Michael Reiss Speaks Out

The Times Online has an article on Michael Reiss, the former Director of Education at the Royal Society who was forced to resign following a peculiarly paranoid episode in which he advocated, innocently enough, that if creationism were brought up in the class room, it should not be dismissed out of hand but that the scientific positions that supported the contrary position should be explained. Somehow,the whole thing blew up his face and he lost his job. As the article correctly points out:

That Reiss possessed better pro-evolution credentials than most (a PhD in evolutionary biology from the University of Cambridge) counted for nothing when weighed against a furious campaign by Fellows of the Royal Society demanding his dismissal. In September, his contract — a secondment from his permanent position as Professor of Science Education at London University’s Institute of Education in Bloomsbury— was terminated.

If ever Ben Stein needed an example of the irrationality of the science establishment, he could not have looked further than this. Now, Reiss is finally having his say. He does, however, let slip something he didn't say at the time that needs no apology whatever:

Of course, Reiss, an evolutionary biologist by training and an ordained minister, doesn’t see it like that. He believes that the exclusion of religious believers from certain scientific positions amounts to discrimination. For him, there is nothing dishonourable about believing in the supremacy of the divine and of science. “Both positions can be held with absolute integrity,” he says. So how does he reconcile the two realms? “Evolution is God’s work. All of science is the outworking of God’s activity.”

A man of integrity and honesty who got shafted for no good reason at all. Interestingly, it has also come to light that it was the NSF that sacked him.

The New Texas Science Standards and What is Wrong With Them

The NCSE has a story about what is wrong with the new science standards crafted by the Texas State Board of Education. It is found in the new issue of Earth Scientist and starts on page 30. The article puts a plain face on some of the things that went under the radar of the mainstream press and others that were reporting on the changes. For example:

The ESS standards include material on the fossil record, and this was a predictable
target for creationist board members. A standard in the original ESS read:

(c)(8)(A) evaluate a variety of fossil types, transitional fossils, fossil lineages, and significant fossil deposits with regard to their appearance, completeness, and
rate of diversity of evolution.

This was amended to:

(c)(8)(A) evaluate a variety of fossil types, proposed transitional fossils, fossil
lineages, and significant fossil deposits with regard to their appearance,
completeness, and rate of diversity of evolution and assess the arguments for
and against universal common descent in light of this fossil evidence.

One pro-science board member attempted to return (c)(8)(A) to its original language, but was voted down; as bad as most of these amendments were, things would have been worse had it not been for the efforts of pro-science board members.The final language adopted by the board removed references to common descent and evolution:

(c)(8)(A) analyze and evaluate a variety of fossil types, transitional fossils,
proposed transitional fossils, fossil lineages, and significant fossil deposits with regard to their appearance, completeness, and alignment with scientific explanations in light of this fossil data.

Other changes were made with regard to the age of the earth:

The age of the universe standard was amended from:

(4)(A) evaluate the evidence concerning the Big Bang model, such as red shift
and cosmic microwave background radiation, and the concept of an expanding universe that originated about 14 billion years ago.

to:

(4)(A) evaluate the evidence concerning the Big Bang model, such as red shift and cosmic microwave background radiation, and the concept of an expanding universe that originated 14 billion years ago, current theories of the evolution of the universe including estimates for the age of the universe.

Why would the Texas SBOE omit the specific age of the universe? The basis of this removal is not scientific uncertainty; the widely-accepted number of 13.7 billion years is well-established by numerous separate lines of evidence. The phrase “14 billion years” was removed in order to satisfy creationist board members who believe the universe, and the Earth, to be less than 10,000 years old.

Now one begins to understand why Casey Luskin claimed victory for the standards in his blog. These are absurd changes and, as Steve Newton writes, will only serve to confuse students who are trying to understand these already hard concepts.

After All, If You Can't Laugh at Yourself...

The June 4 issue of Current Biology contains a study indicating that laughter goes back beyond the ape-human split. The article, in Thaindian reports:

“This study is the first phylogenetic test of the evolutionary continuity of a human emotional expression,” said Marina Davila Ross of the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom.

