Evolution answers

[nathan]

Is justintime arguing that evolution by random chance doesn't happen but science progresses mainly by random chance? That does seem a bit, er, conflicted.

 

[pantsorama]

Is justintime arguing that evolution by random chance doesn't happen but science progresses mainly by random chance? That does seem a bit, er, conflicted.

Probably. Or, more likely, he is saying that scientific progress is guided by the supernatural through the dumb luck of "discovery". But I don't want to put words in his mouth. Thus my direct question as to what he thinks it all means or implies.

But I'll bet it is the one where "Jebus brought us TV dinners via divine revelation that he disguised as dumb luck for...... reasons".

 

[John Jones]

We all know Mendel, Darwin, Newton and Einstein all fudged data and even made Colossal Mistakes in their conclusions/theories. [...]

We don't all know anything of the kind, but anyone at JREF who has been following your comedic antics knows that you have lied, misquoted, and dissimulated.

How has that been working out? You've gotten banned from a lot of places.

 

[Brian-M]

Here is a brief review of the book. It highlights the colossal blunders covered in the book. 'Brilliant Blunders'.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/b...nders-by-mario-livio.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Okay... so the "blunder" was getting the means of hereditary wrong. How does this invalidate the theory of evolution?

 

[Brian-M]

The scientific method allows for the prediction of outcome based on the hypothesis being true. These discoveries were not predicted but pure accidents, luck, unintended outcomes despite sloppy laboratory procedures.

Predicting the outcome based on a hypothesis isn't the start or end of the scientific process. Where did the hypothesis come from in the first place? It was created as a result of an observation... such as an unexpected result from an experiment.

 

[Kid Eager]

The most fundamental question of science is "Why Is It So?" (Prof Julius Sumner-Miller springs to mind).

Accidental discoveries are but one of the results of answering this question.

 

[John Jones]

Here is a brief review of the book. It highlights the colossal blunders covered in the book. 'Brilliant Blunders'.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/b...nders-by-mario-livio.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Review of Brilliant Blunders by Mario Livio
http://physics.about.com/od/physicsbooks/fr/BrilliantBlunders.htm

How do we know you didn't lie about these reviews like you did about page 78 of Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World?

Has anyone ever pointed-out to you that your credibility is not a boomerang?

Why yes. Yes they have! Someone recently pointed-out that once you've thrown your credibility away, it's not coming back.

I wish I could remember who said that.

 

[Sideroxylon]

The scientific method allows for the prediction of outcome based on the hypothesis being true. These discoveries were not predicted but pure accidents, luck, unintended outcomes despite sloppy laboratory procedures.

They may not have been predicted but it took theory to recognize the significance of the scintillation Rontgen observed. But so what if chance plays a role? Please try to demonstrate your point with reference to the thread topic.

 

[catsmate]

Certainly true, he's a well-known young-Earth creationist and ID proponent...

Indeed. A biblical literalist, YEC and general IDiot. He tried to teach creationism at San Francisco State in the '80s, but the university refused. Later he embarrassed himself as "expert" witness for the defense during most of the important creationist court cases. He's done no worthwile scientific research since the early '70s, indeed his recent material is purely creationist propaganda and apologetics.

From that article...


I suspect that there might be some religion-based bias in their conclusions.
<snipped for brevity>

Lots of engineers too but few people with relevant scientific qualifications and work. The Salem Hypothesis strikes again.

 

[justintime]

Foophil, here is a link to a site that also argues against evolution being a science. It goes beyond your friends 10 point creationists views by producing actual Evolution frauds, fossil gaps and list of unconvinced scientists. Maybe your friend is not aware of this site.

http://evolutionisntscience.wordpress.com/evolution-frauds/

 

[Dinwar]

Thanks for all the constructive feedback so far. My prior education in this subject matter was simply a general biology course plus a couple of core biology courses around 20 years ago in college when I was interested in this stuff. It all seemed so simple to grasp (in general) back then, and I find it... annoying... that others don't see it the same way.

