Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab

[Darth Marley]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html


In the meantime, the experiment stands as proof that evolution does not always lead to the best possible outcome. Instead, a chance event can sometimes open evolutionary doors for one population that remain forever closed to other populations with different histories.

Lenski's experiment is also yet another poke in the eye for anti-evolutionists, notes Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. "The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events," he says. "That's just what creationists say can't happen."

[necron2.0]

God, that's hysterical. A man wastes twenty years of his life, playing god over pitre dishes full of bacteria - poking them, prodding them, cultivating and limiting their environment, nurturing them to grow just as he wants them to - and he calls it proof of evolution. It's good to see that the legacy of the Piltdown Man lives on.

I'd be more impressed if he took those petri dishes, put them in an oven at 300 degrees for ten years, and came out with fire-proof E. Coli. That'd better fit the historical reality.

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[Darth Marley]

There is nothing even remotely similar to a Piltdown Man fraud involved here.

[jewels]

The dude worked with E. Coli, thousands of generations of it, to get it to be able to digest citrates. OK

[sarcasm]Did anyone in that 20 years question him working with such a nasty bateria? Who in their right mind wants E. coli to evolve? All we needed in this world was a newly enabled E. coli bacterium when in recent years we are already struggling with it in our veggies and salmonela in our tomatoes. Brilliant, evolving out one of the main markers that the bacteria is E. coli.[sarcasm off]

[Darth Marley]

The point is that complex random mutations happen.

The researcher didn't "work with" the bacteria as a coach, he just was involve in a genetics project much like genetics work with multiple generations of fruit flies.


There are many different strains of e. coli. Beneficial strains exist in the intestinal tract.

[Senmut]

There is nothing even remotely similar to a Piltdown Man fraud involved here.

I think it was something along the lines of sarcasm.
Possibly hyperbole.

[necron2.0]

I think it was something along the lines of sarcasm.
Possibly hyperbole.

Actually, the point is how easily the scientific community is fooled. Piltdown man is just one example. To be sure, it was a deliberate hoax, but that does nothing to hide the fact that just about every reputable scientist of the day believed it, even though the hoaxer left ever more obvious clues that all the evidence was fabricated. One of the last "artifacts" he produces was interpretted by the scientists of the day to be a crude prehistoric club. What it actually was, was a weathered cricket bat.

Not too long ago there was a story on NPR about how rampant the falsification of findings are in the scientific community. Apparently, researchers quite often will "fudge" their figures to match the hypothesis going in, sometimes without even being consciously aware of it. Partly this is due to the inherent arrogance of the field. A researcher will conduct an experiment, and come up with findings that differ from the accepted status quo. Depending on how entrenched the theory under test is, a researcher may not be willing to put his reputation, his career and his funding at risk to present contrary evidence, and so will alter his findings to match what is "known."

A well documented example of this was the study of cranial capacity in the 19th century. Scientists conducted experiments to determine if race had any bearing on cranial capacity. Their research said it did. According to the results, if I remember correctly, Native Americans had the smallest cranial capacity, followed by blacks, then asians and then whites. This was accepted as irrefutable scientific fact long into the 20th century.

Another example came in the 1970's. Anthropologists were coaxed into believing they'd found a long lost prehistoric tribe of cave dwellers (called the Tasaday), living in the Philippines. This belief persisted up through the 80's. With the fall of the Marcos regime, it's been determined that the Tasaday are not cavemen, but rather an indigenous Philippine people. The hoax was a ploy by the Marcos regime to extort grant and research money from the scientific community, and to garner prestige for the Philippines and Marcos himself. Even so, there are still those in the anthropological community who insist that the Tasaday represent prehistoric man, even though their existance in the rainforest can only be traced back 150 years.

Now, in this case of these bacteria, how the experiment breaks down is akin to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The researcher has already stacked the deck by coaxing the bacteria down a certain path. As such, the inputs to the experiment are not independant.

[Darth Marley]

Yes, there are hoaxes and frauds.

Fraud and misrepresentation to get grant money is common enough.

And sometimes peer review fails for a while.

Before relativity, Newtonian mechanics were assumed to be a valid model in all cases.
But to suggest that since science improves its models that all scientific models should be regarded as suspect ig

Comparing this experiment to an example of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is not an accurate claim. Under Heisenberg, on cannot test for both momentum and position of a particle, and the reason is that testing for one absorbs the event, making it impossible to then test for the other value.

In the bacteria test, multiple generations are tracked.

The particular mutation is reproducible only from one generation forward. The outcome is not "uncertain" but is quite reproducible, but only from one particular strain.

While some sort of fraud is certainly possible, assuming that as a default position that it must be fraud may comfort the theistic who resist any evidence that argues against "Intelligent Design," it is in the end just as irrational as the ID theory.
Pointing to other instances of fraud in the history of science does not make a case that this is a fraudulent claim. Advancing such a claim is incredibly bad reasoning.
One might make a similar argument that since other people in history have been mass murderers, then one particular person must also be a mass murderer, even though there is no specific evidence to back up that claim.
You can't point to other people's crime and use that to accuse someone else. At least, you can't do that and remain rational.

