"Natural selection is the only mechanism of adaptive evolution"

[bikerdruid]

Randman, you know this whole debate series would go a lot faster, if you took the time to understand evolution from the perspective of scientists.

Have you taken this "course", yet? http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_01

excellent stuff....thanks, man.

 

[randman]

That is right: He deliberately lied in his 1874 drawings by not adding the details that would make the embryos more distinct and scaling the drawings inappropriately.
See Richardson, M. K. , Hanken, J. , Gooneratne, M. L. , Pieau, C. , Raynaud, A. , Selwood, L. , and Wright, G. M. (1997). There is no highly conserved embryonic stage in the vertebrates: implications for current theories of evolution and development. Anat Embryol. (Berl) 196, 91-106
(PDF)


N.B.

• They look at his 1874 drawings.
• They are considering his drawings in the context of the conserved embryonic stage in the vertebrates (not recapitulation theory).
  The conserved embryonic stage is the hypothesis that there is a point in development when there is maximum resemblance among members of a phylum or comparable higher taxon, e.g. vertebrates.

As pointed in another thread by the 1891 edition of his book the drawings have been redone to be more accurate.

No, the phylotypic stage (highly conserved stage aka the hourglass model) is a bit more than that, but I understand it's tough for you to realize you've been duped by fakes. Emotionally, it's hard for you to accept.

And for the record, "there is no highly conserved stage (aka the phylotypic stage)".

That was the title of Richardson's 1997 paper.

Funny how things change and not because of the evidence.

 

[pipelineaudio]

No, the phylotypic stage (highly conserved stage aka the hourglass model) is a bit more than that, but I understand it's tough for you to realize you've been duped by fakes. Emotionally, it's hard for you to accept.

And for the record, "there is no highly conserved stage (aka the phylotypic stage)".

That was the title of Richardson's 1997 paper.

Funny how things change and not because of the evidence.

Citation please: What Ivy League biology professor was surprised to learn in 1997 that Haeckel's drawings were faked?

 

[ThunderChunky]

The biogenic law as Haeckel proposed is not currently accepted. Haeckel's observation that the developing embryos look similar is true (they dont just look similar on the outside, the gene expression patterns are similar as well) and there are evolutionary reasons for this (evolution is such a useful theory).

A phylogenetically based transcriptome age index mirrors ontogenetic divergence patterns.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21150997

Parallels between phylogeny and ontogeny have been discussed for almost two centuries, and a number of theories have been proposed to explain such patterns. Especially elusive is the phylotypic stage, a phase during development where species within a phylum are particularly similar to each other. Although this has formerly been interpreted as a recapitulation of phylogeny, it is now thought to reflect an ontogenetic progression phase, where strong constraints on developmental regulation and gene interactions exist. Several studies have shown that genes expressed during this stage evolve at a slower rate, but it has so far not been possible to derive an unequivocal molecular signature associated with this stage. Here we use a combination of phylostratigraphy and stage-specific gene expression data to generate a cumulative index that reflects the evolutionary age of the transcriptome at given ontogenetic stages. Using zebrafish ontogeny and adult development as a model, we find that the phylotypic stage does indeed express the oldest transcriptome set and that younger sets are expressed during early and late development, thus faithfully mirroring the hourglass model of morphological divergence. Reproductively active animals show the youngest transcriptome, with major differences between males and females. Notably, ageing animals express increasingly older genes. Comparisons with similar data sets from flies and nematodes show that this pattern occurs across phyla. Our results indicate that an old transcriptome marks the phylotypic phase and that phylogenetic differences at other ontogenetic stages correlate with the expression of newly evolved genes.