The thing I love about science is that while much of it is counter-intuitive, it all makes sense. You can reason out the correct answer--and then prove that your answer IS correct. Honestly, the hardest part I've found is learning the jargon. Once you have that down, the rest is remarkably clear. Not EASY--it requires tremendous, constant effort--but the effort is its own reward most of the time.

Then explain with such a process in place. Why??:

"Many of the great discoveries of our past have been found through pure accident.

The reasons for these accidental discoveries range from clumsiness and luck to unclean or unsafe laboratory practices."

First off, this is a biased sample. "Many" and "great" are added to the "discoveries" in order to dismiss anything that doesn't fit the profile. Was the discovery of the iridium anomoly at the K/Pg boundary a great discovery? Iridium is common--the whole reason they went looking for it was to use it as a clock for sedimentation rates. Finding iridium where they were looking is something akin to finding pasta in a grocery store. Yet the implications of the Alvarez Hypothesis pretty radically shifted two entire fields of science. I'm a Neocatastraphist specifically because of my research into that event.

Second, you've completely misrepresented the scientific process. I would say "misunderstood", but I think you know perfectly well that you are lying; I'm merely responding to you because it offers me a chance to clarify a few things for any lurkers. No one has ever suggested that science ignore chance events. Such an action would be stupid (FYI, when I use the word I mean "activelly and willfully avoiding knowledge"). The real question is, what do you do with the data once you have it? That bacteria in the petri dish is all dead around that bit of bread you put in--what do you do? Discard the dish and start over? Or try to find out why? A scientist will try to figure out why the experiment went wrong, and systematically attempt to determine why that bread killed the bacteria they were trying to grow. THAT is the scientific method.

Hypotheses can come from anywhere, and any natural phenomenon--including those encountered by pure chance--is open for scientific investigation. It's what you do with these that determine whether one is engaging in science or not. Dreams about a snake eating its own tail are irrelevant to science; it's the systematic testing that determined the benzine ring structure that's scientific.

No, this does not mean that hypotheses are unscientific, or that science relies upon unscientific processes. Hypotheses CAN come from anywhere. In practice, they usually come from previous experiments and previous research. Scientists are immersed in the literature of their fields. When I go home from work I read papers about taphonomy, textbooks on vertebrate evolution, and journal articles on mammal migrations and techniques for gathering data from scraps of bone. If I eat alone, I read up on rodent evolution, or elephantid ecology. And I'm hardly unusual; in fact, I'm kind of a slacker compared to some of my friends when it comes to reading in my field. My point is, we can formulate hypotheses because we scientists make it a point to know the background data inside and out. This allows us to apply hypotheses to novel settings. Back when you were trying to prove that jargon was intended for obfuscation you posted an abstract on the retension of juvenile characteristics into adulthood in fish. Being ignorant of paleontology and evolutionary biology, you failed to make the connections that jump out at someone who lives and breaths this stuff. Seeing that paper was a chance event, but it takes a scientist to understand the implications of it.

There's also a number of specific processes that can be used to generate hypotheses. I like Strong Inferrence, and use it where I can. Basically, SI states that you need to formulate mutually exclusive working hypotheses that cover the entire range of possible answers to a question. So, going back to the fish evolution thing, one working hypothesis may be "Similar genes behaved similarly in hominids", while the other would be "Those genes did not behave similarly in hominids". Once we determine how similar they have to be (perhaps key events need to happen in order for that evolutionary mode to occur, and we can look for those), we have a hard and fast cut-off. Either it happens or it doesn't; evidence for one necessarily disproves the other. You can have more than two working hypotheses, but it quickly becomes difficult to make them mutually exclusive. There are other formal methods for developing hypotheses, but I'm not as well-versed in them.

