Evolution a hoax?

[Darat]

...snip...

I think being as diplomatic as possible is still an essential ingredient no matter what approach you take with your arguments.

I disgaree, I think different people respond to different approaches in different way, the problem is finding the right approach to use with a given individual. (And that's in general for any type of discussion in which you are trying to change someone's mind.)

 

[catsmate]

I think that the concept of an ancient man in England hit the right note with a number of the English scientific establishment. As far as hard scientific appraisal was concerned, it was almost immediately cited as a possible mistake by other continental scientists. The Brit David Waterston, French paleontologist Marcellin Boule and American zoologist Garrit Smith concluded the jaw was an ape jaw within a year or two of the announcement in 1912. In 1923 the German Franz Weidenreich accurately described it as "modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth".

Interestingly, the writer of the wiki article finds that these sorts of national prejudices and expectational finds were quite often to be found in science, down to the middle of the century, when Nazi and other nationalist excesses burned them out of science. One thing to thank Hitler and Mussolini for, I suppose. A reverse Godwin.

Indeed Relativity had difficulty making inroads in the British establishment due to its German origins.

 

[Dave Rogers]

It's amusing to see creationists try to debunk evolution incompetently, but it's far more satisfying to see the tables turned. I've just seen this, on the BBC Nature blog: Phil Senter, of Fayette State University, NC, is analysing the appearance of dinosaurs using techniques that creation scientists use to try to disprove evolution, and finding that the assumptions of creationists require that evolution took place over geologically short timescales. I can't access the whole paper, but the abstract makes entertaining reading.

Dave

 

[randman]

Etch fresh bones with acid and no cells will remain. The reason you treat such items with acid is to get rid of any organic contaminants.

And as Wile does not give a reference to his sources, why don't YOU look at the data?

So you just make stuff up? He gives the references for all to see very plainly. Here they are for this article, for example:

REFERENCES

1. Nielson-Marsh, Christina, “Biomolecules in fossil remains: Multidisciplinary approach to endurance,” The Biochemist, 12-14, June 2002
Return to Text

2. Johan Lindgren, et. al., “Microspectroscopic Evidence of Cretaceous Bone Proteins,” The Biochemist, PLoS ONE, 2011
Return to Text

From one of the references:

.

These data are corroborated by synchrotron radiation-based infrared microspectroscopic studies demonstrating that amino acid containing matter is located in bone matrix fibrils that express imprints of the characteristic 67 nm D-periodicity typical of collagen. Moreover, the fibrils differ significantly in spectral signature from those of potential modern bacterial contaminants, such as biofilms and collagen-like proteins., the preservation of primary soft tissues and biomolecules is not limited to large-sized bones buried in fluvial sandstone environments, but also occurs in relatively small-sized skeletal elements deposited in marine sediments.

So care to retract the false accusation he doesn't include references?

 

[Wowbagger]

I disgaree, I think different people respond to different approaches in different way, the problem is finding the right approach to use with a given individual. (And that's in general for any type of discussion in which you are trying to change someone's mind.)

If your approach is too demeaning to your opponent, it only drives them down the hole of cognitive dissonance that much further, making the situation worse, not better.

Maybe it is possible to find ways of getting the "gears" churning in the minds of creationists, while also acting "like a dick". But, it won't be nearly as easy as acting like a somewhat nice guy.

 

[randman]

A scientist able to prove that dozens of dating techniques were incorrect would up-end a hundred years of science and become a multi, multi millionaire, and would earn so many nobel prizes he could melt them down and have them forged into a car*. Strange how nobody has been interested enough to follow this up.


*The car would be called the Nobelmobile, by the way.

Nah. Might be recognized years later and that happen but the old guard isn't going to let a little thing like facts get in their way, imo.

 

[randman]

They could have taken the opportunity to point out that there have been a few hoaxes from evolution scientists (such as Piltdown Man), though better and more reliable evidence still shows evolutionary theory to be accurate.

And, it was scientists, not Creationists, that finally clinched the case of the actual hoaxes being hoaxes, once the more reliable evidence started pouring in.

But, no, they'd rather turn it into a joke. Yes, it is funny. I did get a laugh out of it. But, for what?! I think there is a real lost opportunity when the page looks like that.

There is a typical embedded lie in your comment, namely suggesting a distinction between scientists and creationists as if creationists are not scientists. Just like many "evolutionists" are not scientists but there are evolutionist scientists, the same is true for creationism, Intelligent Design and non-Darwinian evos. The sad thing is you are apparently so indoctrinated that you are unaware of this fallacy in your thinking so that even someone like you that wants to be more "diplomatic" cannot see the blindness and irrationality of your thinking.

