"Single Evolving Lineage of Early Homo"

This was reported a month or so back.  A new fossil has been described from the site of Dmanisi, the 1.8 million year-old site in the Russian republic of Georgia.  The skull is almost totally complete and, with associated jaw, is one of the best examples of early Homo in existence.  From the abstract of the Lordkipanidze et al¹ article:

The Dmanisi sample, which now comprises five crania, provides direct evidence for wide morphological variation within and among early Homo paleodemes. This implies the existence of a single evolving lineage of early Homo, with phylogeographic continuity across continents.

The idea of a single, evolving lineage is the closest you will get to someone admitting that there might be anagenetic speciation going on here. It also suggests a wide range for early Homo that extended from eastern Africa, across the upper coast, and across the strait of Gibraltar. There is evidence of early Homo at Orce, in Spain and Pirro Nord, in Italy from around 1.6 to 1.3 million years ago. No actual hominin remains exist at these sites but the stone tools that have been found found match, generally, those found at Dmanisi. Not a smoking gun but close.

What is intriguing about this is that it is not a huge intellectual leap that is making these hominins move.  The newly-described Dmanisi skull has a cranial capacity of 546 cubic centimeters, barely 100 more than the late australopithecines.  The morphological diversity also has people interested.  From the Science Daily story:

According to [Christophe] Zollikofer, the reason why Skull 5 is so important is that it unites features that have been used previously as an argument for defining different African "species." In other words: "Had the braincase and the face of the Dmanisi sample been found as separate fossils, they very probably would have been attributed to two different species." Ponce de León adds: "It is also decisive that we have five well-preserved individuals in Dmanisi whom we know to have lived in the same place and at the same time." These unique circumstances of the find make it possible to compare variation in Dmanisi with variation in modern human and chimpanzee populations. Zollikofer summarizes the result of the statistical analyses as follows: "Firstly, the Dmanisi individuals all belong to a population of a single early Homo species. Secondly, the five Dmanisi individuals are conspicuously different from each other, but not more different than any five modern human individuals, or five chimpanzee individuals from a given population."

the differences between the East African and Eurasian fossils then could be just regional variation in an evolving polytypic species. This kind of explanation certainly gives the "lumpers" a leg up and, if this explanation is the best one going, calls into our question the splitting that we have applied to other species. Is it, instead, appropriate to sink such taxonomic forms such as Homo heidelbergensis, Homo ergaster, Homo rudolfensis and Homo habilis, all of which exhibit considerable size and shape dimorphism, into one species: Homo erectus which now has taxonomic precedence?

¹A Complete Skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the Evolutionary Biology of Early Homo David Lordkipanidze, Marcia S. Ponce de León, Ann Margvelashvili, Yoel Rak, G. Philip Rightmire, Abesalom Vekua, and Christoph P. E. Zollikofer Science 18 October 2013: 342 (6156), 326-331.

Charter Schools and Religious Entanglement

Although certainly not a new topic (witness last year's Loch Ness Monster reports), the problem of the funding of religious charter schools by state money is becoming a more visible problem.  John Turley tackles this controversy.  The article is as much as anything just a run-down of different cases that have spawned across the country but it is interesting for showing that the charter school/fundamentalist ties are strong in many different areas across the country.  Among them, he writes:

In November 2010, Jessica Meyers wrote a newspaper article about Advantage Academy in Duncanville, Texas. She said the students at this school “follow biblical principles, talk openly about faith and receive guidance from a gregarious former pastor who still preaches when he speaks.” She said Advantage Academy is typical of the “latest breed of charter schools”—those “born from faith-based principles and taxpayer funds.” She added, “Advantage markets its teaching of creationism and intelligent design. It offers a Bible class as an elective and encourages personal growth through hard work and ‘faith in God and country.’”

The academy’s founder Allen Beck is a former pastor for Assemblies of God who “hopes to instill morals and ethics in students as they learn to count and read.” Beck was quoted as saying, “America is in a battle between secularity and biblical thinking. I want to fuse the two together in a legal way.”

The more open these charter schools get in proclaiming their ID/creationism, the more scrutiny they will get to the point where the whole program will be examined and investigated. Given that the organized Texas educational system does not have a good track record for the teaching of "hard science," this will be a battleground state.

Back from Knee Surgery...

I had knee surgery a little over a week ago and have been unable to do much other than watch football games. 

Jonathan Turley's Thoughts on COPE et al. VS. Kansas State Board of Education

A Jonathan Turley notes, and as I reported a month back, a lawsuit has been filed in Kansas by Citizens for Objective Public Education against the Kansas State Board of Education to keep them from implementing the next generation science standards.  The focus of the complaint is that the science standards use scientific naturalism as their base for understanding science.  From the COPE press release:

The Complaint claims that the Standards lead students to ask “ultimate religious questions” like “where do we come from?” Rather than objectively inform children about these questions in an age-appropriate manner, the F&S lead them “to answer the questions with only materialistic/atheistic answers.” This indoctrination is driven by the use of a concealed Orthodoxy (or doctrine) called methodological naturalism or scientific materialism. The Orthodoxy requires that explanations of the cause and nature of natural phenomena may only use natural, material or mechanistic causes, and must assume that teleological or design conceptions of nature are invalid.

Turley suggests that neither of these are valid. He writes:

The allegations are absurd on a number of levels. First, Plaintiffs have adopted a definition of religion which eliminates any requirement for belief in a supernatural entity. Second, Plaintiffs’ reasoning, if pursued to its logical conclusion, would virtually preclude the teaching of science in the public schools because their objections go to the basis of what we understand as the scientific method. Third, Plaintiffs rely upon the same flawed dualism that taints most fundamentalist arguments, the false assumption that acceptance of the findings of evolutionary biology are incompatible with religious belief in general and Christian belief in particular. The great paleontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin, for example, who is quoted above, regarded evolution itself as part of the process of divine creation.

I think that what Turley is getting at in the first part is that religion is overstepping its bounds by demanding that explanations of scientific phenomena include teleological considerations. That is debatable. For the second one he is dead on. Science must proceed within the confines of scientific naturalism to explain things. That is not antithetical to religion. God has created a world that behaves within ordered bounds and is knowable. Science is how we know about it. As far as his third point is concerned, that is one of the greatest debates within Christianity right now: whether or not evolutionary biology can be subsumed within organized Christianity. Entities such as BioLogos think so. Those like AiG and ICR do not. Turley paints a rather broad brush here that is not broadly applicable.  His statement effectively does away with the controversy.  Teilhard de Chardin was a great thinker and a great palaeontologist but as anyone who has read The Jesuit and the Skull
knows, he battled with the church over issues of science his entire life. 

Creation Museum To Get Allosaurus Skull

The AP is reporting that the Creation Museum, in Petersburg, Kentucky, has become the recipient of a privately donated, almost complete (but plastically deformed) Allosaurus skull.  Dylan Lovan writes:

The museum said in a written statement Friday that the Allosaurus probably stood about 10 feet tall and 30 feet long, and was a meat-eater. The skeleton, nicknamed "Ebenezer," includes a skull with 53 teeth and will go on display in an exhibit next year.

"For decades I've walked through many leading secular museums, like the Smithsonian in Washington, and have seen their impressive dinosaur skeletons, but they were used for evolution," said Ken Ham, co-founder of the Answers in Genesis ministry, which operates the museum. "Now we have one of that class for our museum."

Unfortunately, they have no idea what to do with it other than put it on display. They can't do a taxonomic study because that would involve evolutionary biology. They cannot try to place it in a geological context because that would involve mainstream geology. All they can really do is sit and look at it.

The story continues:

The well-preserved condition of the Allosaurus is evidence that it died during a worldwide flood as described in the Bible's Old Testament, Andrew Snelling, a geologist at the Creation Museum, said in the statement.

Snelling said the fossil's intact skeleton is proof of an extremely rapid burial, "which is a confirmation of the global catastrophe of a flood a few thousand years ago."

That is absurd. The fact that it was buried rapidly constitutes no evidence whatsoever that it was buried during a world-wide flood. There are plenty of examples of animals that become entombed and fossilized in contexts that didn't involve water.  This happens routinely in volcanic sediments.  The Ashfall deposits in Yellowstone and the Liaoning fossil beds in China are prime examples.    Ironically, it is the deposits at Liaoning that are so damaging to the flood model because they represent multiple volcanic eruptions over  a considerable depositional thickness, something that could not possibly have happened in a world-wide flood. 