 

[Wowbagger]

here is a link to a site that also argues against evolution being a science. It goes beyond your friends 10 point creationists views by producing actual Evolution frauds, fossil gaps and list of unconvinced scientists. Maybe your friend is not aware of this site.

http://evolutionisntscience.wordpress.com/evolution-frauds/

Not everything on there is a fraud. Sure, the Piltdown Man was. But, not Neanderthals, though. That site has a bunch of its facts wrong.

But, even if there were a few dozen legit frauds in evolution, there are thousands of big findings that are NOT fraudulent, that tell us a LOT about our history, and even a bit about our future:

Just one example is this list in this PDF document:

http://www.nature.com/nature/newspdf/evolutiongems.pdf

 

[Dinwar]

Creationists get soundly defeated when they actually engage in scientific debate with real researchers.

Also, the idea that gaps in the fossil record disprove evolution is laughable. First, we have FAR fewer gaps than most people realize; the stuff you see on display in a museum isn't even close to a percent of what we've found. Second, there are pretty big gaps in the rock record, so gaps in the fossil record are inevitable. Still, evolutionary theory demonstrably works. It allows us to accurately predict, for example, where ancestrial forms of organisms will be found and what they will look like. Even with the gaps, the fossil record demonstrates evolution to be true.

 

[pantsorama]

Foophil, here is a link to a site that also argues against evolution being a science. It goes beyond your friends 10 point creationists views by producing actual Evolution frauds, fossil gaps and list of unconvinced scientists. Maybe your friend is not aware of this site.

http://evolutionisntscience.wordpress.com/evolution-frauds/

Hmmm. So people using an idea incorrectly to enact fraud is evidence that the idea is wrong?

justintime, you and Peter Popoff just disproved God!

Nice work!

 

[Dissolution]

Mounting rejection of evolutionary theories by Canadian scientists and other evolutionary biologist.

Canadian scientists want out of Darwin's 'rut'

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=f0d3d638-ec38-4397-8015-96e92046e3a2

Another Evolutionary Biologist Finally Rejects The Bogus Theory of Evolution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2RZzyFTTXo

Are these scientists jumping on that list that was compiled by the Discovery Institute?
Considering your dim view of fraudulent claims about science, I'd have thought that you'd know just how big of one that list was.



Typical Creationist behaviour, I'm afraid.

 

[Brian-M]

Foophil, here is a link to a site that also argues against evolution being a science. It goes beyond your friends 10 point creationists views by producing actual Evolution frauds, fossil gaps and list of unconvinced scientists. Maybe your friend is not aware of this site.

http://evolutionisntscience.wordpress.com/evolution-frauds/

I'm less than impressed by that link.

Yes, there have been cases of scientific fraud in the field of evolution. So what? There have been far more cases of fraud in the field of medicine than evolution, but we don't conclude that medicine is invalid.

That site begins by saying...

Why are there evolution frauds.

In 1859, in his book Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin said: “Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, (why) do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?”. This is from chapter six entitled Difficulties on the Theory. Scientists who believe evolution have been searching for transitional forms ever since but they have been not found. Therefore, fraudulent fossils have been made and presented as transitional forms.

First of all, if you look up this quote in the Origin of Species (free eBook), it turns out that he's asking this question rhetorically, as an introduction to the answers he's about to give.

If you're interested in how he answers this question, here it is...

ON THE ABSENCE OR RARITY OF TRANSITIONAL VARIETIES.

As natural selection acts solely by the preservation of profitable
modifications, each new form will tend in a fully-stocked country to
take the place of, and finally to exterminate, its own less improved
parent or other less-favoured forms with which it comes into
competition. Thus extinction and natural selection will, as we have
seen, go hand in hand. Hence, if we look at each species as descended
from some other unknown form, both the parent and all the transitional
varieties will generally have been exterminated by the very process of
formation and perfection of the new form.