“It supports the idea that there is laughter in apes,” she added.

To reach the conclusion, researchers analysed the recorded sounds of tickle-induced vocalizations produced by infant and juvenile orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and bonobos, as well as those of human infants. A quantitative phylogenetic analysis of those acoustic data found that the best “tree” to represent the evolutionary relationships among those sounds matched the known evolutionary relationships among the five species based on genetics.

The researchers said that the findings support a common evolutionary origin for the human and ape tickle-induced expressions.They also show that laughter evolved gradually over the last 10 to 16 million years of primate evolutionary history.

But human laughter is nonetheless acoustically distinct from that of great apes and reached that state through an evident exaggeration of pre-existing acoustic features after the hominin separation from ancestors shared with bonobos and chimps, about 4.5 to 6 million years ago, Davila Ross says.

Uh, not 4.5 to 6 mya. Not if Orrorin and Sahelanthropus represent incipient hominids. More like 9 to 10 mya. Still, it is nice to know we share such a stress-reducing behavior.

Teaching Evolution at the Grade School Level

The Harborough Mail has an article on a contest held by a local public school on how life would evolve on different alien landscapes. Here is the winning entry:

The Yark can run on water, eats anything, needs neither oxygen nor water to survive, can grow extra teeth whenever it wants and has a huge tail which can be used for gathering food, scaring enemies and swimming.

But fortunately, you're not likely to see one running around Harborough anytime soon.

For the Yark exists only in the creative mind of seven-year-old Abigail Reeves, a pupil at Harborough C of E Primary School, who came up with the creature to win the Key Stage One section of the UK-wide Darwin in Space competition.

The article also notes:

The contest was organised by the British Science Association to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin – the British scientist who came up with the theory of evolution.

It invited pupils to draw and describe life forms which might have evolved on four environmentally-different islands on an alien planet, inviting them to think about what their creature looks like and how they would have been shaped by the surroundings in which they live.

This is similar to a board game that I have, which is made by Eon products called Quirks. It is a game in which you evolve your creatures (plant, herbivore, carnivore) through a series of biomes so that they will become the dominant creature in each niche. Each card was a section of a creature that had traits you could use to optimize it for a given environment.

This program at Harborough sounds like something that we ought to do over here in US public schools. As Glenn Reynolds would say: "Good luck with that."

Acts & Fiction: Werner Arber and the ICR, Again

Lawrence Ford of the ICR has a rebuttal article in this month's Acts & Facts, in which he supports Jerry Bergman's original conclusions in his article of June of 2008 in which he called Nobel Laureate physiologist Werber Arber a "Darwin Skeptic." Arber issued a sharp criticism of the ICR in general and Bergman in particular, following that article. Ford writes:

Our September 2008 issue featured the article "Werner Arber: Nobel Laureate, Darwin Skeptic" by Dr. Jerry Bergman, a frequent contributing author. While not labeling Dr. Arber a creationist, Dr. Bergman demonstrated to readers that this brilliant scientist has included God in his equation when considering the origin of life.

While quite true, that was not the point of Bergman's article in the first place and it sure as all get out wasn't what fueled Arber's response. When asked by Bergman about the origin of life, Arber, in his initial response to Bergman's article, said this:

On solid scientific grounds one cannot expect to discover if a Creator as defined by religious beliefs and sometimes referred to as intelligent design or God's Will, could be responsible for the origin and subsequent evolution of life. Serious scientific investigations can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God or a possible impact of God on evolutionary processes. In our civilization, both scientific knowledge and religious beliefs contribute essentially to our orientating knowledge, but these two sources of our worldview should not be intermingled.

Sounds okay to me. But here's the problem. That wasn't the point of the original article. In the originial article, Bergman stated that Arber was a Darwin skeptic. Arber responded that he was nothing of the sort:

In conclusion, I am neither a "Darwin skeptic" nor an "intelligent design supporter" as it is claimed in Bergman's article. I stand fully behind the NeoDarwinian theory of biological evolution and I contributed to confirm and expand this theory at the molecular level so that it can now be called Molecular Darwinism.