The nature of the fossil find, itself, also presents problems for Ham and Snelling (or should, at any rate).  How could something like that fossilize in four and half thousand years?  Actual, carbon-dated archaeological remains that old aren't fossilized.  These, and so many other questions about the flood model are never addressed.

For now, all they can do is put it up and say "Gee, isn't that pretty."

 

Ohio Supreme Court to issue verdict soon in Freshwater case

Here is a story that continues to have legs.  The Kenyon Collegian is reporting that the John Freshwater case, the teacher that was accused of teaching creationism in the classroom and branding the arms of at least one student is going to finally be decided by the Ohio Supreme Court.  Eric Geller writes:

Freshwater’s dismissal brought widespread attention to a local controversy over religious education in public schools that began almost a decade ago. In interviews with the Collegian, Kenyon professors recalled following the story over the years as it evolved from a rejected intelligent design curriculum into allegations of physical violence against students.

Between 2002 and 2003, Freshwater petitioned the Board of Education to adopt a lesson plan based on materials from the Intelligent Design Network, an organization dedicated to promoting creationism. Freshwater’s proposal “was turned down by the District’s science curriculum committee, and then was turned down by the Board,” said Richard Hoppe, an affiliated scholar in biology at Kenyon, who has written extensively about Freshwater’s case for The Panda’s Thumb, a science education blog.

After the last set of allegations about Freshwater’s conduct surfaced in 2008, Hoppe attended 38 of the 40 public school board meetings leading up to the 2011 termination decision. He also taught an interdisciplinary studies course at Kenyon about the conflict between creationism and evolution.

“The materials he used in support of that proposal were classical intelligent design creationism materials,” Hoppe said. “It didn’t surprise me when some of the allegations later were that he taught using those kinds of materials.”

Professor of Biology Wade Powell said Freshwater “was teaching creation science — and the fashionable version of it at that time was called ‘intelligent design’ –– and it coincided with some battles that were being fought at the level of the state board of education about the standards for Ohio education.”

The most disturbing quote from the story is this, though:

Hoppe related an incident from the administrative hearings where a student witness, when asked what he had learned about science from Freshwater’s class, reportedly replied, “I learned that you can’t trust scientists. Scientists don’t know anything. You can’t trust science.”

“That was the most striking and disheartening thing,” Hoppe said. “You can’t trust science.”

Sometimes, when I read what comes out of state legislatures with people like Paul Broun in Georgia, I think that they get these ideas from teachers like Freshwater. Rotten science education breeds rotten science legislation.

More on "Noah" From the Hollywood Reporter

Here is another article on the upcoming "Noah" film by Darren Aronovsky.  Aside from apprehensions and criticisms, we find that the production budget has gone over $125 million and:

The use of visual effects has been so extensive that in some scenes, only an actor's face is in the final image. The film relies on effects to create the flood, of course, but in addition, Noah doesn't feature any real animals. Aronofsky said the creatures in the film are "slightly tweaked" versions of those that exist in nature, and there also are fantastical beings in the mix. The director recently told DGA Quarterly that Industrial Light & Magic had said it did the most complicated rendering in the company's history for the film -- "a nice badge of honor," he said.

Might not matter. ILM did the last Star Wars film and it was awful anyway.

Stormy Seas For Darren Aronovsky and "Noah"

Somehow I missed this.  Darren Aronovsky is directing a big-budget movie adaptation of Genesis 6-9 and is running into difficulties with the studio and his audiences.  Amanda Taylor of The Deseret News reports:

Remakes are difficult enough, but when you're creating a film based on a story from the Bible that happened eons ago, the challenges increase.

Director Darren Aronofsky is creating a blockbuster version of the epic tale of Noah and his ark. Of all the problems that have arisen, the latest seems to be a clash between Paramount and the director over audience reactions. The studio has asked Aranofsky to make some changes, but he doesn't want to budge on his vision, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

An anonymous source told THR, "Darren is not made for studio films. He's very dismissive. He doesn't care about (Paramount's) opinion."

The specifics about the film remain unclear, but reactions from Jewish, Christian and general audiences are reportedly "troubling" enough for Paramount to request some alterations.

Brian Godawa, a Hollywood screenwriter referred to in the story, is extraordinarily critical of the screenplay, and writes in his movie blog:

Though God has not spoken to men or angels for a long time, Noah is haunted by recurring dreams of a rainstorm and flood that he surmises is God’s judgment on man because as Noah says, “At our hand, all he created is dying.” The trees, the animals, and the environment. “If we change, if we work to save it, perhaps he will too [save us].” Or as grandfather Methuselah reiterates, “We have destroyed this world, so we ourselves will be destroyed. Justice.” Oh, and I almost forgot, they kill people too, but it’s not really as important. In another place, “We have murdered each other. We raped the world. The Creator has judged us.” The notion of human evil is more of an afterthought or symptom of the bigger environmental concern of the great tree hugger in the sky.

Although it might reasonably be assumed that these sort of actions on the part of the humans at the time would constitute "evil," that is clearly not the primary focus of God's anger in the Genesis story.Godawa writes as much in his article, which is smack on the money in many ways.  The film is supposed to be out March 28 of next year.  It cannot possibly be as bad as the John Voight, Mary Steenburgen, "Noah's Ark" miniseries that was put out by Robert Halmi, Sr. fourteen years ago. 

No Abominable Snowman After All?

Todd Wood points in the direction of this story about the Yeti, or abominable snowman.  Alan Boyle of NBC Science writes:

After a yearlong quest, a British geneticist says he has matched the DNA from hairs attributed to Himalayan Yetis, also known as "Abominable Snowmen," to a breed of Arctic bear that lived tens of thousands of years ago. Other researchers say that might be as good an explanation as any.

The claim is being made by Oxford University's Bryan Sykes, already well-known for his research on human ancestry. Sykes says his findings suggest that sightings of the legendary Yeti may actually represent observations of a previously unknown creature in the Himalayas — perhaps a hybrid of polar bears and brown bears.

Sykes told NBC News that his aim is to bring the Yeti out of the realm of myth and fantasy. "All my colleagues think I'm taking a risk in doing this, but I'm curious, and I am in a position to actually do something to answer the questions," he said.

Outside experts didn't reject Sykes' conclusion out of hand. Tom Gilbert, professor of paleogenomics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, told The Associated Press that Sykes' research provided a "reasonable explanation" for past Yeti sightings.

Based on the interview in the story, Sykes appears to believe that these animals exist and that the reason that they have not been found is that they are few and far between with enormous home ranges. This sounds a tad too convenient. Oddly, the new findings don't seem to have deflated his enthusiasm any.

I think that he is off the mark, anyway. As I wrote sometime back, as nearly as I can tell, the earliest stories of these huge creatures are from China and India.   I believe that their source is the extinct ape Gigantopithecus. This ape consisted of three species and the genus ranged very widely, from India to China and northern Vietnam. The largest species, G. blacki stood almost ten feet tall and is estimated to have weighed over 1100 pounds.   Put simply, if you found the fossilized remains, you would come away thinking there was a very, very large animal on the loose. Given the comparative lack of understanding of what a fossil was and how old these animals were when they were alive, it is quite conceivable, even believable that stories would have arisen about them.The earliest Gigantopithecus remains date to around 10 million years ago but G. bilaspurensis lived as recently as 100 k years ago, coeval with late archaic Homo sapiens.  When people came to the New World (from the Amur River area of China) through the Bering Strait, they brought the stories with them, which is why you get stories of Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest. 

I have no evidence for this, only, as Mr. Spock would say, an hypothesis "which just happens to fit the facts." 

Been on Vacation

Sorry for the lack of posts.  I have been on vacation for the last week with the family down in Florida.  A nice time was had by all.

Meanwhile, Over In South Carolina...

The South Carolina State Board of Education is about ready to approve the new school standards and some are not happy.  Ron Barnett writes this for Greenville Online:

The state Board of Education gave initial approval to a new set of science standards Wednesday, although some board members tried to overturn the vote out of concern over whether the new guidelines leave room for students’ religious beliefs on the origin of life.

“What I’m asking is to teach both,” said board member Neil Willis of Boiling Springs.

After the board approved first reading of the state’s first revision of its science standards since 2005, Willis made a motion to reconsider the move. One other board member seconded the motion, but it failed on a voice vote.