But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed,
why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of
the earth? It will be much more convenient to discuss this question in
the chapter on the Imperfection of the geological record; and I will
here only state that I believe the answer mainly lies in the record
being incomparably less perfect than is generally supposed; the
imperfection of the record being chiefly due to organic beings not
inhabiting profound depths of the sea, and to their remains being
embedded and preserved to a future age only in masses of sediment
sufficiently thick and extensive to withstand an enormous amount of
future degradation; and such fossiliferous masses can be accumulated
only where much sediment is deposited on the shallow bed of the sea,
whilst it slowly subsides. These contingencies will concur only rarely,
and after enormously long intervals. Whilst the bed of the sea
is stationary or is rising, or when very little sediment is being
deposited, there will be blanks in our geological history. The crust of
the earth is a vast museum; but the natural collections have been made
only at intervals of time immensely remote.

But it may be urged that when several closely-allied species inhabit
the same territory we surely ought to find at the present time many
transitional forms. Let us take a simple case: in travelling from north
to south over a continent, we generally meet at successive intervals
with closely allied or representative species, evidently filling nearly
the same place in the natural economy of the land. These representative
species often meet and interlock; and as the one becomes rarer and
rarer, the other becomes more and more frequent, till the one replaces
the other. But if we compare these species where they intermingle, they
are generally as absolutely distinct from each other in every detail of
structure as are specimens taken from the metropolis inhabited by each.
By my theory these allied species have descended from a common parent;
and during the process of modification, each has become adapted to
the conditions of life of its own region, and has supplanted and
exterminated its original parent and all the transitional varieties
between its past and present states. Hence we ought not to expect at
the present time to meet with numerous transitional varieties in each
region, though they must have existed there, and may be embedded
there in a fossil condition. But in the intermediate region, having
intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking
intermediate varieties? This difficulty for a long time quite confounded
me. But I think it can be in large part explained.

In the first place we should be extremely cautious in inferring, because
an area is now continuous, that it has been continuous during a long
period. Geology would lead us to believe that almost every continent has
been broken up into islands even during the later tertiary periods;
and in such islands distinct species might have been separately formed
without the possibility of intermediate varieties existing in the
intermediate zones. By changes in the form of the land and of climate,
marine areas now continuous must often have existed within recent times
in a far less continuous and uniform condition than at present. But I
will pass over this way of escaping from the difficulty; for I believe
that many perfectly defined species have been formed on strictly
continuous areas; though I do not doubt that the formerly broken
condition of areas now continuous has played an important part in the
formation of new species, more especially with freely-crossing and
wandering animals.

In looking at species as they are now distributed over a wide area,
we generally find them tolerably numerous over a large territory, then
becoming somewhat abruptly rarer and rarer on the confines, and finally
disappearing. Hence the neutral territory between two representative
species is generally narrow in comparison with the territory proper to
each. We see the same fact in ascending mountains, and sometimes it
is quite remarkable how abruptly, as Alph. De Candolle has observed,
a common alpine species disappears. The same fact has been noticed by
Forbes in sounding the depths of the sea with the dredge. To those who
look at climate and the physical conditions of life as the all-important
elements of distribution, these facts ought to cause surprise, as
climate and height or depth graduate away insensibly. But when we
bear in mind that almost every species, even in its metropolis, would
increase immensely in numbers, were it not for other competing species;
that nearly all either prey on or serve as prey for others; in short,
that each organic being is either directly or indirectly related in
the most important manner to other organic beings, we must see that the
range of the inhabitants of any country by no means exclusively depends
on insensibly changing physical conditions, but in large part on the
presence of other species, on which it depends, or by which it is
destroyed, or with which it comes into competition; and as these species
are already defined objects (however they may have become so), not
blending one into another by insensible gradations, the range of any one
species, depending as it does on the range of others, will tend to be
sharply defined. Moreover, each species on the confines of its range,
where it exists in lessened numbers, will, during fluctuations in the
number of its enemies or of its prey, or in the seasons, be extremely
liable to utter extermination; and thus its geographical range will come
to be still more sharply defined.