In response to this, the ICR state that:

Dr. Bergman's correspondence with him and review of the original materials supports the conclusions of the Acts & Facts article. Those who rely on macroevolution as the source of life stand on shaky ground because of the obvious design in molecular structures. Creationists, however, have no trouble finding an explanation--life was designed by God.

This is patently false. Dr. Arber's response in no way supported the conclusions of Jerry Bergman's article, which sought to portray Werner Arber as someone who did not accept evolution. Whether or not Dr. Arber believes in God is irrelevant. Further, there was nothing in Dr. Arber's response that indicated that he did not accept macroevolutionary mechanisms. Questions about the origin of life do not encompass evolutionary theory. Of course Dr. Arber would respond by saying he didn't know about the origins of life. That is not part of his research.

More Acts and Fiction from the ICR.

How a Headline Can Get Away From You

IO9 has a story on the 12 mya primate find from Spain with the unfortunate headline:
"12 Million Year Old Hominid With Human Features Discovered In Spain."

No it doesn't. The features aren't remotely human. They are ape-like; and Miocene ape-like, at that! The rest of the article is fairly stock, with the exception of this set of paragraphs:

It's the specimen's facial morphology that has really attracted interest. While most of the primates in the Hominidae family are prognathic, or marked by a protruding jaw, Anoiapithecus brevirostris has a remarkably flat face. Its facial features are comparable only to the Homo genus, of which we're the only living representative and which didn't even exist for nearly ten million years after Anoiapithecus brevirostris.

That's not to say Lluc is some sort of time-displaced missing link between modern humans and ancient apes. Instead, the researchers speculate this may be an example of evolutionary convergence, where similar environmental conditions produce similar adaptations. If nothing else, this discovery may help researchers better understand the occurrence of reduced prognathism in certain strands of the Hominidae family.

Well, YAH! That's probably what's going on.We simply don't have enough information to develop any well-established hypotheses about what this thing represents, yet. Give it time. But, for crying out loud, don't go around calling it an ape with "human features." That's just irresponsible. I can't wait for the YEC groups to weigh in on this one.

With Friends Like These...

The John Birch Society got together to trash evolution in Roxbury, Massachusetts, recently. The society, which has always been marginalized in American society probably could have picked a better target. James Perloff was the speaker. This was reported in the West Roxbury Transcript. Here is part of what the article had to say:

The gathering was in response to a recent celebration of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution in order to see the opposite side of the spectrum, which is creationism — a banned teaching in public school systems nationwide.

Perloff, who lives in Burlington, was brought in to elaborate on his findings against Darwin’s theory of evolution. He has written two books on the subject: “Tornado in a Junkyard” and “The Case against Darwin.”

The event was held in front of a small gathering and was kicked off with a prayer along with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Harold Shurtleff of West Roxbury, regional field director for the John Birch Society.

So what is James Perloff's writing like? Here is an article by him in the New American. I include here a sample paragraph:

Small wonder, then, that Darwinism has always found a comfortable home in totalitarian states. Stein visits the former mental institution at Hadamar, Germany, where over 14,000 mentally ill were once executed by the Nazis. As Stein notes, Charles Darwin advocated eugenics, writing that “the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.... Excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” Stein explores the link between Darwin and Nazi eugenics, interviewing California State University professor Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler. And he notes that eugenics was espoused in America by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.

Suffice it to say that absolutely nothing in that paragraph is correct. Darwin was rejected in Stalinist Soviet Union, where Lysenkoism was embraced, Hitler especially rejected Darwin as it applied to humans and Weikart's book is full of holes so big you could drive a Mack truck through them. This is yet another example of badly researched propaganda.

Matt's Notepad wrote a review of this paper. He titles the review "Perloff: another who doesn't seem to have a clue." You got that one right. Hat tip to LGF.

Two Bills Die in Texas Legislature

The NCSE is reporting on two bills that have died on the vine. The first one is the exemption bill for the ICR that would allow them to operate and grant degrees without having to undergo the same standards that every other degree-granting institution does. The second is the bill that would have put back the "strengths and weaknesses" language into the science standards. As the article notes, the ICR is suing the Texas Higher Education Commission for its decision. Good luck with that one, guys.

