Avoiding the Word "Evolution" 895
jakosc tips us to a disturbing article in PloS Biology on the avoidance of the word "Evolution" in scientific papers and grants. From the paper: "In spite of the importance of antimicrobial resistance, we show that the actual word 'evolution' is rarely used in the papers describing this research. Instead, antimicrobial resistance is said to 'emerge,' 'arise,' or 'spread' rather than 'evolve.' Moreover, we show that the failure to use the word 'evolution' by the scientific community may have a direct impact on the public perception of the importance of evolutionary biology in our everyday lives... It has been repeatedly rumored (and reiterated by one of the reviewers of this article) that both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have in the past actively discouraged the use of the word 'evolution' in titles or abstracts of proposals so as to avoid controversy."
Another word (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Unfortunate? (Score:3, Interesting)
Eh it goes both ways? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It IS disturbing... (Score:1, Interesting)
Evolution is the biggest scientific con ever foisted on mankind.
I'm NOT talking about natural selection, which makes perfect sense, but evolution; ie beneficial mutation
To say you can randomly mutate something orders of magnitude more complex than an o/s, and add globs of functionality to it over huge expanses of time without increasing functional entropy is absurd.
The ratio of beneficial to non beneficial mutation is hugely in favour of increasing disorder. Thus you would expect biological systems to slowly degrade in the long term, which is exactly what we see. Genetic diseases reducing functionality but not mortality.
Re:Sorry Skinflute.. We are a Democracy. (Score:4, Interesting)
(The evidence of this is from hyroglyphs found picturing the process if you want to try and verify it)
A lot of what was known in science 2000+ years ago has been lost only to be rediscovered far more recently, through war, genocide, various cultural dark ages in different regions but 1 person can be given quite a large part of the blame - that rather famous (and egotistical) arsonist, Alexander the Great
Re:What do you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is what I believe. I sure hope I am wrong tho.
Why did God make these rules? (Score:1, Interesting)
Why does God say its not good to gamble. Why do the Ten Commandments give so many rules in life? What happens to us if we disobey these rules?
It is really nothing new. If you study the Vedas from the Far East, you will discover that much of Western thought and many religions are actually based originally on the Vedas. Once upon a time, India was The superpower in the world, in terms of spiritual knowledge, medicine, science and technical prowess. Ayurveda, the knowledge of life, later evolved to become Chinese medicine. Acupuncture and Fengh Shui has its roots in a type of acupuncture in Ayurveda, and Vastu, which is Feng Shui in the Vedas. The same applies to religious thoughts, which spread out all over Europe and Asia.
The interesting thing is in what primitive state the humans were in when they were receiving the knowledge of Jesus. They were not scholars. They were not learned. They were humble fishermen. Yet, they understood a core in the message. A core of selfless love and service.
Being simple, they turned the knowledge into simple rules, like Moses did for the Israel people. So most people could understand and follow it. However, the original meaning to why it is wise to follow the rules, and wether they always apply, was lost in time.
However, it is important to understand this all comes from a spiritual science, the Vedas. This science only prescribes cause and effect, much like our own science. What you sow, so shall you reap. Karma. The laws of the mind. The so-called "laws" of Thou shall and Thou shallt not, is generally frowned upon in the Vedas. The rules are not there to limit our life, but to guide it to the best result, and may even change based on the circumstances (shock!).
What happens when we gamble? We become agitated. We expect big results, and get devastated, and even addicted to it. It may ruin our lives financially, and it certainly will ruin your peace of mind regardless.
What if we kill someone, ditto.
What if we covet someones wife / husband, ditto. Our mind gets disturbed. Since everything we do / create comes from the mind, our peace of mind is most important, according to the Vedas. Wars come in the mind first, always. All conflict is created by our so-called intellect.
It is all there to save our own minds. When reading the Vedas, it become apparent that these rules are self-imposed, because of their benefits. However, in time, it has evolved into more simple laws, people invented the "angry God" (if God is omni-scient, omni-potent and omni-present, why would God ever be angry and frustrated?).
Go to the roots of the knowledge, and you will discover all these discussions of Creationism and Evolution, is a total waste. Neither camp sees the other arguments clearly, or even their own heritage, and theyre totally invested in their own mode of thought. Broaden your horizon, and you may find that both have good arguments, but are really not arguing about the same thing. This happens in most discussions: People have different definitions and modes of thought, and get irritated when others dont share their own perspective.
A bad discussion is when everybody tries to convince the other. Either everybody wins the truth, or nobody wins. That is true enquiry into the reality. You can never really "win" a true discussion, because truth is owned by all.
Re:It IS disturbing... (Score:2, Interesting)
The thing that's intriguing me at the moment though, is the question of at what level the human race is circumventing the 'selection' part of the evolutionary process. There's quite literally very high odds that 'almost any' specimens of humanity will end up able to reproduce. So you have tendancies like poor sight, diabetes, mental disorders that breed true, since we can compensate for them.
