Creationist "PWNED" by Lenski

Huntsman said:
I don't think the lab notes (the relevent data from which are in the papers) are needed, nor would they be useful to reproducing the work.
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I guess it's a hard line to tread because, if one doesn't present the evidence requested, one can be always be accused of withholding data because one fears the "truth" of an "honest" "analysis"*. On the other hand, if the person requesting the data will not be convinced no matter the quantity and quality of the data produced, there is really no reason to produce any more data.

*I do not believe this to be the case with Lenski with respect to the "fear" aspect.
 
Complexity said:
I wouldn't give the idiot any data, any samples of bacterial cultures, anything at all.
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There are some bacterial cultures I'd wish on him ...

We should celebrate Lenski's achievement for a century, mock the idiot's idiocy for another ten seconds, and get back to science and living on good terms with reality.
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Hats off to Lenski and his team for an experiment that can only keep on giving.
 
This part bears repeating:

So, will we share the bacteria? Of course we will, with competent scientists. Now, if I was really mean, I might only share the ancestral strain, and let the scientists undertake the 20 years of our experiment. Or if I was only a little bit mean, maybe I’d also send the potentiated bacteria, and let the recipients then repeat the several years of incredibly pain-staking work that my superb doctoral student, Zachary Blount, performed to test some 40 trillion (40,000,000,000,000) cells, which generated 19 additional citrate-using mutants. But I’m a nice guy, at least when treated with some common courtesy, so if a competent scientist asks for them, I would even send a sample of the evolved E. coli that now grows vigorously on citrate. A competent microbiologist, perhaps requiring the assistance of a competent molecular geneticist, would readily confirm the following properties reported in our paper: (i) The ancestral strain does not grow in DM0 (zero glucose, but containing citrate), the recipe for which can be found on my web site, except leaving the glucose out of the standard recipe as stated in our paper. (ii) The evolved citrate-using strain, by contrast, grows well in that exact same medium. (iii) To confirm that the evolved strain is not some contaminating species but is, in fact, derived from the ancestral strain in our study, one could check a number of traits and genes that identify the ancestor as E. coli, and the evolved strains as a descendant thereof, as reported in our paper. (iv) One could also sequence the pykF and nadR genes in the ancestor and evolved citrate-using strains. One would find that the evolved bacteria have mutations in each of these genes. These mutations precisely match those that we reported in our previous work, and they identify the evolved citrate-using mutants as having evolved in the population designated Ara-3 of the long-term evolution experiment, as opposed to any of the other 11 populations in that experiment. And one could go on and on from there to confirm the findings in our paper, and perhaps obtain additional data of the sort that we are currently pursuing.
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New Scientist's "Short sharp science blog"

All in all we thought it was a pretty excellent piece of research, and plenty of other sites agreed: Pharyngula, for instance, devoted a lengthy post to it. However, such an unambiguous example of evolution in action was always going to bring the kooks out of the woodwork.

First up was Michael Behe, the intelligent design proponent and biochemist, who argued in his Amazon blog that Lenski's work was in fact excellent evidence for intelligent design. His argument is a variant on the usual "it's just so improbable" line: the ability to metabolise citrate required several different mutations (true), which each have a low chance of happening in a given time (true), and it may even have been necessary for them to happen in a particular order (true), therefore Darwinian evolution can't explain it. Er, no, it just means it would take evolution a little while to manage it. 20 years, as it turned out.
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ETA: The bit about being treated with common courtesy would provide enough reason to not share the entire 20-years of data with an unqualified, ignorant (in the Northern English usage as well as knowledgeless) kook.

hence this part

It is my impression that you seem to think we have only paper and electronic records of having seen some unusual E. coli. If we made serious errors or misrepresentations, you would surely like to find them in those records. If we did not, then - as some of your acolytes have suggested - you might assert that our records are themselves untrustworthy because, well, because you said so, I guess. But perhaps because you did not bother even to read our paper, or perhaps because you aren't very bright, you seem not to understand that we have the actual, living bacteria that exhibit the properties reported in our paper, including both the ancestral strain used to start this long-term experiment and its evolved citrate-using descendants. In other words, it's not that we claim to have glimpsed "a unicorn in the garden" - we have a whole population of them living in my lab! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unicorn_in_the_Garden] And lest you accuse me further of fraud, I do not literally mean that we have unicorns in the lab. Rather, I am making a literary allusion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allusion]
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He has the bacteria, and the ancestral bacteria, and strains that are highly likely to evolve citrate metabolism, and strains that are no more likely than any other.

He has stated his willingness for competent scientists to look at these samples.

Why bother with reports when he is willing to show the actual bacteria.

Superb.

and I will only mention in passing that this is the sort of example of a situation where I think it is appropriate to discuss randomness and probability in the natural selection part of evolution. Trom this thread.
 
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FramerDave said:
No harm, but it's probably not just a matter of emailing a few documents. He's been doing this study for many years and I'm sure the data are voluminous. Why should he shoulder the burden of reproducing it all and shipping it out just to satisfy some misinformed crank?
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It's important to note that labs get grants to operate, and part of their grant request is an estimate of the costs involved in making copies of the notebooks available for requests from colleagues.