The standards now will go to the state Education Oversight Committee and come back to the state Board of Education for final action early next year.

As is typical in these debates, however, a basic understanding of how science works is not self-evident in all of the participants:

“To remove the option to believe, I think, is a mistake,” Willis said.

Board member Raye O’Neal Boyd of Winnsboro agreed.

“Where is the opening for people who believe to stick by their beliefs, but at the same time show that they understand what you’re trying to teach them, but not necessarily adopting what you’re trying to teach them?” she asked.

This kind of thing suggests that people are equating scientific evidence  with sociological or cultural debates. It just ain't the same thing. Yes, there are obviously disagreements on how some evidence is explained as theory is being worked out but  if there is scientific evidence for "A" and there is no scientific evidence whatsoever for "B" then it doesn't matter how much you "believe" in "B", it should not be taught as science. Why don't people get this?

Ball State University: The Backlash Continues

The Muncie Star Press is reporting that now the course purporting to teach atheism that was put in the spotlight by the Discovery Institute is under investigation.  Seth Slabaugh writes:

“You can be assured that the syllabi and curricula of all of the courses you singled out, as well as those of other courses offered by the Honors College and elsewhere at the university, are reviewed and updated on a regular basis,” BSU President Jo Ann Gora wrote in a letter on Monday to The Discovery Institute.

The institute is an anti-evolution, pro-creationism intelligent design think tank in Seattle that maintains supernatural forces shaped the universe.

“Some were undergoing this process before we received the inquiry regarding Honors 296, and others are being reviewed and updated at the present time,” the letter read. “Our intent is to ensure that their content and pedagogy reflect the highest academic standards.”

It appears that Gora is concerned about the allegations but in typical fashion, the Discovery Institute is approaching the controversy in a very ham-fisted way by threatening legal action. At issue seems to be the make-up of the commmittee to evaluate Eric Hedin's class and whether or not equity is being applied across the spectrum. The story continues:

[John] West said, “We gave BSU an opportunity to clarify what it is doing, and to show that it is applying its policies in a fair and legal manner. Because BSU has refused to clarify what it is doing or answer our questions, we will be forced to seek another remedy.”

Gora said she shared the institute’s concerns and demands with the university’s board of trustees before responding to the institute by letter this week.

It seems to me that this can only come out well for the Discovery Institute, despite the fact that I still think that they are providing a mixed message in their protest. The position of the university has always been that intelligent design is not accepted science and should not be taught as such. If the Discovery Institute were protesting the straight teaching of evolutionary theory in biology class, that would be one thing. They have historically argued in an anti-evolutionary vein so that would make sense.

But that is not what they are doing. They are protesting because a strictly theological perspective is being taught in another class and they want that scrutinized. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I am thinking "ID is either science or religion. It cannot be both."

The Rise of the Neandertals, Part II

My second BioLogos post on the Neandertals is up here.  Comments welcome. 

Kansas (Again)

"Who could imagine that they would freak-out somewhere in Kansas."  -Frank Zappa

The next generation science standards have been adopted in Kansas and already there has been a lawsuit filed against the Kansas State Board of Education by a conservative group to block their implementation.  From the AP by way of Fox News:

The group, Citizens for Objective Public Education, had criticized the standards developed by Kansas, 25 other states and the National Research Council for treating both evolution and climate change as key scientific concepts to be taught from kindergarten through 12th grade. The Kansas State Board of Education adopted them in June to replace evolution-friendly standards that had been in place since 2007.

The new standards, like the ones they replaced, reflect the mainstream scientific view that evolution is well-established. Most board members believed the guidelines will improve science education by shifting the emphasis in science classes to doing hands-on projects and experiments.

The complaint focuses on the idea that if the children are taught evolutionary principles, that is tantamount to teaching them atheism.  Most of the direct quotes in the story reveal a general ignorance of science on the part of the lawsuit's promoters, notably John Calvert

Calvert was a key figure in past Kansas evolution debates as a founder of the Intelligent Design Network, contending that life is too complex to have developed through unguided evolution. Joshua Rosenau, programs and policy director for the Oakland, Calif.-based National Center for Science Education, said Calvert has been making such an argument for years and "no one in the legal community has put much stock in it."

Like the folks involved in most of these lawsuits and complaints, I would be surprised if he would be capable of coming up with even a cursorily working definition of evolution.

BioLogos Post The Rise of the Neandertals, Part I is Up!

My newest BioLogos post, The Rise of the Neandertals, Part I is up, here.  Comments are welcome either here or there.

Science Daily: "Anthropologists Confirm Link Between Cranial Anatomy and Two-Legged Walking"

This sort of fits under the category of "gee, who knew" but it is nice to finally have confirmation of something that has been tacitly understood for almost ninety years.  Science Daily writes:

The study, published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, confirms a controversial finding made by anatomist Raymond Dart, who discovered the first known two-legged walking (bipedal) human ancestor, Australopithecus africanus. Since Dart's discovery in 1925, physical anthropologists have continued to debate whether this feature of the cranial base can serve as a direct link to bipedal fossil species.

Okay, first, the controversial nature of this is being massively overstated. There is very little doubt, based on comparative anatomical studies, that the placement of the foramen magnum is directly indicative of the kind of locomotor pattern that a given animal employs. That is what clued Dart in to the whole idea that the Taung child represented a biped in the first place. Its foramen magnum was not in the place that you would have expected it to be if the individual had been either a quadrupedal baboon or extinct ape (of which there were none in South Africa). It was, however, located in the same place as in bipedal humans. Further studies demonstrated that if you placed the Taung skull on a quadrupedal animal, it didn't work. The animal would have its face pointed down all of the time, instead of out, like your average quadruped. Put simply, the Taung child was an early biped and there was no reason to think anything differently.

Once again, comparative anatomical studies to the rescue!

As part of the study, the researchers measured the position of the foramen magnum in 71 species from three mammalian groups: marsupials, rodents and primates. By comparing foramen magnum position broadly across mammals, the researchers were able to rule out other potential explanations for a forward-shifted foramen magnum, such as differences in brain size.

According to the findings, a foramen magnum positioned toward the base of the skull is found not only in humans, but in other habitually bipedal mammals as well. Kangaroos, kangaroo rats and jerboas all have a more forward-shifted foramen magnum compared with their quadrupedal (four-legged walking) close relatives.

Well, now we know for sure...sort of.   

Josh Rosenau Updates Us on the "Ark-n-Park"

Josh Rosenau of the NCSE is writing to let us know how Ken Ham is continuing to prop up construction of the Ark Encounter (derisively called the "Ark-n-Park" by Barry Lynn).  He notes:

The project has already been promised a tourism-related state tax rebate and state road crews will widen the road leading to the park, but apparently the campaign to raise capital for construction has not been meeting expectations (neither has Creation Museum attendance, reportedly). So Ken Ham is looking for a new way to scare up money. He sent out an appeal to the Answers in Genesis mailing list offering people a chance to buy bonds to fund the park, bonds issued by the city of Williamstown, Kentucky.

This isn’t quite TARP, but the bonds will be a small government bailout for AiG, using the city’s borrowing power to cut the cost of loans to build the creationist theme park. That probably doesn’t violate the First Amendment, according to a church-state attorney I ran this past, though he observes, “Bond financing is quite complex, and the analysis can differ based on what precise type of bond financing we are talking about here.”

Ham, it seems, is selling bonds rather than going through the usual tax exemptions route because he claims that Obamacare will require any venture that takes public money to provide for "abortion-producing drugs" to be offered. Therefore, to avoid the pitfalls of federal funds, Ham is going the bond route.  This is a problem but not for the reasons that Ham thinks:

First, the Affordable Care Act doesn’t mandate coverage for abortion. Indeed, since 1979, Kentucky law has forbidden insurers from covering abortion without the purchase of a separate insurance rider. My guess is that Ham is referring to the law’s mandate that insurers cover contraception, and claiming that birth control is actually abortion. This is a fairly common argument advanced by the radical religious right, since by defining pregnancy to begin at the moment of fertilization, rather than at implantation, and they can claim that birth control pills (including Plan B) cause abortion (PDF) by preventing implantation of the fertilized egg. Federal law and the medical community see it differently, but being at odds with the science is nothing new for Ham.

