Behe visits Columbia
Peter Nyikos
book _Darwin's Black Box_, visited Columbia, SC and gave several
talks. Two of them were lectures to general audiences on the
campus of the University of South Carolina. The first began on
Thursday, January 28 at 7:30 pm and took place in the Russell House
Ballroom. The second began on Friday at 4 pm and took place in
a large lecture hall in the Physical Sciences Center. The latter
was the first in a series of four lectures sponsored by the University
of South Carolina on the general subject of evolution. Daniel Dennett
will be one of the other three speakers.
Both lectures were given to near-capacity crowds. After each
there were question-and-answer sessions which were quite lively,
to say the least, but Behe fielded the questions quite well.
The first lecture hewed quite closely to the content of
portions of _Darwin's Black Box_. The second ranged further,
giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
evidence in mainstream science, including the phony pictures
by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
peppered moth case.
It was in the first lecture that Behe used a transparency
which has been the source of heated controversy in talk.origins.
I will be doing posts on that controversy to this thread. The
transparency ran exactly as follows, except for linebreaks:
Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure:
0
The second lecture did not use the transparency. Behe has
confirmed that he uses two versions of this transparency in
lectures, the more frequently used one having a smaller 0 than the
other one. The rest of the text is the same.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
PZ Myers
<nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
[snip]
>It was in the first lecture that Behe used a transparency
>which has been the source of heated controversy in talk.origins.
>I will be doing posts on that controversy to this thread. The
>transparency ran exactly as follows, except for linebreaks:
>
>
> Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
> detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure:
>
> 0
>
>
>The second lecture did not use the transparency. Behe has
>confirmed that he uses two versions of this transparency in
>lectures, the more frequently used one having a smaller 0 than the
>other one. The rest of the text is the same.
>
Dang. Mark and I are caught. We've been lying. Ooooh.
Really. That's your "proof" that we've been misrepresenting Behe? This is
something different than what we've been saying?
--
PZ Myers
Matt Silberstein
<nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
[snip]
> The second ranged further,
>giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
>evidence in mainstream science, including the phony pictures
>by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
>peppered moth case.
>
He really offered 100 year old events as evidence of something? Was he
giving a history of science lecture or one promoting his scientific
breakthrough?
[snip]
Matt Silberstein
-------------------------------------------------------
Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing
more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (who was an aviator and aircraft designer
when he wasn't being the author of classic children's books)
Mark J. Koebbe
>
> On January 28-30, Michael Behe, author of the controversy-generating
> book _Darwin's Black Box_, visited Columbia, SC and gave several
> talks. Two of them were lectures to general audiences on the
> campus of the University of South Carolina. The first began on
> Thursday, January 28 at 7:30 pm and took place in the Russell House
> Ballroom. The second began on Friday at 4 pm and took place in
> a large lecture hall in the Physical Sciences Center. The latter
> was the first in a series of four lectures sponsored by the University
> of South Carolina on the general subject of evolution. Daniel Dennett
> will be one of the other three speakers.
>
> Both lectures were given to near-capacity crowds. After each
> there were question-and-answer sessions which were quite lively,
> to say the least, but Behe fielded the questions quite well.
With boku examples of 'designed' events I suppose.
> The first lecture hewed quite closely to the content of
> portions of _Darwin's Black Box_. The second ranged further,
> giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
> evidence in mainstream science,
And still no constraints on a 'design'...let alone intelligent.
including the phony pictures
> by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
> peppered moth case.
Ho-hum...I suppose he discussed the Baer synthesis by contrast (not
likely...don't want to give any credit to evolutionists).
>
> It was in the first lecture that Behe used a transparency
> which has been the source of heated controversy in talk.origins.
There was no controversy....just Peter and Julie quibbling.
> I will be doing posts on that controversy to this thread. The
> transparency ran exactly as follows, except for linebreaks:
>
> Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
> detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure:
>
> 0
>
> The second lecture did not use the transparency.
So far everything you've offered has validated what Paul and I have
said. I suppose Peter will now quibble over the size.
Behe has
> confirmed that he uses two versions of this transparency in
> lectures, the more frequently used one having a smaller 0 than the
> other one. The rest of the text is the same.
So he did have a 0 on a transparency. Gee, Peter, did you think he did
this for effect? BTW, just how many of the articles in JME were you
able to read before he pulled the overhead? How many did he discuss? Be
very specific so that we can start quibbling over minutia just like you.
Peter and his quibbles. The point has stood....Was this the alleged
'thunder' and 'lightning'. Looks and sounds like another fizzler.
MJK
nyi...@math.sc.edu
my...@astro.ocis.temple.edu (PZ Myers) wrote:
> In article <1999020219...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>, Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >which has been the source of heated controversy in talk.origins.
> >transparency ran exactly as follows, except for linebreaks:
> >
> >
> > Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
> > detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure:
> >
> > 0
> >
> >
> >confirmed that he uses two versions of this transparency in
> >lectures, the more frequently used one having a smaller 0 than the
> >other one. The rest of the text is the same.
> >
>
I wonder whether this piece of sarcasm is meant to imply (1) that
I have not caught Mark and/or you lying about this particlular
transparency or (2) that nobody in this newsgroup besides me gives
a damn whether you lie regularly in talk.origins.
> Really. That's your "proof" that we've been misrepresenting Behe?
There's plenty more where the quote below comes from,
including a passage in which you and Mark flatly contradicted
each other, and which you snipped when you followed up to
a post in which I documented the contradiction. I've posted
it below, too, just so Andrew MacRae and other fans of yours
can see just how often
you run away from documentation.
This is
> something different than what we've been saying?
Of course it is, and you know it. You said about a month ago:
To paraphrase him, he said, 'with a title like the Journal of Molecular
Evolution, they ought
to be publishing articles on the evolution of molecules. I've looked
carefully at the last 5 years of this journal.' He then asked the
audience the rhetorical question, 'How many articles on evolution
do you think they've published?' before putting up a cheesy overhead
with nothing but the numeral 0 on it, in big, bold print.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
In writing "To paraphrase him," you made a mockery of the word
"paraphrase". The second statement 'How many...' is a
defamatory misrepresentation. And the highlighted words are
an outright lie.
In your post where you deleted the documentation I repost below,
you backed away from your lie without apologizing for it,
claiming that if there was something else on the transparency,
it was in "fine print". Yet you were close enough to measure
the 0 and give us details on how high it was.
What was that figure you gave, again? Did it apply to the
actual transparency or to the projection on the screen?
And now, here is that repost which shows the glaring discrepancy
between your `testimony' and that of Mark, who seemed to be letting
you do all your talking for him in the thread where I first
reposted it. Names added in brackets.
========================= begin excerpt from a Jan 4 post by Mark
[Myers:]
> >>What he is saying in those lectures is quite explicit. Here in
> >>Philadelphia he showed an overhead of the table of contents of an
> >>issue of JME, and went on at some length about what we ought to be
> >>seeing published in such a journal.
[Julie Thomas:]
> >Tsk, tsk. Up to this point, all the pack members have omitted this most
> >crucial qualifier. Pay attention kiddies:
> >
> >" and went on at some length about what we ought to be seeing
> >published in such a journal ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> >Well, well.
> >
> >When he went on at some length about what we ought
> >to be seeing published in JME, explain what he said.
> >What ought we be seeing? His book is explicit and he
> >even suggests how these studies might be titled (p. 176)
[Julie Thomas, in later post:]
> Paul doesn't tell us what Behe said when he went on at some
> length about what we ought to be seeing published in JME.
Because he didn't...and I and others concur. Watch the goal posts move
again.
========================== end of excerpt
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Peter Nyikos
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> On January 28-30, Michael Behe, author of the controversy-generating
>> book _Darwin's Black Box_, visited Columbia, SC and gave several
>> talks. Two of them were lectures to general audiences on the
>> campus of the University of South Carolina. The first began on
>> Thursday, January 28 at 7:30 pm and took place in the Russell House
>> Ballroom. The second began on Friday at 4 pm and took place in
>> a large lecture hall in the Physical Sciences Center. The latter
>> was the first in a series of four lectures sponsored by the University
>> of South Carolina on the general subject of evolution. Daniel Dennett
>> will be one of the other three speakers.
>>
>> Both lectures were given to near-capacity crowds. After each
>> there were question-and-answer sessions which were quite lively,
>> to say the least, but Behe fielded the questions quite well.
>With boku examples of 'designed' events I suppose.
Guess again. He never claimed any given event was designed,
and even said that science does not deal in certainties.
Oh, wait. You weren't really guessing. You put the word "designed"
in 'inverted commas' instead of quotes. So you were indulging
in innuendo to the effect that Behe presented things he
never presented at Temple University, right?
>> The first lecture hewed quite closely to the content of
>> portions of _Darwin's Black Box_. The second ranged further,
>> giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
>> evidence in mainstream science,
>And still no constraints on a 'design'...let alone intelligent.
What are you babbling about? I've posted beaucoup [note the
correct spelling, Mark] articles this year alone on the subject
of directed panspermy, in which the designers were constrained
just as we ourselves are. One hypothesis, involving what
are informally called "Xordaxians", postulates creatures with
our own genetic code doing modest manipulations that could
be within our reach this coming century, if biochemistry
and biotechnology keeps progressing at the rate it's been
progressing for the last fifty years.
The other hypothesis, involving what are informally called
"Throomians", is more ambitious, because it essentially
involves designing a whole prokaryote from scratch,
but if we keep progressing
for another ten thousand years at our present rate, we
might be able to accomplish such wonders too.
There's a trade-off: it is much easier to imagine the abiogenesis
of the Throomian life forms than that of the Xordaxians,
because Throomian life is based on RNA instead of on DNA and
on our fantastically machine-like protein synthesis mechanism
and genetic code.
> including the phony pictures
>> by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
>> peppered moth case.
>Ho-hum...
I suppose evidence of fraud by fanatical atheists always evokes this
reaction from you. Maybe that's why you and Paul Myers
get along so well.
>I suppose he discussed the Baer synthesis by contrast
No, but von Baer, to give him his correct name, was supposedly
superseded by Haeckel for decades. You don't see any
biology textbooks with drawings based on any by von Baer,
do you?
(not
>likely...don't want to give any credit to evolutionists).
Behe is not a creationist. When he spoke at Temple, didn't any
hecklers ask him point blank whether he considered himself to be
a creationist? One did here, and he replied in the negative.
Would you like to know more about what he said in reply?
But back to von Baer. You insinuated that I ought to apologize
for what I said about germ layers. Did you know that von Baer
claimed there were four rather than three?
two parts.
Did Paul ever mention that tidbit to you? not likely...don't
want to take any credit away from the man whom people
clutched at like a drowning man clutches at a straw when
Haeckel's fraud was first discussed here in talk.origins.
>> It was in the first lecture that Behe used a transparency
>> which has been the source of heated controversy in talk.origins.
>There was no controversy....just Peter and Julie quibbling.
There was plenty of controversy just BETWEEN you and Myers.
I wonder how long it will take for either of you to face
up to the glaring discrepancy in the following excerpt which
Myers deleted in the thread,
"The Myers-Hershey dogma of embryology" two days ago.
========================= begin excerpt from a Jan 4 post by you
[Myers:]
> >>What he is saying in those lectures is quite explicit. Here in
> >>Philadelphia he showed an overhead of the table of contents of an
> >>issue of JME, and went on at some length about what we ought to be
> >>seeing published in such a journal.
[Julie Thomas:]
> >Tsk, tsk. Up to this point, all the pack members have omitted this most
> >crucial qualifier. Pay attention kiddies:
> >
> >" and went on at some length about what we ought to be seeing
> >published in such a journal ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> >Well, well.
> >
> >When he went on at some length about what we ought
> >to be seeing published in JME, explain what he said.
> >What ought we be seeing? His book is explicit and he
> >even suggests how these studies might be titled (p. 176)
[Julie Thomas, in later post:]
> Paul doesn't tell us what Behe said when he went on at some
> length about what we ought to be seeing published in JME.
Because he didn't...and I and others concur. Watch the goal posts move
again.
========================== end of excerpt
>> I will be doing posts on that controversy to this thread. The
>> transparency ran exactly as follows, except for linebreaks:
>>
>> Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
>> detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure:
>>
>> 0
>>
>> The second lecture did not use the transparency.
>So far everything you've offered has validated what Paul and I have
>said.
Does Paul pay you to lie for him, or do you do it free of
charge? Here is what Paul wrote, excerpted from the same
post of yours from which the above excerpt is taken:
======================================= begin excerpt, highlighting added
He then asked the
> >>audience the rhetorical question, 'How many articles on evolution
> >>do you think they've published?' before putting up a cheesy overhead
> >with nothing but the numeral 0 on it, in big, bold print.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
================================= end of excerpt
> I suppose Peter will now quibble over the size.
Look again. That's not the part I highlighted.
> Behe has
>> confirmed that he uses two versions of this transparency in
>> lectures, the more frequently used one having a smaller 0 than the
>> other one. The rest of the text is the same.
>So he did have a 0 on a transparency. Gee, Peter, did you think he did
>this for effect?
Gee, Mark, can YOU find any articles in JME that present
detailed models?
> BTW, just how many of the articles in JME were you
>able to read before he pulled the overhead?
Gee, Mark, did you expect him to leave up a JME article long
enough for you to read the whole thing?
How many did he discuss? Be
>very specific so that we can start quibbling over minutia just like you.
I will take this as a sarcastic implication that we should
not quibble over minutiae, so I will not answer your question.
>Peter and his quibbles. The point has stood....Was this the alleged
>'thunder' and 'lightning'. Looks and sounds like another fizzler.
You look and sound like a breed of networker that is getting
to be more and more common in talk.origins: the Monty Pythonesque
Black Knight clone.
For those who didn't see that scene from the `Holy Grail' film:
The heroes confront a knight dressed all in black who taunts
the heroes for being weaklings who can't fight him and cowards
afraid to fight him. He keeps on doing it as they cut off
both his arms and both his legs, and even afterwards.
I walked out on the film almost immediately after this scene
because it just seemed too farfetched. This was before
I came across Usenet. Had I seen it in 1993 or thereafter,
I would have hung around to see what other kinds of net.barbarians
are being satirized in it.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
PZ Myers
>In article <myers-02029...@bio-101.bio.temple.edu>,
> my...@astro.ocis.temple.edu (PZ Myers) wrote:
>> In article <1999020219...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>, Peter Nyikos
>> <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> >It was in the first lecture that Behe used a transparency
>> >which has been the source of heated controversy in talk.origins.
>> >I will be doing posts on that controversy to this thread. The
>> >transparency ran exactly as follows, except for linebreaks:
>> >
>> >
>> > Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
>> > detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure:
>> >
>> > 0
>> >
>> >
>> >The second lecture did not use the transparency. Behe has
>> >confirmed that he uses two versions of this transparency in
>> >lectures, the more frequently used one having a smaller 0 than the
>> >other one. The rest of the text is the same.
>> >
>>
>> Dang. Mark and I are caught. We've been lying. Ooooh.
>
>I wonder whether this piece of sarcasm is meant to imply (1) that
>I have not caught Mark and/or you lying about this particlular
>transparency or (2) that nobody in this newsgroup besides me gives
>a damn whether you lie regularly in talk.origins.
#1, of course. You merely confirm our account below.
>
>
>> Really. That's your "proof" that we've been misrepresenting Behe?
>
>There's plenty more where the quote below comes from,
>including a passage in which you and Mark flatly contradicted
>each other, and which you snipped when you followed up to
>a post in which I documented the contradiction. I've posted
>it below, too, just so Andrew MacRae and other fans of yours
>can see just how often
>you run away from documentation.
>
>
>This is
>> something different than what we've been saying?
>
>Of course it is, and you know it. You said about a month ago:
>
> To paraphrase him, he said, 'with a title like the Journal of Molecular
> Evolution, they ought
> to be publishing articles on the evolution of molecules. I've looked
> carefully at the last 5 years of this journal.' He then asked the
> audience the rhetorical question, 'How many articles on evolution
> do you think they've published?' before putting up a cheesy overhead
> with nothing but the numeral 0 on it, in big, bold print.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>In writing "To paraphrase him," you made a mockery of the word
>"paraphrase".
Let's see. Nope. I scribbled down a few notes, not a literal transcription
of his talk, so it was a paraphrase. I was also quite careful to clearly
state that these weren't his actual words.
>The second statement 'How many...' is a
>defamatory misrepresentation.
Again, no. Neither you nor Julie have shown that I was trying to misrepresent
him. He made a set of comments, claiming that the work published in JME was
irrelevant and worthless, and hasn't answered any worthwhile questions in
the last 5 years. The two of you respond by saying that I didn't give an
accurate word-for-word recital of his comment. I never claimed I had, and
I did get across the sense of what he was saying.
>And the highlighted words are
>an outright lie.
Nope. All that jumped out from that overhead was a big numeral 0. As I
said originally, he prefaced showing the overhead by stating his rhetorical
question -- and now you are saying he also had that question printed somewhere
on the overhead. Big deal. It does not change what I said, nor does it
represent any attempt to conceal his words -- I had already stated what
you now claim was also printed there.
>
>In your post where you deleted the documentation I repost below,
>you backed away from your lie without apologizing for it,
>claiming that if there was something else on the transparency,
>it was in "fine print". Yet you were close enough to measure
>the 0 and give us details on how high it was.
I said "2 or 3 inches high". It was a big digit on a standard sized
(8.5x11) transparency, so that was a reasonable guess. Again, I was
not making the untoward claims of precision that you are now trying
to imply.
>
>What was that figure you gave, again? Did it apply to the
>actual transparency or to the projection on the screen?
>
>And now, here is that repost which shows the glaring discrepancy
>between your `testimony' and that of Mark, who seemed to be letting
>you do all your talking for him in the thread where I first
>reposted it. Names added in brackets.
>
>========================= begin excerpt from a Jan 4 post by Mark
>
>[Myers:]
>> >>What he is saying in those lectures is quite explicit. Here in
>> >>Philadelphia he showed an overhead of the table of contents of an
>> >>issue of JME, and went on at some length about what we ought to be
>> >>seeing published in such a journal.
>
>[Julie Thomas:]
>> >Tsk, tsk. Up to this point, all the pack members have omitted this most
>> >crucial qualifier. Pay attention kiddies:
>> >
>> >" and went on at some length about what we ought to be seeing
>> >published in such a journal ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> >
>> >Well, well.
>> >
>> >When he went on at some length about what we ought
>> >to be seeing published in JME, explain what he said.
>> >What ought we be seeing? His book is explicit and he
>> >even suggests how these studies might be titled (p. 176)
>
>[Julie Thomas, in later post:]
>> Paul doesn't tell us what Behe said when he went on at some
>> length about what we ought to be seeing published in JME.
>
>Because he didn't...and I and others concur. Watch the goal posts move
>again.
>========================== end of excerpt
What is the glaring contradiction here? I made general comments about
the gist of his talk. I said "at some length" simply because I saw in
my notes that he'd made some prefatory comments about what he wanted
in an article -- of such vagueness and so unmemorable that I'd merely
written "blah blah", and couldn't even recall how much he had said.
You and Julie are two of a kind here. You seem to be avoiding the meat
and meaning to focus on trivial inaccuracies in my account of the talk --
an account I had clearly and repeatedly said was not word-for-word.
Furthermore, those inaccuracies do not change the meaning of what he
said in any significant way. You say there was another line or two of
text on the transparency...so what? It was a nearly blank sheet with
a big 0 on it, that he used to claim JME doesn't publish papers on
molecular evolution. The words you say were present on that transparency
were similar to the words I had already said he used to introduce it.
This is pathetic even for you, Nyikos.
--
PZ Myers
nyi...@math.sc.edu
mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) wrote:
> In talk.origins I read this message from Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
>
> [snip]
>
> >giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
> >by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
> >peppered moth case.
> >
No, one bit of doctoring was fairly recent: it was a video
showing a bird swooping down and snatching a peppered moth
of the `wrong' color. An article in _Nature_ by Coyne,
a vocal critic of Behe's , related that the moths involved
were glued down in a place where they normally wouldn't
alight in the first place.
I haven't had the time to check out Behe's reference, but here
it is: _Nature_, v. 396 (1998) pp. 35-36. Hardly a hundred
years old.
Also, although knowledgeable embryologists have known all
along that Haeckel's first set of drawings was pure fantasy,
the information did not trickle down to the biologists who
write textbooks until fairly recently. I have a book from
the mid-sixties and another from the mid-seventies that
reproduces the Haeckel drawings as though they were accurate.
Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
_Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
The fraud was publicly exposed in _Science_ in the 9/5/97 issue--
at least, that's the date I copied down from the transparency
of the article that Behe showed. Hardly a hundred years old.
If you know of any earlier exposes of the fraud in scientific
journals of a wide readership, do let me know.
> Was he
> giving a history of science lecture or one promoting his scientific
> breakthrough?
Parts of it were on the history of science. One message I got
from his choice of material was that a lot of evidence that
evolution proceeds along Darwinian gradualist principles
just isn't as strong as some people think it is.
Another is that there are some militant
scientists like Haeckel who have an agenda (in Haeckel's case,
atheism) which
they will promote even if it means indulging in fraud. Behe's
critics often accuse him of being blinded by bias, but
fail to see the plank in their own eyes and the eyes of
people whose agendas they support.
Behe even included an example having nothing to do with evolution.
It was in an article titled,
"The (Political) Science of Salt" and appeared in _Science_, 1998.
The author said that the peer-reviewed literature has numerous articles
supporting the thesis that excess salt in the diet is connected
with high blood pressure, using the flimsiest of evidence, while
sound research demonstrating no link is summarily rejected.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
Wade Hines
>> Dang. Mark and I are caught. We've been lying. Ooooh.
>I wonder whether this piece of sarcasm is meant to imply (1) that
>I have not caught Mark and/or you lying about this particlular
>transparency or (2) that nobody in this newsgroup besides me gives
>a damn whether you lie regularly in talk.origins.
Sometimes I think you are riding a bike with your
center of gravity rather forward of the front wheel.
>> Really. That's your "proof" that we've been misrepresenting Behe?
>There's plenty more where the quote below comes from,
>including a passage in which you and Mark flatly contradicted
>each other, and which you snipped when you followed up to
>a post in which I documented the contradiction. I've posted
>it below, too, just so Andrew MacRae and other fans of yours
>can see just how often
>you run away from documentation.
Rationalizations don't always have to be rational.
I really do like the bike analogy. It contrasts
well with sitting back and gaining perspective.
>This is
>> something different than what we've been saying?
>Of course it is, and you know it. You said about a month ago:
> To paraphrase him, he said, 'with a title like the Journal of Molecular
> Evolution, they ought
> to be publishing articles on the evolution of molecules. I've looked
> carefully at the last 5 years of this journal.' He then asked the
> audience the rhetorical question, 'How many articles on evolution
> do you think they've published?' before putting up a cheesy overhead
> with nothing but the numeral 0 on it, in big, bold print.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>In writing "To paraphrase him," you made a mockery of the word
>"paraphrase". The second statement 'How many...' is a
>defamatory misrepresentation. And the highlighted words are
>an outright lie.
Paul says all he was was a big zero. Behe tells Nyikos
different. Nyikos calls Paul a liar. Presumably, Nyikos
is already ridden past all other interpretations whilst
his bike is still back aways. I can picture the gleam
in his eyes as well.
>In your post where you deleted the documentation I repost below,
>you backed away from your lie without apologizing for it,
>claiming that if there was something else on the transparency,
>it was in "fine print". Yet you were close enough to measure
>the 0 and give us details on how high it was.
>What was that figure you gave, again? Did it apply to the
>actual transparency or to the projection on the screen?
>And now, here is that repost which shows the glaring discrepancy
>between your `testimony' and that of Mark, who seemed to be letting
>you do all your talking for him in the thread where I first
>reposted it. Names added in brackets.
Further "evidence" [sensu Nyikos] of Nyikos's inability
to gain sane perespective deleted.
PZ Myers
[snip]
>Also, although knowledgeable embryologists have known all
>along that Haeckel's first set of drawings was pure fantasy,
>the information did not trickle down to the biologists who
>write textbooks until fairly recently. I have a book from
>the mid-sixties and another from the mid-seventies that
>reproduces the Haeckel drawings as though they were accurate.
Really? How do you reproduce a drawing as though it was *inaccurate*?
Textbooks do tend to perpetuate images and phrases for a long, long
time. When Julie Thomas tried to make this same argument a while
back, though, I made the effort to rummage around in my collection
of textbooks to see whether it was true that Haeckel was alive and
well in introductory biology.
The Haeckel picture (actually, the Romanes rendition) was only in
2 of 5. One of those two (Keeton) also balanced it with actual
photographs of embryos, and the text did not give any comfort to
recapitulation. The other (Purves/Orians) explicitly denied recapitulation,
and used the figure to discuss *von Baer's* laws.
>
>Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
>_Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
>James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
>in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
>the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
Julie also pointed this out. She misrepresented Alberts as thoroughly
as you have here. There was no uncritical discussion of Haeckel's
claims. There was no mention of the biogenetic law or recapitulation
at all. A truncated version of the figure was used to illustrate
the similarity of some structures in early embryos, and that is it.
Please quote the specific material in Alberts that uncritically
repeats Haeckel's claims. Or apologize and retract.
>
>The fraud was publicly exposed in _Science_ in the 9/5/97 issue--
>at least, that's the date I copied down from the transparency
>of the article that Behe showed. Hardly a hundred years old.
Read Oppenheimer's _Essays in the History of Embryology and Biology_.
The fact that a paper recently reiterated the errors in Haeckel's
work does not change the fact that Haeckel's ideas were discredited
a hundred years ago.
I thought mathematicians were supposed to be able to understand these
elementary ideas of logic!
>
>If you know of any earlier exposes of the fraud in scientific
>journals of a wide readership, do let me know.
*Oppenheimer* is not a sufficiently well-known source for you?
What about Gould, in _Ontogeny and Phylogeny_? YOUR personal
ignorance is no excuse, you know.
>
>> Was he
>> giving a history of science lecture or one promoting his scientific
>> breakthrough?
>
>Parts of it were on the history of science. One message I got
>from his choice of material was that a lot of evidence that
>evolution proceeds along Darwinian gradualist principles
>just isn't as strong as some people think it is.
>
>Another is that there are some militant
> scientists like Haeckel who have an agenda (in Haeckel's case,
>atheism) which
>they will promote even if it means indulging in fraud.
Haeckel was an atheist; that was not the agenda that drove his work,
however, and it is an obvious bit of jingoistic prejudice and stupid
ignorance on your part (and Behe's) to claim that it was. The biogenetic
law was rather firmly rooted in the work of Goethe and Lamarck, would
you like to claim that they promoted their ideas in service to their
atheism? Shall we turn this around and say that any scientist who has
any kind of metaphysical preconceptions (such as Catholicism, perhaps?)
ought to be called "militant" and "frauds" who "have an agenda"? *I* don't
think so, but apparently you do.
I also, personally, dislike the term "fraud" being applied to Haeckel. He
was wrong, no doubt of it. But he was also part of a tradition that emphasized
abstract ideas over the dirty business of observation, and valued ideals over
reality. He was a lousy scientist, a great politician, and a long-winded
pedant...but if we're going to call him a fraud, there are a few hundred
years worth of philosophers and theologians we're going to have to call
frauds, too.
>Behe's
>critics often accuse him of being blinded by bias, but
>fail to see the plank in their own eyes and the eyes of
>people whose agendas they support.
Irony. Look it up.
Behe seems to bring up his catholicism more than the critics do (although I know
some have, and I think it is deplorable and pointless. Rather like a certain
ass on this newsgroup who likes to bring up my atheism, as if it is at all
relevant).
[snip]
--
PZ Myers
Henry Barwood
PZ Myers wrote:
> Textbooks do tend to perpetuate images and phrases for a long, long
> time.
And inaccurate text as well. I remember trying to prove that there were only 1,2,3,4
and 6 fold symmetry axes in crystallography. The Prof. just laughed and pointed out
that it could not be done by the method outlined in the text. He was right. The
proof is so boring that when it was incorrectly placed in an early (1800's)
textbook, it was copied by subsequent authors almost intact. The textbook version is
something akin to "...and then a miracle occurs...". Interesting, but not actually
real.
The situation is even more aggravating in my children's school textbooks. Dumbing
down has led to many, many inaccuracies being compounded.
Barwood
Andrew MacRae
|In article <36bfc449...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
| mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) wrote:
|> In talk.origins I read this message from Peter Nyikos
|> <nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
|> [snip]
|>
|> > The second ranged further,
|> >giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
|> >evidence in mainstream science, including the phony pictures
|> >by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
|> >peppered moth case.
|> >
|> He really offered 100 year old events as evidence of something?
|
|No, one bit of doctoring was fairly recent: it was a video
|showing a bird swooping down and snatching a peppered moth
|of the `wrong' color. An article in _Nature_ by Coyne,
|Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
|_Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
|James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
|in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
|the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
|
|The fraud was publicly exposed in _Science_ in the 9/5/97 issue--
This is a "Research News" article by E. Pennisi, which discusses
an article by M.K. Richardson that has been previously cited by Paul:
Richardson MK, J Hanken, ML Gooneratne, C Pieau, A Raynaud, L
Selwood, GM Wright (1997) There is no highly conserved
embryonic stage in the vertebrates: implications for current
theories of evolution and development. Anat Embryol 196:91-106
|at least, that's the date I copied down from the transparency
|of the article that Behe showed. Hardly a hundred years old.
