Talk of unicorns and things to come

After our lecture last night talking about experts and analysing risk in our controversies, I was thinking about how this applied to mine. So coming up in the next few posts, expect to see some of these ideas cropping up. I think the 'risks' as we discussed them (which I'll probably explain if I remember) are still in my controversy, but in a different way to normal. I'll be bringing in some of the discussion on experts too, questioning the legitimacy of both sides on the debate. I guess I'll probably give an overview of what the whole controversy seems to be at some point soon too.


For now, I'll explain a bit why things such as Intelligent Design are often considered pseudoscience by 'experts'.


Things that are classed as pseudoscience, such as astrology or ghosts, find themselves within this category because they often fail one part of the scientific method. You can't falsify them. A key part of the scientific method is being able to say something is wrong or untrue. It's very difficult to prove something is true ALL the time, but if something can be falsified, then we can assume that it's not right. These pseudosciences can make a lot of claims which seem to follow the scientific method, but once you actually scrutinize them you can see they fall short.


For example, I could say that there's no such thing as Tinnitus. Instead what is really happening is that a tiny invisible unicorn is dancing around inside your ear canal singing happy songs. Unicorns are magical creatures too, so they can't just be washed out or blown out. Now while this may seem like a good proposition, you can't *really* prove it wrong. There's no way to test it, because I can just keep saying "The unicorn is invisible, you can't see it" or "It's magical and hiding from you". So unless you can then explain to me how magic (something else that doesn't exist) works, and how we can counteract it to make the unicorn visible and catch it to prove it is/isn't there, this isn't really a scientific theory.

A good reason not to take the bible literally

Here is a somewhat amusing letter addressing what can happen if you take the bible literally...

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them:

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15:19- 24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? - Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your devoted fan

Creationism then...

Even though it's denied, you can see that intelligent design is based from creationism. This view is pretty widely accepted as far as I know. Intelligent design was basically a concept put forth so creationism would be accepted more easily. Creationism started to be seen as being representing a particular religious belief, so intelligent design was made to be the new face. With this change, explicit references to God were removed, and a veil of using the scientific method were introduced to attempt to make the idea more accepted.


But what is creationism?


I'm going to take some notes from the National Centre for Science Education website (http://ncse.com/) as they have very nice information on creation and intelligent design. They're basically (as their tag line says) about keeping evolution in schools.


NCSE's definition of creationism goes something like this:

"Creationism" refers to the religious belief in a supernatural deity or force that intervenes, or has intervened, directly in the physical world. Within that broad scope, there are many varieties of creationist belief. Some forms of creationism hold that natural biological processes cannot account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on earth.

This definition is good in terms of arguing about evolution and is how creationism is most often used now, but it doesn't fully cover creation. 


Creationism is a religious belief that takes a literal interpretation of the bible and says a supernatural being, often the Christian God, created the universe and everything in it.

Making a world.

So today I'm going to do a little bit of talking about intelligent design so everything is clear before I start talking about the debate between evolution and creation.

The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

 This definition was taken from the intelligent design website www.intelligentdesign.org.


Now on its own, this definition isn't so bad. If you believe it, its what you believe - if you don't you say 'oh that's just some religious belief about god creating everything, not science'. This is where the trouble begins.


Intelligent designers are claiming that this 'theory' is something that is tested very following the scientific method. Again from the same website:

The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information...When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.

 This approach in itself is flawed. The first problem is, there is no debating listed as part of the process, they just draw conclusions (unless this has been simplified for easier understanding). The other problem is the arbitrary things they are searching for. What exactly is "complex and specified information"? And who are they to judge what is complex and what is not?


Intelligent design also likes to separate itself from creationism, and says that you can only be an 'honest critic' if you can acknowledge the difference between the two. I can do that, but it doesn't mean that I don't think they're still running for the same team. I'll talk a bit more about creationism next time, and leave you with this clip. It has some potentially offensive language, so not appropriate for work or children.





The segment I want starts at around 1:20 but I couldn't find the clip on its own or figure out how to cue it at the right segment, so you can watch it all or just skip to there.

What is a theory?

Now before I get onto talking about and defining the other side of this argument, I'd like to talk a bit about theories. Often it's said by creationists and those who support intelligent design that they "do not believe in the theory of evolution". Now I have two problems with a statement like that, and I want to explain them a bit and why it's pretty much wrong.


The first problem is using the word theory. The use of theory in this way (or in the context in which it is used) really seems to belittle the scientific meaning of the term. A theory isn't a wishy washy guess that is agreed on by a few people, it is an idea that has been thoroughly debated, is highly supported by evidence that explains most or all observations, and can make predictions about future observations. Even beyond this misconception though, the bigger problem is that evolution isn't really considered to be a theory any more by science. It has been so widely observed, and so widely agreed on, that it's considered to be a fact now. A fact in science is when a theory is considered to be so correct, and with so little remaining doubt, that there seems no reason left to continue testing. It's the same as saying that the Earth revolves around the Sun is simply a fact. I also think this applies to natural selection in its most basic form (if you don't take it as the mechanism for developing new species). A faster cheetah will get its dinner more often than a slower one or a tree that grows taller will get more sunlight, and it's these organisms that will go on to reproduce over the other, weaker, ones.