Suggesting that the experiment "coaxes" a result is a untrue.
There is no system of rewards and punishments to encourage the bacteria to change in a particular way.
And most of the bacteria in the nutrient mix never adapts to feed on the citrate.

[Senmut]

Well, as one who is not at all adverse to ID, I do not view it as at all "irrational". What I see as irrational is the clinging at all costs to the beliefs of a 19th Century Victorian racists who was not even a fully trained naturalist. Now, I know you're rolling your eyes and coming up with a snappy retort, but hey...this site champions free speech, right? You know...tolerance??????
Good observations, necron.

[Darth Marley]

Well, as one who is not at all adverse to ID, I do not view it as at all "irrational". What I see as irrational is the clinging at all costs to the beliefs of a 19th Century Victorian racists who was not even a fully trained naturalist. Now, I know you're rolling your eyes and coming up with a snappy retort, but hey...this site champions free speech, right? You know...tolerance??????
Good observations, necron.

My reply need not be snappy, simply truthful will be sufficient.

It doesn't bother me in the slightest if you subscribe to the beliefs of ID, or even a creation mythology that doesn't even pretend to have a veneer of science to it.

Arguments against ID being "rational" include its inclusion of "argument from incredulity" at its heart. Some people cannot imagine that complex systems arose without a designer. Fair enough. But just because you can't imagine a mechanism that results in life without a "grand watchmaker" does not mean that there is such a watchmaker. Then there is the infinite regress; if "irreducible complexity" requires and "intelligent designer" then by that reasoning, any designer must also have a designer.

It doesn't trouble me that some believe in creation. It is when they start to champion religious beliefs as having scientific validity that it becomes a matter for argument.

If by "19th Century Victorian racists who was not even a fully trained naturalist" you mean Darwin, some documentation indicates that he was a believer in a creator god. An attack on his "racist" beliefs, or suggesting that since he was not a "trained naturalist" does not rise to the level of a refutation of his conclusions in his theories of natural and sexual selections.
And as such, it does come off as a desperation tactic, or if not desperate, then just an exercise in propaganda and deception. Rather than argue against the theory, argue against the man, very clever!

[Senmut]

My reply need not be snappy, simply truthful will be sufficient.

It doesn't bother me in the slightest if you subscribe to the beliefs of ID, or even a creation mythology that doesn't even pretend to have a veneer of science to it.

Arguments against ID being "rational" include its inclusion of "argument from incredulity" at its heart. Some people cannot imagine that complex systems arose without a designer. Fair enough. But just because you can't imagine a mechanism that results in life without a "grand watchmaker" does not mean that there is such a watchmaker. Then there is the infinite regress; if "irreducible complexity" requires and "intelligent designer" then by that reasoning, any designer must also have a designer.

It doesn't trouble me that some believe in creation. It is when they start to champion religious beliefs as having scientific validity that it becomes a matter for argument.

If by "19th Century Victorian racists who was not even a fully trained naturalist" you mean Darwin, some documentation indicates that he was a believer in a creator god. An attack on his "racist" beliefs, or suggesting that since he was not a "trained naturalist" does not rise to the level of a refutation of his conclusions in his theories of natural and sexual selections.
And as such, it does come off as a desperation tactic, or if not desperate, then just an exercise in propaganda and deception. Rather than argue against the theory, argue against the man, very clever!



Yes, truthful would be sufficient.
When will you post any?
Irrational? Well, it would seem we have very different definitions of "rational". I look at evolution as about as rational as dancing around naked in the moonlight, trying to make earthquakes stop or whatever. You will disagree. Fine. But your tolerance is really showing.
As to arguing against the man, if someone were to post an ID-based dissertation on any facet of the debate, but did not have a degree, the same argument would be used against them, and you know it. Pot calling the kettle black, there. Very clever.

[Darth Marley]

Yes, truthful would be sufficient.
When will you post any?
Irrational? Well, it would seem we have very different definitions of "rational". I look at evolution as about as rational as dancing around naked in the moonlight, trying to make earthquakes stop or whatever. You will disagree. Fine. But your tolerance is really showing.
As to arguing against the man, if someone were to post an ID-based dissertation on any facet of the debate, but did not have a degree, the same argument would be used against them, and you know it. Pot calling the kettle black, there. Very clever.

Unfortunately, this is what I have come to expect from professing Christians who are militantly opposed to science..

What have I said that you prove to be untruthful?

Bring it forward, or retract your comment.

If you are to essentially call me a liar, bring it on, or back the down.

It isn't my tolerance that is an issue. I have no problem with your religious beliefs. but you, on the other hand, have resorted to going too far. Perhaps you think it amusing, or are simply trying to cause a disturbance rather than engage in a "debate" or conversation.

You say I have not posted truth, but you disprove nothing.

Fact ID proponents engage in the logical fallacies of "argument from incredulity" when discussing "irreducible complexity"and "infinite regress" when the conclusion reached is that any complex form of life must have an even more complicated designer.

Can you refute it, or are you just going to call me a liar?