Worse is when we consider the 'skew' on child rates - in the modern world, it's inhumane to not support parents who don't want to work for a living, and would much rather have lots of sex without any forms of birth control. And of course, give 'support' to the families in question too, so if you work the system right, you quite literally get a better house and more income the more sprogs you drop.
Where you have the more traditional 'professionals' waiting later and later in life to have children, with gradually diminishing success rates, and probably not many children, leading to a net negative growth within the particular social strata.
I can't help but wonder if that's going to really hurt us as a species if we don't correct the trend.
Re:Evolution, with numbers. (Score:2, Interesting)
With respect to eyesight, check out the wikipedia link [wikipedia.org] for more info on how this particular mechanism might plausibly have evolved. Note how evolution works in tiny incremental steps. Whenever such a reduction in tiny steps has not been found by science for some body part or animal as whole, the promise of evolution theory is that it will be found whenever more details of the phylogenetic history of species are found
"evolution" is the wrong word anyway (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:But *THAT* is the problem.... (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as there is a notable change compared to the ancestral organisms, by definition, yes.
"What is then "the concept of evolving" according to these "real, hardcore, scientific guys" whose knowledge you know so well?"
Evolution is the observable phenonmenon of changes in the allele frequencies of a given population.
"Your message reminds me of the Popper's objection to evolution: it is impossible to disprove it since whichever way organisms turn out is fine from the evolutionary standpoint. He concluded then that evolution is not a scientific theory according to his definition."
Popper's criticism [blogspot.com] wasn't towards evolution per se, but towards darwinism (that is, natural selection as the main mechanism behind evolution). However, I didn't say anything like "whichever way organisms turn out is fine from the evolutionray standpoint". I said change in organisms/populations, whether good or bad for the evolutionary fitness of said organisms/populations, is evolution by definition.
Re:But *THAT* is the problem.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Popper's opinion of scientific process would have more force if he had been a scientist.
In fact Popper's barely concealled objective was to provide a definition of science that Marxist and Freudian pseudoscience would be unable to meet. In particular he objected to the fact that both claimed to be 'scientific' while declaring their core theories to be absolute truth beyond the possibility of doubt.
Scientists of the day were happy to go along with Popper's definition because they didn't like the specious nonsense from the followers of Marx, Freud, Jung et al either. In point of fact neither did Marx by the end 'all I can say is that I am not a Marxist' (letter to Engel).
It took another couple of decades for folk to start noticing that what scientists did didn't meet the standards Popper had set either. Or rather it took that long for people to start mentioning the fact. By then the 'scientific' claims of the Marxists and Freudians had been effectively buried and the original political ibjective had been met.
Popper himself accepted that according to his definition there had been perhaps two genuinely falsifiable theories in the history of science.
The falsification canard is regularly trotted out by folk trying to push intelligent design but they miss the entire point. Popper's definition is based on intent. Except in very rare circumstances it is generally not possible to fully meet the falsifiability criteria in full. The real question is not whether the criteria are met but whether the practitioners have the intention of seriously testing their theory by attempting to disprove it or not.
In the case of evoloution the historical theory that we are the product of evolution is inherently untestable, but so is the theory that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. What is testable is the volumes of evidence that support the claim that evolution is the simplest method of interpreting and explaining the fossil record, the one that has provided the greatest predictive power with respect to new discoveries and the one that is consistent with modern experiments that do meet the falsifiability criteria.
Intelligent Design on the other hand is exactly the type of nonesense concocted to support a preconceived notion that the practioners have no intention of seriously testing that Popper was trying to eliminate.
Re:But *THAT* is the problem.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What do you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nah, simpler to assume there's some kind of invisible mastermind in the background planning it all.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What do you expect? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, see, I've heard that "Camel" is a mistranslation of "Rope". I've also heard that camel is correct, and that "eye of the needle" is a phrase or a nickname for a certain gate of Jerusalem that was very small, and thus difficult for someone mounted to pass through (camels would have to bend to the knee to pass through or whatever).
Know what it sounds like to me? Apologetics. Making excuses for the bible. You can't in one instance go and say "oh it's a mistranslation" or "you have to interpret it this way", and then turn back around and say that the bible is literally true and inspired by god, perfectly preserved through the ages.
Anyway, to people that try to re-interpret the phrasing about the passage where the rich man is not entering heaven, I have this to say:
"Nice try, senator."
Re:Disturbing? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no "right" and "wrong". There's only my behaviour, and the consequences of my decisions. An example: I could rape a sedated patient - there's nothing to stop me. However if I did that I would a) be breaking my hippocratic oath and not be the physician I'd like to think that I am b) probably get caught, go to jail, lose the respect of my children, my license to practice, etc c) have to live with guilt after seeing the impact of my action on that person's life. On the whole, it just ain't worth it. "Right and Wrong" doesn't come into it, see?