Gene expression divergence recapitulates the developmental hourglass model.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21150996

The observation that animal morphology tends to be conserved during the embryonic phylotypic period (a period of maximal similarity between the species within each animal phylum) led to the proposition that embryogenesis diverges more extensively early and late than in the middle, known as the hourglass model. This pattern of conservation is thought to reflect a major constraint on the evolution of animal body plans. Despite a wealth of morphological data confirming that there is often remarkable divergence in the early and late embryos of species from the same phylum, it is not yet known to what extent gene expression evolution, which has a central role in the elaboration of different animal forms, underpins the morphological hourglass pattern. Here we address this question using species-specific microarrays designed from six sequenced Drosophila species separated by up to 40 million years. We quantify divergence at different times during embryogenesis, and show that expression is maximally conserved during the arthropod phylotypic period. By fitting different evolutionary models to each gene, we show that at each time point more than 80% of genes fit best to models incorporating stabilizing selection, and that for genes whose evolutionarily optimal expression level is the same across all species, selective constraint is maximized during the phylotypic period. The genes that conform most to the hourglass pattern are involved in key developmental processes. These results indicate that natural selection acts to conserve patterns of gene expression during mid-embryogenesis, and provide a genome-wide insight into the molecular basis of the hourglass pattern of developmental evolution.

 

[Kotatsu]

Am I going have to give another history lesson? Maybe I should post it in the thread on Haeckel and textbooks.

Yes, please! I will order Gould's book and read it when I have time, but in the meantime, some sort of synopsis would be wonderful.

Show me one thing I have been factually ignorant of in regard to evolution, just one piece of data? and yes, then show another if you can find one?

You believe that mammals evolved after the dinosaurs were extinct.

You believe that there was no organisms filling the "whale niche" before whales.

You believe that there are no phylogenetic trees that include ancestors.

You believe that "aquatic and swimming" is a niche.

You, essentially, don't know what a niche is.

You believe that there are no examples of a feature being lost and then regained within a lineage.

You believe evolutionary theory predicts reversal within a lineage on the whole-species level.

You believe that evolutionary theory predicts that bacteria should evolve into something else than bacteria, ideally something similar to mammals or reptiles.

You believe, conversely, that evolutionary theory predicts that something that is not a bacteria should evolve into one.

You believe that the fact that we never see either is evidence against evolutionary theory.

You appear to believe that the fact that we never see either is not evidence against Davison's hypothesis, despite it being a necessary consequence.

You believe that the non-existence of "junk DNA" means that the same DNA sections are no longer evidence for evolution.

You believe that phylum, class, and other higher taxonomic categories have an existence external to taxonomy.

You further believe that these higher taxa have no relation to the estimated age of a clade.

You, essentially, have no idea how taxonomy works at all.

It is also quite reasonable to draw the conclusion that you don't know what a "type" is.

You believe that there is some sinister reason that we cannot settle on a single species concept, and that this is somehow detrimental to the strength of evolutionary theory.

You believe that a proposed ancestral organism is necessarily the ancestor of a more recent one.

You believe that the fossil record does not show transitional forms.

You believe that "convergent evolution" implies identical gene sequences.

You believe that Davison's bizarre hypothesis is in any way anchored even in a parallel reality which approximates our own.

You appear to have no idea what "analogous features" are.

You believe, following Davison, that "homology" is a useless concept.

You believe that opinions of scientists before 1973 are more important than data from after 1973.

You believe that a parent population or parent species continues to be regarded as a parent after one (or more) daughter populations have been split off.

---

This was just from memory, and from a cursory reading of my replies to you in the "Evolution: the facts" thread to refresh my memory. It is still an impressive list, I think. I am sure others can fill in more detail from other threads, as you have been quite productive, post-wise. I can provide quotes for all these claims, if necessary.

truethat: I remember that picture. I have many fond memories of days spent playing with plastic dinosaurs and reading books on them (oddly enough, the text to picture ratio in books on dinosaurs hasn't greatly altered between my 5-year-old reading and my professional reading...we are a visual species). And it still hurts my neck and legs to see therapods standing like that. I can hear the hips popping, and my neck hurts just thinking about it......Thanks for that.