If I am right in believing that allied or representative species, when
inhabiting a continuous area, are generally so distributed that each
has a wide range, with a comparatively narrow neutral territory between
them, in which they become rather suddenly rarer and rarer; then, as
varieties do not essentially differ from species, the same rule will
probably apply to both; and if we in imagination adapt a varying species
to a very large area, we shall have to adapt two varieties to two
large areas, and a third variety to a narrow intermediate zone. The
intermediate variety, consequently, will exist in lesser numbers from
inhabiting a narrow and lesser area; and practically, as far as I can
make out, this rule holds good with varieties in a state of nature. I
have met with striking instances of the rule in the case of varieties
intermediate between well-marked varieties in the genus Balanus. And it
would appear from information given me by Mr. Watson, Dr. Asa Gray, and
Mr. Wollaston, that generally when varieties intermediate between two
other forms occur, they are much rarer numerically than the forms which
they connect. Now, if we may trust these facts and inferences, and
therefore conclude that varieties linking two other varieties together
have generally existed in lesser numbers than the forms which they
connect, then, I think, we can understand why intermediate varieties
should not endure for very long periods;--why as a general rule they
should be exterminated and disappear, sooner than the forms which they
originally linked together.

For any form existing in lesser numbers would, as already remarked,
run a greater chance of being exterminated than one existing in large
numbers; and in this particular case the intermediate form would be
eminently liable to the inroads of closely allied forms existing on both
sides of it. But a far more important consideration, as I believe, is
that, during the process of further modification, by which two varieties
are supposed on my theory to be converted and perfected into two
distinct species, the two which exist in larger numbers from inhabiting
larger areas, will have a great advantage over the intermediate variety,
which exists in smaller numbers in a narrow and intermediate zone.
For forms existing in larger numbers will always have a better chance,
within any given period, of presenting further favourable variations for
natural selection to seize on, than will the rarer forms which exist in
lesser numbers. Hence, the more common forms, in the race for life, will
tend to beat and supplant the less common forms, for these will be
more slowly modified and improved. It is the same principle which, as
I believe, accounts for the common species in each country, as shown
in the second chapter, presenting on an average a greater number of
well-marked varieties than do the rarer species. I may illustrate what I
mean by supposing three varieties of sheep to be kept, one adapted to an
extensive mountainous region; a second to a comparatively narrow, hilly
tract; and a third to wide plains at the base; and that the inhabitants
are all trying with equal steadiness and skill to improve their stocks
by selection; the chances in this case will be strongly in favour of the
great holders on the mountains or on the plains improving their breeds
more quickly than the small holders on the intermediate narrow, hilly
tract; and consequently the improved mountain or plain breed will soon
take the place of the less improved hill breed; and thus the two breeds,
which originally existed in greater numbers, will come into close
contact with each other, without the interposition of the supplanted,
intermediate hill-variety.

To sum up, I believe that species come to be tolerably well-defined
objects, and do not at any one period present an inextricable chaos of
varying and intermediate links: firstly, because new varieties are
very slowly formed, for variation is a very slow process, and natural
selection can do nothing until favourable variations chance to occur,
and until a place in the natural polity of the country can be better
filled by some modification of some one or more of its inhabitants.
And such new places will depend on slow changes of climate, or on the
occasional immigration of new inhabitants, and, probably, in a still
more important degree, on some of the old inhabitants becoming slowly
modified, with the new forms thus produced and the old ones acting and
reacting on each other. So that, in any one region and at any one time,
we ought only to see a few species presenting slight modifications of
structure in some degree permanent; and this assuredly we do see.

Secondly, areas now continuous must often have existed within the
recent period in isolated portions, in which many forms, more especially
amongst the classes which unite for each birth and wander much, may have
separately been rendered sufficiently distinct to rank as representative
species. In this case, intermediate varieties between the several
representative species and their common parent, must formerly have
existed in each broken portion of the land, but these links will
have been supplanted and exterminated during the process of natural
selection, so that they will no longer exist in a living state.

