retain an intron are degraded and this reduces the level of protein that would have been made if a properly spliced transcript had produced a functional mRNA.

It's an example of down-regulation, according to the authors. In most cases the intron-retaining transcripts make up only a few percent of the total transcripts but this is presumably enough to make a difference. In 25 of the genes, the aberrant transcripts are more that 25% of the total cytoplasmic transcripts.

There's nothing in the paper that mentions junk DNA.

Contrast this with the press release from Centenary Institute, Sydney Australia. I reproduce it below ...

How 'Junk DNA' Can Control Cell Development

Aug. 2, 2013 — Researchers from the Gene and Stem Cell Therapy Program at Sydney's Centenary Institute have confirmed that, far from being "junk," the 97 per cent of human DNA that does not encode instructions for making proteins can play a significant role in controlling cell development.

And in doing so, the researchers have unravelled a previously unknown mechanism for regulating the activity of genes, increasing our understanding of the way cells develop and opening the way to new possibilities for therapy.

Using the latest gene sequencing techniques and sophisticated computer analysis, a research group led by Professor John Rasko AO and including Centenary's Head of Bioinformatics, Dr William Ritchie, has shown how particular white blood cells use non-coding DNA to regulate the activity of a group of genes that determines their shape and function. The work is published today in the scientific journal Cell.

"This discovery, involving what was previously referred to as "junk," opens up a new level of gene expression control that could also play a role in the development of many other tissue types," Rasko says. "Our observations were quite surprising and they open entirely new avenues for potential treatments in diverse diseases including cancers and leukemias."

The researchers reached their conclusions through studying introns -- non-coding sequences which are located inside genes.

As part of the normal process of generating proteins from DNA, the code for constructing a particular protein is printed off as a strip of genetic material known as messenger RNA (mRNA). It is this strip of mRNA which carries the instructions for making the protein from the gene in the nucleus to the protein factories or ribosomes in the body of the cell.

But these mRNA strips need to be processed before they can be used as protein blueprints. Typically, any non-coding introns must be cut out to produce the final sequence for a functional protein. Many of the introns also include a short sequence -- known as the stop codon -- which, if left in, stops protein construction altogether. Retention of the intron can also stimulate a cellular mechanism which breaks up the mRNA containing it.

Dr Ritchie was able to develop a computer program to sort out mRNA strips retaining introns from those which did not. Using this technique the lead molecular biologist of the team, Dr Justin Wong, found that mRNA strips from many dozens of genes involved in white blood cell function were prone to intron retention and consequent break down. This was related to the levels of the enzymes needed to chop out the intron. Unless the intron is excised, functional protein products are never produced from these genes. Dr Jeff Holst in the team went a step further to show how this mechanism works in living bone marrow.

So the researchers propose intron retention as an efficient means of controlling the activity of many genes. "In fact, it takes less energy to break up strips of mRNA, than to control gene activity in other ways," says Rasko. "This may well be a previously-overlooked general mechanism for gene regulation with implications for disease causation and possible therapies in the future."

The published paper has nothing to do with junk DNA. Even if intron retention were a common mechanism of gene regulation (it is not), that would only account for about 100 base pairs per gene of additional sequence-dependant information. That's less than 0.1% of the genome.

This is a bad press release because it highlights information that is not in the published paper. The authors bear responsibility for press releases from their own institute that distort their published work. While they may not have written the press release, they presumably are quoted correctly and they should be aware of what's in the press release.

I wonder if they are willing to defend this press release as an accurate representation of their published work?

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John Mattick vs. Jonathan Wells

John Mattick and Jonathan Wells both believe that most of the DNA in our genome is functional. They do not believe that most of it is junk.

John Mattick and Jonathan Wells use the same arguments in defense of their position and they quote one another. Both of them misrepresent the history of the junk DNA debate and both of them use an incorrect version of the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology to make a case for the stupidity of scientists. Neither of them understand the basic biochemistry of DNA binding proteins leading them to misinterpret low level transcription as functional. Jonathan Wells and John Mattick ignore much of the scientific evidence in favor of junk DNA. They don't understand the significance of the so-called "C-Value Paradox" and they don't understand genetic load. Both of them claim that junk DNA is based on ignorance.

Reading the Entrails of Chickens

Dan Graur has a recent post on the phylogeny of placental mammals [The Root of the Placental Phylogenetic Tree: Are we Overlooking Something?]. He refers to a recent review in Molecular Biology and Evolution (MBE) that discusses various options. Graur believes that the question has been settled by examining transposon insertions.