Also, as Rosenau points out, selling municipal bonds is still entangling the donors or buyers in government just at a smaller scale and has very little to do with whether or not abortion is supported.  I suspect that he is right in that the whole ark project is tanking and Ham is just trying to raise money in a somewhat less traditional route.  It doesn't help that there has never been an approved feasibility study for the undertaking.  Here is to hoping that the thing is never built. 

Sorry...

It looks like I have torn some ligaments in my right knee and have been laid up for a bit.  Back now.

Zack Kopplin Files FOIA Suit Against Louisiana Superintendent of Louisiana Department of Education

Zack Kopplin, the tireless crusader for good science public school education contends that the Education Department of the state of Louisiana has withheld documents and obfuscated regarding the details of the Louisiana school voucher program.  To combat this, he has filed suit in Louisiana court to compel the State Education Superindendent John White to release these documents.  As CenLamar reports:

The suit is designed—at long last—to ferret out what the process was leading to Jindal’s sweeping education changes—including whether there was a lack of record making or so-called “off campus” records retention, which is a particularly non-transparent practice of some government officials to hire consultants or third party firms to develop and store policy in order to shield policy making from the public.

In late May and early June, Kopplin submitted a number of requests pertaining to education policy, the overwhelming majority of which were either ignored or improperly answered. Kopplin alleges that, during the last several months, Superintendent White and officials at the Louisiana Department of Education have attempted to conceal, delay, and deny the production of public records.

This is not so different from what the Dover County School Board did in Pennsylvania in 2005, when they brought in copies of the execrable Of Pandas and People in the middle of the night when no one was looking.About his dealings with the Education Department, Kopplin is quoted as saying:

“Pretty early on, I knew this would be a ‘war of attrition,’” said Kopplin. “The hope was that if they didn’t legitimately respond to my questions, then I’d eventually stop asking them. But I never thought I’d need to file a lawsuit, and I never imagined the Department of Education would attempt to conceal so much. I had tried working with them. I even drove in from Houston to meet personally with their staff.”

This is what happens when politicians make education policy.

Discovery Institute Attacks Ball State's Decision to Allow Atheistic Seminar

The Discovery Institute has written an open letter to Jo Ann Gora, the president of Ball State University, asking her to be consistent with regard to the treatment of protected speech on campus.  Christian NewsWire reports:  

"If Ball State is going to ban faculty speech favoring intelligent design by claiming that it would violate the separation of church and state, then it must apply the same ban to faculty speech that promotes atheism or attacks intelligent design in the classroom," says Dr. John West, Vice President of Discovery Institute.

Discovery Institute is asking BSU to investigate its honors seminar "Dangerous Ideas." The sole textbook used in the course is an anthology edited by a prominent atheist in which the authors assert that "Science Must Destroy Religion," that "There is no God; no Intelligent Designer; no higher purpose to our lives," and even that scientists should function as our society's "high priests." The book contains an afterword by atheist evangelist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion.

In her published remarks on the issue, this is what President Gora said:

“Intelligent design is overwhelmingly deemed by the scientific community as a religious belief and not a scientific theory,” President Jo Ann Gora said. “Therefore, intelligent design is not appropriate content for science courses. The gravity of this issue and the level of concern among scientists are demonstrated by more than 80 national and state scientific societies' independent statements that intelligent design and creation science do not qualify as science.”

The question is not one of academic freedom, but one of academic integrity, she added. “Said simply, to allow intelligent design to be presented to science students as a valid scientific theory would violate the academic integrity of the course as it would fail to accurately represent the consensus of science scholars.”

Nowhere in there did President Gora ban faculty speech on the discussion of intelligent design on campus.  Instead, Ball State is banning the teaching of intelligent design in science classes because it is not established science (it is not science at all, for that matter).   The two are very different things.  Leave it to the Discovery Institute to conflate them.

The other peculiar thing here is which First Amendment clause has been used.  By demanding that the atheistic seminar be investigated, focusing on the religious nature of the course and contrasting it with intelligent design, John West is focusing on the establishment clause rather than the free speech clause and, thus, is agreeing that intelligent design is religious, in nature.  Otherwise, why would he care about a philosophy seminar promoting atheism?  This is a substantial shift away from the standard position of the Discovery Institute, which has continually put forth the idea that ID is not tied to religious practice or theology.  If it is going to be argued that banning it is a violation of the establishment clause then it must be. 

It is difficult for me to believe that this is what they really meant to say or that they could have made such a rookie mistake.

And I Thought Don Prothero's Review of Darwin's Doubt Was Withering...

Nick Matzke has also written a review of Darwin's Doubt that has been posted on Panda's Thumb.  This is the nicest thing he has to say about it:

As I read through Meyer’s book, though, in case after case I see misunderstandings, superficial treatment of key issues which are devastating to his thesis once understood, and complete or near-complete omission of information that any non-expert reader would need to have to make an accurate assessment of Meyer’s arguments.

Matzke also points out that Meyer continually uses redrawn, dumbed-down illustrations, while ignorning detailed ones that would poke holes in his case and completely fails to understand the key events in the Pre-Cambrian and Cambrian periods. According to Matzke, Meyer also completely fails to understand phylogenetic analysis and the importance that it has to understanding patterns in the fossil record. It is this section for which he reserves his greatest scorn:

His main argument is basically that phylogenetic results sometimes conflict, therefore the whole thing is meaningless. This exhibits a jaw-dropping level of incompetence. It’s amateurish in the worst possible way, the opening-your-yapper-without-knowing-the-first-thing-about-what-you-are-discussing sort of amateurism.

Indeed, this seems to characterize much of the work that comes out of the DI these days.  One wonders why they don't just pick up a book on palaeontology and read it from cover to cover before writing these things.  This sort of reluctance to adapt their arguments to current data or respond to their critics is the kind of thing that leaves a bad taste in the mouth of your average scientist.  Reading reviews of Meyer's earlier work Signature in the Cell, it is clear that he has learned nothing in the intervening years. As I wrote over two years ago:

It is as if the concept of natural selection is completely foreign or is so repugnant as to be unacceptable and therefore, the DI writers continue to misunderstand it. The problem that I have with this perspective is that this misunderstanding of natural selection has not gone uncorrected. Kenneth Miller, Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, Jerry Coyne, Steve Matheson and Darrel Falk, just to name a few have written treatises strongly rebutting this position held by Meyer, Dembski and Michael Behe. These have been ignored. Therefore, to continue to promote this misunderstanding of natural selection and its role in evolution constitutes, as they say, a terminological inexactitude. This would not be the first time the Discovery Institute was accused of that.

Why should your average scientist take this organization seriously when they continue to misunderstand basic evolutionary theory and repeat falsehoods time and time again?

What really pains me about this is that books that emanate from the Discovery Institute are being read by my kids in school. That has got to stop.

Off-Topic (Sort of) But Way Cool

Scientific American has an infographic that is really neat.  It is 150 million years of fish evolution put in a phylogenetic tree structure.  Here is the graphic but you should go to the story to get the whole thing in all of its detail.

The Washington Times Weighs In on Ball State

Getting in a little bit late in the game, The Washington Times waxes on the trials of Eric Hedin and Ball State University and, by and large, makes a hash of it.  They write:

At Ball State University in Indiana, for example, anti-religion activists are irritated that physics and astronomy professor Eric Hedin presented intelligent design in his classroom as a plausible theory of origins. The basic gist was that mankind and the universe did not spring forth out of a series of wholly random events and that some higher power guided the process.

For one thing, intelligent design is not a theory of origins. Intelligent design is not really a theory at all, in the scientific sense of the word. Intelligent design rests almost entirely on the premise that prevailing scientific theories are at a loss to explain certain processes that take place in the natural world.  Second, there is nothing in the scientific enterprise that argues that the universe sprang forth out of a series of wholly random events.  That is a non-scientific statement.  Onward.  They continue:

Progress depends on challenging the conventional wisdom. Most of the ancient world looked at the sky and assumed it was obvious that the universe revolved around the Earth. In the 16th century, Copernicus said, no, the common belief was wrong and the planets, including Earth, revolve around the sun. A century later, Newton explained how gravity made it all work, which was accepted until Einstein came along with his breakthrough theory of relativity. Science never rests.