It's just a rational form of selfishness. One would argue that the selfish person goes for the quick reward/advantage/gain. Not true. The SMART person goes for the long term reward. In this game, the reward is self preservation.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:1, Interesting)
and misunderstood. This is a example of bacteria evolving (meaning micro-evolution), which no one
has a issue. And it is scientifically sound and repeatable.
Macro-evolution what you are talking about, it based on a belief and a theory. It has not been able
to be repeated in even the most artificial environments.
It is good to use terms more accurately. So they would need to see we observed micro-evolution
when the bacteria gained or lost resistance. Which can be caused by either some inserts into their
DNA, misreads, deletions or by getting a plasmid from another bacteria. It is based on random chance
and is a cool process. And it (examples of micro-evolution, minor changes in a population over time)
is where Darwin got his understanding of micro-evolution and expanded his ideas to make a theory of
the larger system. However, it is just not what we see in science.
In genetics functionality is another way to see the simularities. And you see functional similarities
a lot all over the spectrum. And the more similar something is of course your going to see more functional
similarities in the DNA.
The macro-evolution debate reminds my much of the abiogenesis/Spontaneous Generation beliefs.
I can understand choosing to believe in macro-evolution based on a choice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis [wikipedia.org]
Re:Sorry Skinflute.. We are a Democracy. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh wait, my bad, they do. What was your point again?
I'm not an atheist, though I am agnostic. I don't give a damn about your religion...I can't come up with a word for how little I care. You can do whatever you like, you can believe whatever you like. I don't care if you choose to believe in god, I don't care what you do on Sundays.
But when you start trying to force your beliefs down my throat, you damn betcha I'm going to get pissed, and try to defend what I believe.
And then you'll start crying about how the bad atheist is trying to kill christmas, or saying you're descended from monkeys, or saying the earth isn't the center of the solar system, and then I'll have angry irrational protesters bussed into my neightborhood by some goddamn fundie organization that specializes in bussing whackjob fundies from place to place to protest people who have the audacity to believe in scientific truth and a material universe
And it'll all be because the scary atheist minority is trying to kill religion.
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. Matthew 7:5
Re:What do you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But *THAT* is the problem.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure you can (at least if you're a bacterium
What happens is typical with such chemicals: When you apply some of it to a body part such as hands, there may be enough to kill the bacteria right there. But at the edge of the treated area there is a gradient of the antibiotic's concentration, which falls to zero over some distance. Within this gradient, there are bacteria with differing susceptibility to that particular antibiotic. Thus, withing the gradient zone, the more susceptible bacteria die, while the less susceptible bacteria live. This slightly increases the frequence of whatever genes provided the slightly better resistance of the survivors.
The bacteria in question have generation times that may be under an hour in good conditions. So over weeks or months, they can produce thousands of generations. If you are repeatedly applying the same antibiotic to small areas of your body, you are repeatedly producing gradient zones that further select for slightly better resistance to that antibiotic.
It's the evolutionary process at work right on the surface of your body, and it should be no surprise that the end result is a population of bacteria with good resistance to the antibiotic in your soap.
This process is one of the better examples of why the article's topic is significant. By suppressing understanding of "evolution", we haven't just dealt with an abstract academic theory. We have also created a society in which people are actively selecting bacteria for resistance to antibiotics. People are doing this because they don't understand how bacteria evolve such resistance. Most of them don't even believe in evolution. But the evolutionary process doesn't care whether you believe in it or not. Like gravity and many other abstract academic theories, evolution works even if you don't believe in it.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Disturbing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Guilt comes from knowing that I have intentionally done someone harm and caused suffering. Only a psychopath anti-social doesn't give a damn about other people. Atheists are not psychopaths. Guilt comes from compassion and empathy with the other person - not right or wrong.
I have NO qualms cutting someone open in order to save their life - even if this causes them a great deal of pain in an extreme situation where anaestesia isn't available. Even if by doing so I put their life at significant risk - if the possible benefits outweight the risks. Because I know that my goal is to HELP. If I did everything right, but the patient died - then I did everything I could, and I don't feel guilty. He was going to die anyway. I tried to help, increase the odds, but it wasn't enough.
But inflicting pain for pain's sake - I don't get my kicks that way. Religion has nothing to do with it.
If guilt is the punishment and contentment is the reward, what biological fracture dictates the line between punishment and reward?
You're the one who introduced punishment and reward, not me. Then you ask me questions in those terms. That "bait and switch" doesn't make for a logical argument. I have no time for you if what you are going to do is argue with yourself to "prove" your point.