While you are at it, you might want to look up:
Richardson, M.K.; Hanken, J.; Selwood, L.; Wright, G.M.; Richards, R.J.;
Pieau, C. and Raynaud, A., 1998 (May 15). Haeckel, embryos, and
evolution. Science, v.280, p.983-985.
|If you know of any earlier exposes of the fraud in scientific
|journals of a wide readership, do let me know.
Quoting from the second article cited above:
"We are not the first to question the drawings. Haeckel's past accusers
included His (Leipzig University), Rutimeyer (Basel University), and Brass
(leader of the Keplerbund group of Protestant scientists). However, these
critics did not give persuasive evidence in support of their arguments."
But I'm unclear whether this constitutes an "expose" in the
scientific journals.
..
-Andrew
mac...@agc.bio._NOSPAM_.ns.ca
Matt Silberstein
>In article <36bfc449...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) wrote:
>> In talk.origins I read this message from Peter Nyikos
>> <nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> > The second ranged further,
>> >giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
>> >evidence in mainstream science, including the phony pictures
>> >by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
>> >peppered moth case.
>> >
>> He really offered 100 year old events as evidence of something?
>
>No, one bit of doctoring was fairly recent: it was a video
>showing a bird swooping down and snatching a peppered moth
>of the `wrong' color. An article in _Nature_ by Coyne,
>a vocal critic of Behe's , related that the moths involved
>were glued down in a place where they normally wouldn't
>alight in the first place.
>
>I haven't had the time to check out Behe's reference, but here
>it is: _Nature_, v. 396 (1998) pp. 35-36. Hardly a hundred
>years old.
>
I see. So Behe said there was fraud in that article. Has Nature
responded to the accusation?
>Also, although knowledgeable embryologists have known all
>along that Haeckel's first set of drawings was pure fantasy,
>the information did not trickle down to the biologists who
>write textbooks until fairly recently. I have a book from
>the mid-sixties and another from the mid-seventies that
>reproduces the Haeckel drawings as though they were accurate.
>
So? How is this relevant to either evolution or IC? I can show you all
kinds of inaccuracies in all kinds of textbooks.
>Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
>_Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
>James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
>in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
>the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
>
>The fraud was publicly exposed in _Science_ in the 9/5/97 issue--
>at least, that's the date I copied down from the transparency
>of the article that Behe showed. Hardly a hundred years old.
>
Ok, so there was a problem and science corrected it. What was Behe's
point?
>If you know of any earlier exposes of the fraud in scientific
>journals of a wide readership, do let me know.
>
>> Was he
>> giving a history of science lecture or one promoting his scientific
>> breakthrough?
>
>Parts of it were on the history of science. One message I got
>from his choice of material was that a lot of evidence that
>evolution proceeds along Darwinian gradualist principles
>just isn't as strong as some people think it is.
>
How do these isolated cases support that point? Did he imply or say
that there might be lots more fraud we don't know about? Enough to
shake the foundations?
>Another is that there are some militant
> scientists like Haeckel who have an agenda (in Haeckel's case,
>atheism) which
>they will promote even if it means indulging in fraud. Behe's
>critics often accuse him of being blinded by bias, but
>fail to see the plank in their own eyes and the eyes of
>people whose agendas they support.
>
>Behe even included an example having nothing to do with evolution.
>It was in an article titled,
>"The (Political) Science of Salt" and appeared in _Science_, 1998.
>The author said that the peer-reviewed literature has numerous articles
>supporting the thesis that excess salt in the diet is connected
>with high blood pressure, using the flimsiest of evidence, while
>sound research demonstrating no link is summarily rejected.
>
Are we to take away from this the idea that results of peer-reviewed
science are generally to be distrusted? If so, I expect that Behe has
reproduced all experiments supporting his claims.
Peter Nyikos
>>I walked out on the film almost immediately after this scene
>>because it just seemed too farfetched.
The "Black Knight" scene, that is. See more on the original
sub-thread if this doesn't seem familiar.
>You walked out on Monty Python?!!! <incredulity>
What can I say? This was over fifteen years ago and
I was still naive about how utterly irrational and/or
transparently deceitful human
beings can be and still be popular--more popular than
the people who point out that the emperor has no clothes.
I have found out otherwise in talk.origins and, before that,
talk.abortion
>All I can say is "Ni! Ni!" - look it up for yourself.
Where?
>Arnold the Aardvark
>"I'm Brian and so's my wife!"
I did see the "Life of Brian" and did not walk out of it,
but the quote doesn't ring a bell.
Not a bad film, but there are lots of stretches I found dull.
I did love one scene, though, the one where the usual rhetorical
question, "The Romans have _____________________ and what have
they done for us in return?" or words to that effect. But
suddenly somebody takes the question seriously, and names
the good sewer system the Romans built. The rhetorical questioner
then admits, "OK, granted, they have done that for us. But apart
from that, what have they done for us?"
Immediately another person chimes in with another good deed
the Romans did for the Jews. This goes on for two more
rounds, and this time the pause is long enough for the
rhetorical questioner to add "NOTHING!" after saying,
"But apart from the sewer system, and _____________,
and _______________ and _______________________,
what have they done for us?"
[The foregoing is full of paraphrasals from memory. I saw this film more
than 15 years ago too. I wanted to give Monty a second chance.]
This scene ranks right up there with the ordering-toast scene
from "Five Easy Pieces" among my all-time favorite movie scenes.
A pity the rest of "FEP" was spoiled by the shamelessly
self-centered behavior of the main character, and by a
"when she says No she means Yes" scene that set back the
cause of "when she says No she means No" by a number
of years, I fear.
Peter Nyikos
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> [snip to Behe overhead]
>>
>> Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
>> detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure:
>>
>> 0
>>
>> The second lecture did not use the transparency. Behe has
>> confirmed that he uses two versions of this transparency in
>> lectures, the more frequently used one having a smaller 0 than the
>[snip remainder]
>I have been following this thread and must say that it is difficult to see
>what the dispute is all about. The Behe overhead is a piece of egregious
>demagoguery designed for the scientific illiterate.
What the dispute is about is whether Paul Myers and Mark Koebbe
are among the scientifically illiterate you are talking about,
although their reaction to the slide is the exact opposite
of the reaction you are suggesting in some ways.
In other ways, it is congruent. Both Myers and
(as yet hypothetical) idiotic creationists seem to
take the slide to mean simply that JME has not published any
papers on molecular evolution. It is just that Myers
puked all over Behe for putting that slide up, while the idiotic
(but as yet hypothetical) creationists eat it up.
The dispute, then, is about whether Myers was foolish enough to really think
Behe was saying or meant what Myers claimed he did, or whether Myers
was dissembling and knew damn well what Behe was saying and meant.
Ditto Mark.
Any fool can define a
>problem that cannot be addressed using current techniques.
Are you suggesting that current techniques can't even produce
*hypothetical* models, such as those used in the fanciful
FAQ on the evolution of feathers?
Is anybody
>here actually trying to defend his words?
I have defended them in the past. However, some people recently claim
to have found a few articles that Behe overlooked, and I haven't
had the chance to look them up.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
Peter Nyikos
>In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
>>In article <36bfc449...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
>> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) wrote:
>>> In talk.origins I read this message from Peter Nyikos
>>> <nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
>>>
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> > The second ranged further,
>>> >giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
>>> >evidence in mainstream science, including the phony pictures
>>> >by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
>>> >peppered moth case.
>>> >
>>> He really offered 100 year old events as evidence of something?
>>
>>No, one bit of doctoring was fairly recent: it was a video
>>showing a bird swooping down and snatching a peppered moth
>>of the `wrong' color. An article in _Nature_ by Coyne,
>>a vocal critic of Behe's , related that the moths involved
>>were glued down in a place where they normally wouldn't
>>alight in the first place.
>>
>>I haven't had the time to check out Behe's reference, but here
>>it is: _Nature_, v. 396 (1998) pp. 35-36. Hardly a hundred
>>years old.
>I see.
I begin to detect a pattern. When Matt says "I see" it
means a red flag should go up, because we are about to
see some absolutely perverse interpretations of what is
written.
> So Behe said there was fraud in that article. Has Nature
>responded to the accusation?
You walked into a trap I wasn't even trying to set.
Coyne was EXPOSING the fraud of people whose names Behe
didn't mention IIRC. I just added the "a vocal critic of Behe"
part to show that even Behe and his vocal critics can
agree on some things.
>>Also, although knowledgeable embryologists have known all
>>along that Haeckel's first set of drawings was pure fantasy,
>>the information did not trickle down to the biologists who
>>write textbooks until fairly recently. I have a book from
>>the mid-sixties and another from the mid-seventies that
>>reproduces the Haeckel drawings as though they were accurate.
>>
>So? How is this relevant to either evolution or IC?
Do the words "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" ring a bell?
How is more than 1% of what you, Matt Silberstein, post
relevant to either evolution or IC? Most of the time
all I see is destructive games designed to harass Julie
Thomas, some creationist, or myself.
>>Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
>>_Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
>>James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
>>in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
>>the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
>>
>>The fraud was publicly exposed in _Science_ in the 9/5/97 issue--
>>at least, that's the date I copied down from the transparency
>>of the article that Behe showed. Hardly a hundred years old.
>>
>Ok, so there was a problem and science corrected it. What was Behe's
>point?
"Science" did not correct it. Flesh and blood scientists
corrected it. They did it not by testing falsifiable hypotheses,
but by just taking a look at the organisms and publishing
photographs of them alongside Haeckel's fabrications.
>>If you know of any earlier exposes of the fraud in scientific
>>journals of a wide readership, do let me know.
Neither Andrew MacRae nor you could give one. I don't think
his earlier examples count.
>>> Was he
>>> giving a history of science lecture or one promoting his scientific
>>> breakthrough?
>>
>>Parts of it were on the history of science. One message I got
>>from his choice of material was that a lot of evidence that
>>evolution proceeds along Darwinian gradualist principles
>>just isn't as strong as some people think it is.
>>
>How do these isolated cases support that point? Did he imply or say
>that there might be lots more fraud we don't know about? Enough to
>shake the foundations?
Enough to shake the foundations of
Mother Earth produced life from scratch, this I know
For the evidence for easy subsequent evolution tells me so
IMO.
>>Another is that there are some militant
>> scientists like Haeckel who have an agenda (in Haeckel's case,
>>atheism) which
>>they will promote even if it means indulging in fraud. Behe's
>>critics often accuse him of being blinded by bias, but
>>fail to see the plank in their own eyes and the eyes of
>>people whose agendas they support.
>>
>>Behe even included an example having nothing to do with evolution.
>>It was in an article titled,
>>"The (Political) Science of Salt" and appeared in _Science_, 1998.
>>The author said that the peer-reviewed literature has numerous articles
>>supporting the thesis that excess salt in the diet is connected
>>with high blood pressure, using the flimsiest of evidence, while
>>sound research demonstrating no link is summarily rejected.
>>
>Are we to take away from this the idea that results of peer-reviewed
>science are generally to be distrusted? If so, I expect that Behe has
>reproduced all experiments supporting his claims.
"Joe Lurker" would have a field day with you, and some day
he probably will.
gro...@my-dejanews.com
> book _Darwin's Black Box_, visited Columbia, SC and gave several
> talks. Two of them were lectures to general audiences on the
> campus of the University of South Carolina. The first began on
> Thursday, January 28 at 7:30 pm and took place in the Russell House
> Ballroom. The second began on Friday at 4 pm and took place in
> a large lecture hall in the Physical Sciences Center. The latter
> was the first in a series of four lectures sponsored by the University
> of South Carolina on the general subject of evolution. Daniel Dennett
> will be one of the other three speakers.
>
> Both lectures were given to near-capacity crowds. After each
> there were question-and-answer sessions which were quite lively,
> to say the least, but Behe fielded the questions quite well.
> giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
> evidence in mainstream science, including the phony pictures
> by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
> peppered moth case.
It's always interesting to meet people like Behe in the flesh. A random
assortment of questions that you might have time to answer:
What did you personally think of his talks? Is he a good speaker? Did you find
things in his talks that you disagreed with, or were you pretty much in tune
with him throughout?
Other people have in the past reported that Behe is more forthcoming about the
nature of his "designer" in person than in print. Was this the case?
Has his thinking changed any since the publication of his book? Does he have
new (or modified) ideas or examples?
Did you get to talk with him personally? IS he a nice guy? Does he read
talk.origins regularly?
Regards,
Andy
Matt Silberstein
<nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
>mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>
>>In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
>
[snip]
>>>Also, although knowledgeable embryologists have known all
>>>along that Haeckel's first set of drawings was pure fantasy,
>>>the information did not trickle down to the biologists who
>>>write textbooks until fairly recently. I have a book from
>>>the mid-sixties and another from the mid-seventies that
>>>reproduces the Haeckel drawings as though they were accurate.
>>>
>>So? How is this relevant to either evolution or IC?
>
>Do the words "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" ring a bell?
>
Yes, it was recognized as false over 100 years ago. What is the point?
[snip]
>
>>>Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
>>>_Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
>>>James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
>>>in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
>>>the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
>>>
>>>The fraud was publicly exposed in _Science_ in the 9/5/97 issue--
>>>at least, that's the date I copied down from the transparency
>>>of the article that Behe showed. Hardly a hundred years old.
>>>
>>Ok, so there was a problem and science corrected it. What was Behe's
>>point?
>
>"Science" did not correct it. Flesh and blood scientists
>corrected it. They did it not by testing falsifiable hypotheses,
>but by just taking a look at the organisms and publishing
>photographs of them alongside Haeckel's fabrications.
>
And what is Behe's point?
>>>If you know of any earlier exposes of the fraud in scientific
>>>journals of a wide readership, do let me know.
>
>Neither Andrew MacRae nor you could give one. I don't think
>his earlier examples count.
>
So? What is the point?
>>>> Was he
>>>> giving a history of science lecture or one promoting his scientific
>>>> breakthrough?
>>>
>>>Parts of it were on the history of science. One message I got
>>>from his choice of material was that a lot of evidence that
>>>evolution proceeds along Darwinian gradualist principles
>>>just isn't as strong as some people think it is.
>>>
>>How do these isolated cases support that point? Did he imply or say
>>that there might be lots more fraud we don't know about? Enough to
>>shake the foundations?
>
>Enough to shake the foundations of
>
> Mother Earth produced life from scratch, this I know
> For the evidence for easy subsequent evolution tells me so
>
>IMO.
>
I fail to see any connection between this statement, the current
accepted scientific ideas, or Behe's evidence. What do comments about
Haeckel or about a possible fraud in a moth experiment have to do with
abiogenesis? If that evidence shakes this foundation, then it shakes
the foundation of all of science.
>>>Another is that there are some militant
>>> scientists like Haeckel who have an agenda (in Haeckel's case,
>>>atheism) which
>>>they will promote even if it means indulging in fraud. Behe's
>>>critics often accuse him of being blinded by bias, but
>>>fail to see the plank in their own eyes and the eyes of
>>>people whose agendas they support.
>>>
>>>Behe even included an example having nothing to do with evolution.
>>>It was in an article titled,
>>>"The (Political) Science of Salt" and appeared in _Science_, 1998.
>>>The author said that the peer-reviewed literature has numerous articles
>>>supporting the thesis that excess salt in the diet is connected
>>>with high blood pressure, using the flimsiest of evidence, while
>>>sound research demonstrating no link is summarily rejected.
>>>
>>Are we to take away from this the idea that results of peer-reviewed
>>science are generally to be distrusted? If so, I expect that Behe has
>>reproduced all experiments supporting his claims.
>
>"Joe Lurker" would have a field day with you, and some day
>he probably will.
Nice to know. Now what are we to take away from Behe's examples? What
is the point of all of this?
howard hershey
>
> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>
> >In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
>
> >>In article <36bfc449...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
> >> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) wrote:
> >>> In talk.origins I read this message from Peter Nyikos
> >>> <nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
> >>>
> >>> [snip]
> >>>
> >>> > The second ranged further,
> >>> >giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
> >>> >evidence in mainstream science, including the phony pictures
> >>> >by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
> >>> >peppered moth case.
> >>> >
> >>> He really offered 100 year old events as evidence of something?
Talk about Whiggish history. Haeckel did not produce "phony pictures".
He made drawings from memory (photomicrography not being widely
available at the time) to make a point that he thought supported his
ideas of "ontogeny and phylogeny". No one supports the ideas today.
Even those textbooks that have used these drawings in the present day
specifically use them for entirely different pedagogical purposes than
showing that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"; rather, they use it to
show that there are basic commonalities in the development of
vertebrates. Actual photos, where the obvious size differences of the
gut/yolksac catch the student's eye and distract them from the
physically smaller, less obvious, but more important similarities, are
pedagogically worse than drawings that remove those distractions. That
is at least part of the reason why Haeckel's drawings were retained in
all these texts all those years, even while most of these texts
*explicitly* rejected his "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" ideas
(sheer inertia and the lack of an appropriate substitute - not because
such is impossible, but because it is cheaper to copy an existing
drawing than to make a new and more accurate one from scratch - is the
other reason). There are errors in the pictures (although the ones that
Peter is most concerned with, the removal of extraembryonic membranes,
are not particularly serious). But the standards of scientific
procedure of 100 years ago are not
> >>
> >>No, one bit of doctoring was fairly recent: it was a video
> >>showing a bird swooping down and snatching a peppered moth
> >>of the `wrong' color. An article in _Nature_ by Coyne,
It wasn't an article. It was a book review. Did you actually read it?
Nowhere in that review did Coyne claim any 'doctoring' was done.
> >>a vocal critic of Behe's , related that the moths involved
> >>were glued down in a place where they normally wouldn't
> >>alight in the first place.
A 'fact' that wasn't known at the time. At worst, this would be an
example of a 'problem' one sees all the time: something that works in a
controlled experimental setting may not be how it works in nature. In
nature, release and recapture experiments had been done that showed that
the melanic versions of moth and peppered version were showing
differential recapture rates. This is a 'fact' that needed to be
explained. In a controlled experimental setting (moths glued on trees
with or without lichens), it could be shown that birds preferentially
found and ate the moth that 'stood out' from its background. The
results of that experiment were not 'doctored'. Birds *do*
preferentially eat the 'stand-out' moth on the wrong background. One
can, however, question the relevance of that particular experiment to
what happened in a natural setting.
Both experiments (the release/recapture and the differential feeding
habits of birds) are accurate. And one can certainly make a reasonable
chain of logic connecting these findings with differential survival via
cryptic coloration explaining the selective losses in nature (as the
authors did); the differential recapture is a consequence of
differential survival and the 'odd man' gets eaten by predators because
they stand out. But there were assumptions that were made in that chain
of logic that had not been tested or clearly stated or, if stated,
picked up on. Namely, is avian predation the largest factor in the
differential loss *in nature*? Could other factors explain or
contribute to the differential loss *in nature*? Are the experimental
settings used (moths on tree trunks) relevant to the moth lifestyle *in
nature*? And so on. Putting the moths on the tree trunks was neither
fraud nor doctoring. It was making an assumption of the type necessary
in experimental science about where moths are likely to be found setting
down in nature (and Coyne pointed out that we *still* don't know the
answer to where one finds the moths in a natural setting - how can this
be fraud if we still don't know). One can fault the original authors
for not making these assumptions explicit or others for not picking up
on those qualifications that the authors did make explicit, but that is
hardly 'doctoring' the evidence. 'Doctoring' the evidence would have to
mean that the 'stand out' moth was actually either eaten only as often
or less often than the cryptic moth and the authors reported otherwise.
If you repeated this experiment, you would get the same answer the
original authors did.
> >>
> >>I haven't had the time to check out Behe's reference, but here
> >>it is: _Nature_, v. 396 (1998) pp. 35-36. Hardly a hundred
> >>years old.
If Behe read Coyne's review the way that you reported, his grasp of how
science works and science reading comprehnsion is as weak as yours. If
he used the term 'doctoring' to describe these results, he clearly
understands those terms the same way that Dan Hughes understands the
term "absolute".
>
> >I see.
>
> I begin to detect a pattern. When Matt says "I see" it
> means a red flag should go up, because we are about to
> see some absolutely perverse interpretations of what is
> written.
>
> > So Behe said there was fraud in that article. Has Nature
> >responded to the accusation?
>
> You walked into a trap I wasn't even trying to set.
> Coyne was EXPOSING the fraud of people whose names Behe
> didn't mention IIRC. I just added the "a vocal critic of Behe"
> part to show that even Behe and his vocal critics can
> agree on some things.
Did Behe claim that the moth experiments were fraud? Or is that merely
another example of your own personal ignorance of science? Coyne's
article does not talk of fraud as much as of significant holes in the
argument related to connecting the experimental evidence with what
happens in nature. Since we still do not know what happens in nature,
fraud is hardly the right term to use.
>
> >>Also, although knowledgeable embryologists have known all
> >>along that Haeckel's first set of drawings was pure fantasy,
> >>the information did not trickle down to the biologists who
> >>write textbooks until fairly recently. I have a book from
> >>the mid-sixties and another from the mid-seventies that
> >>reproduces the Haeckel drawings as though they were accurate.
> >>
> >So? How is this relevant to either evolution or IC?
>
> Do the words "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" ring a bell?
Do the textbooks claim that these drawings support the idea of "ontogeny
recapitulates phylogeny"? What pedagogical purpose (textbooks tend to
have pedagogical purpose and concentrate on generalities whereas
research articles deal with detail) were these drawings being used for?
Here is the Figure legend for one such text (more recent than the
60s-70s).
"Figure 1. Illustration of vonBaer's law. Early vertebrate embryos
exhibit features common to the entire subphylum. As development
progresses, embryos become recognizable as members of their class, their
order, their family, and finally, their species. (from Romanes, 1901)."
Gilbert _Developmental Biology_, 2nd edition 1988, Sinauer Pub., p.153.
Since vonBaer's ideas were antithical to Haeckel's, this hardly amounts
to a ringing endorsement of "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny".
See also Raff's treatment of these figures in "The Shape of Life" 1996,
Chicago. pp 194-195. He explicitly mentions Haeckel's ideas and the
fact that some of the resemblances are exaggerated.
>
> How is more than 1% of what you, Matt Silberstein, post
> relevant to either evolution or IC? Most of the time
> all I see is destructive games designed to harass Julie
> Thomas, some creationist, or myself.
>
> >>Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
> >>_Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
> >>James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
> >>in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
> >>the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
Which claims? That the early 'phylotypic' embryos of vertebrates show
more similarity to each other than do the later (or earlier) stages? Or
the claim that "ontology recapitulates phylogeny"?
> >>
> >>The fraud was publicly exposed in _Science_ in the 9/5/97 issue--
> >>at least, that's the date I copied down from the transparency
> >>of the article that Behe showed. Hardly a hundred years old.
> >>
> >Ok, so there was a problem and science corrected it. What was Behe's
> >point?
>
> "Science" did not correct it. Flesh and blood scientists
> corrected it. They did it not by testing falsifiable hypotheses,
> but by just taking a look at the organisms and publishing
> photographs of them alongside Haeckel's fabrications.
>
> >>If you know of any earlier exposes of the fraud in scientific
> >>journals of a wide readership, do let me know.
The drawings of Haeckel were only used, AFAICT, in pedagogy to get
across a general idea of the similarity of early vertebrate *embryos*
(and NOT "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"). That *idea* is not a
false one. Replacing these old drawings with more accurate ones that
also remove the distracting features not relevant to the embryo's
similarity (size of yolk sac) because these would distract the beginning
student eye would probably still be better pedogogically than
photographs (with the appropriate cautions about what parts are
changed). I am sure that it was merely the sheer inertia and econonmics
of textbook publishing which has produced the repeated use of these
drawings, which, while not accurate, are nonetheless adequate for the
purpose to which they were being put. No one was using them in research
for 100 years or so. Comparison of features of, say, development of the
jaw from a pharangeal arch in particular organisms, in a research
program would use photographs of those features.
I have seen many textbook figures that present the double helix of DNA
and DNA replication without disclosing that the strands are antiparallel
and that replication on one of the strands must be discontinuous. And I
also recognize that all of these are stick cartoons compared to a
space-filling model (which is also a cartoon). But, for some of the
lower grade levels, where the idea of DNA replication itself is
confusing, adding in these details *at that time* might cause more
confusion than enlightenment.
> Neither Andrew MacRae nor you could give one. I don't think
> his earlier examples count.
>
> >>> Was he
> >>> giving a history of science lecture or one promoting his scientific
> >>> breakthrough?
> >>
> >>Parts of it were on the history of science. One message I got
> >>from his choice of material was that a lot of evidence that
> >>evolution proceeds along Darwinian gradualist principles
> >>just isn't as strong as some people think it is.
But is he equating evolution with 'gradualist principles'? That would
be a mistake.
> >How do these isolated cases support that point? Did he imply or say
> >that there might be lots more fraud we don't know about? Enough to
> >shake the foundations?
>
> Enough to shake the foundations of
>
> Mother Earth produced life from scratch, this I know
> For the evidence for easy subsequent evolution tells me so
>
> IMO.
At least you wrote IMO and not IMHO. I only wish that your O were an
informed and intelligent O. The above ditty doesn't make any sense.
> >>Another is that there are some militant
> >> scientists like Haeckel who have an agenda (in Haeckel's case,
> >>atheism) which
> >>they will promote even if it means indulging in fraud. Behe's
> >>critics often accuse him of being blinded by bias, but
> >>fail to see the plank in their own eyes and the eyes of
> >>people whose agendas they support.
Who the hell supports Haeckel's ideas of "ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny"? I didn't even know (much less care) that Haeckel was an
athiest. What is your evidence that he was?
> >>Behe even included an example having nothing to do with evolution.
> >>It was in an article titled,
> >>"The (Political) Science of Salt" and appeared in _Science_, 1998.
> >>The author said that the peer-reviewed literature has numerous articles
> >>supporting the thesis that excess salt in the diet is connected
> >>with high blood pressure, using the flimsiest of evidence, while
> >>sound research demonstrating no link is summarily rejected.
And I agree that Journal editors and reviewers can have biases. OTOH,
they also would probably reject articles by Behe which claimed a
'designer' on the basis of the really strong evidence he presents: "I
don't see how it could occur gradually and am unwilling to consider
other natural evolutionary mechanisms."
> >>
> >Are we to take away from this the idea that results of peer-reviewed
> >science are generally to be distrusted? If so, I expect that Behe has
> >reproduced all experiments supporting his claims.
>
> "Joe Lurker" would have a field day with you, and some day
> he probably will.
Hiya, Joe (aka PN). Same style.
Andy Groves
> Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
> _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
> James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
> in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
> the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. In the text, we have the
passage:
"Molecular studies, to be discussed later in this book, reveal an
astonishing number of developmental resemblances at a fundamental genetic
level, even between species as remotely related as mammals and insects. In
terms of anatomy, furthermore, early developmental stages of animals whose
adult forms appear radically different are often surprisingly similar; it
takes an expert eye to distinguish, for example, a young chick embryo from
a young human embryo (reference to truncated Haeckel Figure)"
I don't have many problems with this passage, although the "expert eye"
bit is perhaps not strictly true. Anyway, in the legend to the Haeckel
figue we see the following:
"Comparison of the embryonic development of a fish, an amphibian, a
reptile, a bird, and a selection of mammals. The early stages (above) are
very similar; the later stages (below) are more divergent. The earliest
stages are drawn roughly to scale; the later stages are not. (reference to
Haeckel follows)."
Now, I have to admit that to avoid any more confusion it would probably be
a good thing if people used Michael Richardson's pictures of embryos in
future textbooks to make the same point. However, as far as I'm concerned,
the accusation that Alberts and co. have *uncritically repeated Haeckel's
claims* is without foundation.
Regards,
--
Andy Groves
nyi...@math.sc.edu
Myers is displaying a talent I have seldom seen him display
before -- a genius for denying the obvious.
In article <myers-03029...@bio-101.bio.temple.edu>,
my...@astro.ocis.temple.edu (PZ Myers) wrote:
> In article <799kq9$c8t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>
> >In article <myers-02029...@bio-101.bio.temple.edu>,
> > my...@astro.ocis.temple.edu (PZ Myers) wrote:
> >> In article <1999020219...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>, Peter Nyikos
> >> <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >> [snip]
> >>
> >> >It was in the first lecture that Behe used a transparency
> >> >which has been the source of heated controversy in talk.origins.
> >> >I will be doing posts on that controversy to this thread. The
> >> >transparency ran exactly as follows, except for linebreaks:
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
> >> > detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure:
> >> >
> >> > 0
> >> >
[...]
> >> Dang. Mark and I are caught. We've been lying. Ooooh.