The two points to this are:

a) there is absolutely a material and time cost involved and

b) this should be accounted for already, and a procedure should be in place to fulfil requests



aggle-rithm said:
In my experience, when people say they want ALL the data, they have no idea what they're asking for.
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This is the problem. If they really planned to replicate, they would be asking for specific details. Asking for 'everything' shows that they have no idea what they're doing.

If Lenski never released experimental details or samples to anybody it would be a real black mark, but considering the real costs involved, restricting compliance to legitemate requests is appropriate.
 
Providing the data to someone who won't even trouble himself to read the paper which is based on the data is obviously a waste of time. Someone incapable of understanding the data is likely to waste even more time down the road, generating unlikely or even impossible alternative explanations for the data which will take time to understand and answer.

Still, as long as the requester is willing to pay the cost of making the data available, I say let him have it. Live organisms is another matter, and I see no reason to release them to amateurs and boneheads.
 
dogjones said:
Here is an exchange between Andy Schlafly, bloke behind "conservapedia", and Richard Lenski. I found it on Ben Goldacre's site. Wonderful wonderful wonderful. Hope the mods agree it's ok to post in its entirety.


Edited by Darat: 


First letter
First Reply
Second letter
Second reply
Sorry for the confusion but Rule 4 is quite clear, complete articles are not be posted here.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Darat
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Darat, it's not an article. It's a publicly available email exchange. It's on several other sites now. There are no copyright issues. Why not post it here?
 
bokonon said:
Providing the data to someone who won't even trouble himself to read the paper which is based on the data is obviously a waste of time.
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There's no way to pierce the arrogance of belief. Believers are unendingly demanding, and think they have a right to be. If you don't pander to their demands they declare victory. Screw 'em. Maybe beat them up for entertainment or practice, whatever, it's all good. Never indulge them.

I think Lenski handled it excellently.
 
dogjones said:
Darat, it's not an article. It's a publicly available email exchange. It's on several other sites now. There are no copyright issues. Why not post it here?
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Rules is rules, and if it's all over the place anyway there's no real issue. Bend the rules and you're on a slippery slope :).
 
mijopaalmc said:
No. He did address why he wouldn't release the strains to Schlafly or his "acolytes" simply because they requested them. However, his main reason for refusing to release his lab not (which I understand to be the data) seems to be that Schlafly et al. don't understand them and would twist them to serve their personal agenda, which doesn't seem to be very much of a reason at all.
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Good lord, Mijo, how is it possible that you read the letters (I presume you did) and you still come up with this stuff? He did say he would send samples to anyone who could show competence, making no limits. If Shafly can demonstrate competence, he could garner a sample straight away and begin working on his examination of "data [which] can be accessible to unbiased researchers outside of the hegemony of the Darwinian academia". If he can't, Behe probably could. He did not "refuse to release his lab" (whatever that may mean). Releasing raw data is by no means an easy thing to do; the documentation required to understand that data probabaly would outweigh the writing of the paper by 4 times. He has no time to waste on doing that sort of busywork. If these people want data they can very well create it themselves, with a lot less hassle, just as Lenski suggests. He said nothing about withholding data because it might be twisted; he only stated that the twisting was already afoot.

Get it through your head - the man has nothing, NOTHING, to hide. He did work that might win him he Nobel prize at some point, for persistence and proof of serendipity (or rather, proof that the prepared man gets the luck) if nothing else.

He did say he would post on his own website the data that wasn't included in the paper. What more do you want?
 
Olowkow said:
dogjones said:
Here is an exchange between Andy Schlafly, bloke behind "conservapedia", and Richard Lenski. I found it on Ben Goldacre's site. Wonderful wonderful wonderful. Hope the mods agree it's ok to post in its entirety.

Edited by Darat: 


Does anyone know if he is one of Phyllis Schlafly's sons?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Schlafly
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Okowlow, follow your own link to Phyllis' page, look for the list of children. You'll see a link there on "Andrew". Follow it and read the first line of the first paragraph. I'd say "yes".
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There is a certain art to pwnage. It involves doing the deed with such ease as to demonstrate power (in this case, intellectual prowess and integrity) over the pwned without overstating the case - you don't beat the person up, you imply that if he moves a muscle out of line, he'll be mush, but in more elegant language. I think Lenski has it down pat, and Schlafly played right into his hands.
 
Considering how much scrutiny Schlafly devoted to the paper, Lenski could probably send him a few CDs of output from a random number generator, and no one would be the wiser.
 
There isn't anything difficult to understand here, except Schlafly's ignorance. Lenski's description of his work is very clear as is his first letter to Schlafly.
It appears to be Schlafly is incompetent, or that he cannot grasp what he reads.
 
mijopaalmc is merely an apologist for the fundies and creationists.

Discuss this with him if you wish, but you won't make any headway.
 
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