My other problem with this statement is the word believe... But I guess that's just me being fussy. It's probably no different to someone saying 'I don't believe in aliens'. There is 'evidence' for both aliens and evolution (although one is concrete and the other is sketchy (not respectively)). What people really should say is something like 'I don't believe the evidence for aliens correlates to that conclusion'... or something along those lines, but perhaps less wordy.

Evolution in a few hundred words

Today I'm going to give some explanations to the mechanisms of evolution I described yesterday. These examples come adapted from the same textbook as I used yesterday.


I thought I might break them up into 2 categories as well, to make things a bit more simpler.


Processes that introduce new genes/alleles into a population:

• Mutations
• Basically the source of all new genes and alleles in any given population
• This occurs when part of the base code of DNA changes from one form to another, or rearranges itself somehow (I've included a picture of this at the bottom - Figure 1)
• Genes are small "coding" sections of DNA, so when these mutations occur within a gene, it may change its expression

• Migration
• Migration is movement of of individuals from subpopulations within a larger population
• This means that new genes that have developed in one subpopulation can be transferred to another through mating
• For example, say you have a population of black birds, and another population with yellow birds and black birds in it. A yellow bird from the second population may fly over to the first population of entirely black birds and breed. This could then introduce the yellow colouring into the other population

Processes that affect allele and gene frequency within populations and drive evolution:

• Natural Selection
• Most simply put - survival of the fittest
• Those with the best genes to suit the environment will obviously survive better in that environment and will be able to reproduce more successfully
• If the environment changes, different genes may be more useful and therefore different organisms will flourish
• The best example of this is the peppered moth. Before the industrial revolution, light coloured peppered moths were higher in population than black coloured moths. This was because they camouflaged on trees better, and weren't eaten as often. As industry took hold and factories started producing, the trees became covered in soot. Now the light coloured moths stood out much clearer on the trees, while the black coloured moths camouflaged. Following this, the black moths rose in number, and the light ones fell because the black were more suited to the new environment
• New species can be made through natural selection when an event (or even migration) separates a population and applies different environmental pressures to them. The populations adapt differently to their different environments, and over time become two different species

• Genetic Drift
• Genetic drift is the random inheritance of genes and alleles passed through generations
• This random chance of inheritance changes the frequency that alleles appear
• As I couldn't get the animation work in the blog, here is a link that explains genetic drift quite well (again with wiki... but is just a picture that is effective at explaining what is happening) 
• So even if parents are selected by natural selection, genetic drift may cause the offspring to fail in the environment

Sorry for the epically big blog post, but I really wanted to get all that out. If any of it is unclear or you need more info, post comments and ask!

Figure 1: Some types of mutations shown here as examples. Sourced from Wikipedia.

It's evolutionary, my dear Watson.

I'm lucky enough to have gotten the flu, so I'm going to keep this pretty short because I'm not feeling overly great right now. Today I'm going to set out a definition for evolution that should hopefully carry through the semester. This definition comes adapted from the genetics textbook I used through uni (referenced below). It may not be the best reference for evolution, as the primary focus of the book is molecular genetics, but I felt that the evolutionary sections and definitions were sufficient for something like this blog.

Evolution, in its most basic form, is the progressive changes that occur in the gene pool of a population.


Genes are the functional parts of DNA that code for information about us. They control basic things like our hair or eye colour and height, as well as being the building blocks for all our proteins, hormones and anything else that occurs our the body.

Alleles are the alternate forms of any given gene. For example, say we are looking at cats, and their fur colour is controlled by a single gene. The different alleles of that gene would be the different colours. There may be a black allele and a white allele and an orange allele, but they're still all the same gene.

So evolution occurs when alleles are changed within a population over time through certain mechanisms. There are four of these mechanisms: mutation, migration, natural selection, and genetic drift. I'll explain these in my next post.

Hartl, D. L., & Jones, E. W. (2005). Genetics: analysis of genes and genomes (6th ed.): Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Primordial Soup

Hello, and welcome to the place where the incoherent thoughts in my head will gather in a (hopefully) coherent way.

In this blog I'm going to be talking about evolution, and the controversies that arise when creation becomes involved. I think its important here to note that although I'm not really religious, I still respect people who are, and believe that if they want to have faith, that's a fine thing. I also want to clarify that I don't believe that religion and science, or more specifically for here creation and evolution, need to be mutually exclusive. In my eyes, if you want God to fit into it, he created everything, and guides evolution. It still works. Basically I'm going to be saying that evolution is a fact, not a theory and discuss different things from mechanisms to things I see as problems such as teaching creation in a science class. Its going to be sort of "as I think of it" for a while until I get a totally clear direction of where I want to end up, and the argument I want to portray. 

I guess I need to give a bit of background about me and why this is all happening. Over the summer, I completed a Bachelor of Science with majors in genetics and neuroscience. Straight after this, I moved onto studying a Masters of Science Communication, as I wasn't really sure if the lab was the place for me. This blog is designed to be an assessment piece for a subject I'm doing within the degree called "communicating controversial science", hence the controversial topic. Not sure if this is going to be my final topic yet (I have the 9th to decide and get one up and running). There may be a last minute swap to discussing the concept of consciousness and what it is. Just feeling this evolution argument that I'd put out here might be a bit too cliché and overdone (and in my head there's no real controversy or question). Time will tell and next Monday still seems like so far away.

I think I covered everything I wanted for the intro post. If not, oh well, there's always a new post or the edit button.

And if you didn't know already, the title "endless forms most beautiful" is a quote from Darwin in the famous: On the Origin of Species.