It is somewhat ironic that she chooses these examples of people who challenged the prevailing views because each one of these people had hard evidence that supported their positions.  This was also true of Charles Darwin, who's theory was revolutionary for its time and, with other researchers extending it, had been found to be one of the most robust theories in existence.  Now let's see what the theoretical constructs of intelligent design are. As Paul Nelson said eight years ago:

Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don’t have such a theory now, and that’s a real problem. Without a theory, it’s very hard to know where to direct your research focus. Right now, we’ve got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as “irreducible complexity” and “specified complexity” –- but, as yet, no general theory of biological design.¹

We are eight years down the road and intelligent design still consists of attacks on evolution rather than a attempting to design a full-fledged theorectical base. Jeffrey Shallit pointed this out a year back:

Here is a perfect example of this sterility: Bio-Complexity, the flagship journal of the intelligent design movement. As 2012 draws to a close, the 2012 volume contains exactly two research articles, one "critical review" and one "critical focus", for a grand total of four items. The editorial board has 30 members; they must be kept very busy handling all those papers.  (Another intelligent design journal, Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design, hasn't had a new issue since 2005.)

The 2013 volume has had, in eight months, only three articles and all three are based on arguments against evolution, not support for intelligent design.  The problem persists.  And as long as proponents of ID cannot provide their own tests of how this theory can be supported, it does not belong in the science classroom. Indeed, their only recourse in recent years has been to try to redefine science so that ID can be incorporated.  The problem here, is, as Michael Behe noted, when one does so, astrology is considered to be science.

Jo Ann Gora of Ball State did not close off discussion of competing scientific theories, she closed off acceptance of a non-scientific alternative to established science.


¹Nelson, P. (2004) The Measure of Design," Touchstone, pp. 64-65

Donald Prothero Writes A Withering Review of Darwin's Doubt

On the Amazon page for the new Stephen Meyer book Darwin's Doubt, there is a review of the book by Donald Prothero, who is responsible for one of the best books on the fossil record in recent memory, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters.  Of creationists (sensu lato), he writes:

They either cannot understand the scientific meaning of many fields from genetics to paleontology to geochronology, or their bias filters out all but tiny bits of a research subject that seems to comfort them, and they ignore all the rest.
Another common tactic of creationists is credential mongering. They love to flaunt their Ph.D.'s on their book covers, giving the uninitiated the impression that they are all-purpose experts in every topic. As anyone who has earned a Ph.D. knows, the opposite is true: the doctoral degree forces you to focus on one narrow research problem for a long time, so you tend to lose your breadth of training in other sciences. Nevertheless, they flaunt their doctorates in hydrology or biochemistry, then talk about paleontology or geochronology, subjects they have zero qualification to discuss. Their Ph.D. is only relevant in the field where they have specialized training. It's comparable to asking a Ph.D. to fix your car or write a symphony--they may be smart, but they don't have the appropriate specialized training to do a competent job based on their Ph.D. alone.

This credential mongering was, of course, true with the modern progenitors of all subsequent creationist works, The Genesis Flood and Scientific Creationism, both written by Henry Morris, a hydraulic engineer with no training in any of the major earth or biological sciences.That they were accepted uncritically by masses of Christians is, to this day, astounding.  Onward.

Prothero, who is a palaeontologist, has found Meyer's book unimpressive:

Almost every page of this book is riddled by errors of fact or interpretation that could only result from someone writing in a subject way over his head, abetted by the creationist tendency to pluck facts out of context and get their meaning completely backwards. But as one of the few people in the entire creationist movement who has actually taken a few geology classes (but apparently no paleontology classes), he is their "expert" in this area, and is happy to mislead the creationist audience that knows no science at all with his slick but completely false understanding of the subject.

This is the same sort of experience I had with the abysmal Bones of Contention, written by Marvin Lubenow some years back, where every page had some sort of error on it.  I felt beaten down by the time I was finished and, despite having the best intentions of reviewing it, I never did because I couldn't stomach picking it up again.

Meyer's central focus of the book is the Cambrian "explosion," in which life seems to have proliferated and diversified during what Meyer argues is too short a time for evolution to have occurred.  After correcting Meyer's understanding of how long the Cambrian was, he addresses a persistent problem:

The mistakes and deliberate misunderstandings and misinterpretations go on and on, page after page. Meyer takes the normal scientific debates about the early conflicts about the molecular vs. morphological trees of life as evidence scientists know nothing, completely ignoring the recent consensus between these data sets. Like all creationists, he completely misinterprets the Eldredge and Gould punctuated equilibrium model and claims that they are arguing that evolution doesn't occur--when both Gould and Eldredge have clearly explained many times (which he never cites) why their ideas are compatible with Neo-Darwinism and not any kind of support for any form of creationism.

It is immensely disappointing to see this kind of problem over and over in ID writings. This example is similar to the lack of understanding of natural selection and adaptive valleys and peaks that William Dembski exhibits in his writings.  He seems to make the same errors consistently to the point where people don't even comment on what he has written because he won't address any of the criticisms. This is common of most ID writers.  I am currently piecing through Science and Human Origins by Luskin, Axe and Gauger and am encountering the same errors that I took Casey Luskin to task for three years ago.

You should read the whole review in all of its caustic glory.  I will probably get around to reading it but have too many other things to read right now. 

HuffPo: Creationist Darek Isaacs Calls Dragons Real, Says They Lived In Biblical Times

Sometimes I just want to crawl under the desk and hide.  Welcome to the public face of Christianity: the young earth creationists.  HuffPo is running a story on an interview with Derek Isaacs, listed as a creationist author and filmmaker, in which he argues that dragons lived with humans and are extensively mentioned in the Bible.  Meredith Bennett-Smith writes:

In an interview with Christian talk show Creation Today posted to YouTube on Wednesday, Isaacs says that dragons are real because the Bible says so.

As a so-called Young Earth Creationist, Isaacs is guided by the scientifically discredited belief that the Earth was created by God several thousand years ago. (Scientists believe the Earth came into being about four billion years ago.) In addition, he believes in biblical inerrancy--the belief that the sacred book contains no errors.

"The Bible speaks about dragons,” Isaacs told the show's hosts. "Our authority -- everything we do, we have to measure by the word of God. That is what I believe. So we have to go to the Bible, and the Bible speaks about dragons."

"Scientifically discredited." That is one way of putting it.  Nevermind that there is no archaeological or fossil evidence of "dragons" whatsoever.  Here is the video:



He comments that 2000 years ago, people would have understood the lethality of dragons. Despite never having seen one? Where were they?  If real, honest-to-goodness dragons were actually around, they would have been mentioned in every single book of the bible.

It has been argued by some creationists that dragons were, in fact, dinosaurs.  Some dinosaurs were thirty tons and eighty feet long. Others were fast, killing machines.  If all of the dinosaur remains in the rock record were the result of the flood and represent the carcasses of animals living during bible times, the Holy land would have been overrun with them!

The other problem is that the flood story predates the dragon references in the Old Testament AND the book of Revelation, so there would not have been any dinosaurs running around at this point, anyway.  But there are larger interpretive problems here.

The word "dragon" in Hebrew is Tan-neem, which means large creature.  In many verses in the Old Testament, it clearly means the Nile Crocodile.  For example:

"Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself. But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales." (Ezekiel 29:3-4 KJV)

In the New Testament, the word "dragon" refers to Satan:

"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." (Revelation 12:7-9 KJV)

 It is pretty clear that this set of verses does not describe a reptile with arms and legs. It describes a monster in theological terms.

This is yet another example of flat-earth Christianity, where there is no interpretation done on the part of the reader. Revelation is only one-way and we are not to question how to read the scriptures.

Consequently, what seems obvious using even a cursory read of the Bible is completely lost on people like this.  Further, it is no surprise from whence this kind of nonsense emanates. 

As Christians, we cannot afford to behave irresponsibly like this.  It is incumbent on all of us to think intelligently about our faith and understand its cultural context and history.  The statements of Derek Isaacs just make Christians look ignorant.

Good News In Texas

Apparently, the new textbooks in Texas are getting a good review by a group of Ph.D. candidates who have evaluated them.  The Texas Freedom Network writes:

“It appears that publishers have done a good job resisting political pressure to weaken instruction on evolution with junk science in their new textbooks,” said Kathy Miller, president of the TFN Education Fund. “That should be reassuring for parents who want their kids to get a science education that prepares them for college and a 21st century economy. But we’re already seeing signs that the pressure on publishers will increase in the coming months.”

This is a far cry from the days of Don McLeroy.