You might appreciate this, then:
There is an old Swedish sci-fi story from 1932 (or thereabout) called "Under the Drum-fire of the Meteors" by Ossian Elgström. It is a hilarious book, which I don't think would have been translated into English (I found it in Swedish by coincidence, and had never heard about it before; I doubt it has ever been reprinted). There are too many awesome things in it to list, but it does have dinosaurs living together with the Atlanteans, Monopeds, Kynocephalians and other creatures in vast caves underneath Russia, and in the end, everyone dies.

In one great scene, the party -- a Swedish engineer, an American sea captain, and a British explorer -- are attacked by a Tyrannosaurus that explicitly jumps like a kangaroo. The engineer shoots at it with a cold ray he has invented (for no real reason beyond Ossian thinking it's a cool thing, it seems) and hurts the dinosaur badly, causing it to crawl away on its stomach like a lizard and hide in the bushes.

It's probably the best dinosaur book I have ever read, and it's a pity there isn't an English version.

---

I would also be much obliged for your comments on this post, randman:

No, that is not correct. The argument is that in some cases, a land mammal has been found to have occupied an aquatic niche ahead of already existing aquatic animals. This could be for a variety of reasons, but getting there first is certainly good enough for our purposes.

 

[Simon39759]

I have been wondering about Haeckel for a while... and about one of his contemporary named Percival Lowell.

You see, one day Percival Lowell observed some weird canal like structure on the surface of Mars, intrigued, he looked further into it and, after a few months, had described 400 of such structure, how their flow changed, often following a seasonal cycle, and how they were surrounded by areas of vegetation. The canals, in short, were the product of an agricultural Martian society!
Of course, we now know that he was wrong. The biggest of his canals do, in fact, exist but the rest were purely the product of Lowell's imagination. Looking through a relatively primitive instrument, he perceived shades and irregularity that his imagination, confirmation bias and wishful thinking soon expanded into a grandiose construct.
He was not lying, simply mistaken. And he was not completely wrong, some of the bigger canals do, in fact exist, remnant of long dried rivers...

Haeckel, as far as I know, and I admit I am not very familiar with him, was the same problem.
He looked through the limited optics of the microscopes of his time, saw some patterns and, within a few months, expanded it into one grandiose theory. His wishful thinking and confirmation influencing his observations and leading to the inaccurate drawings that seemed to support his theory.
But, just like some of the canals Lowell observed do in fact exist, some of the similarities and patterns Haeckel noticed are actually real. Sure, he did oversell them by a long shot, but he was not entirely wrong or a total fraud. At the core of his recapitulative theory lies a core of reality: embryos are often constructed by adding up on top of older, more primitive structures. This is the reason why the cortex, the more recent innovation of our brain, develops last.
And sometime ancestral structures start to develop before disappearing: this is the reason why our hands start finned, before the skin between the fingers regress.
This is the reason why scientists today still sometime use expression reminiscent of Haeckel's... Some of his observations are still valid...

 

[Belz...]

I'm also the only person with my name in the entire world.

Now I'm getting interested.

 

[Belz...]

truethat, I am not about to provide you with personal information of any sort that might enable you to track down my identity, but if you would like to tell us who you are, what universities you went to and your degrees and employer, that's fine.

Telling us what your qualifications are is not very indicative of your personal identity. You just don't want to provide them because you have none.

I think that's wishfulness on your part.

In other words you just "know" that it's the case. I was under the impression that just-so stories were Verboten.

Show me one thing I have been factually ignorant of in regard to evolution, just one piece of data?

Read the whole thread again, and you'll see you DON'T UNDERSTAND EVOLUTION.

 

[Simon39759]

I'm also the only person with my name in the entire world.

Now I'm getting interested.

His name is Ascipencer Parsifal Snifflelynn the third.
True story.