> >
> >I wonder whether this piece of sarcasm is meant to imply (1) that
> >I have not caught Mark and/or you lying about this particlular
> >transparency or (2) that nobody in this newsgroup besides me gives
> >a damn whether you lie regularly in talk.origins.
>
> #1, of course. You merely confirm our account below.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You are painting yourself into a corner, Paul, and I didn't
even contribute the highlighted can of paint.
> >> Really. That's your "proof" that we've been misrepresenting Behe?
> >
> >There's plenty more where the quote below comes from,
> >including a passage in which you and Mark flatly contradicted
> >each other, and which you snipped when you followed up to
> >a post in which I documented the contradiction. I've posted
> >it below, too, just so Andrew MacRae and other fans of yours
> >can see just how often
> >you run away from documentation.
Well, you didn't exactly run away this time, but you did display
your genius for denying the obvious in response.
I can't help noticing that Mark has fallen silent all of a sudden.
Is he just an apprentice at the trade of denying the obvious,
hoping to learn from a master?
> >This is
> >> something different than what we've been saying?
> >
> >Of course it is, and you know it. You said about a month ago:
> >
> > To paraphrase him, he said, 'with a title like the Journal of Molecular
> > Evolution, they ought
> > to be publishing articles on the evolution of molecules. I've looked
> > carefully at the last 5 years of this journal.' He then asked the
> > audience the rhetorical question, 'How many articles on evolution
> > do you think they've published?' before putting up a cheesy overhead
> > with nothing but the numeral 0 on it, in big, bold print.
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> >In writing "To paraphrase him," you made a mockery of the word
> >"paraphrase".
>
> Let's see. Nope. I scribbled down a few notes, not a literal transcription
> of his talk, so it was a paraphrase.
The part I refer to below is no more a paraphrase than
You are a blatantly despicable liar.
is a paraphrase of
You aren't giving a completely accurate account.
You addressed the former words to Joe Potter, remember?
> >The second statement 'How many...' is a
> >defamatory misrepresentation.
> Again, no. Neither you nor Julie have shown that I was trying to misrepresent
> him.
We can haggle about the truth of this statement later. The issue
here is that
...Behe says JME publishes no articles on molecular evolution.
is a defamatory misrepresentation of what Behe actually said,
and yet your words above clearly implied these later words,
also made by you.
You realize, don't you, that if Behe were ever documented
making the ridiculous claim you attributed to him, no
biology or biochemistry department in a state university
would dare to invite him to give a lecture such as he
gave in our Physical Sciences Building?
If a creationist had so mangled the message inhrent in the words,
Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure: 0.
I think you would have no hesitation about labeling him a "blatantly
despicable liar" or worse. Look at the utterly miniscule thing
Tim Teebken did to earn from you a charge that he is "a fraud".
>He made a set of comments, claiming that the work published in JME was
> irrelevant and worthless, and hasn't answered any worthwhile questions in
> the last 5 years.
The foregoing may be legally actionable libel, but I leave such
matters up to Behe and his lawyer.
>The two of you respond by saying that I didn't give an
> accurate word-for-word recital of his comment. I never claimed I had, and
> I did get across the sense of what he was saying.
You really are painting yourself into a corner, Paul. You
do realize that, don't you?
> >And the highlighted words are
> >an outright lie.
>
> Nope. All that jumped out from that overhead was a big numeral 0.
Nice use of the Broken.Usenet.Promise. A subjective impression
is supposed to justify a supposedly objective claim.
As I
> said originally, he prefaced showing the overhead by stating his rhetorical
> question
As the actual words of the overhead transparency show, the question
he actually asked was anything but rhetorical.
>-- and now you are saying he also had that question printed somewhere
> on the overhead. Big deal.
"somewhere on the overhead". Besides the zero, that is ALL that
was on the overhead.
It does not change what I said, nor does it
> represent any attempt to conceal his words -- I had already stated what
> you now claim was also printed there.
No, you did not. Your whole case against Julie Thomas and Behe
was based on the colossal difference between what you "already
stated" and what was actually on that slide.
> >In your post where you deleted the documentation I repost below,
> >you backed away from your lie without apologizing for it,
> >claiming that if there was something else on the transparency,
> >it was in "fine print". Yet you were close enough to measure
> >the 0 and give us details on how high it was.
>
> I said "2 or 3 inches high". It was a big digit on a standard sized
> (8.5x11) transparency, so that was a reasonable guess. Again, I was
> not making the untoward claims of precision that you are now trying
> to imply.
OK, so you didn't measure it. Still, you were close enough
to estimate its size to within an order of magnitude.
> >
> >What was that figure you gave, again? Did it apply to the
> >actual transparency or to the projection on the screen?
You ducked this question. Why?
This says a lot more for what you are able to comprehend than
it does about what he actually said.
However, I note that you do NOT say anything about what Mark
said at the end. Mark kept harping on that theme over and
over again--that Behe did NOT go on at any length, that he
gave NO context to that zero except for your defamatory
statement.
> You and Julie are two of a kind here. You seem to be avoiding the meat
> and meaning to focus on trivial inaccuracies in my account of the talk --
You also have a genius for making mountains out of molehills
and molehills out of mountains.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
nyi...@math.sc.edu
gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>
> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
>
> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
> no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
In the text, we have the
> passage:
>
> "Molecular studies, to be discussed later in this book, reveal an
> astonishing number of developmental resemblances at a fundamental genetic
> level, even between species as remotely related as mammals and insects. In
> terms of anatomy, furthermore, early developmental stages of animals whose
> adult forms appear radically different are often surprisingly similar; it
> takes an expert eye to distinguish, for example, a young chick embryo from
> a young human embryo (reference to truncated Haeckel Figure)"
There's the swallowing of the fraud. A human embryo looks
nothing like the figure of the early stage. Nothing at all.
> I don't have many problems with this passage, although the "expert eye"
> bit is perhaps not strictly true. Anyway, in the legend to the Haeckel
> figue we see the following:
>
> "Comparison of the embryonic development of a fish, an amphibian, a
> reptile, a bird, and a selection of mammals. The early stages (above) are
> very similar;
And totally fictitious the way Haeckel drew them. Would you
like me to explain all the differences between his fantasy
and an actual human embryo?
the later stages (below) are more divergent. The earliest
> stages are drawn roughly to scale; the later stages are not. (reference to
> Haeckel follows)."
>
> Now, I have to admit that to avoid any more confusion it would probably be
> a good thing if people used Michael Richardson's pictures of embryos in
> future textbooks to make the same point. However, as far as I'm concerned,
> the accusation that Alberts and co. have *uncritically repeated Haeckel's
> claims* is without foundation.
Well, not all of Haeckel's claims; I'm sorry if I created that
impression with my words.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
PZ Myers
[snip]
>You realize, don't you, that if Behe were ever documented
>making the ridiculous claim you attributed to him, no
>biology or biochemistry department in a state university
>would dare to invite him to give a lecture such as he
>gave in our Physical Sciences Building?
>
In this case, was he invited by the biology or biochemistry
department? At Temple, he was invited by our Frontier Sciences
program (and if anyone has been reading the Skeptical Inquirer
lately, that is no accolade). His previous engagement was at Oregon,
and there he was invited by a theology group. Has he been getting
many invitations from biologists or biochemists?
[snip]
>> I said "2 or 3 inches high". It was a big digit on a standard sized
>> (8.5x11) transparency, so that was a reasonable guess. Again, I was
>> not making the untoward claims of precision that you are now trying
>> to imply.
>
>OK, so you didn't measure it. Still, you were close enough
>to estimate its size to within an order of magnitude.
Huh? Anyone in the room could have seen that. We could all see
the size of the bright projection from the overhead projector;
we could see the relative size of the digit to the projected area;
we knew how big the transparency was. Why is this an issue?
>
>> >
>> >What was that figure you gave, again? Did it apply to the
>> >actual transparency or to the projection on the screen?
>
>You ducked this question. Why?
>
I didn't. I said above it was an estimate of the size, and that it
was 2 or 3 inches high on a standard size transparency. Now think
carefully about this, Mr. Mathematician.
Would a 2 or 3 inch high letter be easily visible on a projected
image in a large room? If a LARGE digit were projected on a screen,
don't you suspect it would be a foot or two high?
This is just bizarre. I said you were rather desperately trying to
make an issue of irrelevancies, and this is a prime example. Does
it make a difference if the zero was printed in 128 point Times or
360 point Helvetica? Is this what you call pinning me down on an
objective claim, getting all prosecutorial on clearly labeled
estimates and paraphrases?
[snip]
--
PZ Myers
PZ Myers
>And totally fictitious the way Haeckel drew them. Would you
>like me to explain all the differences between his fantasy
>and an actual human embryo?
No. See <http://www.sghms.ac.uk/depts/anatomy/pages/mikhmpg.htm> for a
PHOTOGRAPH of the same stage. Then look at Haeckel's drawings at
Scott Gilbert's site <http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/evo5.html> (this
page also reproduces Richardson's drawings of the phylotypic stage).
It is actually fairly decent, considering it was almost certainly drawn
freehand and from material that was pathetically preserved compared to
what Richardson has. Still, you can tell that every ambiguity and
complication in the original material was consistently interpreted
towards similarity, and it is quite obvious where he took the liberty
of stripping out gross differences, like the huge yolk sacs, that
distorted the overall shape.
--
PZ Myers
ScottWSU
<<...I was still naive about how utterly irrational and/or
transparently deceitful human
beings can be and still be popular--more popular than
the people who point out that the emperor has no clothes.>>>
**** Yes. I agree. When people point out the intellectual emptiness of
creationism - in all its many guises - there are always many that will resist
and continue to claim victory. ALl due to either complete ignorance, religious
indoctrination, or usually, both.
*****
Victor Eijkhout
> >All I can say is "Ni! Ni!" - look it up for yourself.
>
> Where?
Just as tad after "is", in any decent dictionary.
--
Victor Eijkhout
"[A] man was excluded from the jury after asking the judge to tell him the
date of birth of the defendant so that he could draw up an astrological
chart to help him to decide on guilt or innocence." [Times 1998/12/29]
gro...@my-dejanews.com
> like me to explain all the differences between his fantasy
> and an actual human embryo?
>
> > stages are drawn roughly to scale; the later stages are not. (reference to
> > Haeckel follows)."
> >
> > Now, I have to admit that to avoid any more confusion it would probably be
> > a good thing if people used Michael Richardson's pictures of embryos in
> > future textbooks to make the same point. However, as far as I'm concerned,
> > the accusation that Alberts and co. have *uncritically repeated Haeckel's
> > claims* is without foundation.
>
> Well, not all of Haeckel's claims; I'm sorry if I created that
> impression with my words.
Apology accepted; one of the authors of the Alberts book is a former
colleague, another is a colleague and a friend - so I'm leaping to their
defence more than I otherwise might.
Cheers,
Andy
Mark J. Koebbe
> >>
> >> Both lectures were given to near-capacity crowds. After each
> >> there were question-and-answer sessions which were quite lively,
> >> to say the least, but Behe fielded the questions quite well.
>
> >With boku examples of 'designed' events I suppose.
>
> Guess again. He never claimed any given event was designed,
> and even said that science does not deal in certainties.
>
> Oh, wait. You weren't really guessing. You put the word "designed"
> in 'inverted commas' instead of quotes. So you were indulging
> in innuendo to the effect that Behe presented things he
> never presented at Temple University, right?
Nope. Guess again.
> >> The first lecture hewed quite closely to the content of
> >> portions of _Darwin's Black Box_. The second ranged further,
> >> giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
> >> evidence in mainstream science,
>
> >And still no constraints on a 'design'...let alone intelligent.
>
> What are you babbling about?
People babbling about the 'design' inference, without a constraint on a
'design' nor a constraint on intelligence. This was supposedly a major
reason for his book and his lecture appearances. Did he get to the meat
of the argument or spend all his time on denigrating evolutionists.
I've posted beaucoup [note the
> correct spelling, Mark]
ROTFLMAO (which correctly spelled is 'rolling on the floor laughing my
ass off' for those who quibble over spelling).
articles this year alone on the subject
> of directed panspermy, in which the designers were constrained
> just as we ourselves are. One hypothesis, involving what
> are informally called "Xordaxians", postulates creatures with
> our own genetic code doing modest manipulations that could
> be within our reach this coming century, if biochemistry
> and biotechnology keeps progressing at the rate it's been
> progressing for the last fifty years.
>
> The other hypothesis, involving what are informally called
> "Throomians", is more ambitious, because it essentially
> involves designing a whole prokaryote from scratch,
> but if we keep progressing
> for another ten thousand years at our present rate, we
> might be able to accomplish such wonders too.
>
> There's a trade-off: it is much easier to imagine the abiogenesis
> of the Throomian life forms than that of the Xordaxians,
Who also have to evolve or be created or be designed.....ambitious is an
understatement. To ascribe it as easier to imagine is indistinguishable
from putting the cart before the horse.
> because Throomian life is based on RNA instead of on DNA and
> on our fantastically machine-like protein synthesis mechanism
> and genetic code.
>
> > including the phony pictures
> >> by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
> >> peppered moth case.
>
> >Ho-hum...
>
> I suppose evidence of fraud by fanatical atheists always evokes this
> reaction from you. Maybe that's why you and Paul Myers
> get along so well.
There you go again. Feebly attempting to poison the well.
>
> >I suppose he discussed the Baer synthesis by contrast
>
> No, but von Baer, to give him his correct name,
ROTF again. Emphasis on the 'no' which makes my point.
was supposedly
> superseded by Haeckel for decades. You don't see any
> biology textbooks with drawings based on any by von Baer,
> do you?
Nope, the one I have has a figure based on von Baer's (gee, did I get
the spelling right) interpretation. That's page 254, figure 7.1 (after
Romanes, 1901) from Gilbert, 1997. Wait...that should be S.F. Gilbert,
fifth edition, Sinauer Press...is that detailed enough for you Peter.
Should I mention whether it is at the top or bottom of the page? Or
should I have an original copy of Romanes, 1901 in hand.
>
> (not
> >likely...don't want to give any credit to evolutionists).
>
> Behe is not a creationist.
So? Did he or did he not credit or discredit evolutionists? Did his
talk have a title with 'design' in it? Did he mention the criteria for
'design' in biology? Did he offer up even a single gedanken experiment
which might support 'design'?
The whole reason I went to the talk at Temple was to see if he had
developed some idea about how to define 'design' in the framework of
biological
science. I figured he had 2 years since his book and some cues from
people like Dembski. I was very disappointed, because he spent all his
time discussing his critics 'religious' antibias, the obvious problems
of evolution (to which most evolutionists are already aware), a bit of
time on what he might think to be 'generally' an article he would like
to see
(without comparison to the actual articles in JME, which might contain a
few points of his argument, we will never know, I guess), then discussed
design briefly by referencing a fellow Discovery colleagues' new book
without giving any conceptual framework for the design.
When he spoke at Temple, didn't any
> hecklers ask him point blank whether he considered himself to be
> a creationist? One did here, and he replied in the negative.
Nobody heckled him....there were about 30 at most at the lecture. Of
course it might have been 32...or 27. How did he distinguish himself
from creationists' concept of 'design'? Those IC systems which seem to
be either reducible, have duplicated parts with other functions or show
evidence of evolution? Did he constrain his 'design' hypothesis?
Sounds like he hasn't moved much beyond a 'creationist' view.
One key point I recall from the Q and A section at Temple, was a query
(rhetorical) phrased 'generally', that it seemed that 'you have to
assume design to know it was design'. Behe responded with something
about that being a philosophical issue and that he was not a
philosopher. Paul, might confirm what I say, he may not. I found that
this 'rhetorical' question cut to the center of his argument. Without a
'constraint' on design or IC, the argument is indistinguishable from a
circular fallacy.
>
> Would you like to know more about what he said in reply?
>
> But back to von Baer. You insinuated that I ought to apologize
> for what I said about germ layers. Did you know that von Baer
> claimed there were four rather than three?
> two parts.
No I didn't. Read between the lines....like Julie said we should've
done at Behe's talk. Hell, lets bring in the auditory placodes or
perhaps the AER? Why not reduce it to two germ layers, ectoderm and
endoderm? Hell lets just reduce it to the egg as a primary germ layer
(noggin, nanos, bicoid). Boy, wouldn't that be useful.
>
> Did Paul ever mention that tidbit to you? not likely...don't
> want to take any credit away from the man whom people
> clutched at like a drowning man clutches at a straw when
> Haeckel's fraud was first discussed here in talk.origins.
Focusing on Haeckels' fraud is a form of clutching at straws. Did he
discuss the 'von' Baer ideas as would commonly be done at any credible
scientific talk?
>
> >> It was in the first lecture that Behe used a transparency
> >> which has been the source of heated controversy in talk.origins.
>
> >There was no controversy....just Peter and Julie quibbling.
>
> There was plenty of controversy just BETWEEN you and Myers.
A controversy generated entirely by your quibbling over minutia. The
issue was did he detail the types of articles he would like to see
(without discussing the articles which are in JME). He spent as much
time discussing his religion and prejudice as he did of the types of
papers he would like to see (however, I didn't time him to the
second...so Peter has room for more quibbles). Then again, Paul might
say that I overstated the opinion, then Peter can quibble about accuracy
and collusion and lies and anything that he thinks is reality.
Meanwhile the central flaws in Behe's presentation remain unchallenged.
I'll wait for more of Peter's quibbles.
> I wonder how long it will take for either of you to face
> up to the glaring discrepancy in the following excerpt which
> Myers deleted in the thread,
ROTF.
> "The Myers-Hershey dogma of embryology" two days ago.
>
> ========================= begin excerpt from a Jan 4 post by you
>
> [Myers:]
> > >>What he is saying in those lectures is quite explicit. Here in
> > >>Philadelphia he showed an overhead of the table of contents of an
> > >>issue of JME, and went on at some length about what we ought to be
> > >>seeing published in such a journal.
>
> [Julie Thomas:]
> > >Tsk, tsk. Up to this point, all the pack members have omitted this most
> > >crucial qualifier. Pay attention kiddies:
Note the crucial qualifier...'pay attention kiddies'.
> > >
> > >" and went on at some length about what we ought to be seeing
> > >published in such a journal ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > >
> > >Well, well.
> > >
> > >When he went on at some length about what we ought
> > >to be seeing published in JME, explain what he said.
> > >What ought we be seeing? His book is explicit and he
> > >even suggests how these studies might be titled (p. 176)
>
> [Julie Thomas, in later post:]
> > Paul doesn't tell us what Behe said when he went on at some
> > length about what we ought to be seeing published in JME.
>
> Because he didn't...and I and others concur. Watch the goal posts move
> again.
Quibble quibble quibble. He did not compare his model of what he
would like to see with specific articles in JME. I don't recall a model
that had relevant specifics, Paul recalls a brief discussion. Peter
thinks this is the center of the argument. Go figure.
That he simply stated he looked through five years of articles, without
pointing to at least a specific example to support his point, is a
glaring omission.
That he is still entirely incapable of 'constraining' design or proving
IC remains a hallmark of his presentations. His only 'proof' of
'design' was to put the title of Dembski's book on an overhead. He
didn't spend much time on Dembski's claims either. But then I suppose
Peter wants to know 'exactly' how much time and exact details.
What an idiot.
> ========================== end of excerpt
>
> >> I will be doing posts on that controversy to this thread. The
> >> transparency ran exactly as follows, except for linebreaks:
> >>
> >> Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
> >> detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure:
> >>
> >> 0
> >>
> >> The second lecture did not use the transparency.
>
> >So far everything you've offered has validated what Paul and I have
> >said.
>
> Does Paul pay you to lie for him,
Hysterical.....
You couldn't prove a lie if you tried. No more then your deliberate
obfuscation about iron, heme, and protein. Pot meet black kettle.
Meanwhile the central flaws of Behe's arguments remain.
or do you do it free of
> charge? Here is what Paul wrote, excerpted from the same
> post of yours from which the above excerpt is taken:
>
> ======================================= begin excerpt, highlighting added
>
> He then asked the
> > >>audience the rhetorical question, 'How many articles on evolution
> > >>do you think they've published?' before putting up a cheesy overhead
> > >with nothing but the numeral 0 on it, in big, bold print.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> ================================= end of excerpt
>
> > I suppose Peter will now quibble over the size.
>
> Look again. That's not the part I highlighted.
Without discussing a single article....he puts up a 0. Okay, that
really helps your argument.
>
> > Behe has
> >> confirmed that he uses two versions of this transparency in
> >> lectures, the more frequently used one having a smaller 0 than the
> >> other one. The rest of the text is the same.
>
> >So he did have a 0 on a transparency. Gee, Peter, did you think he did
> >this for effect?
>
> Gee, Mark, can YOU find any articles in JME that present
> detailed models?
Gee, Peter, answer the question.
How detailed? As detailed as Behe's evidence of 'design'? As detailed
as Behe wants JME to be? Who died and made him 'god'? Oh, that's
right...he did spend some time talking about Catholicism.....
>
> > BTW, just how many of the articles in JME were you
> >able to read before he pulled the overhead?
>
> Gee, Mark, did you expect him to leave up a JME article long
> enough for you to read the whole thing?
Fallacy of extended analogy noted.
The issue was the amount of time he gave to detailing a comparison of
what he would like to 'see' and what was in the journal. Not much time
IIRC. It was way to general of a commentary to ascribe any specificity
which you rely on for invective. The fact that he didn't even present
an example from JME supports this induction.
>
> How many did he discuss? Be
> >very specific so that we can start quibbling over minutia just like you.
>
> I will take this as a sarcastic implication that we should
> not quibble over minutiae, so I will not answer your question.
Yet you offered this entire post as a response.....go figure.
>
> >Peter and his quibbles. The point has stood....Was this the alleged
> >'thunder' and 'lightning'. Looks and sounds like another fizzler.
>
> You look and sound like a breed of networker that is getting
> to be more and more common in talk.origins: the Monty Pythonesque
> Black Knight clone.
Except it is I who is Arthur (Graham Chapman)....relevance?
>
> For those who didn't see that scene from the `Holy Grail' film:
> The heroes confront a knight dressed all in black who taunts
> the heroes for being weaklings who can't fight him and cowards
> afraid to fight him.
Hold the mirror up to your face real close and repeat.
He keeps on doing it as they cut off
> both his arms and both his legs, and even afterwards.
Indeed.
>
> I walked out on the film almost immediately after this scene
> because it just seemed too farfetched. This was before
> I came across Usenet. Had I seen it in 1993 or thereafter,
> I would have hung around to see what other kinds of net.barbarians
> are being satirized in it.
Quibble quibble quibble. Keep talking oh great Black Knight. Are you
going to now say...'alright...let's call it a draw'.
MJK
Matt Silberstein
>In article <grovesa-0402...@131.215.121.119>,
> gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
>> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>>
>> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
>> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
>> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
>> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
>> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
>>
>> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
>> no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
>
>Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
>drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
>
So which is the claim, that there was fraud over 100 years ago or that
there is fraud now?
> In the text, we have the
>> passage:
>>
>> "Molecular studies, to be discussed later in this book, reveal an
>> astonishing number of developmental resemblances at a fundamental genetic
>> level, even between species as remotely related as mammals and insects. In
>> terms of anatomy, furthermore, early developmental stages of animals whose
>> adult forms appear radically different are often surprisingly similar; it
>> takes an expert eye to distinguish, for example, a young chick embryo from
>> a young human embryo (reference to truncated Haeckel Figure)"
>
>There's the swallowing of the fraud. A human embryo looks
>nothing like the figure of the early stage. Nothing at all.
>
I think this is the crux of all of Peter's issues. It is the
similarity to the human embryo that concerns him. As he says (over and
over) he came here from alt.abortion. And he does not like comparisons
between human embryos and other animal embryos. That humans share a
common ancestor with other animals does not speak to the abortion
issue, the embryo question does.
>> I don't have many problems with this passage, although the "expert eye"
>> bit is perhaps not strictly true. Anyway, in the legend to the Haeckel
>> figue we see the following:
>>
>> "Comparison of the embryonic development of a fish, an amphibian, a
>> reptile, a bird, and a selection of mammals. The early stages (above) are
>> very similar;
>
>And totally fictitious the way Haeckel drew them. Would you
>like me to explain all the differences between his fantasy
>and an actual human embryo?
>
No, I would rather you explain why the actual current scientific view
is wrong. If your objection is to 100 year old science it does not
really matter.
[snip]
Peter Nyikos
at $19.95. Its title is "Irreducible Complexity: The Biochemical
Challenge to Darwinian Theory", and information on ordering
it can be found at:
http://www.arn.org/orders/vidinfo.htm
This is the usual talk given by Behe, the one with the now-famous
(as far as talk.origins is concerned) transparency with the zero
on it. Of it, Behe wrote the following in an e-mail yesterday
which he has allowed me to quote from:
I viewed the tape of myself at Princeton last night, and it's just
as I remember, and just as I do all the time. I emphasized that the
zero was the number of papers concerned with detailed models for
irreducibly complex biochemical systems, and specifically said
that JME has published a thousand papers in the past 10 years or so,
the overwhelming majority of which were sequence analyses.
I emphasized that the story is about the same in other journals -
a lot of sequence analysis, but no detailed models. Essentially
I said the same thing as I wrote in my book. I say virtually the
same thing in every talk, simply because I have the lines pretty
much memorized by now, and they always flow out in the same sequence.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Peter Nyikos
lecture costs $29.95, not $19.95.
"Rod Kardorff" <R...@NOSPAMeatel.net> writes:
...the usual generic flaming twaddle. Almost nothing concrete
that one could tie to specific events. The events
in the post to which Rod is following up aren't even
alluded to.
Rod wrote only a very few statements
that even have to do with me specifically instead of being
utilizable to just about anyone with equal justice, in some
cases a lot more. Here is one of those few:
>Peter, having found a "hero" in Behe,cannot understand why Behe is not
>recognized as a genius by everyone else.
I neither consider Behe to be a genius nor is he a "hero". He
is just someone who is shamelessly misrepresented by people,
some of whom Rod Kardoff praises without naming them, and these
people especially have no excuse for not knowing better. [In
most cases, I think they *do* know a lot better but are
dissembling or passing off raw emotions as objective observations.
Which is basically what Rod did all thru his post.]
>A question:
>If a student in your class, 19 years old,
>tells you that you do not know math, do you spend hours trying to explain
>yourself to him/her?
Never had a student do that. I wonder what the point is--has Myers
been telling you tall tales about how I tell people like him
that they don't know biology, Rod? That's not what the post you are
following up to is all about, and you know it.
>I bet not.
>(I would hate to be one of peters students)
I once caught a student taking a test for another student in
my class, and both were suspended. Do you think you
might try pulling a stunt like that? If not, you have
nothing to fear from me. Myers, on the other hand, is
pulling equally reprehensible stunts daily, and that is
why you see me bearing down on him in the post whose
words you left in below.
[...]
>Rod #613
Atheist number 613 from alt.atheism?
Don't be sucked into supporting Myers just because he is
an atheist. He gives atheism an undeserved bad name.
Most of what follows is a repetition of my latest followup
to Myers, but I did make one addition in the middle of it all.
Note: yes, if a sincere honest adult had said what
Myers said about the transparency, I would naturally conclude
from the "8.5x11" part that he was estimating the height
of the letter on the transparency itself. But people
who demonstrate a genius for denying the obvious do,
in my experience, usually demonstrate a high degree of
aptitude for misdirection as well.
Mark J. Koebbe
>
> Oops! I made a typo in my last post. The video of Behe's Princeton
> lecture costs $29.95, not $19.95.
Then of course, everything else you said about his lecture is therefore
suspect. Does the logic sound familiar, Peter?
Of course, even more puzzling is why someone would want to see a lecture
which wouldn't pass as a Master's thesis presentation at Tolucca Tech.
Coming from a Ph.D. from U. Penn, that is almost embarassing.
>
> "Rod Kardorff" <R...@NOSPAMeatel.net> writes:
>
> ...the usual generic flaming twaddle.
Spoken by the king of twaddle....
Almost nothing concrete
> that one could tie to specific events. The events
> in the post to which Rod is following up aren't even
> alluded to.
You mean like no design events....no evidence...no thought experiment.
Oh, I forgot...that would be Behe.
>
> Rod wrote only a very few statements
> that even have to do with me specifically instead of being
> utilizable to just about anyone with equal justice, in some
> cases a lot more. Here is one of those few:
>
> >Peter, having found a "hero" in Behe,cannot understand why Behe is not
> >recognized as a genius by everyone else.
>
> I neither consider Behe to be a genius nor is he a "hero". He
> is just someone who is shamelessly misrepresented by people,
Like shamelessly misrepresenting the JME without discussing a single
article or its lacking in 'evolutionary' evidence....
I guess it depends on whether one is talking science or mysticism.
> some of whom Rod Kardoff praises without naming them, and these
> people especially have no excuse for not knowing better.
Same goes for a Ph.D. in biochemistry giving talks which show competency
of a freshman in college.
[In
> most cases, I think they *do* know a lot better but are
> dissembling or passing off raw emotions as objective observations.