Study: Neandertals Made Bone Points

Nature has a story detailing research indicating the use of bone tools by Neandertals. Ewen Callaway writes:

Excavations of Neanderthal sites more than 40,000 years old have uncovered a kind of tool that leather workers still use to make hides more lustrous and water resistant. The bone tools, known as lissoirs, had previously been associated only with modern humans. The latest finds indicate that Neanderthals and modern humans might have invented the tools independently.

This is one of those things that has always been suspected but never shown. It is nice to finally have the evidence. It isn't immediately clear, however that they developed them independently. The incoming moderns may have learned the craft from the Neandertals they interbred with.  Here is the photo from Nature. 

The Carlisle Sentinel Responds to Stephen Bloom

The Carlisle Sentinel has devoted an editorial to the Stephen Bloom push to have a bill passed allowing "academic freedom" for debating the merits of scientific theories in high school.  They write:

Bloom told abc27 News that he’s surprised his proposal has generated a firestorm of criticism that calls the bill “anti-science.” His defense is that he wants “to encourage the kind of thinking that leads to good science.” We’re surprised Bloom is surprised. How could a memo like this not generate controversy? Critics are painting Bloom’s proposal as a backdoor method for getting religious teachings back into school, and that’s because that’s exactly what this looks like.

Even if we take Bloom at his word that this is an innocent call for more debate in school, this is still an absurd proposal.

Let’s extend his logic away from science and into math class. Say an educator is teaching long division to a classroom filled with students, some of whom believe long division is a bad approach. Bloom’s bill apparently would enable those students to derail their math class and insist their teacher open the room to a debate about long division. Bloom might argue that long division is fact and science is theory. Others might argue that long division is theory and science is fact. Still others might argue both are fact or both are theory.

Color me skeptical but I don't believe that his proposal is innocent. If it were, he would not have focused on "evolution and global warming." Furthermore, I think that "global warming" is just included to throw people off when what he really wants gone is evolution.  If he wanted to be all inclusive, he would have mentioned other disciplines, such as medicine or physics. That he did not betrays a hidden agenda.

His use of the term "academic freedom" is also suspect. This is another bill in a string of them that have, at their base, a model derived from the Discovery Institute that uses the phrase "academic freedom."   Further, as I have noted previously, he has no idea what "good science" is.  Once again: when politicians get involved in education policy, no good comes of it. 

Representative Bloom Pushes Forward

Two days ago, I posted a story on Pennsylvania state senator Stephen Bloom's ill-advised to push a bill that would "...allow students in public elementary and secondary schools to question or critique "the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories.""  Today the Carlisle Sentinel has a bit more on the story.  Dave Marcheskie writes:

Bloom, R-199, has begun seeking co-sponsors of legislation that would require Pennsylvania's public schools to allow debate on scientific theories.

Bloom says his proposal, dubbed "academic freedom," would open up the classroom atmosphere so that a student or teacher could express doubts or concerns they might have about existing theories.

Students and teachers could debate current teachings on biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning, among other issues.

Andy Hoover, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said teachers are not qualified to go beyond the state-approved curriculum.

"Certainly, a biology teacher is in no place to discuss religious theory," Hoover said.

As it stands, Bloom's proposal would require a school to assist a teacher when addressing such "controversies" in science classrooms.

Here is the problem: before reasoned debate can occur, there has to be an understanding of what is being debated. Very few kids in high school will have the necessary background to debate the merits of evolution or cloning cogently. These are things you learn about in little more than cursory fashion in high school and then pursue in college if interested.  It is clear from his understanding of science that Rep. Bloom did not pursue them.  He has no idea what a scientific theory actually is, and he has a very great distrust of the academy. 

This is all straight out of the Discovery Institute's playbook: promote "academic freedom" legislation with the ultimate goal of pursuing a post-modern view of science in which it can be redefined to include disciplines that, using modern definitions, aren't science.  When asked whether or not astrology should be considered a science, Michael Behe, senior fellow at the DI, admitted that, well yes, it would.  If you can redefine the scientific enterprise to include things like astrology, for which there are no testable scientific hypotheses, then you can redefine it to include anything, including, obviously, Intelligent Design.  The only reason science works as well as it does is that, through its framework, it fosters testable questions which, in turn, generate theory.  Rep. Bloom does not understand this.

Popular Science: What Pangaea Would Look Like With Today's Political Boundaries [Infographic]

Popular Science has a peculiar graphic up that imagines what the world would like geopolitically if the continents were still arranged in the shape of Pangaea. It is mostly an exercise in silliness but is fun to look at.  Click on the picture for a larger version.

Just When You Thought The Ball State News Would Die Down...

While the ties to Ball State University are, admittedly, somewhat stretched, the media is playing this one up for all it is worth.  Seth Slabaugh writes:

Toy dinosaurs at the juice and coffee table greeted members of Grace Baptist Church during a seminar on a recent Saturday morning.

The reason for the toys?

“Dinosaurs and the Bible” was a key presentation at the creationist event.

Guest lecturer Jay Wile, a nuclear chemist who taught at Ball State University during the 1990s, presented the group evidence of dinosaurs living alongside humans in recent history.

“I am sure you disagree with most of what was in my presentations ... and I have no problem with that,” Wile told The Star Press after his talk. “Disagreement is one of the many things that makes life interesting. I just ask that you treat me fairly in your disagreement.”

So, despite the fact that all of the available evidence puts the dinosaurs and humans at 65 million years apart, and despite the fact that the dinosaur remains that we do have are fossilized and couldn't possibly be six thousand years old, some wall engravings and verses from the Bible that mention "the behemoth" are enough to argue that dinosaurs and humans coexisted?  Really?  They continue:

He next displayed photographs of Native American rock engravings of “incredibly accurate” depictions of dinosaurs at Natural Bridges Monument in Utah and at Havasupai Canyon in Arizona. He also showed photographs of a 13th century Cambodian temple’s rock sculpture of a stegosaurus with plates on its back, as well as two sauropods drawn on the tomb of Richard Bell, a Bishop of Carlisle, who died in 1495.

“No paleontologists were around back then,” Wile said.

True, but the fossilized bones were and, like the remains of Gigantopithecus, would serve to allow the locals to envision what the beast must have looked like. As it turns out, Stegosaurus remains are found mostly in Asia, specifically southern China.  Lo and behold! An alternate explanation that also happens to fit the evidence.  This kind of thing is just depressing to read. 

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back To Pennsylvania

Philly.com is reporting that a Republican (natch) state representative is promoting an "academic freedom" bill.  Angela Couloumbis writes:

A Republican state representative calls it a matter of academic freedom.

Science-education advocates claim it's nothing but a backdoor attempt to allow public schools to discuss Bible-based creationism.

Rep. Stephen Bloom (R., Cumberland) circulated a memo to his colleagues Thursday seeking cosponsors for planned legislation to allow students in public elementary and secondary schools to question or critique "the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories."

In an interview, Bloom said the purpose of his bill was not to supplant what is now taught in classrooms - including, he said, evolution and global warming - but to foster an atmosphere that allows for a free exchange of ideas if a student were to question or disagree with the teaching.

"In the real world, outside of academia, scientific theory is up for all kinds of argument," Bloom said. "I don't think it's right to exclude any particular kind of argument prima facie. If a student wants to discuss a criticism, he or she should be able to."

And out it comes.  Funny how "existing scientific theories" becomes "evolution and global warming."  Bloom doesn't care about anything but evolution.  He probably couldn't even describe it but that doesn't matter.  What if the student disagrees with the teaching because they think the earth was created six thousand years ago?  How much time should be spent on that?

The only reason people like Bloom think that scientific theory is up for all kinds of argument is because they have no idea what a scientific theory is.  The only reason science happens at all is because people like Bloom don't have a say in it. 

They don't call it the "stupid party" for nothing. 

Louisiana Still Trying To Get LSEA Repealed

The Times-Picayune of New Orleans is carrying a story about the latest attacks on the Louisiana Science Education Act.  Danielle Dreilinger writes:

The Botanical Society of America devoted a symposium Monday in New Orleans to railing against and ridiculing the Louisiana Science Education Act. Panelists said the 2008 law allows the teaching of creationism in science class and has made the state an international laughingstock.

Supporters of the law claim that it doesn't allow the teaching of religion but fail to explain why the entire text of the law is aimed squarely at biology and evolution, as if other scientific disciplines are exempt. To the writers of the law, only the areas of evolution and climate change are "controversial." This speaks as much to their comparative lack of education as anything. As Zack Kopplin has stated: "You don't need a law to teach critical thinking in science." Or you shouldn't anyway.