 

[Dancing David]

I think that's wishfulness on your part. Not only does it happen in a college setting but I have showed you it happens in peer-reviewed literature. It's part of evo's approach to science, and you are also making a false accusation on moving the goalposts. You know full well as I've stated many times about a visiting botany professor, a creationist from NC State, is where I first learned Haeckel was faked.

But now, maybe for the lurkers as you have often said you are writing for their benefit?, you suggest I just fabricated going to school in the 90s in response to you post here?

Have you no integrity?

Nope you have also been shown that it was not wide spread, but it is your only point. It has beens shown that it was not part of the mainstream of modern evolutionary theory, but please keep derailing your own thread.

 

[Belz...]

You'd want "the controversy" taught in schools. You'd even insist on it.

There is no controversy.

Oh, and you have still not shown of one single thing showing I've misunderstood evolution.

Here's one:

You'd want "the controversy" taught in schools. You'd even insist on it.

There IS no controversy. That's already one thing you don't understand.

You're welcome.

 

[Dancing David]

Yea, he deliberately lied. That's what the 1997 study, the mountains of other reports and studies including the one by creationists in 1969 and going all the way back to the 1800s showed.

He deliberately faked the data. He didn't just draw it wrong by mistake. He was an incredible illustrator. He deliberately faked it.

It's not the first time he faked data either. He did it in other areas, flat out making stuff up. There was a whole book in 1910 on his forgeries, in fact.

And Issac Newton sat at witch trials and was an alchemist, that does not invalidate the idea of gravitational attraction.

ETA: debate the merits of the idea.

 

[Belz...]

All you are doing is engaging in character assassination of another human being because he disagrees with your faith.

Now you're just being ridiculous. Act like an adult, please.

 

[Dancing David]

Already cited it on the prior page. Go back and read it.

Quote your self, you know you can.

 

[Dancing David]

No, the phylotypic stage (highly conserved stage aka the hourglass model) is a bit more than that, but I understand it's tough for you to realize you've been duped by fakes. Emotionally, it's hard for you to accept.

And for the record, "there is no highly conserved stage (aka the phylotypic stage)".

That was the title of Richardson's 1997 paper.

Funny how things change and not because of the evidence.

Funny how you can't debate the topic of the thread and so focus on one person's behavior and not the merits of whatever the thread was about. But then when shown that you false dichotomy is false, you insist that somehow, Heakels drawings are the underpinning of evolutionary theory.

Natural seelction is the only mechanism of adaptive evolution.

 

[truethat]

I have been wondering about Haeckel for a while... and about one of his contemporary named Percival Lowell.

You see, one day Percival Lowell observed some weird canal like structure on the surface of Mars, intrigued, he looked further into it and, after a few months, had described 400 of such structure, how their flow changed, often following a seasonal cycle, and how they were surrounded by areas of vegetation. The canals, in short, were the product of an agricultural Martian society!
Of course, we now know that he was wrong. The biggest of his canals do, in fact, exist but the rest were purely the product of Lowell's imagination. Looking through a relatively primitive instrument, he perceived shades and irregularity that his imagination, confirmation bias and wishful thinking soon expanded into a grandiose construct.
He was not lying, simply mistaken. And he was not completely wrong, some of the bigger canals do, in fact exist, remnant of long dried rivers...

Haeckel, as far as I know, and I admit I am not very familiar with him, was the same problem.
He looked through the limited optics of the microscopes of his time, saw some patterns and, within a few months, expanded it into one grandiose theory. His wishful thinking and confirmation influencing his observations and leading to the inaccurate drawings that seemed to support his theory.
But, just like some of the canals Lowell observed do in fact exist, some of the similarities and patterns Haeckel noticed are actually real. Sure, he did oversell them by a long shot, but he was not entirely wrong or a total fraud. At the core of his recapitulative theory lies a core of reality: embryos are often constructed by adding up on top of older, more primitive structures. This is the reason why the cortex, the more recent innovation of our brain, develops last.
And sometime ancestral structures start to develop before disappearing: this is the reason why our hands start finned, before the skin between the fingers regress.
This is the reason why scientists today still sometime use expression reminiscent of Haeckel's... Some of his observations are still valid...