Speaking to the mirror again.
> Which is basically what Rod did all thru his post.]
Pot meet black kettle.
Rest of 100's of lines of quibbles deleted.
MJK
Huxter4441
scientific journals that deal with detailed models of the design and creation
(by whom, we cannot say 'wink, wink') of supposedly IC systems?
howard hershey
>
> In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
>
> >In article <grovesa-0402...@131.215.121.119>,
> > gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
> >> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
> >>
> >> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
> >> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
> >> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
> >> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
> >> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
> >>
> >> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
> >> no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
> >
> >Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
> >drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
The drawings are not *entirely* accurate, Peter. Specifically,
Haeckel's drawings overemphasize the similarities, which he may well
have done to press his claim that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny (and
which *today* would be regarded as scientific fraud; how it was regarded
among the naturphilosophers of his day is anyone's guess). But the
drawings are not totally inaccurate either. Early vertebrate embryos do
share many more common features and similarities than later embryos or
the adult animals.
> >
> So which is the claim, that there was fraud over 100 years ago or that
> there is fraud now?
>
> > In the text, we have the
> >> passage:
> >>
> >> "Molecular studies, to be discussed later in this book, reveal an
> >> astonishing number of developmental resemblances at a fundamental genetic
> >> level, even between species as remotely related as mammals and insects. In
> >> terms of anatomy, furthermore, early developmental stages of animals whose
> >> adult forms appear radically different are often surprisingly similar; it
> >> takes an expert eye to distinguish, for example, a young chick embryo from
> >> a young human embryo (reference to truncated Haeckel Figure)"
> >
> >There's the swallowing of the fraud. A human embryo looks
> >nothing like the figure of the early stage. Nothing at all.
Yes it does, Peter. Surely you have seen actual photos of human embryos
at the equivalent stage in your vast reading of human embryology texts.
Perhaps you could describe which stage you think you are looking at and
how the human embryo looks "nothing at all" like any other vertebrate
embryo at that stage? The human embryo is not always *identical* to
other vertebrate embryos in *all* characteristics at the same stage (as
Haeckel's discredited ideas about ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny
would imply) but to say that the early human embryo looks "nothing at
all" like other vertebrate embryos at similar stages of development is
an even worse 'fraud' than the one you claim Haeckel perpetuated. All
vertebrate early embryos are very similar in structure compared to the
divergences in structure and morphology that occur later.
> >
> I think this is the crux of all of Peter's issues. It is the
> similarity to the human embryo that concerns him. As he says (over and
> over) he came here from alt.abortion. And he does not like comparisons
> between human embryos and other animal embryos. That humans share a
> common ancestor with other animals does not speak to the abortion
> issue, the embryo question does.
>
> >> I don't have many problems with this passage, although the "expert eye"
> >> bit is perhaps not strictly true. Anyway, in the legend to the Haeckel
> >> figue we see the following:
> >>
> >> "Comparison of the embryonic development of a fish, an amphibian, a
> >> reptile, a bird, and a selection of mammals. The early stages (above) are
> >> very similar;
> >
> >And totally fictitious the way Haeckel drew them. Would you
> >like me to explain all the differences between his fantasy
> >and an actual human embryo?
Haeckel's drawings, *as drawings*, are not "totally fictitious" (I have
no real evidence that Haeckel had access to many early human embryos, so
it is possible that his 'drawings' of 'human' embryos may have included
some features actually extracted from study of other mammals - but
because of the high degree of similarity among the mammals, such a
drawing, *as a drawing*, while it may be inaccurate in some detail,
would not be radically wrong). The sort of fraudulent picture you are
claiming, where the drawing of the human embryo has *no resemblance* to
the real human embryo at all, would have been discarded or altered long
ago, as they would have no value whatsoever (current use of these
drawings, since at least the 1940s and probably earlier, are limited to
pedagogy showing the basic similarity of early stages in vertebrate
development not to a detailed analysis of this; nor have they been used
to support of Haeckel's ideas on the relationship between phylogeny and
ontogeny since at least the same amount of time). What Haeckel has been
accused of, even by his harshest 'knowledgeable' critics (as opposed to
certain amateurs and ideologues who spout off terms like "fantasy" and
"totally fictitious" with little real knowledge), is exagerating
similarities, not drawing or presenting "totally fictitious" figures
radically divorced from reality. His drawing of the early human embryo
is not a "fantasy"; it shows, as a drawing, perhaps an exageration of
the similarities with other similarly staged embryos.
This is not to excuse Haeckel. He *did* exagerate features to support
his ideas about "ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny". He may have used
extrapolation from other mammals for some of the features seen in early
human embryos (although I don't know this). Today, this would be
clearly regarded as fraudulent science. But Haeckel existed in a
different social environment. At his time and place what he did would
probably be considered marginally less than honest (there were
complaints at the time). The figures he drew, however inacurate the
specific exagerations, are sufficiently close to the reality to have
some pedagogic value (to show the similarity of early embryos). They
are not used to show that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. And they
would not be used at all (or at least not without significant
alteration) if the early human embyro did not resemble the drawing "at
all". Even the regetable, if understandable, habit of textbooks
perpetuating material that should have been altered would never stand
for a drawing that differed as dramatically from reality as you assert
(wrongly) in this case.
I can only imagine that you are thinking of some much later stage in
human development when you are refering to "an actual human embryo"
looking so much different from this "fantasy". Did you actually read
those human embryology books? Did you look at the pictures?
Julie Thomas
In a previous article, mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) says:
>In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
>
>>In article <grovesa-0402...@131.215.121.119>,
>> gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
>>> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>>>
>>> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
>>> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
>>> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
>>> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
>>> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
>>>
>>> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
>>> no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
>>
>>Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
>>drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
>>
>So which is the claim, that there was fraud over 100 years ago or that
>there is fraud now?
This whole issue of Haeckel's drawings in the texts (some as
recent as 1998) and Richardson's article is not, and has never been,
about "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." The issue has always
been about whether these embryos are indeed as similar as portrayed
by Haeckel and in many texts. From the Science article that
reviewed Richardson's work:
After taking careful photographs of embryos that roughly match the
species and age used in Haeckel's drawings, Richardson found they
"often looked surprisingly different."
In order to make the different vertebrate embryos look so similar,
Haeckel's drawings contain things not seen, omit things that are there,
fudge the scale even when there is a 10-fold difference in size, and
create the impression that there are no significant variations within
groups. Richardson notes, "it looks like it's turning out to be one of the
most famous fakes in biology."
--
PZ Myers
<nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>A video of a talk Behe gave at Princeton University is available
>at $19.95. Its title is "Irreducible Complexity: The Biochemical
>Challenge to Darwinian Theory", and information on ordering
>it can be found at:
>
>http://www.arn.org/orders/vidinfo.htm
>
>This is the usual talk given by Behe, the one with the now-famous
>(as far as talk.origins is concerned) transparency with the zero
>on it. Of it, Behe wrote the following in an e-mail yesterday
>which he has allowed me to quote from:
>
> I viewed the tape of myself at Princeton last night, and it's just
> as I remember, and just as I do all the time. I emphasized that the
> zero was the number of papers concerned with detailed models for
> irreducibly complex biochemical systems, and specifically said
What? No! It can't be!
Behe has paraphrased himself!
Peter, you specifically said that what was on the overhead were the words:
"Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure:"
Is "models for the production of complex biochemical structure"
synonymous with "models for IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX biochemical systems"?
How misleading!
I guess we could start trading accusations of lying back and forth now,
and drag Behe into the game, too.
> that JME has published a thousand papers in the past 10 years or so,
> the overwhelming majority of which were sequence analyses.
> I emphasized that the story is about the same in other journals -
> a lot of sequence analysis, but no detailed models. Essentially
> I said the same thing as I wrote in my book. I say virtually the
> same thing in every talk, simply because I have the lines pretty
> much memorized by now, and they always flow out in the same sequence.
>
Yes, I quite understand the point you, Thomas, and Behe have been making.
He was not at all dishonest in his presentation. He was very careful in
his phrasing to make sure he didn't say anything he could get caught on
later, and the ID/IC gang (you three) are quite sincere in your insistence
that his words must be reproduced verbatim. His comments tend to fall to
pieces if they aren't repeated precisely -- they're kind of IC, aren't they?
However, you guys haven't been able to comprehend my point. Sorry.
I haven't been accusing Behe of lying, or misrepresenting himself, or
anything of that nature. I thought that was pretty clear in my original
post on his talk. Rather, what I'm accusing him of is pandering to anti-
evolutionary sentiment, and giving a talk that was empty of any substance
at all.
Behe was making an empty rhetorical flourish with his material about JME.
He contrived a definition of what evolutionists ought to be studying and
publishing, brought up a major journal, and said they weren't studying
what he said they should.
Why?
It would be one thing if a major journal were ignoring material cogent to
its own stated purpose, or if Behe had evidence that some journal were
suppressing relevant ideas. That isn't the case. He's berating a journal
for not following *his* grand plan. Why should they? What point is he
trying to make?
I have a suggestion for him. Throw out that overhead with the table of
contents for JME. Grab a copy of Living magazine from his grocery store
checkout, and copy that instead. Then he can give a talk where he says:
"This is a page from Living magazine, one of the premier journals on the
market today for studying life. blah blah blah..."
"You would think a journal with a title like that would welcome ideas
about the origin of life. But I ask you, how many papers have been
published in Living magazine that discuss detailed models for the production
of complex biochemical structure?"
And then he could put up his overhead with the zero on it. It would be just
as true! And people would nod their heads in agreement, and clap, and there
would be mutterings about "That Martha Stewart -- she's a bitch", and so forth.
Then he could go on and tell everyone that he reviewed the articles in the
magazine for the last 5 years, and he found thousands of articles on flower
arranging, but nothing on what he wanted.
That's basically what he was doing with JME. Instead of pandering to anti-
Martha Stewart sentiment, though, he's getting a good reaction from the
anti-evolution crowd, the people who think scientific journals squelch all
the good evidence for creation. People who don't have that bias see him
making an irrelevant, cheap shot at the entire field of molecular evolution
(or flower arranging, if he chooses to revise his talk).
His entire talk followed that model. He's pimping himself to the ignorant,
and giving shallow, empty talks that would get him laughed off the podium
if they were presented as real science. He started off with a Biology 101
lecture on signal transduction in the eye and the structure of the flagellum
(message: ooh, isn't it complicated?), digressed into a pointless smirk
at the JME, finally talked about HIS theory, but illustrated his points
with cartoons rather than data, and ended it all with a long whine about how
his ideas get no respect because he's a good Catholic. It was an awful
talk, with nothing constructive in it, and nothing of substance -- but lots
that would appeal to the ignorant anti-science crowd, yourself included.
*That* was my summary. Your response, and Thomas's, and Behe's, is to get
all upset because I didn't get one very carefully worded sentence verbatim
in my notes. That is pathetic.
I apologize. I failed to include the appropriate weasel words in his phrasing.
I failed to transcribe every word from his overheads. I guessed at the
approximate size of the zero that was in the center of one of them...when I
should have gone up to him afterwards with a ruler and measured it precisely.
My only excuse is that I didn't know there would be a quiz on it afterwards,
and I'm evil. I mean, my only two excuses are that I didn't know about the
quiz, I'm evil, and I don't know shorthand. My only THREE excuses are...
Now that that is out of the way, any chance you could deal with the SUBSTANCE
of the criticisms? No more detours into pointless trivia? No? I didn't think
so.
--
PZ Myers
Peter Nyikos
talk.origins charter, folks. It's only in later followups
that I will comment on Mark's *ad hominem* remarks about Behe
and an increasingly famous transparency.
"Mark J. Koebbe" <mko...@pond.com> writes:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> "Mark J. Koebbe" <mko...@pond.com> writes:
>>
>> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> >>
>[snip description of Behe's Columbia visit]
>> >>
>> >> Both lectures were given to near-capacity crowds. After each
>> >> there were question-and-answer sessions which were quite lively,
>> >> to say the least, but Behe fielded the questions quite well.
>>
>> >With boku examples of 'designed' events I suppose.
>>
>> Guess again. He never claimed any given event was designed,
>> and even said that science does not deal in certainties.
>>
>> Oh, wait. You weren't really guessing. You put the word "designed"
>> in 'inverted commas' instead of quotes. So you were indulging
>> in innuendo to the effect that Behe presented things he
>> never presented at Temple University, right?
>Nope. Guess again.
You were indulging to the effect that Behe claimed some things
to be designed, when all he was saying was that they are IC, they look like
they were designed, and no one has been able to show how they
could have evolved, right?
>> >> The first lecture hewed quite closely to the content of
>> >> portions of _Darwin's Black Box_. The second ranged further,
>> >> giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
>> >> evidence in mainstream science,
>>
>> >And still no constraints on a 'design'...let alone intelligent.
>>
>> What are you babbling about?
>People babbling about the 'design' inference, without a constraint on a
>'design' nor a constraint on intelligence.
Not Behe. You've never read the eleventh chapter of his book,
have you?
This was supposedly a major
>reason for his book and his lecture appearances. Did he get to the meat
>of the argument or spend all his time on denigrating evolutionists.
Like I said, Behe is not a creationist. But no, he did not mention
directed panspermy; I wish he had. He threw away a good chance
when one heckler asked him how he would distinguish between
life designed by one designer and life designed by many designers.
Fortunately, I got to talking with the heckler after Behe's second
talk and filled him in on the various possibilities.
> I've posted beaucoup [note the
>> correct spelling, Mark]
>ROTFLMAO (which correctly spelled is 'rolling on the floor laughing my
>ass off' for those who quibble over spelling).
When you pick yourself up off the floor, note that I am not
quibbling over spelling; I'm just telling you the correct spelling.
> articles this year alone on the subject
>> of directed panspermy, in which the designers were constrained
>> just as we ourselves are. One hypothesis, involving what
>> are informally called "Xordaxians", postulates creatures with
>> our own genetic code doing modest manipulations that could
>> be within our reach this coming century, if biochemistry
>> and biotechnology keeps progressing at the rate it's been
>> progressing for the last fifty years.
The hypothesis states the design was the effort of many teams
of researchers, and some may have designed one feature, some
another, of the organisms sent to earth.
>> The other hypothesis, involving what are informally called
>> "Throomians", is more ambitious, because it essentially
>> involves designing a whole prokaryote from scratch,
>> but if we keep progressing
>> for another ten thousand years at our present rate, we
>> might be able to accomplish such wonders too.
>>
>> There's a trade-off: it is much easier to imagine the abiogenesis
>> of the Throomian life forms than that of the Xordaxians,
>Who also have to evolve or be created or be designed.....ambitious is an
>understatement.
Yes, coming up with hypotheses for the evolution of intelligent
Throomians *from* the first Throomian sub-prokaryote (self-replicator
enclosed in a cell membrane or cell wall) is quite an
ambitious undertaking. That's why I made conjugation, involving
exchange of whole cells, part of the Throomian hypothesis.
As for them being able to design a prokaryote from scratch,
I've also decided to hypothesize them being able to link
their brains together physically; but I can drop this hypothesis
if people come up with telling objections against it.
To ascribe it as easier to imagine is indistinguishable
>from putting the cart before the horse.
You're not making sense here. Are you suggesting that
abiogenesis even to the RNA-based-cell extent is tantamount to
imagining abiogenesis that goes all the way to the
first true prokaryote? Observe what I wrote next:
>> because Throomian life is based on RNA instead of on DNA and
>> on our fantastically machine-like protein synthesis mechanism
>> and genetic code.
TO BE CONTINUED
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Peter Nyikos
>In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
>>In article <grovesa-0402...@131.215.121.119>,
>> gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
>>> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>>>
>>> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
>>> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
>>> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
>>> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
>>> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
>>>
>>> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
>>> no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
>>
>>Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
>>drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
>>
>So which is the claim, that there was fraud over 100 years ago or that
>there is fraud now?
The former...and that the fraud was (mostly unwittingly) perpetuated up
to the present time. Perhaps some authors of textbooks still haven't
heard of the expose in _Science_. I cringe to think of high school
kids still being shown those phony pictures decades from now because
of the incompetence of the authors and editors.
>> In the text, we have the
>>> passage:
>>>
>>> "Molecular studies, to be discussed later in this book, reveal an
>>> astonishing number of developmental resemblances at a fundamental genetic
>>> level, even between species as remotely related as mammals and insects. In
>>> terms of anatomy, furthermore, early developmental stages of animals whose
>>> adult forms appear radically different are often surprisingly similar; it
>>> takes an expert eye to distinguish, for example, a young chick embryo from
>>> a young human embryo (reference to truncated Haeckel Figure)"
>>
>>There's the swallowing of the fraud. A human embryo looks
>>nothing like the figure of the early stage. Nothing at all.
>>
>I think this is the crux of all of Peter's issues. It is the
>similarity to the human embryo that concerns him.
Scientific fraud of all kinds concerns me. I am just as concerned
about the Piltdown fraud, and I have several posts containing
sharp comments about Ed Conrad's specimens to show for it.
As he says (over and
>over) he came here from alt.abortion.
You can't even get the name right, that's how infrequently
I mention it.
And he does not like comparisons
>between human embryos and other animal embryos.
This is a bare-faced lie. I love to compare them, and note
the differences and the far greater similarities.
That humans share a
>common ancestor with other animals does not speak to the abortion
>issue, the embryo question does.
That humans share a common ancestor is so certain that I think
Matt is deliberately lying about me in order to elicit
nasty comments from me about creationism. I call this
the SplitterLumper Scam. You lump people with others whom
you know damn well that they disagree with, just so you
or others can show their angry reaction to the people they
were unjustly lumped with, lest the latter join forces with
the victim of the scam.
>>> I don't have many problems with this passage, although the "expert eye"
>>> bit is perhaps not strictly true. Anyway, in the legend to the Haeckel
>>> figue we see the following:
>>>
>>> "Comparison of the embryonic development of a fish, an amphibian, a
>>> reptile, a bird, and a selection of mammals. The early stages (above) are
>>> very similar;
>>
>>And totally fictitious the way Haeckel drew them. Would you
>>like me to explain all the differences between his fantasy
>>and an actual human embryo?
>>
>No, I would rather you explain why the actual current scientific view
>is wrong.
The actual current scientific view may be as I fear above. I fear
that some incompetent scientists will continue to perpetrate
Haeckel's phony pictures.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
Peter Nyikos
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> Oops! I made a typo in my last post. The video of Behe's Princeton
>> lecture costs $29.95, not $19.95.
>Then of course, everything else you said about his lecture is therefore
>suspect. Does the logic sound familiar, Peter?
No, because I am charging you and Paul with dishonestly defaming
Behe, nothing more, nothing less. I am not trying to draw any
conclusions about what you two said elsewhere, except to point out
how hypocritical it is of Paul to belittle the difference
between what you and he claimed and what Behe wrote, after
having called Joe Potter a "blatantly despicable liar" and
Tim Teebken "a fraud".
For more about the latter event, see the thread I began yesterday,
"Tim Teebken and his detractors".
Oh, and I'm also demonstrating how hypocritical it was of
you to keep salivating "Watch the goalposts move" and
words to that effect in taunting Julie Thomas.
The hypocrisy is evident just in
your opening two lines up there, and all through this post
and the other one of yours that I followed up to earlier
this morning.
>Of course, even more puzzling is why someone would want to see a lecture
>which wouldn't pass as a Master's thesis presentation at Tolucca Tech.
>Coming from a Ph.D. from U. Penn, that is almost embarassing.
Your incompetent evaluation of the lecture is duly noted.
>>
>> "Rod Kardorff" <R...@NOSPAMeatel.net> writes:
>>
>> ...the usual generic flaming twaddle.
>Spoken by the king of twaddle....
You must have been a fan of Pee Wee Herman. I never did care
for the guy.
> Almost nothing concrete
>> that one could tie to specific events. The events
>> in the post to which Rod is following up aren't even
>> alluded to.
>You mean like no design events....no evidence...no thought experiment.
>Oh, I forgot...that would be Behe.
I believe you remembered exactly what was in the post to which
Rod was following up, and deleted it because you couldn't face
up to the implication that you are an apprentice in the craft
of denying the obvious, learning at the feet of a master like
Paul Myers.
>> Rod wrote only a very few statements
>> that even have to do with me specifically instead of being
>> utilizable to just about anyone with equal justice, in some
>> cases a lot more. Here is one of those few:
>>
>> >Peter, having found a "hero" in Behe,cannot understand why Behe is not
>> >recognized as a genius by everyone else.
>>
>> I neither consider Behe to be a genius nor is he a "hero". He
>> is just someone who is shamelessly misrepresented by people,
>Like shamelessly misrepresenting the JME without discussing a single
>article or its lacking in 'evolutionary' evidence....
The foregoing could be construed as legally actionable libel,
except that you have a perfect alibi: everyone who reads
you knows you are bullshitting.
Well, that's the alibi I expect you'd use, anyway, along with the old
"talk.origins isn't the real world anyway" alibi.
>I guess it depends on whether one is talking science or mysticism.
Or whether one is talking about JME or a figment of your
imagination: the fictitious JME which includes articles that answer
the following question that Behe included in his talk
here shortly before he flashed the slide:
How many proposed detailed models for the Darwinian
evolution of systems like the flagellum or cilium?
>> some of whom Rod Kardoff praises without naming them, and these
>> people especially have no excuse for not knowing better.
>Same goes for a Ph.D. in biochemistry giving talks which show competency
>of a freshman in college.
I doubt that you could give such a competent lecture in the
area you specialize in AND field questions in it as well
as Behe did.
> [In
>> most cases, I think they *do* know a lot better but are
>> dissembling or passing off raw emotions as objective observations.
>Speaking to the mirror again.
You really do love these variations on "I know you are, but
what am I?" [The formula predates Pee Wee Herman, but he is the
one who made it part of the lore of the media.]
>> Which is basically what Rod did all thru his post.]
>Pot meet black kettle.
Just can't cure yourself of the IkyabwaI bug, I see.
>Rest of 100's of lines of quibbles deleted.
Flagrantly burying your head in the sand, I see.
>MJK
nyi...@math.sc.edu
this thread. He saved his histrionics for the thread,
"Tim Teebken and his detractors" where I document an
earlier example of character assassination by Myers.
In article <myers-04029...@bio-101.bio.temple.edu>,
my...@astro.ocis.temple.edu (PZ Myers) wrote:
> In article <79d075$6jk$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >You realize, don't you, that if Behe were ever documented
> >making the ridiculous claim you attributed to him, no
> >biology or biochemistry department in a state university
> >would dare to invite him to give a lecture such as he
> >gave in our Physical Sciences Building?
> >
>
> In this case, was he invited by the biology or biochemistry
> department? At Temple, he was invited by our Frontier Sciences
> program (and if anyone has been reading the Skeptical Inquirer
> lately, that is no accolade).
I haven't, so kindly fill me in on what the program is all about.
And, if it's relevant, what criticisms (if any) the Skeptical
Enquirer had of it.
> His previous engagement was at Oregon,
> and there he was invited by a theology group. Has he been getting
> many invitations from biologists or biochemists?
I don't know offhand, but I'll ask him. For sure, his second
lecture was co-sponsored by the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry,
as part of a series which has to do with Darwinism. Two other
speakers in the series are Lewontin of Harvard, speaking here
next Tuesday, and Dennett. I forget who the fourth is.
> [snip]
>
> >> I said "2 or 3 inches high". It was a big digit on a standard sized
> >> (8.5x11) transparency, so that was a reasonable guess. Again, I was
> >> not making the untoward claims of precision that you are now trying
> >> to imply.
> >
> >OK, so you didn't measure it. Still, you were close enough
> >to estimate its size to within an order of magnitude.
>
> Huh? Anyone in the room could have seen that. We could all see
> the size of the bright projection from the overhead projector;
> we could see the relative size of the digit to the projected area;
> we knew how big the transparency was. Why is this an issue?
See what I added to what Rod left in.
> >> >What was that figure you gave, again? Did it apply to the
> >> >actual transparency or to the projection on the screen?
> >
> >You ducked this question. Why?
> >
>
> I didn't. I said above it was an estimate of the size, and that it
> was 2 or 3 inches high on a standard size transparency.
That is not what you said up there. Now, for the first time,
you have finally answered the question unequivocally.
>Now think
> carefully about this, Mr. Mathematician.
I did, even before I wrote what I did. See what I added to
our exchange in followup to Rod.
> Would a 2 or 3 inch high letter be easily visible on a projected
> image in a large room?
You didn't say how large the room was. If you can see Behe's
glasses from where you are sitting you can see the zero too
if it is that size.
> If a LARGE digit were projected on a screen,
> don't you suspect it would be a foot or two high?
"large" is a relative concept. With your genius for denying
the obvious, and saying nothing else was on the screen when
you really meant there was "fine print" elsewhere on the screen,
I didn't want to overlook any tricks of yours.
You snipped the possibly actionable libel against Behe and much
else. Let me just add to what I wrote before: one libelous
statement is hardly worth initiating a lawsuit for, IMO, but
the one I was referring to could be one of many exhibits
against you in a lawsuit. You provided quite a few last month,
and Mark's post of Jan. 4 alone has enough to keep us all
busy for another week at least. I've only excerpted little
bits and pieces so far.
gro...@my-dejanews.com
iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) wrote:
>
> In a previous article, mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) says:
>
> >
> >>In article <grovesa-0402...@131.215.121.119>,
> >> gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
> >>> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
> >>>
> >>> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
> >>> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
> >>> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
> >>> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
> >>> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
> >>>
> >>> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
> >>> no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
> >>
> >>Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
> >>drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
> >>
> >So which is the claim, that there was fraud over 100 years ago or that
> >there is fraud now?
>
> recent as 1998) and Richardson's article is not, and has never been,
> about "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." The issue has always
> been about whether these embryos are indeed as similar as portrayed
> by Haeckel and in many texts. From the Science article that
> reviewed Richardson's work:
>
> After taking careful photographs of embryos that roughly match the
> species and age used in Haeckel's drawings, Richardson found they
> "often looked surprisingly different."
>
> In order to make the different vertebrate embryos look so similar,
> Haeckel's drawings contain things not seen, omit things that are there,
> fudge the scale even when there is a 10-fold difference in size, and
> create the impression that there are no significant variations within
> groups.
To reiterate my previous post, Alberts et al clearly label their igure with
the legend "......The earliest stages are drawn roughly to scale; the later
stages are not".
Andy
nyi...@math.sc.edu
hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) wrote:
> nyi...@math.sc.edu writes:
>
> >> Dang. Mark and I are caught. We've been lying. Ooooh.
>
> >I wonder whether this piece of sarcasm is meant to imply (1) that
> >I have not caught Mark and/or you lying about this particlular
> >transparency or (2) that nobody in this newsgroup besides me gives
> >a damn whether you lie regularly in talk.origins.
>
> center of gravity rather forward of the front wheel.
Does this comment imply that you don't give a damn whether
Myers lies regularly in talk.origins? Andrew MacRae and
Matt Silberstein have already essentially said that. Andrew did it by
saying that he gets very easily bored
when that is the topic, and Matt said pretty much the same
thing on a memorable occasion, punctuating his comment
with a term of endearment Sherilyn first used against me.
> >> Really. That's your "proof" that we've been misrepresenting Behe?
>
> >There's plenty more where the quote below comes from,
> >including a passage in which you and Mark flatly contradicted
> >each other, and which you snipped when you followed up to
> >a post in which I documented the contradiction. I've posted
> >it below, too, just so Andrew MacRae and other fans of yours
> >can see just how often
> >you run away from documentation.
>
> Rationalizations don't always have to be rational.
> I really do like the bike analogy. It contrasts
> well with sitting back and gaining perspective.
Keep sitting back, Wade, and enjoy the show.
> >This is
> >> something different than what we've been saying?
>
> >Of course it is, and you know it. You said about a month ago:
>
> > To paraphrase him, he said, 'with a title like the Journal of Molecular
> > Evolution, they ought
> > to be publishing articles on the evolution of molecules. I've looked
> > carefully at the last 5 years of this journal.' He then asked the
> > audience the rhetorical question, 'How many articles on evolution
> > do you think they've published?' before putting up a cheesy overhead
> > with nothing but the numeral 0 on it, in big, bold print.
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> >In writing "To paraphrase him," you made a mockery of the word
> >"paraphrase". The second statement 'How many...' is a
> >defamatory misrepresentation. And the highlighted words are
> >an outright lie.
>
> Paul says all he was was a big zero. Behe tells Nyikos
> different. Nyikos calls Paul a liar.
Yes, because I've never seen a lie by Behe, and I've seen
scads of them by Myers. Julie said it much more kindly,
but then she hasn't seen as much of the dark side of Myers as I have.
Presumably, Nyikos
> is already ridden past all other interpretations whilst
> his bike is still back aways. I can picture the gleam
> in his eyes as well.
Picture all you want. I notice you have nothing to say
here in direct defense of Myers. You are just indulging
in vague generalities to create the impression that you
think he is a great guy without having to stick your neck out.
