Jerry Coyne responds to Behe
| July 4, 2007 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution |
Coyne contra Behe in The New Republic; Behe contra Coyne at Amazon; and now Coyne contra Behe at TalkReason. The following comment by Coyne caught my eye:
Both Richard Dawkins (in his review of The Edge of Evolution in The New York Times) and myself have noted Behe’s remarkable reluctance to submit his claims to peer-reviewed scientific journals. If Behe’s theory is so world-shaking, and so indubitably correct, why doesn’t he submit it to some scientific journals? (The reason is obvious, of course: his theory is flat wrong.)
Let me suggest another reason: Coyne is wrong and doesn’t want Behe upsetting his applecart.
39 Responses to Jerry Coyne responds to Behe
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Sorry – accidentally hit post; to finish, Atom, IGF-1 variation is a SNP.
Also, contra PaV, (from the Nature press release):
Mosher et al. did not detect this mutation in 14 other heavy-muscled breeds of dog, suggesting that it might be unique to whippets.
jerry, “The one issue that seems to come up at various times is falsification of the data and just about every novel finding is subject to others performing the same experiment. So there is a constant quality control process going on that monitors other’s work.”
I’m not sure the second sentence follows from the first. The whole raison d’etre for this blog is that both you and the most rabid of Darwinists look at the same data and come to different conclusions. So wouldn’t it be reasonable to say that it isn’t data but interpretation that is at issue? Yet one of the cornerstones of science (as I understand it) is advancing knowledge by casting aside our weight of preconceptions and interpreting data without prejudice. What does it say at the beginning of this blog? “Materialistic ideology has subverted the study of biological and cosmological origins so that the actual content of these sciences has become corrupted.” Wouldn’t a systematic study science itself help to eliminate this?
jerry, “It is unlikely that a scientist would become a master of some abstract field without learning the methodology of science along the way.” I’m thinking they call it consensus science. Though most likely you are right that they did learn it and have just grown sloppy at it.
As to the Goldman videos at the Teaching Company, I found them interesting and look forward to seeing them. Thank you.
@ Patrick: A lot of our disagreement has to do with the fact that we have different concepts about terms like “new” “variation” “potential”. This would require a long extra discussion. None of the processes and changes you describe are surprising to me. But I judge them always against the big open questions of evolutionary biology: The origin of novelty and all aspects connected with that, often filed under the term “macroevolution”. And I see dog-breeding and other microevolutionary processes as interesting by itself but not essentially contributing to this “big” question.
Jon Jackson
I was wondering if anyone knows of a branch of science that studies science and the scientific method itself
It’s Philosophy of Science. Professor Dembski has a PhD in it along with a PhD in math.
Actually Dave, I’m thinking Science Studies was a little more along the lines of what I was thinking of. But thanks for the tip.
Jon Jackson,
There has always been debate over the implications of scientific findings as scientists protect their pet theories and some of it can be very nasty. I taught for 8 years in two different universities and faculty meeting were frequently contentious. That is why there is always a push to find new theories/experiments to look at the data from different perspectives. It is part of the quality control.
However, when the issues of science have political implications the analysis of data process is very suspect and even more contentious. The people who discuss evolution seem to have major personal self identity stakes in which theory is correct and the discourse is seldom civil. Their self identity determines their position, not the evidence. This site tries to maintain civil discourse but self identity still seems to affect a lot of the discussion. Also, I think a lot of posts here are inappropriate.
Political concerns in general seem to trump truth concerns in many areas which is why there is often a series of people talking past each other as they try to defend their point of view. Also for issues like evolution that go further than the science involved the contention is much more visible to the public. Most science debates rarely get further than the narrow fields of the particular discipline.
From my perspective, evolution and things like global warming are not about science but political control of the society and when that happens truth is the first thing sacrificed. But most science does not have these wide political considerations and as such the quality control process is rarely visible.
Jon
You asked for a field that studies, among other things, the scientific method itself. That precludes Science Studies as defined in your link.
Also, contra PaV, (from the Nature press release):
Mosher et al. did not detect this mutation in 14 other heavy-muscled breeds of dog, suggesting that it might be unique to whippets.——-Patrick Caldon
I just now noticed this post.
Since I don’t have access to the paper (only the abstract), I’m wondering how they determined that MSTN is not present in other heavily-muscled dog breeds: was it through protein assays, or was it through complete genome analysis. I suspect the former. This, then, would simply mean that MSTN is not expressed in those other heavily-muscled breeds. Artifical selection may have simply resulted in a genome that gives expression to the already present MSTN in the whippets.
Nonetheless, this remains extraneous to the main point, which is that a two base-pair deletion is the cause of the phenotype.
pav
the survey would have to include every individual animal of the other breeds to prove its complete absence in them
take albinism for example – only 1 in 70 humans is heterozygous for it and 1 in 17,000 homozygous for it – now say we suspected it was entirely absent in some sub-population of humans that had been reproductively isolated for a long time with no albinism observed – how many individuals would need to be dna tested for the allele to confirm its complete absence versus just more rare than 1 in 70? you’d have to test every single individual – what if its there but in one in 700 individuals? you’d have to test on average 700 individuals before you found a copy!