How NOT to argue or do “research”
Posted by Dale Husband on May 31, 2008
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/03/lynn_margulis_blog_tour.php
Note comment #163, which I wrote in reference to some earlier commenters.
(((Interesting comments, these three.
Let’s face it, no one who is not a dissident is going to read links to an HIV dissident site, especially when some of the papers are by Duesberg. People may read papers from mainstream scientists so long as they support their own arguments. Everyone here is interested in furthering their own arguments. Period.
Posted by: wayne | March 19, 2007 7:46 PM
“Not only have I read Duesberg’s articles but I have checked his claims with the ‘orthodox’ literature. It is only after this that I concluded that duesberg is full of crap.”
And therefore everyone reading this blog should take Chris Noble’s word for it. Just like everyone takes nature’s and Science’s “word for it” when they also say Duesberg is full of crap. My guess is that (unlike Chris Noble) 99% of people who take [fill in the blank]’s “word for it” have not actually taken time to examine the “dissident literature” (or even the “orthodox literature” which dissidents allegedly “cherry-pick” and “abuse”). My guess is, 99% of people who dismiss dissidents out of hand do so simply because “everyone else thinks so…”
And then everyone wonders why it’s NOT impossible for such a blunder to have happened…
Jake
Posted by: Jake | March 24, 2007 6:51 AM
DT, as with most of what you have to say, that statement of yours is not true at all!
DT dismisses the HIV dissidents because DT is a HIV drug rep to doctors for a pharmaceutical company! Doooohhhh!
Posted by: lincoln | April 1, 2007 12:06 AM
This is an example of what happens when someone gets so fixated on an idea that they can’t stand to lose an argument over it.
Posted in biology, denialism, scientific, skepticism | No Comments »
PZ Myers fan here!
Posted by Dale Husband on April 5, 2008
I am a regular reader of the blog by PZ Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
Posted in Atheism, Bible, biology, evolution, intellectual, scientific, skepticism | No Comments »
A critical test of common descent (evolution)
Posted by Dale Husband on March 5, 2008
We can take the DNA of cell nuclei and check them to see if the differences between those of various organisms can enable us for build a family tree of those organisms. The more similar their nuclear DNA is, the more closely related they are. But since mitochondria and chloroplasts also have DNA, we could also take them and check to see if we could build up a family tree that is the same as the one we would build up with the nuclear DNA.
Indeed, there is no reason, if all life was produced by a single recent act of creation, for the DNA of the mitochondria of all animals to be significantly different from each other. So if I was a Creationist, especially of the young Earth kind, I would predict that it would be impossible to make a family tree from mitochondria DNA, or if I did, it would be completely different from the nuclear DNA. But if I was testing the theory of common decent, I would predict that the readings in animals of both their nuclear and mitochondrial DNA would produce the SAME FAMILY TREE in all cases! This would make perfect sense if the mitochondria and the rest of the cells have been evolving together ever since they first came together over a billion years ago.
Mitochondrial DNA is already used in forensics to determine who the mother of a child is, while nuclear DNA must be used to determine the father of that same child. This would only be an extension of that function, since the parents of the child must be of the same species, or at least very closely related, to even produce offspring at all.
Posted in biology, evolution, scientific | No Comments »
Why the term “species” should be abolished
Posted by Dale Husband on January 25, 2008
The term “species” has a clear definition in biology: a group of organisms that breed only among themselves and do not breed with members of any other group. Thus, as far as we can tell, humans are all members of the same species, Homo sapiens.
The lesser black backed gull and the herring gull of Britain, however, act like separate species, yet are connected to each other by a ring of subspecies that extend all around the Northern Hemisphere and can interbreed with their neighbors. So in the sense I stated above, the definition of species breaks down.
The issue of species also fails when asexual life forms are considered, including bacteria, most protists, a few populations of beetles, a population of lizards, and an entire class of rotifers called Bdelloidea. The lizards, beetles and rotifers in question are all females, while among the single celled organisms the issue of gender identity is meaningless.
Suppose we have a population of 400 asexually reproducing lizards which are genetically and physically almost identical. One at a glance would assume they are members of the same species. But because the lizards do not swap genes via sexual reproduction, they would just as well be considered 400 separate species.
The issue of “species” becomes meaningless when one considers extinct organisms that are dug up as fossils. Fossils cannot breed among themselves and so the designation of certain fossils as Homo hablis, Homo egaster, and Homo sapiens is entirely arbitrary, based on the structure of the fossils and nothing more. The same is true of all other organisms in the fossil record, including dinosaurs.
I would therefore argue that the term “species” is really useless and should be abolished completely, because it is a source of unnecessary confusion.
Posted in biology, evolution, scientific | No Comments »