> >In your post where you deleted the documentation I repost below,
> >you backed away from your lie without apologizing for it,
> >claiming that if there was something else on the transparency,
> >it was in "fine print". Yet you were close enough to measure
> >the 0 and give us details on how high it was.
>
> >What was that figure you gave, again? Did it apply to the
> >actual transparency or to the projection on the screen?
>
> >And now, here is that repost which shows the glaring discrepancy
> >between your `testimony' and that of Mark, who seemed to be letting
> >you do all your talking for him in the thread where I first
> >reposted it. Names added in brackets.
>
> Further "evidence" [sensu Nyikos] of Nyikos's inability
> to gain sane perespective deleted.
Further evidence of your cowardice, dishonesty, and
anti-Nyikos fanaticism. If you really think
there is a sane perspective different from mine, why did
you delete the *prima facie* case against Paul and Mark
flatly contradicting each other? Why didn't you even
try to come up with an alibi for them?
Actually, I believe you tried, but your mind wasn't equal to
the task. You are at best a journeryman when it comes
to denying the obvious, unlike the master Myers. I've seen
it often enough: you repeatedly take refuge in surrealism where Myers
would simply deny the evidence that is right there before his
eyes, or else delete it and pretend it was never posted.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
>
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Mark J. Koebbe
>
> In article <hines.9...@cgl.ucsf.edu>,
> hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) wrote:
> > nyi...@math.sc.edu writes:
> >
> > >> Dang. Mark and I are caught. We've been lying. Ooooh.
> >
> > >I wonder whether this piece of sarcasm is meant to imply (1) that
> > >I have not caught Mark and/or you lying about this particlular
> > >transparency or (2) that nobody in this newsgroup besides me gives
> > >a damn whether you lie regularly in talk.origins.
> >
> > Sometimes I think you are riding a bike with your
> > center of gravity rather forward of the front wheel.
>
> Does this comment imply that you don't give a damn whether
> Myers lies regularly in talk.origins?
No it probably implies that what you refer to as lies aren't necessarily
lies. Further consideration of the actual issues reveal your lack of
focus. People will get bored by pompous arrogance without addressing
the substance of the argument.
[Snip vague irrelevant guilt by association rant]
Like Clinton means 'lie'. Back to the zero, Peter.
and I've seen
> scads of them by Myers. Julie said it much more kindly,
Be specific, Peter, how many is a 'scad'?
And I quote one of her comments; 'pay attention kiddies'. Doesn't sound
too compassionate to me.
> but then she hasn't seen as much of the dark side of Myers as I have.
Ooohhh!!! Vehy scary. (Second City TV sketch inferred).
>
> Presumably, Nyikos
> > is already ridden past all other interpretations whilst
> > his bike is still back aways. I can picture the gleam
> > in his eyes as well.
>
> Picture all you want. I notice you have nothing to say
> here in direct defense of Myers.
Perhaps because there is nothing that really needs defending except
Peter's misinterpretations.
You are just indulging
> in vague generalities to create the impression that you
> think he is a great guy without having to stick your neck out.
You mean like 'scads' of lies?
>
> > >In your post where you deleted the documentation I repost below,
> > >you backed away from your lie without apologizing for it,
> > >claiming that if there was something else on the transparency,
> > >it was in "fine print". Yet you were close enough to measure
> > >the 0 and give us details on how high it was.
> >
> > >What was that figure you gave, again? Did it apply to the
> > >actual transparency or to the projection on the screen?
> >
> > >And now, here is that repost which shows the glaring discrepancy
> > >between your `testimony' and that of Mark, who seemed to be letting
> > >you do all your talking for him in the thread where I first
> > >reposted it. Names added in brackets.
> >
> > Further "evidence" [sensu Nyikos] of Nyikos's inability
> > to gain sane perespective deleted.
>
> Further evidence of your cowardice, dishonesty, and
> anti-Nyikos fanaticism. If you really think
> there is a sane perspective different from mine, why did
> you delete the *prima facie* case against Paul and Mark
> flatly contradicting each other?
Perhaps because it was irrelevant to the central issue that Paul
originally made. Perhaps you might get back on topic. Perhaps this is
just a futile attempt like barking at the moon.
Why didn't you even
> try to come up with an alibi for them?
No crime, who needs an alibi? Manufacture away, Peter.
>
> Actually, I believe you tried, but your mind wasn't equal to
> the task. You are at best a journeryman
Peter must be livid by now, his typing is running together.
when it comes
> to denying the obvious, unlike the master Myers. I've seen
> it often enough: you repeatedly take refuge in surrealism where Myers
> would simply deny the evidence that is right there before his
> eyes, or else delete it and pretend it was never posted.
You mean the 'no' evidence as evidence argument by Behe?
Keep up your feeble attempts to sully people on trivialities...meanwhile
most might want to pursue the obvious mistakes you repeatedly make and
equivocate on other more relevant topics.
MJK
nyi...@math.sc.edu
In article <myers-05029...@bio-101.bio.temple.edu>,
my...@astro.ocis.temple.edu (PZ Myers) wrote:
> In article <1999020504...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>, Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
> >A video of a talk Behe gave at Princeton University is available
> >at $19.95.
Apologies again for the typo: it is $29.95.
Its title is "Irreducible Complexity: The Biochemical
> >Challenge to Darwinian Theory", and information on ordering
> >it can be found at:
> >
> >http://www.arn.org/orders/vidinfo.htm
> >
> >This is the usual talk given by Behe, the one with the now-famous
> >(as far as talk.origins is concerned) transparency with the zero
> >on it. Of it, Behe wrote the following in an e-mail yesterday
> >which he has allowed me to quote from:
> >
> > I viewed the tape of myself at Princeton last night, and it's just
> > as I remember, and just as I do all the time. I emphasized that the
> > zero was the number of papers concerned with detailed models for
> > irreducibly complex biochemical systems, and specifically said
>
> What? No! It can't be!
>
> Behe has paraphrased himself!
So? Note that he was talking about what he said in the talk,
not what was on the transparency. In the talk he gave here,
he said the words "How many proposed detailed models for the
Darwinian evolution of systems like the flagellum or cilium?"
He evidently doesn't like repeating himself any more than
I do.
> Peter, you specifically said that what was on the overhead were the words:
>
> "Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
> detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure:"
Yep. Not only did I personally copy most of that down during
his talk from the slide, but
I was careful to take the above directly
from an e-mail Behe sent me.
> Is "models for the production of complex biochemical structure"
> synonymous with "models for IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX biochemical systems"?
No, but both statements are true. Behe is not self-centered like
you are; he does not expect JME to start emphasizing irreducible
complexity. So he covers both bases in his talks.
> How misleading!
>
> I guess we could start trading accusations of lying back and forth now,
> and drag Behe into the game, too.
You are really pathetic, trying to compare this difference
with the slanderously different thing you attributed to him.
You admitted you couldn't even follow what he was saying. Why,
then, did you make up a tall tale and claim it was a paraphrasal
of what he had been saying?
> > that JME has published a thousand papers in the past 10 years or so,
> > the overwhelming majority of which were sequence analyses.
> > I emphasized that the story is about the same in other journals -
> > a lot of sequence analysis, but no detailed models. Essentially
> > I said the same thing as I wrote in my book. I say virtually the
> > same thing in every talk, simply because I have the lines pretty
> > much memorized by now, and they always flow out in the same sequence.
> >
>
> Yes, I quite understand the point you, Thomas, and Behe have been making.
> He was not at all dishonest in his presentation.
Whereas the statement you attributed to him would have been
egregiously dishonest or else revealing an ignorance of evolution
that would be catastrophic to Behe's reputation.
>He was very careful in
> his phrasing to make sure he didn't say anything he could get caught on
> later, and the ID/IC gang (you three) are quite sincere in your insistence
> that his words must be reproduced verbatim.
We never insisted on any such thing and you know it.
Why must you go on piling lies upon lies?
> His comments tend to fall to
> pieces if they aren't repeated precisely -- they're kind of IC, aren't they?
You keep digging yourself deeper into your hole, and
I didn't even provide you with a shovel.
> However, you guys haven't been able to comprehend my point. Sorry.
>
> I haven't been accusing Behe of lying,
Not directly. But you accused him of something which would
have been a lie, had he said it, or at best...see above.
or misrepresenting himself, or
> anything of that nature. I thought that was pretty clear in my original
> post on his talk. Rather, what I'm accusing him of is pandering to anti-
> evolutionary sentiment,
...using fraudulent claims about the content of his words as
part of your accusation. Without your deceitful words, where
is your case for him pandering?
and giving a talk that was empty of any substance
> at all.
>
> Behe was making an empty rhetorical flourish with his material about JME.
> He contrived a definition of what evolutionists ought to be studying and
> publishing,
Shouldn't he think they ought to publish papers on molecular
evolution? That's what YOU accused him of applying the
big zero to.
[...]
> It would be one thing if a major journal were ignoring material cogent to
> its own stated purpose,
And that is exactly what you accused Behe of claiming.
Rest deleted. At the end you asked for substance. There is your
substance right there, just in the last three non-blank lines before this
last paragraph that I am typing the last line of.
Wade Hines
> hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) wrote:
>> Sometimes I think you are riding a bike with your
>> center of gravity rather forward of the front wheel.
>Does this comment imply that you don't give a damn whether
>Myers lies regularly in talk.origins? Andrew MacRae and
>Matt Silberstein have already essentially said that. Andrew did it by
>saying that he gets very easily bored
>when that is the topic, and Matt said pretty much the same
>thing on a memorable occasion, punctuating his comment
>with a term of endearment Sherilyn first used against me.
Is there a term for a pathological absense of a
sense of irony? Maybe it's simply "dellusional".
Would I give a damn about XYZ lying regularly on talk.origins?
No, not really. In my estimation, such behavior is self
disqualifying. But you asked a different question. I don't
answer question like, "have you stopped beating your wife?"
though I notice that you like to ask those sorts of questions.
Meanwhile, to anyone with a normal level of reading
comprehension skills, which includes a sense of perspective,
it wouldn't look like Myers is lying.
Further, people saying they get bored by endless
accusations and Nykosian "justification" for his
endless accusations, isn't a comment so much on
the accusation in abstract but on its totally
frivolous nature given the lack of perspective
demonstrated by the accuser.
>> Rationalizations don't always have to be rational.
>> I really do like the bike analogy. It contrasts
>> well with sitting back and gaining perspective.
>Keep sitting back, Wade, and enjoy the show.
I couldn't call it enjoyment but I do feel you play
well into exposing your insantity and in that small
way I provide a service.
>> Paul says all he was was a big zero. Behe tells Nyikos
>> different. Nyikos calls Paul a liar.
>Yes, because I've never seen a lie by Behe, and I've seen
>scads of them by Myers. Julie said it much more kindly,
>but then she hasn't seen as much of the dark side of Myers as I have.
Obi Wan or Yoda? No, it's mixing images. I'm thinking more
wicked witch "and your little dog too" imagry.
> Presumably, Nyikos
>> is already ridden past all other interpretations whilst
>> his bike is still back aways. I can picture the gleam
>> in his eyes as well.
>Picture all you want. I notice you have nothing to say
>here in direct defense of Myers. You are just indulging
Certainly not. Direct defense would lend a small sense
of credibility to your absurd perspective. I just
handed you a shovel with which to bury yourself deeper.
>in vague generalities to create the impression that you
>think he is a great guy without having to stick your neck out.
I said nothing about Paul being a great guy. You must be
running one of your BlackAndWhite Meltdown scams where
my not saying Soandso is evil is contrasted with halos
and wings. Put yourself on a list.
>> Further "evidence" [sensu Nyikos] of Nyikos's inability
>> to gain sane perespective deleted.
>Further evidence of your cowardice, dishonesty, and
>anti-Nyikos fanaticism. If you really think
<<< sensu Nyikos >>>
>there is a sane perspective different from mine, why did
>you delete the *prima facie* case against Paul and Mark
>flatly contradicting each other? Why didn't you even
>try to come up with an alibi for them?
Why defend someone who doesn't need defending? You
take your own allegations far too seriously, more than
anyone else except in an opposite sense.
If you had any sense of perspective, you'ld wonder if
Behe does anything to create the impression people
get rather than claiming that people have it out for
him. The truth lies fairly close to the middle I
expect.
>Actually, I believe you tried, but your mind wasn't equal to
>the task. You are at best a journeryman when it comes
>to denying the obvious, unlike the master Myers. I've seen
>it often enough: you repeatedly take refuge in surrealism where Myers
>would simply deny the evidence that is right there before his
>eyes, or else delete it and pretend it was never posted.
>Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
There is obvious and ....
PZ Myers
>I said nothing about Paul being a great guy.
Nor do I ever expect anyone to do so.
I've already confessed to being an evil rat bastard today.
I think that excuses everyone from ever feeling obligated
to say anything nice about me, or defending me in these
threads. That keeps it all nice and simple, doesn't it?
--
PZ Myers
Mark J. Koebbe
>>PZMyers wrote:
>> Yes, I quite understand the point you, Thomas, and Behe have been making.
>> He was not at all dishonest in his presentation.
>Whereas the statement you attributed to him would have been
>egregiously dishonest or else revealing an ignorance of evolution
>that would be catastrophic to Behe's reputation.
Reread the last sentence, you've answered your own rhetorical question
with one of the choices.
MJK
MoE
>
> "Mark J. Koebbe" <mko...@pond.com> writes:
>
> >Like shamelessly misrepresenting the JME without discussing a single
> >article or its lacking in 'evolutionary' evidence....
>
> The foregoing could be construed as legally actionable libel,
> except that you have a perfect alibi:
The truth?
> everyone who reads
> you knows you are bullshitting.
Your failure to answer whether you have discussed any actual
articles in JME is noted.
Would you like to shamelessly evade any more questions?
MoE
>
> This one is solidly on-topic for the thread title and for the
> talk.origins charter, folks. It's only in later followups
> that I will comment on Mark's *ad hominem* remarks about Behe
> and an increasingly famous transparency.
[and then...]
> Like I said, Behe is not a creationist. But no, he did not mention
> directed panspermy; I wish he had. He threw away a good chance
> when one heckler asked him how he would distinguish between
> life designed by one designer and life designed by many designers.
> Fortunately, I got to talking with the heckler after Behe's second
> talk and filled him in on the various possibilities.
Oh, the irony...
I wasn't aware that people who asked questions of people you admire were
'hecklers'. Is it heckling if I asked someone who claims that a protein
structure clearly shows that X mechanism works when there are several
others that are possible?
Waiting for you to not answer the question...
--
CJC
cjc...@iserve.net
Yep, new news service. Again.
Matt Silberstein
(Julie Thomas):
>
>In a previous article, mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) says:
>
>>In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
>>
>>>In article <grovesa-0402...@131.215.121.119>,
>>> gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
>>>> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
>>>> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
>>>> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
>>>> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
>>>> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
>>>>
>>>> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
>>>> no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
>>>
>>>Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
>>>drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
>>>
>>So which is the claim, that there was fraud over 100 years ago or that
>>there is fraud now?
>
>This whole issue of Haeckel's drawings in the texts (some as
>recent as 1998) and Richardson's article is not, and has never been,
>about "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."
Now tell that to Peter.
[begin excerpt]
From: Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Behe visits Columbia
Date: 3 Feb 1999 20:10:20 -0500
Message-ID: <1999020401...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>
mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
[MS: snip]
>So? How is this relevant to either evolution or IC?
Do the words "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" ring a bell?
[end excerpt]
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com
So where is Peter going with the continuous recapitulation of this biogenetic
nonsense? Has this issue been beaten to death YET? Can just a little more
mileage get squeezed out of it?
Gill slits, gill slits, gill slits for the endoderm is ectoderm! Heh, heh.
Beware the peppered moth.
Scott Chase
Andrew MacRae
|In article <hines.9...@cgl.ucsf.edu>,
| hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) wrote:
|>
|> >> Dang. Mark and I are caught. We've been lying. Ooooh.
|>
|> >I wonder whether this piece of sarcasm is meant to imply (1) that
|> >I have not caught Mark and/or you lying about this particlular
|> >transparency or (2) that nobody in this newsgroup besides me gives
|> >a damn whether you lie regularly in talk.origins.
|>
|> center of gravity rather forward of the front wheel.
|
|Does this comment imply that you don't give a damn whether
|Myers lies regularly in talk.origins? Andrew MacRae and
|Matt Silberstein have already essentially said that. Andrew did it by
|saying that he gets very easily bored
|when that is the topic, and Matt said pretty much the same
|thing on a memorable occasion, punctuating his comment
|with a term of endearment Sherilyn first used against me.
I want to make three short, public comments here: 1) I consider
this an inaccurate paraphrasal of what I have said ("essentially" or not)
that misses several important subtleties, 2) Peter fails to provide a
pointer to what I have actually said, verbatim, on this subject, so that
other people could independently evaluate his claim about my opinion, and
3) I have sent an e-mail to Peter with some detailed comments that will
hopefully clarify my actual opinion.
..
-Andrew
mac...@agc.bio._NOSPAM_.ns.ca
Matt Silberstein
[snip]
>
>Does this comment imply that you don't give a damn whether
>Myers lies regularly in talk.origins? Andrew MacRae and
>Matt Silberstein have already essentially said that. Andrew did it by
>saying that he gets very easily bored
>when that is the topic, and Matt said pretty much the same
>thing on a memorable occasion, punctuating his comment
>with a term of endearment Sherilyn first used against me.
>
Petey, sweetheart, do you have a message id or thread title and date
available? Just so others can check to see the details of what I said.
(You bait me, I bait you, we all get to have fun.)
Adam Noel Harris
:In article <79feg7$8dl$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com> nyi...@math.sc.edu writes:
Why is Nyikos using Dejanews? This makes it impossible to filter him out
via References: (w/o losing several worthwhile t.o posters). Is there
good reason why he can't post straight from SC where he can be easily
ignored?
-Adam
--
Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Stanford University.
PGP Fingerprint = C0 65 A2 BD 8A 67 B3 19 F9 8B C1 4C 8E F2 EA 0E
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com
iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) wrote:
>
> >> gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
> >>> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
> >>>
> >>> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
> >>> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
> >>> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
> >>> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
> >>> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
> >>>
> >>> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
> >>> no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
> >>
> >>Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
> >>drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
> >>
> >So which is the claim, that there was fraud over 100 years ago or that
> >there is fraud now?
>
> This whole issue of Haeckel's drawings in the texts (some as
> recent as 1998) and Richardson's article is not, and has never been,
> been about whether these embryos are indeed as similar as portrayed
> by Haeckel and in many texts.
>
I admit that I'm not too impressed by the brief treatment of Heackel's
drawing by Alberts et al (1994) in _Molecular Biology of the Cell_. They
discuss the early similarities of early embryos and write (p. 32-3): "...it
takes an expert eye to distinguish, for example, a young chick embryo from a
young human embryo (Figure 1-36)". Then you glance up at that drawing of
Haeckel's and get a false impression. The main focus of the Alberts et al
text is molecular biology not comparative embryology. William Ballard's text
_Comparative Anatomy and Embryology_ has an entire chapter devoted
exclusively to the anatomy of the pharyngula (aka vertebrate phylotypic
stage). Ballard emphasizes similarities in the idealized stage, but does
discuss variability (1964, p. 69): "Some of these actual pharyngulas have a
tailfin and some do not. Those which are tetrapods have lung buds, the fish
pharyngulas lack them. They all have a liver, to mention an organ at random,
but the livers of fishes, birds and mammals are interestingly different in
detail even at the pharyngula stage. Arteries can be compared easily but
there is little uniformity in the veins. Most conspicuously, the
circumstances and needs for respiration, nutrition, and excretion at this
stage have been met by a good many structures of a temporary nature, aptly
referred to as scaffolding tissues, which are in bold contrast in the
different classes of vertebrates."
Ballard's text came out in 1964. His drawings are cartoonish, but there is
quite a bit more variability implied than in Haeckel's drawings that you see
in the Alberts et al 1994 text. I've seen some questionable allusions to the
biogenetic law though, so your point of bringing this drawing up is well
taken. Muller (1997, p. 124-5) discusses Haeckel's "serious mistakes", such
as comparison of descendent embryo stages with ancestral adult stages. Muller
discusses the differences in mammalian early development as being at odds
with the biogenetic law, then outlines the processes of palingenesis
(recapitulation) and cenogenesis (embryonic adaptation). Muller then modifies
the biogenetic law, in the context of a conserved body plan by writing:
"Therefore, the biogenetic law is valid if it is modified by stating that all
vertebrates recapitulate certain embryonic traits of their ancestors- in
particular, a common phylotypic stage." I do not find this to be very
palatable. Why invoke recapitulation?
Gerhart and Kirschner (1997, p. 607) in _Cell, Embryos and Evolution_ take a
brief stop at Haeckel's door in their chapter "Evolution and Evolvability".
Their context is "a succession of embedded evolutionary processes". They
discuss modifications to Haeckel's law. The "unipolar Haeckel" model involves
only terminal addition where the modifications occur at the end of ontogeny.
The "bipolar Haeckel" model is not too different than the "developmental
hourglass" model diagrammed by Raff (1996, p. 208) with "prephylotypic
developmental trajectories" converging on the phylotypic bottleneck, after
which occur divergent "von Baerian developmental trajectories". Notice that
Raff has placed this model in the context of von Baer's laws of conservation,
not Haeckel's law of recapitulation. The "bipolar Haeckel" model of Gerhart
and Kirschner shares the variabilty of early and late ontogeny with the
"hourglass". Further modification by Gerhart and Kirschner involves a
"two-dimensional" Haeckel model allowing modification of any stage, also
allowed for by opening up the "developmental hourglass". This is where
Gerhart and Kirschner bring extraembryonic membranes into the picture (aka
the scaffolding tissues mentioned by Ballard). One last modification is the
"three-dimansional Haeckel" model that incorporates "signal pathways" at the
molecular level. Why did Gerhart and Kirschner need to invoke Haeckel in
this? Why not von Baer? They seem to have modified Haeckel to the point of
absurdity.
Mayr (1994) details the history of the biogenetic law from JF Meckel to Ernst
Haeckel. He comments that Haeckel had too much experience as an embryologist
to have really thought that a "gill arch" stage mammal embryo actually
resembled an adult fish. He modifies the concept of recapitulation by
introducing the notion of a "somatic program". Mayr in the 1994 paper, seems
to be wearing kid gloves when it comes to Haeckel, as opposed to von Baer,
who refuted recapitulation in 1828 with his four laws (see Gould, 1977, p.
56).
In his book _This is Biology_ (1997, p. 171) Mayr maintains that
recapitulation proponents such as Haeckel were actually proposing that
descendent embryos resembled the "permanent", not "adult", stages of
ancestors. His treatment of Haeckel aside, Mayr's concept of the "somatic
program" could be valuable as it is probably not far removed from the
continental Bauplan or epigenetics.
>
> From the Science article that
> reviewed Richardson's work:
>
> After taking careful photographs of embryos that roughly match the
> species and age used in Haeckel's drawings, Richardson found they
> "often looked surprisingly different."
>
> In order to make the different vertebrate embryos look so similar,
> Haeckel's drawings contain things not seen, omit things that are there,
> fudge the scale even when there is a 10-fold difference in size, and
> create the impression that there are no significant variations within
> groups. Richardson notes, "it looks like it's turning out to be one of the
> most famous fakes in biology."
> --
>
Haeckel's drawings were wrong and outdated, but does this eliminate the
possibility of a conserved phylotypic stage or period altogether? I haven't
received the Richardson et al 1997 paper in _Anatomy and Embryology_ yet.
Hall (1997) discusses the work of Richardson and colleagues. The big dispute
might be over whether phylotypy occurs in a "stage" or a "period". Hall
acknowledges the importance of their work but disputes replacement of the
term "stage" with "period". Hall describes Ballard's (1976, 1981) pharyngula
as a "visceral animal". He argues that Richardson and colleagues focus on
embryonic adaptations rather than the defining criteria used by Ballard.
Richardson (1998a) has replied to Hall's article arguing that the pharyngula
is an archetype (in the morphological idealistic spirit of Richard Owen) and
adding that heterochrony obscures the conservation, making it hard to define
a stage that is shared. Richardson (1998b) discusses variation in somite
number as a "dissociation" that disrupts the neatness of the "developmental
hourglass" model.
So I agree that Haeckel's drawings are dated, inaccurate, and inappropriate
for use in textbooks, because they help perpetuate a bad idea. Recapitulation
(aka the biogenetic law) should probably be put to rest, no matter how
elaborately phrased or modified. Conservation of developmental stage, period,
or process, on the other hand, is a topic that is open for debate.
refs:
Alberts B, Bray D, Lewis J, Raff M, Roberts K, Watson JD. 1994. Molecular
Biology of the Cell (3rd edition). Garland Publishing, Inc. New York
Ballard WW. 1976. Problems of gastrulation: real and verbal. Bioscience (26):
36-9
Ballard WW. 1981. Morphogenetic movements and fate maps of vertebrates. Amer.
Zoo. (21): 391-9
Ballard WW. 1964. Comparative Anatomy and Embryology. The Ronald Press
Company. New York
Gerhart J and Kirschner M. 1997. Cells, Embryos, and Evolution: Toward a
Cellular and Developmental Understanding of Phenotypic Variation and
Evolutionary Adaptability. Blackwell Science. Malden, Massachusetts
Gould SJ. 1977. Ontogeny and Phylogeny. The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetss
Hall BK. 1997. Phylotypic stage or phantom: is there a highly conserved
embryonic stage in vertebrates. Trends in Ecology and Evolution(12): 461-3
Mayr E. 1997. This is Biology: the Science of the Living World. The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts
Mayr E. 1994. Recapitulation reinterpreted: the somatic program. The
Quarterly Review of Biology (69): 223-232
Muller W. 1997. Developmental Biology. Springer. New York
Raff RA. 1996. The Shape of Life: Genes, Development, and the Evolution of
Animal Form. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago
Richardson MK. 1998a. Phylotypic stage theory. Trends in Ecology and
Evolution (13): 158
Richardson MK. 1998b. Somite number and vertebrate evolution. Development
(125): 151-160
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com
iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) wrote:
>
> In a previous article, mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) says:
>
> >In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
> >
> >>In article <grovesa-0402...@131.215.121.119>,
> >> gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
> >>> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
> >>>
> >>> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
> >>> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
> >>> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
> >>> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
> >>> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
> >>>
> >>> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
> >>> no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
> >>
> >>Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
> >>drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
> >>
> >So which is the claim, that there was fraud over 100 years ago or that
> >there is fraud now?
>
> This whole issue of Haeckel's drawings in the texts (some as
> recent as 1998) and Richardson's article is not, and has never been,
> about "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." The issue has always
> been about whether these embryos are indeed as similar as portrayed
> reviewed Richardson's work:
>
> After taking careful photographs of embryos that roughly match the
> species and age used in Haeckel's drawings, Richardson found they
> "often looked surprisingly different."
>
> In order to make the different vertebrate embryos look so similar,
> Haeckel's drawings contain things not seen, omit things that are there,
> fudge the scale even when there is a 10-fold difference in size, and
> create the impression that there are no significant variations within
> groups. Richardson notes, "it looks like it's turning out to be one of the
> most famous fakes in biology."
> --
>
>
In my recent response to this post, I erred in citation of Richardson (1998).
It should read:
Richardson MK, Allen SP, Wright GM, Raynaud A, and Hanken J. 1998. Somite
John Wilkins
And I'll reiterate, this was exposed in the 1910s in Germany by
evolutionary scientists and comparative embryologists. It made quite a
stir at the time. Whatever Richardson may note now, it's hardly a
body-blow to Darwinism.
Haeckel was known to misuse von Baer and Meckel to suit his purposes in
the nineteenth century.
--
John Wilkins, Head, Graphic Production, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute
of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia
<mailto:wil...@WEHI.EDU.AU><http://www.wehi.edu.au/~wilkins>
I do not make errors; reality fails to live up to my expectations
Wade Hines
>I do wish Peter wouldn't continue to insist that the endearment "darling"
>was used "against" him by me. At the time, its previous history as perhaps
>the most fearsome weapon of warfare ever mustered against a mathematics
>professor was completely unknown to me. As you can probably tell from my
>tone here, I still have serious problems maintaining an appropriately penitent
>attitude towards my heinous solecism of April, 1997.
Salacious salutations seducing sexually
shrouded thirsts seen as scandalous assaults!
Such seedy seductions send psycotic subliminals
straight to a seventh circle Styxian abyss of
self-doubted straightness.
Sheesh.
PZ Myers
>Sher...@sidaway.demon.co.uk writes:
>
>>I do wish Peter wouldn't continue to insist that the endearment "darling"
>>was used "against" him by me. At the time, its previous history as perhaps
>>the most fearsome weapon of warfare ever mustered against a mathematics
Sherilyn is really obsessed with this mustard stuff, I think. First she
slathers it on cheesesteaks, and now she's smearing it all over mathematics
professors.
>>professor was completely unknown to me. As you can probably tell from my
>>tone here, I still have serious problems maintaining an appropriately penitent
>>attitude towards my heinous solecism of April, 1997.