Thirdly, when two or more varieties have been formed in different
portions of a strictly continuous area, intermediate varieties will, it
is probable, at first have been formed in the intermediate zones, but
they will generally have had a short duration. For these intermediate
varieties will, from reasons already assigned (namely from what we know
of the actual distribution of closely allied or representative species,
and likewise of acknowledged varieties), exist in the intermediate zones
in lesser numbers than the varieties which they tend to connect. From
this cause alone the intermediate varieties will be liable to accidental
extermination; and during the process of further modification through
natural selection, they will almost certainly be beaten and supplanted
by the forms which they connect; for these from existing in greater
numbers will, in the aggregate, present more variation, and thus be
further improved through natural selection and gain further advantages.

Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be
true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all the
species of the same group together, must assuredly have existed; but the
very process of natural selection constantly tends, as has been so often
remarked, to exterminate the parent forms and the intermediate links.
Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only
amongst fossil remains, which are preserved, as we shall in a future
chapter attempt to show, in an extremely imperfect and intermittent
record.

(Placed in a spoiler to avoid flooding the thread with a wall-of-text.)


The next point it makes is about Ernst Haeckel's "fraudulent" embryo drawings...

Today – believe it or not – Haeckel’s drawings still appear in many high school and college textbooks. Among them are “Evolutionary Biology” by Douglas J. Futuyma (Third Edition, Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 1998), and also the bedrock text, “Molecular Biology of the Cell” (third edition), whose authors include biochemist Dr. Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences.

It sounds shocking that embryo pictures that are known to have been inaccurate for over a century still appear in modern biology textbooks. But a quick dip into Wikipedia reveals a benign reason for this...

Some version of Haeckel’s drawings can be found in many modern biology textbooks in discussions of the history of embryology, with clarification that these are no longer considered valid​

Hardly the conspiracy of fraud that the article makes it appear to be.

The next topic of discussion is "Piltdown man, deliberate evolution fraud". Fraud, yes. But not one perpetuated by the scientific community. Instead, the scientific community was the victim of the fraud.

Then it goes on to talk about "Nebraska Man. False evolutionary model made from a pigs tooth. The pig was still alive too." This is not an example of scientific fraud of any kind. In fact, the claim that an "evolutionary model" was created on the basis of that tooth is a lie.

What happened was that Dr. Osborn and Dr. William D. Matthew mistakenly classified a discovered tooth as belonging to an unknown anthropoid ape with a closer connection to humans than any existing ape. Most of the scientific community regarded the findings as inconclusive, and the two researchers later retracted their statement when they realized their mistake. That's the entire story as far as the scientific community was involved.

But before the retraction was made a newspaper published an artist's impression of what the ape might have looked like, a picture that Dr. Osborn himself described as "a figment of the imagination of no scientific value, and undoubtedly inaccurate". But the damage was done, and the general public got the wrong impression that the image was what the scientists had concluded that the ape would have looked like from the basis of nothing more than a tooth.

But even though the image was not produced by scientists or "evolutionists", the page you link to falsely claims that "single tooth was all it took for evolutionists to come up with the drawing you see above".

I could go on and criticize every point which that site gets wrong, but I don't think that would be a productive use of my time.

 

[justintime]

The thing I love about science is that while much of it is counter-intuitive, it all makes sense. You can reason out the correct answer--and then prove that your answer IS correct. Honestly, the hardest part I've found is learning the jargon. Once you have that down, the rest is remarkably clear. Not EASY--it requires tremendous, constant effort--but the effort is its own reward most of the time.

First off, this is a biased sample. "Many" and "great" are added to the "discoveries" in order to dismiss anything that doesn't fit the profile. Was the discovery of the iridium anomoly at the K/Pg boundary a great discovery? Iridium is common--the whole reason they went looking for it was to use it as a clock for sedimentation rates. Finding iridium where they were looking is something akin to finding pasta in a grocery store. Yet the implications of the Alvarez Hypothesis pretty radically shifted two entire fields of science. I'm a Neocatastraphist specifically because of my research into that event.