New Edited Volume by Ronald Numbers

The Globe and Mail has an article on a new book edited by Ronald Numbers, who wrote the exceptional book The Creationists. The new book, called Galileo Goes to Jail, addresses 25 myths of science and debunks everything from, well, Galileo's so called imprisonment to Descarte's mind-body distinction. Worth picking up.

Out of Europe????

Bob Holmes of the New Scientist is reporting on a spectacular find in Spain of a 12 million year old primate that seems to show characteristics of both African and European Miocene apes. While the hype level is not as high as it was with Ida, the find raises some questions about where the later hominoids came from. He writes:

The fossil, named Anoiapithecus brevirostris by Salvador Moyà-Solà of the Catalan Institute of Palaeontology in Barcelona, Spain, and his colleagues, dates from a period of human evolution for which the record is very thin. While only the animal's face, jaw and teeth survive, their shape places it within the African hominid lineage that gave rise to gorillas, chimps and humans. However, it also has features of a related group called kenyapithecins.

Moyà-Solà says that A. brevirostris and some similar-looking kenyapithecins lived in Europe shortly after the afrohominid and kenyapithecin lineages split, and so that the divergence itself may have happened there. If he is right, our hominid ancestors lived in Europe and only later migrated to Africa, where modern humans evolved.

Methinks this is a tad premature, since we have Miocene apes on all continents and the remains are not as certainly diagnostic.



It will certainly get people thinking about primate origins in a new way.

As Climate Changes, So Do Animals' Diets

A story in e! Science News reports that researchers from The University of Florida have conducted a study of mammalian teeth and discovered that, as climate changes, the diets of many mammals shift to accommodate the changes:

Led by Florida Museum of Natural History vertebrate paleontologist Larisa DeSantis, researchers examined fossil teeth from mammals at two sites representing different climates in Florida:

a glacial period about 1.9 million years ago and a warmer, interglacial period about 1.3 million years ago. The researchers found that interglacial warming resulted in dramatic changes to the diets of animal groups at both sites. The study appears in the June 3 issue of PLoS ONE.

"When people are modeling future mammal distributions, they're assuming that the niches of mammals today are going to be the same in the future," DeSantis said. "That's a huge assumption."

Co-author Robert Feranec, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the New York State Museum, said scientists cannot predict what species will do based on their current ecology.

"The study definitively shows that climate change has an effect on ecosystems and mammals, and that the responses are much more complex than we might think," Feranec said.

We know that when the African climate shifted toward the end of the Miocene, the monkeys adapted to the savannas while the higher apes adapted to the jungles. Rather than do either, one group likely exploited the forest/fringe environment, which allowed them to be more generalists. It is probably this group that gave rise to the earliest hominids.

Yup, I Want One of These, Too.

Red Orbit has a story on a Triceratops skull that just sold for $242 000. The auction house didn't reveal the name of the buyer. Still, wouldn't this look cool in your living room?

Ancient Hippos in North America

Randy Boswell of Canwest has a story of some hippo remains that have been discovered in Ellesmere Island (a hotbed of temperate fossils), shedding light on the migration of the modern precursors into North America some 50 million years ago:

Researchers have long known that Canada’s northernmost Arctic islands were once relatively warm, lush environments inhabited by alligators and other creatures associated today with southerly latitudes.

But the latest findings, according to Canadian and U.S. researchers who’ve published a study in the latest issue of the journal Geology, shed new light on the diets and movements of Arctic animals in the post-dinosaur age and “may provide the behavioural smoking gun for how modern groups of mammals like ungulates — ancestors of today’s horses and cattle — and true primates arrived in North America.”

Are they actually hippos? Well, not really:

Among the remains analyzed were teeth from the extinct Coryphodon, a semi-aquatic mammal resembling the modern hippopotamus. Teeth from two other species — an extinct ancestor of today’s tapirs and a rhinoceros-like animal called brontothere — also were examined and confirmed the team’s findings.

Another piece of the puzzle.