>
>Salacious salutations seducing sexually
>shrouded thirsts seen as scandalous assaults!
>
>Such seedy seductions send psycotic subliminals
>straight to a seventh circle Styxian abyss of
>self-doubted straightness.
>
>Sheesh.
You forgot to mention something about self-referential sibilance in
your screed.
But you shouldn't mock Sherilyn's point. It really is an awful thing
that she has said to poor, poor Peter, and even worse, she doesn't
recognize it -- the total absence of remorse suggests that she should
not be paroled. And if I were to mention a few of the dreadful things
she has said of me...the only comparable case that comes to mind is
Mike Tyson. A savage, brutal animal on a hair trigger.
Watch her carefully. I suspect she may try to compound her criminal
use of endearments with politeness and civility. You just can't trust
people like that.
--
PZ Myers
Sherilyn
<my...@astro.ocis.temple.edu> writes
>In article <hines.9...@cgl.ucsf.edu>, hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines)
>wrote:
>
>>Sher...@sidaway.demon.co.uk writes:
>>
>>>I do wish Peter wouldn't continue to insist that the endearment "darling"
>>>was used "against" him by me. At the time, its previous history as perhaps
>>>the most fearsome weapon of warfare ever mustered against a mathematics
>
>Sherilyn is really obsessed with this mustard stuff, I think. First she
>slathers it on cheesesteaks, and now she's smearing it all over mathematics
>professors.
You might compare Professor Nyikos to a cheesesteak, PZ, but I couldn't
possibly comment.
>
>>>professor was completely unknown to me.
...
>And if I were to mention a few of the dreadful things
>she has said of me...
I still have the photographs, darling.
>
>Watch her carefully. I suspect she may try to compound her criminal
>use of endearments with politeness and civility. You just can't trust
>people like that.
>
*smooch*
--
Sherilyn
he...@eznet.net
> Sher...@sidaway.demon.co.uk writes:
>
> >I do wish Peter wouldn't continue to insist that the endearment "darling"
> >was used "against" him by me. At the time, its previous history as perhaps
> >the most fearsome weapon of warfare ever mustered against a mathematics
> >tone here, I still have serious problems maintaining an appropriately
penitent
> >attitude towards my heinous solecism of April, 1997.
You didn't really do that?
You brute!
You ruffian!!
You, you you you ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh!!!
That is even worse than saying "Ni!" to old woman while searching for a
shrubbery.
<faints away from the sheer horror and cruelty of such unwarranted abuse*>
* Not that Peter isn't well deserving of abuse, but calling him "darling" is
just way way over the top. Maybe "sweetsie" would have been more appropriate
given the situation. Or possibly "snoogums". But "d--" uh "drlghba" um
"dlingkns" - see, I can't even bring myself to type that awful word.
Sher...@sidaway.demon.co.uk
mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) wrote:
> In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
>
> >
> >Does this comment imply that you don't give a damn whether
> >Myers lies regularly in talk.origins? Andrew MacRae and
> >Matt Silberstein have already essentially said that. Andrew did it by
> >saying that he gets very easily bored
> >when that is the topic, and Matt said pretty much the same
> >thing on a memorable occasion, punctuating his comment
> >with a term of endearment Sherilyn first used against me.
> >
> Petey, sweetheart, do you have a message id or thread title and date
> available? Just so others can check to see the details of what I said.
> (You bait me, I bait you, we all get to have fun.)
I do wish Peter wouldn't continue to insist that the endearment "darling"
was used "against" him by me. At the time, its previous history as perhaps
the most fearsome weapon of warfare ever mustered against a mathematics
professor was completely unknown to me. As you can probably tell from my
tone here, I still have serious problems maintaining an appropriately penitent
attitude towards my heinous solecism of April, 1997.
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Peter Nyikos
>In article <79feg7$8dl$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com> nyi...@math.sc.edu writes:
>|In article <hines.9...@cgl.ucsf.edu>,
>| hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) wrote:
>|> nyi...@math.sc.edu writes:
>|>
>|> >> Dang. Mark and I are caught. We've been lying. Ooooh.
>|>
>|> >I wonder whether this piece of sarcasm is meant to imply (1) that
>|> >I have not caught Mark and/or you lying about this particlular
>|> >transparency or (2) that nobody in this newsgroup besides me gives
>|> >a damn whether you lie regularly in talk.origins.
>|>
>|> Sometimes I think you are riding a bike with your
>|> center of gravity rather forward of the front wheel.
>|
>|Does this comment imply that you don't give a damn whether
>|Myers lies regularly in talk.origins? Andrew MacRae and
>|Matt Silberstein have already essentially said that. Andrew did it by
>|saying that he gets very easily bored
>|when that is the topic, and Matt said pretty much the same
>|thing on a memorable occasion, punctuating his comment
>|with a term of endearment Sherilyn first used against me.
> I want to make three short, public comments here: 1) I consider
>this an inaccurate paraphrasal of what I have said ("essentially" or not)
>that misses several important subtleties,
I see no *empirical* distinction, between what you have said
and essentially admitting you don't give a damn.
By this I mean: how could anyone falsify the statement that you
don't give a damn? I've seen various denials on
your part, but I see nothing else in your behavior that would indicate
that you do give a damn.
On the other hand, your claim that you
get very easily bored, etc. just sounds to me like a rationalization
of you not giving a damn.
In talk.origins, there is an unspoken rule that a person who
is in good with the majority in talk.origins will never be
considered dishonest unless he admits to being dishonest.
You see it at work with the highly dishonest Silberstein
calling Vince Maycock dishonest, thanks to Vince having admitted
once to having indulged in trolling, while stoutly denying
he is dishonest despite massive evidence of his dishonesty.
You have elevated this unspoken rule into a personal publicized rule.
I think the reason you have done it is that you know that you
have sided with some highly suspicious looking characters,
and this gives you the luxury of continuing to side with them.
It also gives you the luxury of indulging in hit-and-run tactics
against me on the grounds that I make frequent personal attacks on others.
With the dishonesty of X and Y and Z being a non-issue with you
no matter who X and Y and Z are, you are free to make the main
target of your sporadic attacks the fact that I attack more
people here than just about anyone else here does.
This is an essentially amoral strategy, since it does not
give a damn whether the attacks are accurate or not.
2) Peter fails to provide a
>pointer to what I have actually said, verbatim, on this subject, so that
>other people could independently evaluate his claim about my opinion, and
I didn't have time to look it up, and don't right now, partly
because I don't recall the exact wording. I do remember, however,
that you said it.
Remainder deleted and responded to on the original Subject: line.
Peter Nyikos
mac...@agc.bio_NOSPAM_.ns.ca (Andrew MacRae) writes:
>In article <79feg7$8dl$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com> nyi...@math.sc.edu writes:
>|In article <hines.9...@cgl.ucsf.edu>,
>| hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) wrote:
>|> nyi...@math.sc.edu writes:
>|>
>|> >> Dang. Mark and I are caught. We've been lying. Ooooh.
[deletia of things replied to on "Fallout from `Behe visits Columbia'"]
>3) I have sent an e-mail to Peter with some detailed comments that will
>hopefully clarify my actual opinion.
I read the letter but was disappointed that it showed no
awareness of how big an issue Paul and Mark made earlier of
the difference between what Julie suspected Behe said
and what THEY claimed Behe said and wrote. They really came
down hard on both Julie and Behe, whereas Julie was right
about Behe all along.
Now that Paul and Mark have been caught repeating falsehoods,
they are doing their best to minimize a difference they
made a very big deal of earlier. Their trumped-up case against Behe and
Julie on that thread of 4-6 weeks ago is encapsuled in the following
little exchange, taken from Mark Koebbe's January 4 article
that I've been quoting from:
========================= begin excerpt, Julie's name added in brackets:
[Julie:]
> >Concerning the pack's feeding frenzy on Behe's speech,
> >I wrote in reply to Paul:
> >
> >>And BTW, what *is* your point? Are you suggesting
> >>tha because Behe made erroneously claimed there
> >>was no work being published on molecular evolution
> >>in a speech that we can ignore the arguments
> >>he makes in pp. 173-78 of his book? Nice logic.
> >
> >Paul replied:
> >
> >>We have another problem here. You say Behe is making one set
> >>of claims in his book (sorry, but my copy is at work, so I can't
> >>check your specific pages today). You suggest that he does respect
> >>the work of molecular biology right now, and obviously you rely
> >>heavily on that same work for your summaries. However, at the same
> >>time, Behe is flying around the country and giving public lectures
> >>that say something completely different. We have documented the
> >>content of talks at Philadelphia and Allentown here, and Behe told
> >>me himself that he'd given the same talk in Oregon the week before.
>
====================== end of excerpt
Behe is NOT saying something completely different in his public
lectures from what
is in his book, and Paul is belatedly trying to minimize the
difference now that I've posted some of the facts about Behe's
speeches.
I'll be reposting the whole article from which the above snippet
is taken, so that you may begin to see what the "feeding frenzy"
was all about, and how strongly Mark and Paul were bearing down
on Julie on the basis of their phony testimony.
The article will appear on the thread, "Michael Behe and his detractors".
Peter Nyikos
>In article <36bcb0d0...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) wrote:
>> In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
>>
>> [snip]
>> >
>> >Does this comment imply that you don't give a damn whether
>> >Myers lies regularly in talk.origins? Andrew MacRae and
>> >Matt Silberstein have already essentially said that. Andrew did it by
>> >saying that he gets very easily bored
>> >when that is the topic, and Matt said pretty much the same
>> >thing on a memorable occasion, punctuating his comment
>> >with a term of endearment Sherilyn first used against me.
Matt quite predictably baits me again:
>> Petey, sweetheart, do you have a message id or thread title and date
>> available? Just so others can check to see the details of what I said.
>> (You bait me, I bait you, we all get to have fun.)
I sometimes wonder whether Matt Silberstein has been fed information
behind the scenes about a certain incident recounted below.
>I do wish Peter wouldn't continue to insist that the endearment "darling"
>was used "against" him by me. At the time, its previous history as perhaps
>the most fearsome weapon of warfare ever mustered against a mathematics
>professor was completely unknown to me.
Of course, as I explained, it was only a reminder of one rather heinious method
of warfare used against me and against various pro-lifers by
Keith "Justified and Ancient" Cochran.
Fortunately, I neutralized this weapon of Keith's, which was
a most potent weapon against pro-lifers, and his fans
went absolutely ballistic against me. If you think the denunciations
I get from time to time about my tactics here in talk.origins
are something, you should see the volcanic eruption that greeted
a certain post of mine in talk.abortion. I think 90% of the
force of that eruption is directly traceable to the fact that
the ones participating in it were appalled by the fact that Keith
would never again be able to convincingly make fisting offers
to pro-lifers.
Deja News just misses going back far enough, but I'll be glad
to give details over e-mail to sincerely interested parties.
As you can probably tell from my
>tone here, I still have serious problems maintaining an appropriately penitent
>attitude towards my heinous solecism of April, 1997.
Yes, I can see that. But are you suggesting here that "Peter darling"
was NOT used as a sarcastic expression of derision? I don't recall
you having made such a thing clear before. If I've forgotten
something, please accept my apologies in advance.
Wade Hines
> In talk.origins, there is an unspoken rule that a person who
> is in good with the majority in talk.origins will never be
> considered dishonest unless he admits to being dishonest.
Actually it's more than that Peter.
In life, people tend to turn off those who go around making
a personal crusade of their impression of other peoples
behavior. With Nyikos, this seems to be the paramount issue.
I find _you_ a bore in this respect.
Your reading of unspoken/unwritten rules may just be due to
your lack of understanding of more basic social conventions.
I'm not aware of anyone else who makes someone elses asserted
dishonesty *the* central issue of their posts in any manner
remotely approaching how Nyikos does it.
Matt Silberstein
<nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
[snip]
>In talk.origins, there is an unspoken rule that a person who
>is in good with the majority in talk.origins will never be
>considered dishonest unless he admits to being dishonest.
>You see it at work with the highly dishonest Silberstein
>calling Vince Maycock dishonest, thanks to Vince having admitted
>once to having indulged in trolling, while stoutly denying
>he is dishonest despite massive evidence of his dishonesty.
>
How horrible, I accurately described Vince's behavior at that time.
How could I do such a thing. You are so right to castigate me for
that.
Matt Silberstein
<nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
>Sher...@sidaway.demon.co.uk writes:
>
>>In article <36bcb0d0...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
>> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) wrote:
>>> In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
>>>
>>> [snip]
>>> >
>>> >Does this comment imply that you don't give a damn whether
>>> >Myers lies regularly in talk.origins? Andrew MacRae and
>>> >Matt Silberstein have already essentially said that. Andrew did it by
>>> >saying that he gets very easily bored
>>> >when that is the topic, and Matt said pretty much the same
>>> >thing on a memorable occasion, punctuating his comment
>>> >with a term of endearment Sherilyn first used against me.
>
>Matt quite predictably baits me again:
>
>>> Petey, sweetheart, do you have a message id or thread title and date
>>> available? Just so others can check to see the details of what I said.
>>> (You bait me, I bait you, we all get to have fun.)
>
>I sometimes wonder whether Matt Silberstein has been fed information
>behind the scenes about a certain incident recounted below.
>
And I wonder if you could provide some evidence for your claim above.
You did say that I "essential said" I don't care if Myers lies. Since
you remember my saying this I hope you have message ids or thread/date
information so that I can look it up. I must say I don't particularly
remember saying that and wonder what the context was.
>>I do wish Peter wouldn't continue to insist that the endearment "darling"
>>was used "against" him by me. At the time, its previous history as perhaps
>>the most fearsome weapon of warfare ever mustered against a mathematics
>>professor was completely unknown to me.
>
>Of course, as I explained, it was only a reminder of one rather heinious method
>of warfare used against me and against various pro-lifers by
>Keith "Justified and Ancient" Cochran.
>
>Fortunately, I neutralized this weapon of Keith's, which was
>a most potent weapon against pro-lifers, and his fans
>went absolutely ballistic against me. If you think the denunciations
>I get from time to time about my tactics here in talk.origins
>are something, you should see the volcanic eruption that greeted
>a certain post of mine in talk.abortion. I think 90% of the
>force of that eruption is directly traceable to the fact that
>the ones participating in it were appalled by the fact that Keith
>would never again be able to convincingly make fisting offers
>to pro-lifers.
>
>Deja News just misses going back far enough, but I'll be glad
>to give details over e-mail to sincerely interested parties.
>
Nope, sorry. I know exactly 0 about any of this except what you have
said and I have pretty much ignored that.
> As you can probably tell from my
>>tone here, I still have serious problems maintaining an appropriately penitent
>>attitude towards my heinous solecism of April, 1997.
>
>Yes, I can see that. But are you suggesting here that "Peter darling"
>was NOT used as a sarcastic expression of derision? I don't recall
>you having made such a thing clear before. If I've forgotten
>something, please accept my apologies in advance.
>
How horrible, a sarcastic expression of derision. Not that.
Sher...@sidaway.demon.co.uk
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
[Recounting some scuffle in talk.abortion]
...
> I think 90% of the
> force of that eruption is directly traceable to the fact that
> the ones participating in it were appalled by the fact that Keith
> would never again be able to convincingly make fisting offers
> to pro-lifers.
>
> Deja News just misses going back far enough, but I'll be glad
> to give details over e-mail to sincerely interested parties.
I should be absolutely delighted if you could email me with the confidential
details of why Keith Cochrane is no longer in a position to make credible
fisting offers to pro-lifers. But I do hope you're not going to get too
proctological on me.
> ...But are you suggesting here that "Peter darling"
> was NOT used as a sarcastic expression of derision? I don't recall
> you having made such a thing clear before. If I've forgotten
> something, please accept my apologies in advance.
I don't think I'm qualified to judge, really. I post to USENET for fun,
and like you I occasionally make fairly politely worded comments about the
postings of others.
The posting in question (quoted in full below) was an observation to the
effect that, in my opinion at the time, you were not worth responding to when
you got on your high horse. Quite why this led to your completely off-scale
"drag queen" outburst I can only guess. The comment was, in effect, a more
concise and pithy mirror of your own, as you no doubt recognised at the time.
[REPOST]
Re: Something is rotten in the state of...
Author: Sherilyn <sher...@sidaway.demon.co.uk>
Date: 1997/04/10
Forum: talk.origins
In article <5ih1ld$l...@redwood.cs.sc.edu>, Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@math.scarolina.edu> writes
>A reminder: I am still boycotting any post of Hines whose counterproductive
>aspects outweigh their constructive aspects in my estimation.
>Off-topic posts, given that he is Wade Hines and not some
>nice responsible person (like Keith Robison is IMHO), are
>still going to be counted as counterproductive until he
>shows signs of cleaning up his act in those kinds of posts.
>The post to which I am following up was one of the easiest
>judgment calls: where Wade Hines isn't indulging in outright
>falsehoods and pointless/unsupportable insults, he is being
>disingenouous.
>
I still don't understand why anyone bothers to respond to Peter's posts
when he gets personal like this. His arguments (and it does appear that
he has substantive arguments) are alas buried beneath a mountain of this
arrogant tosh.
And don't deny it, Peter darling. You know it's true.
Sherilyn
Peter Nyikos
This is my second followup to a post by Mark on "Behe visits Columbia".
The first went to the original thread.
"Mark J. Koebbe" <mko...@pond.com> writes:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> "Mark J. Koebbe" <mko...@pond.com> writes:
>>
>> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
[snip lots dealt with in first post]
>> > including the phony pictures
>> >> by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
>> >> peppered moth case.
>>
>> >Ho-hum...
>>
>> I suppose evidence of fraud by fanatical atheists always evokes this
>> reaction from you. Maybe that's why you and Paul Myers
>> get along so well.
>There you go again. Feebly attempting to poison the well.
There you go again, avoiding the issue of your attitude towards
Myers and Haeckel.
>> >I suppose he discussed the Baer synthesis by contrast
>>
>> No, but von Baer, to give him his correct name,
>ROTF again. Emphasis on the 'no' which makes my point.
You haven't a clue as to what this is all about, I see.
Read my reply to Andy Groves to see what aspect of Haeckel's
fraud is really being talked about, and tell me whether you
can give any pictures by von Baer of human embryos that
are more accurate than those of Haeckel.
If my reply to Andy Groves on the subject is not enough,
try looking at some of my replies to Silberstein, especially
the one in which I talk about high school biology textbooks and Julie's
own contribution to the "Behe visits Columbia" thread.
> was supposedly
>> superseded by Haeckel for decades. You don't see any
>> biology textbooks with drawings based on any by von Baer,
>> do you?
>Nope, the one I have has a figure based on von Baer's (gee, did I get
>the spelling right) interpretation.
Why the word "interpretation"? why not the word "drawings"?
That's page 254, figure 7.1 (after
>Romanes, 1901)
Was the actual drawing due to Romanes? I rest MY case.
from Gilbert, 1997. Wait...that should be S.F. Gilbert,
>fifth edition, Sinauer Press...is that detailed enough for you Peter.
>Should I mention whether it is at the top or bottom of the page? Or
>should I have an original copy of Romanes, 1901 in hand.
>>
>> (not
>> >likely...don't want to give any credit to evolutionists).
>>
>> Behe is not a creationist.
>So? Did he or did he not credit or discredit evolutionists?
The former. Not the latter, much as you would love to discredit
him.
[...]
> When he spoke at Temple, didn't any
>> hecklers ask him point blank whether he considered himself to be
>> a creationist? One did here, and he replied in the negative.
>Nobody heckled him....there were about 30 at most at the lecture. Of
>course it might have been 32...or 27.
Here, there were easily ten times as many for his first lecture
and easily five times as many for his second. But tell me: didn't
even Myers or you heckle him? Were y'all saving all your venom
for this newsgroup?
[Silbersteinesque questions about design deleted here. Matt
does it better, and I've responded many times to such
questions before.]
>> Would you like to know more about what he said in reply?
>>
>> But back to von Baer. You insinuated that I ought to apologize
>> for what I said about germ layers. Did you know that von Baer
>> claimed there were four rather than three?
>> two parts.
>No I didn't. Read between the lines....like Julie said we should've
>done at Behe's talk. Hell, lets bring in the auditory placodes or
>perhaps the AER? Why not reduce it to two germ layers, ectoderm and
>endoderm?
Because von Baer did not do that. We are discussing history here.
Hell lets just reduce it to the egg as a primary germ layer
>(noggin, nanos, bicoid). Boy, wouldn't that be useful.
What is your major? Sure doesn't sound like anything to do
with the sciences.
>> Did Paul ever mention that tidbit to you? not likely...don't
>> want to take any credit away from the man whom people
>> clutched at like a drowning man clutches at a straw when
>> Haeckel's fraud was first discussed here in talk.origins.
>Focusing on Haeckels' fraud is a form of clutching at straws.
Dream on, Mark. Haeckel's fraud speaks to shoddy biology
which I've seen in high school and college textbooks all over the place.
You are unable to concern
yourself about such matters because you are in this thing
for the anti-Christian angle, aren't you?
Did he
>discuss the 'von' Baer ideas as would commonly be done at any credible
>scientific talk?
No, because anyone who discusses von Baer's ideas in a talk where
the subject is fraud in the depiction of embryos, is being
crashingly irrelevant. Besides, von Baer is interesting for historical
reasons, but he is badly dated, and we can safely skip over
him to modern scientific theories.
By the way, have you ever taken a college course in science?
TO BE CONCLUDED
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
Peter Nyikos
thread, "Michael Behe and his detractors".
"Mark J. Koebbe" <mko...@pond.com> writes:
>nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>>
>> In article <hines.9...@cgl.ucsf.edu>,
>> hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) wrote:
>> > nyi...@math.sc.edu writes:
>> >
>> > >> Dang. Mark and I are caught. We've been lying. Ooooh.
>> >
>> > >I wonder whether this piece of sarcasm is meant to imply (1) that
>> > >I have not caught Mark and/or you lying about this particlular
>> > >transparency or (2) that nobody in this newsgroup besides me gives
>> > >a damn whether you lie regularly in talk.origins.
For the lie that was told about the transparency, see the
highlighted words below.
>> > Sometimes I think you are riding a bike with your
>> > center of gravity rather forward of the front wheel.
>>
>> Does this comment imply that you don't give a damn whether
>> Myers lies regularly in talk.origins?
>No it probably implies that what you refer to as lies aren't necessarily
>lies.
That's Wade all the way, especially the weasel word "necessarily".
I think you are right for once.
>Further consideration of the actual issues reveal your lack of
>focus. People will get bored by pompous arrogance without addressing
>the substance of the argument.
When did you ever post anything of substance?
[...]
[Myers, your mentor in denying the obvious, wrote:]
>> > > To paraphrase him, he said, 'with a title like the Journal of Molecular
>> > > Evolution, they ought
>> > > to be publishing articles on the evolution of molecules. I've looked
>> > > carefully at the last 5 years of this journal.' He then asked the
>> > > audience the rhetorical question, 'How many articles on evolution
>> > > do you think they've published?' before putting up a cheesy overhead
>> > > with nothing but the numeral 0 on it, in big, bold print.
>> > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> >
>> > >In writing "To paraphrase him," you made a mockery of the word
>> > >"paraphrase". The second statement 'How many...' is a
>> > >defamatory misrepresentation. And the highlighted words are
>> > >an outright lie.
>> >
>> > Paul says all he was was a big zero. Behe tells Nyikos
>> > different. Nyikos calls Paul a liar.
>>
>> Yes, because I've never seen a lie by Behe,
>Like Clinton means 'lie'. Back to the zero, Peter.
Behe told the truth, and you've never made a dent in it or
even tried to make a dent in it, except when you backed
up Paul's lie, "nothing but".
> and I've seen
>> scads of them by Myers. Julie said it much more kindly,
>Be specific, Peter, how many is a 'scad'?
At least twenty out and out lies. Hundreds of half-truths
and wild unsupported accusations. Also some weaseling
crypto-lies like the one you tell below.
>And I quote one of her comments; 'pay attention kiddies'. Doesn't sound
>too compassionate to me.
It's very compassionate compared to what she could have
justifiably said.
>> but then she hasn't seen as much of the dark side of Myers as I have.
[...]
>> Presumably, Nyikos
>> > is already ridden past all other interpretations whilst
>> > his bike is still back aways. I can picture the gleam
>> > in his eyes as well.
>>
>> Picture all you want. I notice you have nothing to say
>> here in direct defense of Myers.
I've coined the term "weaseling crypto-lies" for sentences
like the following.
>Perhaps because there is nothing that really needs defending except
>Peter's misinterpretations.
The part after the "because" is a complete falsehood, and you
know it and are weaseling with the word "Perhaps" to avoid
telling an out-and-out lie.
That is the essence of the weaseling crypto-lie.
> You are just indulging
>> in vague generalities to create the impression that you
>> think he is a great guy without having to stick your neck out.
>You mean like 'scads' of lies?
See above, coward.
[...]
>> > >And now, here is that repost which shows the glaring discrepancy
>> > >between your `testimony' and that of Mark, who seemed to be letting
>> > >you do all your talking for him in the thread where I first
>> > >reposted it. Names added in brackets.
>> >
>> > Further "evidence" [sensu Nyikos] of Nyikos's inability
>> > to gain sane perespective deleted.
>>
>> Further evidence of your cowardice, dishonesty, and
>> anti-Nyikos fanaticism. If you really think
>> there is a sane perspective different from mine, why did
>> you delete the *prima facie* case against Paul and Mark
>> flatly contradicting each other?
>Perhaps because it was irrelevant to the central issue that Paul
>originally made.
How far back does "originally" go? For sure, it predates your
January 4 post that I've reposted on "Michael Behe and his detractors".
Perhaps you might get back on topic. Perhaps this is
>just a futile attempt like barking at the moon.
Sounds to me like two more weaseling crypto-lies; but
the evidence on them is ambiguous since you do not
specify what you mean by "the topic" nor what you
mean by "futile". If it means "futile
at getting Andrew MacRae to acknowledge that Paul looks
to be a tad more dishonest than Andrew MacRae," you
are probably right.
> Why didn't you even
>> try to come up with an alibi for them?
>No crime, who needs an alibi? Manufacture away, Peter.
You and Paul committed something that just might be legally
actionable. I believe the word "alibi" applies to tort
law as well as to criminal law.
Peter Nyikos
>nyi...@math.sc.edu writes:
>> hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) wrote:
>>> Sometimes I think you are riding a bike with your
>>> center of gravity rather forward of the front wheel.
>>Does this comment imply that you don't give a damn whether
>>Myers lies regularly in talk.origins? Andrew MacRae and
>>Matt Silberstein have already essentially said that.
...referring to Andrew giving a damn or not, etc. Not to
whether they think YOU don't give a damn. That should
be clear from what I said next:
Andrew did it by
>>saying that he gets very easily bored
>>when that is the topic, and Matt said pretty much the same
>>thing on a memorable occasion, punctuating his comment
>>with a term of endearment Sherilyn first used against me.
>Is there a term for a pathological absense of a
>sense of irony? Maybe it's simply "dellusional".
You are indulging in a multi-layered evasion, the deepest
layer being that you are begging the question about these
other two people's true attitude. The "irony" dodge is
an old, old dirty debating trick that I first saw from
Ron Bense, a person who used to post to talk.abortion
and who resembles you more than anybody
in talk.origins besides yourself does.
>Would I give a damn about XYZ lying regularly on talk.origins?
>No, not really. In my estimation, such behavior is self
>disqualifying.
Not on talk.origins. You certainly haven't disqualified
Myers on account of it. Neither has Andrew MacRae. Neither
has anyone else here except me; even Julie hasn't seen
evidence as overwhelming as I have, so she is naturally
cautious about what she has seen.
You on the other hand expected me to cave in to one
e-mailed bit of documentation about Ted Holden and to
admit he is dishonest; you didn't even send me
the documentation (someone else, who wished to remain
anonymous did) and it was so run-of the mill that you
commit such distortions hundreds of times a month.
You've never shown me a smidgin of even ALLEGED evidence
of Holden's dishonesty yourself, yet you posted the flagrantly
dishonest "you can't make (th?)em drink" to make it look
like I was presented with overwhelming evidence.
> But you asked a different question. I don't
>answer question like, "have you stopped beating your wife?"
>though I notice that you like to ask those sorts of questions.
Another old scam of yours. You keep labeling questions
that way when they can be answered either Yes or No as the case may
be without any loss of face. Of course,
that applies only if they can be answered the right
way TRUTHFULLY, which is probably why you can't
see the difference between them and "have you stopped
beating your wife?"
Yet you answered the question anyway, with "No, not really."
Is this a testimony to your ability to give weaseling answers?
>Meanwhile, to anyone with a normal level of reading
>comprehension skills, which includes a sense of perspective,
>it wouldn't look like Myers is lying.
You either have an incredibly weird idea of what constitutes
reading comprehension, or are just plain lying yourself.
And being cowardly about it to boot. I note that you
display NO words by Myers to back up your idiotic/insincere
claim.