Second, you've completely misrepresented the scientific process. I would say "misunderstood", but I think you know perfectly well that you are lying; I'm merely responding to you because it offers me a chance to clarify a few things for any lurkers. No one has ever suggested that science ignore chance events. Such an action would be stupid (FYI, when I use the word I mean "activelly and willfully avoiding knowledge"). The real question is, what do you do with the data once you have it? That bacteria in the petri dish is all dead around that bit of bread you put in--what do you do? Discard the dish and start over? Or try to find out why? A scientist will try to figure out why the experiment went wrong, and systematically attempt to determine why that bread killed the bacteria they were trying to grow. THAT is the scientific method.

Hypotheses can come from anywhere, and any natural phenomenon--including those encountered by pure chance--is open for scientific investigation. It's what you do with these that determine whether one is engaging in science or not. Dreams about a snake eating its own tail are irrelevant to science; it's the systematic testing that determined the benzine ring structure that's scientific.

No, this does not mean that hypotheses are unscientific, or that science relies upon unscientific processes. Hypotheses CAN come from anywhere. In practice, they usually come from previous experiments and previous research. Scientists are immersed in the literature of their fields. When I go home from work I read papers about taphonomy, textbooks on vertebrate evolution, and journal articles on mammal migrations and techniques for gathering data from scraps of bone. If I eat alone, I read up on rodent evolution, or elephantid ecology. And I'm hardly unusual; in fact, I'm kind of a slacker compared to some of my friends when it comes to reading in my field. My point is, we can formulate hypotheses because we scientists make it a point to know the background data inside and out. This allows us to apply hypotheses to novel settings. Back when you were trying to prove that jargon was intended for obfuscation you posted an abstract on the retension of juvenile characteristics into adulthood in fish. Being ignorant of paleontology and evolutionary biology, you failed to make the connections that jump out at someone who lives and breaths this stuff. Seeing that paper was a chance event, but it takes a scientist to understand the implications of it.

There's also a number of specific processes that can be used to generate hypotheses. I like Strong Inferrence, and use it where I can. Basically, SI states that you need to formulate mutually exclusive working hypotheses that cover the entire range of possible answers to a question. So, going back to the fish evolution thing, one working hypothesis may be "Similar genes behaved similarly in hominids", while the other would be "Those genes did not behave similarly in hominids". Once we determine how similar they have to be (perhaps key events need to happen in order for that evolutionary mode to occur, and we can look for those), we have a hard and fast cut-off. Either it happens or it doesn't; evidence for one necessarily disproves the other. You can have more than two working hypotheses, but it quickly becomes difficult to make them mutually exclusive. There are other formal methods for developing hypotheses, but I'm not as well-versed in them.

The last thing we need is a hypothesis of the scientific method itself. It is a method used to establish facts/truth and at best arrives at a hypothesis of both because even upon verifying the facts/truth it is still subject to change when the process fails to repeat the results or an alternate explanation is offered. This is the best case scenario for the scientific method. when it appears to be working as hypothesized.

But then many of the great discoveries have been found through pure accident and even attributed to luck, clumsiness, to unclean or unsafe (sloppy) laboratory practices and not where the outcome was predicted.

Scientists will take credit for anything and everything. Unfortunately not many accidental discoveries in evolution have been dramatic.One can even say most of evidence for evolution were discovered accidentally. Fossils found in Canada, Middle-east, China contradict the Out of Africa theory and even suggestions that migration occurred at times quite different from the original theory.

Evolution is not a science it is a theory and the scientific method applied is very questionable because the hypothesis follows after the fact of a discovery and is often forced fitted into the existing evolution theory.

Any number of fabrications and retractions have followed fossil claims and fraud has been exposed. Unfortunately "The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity."

