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!

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.

You asked for a field that studies, among other things, the scientific method itself. That precludes Science Studies as defined in your link.

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.

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.

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.

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.

On greyhounds, it’s not hard to verify that they accelerate better than wolves, and shepherd dogs can guard and herd sheep in a way which wolves cannot.

But since you’re not happy with this, let’s give another example; it’s not hard to verify that Jack-Russell terriers (which are small) will be far superior at hunting game in burrows underground than wolves. To me “superior is as superior does”; if you get a pack of wolves outside a fox burrow and they can’t get at the fox, but a single Jack Russell terrier can get the fox, then you need to provide some detailed technical argument to say that wolves and JRTs have the same capability for hunting foxes. Incidentally there are alleles present in JRTs (and many small dog breeds) which are not present in wolves, called IGF-1; in this case it is a single base pair substitution (a SNP). This was published a couple of months ago. This allele (probably among others) ultimately gives JRTs an ability to hunt foxes which wolves do not have.

Also no “Darwinist” argues that variation is without borders. You could view the whole study of population genetics as an attept to get a handle on these borders. Get a copy of a good text on evolution (e.g. Mark Ridley’s text) and you’ll see chapter after chapter describing borders and getting a handle on the precise mechanisms of variation and the borders which do exist. A lot of the reason that people like Haldane and RA Fisher are famous is that they got a pretty good handle on how variation works, and described mathematically/statistically what the borders are. Seriously, if you want to argue about this, a good undergraduate text on population genetics would make excellent reading.

I’m happy to hear an argument that the wolf has the same underlying capability to hunt foxes in burrows that JRTs have, but given that a wolf could never fit in a fox burrow you’ll have to precisely define the word capability, since you’re clearly using it in a non-standard sense.

Atom,
MSTN is a double deletion event. IGF-1 is a