Need a Copy of On the Origins of Species?

There is one for sale for a mere 10 to 15 000 pounds. Virgin Media reports that a first edition copy of the book is for sale:

Only 1,250 were produced in its first print run back in 1859.

A copy of the ground-breaking text turned up a house near Inverness and will go under the hammer on Friday.

A first edition sold in Norfolk in April fetched £35,000.

Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull have suggested a more modest estimate of £10,000 to £15,000.

Book specialist Simon Vickers said: "This particular copy of The Origin Of Species was found in a house near Inverness. It has been in the family a long time.

"The family have no known connection to Darwin, and it may have been bought on its first publication."

This year marks the bicentenary of the influential scientist's birth. When Darwin died in 1882 he was given a state funeral and buried in Westminster Abbey.

Oh, if only I had the money. Oh, who am I fooling. I would go buy a Canon 1D-s.

The Dilemma of Rick Perry

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has an article on the current dilemma of Rick Perry, who's renomination of Don McLeroy as head of the Texas State Board of Education just went down in flames. They are not hopeful for a quick resolution:

The board’s most recent factionalism came during discussions of science curriculum standards, and McLeroy led the faction that pushed for teaching students about adding creationism and intelligent design. That debate exploded into what was taken as inserting religion into public school classrooms.

Some would argue that it wasn’t that at all, that it was an attempt to teach all theories of mankind’s origins. If that’s the case, McLeroy was not effective in getting the message across.

Indeed, he struggled during the debate. His point seemed to be that "experts" are wrong when they say evolution is the foundation of modern biology. He said genetics, the study of heredity and variation in similar or related animals, provides that foundation.

He called evolution "philosophical speculation" that reflects a certain religious viewpoint. Other views should be presented in classrooms as well, he said.

Eventually, the state board said schools should be encouraged to scrutinize all sides of scientific theories. That didn’t really settle anything, because many people who back the teaching of evolution say creationism and intelligent design are religion, not science.

McLeroy’s hometown senator, Steve Ogden of Bryan, said during the confirmation debate last week that rejecting McLeroy’s nomination would send a message that would be interpreted by some Texans as "if you are a conservative, if you believe in the infallibility and the literacy of the Bible, there’s no need to apply to be on the State Board of Education."

It was certainly McLeroy's comment that evolution is "philosophical speculation," (which is like calling Newtonian physics "philosophical speculation"), that got the ball rolling. His comment about "someone has got to stand up to the experts" didn't help matters. McLeroy neither attempted to learn about evolution, nor tried to understand why scientists felt so strongly about teaching it. Such a position was simply untenable for the job he held.

The statement of senator Ogden is disturbing on several levels. One one level, it shows that he has completely bought into the notion that evolution = atheism, a position that is unfounded. On the second level, though, it furthers the politicization and "religiousization" of the problem. Science should never be politicized, which is exactly what McLeroy did, by representing and promoting a particular constituency. Having said that, the YEC constituency exists regardless of what people like McLeroy do or don't do. Promoting shoddy science on their behalf, though, does nobody any favors.

In a sense, the writer of the piece is correct in that this problem will never go away. As long as the constituency exists that believes in a literal 6k year-old creation, they will vote in the people that will support teaching that. This is why the school boards must be removed from the political process, as the Texas legislature is trying to do. That won't stop Rick Perry from appointing another creationist to head the board, though. The key is to insulate the curriculum writers from the actions of the board. I do not have high hopes that that will happen anytime soon.

Meanwhile, in Manitoba There be Fossils!

Chinta Puxley of the Manitoba Daily Gleaner is telling her readers to come dig for prehistoric sea creatures. She writes:

It's about as far from an ocean as you can get, and one of the last places you might expect to discover the remnants of a prehistoric sea monster that once ruled the marine world. But some of Canada's richest deposits of marine dinosaurs are found in the sand-like soil of Morden, Man., about 100 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg.

It's here that researchers, families and even school children have unearthed the remains of 80-million-year-old reptiles.