New Poll Results on The Huffington Post

HuffPo has an odd post on a new survey that tracks the belief in evolution and how it has changed since the last such poll.  Yasmine Hafiz writes:

According to a YouGov poll, only 21% of Americans believe that human beings evolved without the involvement of God, and 25% of those surveyed said, "Human beings evolved but God guided this process."

37% of respondents answered that "God created human beings in their present form," in response to the question "Which of the following comes closest to your views on the origin of human beings?"

The research shows a slow change in the national acceptance of evolution, as in 2004 only 13% of Americans said that human beings evolved without God's guidance.

However, the country remains divided on the issue of what to teach in schools, as 40% favor teaching creationism and intelligent design in schools while 32% oppose it and 29% are unsure.

The poll results, themselves, are here.  Ms. Hafiz writes that there is change in the national acceptance of evolution.  That statement is without evidence.  What the poll does reflect is an 8% swing away from a theistic evolution/evolutionary creation explanation of human origins, which may reflect a deeper move of those people away from the church.    Acceptance of evolution may or may not have increased in the last nine years but that is not what is being identified.

Further, despite her consternation regarding the teaching of ID in schools, it is not difficult to see that, if 37% of those polled think that people were created in their present form (that question is a bit fuzzy in and of itself), that 40% would support the teaching of ID and creationism since creation by divine fiat precludes an evolutionary explanation. 

Interesting poll results.  Fuzzy interpretation. 

Ball State Closes Review Report

Ball State University has decided not to make public the report concerning Eric Hedin.  The Muncie Star Press reports:

Provost Terry King created the panel to advise him after BSU received a threatening letter from an attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), which alleges the honors science course is “a one-sided monologue by a government-paid employee whose agenda is to show that science proves the truth of religion.”

Ball State earlier also declined to release student evaluations of the course.

FFRF and The Discovery Institute, an intelligent design think tank that is supporting physicist Hedin, are criticizing Ball State’s decision to keep the records secret.

Ball State University has invoked the defense that these reports are part of the life of the university and should not be public:

BSU spokeswoman Joan Todd said: “We define student evaluations and other teaching evaluations, such as the review panel's report, as part of a personnel file. It is not our practice to release such materials. We have a consistent history of protecting the privacy of personnel records and do not believe that Dr. Hedin should be treated differently.

Eventually, however, the results of the report will be felt. Although you can't see a black hole, you can tell it is there based on what happens around it. Hedin's class will either continue or be cancelled and the report will have a role to play in his tenure application, when it happens. It may also be leaked at some point. Until then, Ball State University has gone silent on the matter.

Homo floresiensis Gains Legitimacy

Science Daily has posted a story detailing new examination of the Liang Bua crania by researchers at SUNY Stonybrook, The University of Tubingen, and the University of Minnesota in which they grant legitimate species status to Homo floresiensis.  They write:

The scientists applied the powerful methods of 3-D geometric morphometrics to compare the shape of the LB1 cranium (the skull minus the lower jaw) to many fossil humans, as well as a large sample of modern human crania suffering from microcephaly and other pathological conditions. Geometric morphometrics methods use 3D coordinates of cranial surface anatomical landmarks, computer imaging, and statistics to achieve a detailed analysis of shape.

This was the most comprehensive study to date to simultaneously evaluate the two competing hypotheses about the status of Homo floresiensis.

The study found that the LB1 cranium shows greater affinities to the fossil human sample than it does to pathological modern humans. Although some superficial similarities were found between fossil, LB1, and pathological modern human crania, additional features linked LB1exclusively with fossil Homo. The team could therefore refute the hypothesis of pathology.

The link to the PLoS paper is here.This is the conclusion of the paper:

Our analyses corroborate the previously suggested link between LB1 and fossil Homo and support the attribution of this specimen to a distinct taxon, H. floresiensis. Furthermore, the neurocranial shape of H. floresiensis closely resembles that of H. erectus s.l. and particularly specimens of early Eurasian H. erectus, although it is unclear whether this latter affinity is best attributed to a close phylogenetic relationship or to a size-related convergence in shape. These results also counter the hypotheses of pathological conditions as the underlying cause of the LB1 neurocranial phenotype, with the possible exception of posterior deformational plagiocephaly, a condition without significant adverse health effects.

Of course, this doesn't mean that it is not endemic dwarfism, just that it is not built on a modern human base. In this case, it may represent a Homo erectus base. Why it was so marked is still an unanswered question.It is also quite possible that this represents founder effect followed by years of selection for diminutive characteristics.  It definitely represents a peculiar side branch in human evolutionary history but not one that defies explanation. 

Gonzalez Won't Teach ID

Guillermo Gonzalez has made a public attestation that he will not teach intelligent design at Ball State University.  As the Muncie Star Press reports:

Gonzalez, who was hired by BSU this summer as an assistant professor in the department of physics and astronomy, is best known for his advocacy of intelligent design.

“As I communicated to members of the department during my interviews, I plan to continue my research on astrobiology and stellar astrophysics,” Gonzalez said in a statement issued this week.

The statement reported that he will not be discussing intelligent design in the classroom, and that he did not discuss intelligent design when he taught at Iowa State University, either

That may not be enough to soothe folks like Coyne and Harris but it is a huge step forward to placate the faculty at Ball State, I am sure. It is important for him to distance himself from the modern ID movement in this sense and for them to understand that. The anti-science comments made by the faculty at Iowa State are not without merit.

It is one thing for ID supporters to believe that the universe is created and guided by an intelligence. It is another for modern ID supporters to, having no theoretical constructs of their own, take pot shots at organized science in support of their ideas.  At least "mainstream" creationism, warts and all, has a testable framework. You can test the hypothesis "the earth was created six-thousand years ago." That's easy. Trying to test the hypothesis "God created the heavens and the earth," That's hard.  Add to that the fact that the public face of ID as purveyed by people like David Klinghoffer, Cornelius Hunter, William Dembski and David Berlinski is rabidly "anti-Darwinian," and you have a science credibility problem.  Gonzalez is wise to stay well away from that. 

Science Magazine: Turkish Scientists See Growing Antievolution Bias in Government

In an alarming and growing trend in Turkey, the main Turkish granting agency, The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey has denied a grant to a summer workshop on evolutionary biology. Science Magazine writes:

Now, the organizers are calling this the first open admission of a bias against evolutionary biology by Turkey's conservative government. The government began blocking educational evolution websites in 2011, and recently TÜBİTAK stopped publishing books on evolution, a decision it claimed was based on copyright issues.

The longer article is here.  In it, the ruling organization is quoted as saying the denial was based on objective peer-review.  The decision to stop publishing books on evolutionary biology because of copyright issues is a smokescreen. The government has been leaning toward creationism for some time and, when he was not in prison, Turkey's chief creationist, Adnan Oktar (neé Harun Yahya) enjoyed remarkable popularity. Four years ago, the Washington Post alerted the western world to this problem. At the time, Marc Kaufman wrote:

The Islamic anti-evolution campaign is taking place in Turkey, and not Egypt or Saudi Arabia, because it is the Muslim nation where evolution has been taken most seriously. Like the Bible, the Koran says that God created the Earth and everything on it, and in many Muslim nations that ends the discussion. But Turkey, which is officially secular, appears to be joining its Muslim neighbors on evolution. A recent survey, quoted in a 2008 article in the American journal Science, found that fewer than 25 percent of Turks accepted evolution as an explanation of how modern life came to be -- by far the lowest percentage of any developed nation. In a year in which conferences worldwide are celebrating the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and his contribution to science, the battle against Darwinian thinking in Turkey has become something of a rout, even among aspiring science teachers.

It appears that the problem is increasing. In a sense, Turkey has it worse than the United States because the problem in the U.S. is largely the work of private organizations (AiG, ICR and the like) and in the local school boards and state legislatures. Where there are legal challenges, they are all one-sided. Creationists and ID supporters typically get their clocks cleaned. In Turkey, however, the ruling, central, Islamic government is supporting creationism. Anyone not supporting the government can get marginalized (or worse) simply on ideological grounds.

Hat tip to the Panda's Thumb

Inside Higher Ed on Guillermo Gonzalez

Inside Higher Ed has a short blurb on the hiring of Guillermo Gonzalez at Ball State University.  It reads in part:

Gonzalez was denied tenure at Iowa State University, where he said that he was being punished for his views, but his faculty colleagues said he was rejected based on traditional tenure criteria. A broad consensus exists among scientists that evolution, not intelligent design, explains the origins of the earth. And many scientists -- while having no problem with intelligent design as a focus in philosophy or religion classes -- object to science departments teaching it.