This is a pretty accurate observation. I'm not sure what randman's point even is. As Kotatsu pointed out it seems to be this

You believe that opinions of scientists before 1973 are more important than data from after 1973.

Controversy in evolution is what moves it forward and gets it to new ideas. But the science follows the evidence not the ideas. A SCIENTIST might have a confirmation bias and do what you mentioned above. But the community will eventually catch it out as wrong and it will be noted.

Randman seems to think that controversy within science is something weird. It's very common. Just take a look at this clip about dinosaurs and you'll see an example.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFqx4Est-Ps&feature=related


As you can the scientists are trying to figure out things, and they still don't know how it all comes together. So they keep doing research.


Evolutionary theory is OVER HERE..............................................................................Understanding how it played out is OVER HERE.

 

[Reality Check]

No, the phylotypic stage (highly conserved stage aka the hourglass model) is a bit more than that, but I understand it's tough for you to realize you've been duped by fakes. Emotionally, it's hard for you to accept.

I know that my descripton a simple descripton of the phylotypic stage.
But I understand it's tough for you to realize you've been duped by your ignorance. Emotionally, it's hard for you to accept.

The fact is that Haeckel's 1874 doctored images are not scientific evidence for anything (because they are inaccurate). No one today uses the 1874 images as scientific evidence.

I was never duped by the drawings because I have always known that they were doctored.

And for the record, "there is no highly conserved stage (aka the phylotypic stage)".

That was the title of Richardson's 1997 paper.

And for the record, Duhhhh !
As I wrote

See Richardson, M. K. , Hanken, J. , Gooneratne, M. L. , Pieau, C. , Raynaud, A. , Selwood, L. , and Wright, G. M. (1997). There is no highly conserved embryonic stage in the vertebrates: implications for current theories of evolution and development. Anat Embryol. (Berl) 196, 91-106
(PDF)

(emphasis added in case you cannot recognize a title when you read it)

Funny how things change and not because of the evidence.

Funny how you are ignorant that Richardson's 1997 paper gave evidence that there is no highly conserved stage (aka the phylotypic stage) and thus things changed. There was more evidence that there is no phylotypic stage.
The debate has not stopped because science does not stop. As more evidence is collected the existence or not of the phylotypic stage will continue to be debated.



The Pandas Thumb blog has a good series of articles about it.

• It’s just a stage. A phylotypic stage. Part I.
• It’s just a stage. A phylotypic stage. Part II: The flies
• A visit from the architects of the fly hourglass paper
• It’s just a stage. A phylotypic stage. Part III: Fish and more

P.S. I do hope you realize that the supposed observation of a phylotypic stage is separate from the debunked recapitulation theory?If it exists then a theory will have to explain the observation. That theory will not be recapitulation.

 

[randman]

The biogenic law as Haeckel proposed is not currently accepted. Haeckel's observation that the developing embryos look similar is true (they dont just look similar on the outside, the gene expression patterns are similar as well) and there are evolutionary reasons for this (evolution is such a useful theory).

A phylogenetically based transcriptome age index mirrors ontogenetic divergence patterns.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21150997



Gene expression divergence recapitulates the developmental hourglass model.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21150996

At least unlike pretty much every evo on this thread, you actually presented some data. But of course, the genome isn't really what Haeckel and recapitulation are about.

I am also not sure of how the hour-glass model fits with the molecular evidence since does DNA change during embryonic development? I suppose the concept is whether the regulatory genes in this area are conserved and to what degree.

Plus, considering the history of evolutionists making wild, unfounded claims in respect to embryology, I think it's wise for anyone to be especially prudent about just accepting any claim in this area put forward by evos.