But that's not the part that caught my attention. At the end of his post he says,

Finally, there is a small sentence in the Teeling and Hedges commentary that drove me up the wall: “The timing of the splitting event—approximately 100 Ma based on molecular clocks—is not in debate, at least among molecular evolutionists (Hedges et al. 1996…” Actually, dear Blair, it is. And whether you like it or not, both William Martin and I are fine molecular evolutionists.

The reference is to a paper by Dan Graur and Bill Martin—a formidable team that you want on your side because the alternative can be very embarrassing. You really, really don't want to mess with these guys.

We need more papers like this one.

Graur, D. & Martin, W. (2004) Reading the entrails of chickens: molecular timescales of evolution and the illusion of precision. TRENDS in Genetics 20:80-86 [doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2003.12.003] [PDF]

How IDiots Would Activate the GULOP Pseudogene

The enzyme L-glucono-γ-lactone oxidase is required for the synthesis of vitamin C. Humans cannot make this enzyme because the gene for this enzyme is defective [see Human GULOP Pseudogene]. The GenBank entry for this pseudogene is GeneID=2989. GULOP is located on chromosome 8 at p21.1 in a region that is rich in genes.

Here's a diagram that compares what is left of the human GULOP pseudogene with the functional gene in the rat genome.

Best Beatles' Songs

Jerry Coyne thinks that the Beatles are the greatest rock group ever [Match this song!]. I'm pleased to announce that I agree with him on this point.

Jerry thinks that A Day in the Life is the best Beatles' song and that's where we part company. His second choice is Eleanor Rigby [Eleanor Rigby] and that's also one of my top ten.

We'll see what his other favorites are over the next few days. If he doesn't mention the very best song (IMHO) I'll correct him when he's finished.

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Some Questions for IDiots

Here's a short quiz for proponents of Intelligent Design Creationism. Let's see if you have been paying attention to real science. Please try to answer the questions below. Supporters of evolution should refrain from answering for a few days in order to give the creationists a chance to demonstrate their knowledge of biology and of evolution.

The bloggers at Evolution News & Views (sic) are promoting another creationist book [see Biological Information]. This time it's a collection of papers from a gathering of creationists held in 2011. The title of the book, Biological Information: New Perspectives suggests that these creationists have learned something new about biochemistry and molecular biology.

One of the papers is by Jonathan Wells: Not Junk After All: Non-Protein-Coding DNA Carries Extensive Biological Information. Here's part of the opening paragraphs.

James Watson and Francis Crick’s 1953 discovery that DNA consists of two complementary strands suggested a possible copying mechanism for Mendel’s genes [1,2]. In 1958, Crick argued that “the main function of the genetic material” is to control the synthesis of proteins. According to the “ Sequence Hypothesis,” Crick wrote that the specificity of a segment of DNA “is expressed solely by the sequence of bases,” and “this sequence is a (simple) code for the amino acid sequence of a particular protein.” Crick further proposed that DNA controls protein synthesis through the intermediary of RNA, arguing that “the transfer of information from nucleic acid to nucleic acid, or from nucleic acid to protein may be possible, but transfer from protein to protein, or from protein to nucleic acid, is impossible.” Under some circumstances RNA might transfer sequence information to DNA, but the order of causation is normally “DNA makes RNA makes protein.” Crick called this the “ Central Dogma” of molecular biology [3], and it is sometimes stated more generally as “DNA makes RNA makes protein makes us.”

The Sequence Hypothesis and the Central Dogma imply that only protein-coding DNA matters to the organism. Yet by 1970 biologists already knew that much of our DNA does not code for proteins. In fact, less than 2% of human DNA is protein-coding. Although some people suggested that non-protein-coding DNA might help to regulate gene expression, the dominant view was that non-protein-coding regions had no function. In 1972, biologist Susumu Ohno published an article wondering why there is “so much ‘ junk’ DNA in our genome” [4].

1. Crick published a Nature paper on The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology in 1970. Did he and most other molecular biologists actually believe that "only protein-coding DNA matters to the organism?"
2. Did Crick really say that "DNA makes RNA makes protein" is the Central Dogma or did he say that this was the Sequence Hypothesis? Read the paper to get the answer—the link is below).
3. Is it true that, in 1970, the majority of molecular biologists did not believe in repressor and activator binding sites (regulatory DNA)?
4. Is it true that in 1970 molecular biologists knew nothing about the functional importance of non-transcribed DNA sequences such as centromeres and origins of DNA replication?
5. It is true that most molecular biologists in 1970 had never heard of genes for ribosomal RNAs and tRNAs (non-protein-coding genes)?
6. If the answer to any of those questions contradicts what Jonathan Wells is saying then why do you suppose he said it?

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Crick, F. (1970) Central Dogma of Molecular Biology. Nature 227:561-563. [PDF]