 

[Aridas]

Foophil, here is a link to a site that also argues against evolution being a science. It goes beyond your friends 10 point creationists views by producing actual Evolution frauds, fossil gaps and list of unconvinced scientists. Maybe your friend is not aware of this site.

http://evolutionisntscience.wordpress.com/evolution-frauds/

Incidentally... when one actually looks at the whole picture for each of those stories, rather than just the rather skewed accounting there with its half-truths and blatant lies, science still comes out in an overwhelmingly more positive light than creationism. Of those listed... only two even count as what could actually be viably considered issues at all - the Piltdown man and Haeckel's theory/drawings... and it was science that determined that they were frauds, proclaimed it openly, and has treated it as such since such was determined to be the case. Claiming that modern evolutionary theory is in any way affected by showing that falsified and not used theories have been falsified is, well, not even remotely going to work. Creationists have a long history of using arguments even after they're demonstrated to be wrong... over and over again, the website linked just being another an example of such. As for fraud... the creationists spreading claims, like, say, Kent Hovind, seem to engage in a remarkable amount of that in multiple ways, as a separate point.

 

[Dinwar]

First of all, if you look up this quote in the Origin of Species (free eBook), it turns out that he's asking this question rhetorically, as an introduction to the answers he's about to give.

Since Creationist "research" consists of cherry-picking, Darwin's habit of actually presenting the other side of the argument before addressing it is a gold mine. It's entirely possible to makek Darwin look like he's refuting his own theory--provided one is willing to abandon all principles of rational discourse.

The last thing we need is a hypothesis of the scientific method itself.

I'm unaware of any justification for refusing to allow an expert to comment on their own methodology.

It is a method used to establish facts/truth and at best arrives at a hypothesis of both because even upon verifying the facts/truth it is still subject to change when the process fails to repeat the results or an alternate explanation is offered.

Translation: You don't like science because it's subject to change once new data is discovered. Considering no better alternative has ever been presented, I'd say that's your problem, not a fault in science.

But then many of the great discoveries have been found through pure accident and even attributed to luck, clumsiness, to unclean or unsafe (sloppy) laboratory practices and not where the outcome was predicted.

This is why we run experiments: sometimes our understanding of the system in question is wrong, and it's far better to actually test it than to ignore that fact.

Scientists will take credit for anything and everything.

Lie. Scientists are rather obsessed with providing proper citations and giving credit where it is due.

Unfortunately not many accidental discoveries in evolution have been dramatic.

It would be fortunate if they WERE dramatic? That's nonsensical.

Fossils found in Canada, Middle-east, China contradict the Out of Africa theory and even suggestions that migration occurred at times quite different from the original theory.

No data refutes the Out Of Africa theory for the origins of Homo sapiens sapiens. Some interesting fosslis are helping us refine the theory, but the basic framework holds true: humans evolved in Africa, than spread out to the rest of the world.

Evolution is not a science it is a theory...

Technically true (hey, blind pigs CAN find truffles!). Evolution is not a science. Evolutionary biology, paleontology, molecular biology, taxonomy, cladistics, genetics, genetic engineering, etc. are sciences, and evolutionary theory serves as the foundation for all of them.

...and the scientific method applied is very questionable because the hypothesis follows after the fact of a discovery and is often forced fitted into the existing evolution theory.

That's not how it works. Chance discoveries can spur new hypotheses, which are then subject to rigorous testing. Most of paleontology spent the 1980s and the 1990s testing the Alvarez Hypothesis, and some people are continuing to test it today. And no new discovery is "forced fitted into the existing evolution theory". Some--such as the Burgess Shale--revolutionize evolutionary theory. Others, such as Ida, were long predicted by only recently found.

Any number of fabrications and retractions have followed fossil claims and fraud has been exposed.

If by "any number" you mean "a vanishingly small number", then yes. A very few incidents of fraud and fabrications have occurred. It is unfortunate, but it's the way humans work. Some have been quite spectacular, such as Richard Owen's work. Others were known to be wrong pretty much from the beginning, though Creationists would prefer we don't remember that. That said, the overwhelming majority of publications--far above 99%--are perfectly honest.

Unfortunately "The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity."

You have yet to show any lack of integrity besides your own.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Evolution is not a science it is a theory

Wha....?