>Further, people saying they get bored by endless
>accusations and Nykosian "justification" for his
>endless accusations, isn't a comment so much on
>the accusation in abstract but on its totally
>frivolous nature given the lack of perspective
>demonstrated by the accuser.
More of the same dishonest, cowardly behavior from you.
>>> Rationalizations don't always have to be rational.
>>> I really do like the bike analogy. It contrasts
>>> well with sitting back and gaining perspective.
>>Keep sitting back, Wade, and enjoy the show.
>I couldn't call it enjoyment but I do feel you play
>well into exposing your insantity and in that small
>way I provide a service.
Thank you for justifying my earlier claim about your anti-Nyikos
fanaticism. You know, I began to have regrets almost immediately
afterwards, saying to myself "I really overdid that one. I should
have just said something more moderate."
Like "anti-Nyikos attitude". But you really
are behaving like a fanatic in this post.
>>> Paul says all he was was a big zero. Behe tells Nyikos
>>> different. Nyikos calls Paul a liar.
>>Yes, because I've never seen a lie by Behe, and I've seen
>>scads of them by Myers. Julie said it much more kindly,
>>but then she hasn't seen as much of the dark side of Myers as I have.
>Obi Wan or Yoda? No, it's mixing images. I'm thinking more
>wicked witch "and your little dog too" imagry.
I think this is a perfect case of actions speaking louder
than words: you really don't give a damn how many lies
Myers tells as long as he is on YOUR side.
>> Presumably, Nyikos
>>> is already ridden past all other interpretations whilst
>>> his bike is still back aways. I can picture the gleam
>>> in his eyes as well.
>>Picture all you want. I notice you have nothing to say
>>here in direct defense of Myers. You are just indulging
>Certainly not. Direct defense would lend a small sense
>of credibility to your absurd perspective.
Translation: I, Wade, know I can't defend Myers, so I will
just indulge in this transparent dodge. I believe I am
so popular and/or feared for the way I can harass anyone
who disagrees with me, that nobody except Nyikos or
maybe Julie will call me on it.
>I just
>handed you a shovel with which to bury yourself deeper.
Stop plagiarizing me. What I said to Myers along these, was fully
justified. You are just playing tit-for-tat.
Oh. Wait. You are talking about me burying myself in
unpopularity. Well, that's to be expected in a magnet
for dishonest troublemakers like talk.origins when one
exposes their dishonesty. The person exposing troublemakers
naturally gets attacked even by troublemakers whom he
hasn't attacked yet.
It's called the pre-emptive strike: people can claim that
I just beat on people for `disagreeing with' me, so they
hit me with wild accusations for me to disagree with.
>>in vague generalities to create the impression that you
>>think he is a great guy without having to stick your neck out.
>I said nothing about Paul being a great guy.
What part of "create the impression" don't you understand?
>>> Further "evidence" [sensu Nyikos] of Nyikos's inability
>>> to gain sane perespective deleted.
>>Further evidence of your cowardice, dishonesty, and
>>anti-Nyikos fanaticism. If you really think
> <<< sensu Nyikos >>>
I stand by those words now. See above. You would have
had a retraction from me if you hadn't decided to overindulge
in dirty debating tricks this time around.
[...]
>If you had any sense of perspective, you'ld wonder if
>Behe does anything to create the impression people
>get rather than claiming that people have it out for
>him. The truth lies fairly close to the middle I
>expect.
You and your kind prey on the natural instincts of people
who have been brought up in the USA. "If two people
violently disagree, the truth almost surely lies somewhere in the
middle," is an instinctive reaction which you exploit
by the slight-looking but cunning twist, "fairly close
to the middle".
nyi...@math.sc.edu
my...@netaxs.com (PZ Myers) wrote:
> In article <hines.9...@cgl.ucsf.edu>, hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines)
> wrote:
>
>
>
> I've already confessed to being an evil rat bastard today.
> I think that excuses everyone from ever feeling obligated
> to say anything nice about me, or defending me in these
> threads. That keeps it all nice and simple, doesn't it?
Since the confession was obviously tongue-in-cheek, as is
this post to which I am responding, the answer is obviously
"No". It keeps it complicated by the fact that Myers
is being highly evasive.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Peter Nyikos
>In talk.origins I read this message from iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu
>(Julie Thomas):
>>
>>In a previous article, mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) says:
>>
>>>In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
>>>
>>>>In article <grovesa-0402...@131.215.121.119>,
>>>> gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
>>>>> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
>>>>> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
>>>>> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
>>>>> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
>>>>> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
>>>>>
>>>>> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
>>>>> no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
>>>>
>>>>Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
>>>>drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
>>>>
>>>So which is the claim, that there was fraud over 100 years ago or that
>>>there is fraud now?
>>This whole issue of Haeckel's drawings in the texts (some as
>>recent as 1998) and Richardson's article is not, and has never been,
>>about "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."
>Now tell that to Peter.
Your question was too open-ended, Matt. See below.
Also, see my earlier reply to you where I told you
my concerns about high school texts.
>[begin excerpt]
>From: Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu>
>Newsgroups: talk.origins
>Subject: Re: Behe visits Columbia
>Date: 3 Feb 1999 20:10:20 -0500
>Message-ID: <1999020401...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>
>mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>[MS: snip]
>>So? How is this relevant to either evolution or IC?
>Do the words "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" ring a bell?
That is still relevant as far as high school texts and maybe
some substandard college and research level writings are concerned.
It is not, however, relevant to the question of why Behe brought
the matter up, nor why Richardson wrote about it. Nobody on
the research level takes "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"
seriously the way Haeckel meant it. On the other hand, they
do take scientific fraud seriously no matter what the intent.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Peter Nyikos
CC to Scott because of the change in thread title.
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com writes:
>In article <36cdc822...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) wrote:
>> [begin excerpt]
>>
>> From: Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu>
>> Newsgroups: talk.origins
>> Subject: Re: Behe visits Columbia
>> Date: 3 Feb 1999 20:10:20 -0500
>> Message-ID: <1999020401...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>
>>
>> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>>
>> [MS: snip]
>>
>> >So? How is this relevant to either evolution or IC?
>>
>> Do the words "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" ring a bell?
>>
>> [end excerpt]
>>
>> [snip]
>So where is Peter going with the continuous recapitulation of this biogenetic
>nonsense?
Nowhere. See my own reply to Matt's post on the original thread.
>Has this issue been beaten to death YET? Can just a little more
>mileage get squeezed out of it?
Not at all. I was responding to Matt, who hasn't even demonstrated
high school competence in biology yet. So I decided to remind him of
the relevance of embryology to evolution, etc. See also my comments on high
school texts in another followup to him, appended below.
>Gill slits, gill slits, gill slits for the endoderm is ectoderm! Heh, heh.
>Beware the peppered moth.
You can read the claim that human embyros have gill slits in
Phillips's _Development of Vertebrate Anatomy_, a graduate-level
text that came out in 1975, and gives Haeckel's drawings as though
they were correct. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still
some biology texts that include this misinformation.
Now for those comments I refer to up there:
==================== begin abridged post, deletia denoted by {...}
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Behe visits Columbia
References: <1999020219...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu> <36bfc449...@nntp.ix.netcom.com> <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <grovesa-0402...@131.215.121.119> <79d144$7ca$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36c66d3c...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>
mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>In talk.origins I read this message from nyi...@math.sc.edu:
>>In article <grovesa-0402...@131.215.121.119>,
>> gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
>>> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>>>
>>> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
>>> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
>>> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
>>> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
>>> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
>>>
>>> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
>>> no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
>>
>>Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
>>drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
>>
>So which is the claim, that there was fraud over 100 years ago or that
>there is fraud now?
The former...and that the fraud was (mostly unwittingly) perpetuated up
to the present time. Perhaps some authors of textbooks still haven't
heard of the expose in _Science_. I cringe to think of high school
kids still being shown those phony pictures decades from now because
of the incompetence of the authors and editors.
>> In the text, we have the
>>> passage:
>>>
>>> "Molecular studies, to be discussed later in this book, reveal an
>>> astonishing number of developmental resemblances at a fundamental genetic
>>> level, even between species as remotely related as mammals and insects. In
>>> terms of anatomy, furthermore, early developmental stages of animals whose
>>> adult forms appear radically different are often surprisingly similar; it
>>> takes an expert eye to distinguish, for example, a young chick embryo from
>>> a young human embryo (reference to truncated Haeckel Figure)"
>>
>>There's the swallowing of the fraud. A human embryo looks
>>nothing like the figure of the early stage. Nothing at all.
>>
>I think this is the crux of all of Peter's issues. It is the
>similarity to the human embryo that concerns him.
Scientific fraud of all kinds concerns me. I am just as concerned
about the Piltdown fraud, and I have several posts containing
sharp comments about Ed Conrad's specimens to show for it.
{...}
>>> I don't have many problems with this passage, although the "expert eye"
>>> bit is perhaps not strictly true. Anyway, in the legend to the Haeckel
>>> figue we see the following:
>>>
>>> "Comparison of the embryonic development of a fish, an amphibian, a
>>> reptile, a bird, and a selection of mammals. The early stages (above) are
>>> very similar;
>>
>>And totally fictitious the way Haeckel drew them. Would you
>>like me to explain all the differences between his fantasy
>>and an actual human embryo?
>>
>No, I would rather you explain why the actual current scientific view
>is wrong.
The actual current scientific view may be as I fear above. I fear
that some incompetent scientists will continue to perpetrate
Haeckel's phony pictures.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
=================== end of excerpt
Peter Nyikos
>Why is Nyikos using Dejanews?
I've explained this lots of times. Our university newsreader only takes in
between one-fifth and one-third of all posts that appear in
talk.origins.
Peter Nyikos
>Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> writes:
>> >All I can say is "Ni! Ni!" - look it up for yourself.
>>
>> Where?
>Just as tad after "is", in any decent dictionary.
I looked in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate dictionary, but couldn't
find it.
Which language is the dictionary supposed to be in, anyway?
In Hungarian, "is" means "too" in the sense of "also", and
"Ni!" means roughly "Look!"
Richard Harter
That's odd. In my dictionary "it" is just a tad after "is". The man
did say to look it up. He didn't quote "it" but, then, he didn't quote
"Ni" either.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-978-369-3911
Microsoft announced today that the release of Windows 2000
has slipped and will be released in the first quarter of 1901.
Wade Hines
> hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) writes:
> >Would I give a damn about XYZ lying regularly on talk.origins?
> >No, not really. In my estimation, such behavior is self
> >disqualifying.
> Not on talk.origins. You certainly haven't disqualified
> Myers on account of it. Neither has Andrew MacRae. Neither
> has anyone else here except me; even Julie hasn't seen
> evidence as overwhelming as I have, so she is naturally
> cautious about what she has seen.
I will only add this: I don't see where anybody who is reading
the same posts gets the same impression as you Peter. The choices
include
a.) everybody else is lying about their impressions.
b.) everybody else is defective.
c.) Peter's impressions are based on unique perspectives.
I know I will be accused of perpetuating another scam but that's
the beauty of your world Peter. It is entirely self consistent,
if self enclosed.
Paul McElligott
Oh, the horror
he...@eznet.net wrote:
> [piggybacking]
> > Sher...@sidaway.demon.co.uk writes:
> >
> > >I do wish Peter wouldn't continue to insist that the endearment "darling"
> > >was used "against" him by me. At the time, its previous history as perhaps
> > >the most fearsome weapon of warfare ever mustered against a mathematics
> > >professor was completely unknown to me. As you can probably tell from my
> > >tone here, I still have serious problems maintaining an appropriately
> penitent
> > >attitude towards my heinous solecism of April, 1997.
>
> You didn't really do that?
>
> You brute!
>
> You ruffian!!
>
> You, you you you ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh!!!
>
> That is even worse than saying "Ni!" to old woman while searching for a
> shrubbery.
>
> <faints away from the sheer horror and cruelty of such unwarranted abuse*>
>
> * Not that Peter isn't well deserving of abuse, but calling him "darling" is
> just way way over the top. Maybe "sweetsie" would have been more appropriate
> given the situation. Or possibly "snoogums". But "d--" uh "drlghba" um
> "dlingkns" - see, I can't even bring myself to type that awful word.
>
> -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
> http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
--
Paul McElligott
"Subvert the dominant paradigm"
Mark J. Koebbe
perception of science.
nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>
> In article <myers-05029...@chestnut1-23.slip.netaxs.com>,
> my...@netaxs.com (PZ Myers) wrote:
> > In article <hines.9...@cgl.ucsf.edu>, hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines)
> > wrote:
> >
> > >I said nothing about Paul being a great guy.
> >
> > Nor do I ever expect anyone to do so.
> >
> > I've already confessed to being an evil rat bastard today.
> > I think that excuses everyone from ever feeling obligated
> > to say anything nice about me, or defending me in these
> > threads. That keeps it all nice and simple, doesn't it?
>
> Since the confession was obviously tongue-in-cheek,
How do we distinguish these from 'crypto-lies'.
as is
> this post to which I am responding, the answer is obviously
> "No". It keeps it complicated by the fact that Myers
> is being highly evasive.
In response to a juvenile diatribe about what was the real issue at a
Behe talk. Talk about evading issues such as 'no known examples of
design'..'no constraint on design'...and diatribes on strawman
caricatures of evolution and a 'crypto lie' about reading five years of
every article of JME, then failing to mention a single example to
support his handwaving.
Rant on black knight.
MJK
>
> Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
>
Mark J. Koebbe
>
> After today, all posts by me about the transparency will go to the
> thread, "Michael Behe and his detractors".
>
> "Mark J. Koebbe" <mko...@pond.com> writes:
>
> >nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
> >>
> >> In article <hines.9...@cgl.ucsf.edu>,
> >> hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) wrote:
> >> > nyi...@math.sc.edu writes:
> >> >
> >> > >> Dang. Mark and I are caught. We've been lying. Ooooh.
> >> >
> >> > >I wonder whether this piece of sarcasm is meant to imply (1) that
> >> > >I have not caught Mark and/or you lying about this particlular
> >> > >transparency or (2) that nobody in this newsgroup besides me gives
> >> > >a damn whether you lie regularly in talk.origins.
>
> For the lie that was told about the transparency, see the
> highlighted words below.
Sure.
>
> >> > Sometimes I think you are riding a bike with your
> >> > center of gravity rather forward of the front wheel.
> >>
> >> Does this comment imply that you don't give a damn whether
> >> Myers lies regularly in talk.origins?
>
> >No it probably implies that what you refer to as lies aren't necessarily
> >lies.
>
> That's Wade all the way, especially the weasel word "necessarily".
> I think you are right for once.
Relevance?
>
> >Further consideration of the actual issues reveal your lack of
> >focus. People will get bored by pompous arrogance without addressing
> >the substance of the argument.
>
> When did you ever post anything of substance?
Relevance? Did I make such a claim? I simply said that you don't argue
about the substance. That doesn't require me to post something of
substance. I simply use your misuse of logic to sink your own opinion.
>
> [...]
>
> [Myers, your mentor in denying the obvious, wrote:]
> >> > > To paraphrase him, he said, 'with a title like the Journal of Molecular
> >> > > Evolution, they ought
> >> > > to be publishing articles on the evolution of molecules. I've looked
> >> > > carefully at the last 5 years of this journal.' He then asked the
> >> > > audience the rhetorical question, 'How many articles on evolution
> >> > > do you think they've published?' before putting up a cheesy overhead
> >> > > with nothing but the numeral 0 on it, in big, bold print.
> >> > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >> >
> >> > >In writing "To paraphrase him," you made a mockery of the word
> >> > >"paraphrase". The second statement 'How many...' is a
> >> > >defamatory misrepresentation. And the highlighted words are
> >> > >an outright lie.
> >> >
> >> > Paul says all he was was a big zero. Behe tells Nyikos
> >> > different. Nyikos calls Paul a liar.
> >>
> >> Yes, because I've never seen a lie by Behe,
>
> >Like Clinton means 'lie'. Back to the zero, Peter.
>
> Behe told the truth, and you've never made a dent in it or
> even tried to make a dent in it, except when you backed
> up Paul's lie, "nothing but".
And yet the '0' remains based on a generalized straw man without any
referral to specifics......is this a 'crypto' lie.
> > and I've seen
> >> scads of them by Myers. Julie said it much more kindly,
>
> >Be specific, Peter, how many is a 'scad'?
>
> At least twenty out and out lies. Hundreds of half-truths
> and wild unsupported accusations. Also some weaseling
> crypto-lies like the one you tell below.
>
> >And I quote one of her comments; 'pay attention kiddies'. Doesn't sound
> >too compassionate to me.
>
> It's very compassionate compared to what she could have
> justifiably said.
Which was that she wasn't at the talk so she couldn't support a
verifiable opinion. That would have been the truth....anything else was
speculation.
>
> >> but then she hasn't seen as much of the dark side of Myers as I have.
>
> [...]
>
> >> Presumably, Nyikos
> >> > is already ridden past all other interpretations whilst
> >> > his bike is still back aways. I can picture the gleam
> >> > in his eyes as well.
> >>
> >> Picture all you want. I notice you have nothing to say
> >> here in direct defense of Myers.
>
> I've coined the term "weaseling crypto-lies" for sentences
> like the following.
Yes, and we often see how these 'coining' of terms whip right around and
whap you upside the head.
>
> >Perhaps because there is nothing that really needs defending except
> >Peter's misinterpretations.
>
> The part after the "because" is a complete falsehood, and you
> know it and are weaseling with the word "Perhaps" to avoid
> telling an out-and-out lie.
More whining from peter.
>
> That is the essence of the weaseling crypto-lie.
Like ignoring the presence of the '0' without proof of the '0'. That
fits peter's definition of 'crypto-lie' as well.
>
> > You are just indulging
> >> in vague generalities to create the impression that you
> >> think he is a great guy without having to stick your neck out.
>
> >You mean like 'scads' of lies?
>
> See above, coward.
Then do something about it besides whining and quibbling.
>
> [...]
>
> >> > >And now, here is that repost which shows the glaring discrepancy
> >> > >between your `testimony' and that of Mark, who seemed to be letting
> >> > >you do all your talking for him in the thread where I first
> >> > >reposted it. Names added in brackets.
> >> >
> >> > Further "evidence" [sensu Nyikos] of Nyikos's inability
> >> > to gain sane perespective deleted.
> >>
> >> Further evidence of your cowardice, dishonesty, and
> >> anti-Nyikos fanaticism. If you really think
> >> there is a sane perspective different from mine, why did
> >> you delete the *prima facie* case against Paul and Mark
> >> flatly contradicting each other?
>
> >Perhaps because it was irrelevant to the central issue that Paul
> >originally made.
>
> How far back does "originally" go? For sure, it predates your
> January 4 post that I've reposted on "Michael Behe and his detractors".
>
> Perhaps you might get back on topic. Perhaps this is
> >just a futile attempt like barking at the moon.
>
> Sounds to me like two more weaseling crypto-lies; but
> the evidence on them is ambiguous since you do not
> specify what you mean by "the topic" nor what you
> mean by "futile"
You mean like 'specify' in detail the failings of the JME to address
Behe's strawman of evolution? No wait, sorry I seem to be using your
own logic to shut down your claim.
.. If it means "futile
> at getting Andrew MacRae to acknowledge that Paul looks
> to be a tad more dishonest than Andrew MacRae," you
> are probably right.
>
> > Why didn't you even
> >> try to come up with an alibi for them?
>
> >No crime, who needs an alibi? Manufacture away, Peter.
>
> You and Paul committed something that just might be legally
> actionable. I believe the word "alibi" applies to tort
> law as well as to criminal law.
Then do something...maybe then we'll get to see the substance behind the
claims for '0' articles supporting a straw man argument against
evolution. I'll bet Behe would want to avoid this at all possible costs
until he actually has a 'scientific' argument for design...perchance an
example of 'design'. The last thing he wants is a detailed spotlight on
his own position. This most assuredly would be relevant to any 'legal'
proceedings based on 'crypto-lies'.
Put your money where your mouth is....
MJK
gro...@my-dejanews.com
about transparencies.
I hope Peter will respond to it if he has time.
Andy
> In article <1999020219...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>,
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
> > On January 28-30, Michael Behe, author of the controversy-generating
> > book _Darwin's Black Box_, visited Columbia, SC and gave several
> > talks. Two of them were lectures to general audiences on the
> > campus of the University of South Carolina. The first began on
> > Thursday, January 28 at 7:30 pm and took place in the Russell House
> > Ballroom. The second began on Friday at 4 pm and took place in
> > a large lecture hall in the Physical Sciences Center. The latter
> > was the first in a series of four lectures sponsored by the University
> > of South Carolina on the general subject of evolution. Daniel Dennett
> > will be one of the other three speakers.
> >
> > Both lectures were given to near-capacity crowds. After each
> > there were question-and-answer sessions which were quite lively,
> > to say the least, but Behe fielded the questions quite well.
> > The first lecture hewed quite closely to the content of
> > portions of _Darwin's Black Box_. The second ranged further,
> > giving examples of strong bias and outright falsification of
> > evidence in mainstream science, including the phony pictures
> > by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
> > peppered moth case.
>
> It's always interesting to meet people like Behe in the flesh. A random
> assortment of questions that you might have time to answer:
>
> What did you personally think of his talks? Is he a good speaker? Did you find
> things in his talks that you disagreed with, or were you pretty much in tune
> with him throughout?
>
> Other people have in the past reported that Behe is more forthcoming about the
> nature of his "designer" in person than in print. Was this the case?
>
> Has his thinking changed any since the publication of his book? Does he have
> new (or modified) ideas or examples?
>
> Did you get to talk with him personally? Is he a nice guy? Does he read
> talk.origins regularly?
>
> Regards,
>
> Andy
wade
He has an uncomfortable association between fisting and people
calling him darling. Maybe I should put that on an overhead.
Paul McElligott wrote in message <36C106EA...@earthlink.net>...
>> -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
>> http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
>
>
>
PZ Myers
<wad...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>I don't think you people understand what Peter has been saying.
>
>He has an uncomfortable association between fisting and people
>calling him darling. Maybe I should put that on an overhead.
>
Yes. I think it is best illustrated with a cartoon, and used to
make a scientific point. Unfortunately, I don't think you're going
to find a Calvin & Hobbes or Gary Larson cartoon about fisting...
you might have to go digging about in some tasteless rag like
"Hustler" to find something appropriate.
Still, despite the unsavory source, it is a Behe- or Nyikos-esque
way to support your ideas, I agree. But do you want to stoop that low?
--
PZ Myers
Andy Groves
> I don't think you people understand what Peter has been saying.
>
> He has an uncomfortable association between fisting and people
> calling him darling. Maybe I should put that on an overhead.
>
You mean like "Please don't fist me, Darling" in 48 point font?
Just trying to be helpful,
Andy
--
Andy Groves
Andrew MacRae
Would such incompetence extend to those scientists who think that,
on a fundamental level, Haeckel was correct: all vertebrates develop a
similar body plan (consisting of notochord, body segments, pharyngeal
pouches, and so forth)? Or those that think this shared developmental
program reflects shared evolutionary history? Would that still be true
even if they did acknowledge the errors in Haeckel's diagrams and that
recapitulation was false?
A simple yes or no would suffice.
-Andrew
mac...@agc.bio._NOSPAM_.ns.ca
PZ Myers
mac...@agc.bio_NOSPAM_.ns.ca wrote:
> Would such incompetence extend to those scientists who think that,
>on a fundamental level, Haeckel was correct: all vertebrates develop a
>similar body plan (consisting of notochord, body segments, pharyngeal
>pouches, and so forth)? Or those that think this shared developmental
>program reflects shared evolutionary history? Would that still be true
>even if they did acknowledge the errors in Haeckel's diagrams and that
>recapitulation was false?
The correct ideas above aren't Haeckel's...
But those ideas (common body plan, etc.) are something I would agree with.
>
> A simple yes or no would suffice.
A simple answer? Now you are asking for way too much.
--
PZ Myers
Peter Nyikos
"Mark J. Koebbe" <mko...@pond.com> writes:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> "Mark J. Koebbe" <mko...@pond.com> writes:
>>
>> >nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>> >>
>> >> In article <hines.9...@cgl.ucsf.edu>,
>> >> hi...@cgl.ucsf.EDU (Wade Hines) wrote:
>> >> > nyi...@math.sc.edu writes:
>> >> >
>> >> > >> Dang. Mark and I are caught. We've been lying. Ooooh.
>> >> >
>> >> > >I wonder whether this piece of sarcasm is meant to imply (1) that
>> >> > >I have not caught Mark and/or you lying about this particlular
>> >> > >transparency or (2) that nobody in this newsgroup besides me gives
>> >> > >a damn whether you lie regularly in talk.origins.
>>
>> For the lie that was told about the transparency, see the
>> highlighted words below.
[...]
>> >Further consideration of the actual issues reveal your lack of
>> >focus. People will get bored by pompous arrogance without addressing
>> >the substance of the argument.
>>
>> When did you ever post anything of substance?
>Relevance? Did I make such a claim?
No, but in light of my first followup to you on the Subject: line,
I am very curious. So far, you look like an intellectual lightweight
to me, about on the level of an average or below average college
freshman at my university.
>> [...]
>>
>> [Myers, your mentor in denying the obvious, wrote:]
>> >> > > To paraphrase him, he said, 'with a title like the Journal of Molecular
>> >> > > Evolution, they ought
>> >> > > to be publishing articles on the evolution of molecules. I've looked
>> >> > > carefully at the last 5 years of this journal.' He then asked the
>> >> > > audience the rhetorical question, 'How many articles on evolution
>> >> > > do you think they've published?' before putting up a cheesy overhead
>> >> > > with nothing but the numeral 0 on it, in big, bold print.
>> >> > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> >> >
>> >> > >In writing "To paraphrase him," you made a mockery of the word
>> >> > >"paraphrase". The second statement 'How many...' is a
>> >> > >defamatory misrepresentation. And the highlighted words are
>> >> > >an outright lie.
[...]
>> Behe told the truth, and you've never made a dent in it or
>> even tried to make a dent in it, except when you backed
>> up Paul's lie, "nothing but".
>And yet the '0' remains based on a generalized straw man without any
>referral to specifics......is this a 'crypto' lie.
The specifics have been posted many times:
Number of papers in the Journal of Molecular Evolution that discuss
detailed models for the production of complex biochemical structure:
That is what ELSE was on the slide that Paul lied had nothing
else, with you and three others you mention being accessories
before and/or the fact.
[...]
>> >And I quote one of her comments; 'pay attention kiddies'. Doesn't sound
>> >too compassionate to me.
>>
>> It's very compassionate compared to what she could have
>> justifiably said.
>Which was that she wasn't at the talk so she couldn't support a
>verifiable opinion.
She had seen earlier posts where you "kiddies" had suppressed
an important item of information. You proceeded to lie over and over
to her in reply to her "kiddies" post that the item of information
did not exist.
She could have been a lot nastier to you and all the others
who had suppressed the information.
That would have been the truth....anything else was
>speculation.
What she was referring to were things that had appeared in
earlier posts--or did not appear, as the case may be.
[...]
>> I've coined the term "weaseling crypto-lies" for sentences
>> like the following.
[moronic unsupported claim by Koebbe deleted here]
>> >Perhaps because there is nothing that really needs defending except
>> >Peter's misinterpretations.
>>
>> The part after the "because" is a complete falsehood, and you
>> know it and are weaseling with the word "Perhaps" to avoid
>> telling an out-and-out lie.
>More whining from peter.
Like I said...like an average or below average freshman.
>> That is the essence of the weaseling crypto-lie.
>Like ignoring the presence of the '0' without proof of the '0'. That
>fits peter's definition of 'crypto-lie' as well.
Idiot. How is Behe supposed to prove his claim without taking you
through every single paper ever published in JME? It's up
to Behe-haters like you to try and find even ONE example that shows
he is wrong.
Paul's said he's given the same speech lots of places. Surely
somebody by now would have shown him wrong, if he were wrong.
Remainder deleted. You allege a "strawman argument against
evolution" by Behe, but Behe has never argued against evolution.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
> This is my second followup to a post by Mark on "Behe visits Columbia".
> The first went to the original thread.
>
>
> "Mark J. Koebbe" <mko...@pond.com> writes:
>
> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> >>
> >> "Mark J. Koebbe" <mko...@pond.com> writes:
> >>
>
> [snip lots dealt with in first post]
>
> >> >> by Haeckel of various embryos, and doctored evidence in the
> >> >> peppered moth case.
> >>
> >>
> >> I suppose evidence of fraud by fanatical atheists always evokes this
> >> reaction from you. Maybe that's why you and Paul Myers
> >> get along so well.
>
> >There you go again. Feebly attempting to poison the well.
>
> There you go again, avoiding the issue of your attitude towards
> Myers and Haeckel.
>
By your above "fanatical atheists" and this more recent "Myers and Haeckel",
I can see that you are lumping Myers in with Haeckel, as if this somehow
makes your point. Give it a break Peter.