What is considerably more interesting is the comments section, which contains an invocation of Godwin's Law and some reactions to the blurb. For example, one (correctly) writes:

I'm pretty sure that this sentence cannot be true: "A broad consensus exists among scientists that evolution, not intelligent design, explains the origins of the earth."

Unless, that is, the word "origin" no longer means what it used to mean.

Another individual responded “The hiring of such people should automatically decertify the institution.” This was not very well received and reminded me of what defrocked comedian Mike Warnke once upon a time said: “He was so narrow-minded he could look through a key-hole with both eyes.”

It is quite interesting to see the range of variation in comments to this story, both here and elsewhere.  It seems to have struck quite a nerve. 

Study: Neandertal Speech and Language Abilities Like Modern Humans

Science Daily has a story on Neandertal speech.  Work by Dan Didiu and Stephen Levinson suggests that Neandertals and modern humans share a common ancestry with regard to the use of language.  Science Daily writes:

Dediu and Levinson review all these strands of literature and argue that essentially modern language and speech are an ancient feature of our lineage dating back at least to the most recent ancestor we shared with the Neandertals and the Denisovans (another form of humanity known mostly from their genome). Their interpretation of the intrinsically ambiguous and scant evidence goes against the scenario usually assumed by most language scientists, namely that of a sudden and recent emergence of modernity, presumably due to a single -- or very few -- genetic mutations. This pushes back the origins of modern language by a factor of 10 from the often-cited 50 or so thousand years, to around a million years ago -- somewhere between the origins of our genus, Homo, some 1.8 million years ago, and the emergence of Homo heidelbergensis. This reassessment of the evidence goes against a saltationist scenario where a single catastrophic mutation in a single individual would suddenly give rise to language, and suggests that a gradual accumulation of biological and cultural innovations is much more plausible..

I am still a bit “iffy” on the whole “common ancestor of modern humans and Neandertals” thing since some are trying to argue for a common ancestor based on the material from the Gran Dolina, in Spain, and it sure as all get out looks like modern humans originated in Northeast Africa at, or near, Herto. I have a tendency to think that there was a good deal of panmixia throughout Europe and north Africa.  Otherwise, we are required to believe that there was a species split at H. antecessor into what became modern humans (how'd they get to north Africa?) on one side and Neandertals on the other and that, some 700 to 720 thousand years later, emerging moderns and Neandertals encountered one another and interbred.  That is overly simplistic, I am sure but it seems far-fetched.  It seems easier to argue that the H. antecessor material represents an archaic Homo sapiens population that was the precursor (or something like it was) to later archaics, such as Petralona and Atapuerca, out of which Neandertals came.  Then the Neandertals interbred with the north-moving moderns and somewhere in there, the Denisova population split off.  The panmixia in Europe, western Asia and Russia explains why moderns have both Neandertal and Denisovan genes, along with the modern genes that originated in North Africa.  Subsequent swamping of the archaic genome led to the demise of both the Neandertals and Denisovans.   

Uncommon Advertising?

I yanked this screenshot off of Uncommon Descent, the ID blog that is run by Barry Arrington and to which Denys O'Leary, Cornelius Hunter and William Dembski post occasionally.  The blog is, ostensibly Christian in outlook and presentation.  This is why I don't run advertising on my blog.

Kind of a mixed message here, folks.

Throwing Caution To The Winds...

Ball State University, in the middle of a controversy surrounding one of its faculty, Eric Hedin, has just hired Guillermo Gonzalez, the astronomer who made waves a few years ago when he was denied tenure at Iowa State University.  He maintained that the reason for this was because he is a supporter of Intelligent Design.  He appealed the decision and lost the appeal.  It is hard to argue with his publication record up to the point—he had 66 publications in a little over twenty years (2007 data) and they were all in mainstream journals. Arguments were made at the time that he had not published acceptable science in some years leading up to the denial of tenure. A look at the actual published papers in his vita would seem to suggest otherwise. Furthermore, Iowa State faculty admitted later that his support of ID was a factor in the denial. Charles Huckabee, of the Chronicle of Higher Education writes:

The astronomer, Guillermo Gonzalez, made headlines when Iowa State University denied him tenure in 2007, a decision that was upheld by the university’s president and the statewide Iowa Board of Regents. He maintained that he had been denied tenure because of his advocacy of intelligent design. The university said the decision was based on scholarly concerns, such as a publication record that dwindled after a promising start. After leaving Iowa State, Mr. Gonzalez landed on the faculty at Grove City College, a Christian institution in Pennsylvania.

What effect this will have on the Hedin case is unclear but it will certainly make Ball State a lightening rod for more criticism from folks like Jerry Coyne.

Discovery Institute Claims Bias in Eric Hedin Case

The Muncie Star Press is reporting on a complain filed by the Discovery Institute that the panel set to review the class of Eric Hedin is biased away from ID.  Seth Slabaugh writes:

A national organization supporting assistant professor of physics Eric Hedin is charging that a faculty panel appointed to review Hedin’s “Boundaries of Science” course at Ball State University is far from impartial. Three of the four panelists are connected to groups opposed to intelligent design, says John West, vice president of the Seattle-based, intelligent-design think tank The Discovery Institute.

The people that are on the panel are experts in the field of astronomy, biology and philosophy. The complaint does not seem to address that. The problem is that, as scientists, they don't like ID. There is a distinct problem here. It is not likely that anyone qualified to sit on that panel will like ID. Whatever the Discovery Institute thinks, your average scientist does not think that ID is science. It has no testable framework or general theory and consists largely of taking pot shots at evolution. I doubt the DI could find anyone that would be acceptable on that panel except their own fellows, at which point the rank and file scientists would come out of the woodwork and cry foul—justifiably. Therefore, they can complain about the setup but they have  nothing to put in its place. 

A Review of Darwin's Doubt By Nick Matzke

Over at Panda's Thumb, Nick Matzke has written a review of Stephen Meyer's new book Darwin's Doubt.  To get an idea of what he thinks of the book, Matzke's post is called "Meyer's Hopeless Monster." For example:

As I read through Meyer’s book, though, in case after case I see misunderstandings, superficial treatment of key issues which are devastating to his thesis once understood, and complete or near-complete omission of information that any non-expert reader would need to have to make an accurate assessment of Meyer’s arguments.

He also chastises Meyer for his lack of understanding of unilineal versus collateral ancestry, and notes that this is a common problem with creationists:

Yet another confusion that Meyer exhibits relates to the idea of “ancestor”. As with all creationists, Meyer exhibits no understanding of the fact that phylogenetic methods as they exist now can only rigorously detect sister-group relationships, not direct ancestry, and, crucially, that this is neither a significant flaw, nor any sort of challenge to common ancestry, nor any sort of evidence against evolution. Distinguishing between a close sister-group relationship and an exact ancestor is just a level of precision that we cannot expect in most cases. It’s just a by-product of the method and the data available.

A common problem is the inability to understand that even if a species did not give rise to successor species, it can still be transitional by virtue of the number of derived and retained traits relative to its sister taxa.

The whole review is scathing and his examples devastating to the premises of the book.  Another ID hatchet job.  

Reuters: More than 7,000 Petition Ball State University to Protect Academic Freedom of Professor Eric Hedin

Reuters is carrying a press release about the effort spearheaded by the Discovery Institute to take the heat off of Eric Hedin, who has become somewhat of a posterboy for academic freedom.  From the PR Newswire by way of the DI:

Discovery Institute has delivered a petition to Ball State University (BSU) from more than 7,000 people, including more than 1,200 residents of Indiana, urging the university to defend the academic freedom of assistant professor of physics Eric Hedin. Prof. Hedin has come under attack from activists at the Freedom from Religion Foundation because of an honors seminar he teaches on the "Boundaries of Science" that discusses the debate over intelligent design as one of its topics.

The petition was accompanied by letters to BSU President Jo Ann Gora and the university's Board of Trustees from Discovery Institute Vice President Dr. John West.

To be sure, the petition would carry more weight had it been from an organization that is seen by the scientific community as legitimate, which the DI is not.  Consequently, it may be received in much the same way as the "Dissent from Darwin" list is.  We shall see.