It is an undeniable fact there are creationist and ID scientists. Moreover, many of them have been involved in exposing the errors of evolutionists and yet when evos finally come around, you and others pretend creationists and IDers played no role whatsoever.

 

[phunk]

Nah. Might be recognized years later and that happen but the old guard isn't going to let a little thing like facts get in their way, imo.

That's silly rand, the last thing scientists want is stasis. It would put them all out of jobs. New science means more work for scientists.

 

[Acleron]

So you just make stuff up? He gives the references for all to see very plainly. Here they are for this article, for example:



From one of the references:

.

So care to retract the false accusation he doesn't include references?

I apologise, I didn't see the read more link at the bottom.

But I stand by the statement that acid removes organic material and therefore you would not expect to see organic material. What you may see is the occlusion left by those cells, which is all you expect to see. Care to comment on that?

 

[randman]

Though the evidence does not show a young earth, there is evidence that we don't actually understand radioactive decay as well as once thought; that it is not as constant as theory suggested. Wile's comments here are measured and instructive, imo.

Because I am a nuclear chemist, there are certain things I don’t want to believe. For example, I don’t want to believe quantum mechanics is wrong just because it is incompatible with general relativity. ....

For a long time, there was something else I didn’t want to believe. I didn’t want to believe that the half-lives of radioactive isotopes could change. It seemed so clear to me at the time: radioactive half-lives depend on the energetics of the nucleus, and the energy levels in the nucleus are (roughly speaking) about 100,000 times that of the electrons in an atom. Thus, if nature exposes a radioactive atom to stress, the electrons should be the ones that deal with the stress, not the nucleus. The nucleus is under the electron cloud, and it deals in energies that are so much greater than electron energies, that the electrons effectively “shield” the nucleus from being affected by most of the stress that nature can throw at it.

Over the years, however, the data have drug me (kicking and screaming the entire way) to the point where I have to admit that radioactive half-lives can change, and in some cases, they can change quite substantially.


For example, Otto Reifenschweiler showed that when tritium (a radioactive form of hydrogen) was incorporated into small particles of titanium and heated, the radioactivity of the tritium decreased by 40%1. This means the half-life of the radioactive decay increased. F. Raiola and his collaborators saw a roughly 6 percent decreased half-life for a radioactive form of polonium when it is layered in copper metal. 2. Interestingly enough, Raiola’s paper references another study that I am waiting on from interlibrary loan in which the same form of radioactive polonium had a 300% shorter half-life when it is layered in palladium.


Nuclear chemists and physicists have no coherent model to account for these changes in radioactive half-life. However, that is not unusual. It often takes generations for theorists to actually explain why experimentalists see what they have seen. Also, the explanation is not nearly as important to me as the fact that it clearly can happen, even though all my education (through graduate school) said that such a thing is clearly impossible.

In fact, it seems that what was considered impossible just 20 years ago is being demonstrated all over the place. Indeed, there is now clear and convincing evidence that the rate of radioactive decay varies (slightly, but still measurably) based on the distance between the earth and the sun! 3 Interestingly enough, two independent labs have been seeing this effect since the early 1980s, but both were too afraid to publish the results, thinking they were making some systematic error. Instead, the error is clearly in the assumption that radioactive half-lives are constant.

http://blog.drwile.com/?p=297

 

[randman]

I apologise, I didn't see the read more link at the bottom.

But I stand by the statement that acid removes organic material and therefore you would not expect to see organic material. What you may see is the occlusion left by those cells, which is all you expect to see. Care to comment on that?

If Wiles was not as accurate in his language, the study itself is and clearly shows collagen and bio-organic molecules being preserved. Since the initial discovery of bio-organic molecules in dino-bones, many tried to debunk it precisely because it's so astonishing and conflicting with bio-chemistry for preservation to last tens of millions or years, but they keep finding more and publishing those findings.

Some said maybe it was the sandstone, exceptional preservation cased in very large bones, but now we see that's not accurate.

To pretend this isn't a problem is just putting one's head in the sand. I was not a YECer but this is pretty powerful evidence our dating methods are wrong. I still accept a vaguely old earth but don't think based on this that it's nearly as old as conventional science thought.

 

[randman]

That's silly rand, the last thing scientists want is stasis. It would put them all out of jobs. New science means more work for scientists.

