Behe and Hunt: Irreducible Complexity and Numerology

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@colewd

I will respond when he gets back to me.

I will look forward to hearing from Behe. He is a nice guy, and I have no ill will to him. Remember also that @art had been wanting him to engage on T-urf23 too, which appears to be a very complex enzyme arising out of non-coding DNA.

@colewd

On number 2 I think the more interesting is the work that Giuseppe Puccio is posting at UD on indirect measurements of functional information as he is using empirical observations of DNA and Protein sequences. Their have been many back and forth discussions between UD and TSZ where Joe Felsenstein was very involved and wrote and op challenging Puccio’s work.

I’ve covered in that past and will again. I even have a preprint on it in biorxiv. The real issue, however, is…

@swamidass

Figure out why ID has not retracted any of their falsified arguments. They are much more likely to listen to you guys on this than us.

This case is a clearly bad argument, or at least it seems that way. If it isn’t they might try and defend it.

@swamidass

This paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/1303.6739 ) is put forward as example of CSI (ala Dembski) and is essential numerology. @evograd has linked to some clear rebuttals of this, and it has not been picked up by any of the leaders. Though, we still see it positively referenced at ENV: In the Planetary Science Journal Icarus, the “Wow!” Signal of Intelligent Design | Evolution News. Do they stand by this paper? Do they agree it is an example of CSI? If not, when will they point out and clarify its problems?

If they can’t retract or defend this paper after that glowing review in ENV, how can we trust they will ever retract a bad argument?