But I'll take a look at it. From reading the abstracts, it doesn't look very hopeful but more evos running down the wrong rabbit hole, the wrong path set by the great founding father, Haeckel.

At a minimum, you should certainly not be touting these very limited studies as indicating that much of anything. That's a big problem with evos, basing conclusions on data that is way too limited to make their conclusions.

Your following statement is not yet supported by comprehensive and conclusive studies and may just be plain wrong.

Haeckel's observation that the developing embryos look similar is true (they dont just look similar on the outside, the gene expression patterns are similar as well)

It's an interesting idea. Doesn't really serve as evidence for evolution though, but at least it's something testable and could have real biological applications for understanding embryological development.

 

[Simon39759]

At least unlike pretty much every evo on this thread, you actually presented some data. But of course, the genome isn't really what Haeckel and recapitulation are about.

Clearly not. But, as have been pointed to you many times, the original recapitulation theory has been abandoned decades ago and Haeckel, when used, which is more sparingly than creationists like to pretend, was to illustrate Von Baer's.
These study is a look at Von Baer's theory from a genetic point of view...

I am also not sure of how the hour-glass model fits with the molecular evidence since does DNA change during embryonic development? I suppose the concept is whether the regulatory genes in this area are conserved and to what degree.

It's neither. Regulatory genes are like normal genes, they don't go anywhere. This study is about gene expression.

Plus, considering the history of evolutionists making wild, unfounded claims in respect to embryology, I think it's wise for anyone to be especially prudent about just accepting any claim in this area put forward by evos.

Yeah, yeah, some poisoning the well.
Of course, considering the creationists history of lying and using frauds, I think it's wise to assume they are lying whenever they speak.
At any rate; if you had actually read the paper, or even simply the nice summary on Panda about them, you'd see that 'unfounded' hardly fits the data-filled article...

But I'll take a look at it. From reading the abstracts, it doesn't look very hopeful but more evos running down the wrong rabbit hole, the wrong path set by the great founding father, Haeckel.
At a minimum, you should certainly not be touting these very limited studies as indicating that much of anything. That's a big problem with evos, basing conclusions on data that is way too limited to make their conclusions.

Yeah, yeah, your transparent attempt at handwaving of a paper you understand nothing about ("does DNA change during embryonic development?") has been dully noted...

 

[Dinwar]

Yeah, yeah, some poisoning the well.
Of course, considering the creationists history of lying and using frauds, I think it's wise to assume they are lying whenever they speak.
At any rate; if you had actually read the paper, or even simply the nice summary on Panda about them, you'd see that 'unfounded' hardly fits the data-filled article...


Yeah, yeah, your transparent attempt at handwaving of a paper you understand nothing about ("does DNA change during embryonic development?") has been dully noted...

This is why many of us have stopped bothering to provide randman with data. When we do we're insulted, mocked, or flat-out ignored. When those don't work he simply dismisses the data (the simple fact that he's still bringing up these drawings is proof enough of that, after ANTpogo's amazing thread). It's like trying to teach calculus to a tree.

It's an interesting idea. Doesn't really serve as evidence for evolution though, but at least it's something testable and could have real biological applications for understanding embryological development.

This is the other reason: randman insists that he knows more than anyone on this forum, and continuously demonstrates that he's never actually studied the topic. We have PHOTOS of embryos--meaning unaltered, simply recording the light transmitted through/reflected off of the embryos. We KNOW they're similar, and remarkably so. We know that this is because of gene expression. We know that certain structures are homologous, meaning that the only explanation that doesn't include the supernatural is evolution. This stuff is in any textbook (for example, page 51 of "Evolutionary Analysis" by Scott Freeman and Jon C. Herron has photographs of embroys of snakes, chickens, possums, cats, bats, and humans). There are clear homologies, such as the pharyngeal pouches, the tail, the form of the tailbud embryo, and so on. The more closely related things show more similarities. Hard to argue with this evidence, so randman is simply dismissing it.