I think you don't really understand what happens when science becomes politicized or turned into a pseudo-religion. Just look at the shenanigans of the warmers. Even if you believe in anthropogenic global warming, there is no legitimate defense for their unscientific approach. I don't want to get off into that since it'd be a different thread but man has created myths for himself for a long time.

Scientists apparently do it as well. The whole NeoDarwinian narrative is just an elaborate example of modern myth-making.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Though the evidence does not show a young earth, there is evidence that we don't actually understand radioactive decay as well as once thought; that it is not as constant as theory suggested. Wile's comments here are measured and instructive, imo.

Sounds like grasping at very short straws to me. Googling your claims doesn't give a lot of reason to believe these are even accepted, repeated observations. Secondly they don't have any resemblance to elements or decay modes that are used in dating. Thirdly, assuming these are accurate and unexplained, why would that impact what we know about other elements?

 

[Wowbagger]

It is an undeniable fact there are creationist and ID scientists.

I know that there are scientists who also happen to be creationists and ID proponents. But, neither creationism nor ID is an element in any productive science they actually do.

"Creation Science" did not unravel the Piltdown hoax. Evolutionary scientists did. Creationism did not have any actual empirical means for deducing the nature of the hoax. Meanwhile, evolutionary clues from other investigations made the Piltdown speciman look more and more inaccurate and questionable over time.

 

[randman]

I know that there are scientists who also happen to be creationists and ID proponents. But, neither creationism nor ID is an element in any productive science they actually do.

"Creation Science" did not unravel the Piltdown hoax. Evolutionary scientists did. Creationism did not have any actual empirical means for deducing the nature of the hoax. Meanwhile, evolutionary clues from other investigations made the Piltdown speciman look more and more inaccurate and questionable over time.

That's not true at all. You are right to say there are scientists that happen to be creationists and Iders but wholly wrong to claim creationism and Intelligent Design has no "element in any productive science they actually do."

I will presume you are just ignorant of their work, but regardless it's still a lie; ID and creationism do play a significant role in some of their productive work.

 

[Acleron]

If Wiles was not as accurate in his language, the study itself is and clearly shows collagen and bio-organic molecules being preserved. Since the initial discovery of bio-organic molecules in dino-bones, many tried to debunk it precisely because it's so astonishing and conflicting with bio-chemistry for preservation to last tens of millions or years, but they keep finding more and publishing those findings.

Some said maybe it was the sandstone, exceptional preservation cased in very large bones, but now we see that's not accurate.

To pretend this isn't a problem is just putting one's head in the sand. I was not a YECer but this is pretty powerful evidence our dating methods are wrong. I still accept a vaguely old earth but don't think based on this that it's nearly as old as conventional science thought.

OK, I've looked at those references now. The first by Nielson-Marsh is just an overview of the what needs to be done, 2/3rds of the results she presents are unpublished.

The second paper is more interesting. It certainly looks as if they found collagen, but the problem not addressed by the paper is where did it come from? They need to produce the correct control when looking at the edge of sensitivity. Perhaps a rock of similar composition without a fossil present or the fossil itself subject to high temperature to remove any organic material, and then carry out the same examinations again at the same time as their fossil. Hopefully, this would eliminate contamination from those handling the materials.

It is not impossible that collagen can survive such periods, just unlikely. The decay of proteins usually follows a logarithmic curve. Collagen is a repeating polypeptide so finding fragments that still bind to antibody is more likely that for other proteins. But the techniques used are being forced to their limits, hence the need for very careful controls.

So, no, it is not powerful evidence and does not conflict with dating techniques.

 

[Wowbagger]

That's not true at all. You are right to say there are scientists that happen to be creationists and Iders but wholly wrong to claim creationism and Intelligent Design has no "element in any productive science they actually do."

I will presume you are just ignorant of their work, but regardless it's still a lie; ID and creationism do play a significant role in some of their productive work.

I have asked countless times for examples of productive results coming from creationists and IDers. The best example I've seen was the computer game Spore. (Yes, it is possible to create a fun computer game based on the principles of Intelligent Design. I will concede that much. )

The Theory of Evolution, on the otherhand, has a rich history of delivering reliable solutions to real world problems, in the field of biology, and beyond!

There is a great resource of examples to be found here:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/search/topics.php?topic_id=15

If I am wrong about the value of I.D., perhaps you can share some examples of what it can do for us.

 

[dafydd]

If I am wrong about the value of I.D., perhaps you can share some examples of what it can do for us.

Make us laugh?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Make us laugh?

I have to thank you for the link that started all of this fun.

 

[dafydd]

I have to thank you for the link that started all of this fun.

You are very welcome.