>
> >> >I suppose he discussed the Baer synthesis by contrast
> >>
> >> No, but von Baer, to give him his correct name,
>
> >ROTF again. Emphasis on the 'no' which makes my point.
>
> You haven't a clue as to what this is all about, I see.
> Read my reply to Andy Groves to see what aspect of Haeckel's
> fraud is really being talked about, and tell me whether you
> can give any pictures by von Baer of human embryos that
> are more accurate than those of Haeckel.
>
Did von Baer use a camera? Did Haeckel?
>
> If my reply to Andy Groves on the subject is not enough,
> try looking at some of my replies to Silberstein, especially
> the one in which I talk about high school biology textbooks and Julie's
> own contribution to the "Behe visits Columbia" thread.
>
COUGH!!!!COUGH!!!! I see you've avoided MY contribution to the "Behe visits
Columbia" thread (at least the last time I checked you hadn't commented). I
think I handled the issue quite well. It might not have been the best review
of a topic ever posted on Usenet (it was painfully incomplete as I just
received a copy of Richardson's 1997 opus in _Anatomy and Embryology_ today),
but it sure trumps anything you've been able to muster so far. And you will
notice I didn't insult Julie. I also did not take time out to bring
somebody's family members into the debate or I didn't engage in hundreds of
lines of useless meta-babble about the assumed intentions of everybody who
doesn't agree with me.
And if you missed my post on DejaNews or whatever reader you're using, you
might have gotten it in e-mail. I forwarded it to you. You'll probably
piggyback, like with the "germ layers", the "neural crest", and
"gastrulation". What makes me ill is when you inject uncalled for personal
comments in your posts. Yeck.
*noggin*, *nanos*, *bicoid*? Sounds distinctly biological to me. Do you know
what these names mean Peter? Have you ever heard of them before (rolling
eyes)?
>
> >> Did Paul ever mention that tidbit to you? not likely...don't
> >> want to take any credit away from the man whom people
> >> clutched at like a drowning man clutches at a straw when
> >> Haeckel's fraud was first discussed here in talk.origins.
>
> >Focusing on Haeckels' fraud is a form of clutching at straws.
>
> Dream on, Mark. Haeckel's fraud speaks to shoddy biology
> which I've seen in high school and college textbooks all over the place.
>
REFERENCES please. What textbooks are you referring to? I did see those scary
Haeckelian embryos on the cover of Gerhart and Kirschner's _Cells, Embryos,
and Evolution_. They even took time out to allude to the biogentic law
briefly. I didn't like this discussion of their's, but overall, the book is
pretty gosh darn good. You should read it and give us a critique on whatever
molecular biological mistakes they might have made. That was the overall jist
of the book (molecular cell biology) not comparative embryology. Maybe
molecular and cell biologists haven't realized Haeckel's ideas are old hat
yet. They don't teach that sort of stuff in Ouchterlony 101 ;-)
>
> You are unable to concern
> yourself about such matters because you are in this thing
> for the anti-Christian angle, aren't you?
>
> Did he
> >discuss the 'von' Baer ideas as would commonly be done at any credible
> >scientific talk?
>
> No, because anyone who discusses von Baer's ideas in a talk where
> the subject is fraud in the depiction of embryos, is being
> crashingly irrelevant. Besides, von Baer is interesting for historical
> reasons, but he is badly dated, and we can safely skip over
> him to modern scientific theories.
>
Such as...?
>
> By the way, have you ever taken a college course in science?
>
>
Peter, this insult was uncalled for. I'm trying to discuss issues with you in
a calm, rational manner, but it's hard when I see you continue along on your
endless tirades. I'm not always the perfect netizen, but I'm trying to
maintain some decorum.
Scott Chase
PZ Myers
<nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
>>Like ignoring the presence of the '0' without proof of the '0'. That
>>fits peter's definition of 'crypto-lie' as well.
>
>Idiot. How is Behe supposed to prove his claim without taking you
>through every single paper ever published in JME? It's up
>to Behe-haters like you to try and find even ONE example that shows
>he is wrong.
>
>Paul's said he's given the same speech lots of places. Surely
>somebody by now would have shown him wrong, if he were wrong.
You just don't get it. I didn't say he lied, or was 'wrong'. I said
he was playing pointless rhetorical games to pander to the anti-
evolution crowd. He's dismissing the field of molecular evolution
as having any relevance at all to his particular mania, and he's
doing it in such a way as to appeal to the ignorant and appear
dishonest to those who know even a little bit about it.
You might ask him why, sometime. It doesn't advance his thesis one
little bit to complain about a journal that doesn't publish what he
wants it to publish.
--
PZ Myers
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com
> >(Julie Thomas):
>
> >>
> >>In a previous article, mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) says:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>>In article <grovesa-0402...@131.215.121.119>,
> >>>> gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
> >>>>> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
> >>>>> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
> >>>>> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
> >>>>> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
> >>>>> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all right, but
> >>>>> no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
> >>>>
> >>>>Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
> >>>>drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
> >>>>
> >>>So which is the claim, that there was fraud over 100 years ago or that
> >>>there is fraud now?
>
> >>recent as 1998) and Richardson's article is not, and has never been,
> >>about "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."
>
> >Now tell that to Peter.
>
> Your question was too open-ended, Matt. See below.
>
> Also, see my earlier reply to you where I told you
> my concerns about high school texts.
>
>
> >From: Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu>
> >Newsgroups: talk.origins
> >Subject: Re: Behe visits Columbia
> >Date: 3 Feb 1999 20:10:20 -0500
> >Message-ID: <1999020401...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>
>
> >mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>
> >[MS: snip]
>
> >>So? How is this relevant to either evolution or IC?
>
> >Do the words "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" ring a bell?
>
> some substandard college and research level writings are concerned.
> It is not, however, relevant to the question of why Behe brought
> the matter up, nor why Richardson wrote about it. Nobody on
> the research level takes "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"
> seriously the way Haeckel meant it. On the other hand, they
> do take scientific fraud seriously no matter what the intent.
>
>
I thought the issue was conserved stages, periods, or processes in
embryology. Have you been keeping up?
Do you or Behe discount that there is early embryonic conservation as the
foundations of the vertebrate body plan are being set? If so, give me some
good reasons. And please don't refer to "Haeckel's drawings" to make your
point. Indulge me in some "cutting-edge" biological details. The history
lesson is over.
PZ Myers
wrote:
>In article <1999020919...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>,
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>
>> This is my second followup to a post by Mark on "Behe visits Columbia".
>> The first went to the original thread.
>>
>Are you trying to win the novel subjects per author contest, Peter?
>>
>> "Mark J. Koebbe" <mko...@pond.com> writes:
>>
>> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
[snip]
>> >> I suppose evidence of fraud by fanatical atheists always evokes this
>> >> reaction from you. Maybe that's why you and Paul Myers
>> >> get along so well.
>>
>> >There you go again. Feebly attempting to poison the well.
>>
>> There you go again, avoiding the issue of your attitude towards
>> Myers and Haeckel.
>>
>
>By your above "fanatical atheists" and this more recent "Myers and Haeckel",
>I can see that you are lumping Myers in with Haeckel, as if this somehow
>makes your point. Give it a break Peter.
Yes. It's very strange, and rather hypocritical.
He can support Behe's tactic of whining about how he's persecuted because
he is catholic, because he claims it is true and a terrible injustice. At
the same time, he uses "atheist" as a pejorative, and tries to brand me
as some kind of evil criminal with it.
Similarly, I prefer not to smear Haeckel personally (well, at least not
too much), because I think it is a little unfair to apply modern standards
of science to someone who was more of a philosopher/politician than a
scientist. But I repudiate his ideas completely. Lumping us together is
rather inappropriate.
[snip]
>>
>> > was supposedly
>> >> superseded by Haeckel for decades. You don't see any
>> >> biology textbooks with drawings based on any by von Baer,
>> >> do you?
>>
>> >Nope, the one I have has a figure based on von Baer's (gee, did I get
>> >the spelling right) interpretation.
>>
>> Why the word "interpretation"? why not the word "drawings"?
>>
>> That's page 254, figure 7.1 (after
>> >Romanes, 1901)
>>
>> Was the actual drawing due to Romanes? I rest MY case.
Yes. Romanes had it redone, but with little revision.
[snip]
>>
>> >No I didn't. Read between the lines....like Julie said we should've
>> >done at Behe's talk. Hell, lets bring in the auditory placodes or
>> >perhaps the AER? Why not reduce it to two germ layers, ectoderm and
>> >endoderm?
>>
>> Because von Baer did not do that. We are discussing history here.
>>
>> Hell lets just reduce it to the egg as a primary germ layer
>> >(noggin, nanos, bicoid). Boy, wouldn't that be useful.
>>
>> What is your major? Sure doesn't sound like anything to do
>> with the sciences.
This is another odd, hypocritical complaint from Nyikos...who is
definitely not a science 'major' himself.
>>
>
>*noggin*, *nanos*, *bicoid*? Sounds distinctly biological to me. Do you know
>what these names mean Peter? Have you ever heard of them before (rolling
>eyes)?
>
>>
>> >> Did Paul ever mention that tidbit to you? not likely...don't
>> >> want to take any credit away from the man whom people
>> >> clutched at like a drowning man clutches at a straw when
>> >> Haeckel's fraud was first discussed here in talk.origins.
>>
>> >Focusing on Haeckels' fraud is a form of clutching at straws.
>>
>> Dream on, Mark. Haeckel's fraud speaks to shoddy biology
>> which I've seen in high school and college textbooks all over the place.
>>
>
>REFERENCES please. What textbooks are you referring to? I did see those scary
>Haeckelian embryos on the cover of Gerhart and Kirschner's _Cells, Embryos,
>and Evolution_. They even took time out to allude to the biogentic law
>briefly.
You'll also find the figure reproduced in Raff & Kaufman's _Embryos, Genes,
and Evolution_, with a fairly thorough discussion of the real issues
underlying the biogenetic law.
I would also like to see Nyikos demonstrate some real problems with the
presentation of Haeckel's ideas in any textbooks, anywhere. I suspect
there could very well be textbooks around that might give misleading
comfort to "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", but I haven't found any.
Judging by his misrepresentation of how it was handled in _Molecular
Biology of the Cell_, I doubt that Nyikos has any evidence to support
this particular claim.
>I didn't like this discussion of their's, but overall, the book is
>pretty gosh darn good. You should read it and give us a critique on whatever
>molecular biological mistakes they might have made. That was the overall jist
>of the book (molecular cell biology) not comparative embryology. Maybe
>molecular and cell biologists haven't realized Haeckel's ideas are old hat
>yet. They don't teach that sort of stuff in Ouchterlony 101 ;-)
>
>>
>> You are unable to concern
>> yourself about such matters because you are in this thing
>> for the anti-Christian angle, aren't you?
>>
>> Did he
>> >discuss the 'von' Baer ideas as would commonly be done at any credible
>> >scientific talk?
>>
>> No, because anyone who discusses von Baer's ideas in a talk where
>> the subject is fraud in the depiction of embryos, is being
>> crashingly irrelevant. Besides, von Baer is interesting for historical
>> reasons, but he is badly dated, and we can safely skip over
>> him to modern scientific theories.
>>
>Such as...?
Design! Panspermy! The flight plan of incoming alien spaceships! Where have
you been, Scott?
>>
>> By the way, have you ever taken a college course in science?
>>
>>
>
>Peter, this insult was uncalled for.
You shouldn't regard it as an insult. Nyikos has taken minimal coursework,
if any, in science himself. I don't know why he chooses to think this is
something to use as a debating tool, since it can so easily be turned against
him.
>I'm trying to discuss issues with you in
>a calm, rational manner, but it's hard when I see you continue along on your
>endless tirades. I'm not always the perfect netizen, but I'm trying to
>maintain some decorum.
--
PZ Myers
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
> This is another followup to a post on "Behe visits Columbia".
> CC to Scott because of the change in thread title.
>
> Hemida...@my-dejanews.com writes:
>
> >In article <36cdc822...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
> > mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) wrote:
>
> >> [begin excerpt]
> >>
> >> From: Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu>
> >> Newsgroups: talk.origins
> >> Subject: Re: Behe visits Columbia
> >> Date: 3 Feb 1999 20:10:20 -0500
> >> Message-ID: <1999020401...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>
> >>
> >> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
> >>
> >> [MS: snip]
> >>
> >> >So? How is this relevant to either evolution or IC?
> >>
> >> Do the words "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" ring a bell?
> >>
> >> [end excerpt]
> >>
> >> [snip]
>
> >So where is Peter going with the continuous recapitulation of this biogenetic
> >nonsense?
>
> Nowhere. See my own reply to Matt's post on the original thread.
>
>
> >Has this issue been beaten to death YET? Can just a little more
> >mileage get squeezed out of it?
>
> Not at all. I was responding to Matt, who hasn't even demonstrated
> high school competence in biology yet.
>
Really? Matt usually seems to do a pretty good job whenever I read his posts.
He's real good at the philosophy of science.
>
> So I decided to remind him of
> the relevance of embryology to evolution, etc. See also my comments on high
> school texts in another followup to him, appended below.
>
So embryology does have relevance to evolution?
>
> >Gill slits, gill slits, gill slits for the endoderm is ectoderm! Heh, heh.
> >Beware the peppered moth.
>
> You can read the claim that human embyros have gill slits in
> Phillips's _Development of Vertebrate Anatomy_, a graduate-level
> text that came out in 1975, and gives Haeckel's drawings as though
> they were correct. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still
> some biology texts that include this misinformation.
>
1975? Ballard's text came out in 1964. TRUMP!!!! And Ballard takes a little
time to discount the biogenetic nonsense several times.
Yes. I'm sure they will all become brainwashed "recapitulationists". Any of
these high school kids who happens to pursue biology at the university level
might eventually learn that ontogeny and phylogeny have a more complex
relationship.
Yawn.
PZ Myers
wrote:
>> The actual current scientific view may be as I fear above. I fear
>> that some incompetent scientists will continue to perpetrate
>> Haeckel's phony pictures.
>>
>>
>Yawn.
Yawn. (hey, this is contagious!)
Nyikos seems to have this obsession with the "phoniness" of the pictures,
but he doesn't seem to have bothered to comment on my teeny-tiny short post
from last week...this one:
---<myers-04029...@bio-101.bio.temple.edu>---
In article <79d144$7ca$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu wrote:
>And totally fictitious the way Haeckel drew them. Would you
>like me to explain all the differences between his fantasy
>and an actual human embryo?
No. See <http://www.sghms.ac.uk/depts/anatomy/pages/mikhmpg.htm> for a
PHOTOGRAPH of the same stage. Then look at Haeckel's drawings at
Scott Gilbert's site <http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/evo5.html> (this
page also reproduces Richardson's drawings of the phylotypic stage).
It is actually fairly decent, considering it was almost certainly drawn
freehand and from material that was pathetically preserved compared to
what Richardson has. Still, you can tell that every ambiguity and
complication in the original material was consistently interpreted
towards similarity, and it is quite obvious where he took the liberty
of stripping out gross differences, like the huge yolk sacs, that
distorted the overall shape.
------
Anybody can just compare the drawings and the real thing, all by themselves.
Nyikos is really pushing himself well past the bounds of credibility with
this one.
--
PZ Myers
Andrew MacRae
writes:
|In article <1999020923...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>,
| Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
|> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
|> >(Julie Thomas):
|> >>In a previous article, mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) says:
|> >>>>In article <grovesa-0402...@131.215.121.119>,
|> >>>> gro...@spam-me-not.cco.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
|> >>>>> In article <799o7n$f6t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, nyi...@math.sc.edu
wrote:
|> >>>>> > Behe also showed a transparency from the journal,
|> >>>>> > _Molecular Biology of the Cell_, By Bruce Alberts and
|> >>>>> > James Watson--NAS President and Nobel Laureate, respectively,
|> >>>>> > in which they repeated uncritically Haeckel's claims about
|> >>>>> > the embryos. This was in 1994, hardly a hundred years ago.
|> >>>>>
|> >>>>> Well, in *my* 1994 edition of Alberts the figure is there all
|> >>>>> right, but no mention of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
|> >>>>
|> >>>>Of course not. Not every use made of those fraudulent
|> >>>>drawings of Haeckel's has to do with that little theme.
|> >>>>
|> >>>So which is the claim, that there was fraud over 100 years ago or
|> >>>that there is fraud now?
|>
|> >>recent as 1998) and Richardson's article is not, and has never been,
|> >>about "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."
|>
|> >Now tell that to Peter.
|>
|> Your question was too open-ended, Matt. See below.
|>
|> Also, see my earlier reply to you where I told you
|> my concerns about high school texts.
|>
|>
|> >From: Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu>
|> >Newsgroups: talk.origins
|> >Subject: Re: Behe visits Columbia
|> >Date: 3 Feb 1999 20:10:20 -0500
|> >Message-ID: <1999020401...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>
|>
|> >mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
|>
|> >[MS: snip]
|>
|> >>So? How is this relevant to either evolution or IC?
|>
|> >Do the words "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" ring a bell?
|>
|> some substandard college and research level writings are concerned.
|> It is not, however, relevant to the question of why Behe brought
|> the matter up, nor why Richardson wrote about it. Nobody on
|> the research level takes "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"
|> seriously the way Haeckel meant it. On the other hand, they
|> do take scientific fraud seriously no matter what the intent.
|
|I thought the issue was conserved stages, periods, or processes in
|embryology. Have you been keeping up?
|
|Do you or Behe discount that there is early embryonic conservation as the
|foundations of the vertebrate body plan are being set? If so, give me
|some good reasons. And please don't refer to "Haeckel's drawings" to make
|your point. Indulge me in some "cutting-edge" biological details. The
|history lesson is over.
But was Behe's presentation of the fraud of Haeckel *meant* to be
anything more than a history lesson, or perhaps a comment on the sociology
of fraud, or of textbook production standards? You are asking a
completely valid question, but, in fairness, that may not have been Behe's
point. I have to admit I'm still not clear what that point was, actually.
-Andrew
mac...@agc.bio._NOSPAM_.ns.ca
Peter Nyikos
>In article <79smpc$62a$1...@darwin.ediacara.org>,
>mac...@agc.bio_NOSPAM_.ns.ca wrote:
MacRae made no comment on any of the details I mentioned, and
Myers deleted them.
One of them is quoted below in the letter from Julie.
>> Would such incompetence extend to those scientists who think that,
>>on a fundamental level, Haeckel was correct: all vertebrates develop a
>>similar body plan (consisting of notochord, body segments, pharyngeal
>>pouches, and so forth)?
Haeckel was more or less correct about that, if he said it. But
did he? If so, where? I'm especially interested in the
"so forth" part.
Did Haeckel carefully specify "pharyngeal pouches" in place
of "gill slits"? Did Haeckel never allege that human embryos
have gill slits? If so, who should be faulted for errors
that have passed down to the present day?
Or at least last year: see the following letter that Julie sent me:
============================== begin included e-mail
Peter, you wrote:
"You can read the claim that human embyros have gill slits in
Phillips's _Development of Vertebrate Anatomy_, a graduate-level
text that came out in 1975, and gives Haeckel's drawings as though
they were correct. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still
some biology texts that include this misinformation."
You're right. Consider the following quote:
"Common ancestral early genes might explain such prenatal features
as the gill slits and rudimentary tail seen in a 7-week-old human embyro."
Lewis, Riki. 1998 Life, 3rd Ed. WCB McGraw-Hill; Boston, p. 395.
The above was listed as one of the evidences of evolution.
Lewis' book is a popular undergrad introductory biology text.
And note the date - 1998.
BTW, Lewis also reproduces the Haeckel figures in dispute. The
legend to this figure includes the following:
"Notice how similar the early embryos in the top row are
[the tailbud stage shown not be so "similar" by Richardson et al.]
each has gill slits and a tail reminiscent of fish." (p. 212)
Feel free to use or simply post this if you want.
================================== end included e-mail
Or those that think this shared developmental
>>program reflects shared evolutionary history?
FWIW. We share an evolutionary history
with oysters. It just doesn't extend as far up as the
first chordate.
We also share an evolutionary history with chimps, which extends
a good deal further up.
Aside to Andrew: I've been dipping into the 1998 edition of
_Five Kingdoms_ by Lynn Margulis and someone else, and
I was amazed to see that Craniata is given phylum status there--
even Cephalochordata is made a separate phylum. Is this
idea catching on? Or is it idiosyncratic to them?
The reason I bring this up here is that we share notochord,
dorsal nerve cord, body segments, "and so forth" with
*Branchiostoma*, alias Amphioxus, (common name: lancelet).
Do we also share pharyngeal
pouches with them? I do know that the lancelet has numerous
gill slits.
Would that still be true
>>even if they did acknowledge the errors in Haeckel's diagrams and that
>>recapitulation was false?
Would what still be true? That we share an evolutionary history?
or that those scientists are right about Haeckel?
Even Myers seems to think that they aren't:
>The correct ideas above aren't Haeckel's...
>But those ideas (common body plan, etc.) are something I would agree with.
Me too. But then, we also have a common body plan with annelids;
it's just that we are flipped upside down and backwards from them,
and we don't have as many details in common as we do with lampreys
and hagfish, let alone higher vertebrates.
>>
>> A simple yes or no would suffice.
>A simple answer? Now you are asking for way too much.
Of course, especially considering how complicated the question was.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
gro...@my-dejanews.com
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
> Remainder deleted. You allege a "strawman argument against
> evolution" by Behe, but Behe has never argued against evolution.
Agreed. I nevertheless believe that the main thrust of his argument in DBB
uses a view of evolution that one might not unreasonably label as a straw man
argument. But to his credit, he does acknowledge the "indirect, circuitous
route" of Darwinism is a formal possibility. Quite what makes him rule it out
on the grounds of probability as opposed to design is beyond me.
Andy
PZ Myers
<nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>my...@astro.ocis.temple.edu (PZ Myers) writes:
>
>>In article <79smpc$62a$1...@darwin.ediacara.org>,
>>mac...@agc.bio_NOSPAM_.ns.ca wrote:
>
>MacRae made no comment on any of the details I mentioned, and
>Myers deleted them.
>
>One of them is quoted below in the letter from Julie.
>
>>> Would such incompetence extend to those scientists who think that,
>>>on a fundamental level, Haeckel was correct: all vertebrates develop a
>>>similar body plan (consisting of notochord, body segments, pharyngeal
>>>pouches, and so forth)?
>
>Haeckel was more or less correct about that, if he said it. But
>did he? If so, where? I'm especially interested in the
>"so forth" part.
Where? Everywhere. It was central to his theory.
>
>Did Haeckel carefully specify "pharyngeal pouches" in place
>of "gill slits"? Did Haeckel never allege that human embryos
>have gill slits? If so, who should be faulted for errors
>that have passed down to the present day?
How many times do I have to go over this? "Gill slit" is an awkward
colloquialism that was used to describe those funny-looking blobs and
gaps and protuberances hanging off of the embryonic head. It's not
a term that anyone in the field ever seems to use, at least not anymore,
and it mainly seems to live on in popular texts. There is nothing really
wrong with it, as long as you aren't misled into assuming it implies a
literal gill.
You also see the term "branchial arches". We don't have gills (branchia),
but it is still a reasonable word to use to describe those particular
structures. It is just a convenient *name*.
As for Haeckel...he published in German, of course. I've browsed one
of his books a long time ago in the original, but Haeckel is wordy and
convoluted enough in translation that I can't imagine trying to attempt
reading it seriously in German.
However, I *think* the terms he used were Kiemenbögen or Kiemenspalten,
which would translate as gill arches or gill slits. I suspect the reason
we see the term "gill slits" in English because it was originally a
literal translation. Nowadays, I usually see Pharyngealbögen (pharyngeal
arches) in the literature -- although I've also seen "sogenannten Kiemenbögen"
("so-called gill arches"). (No, I do not make it a habit to read the
German literature...my language skills are too rusty to make it anything
but a painful exercise. Somebody more comfortable with German might tell
us that there is a more widely used term.)
>
>Or at least last year: see the following letter that Julie sent me:
>
>============================== begin included e-mail
>
>Peter, you wrote:
>
>"You can read the claim that human embyros have gill slits in
>Phillips's _Development of Vertebrate Anatomy_, a graduate-level
>text that came out in 1975, and gives Haeckel's drawings as though
>they were correct. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still
>some biology texts that include this misinformation."
>
>You're right. Consider the following quote:
>
>"Common ancestral early genes might explain such prenatal features
>as the gill slits and rudimentary tail seen in a 7-week-old human embyro."
>Lewis, Riki. 1998 Life, 3rd Ed. WCB McGraw-Hill; Boston, p. 395.
>
>The above was listed as one of the evidences of evolution.
>Lewis' book is a popular undergrad introductory biology text.
>And note the date - 1998.
Yes. They have "gill slits". As I've said over and over and over again,
I don't like the term, but I can sorta see where introductory biology
texts might favor short, simple words: gill slits rather than pharyngeal
pouches.
>
>BTW, Lewis also reproduces the Haeckel figures in dispute. The
>legend to this figure includes the following:
>
>"Notice how similar the early embryos in the top row are
>[the tailbud stage shown not be so "similar" by Richardson et al.]
>each has gill slits and a tail reminiscent of fish." (p. 212)
Yes. They are quite similar. Thomas has misstated the conclusions
of Richardson et al., I think. The point of that paper is that they
are not identical (not "highly conserved"), not that they are not
similar.
Also note that Lewis says specifically that at the earliest stage
in the diagram, they all have structures reminiscent of those in
the fish. I don't see what you find objectionable in that comment.
>
>Feel free to use or simply post this if you want.
>
>================================== end included e-mail
Again, both you and Thomas show that you don't understand the
point.
Textbooks use an easy to grasp and historically significant
illustration. It is a relic from a flawed and failed theory,
but none of them (that I've seen yet) make invalid interpretations
of the figure on the basis of that obsolete theory. Furthermore,
they all seem to draw interpretations about early development
(that there is a common developmental program) that I think are
important to make in these kinds of textbooks. What would you prefer?
That they not say anything about this stage of development, and
this significant phenomenon?
Also, the majority of the books I've looked at don't use the
Haeckel or Romanes drawings at all. Those that do, don't make a
big deal of the biogenetic law. Those books are also using about
the only easily accessible figure on the topic, at least until
now -- I suspect that many textbook authors are requesting the right
to use Richardson's figures now, to replace the Haeckel drawings...
but they won't be changing the substance of what they say about
these developmental stages at all!
>
> Or those that think this shared developmental
>>>program reflects shared evolutionary history?
>
>FWIW. We share an evolutionary history
>with oysters. It just doesn't extend as far up as the
>first chordate.
>
>We also share an evolutionary history with chimps, which extends
>a good deal further up.
>
[snip]
>
> Would that still be true
>>>even if they did acknowledge the errors in Haeckel's diagrams and that
>>>recapitulation was false?
>
>Would what still be true? That we share an evolutionary history?
>or that those scientists are right about Haeckel?
>
>Even Myers seems to think that they aren't:
You are going to have to clarify this. What don't I think? That
we have a common evolutionary history, I agree with. Ditto that
there is a shared development program that reflects that history.
I also think that the current assessment of Haeckel by the scientific
community is correct. What are you saying that I think isn't so?
>
>>The correct ideas above aren't Haeckel's...
>
>>But those ideas (common body plan, etc.) are something I would agree with.
>
>Me too.
So you would agree that there is at least a rough phylotypic stage, and
that humans and fish both have pharyngeal pouches, or whatever arbitrary
term you prefer to assign to those homologous structures?
>But then, we also have a common body plan with annelids;
>it's just that we are flipped upside down and backwards from them,
>and we don't have as many details in common as we do with lampreys
>and hagfish, let alone higher vertebrates.
You never did look up those papers comparing axis specification in
vertebrates and invertebrates that I gave you many months ago, did you?
"Flipped upside down and backwards"...and you dare to complain about
the superficial terminology of "gill slits".
>
>>>
>>> A simple yes or no would suffice.
>
>>A simple answer? Now you are asking for way too much.
>
>Of course, especially considering how complicated the question was.
No, the question wasn't that complicated. I thought it was asking for
too much to expect a simple answer from *you*. I was right.
--
PZ Myers
Matt Silberstein
<nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
>
[snip]
>
>No, but in light of my first followup to you on the Subject: line,
>I am very curious. So far, you look like an intellectual lightweight
>to me, about on the level of an average or below average college
>freshman at my university.
>
Peter, please refresh my memory. From my understanding of the term,
your statement above is an excellent example of an ad hominem fallacy.
You are speaking about the person, not about the statements. Whether
he is a "lightweight" is irrelevant. Whether he is on a graduate,
undergraduate, or grade school level is irrelevant. What matters is
whether what he said is correct or not. Now you claim to have a book
(Oxford Book of Philosophy?) with has a different definition, one
that supports your use of this kind of argument. Could you provide a
page reference. Or, if it is under ad hominem, just confirm my memory
of the book title. I am interested to see the logic that approves of
attacking a person to discredit what they said.
[snip]
Matt Silberstein
-------------------------------------------------------
It was long ago and it was far away
But it was so much better than it is today
J.S.