The treasure trove of skeletons discovered just outside the town prompted enthusiasts in 1979 to pool their collection of ancient bones and establish what is now the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre, the country's largest collection of marine reptile fossils.

Sounds like a great vacation spot to me.

Science, Ken Ham and Common Ground

Shelly Emling of the Atlanta Journal Constitution profiles Ken Ham of the Creation Museum in Kentucky as part of a larger article on the gap between science and creationism. Of Ham, she says this:

Ken Ham, whose Creation Museum in Kentucky just celebrated its second anniversary this weekend, has never been more sure that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old and that God created everything in six divinely ordered 24-hour time slots.

To Ham, it doesn’t matter that scientists have recently unveiled Ida —- the 47-million-year-old fossil hailed as the evolutionary link between modern primates and more distant species —- the latest in a string of significant fossils to be hyped by the media.

“No other book gives an account of origins as specifically as the Bible,” said Ham, whose museum just 20 miles southwest of Cincinnati has attracted 720,000 visitors since opening in 2007.

Herein lies part of the problem, of course. It should matter. How much evidence does Ken Ham just ignore or dismiss out of hand? Here we have a primate fossil that is 95% complete, represents a primate that doesn't exist today, has not existed in the last two thousand years and is unlike any living primate. Is the thinking here that this simply represents yet another fossil that was resident on the Ark? How many species does that make, now?

The article continues with a discussion of different approaches to the problem, including the views of Francisco Ayala and Simon Conway-Morris but then ends with this howler:

Perhaps one day the debate over evolution and creationism will be settled. But I doubt it. The arguments on both sides are too persuasive. Still, one can hope.

The arguments on the creationism side are persuasive only if one knows absolutely nothing about geology, palaeontology or biology. That's what they're counting on.

Another Reason to Visit Utah

Pat Bagley of the The Salt Lake City Tribune has an article on the rich heritage of dinosaur remains that the state has provided over the years. She writes:

Andrew Carnegie contemplated the cavernous new wing of his Pittsburgh museum. It needed something to fill it. Something big.

There was that young fellow, Earl Douglass, in his employ with the story of a bone. What was it again? Oh, yes -- a thighbone bigger than a man. The man had been following up on stories of big bones found by sheepherders near Utah's Green River, and that's where he had seen it. Too heavy to carry out, he had left it. Carnegie sent the young man back to fetch it, along with the rest of the beast. That would be something to fill the empty museum space.

Read the whole thing.

New Scientist Rains on Ida's Parade

An article in the New Scientist suggests that Ida is no sort of missing link at all and is not even on the path to later hominoids. They write:

What does Ida's anatomy tell us about her place on the family tree of humans and other primates? The fact that she retains primitive features that commonly occurred among all early primates, such as simple incisors rather than a full-fledged toothcomb, indicates that Ida belongs somewhere closer to the base of the tree than living lemurs do.

But this does not necessarily make Ida a close relative of anthropoids – the group of primates that includes monkeys, apes – and humans. In order to establish that connection, Ida would have to have anthropoid-like features that evolved after anthropoids split away from lemurs and other early primates. Here, alas, Ida fails miserably.

As if to demonstrate the point, they provide a nice cladogram.



If the truth be told, we probably won't know anything definitive about where Ida fits until we discover more finds from that time period. If Ida exists, others probably do as well.

Finding Dinosaurs in Alberta

In Alberta, Canada, which is the home of the largest creation museum in Canada, the Big Valley Creation Museum the local palaeontologists have their own answer. The Grande Prairie Herald Tribune has an article on dinosaur camps that are being offered to youngsters by Grande Prairie Regional College. Quoth the article:

"There will be some kind of informative lectures, but most of it will be hands-on. We have various exercises designed to actually give the kids experience in what it’s like to excavate a dinosaur fossil; to actually learn to look at the tracks and learn how dinosaurs walked and how dinosaurs ran; opportunities for kids to make up posters on their favourite dinosaurs.

“We’ll actually be doing some field trips where we’ll go out to real localities where they can look at the geology of the area and figure out what this place looked like 70 million years ago.”

Any antidote to the nonsense of the Big Valley Museum is welcome.