What could he possibly be saying to anyone that isn’t already widely discussed and debated in the origin of life field? As if all the issues James Tour brings up are not already known, debated vigorously, and tested experimentally when and if researchers can. He has advanced no argument someone else involved in the origin of life field has not already brought up over half a century ago. Oparin, Haldane, Orgel, Miller, Shapiro, and dusins of other scientists have been discussing and debating every issue Tour is propping up since the first half of the 20th century. Chirality, purity, concentration, combinatorics, incompatible reaction chemistries from different steps, problems of polymerization, the double-edged sword of UV light and so on. You can go read articles from the goddamn 1940’s on this stuff.
Nobody needs to take lectures from quasi-creationist James Tour on how they’re all wasting their time and don’t deserve to have their research funded.
You are missing the point entirely @Rumraket. This is about trust, not who is right. Tour is trusted by large portions of the public, and he is also reasonable. I’ve seen him change his mind. We all just watched him apologize publicly for a mistake. Real dialogue builds trust, and if this increases understanding, that would valuable.
I agree. Opinions from fellow chemists can be helpful as long as they stay within the bounds of science, even if those opinions turn out to be wrong.
Part of the problem is that the general public isn’t always able to discern between Tour’s scientific criticisms and his non-scientific opinions. It is one thing to point to possible problems in a specific OoL model, and a very different thing to jump to a God of the Gaps argument.
It seems a bit odd that when someone calls Tour a liar, and who was obviously at least wrong about what he said about the sugars in the diagram—and who knows how many other things—that he doesn’t get pointed out as needing to so some apologizing and retracting.
Yet at the same time I get pointed out as needing to apologize for making a perfectly legitimate claim that someone who isn’t qualified is supposedly schooling someone who is an expert in his field. And I still contend that he isn’t qualified since Tour’s statements seem to be mostly based on his experience in synthetic chemistry.
Does @Gary_Hurd have any training or experience in synthetic chemistry? If so it’s not apparent. I’m happy to apologize if what I said was a misrepresented of his qualifications. However, I would say that it’s arguable whether or not it was, and I would say at worst it was a minor misrepresentation considering all of the surrounding details.
What I’m also wondering is why so many who readily jumped on the bandwagon of deriding Tour, taking the word of a second rate chemist over an expert, when after he makes an apology for saying Szostak was lying, and gives in more detail his reasons for why the errors he pointed out were actual errors, as of yet, to my knowledge, none of those same people have even hinted that maybe they may have been premature in the manner in which they judged him and the situation.
At the least it seems they could admit that Tour was right about the sugars in light of Szostak agreeing with him. Such behavior seems at the least suspicious to me. Is it only if you’re a Christian that you’re required to apologize? From what I’ve observed so far, that’s the impression I get.
Why do you keep repeating Tour’s lie about the sugars in the simple diagram after you’ve had it explained to you multiple times AND agreed with the reason for the simplified representations? You seem to be knee-jerk defending Tour’s anti-science nonsense even though you have no clue about the subject yourself. I notice you had nothing to say on the many critiques of Tour’s claims Dr. Hurd raised.
I’ll also point out again this latest episode with Tour isn’t the first time he’s been guilty of posting this kind of anti-science rubbish. Look up his anti-science propaganda from last year where he declared there’s no one in science who understands macroevolution.
Ah, here we go. Gotta play the “poor persecuted Christian victim” card. With Creationists it never fails.
Tour reports in a PDF on his website, that Szostak agreed with him in their phone conversation, that what was “simple sugars” in his diagram were in fact not sugars (but their precursors), and that the molecules do not depict double or triple-bonds where and if they should(like in the N=C bonds in the RNA base). Szostak apparently says to Tour that this is a mistake by the artist contracted to draw the diagram.
That is technically correct, there is no other way to state it. I just don’t see how it’s much of a problem exactly because it’s not the primary literature but instead a pop-sci article.
And despite my deep and intense atheistic biases that makes me hate Tour and distrust everything he says (h/t Eddie)*, I believe what Tour reports about the conversation he had with Jack Szostak.
But Tour likes to emphasize it because he wants to fit it into a story about how there’s some big unique issue with dishonest science communication in the origin of life field that makes people think we are closer to solving it than we are. How not including double bonds, or calling them simple sugars instead of sugar-precursors makes people believe that is anyone’s guess.
Tour makes a big deal of the fact that all the reaction steps aren’t shown from the precursors to RNA nucleotides, and that the simplified diagram just shows heat coming up from below and UV light coming down from above, but this is a much weaker point of his. Having all the reaction steps shown would just make it look technical and laymen would quickly loose interest in seeing a large technical diagram with ten different reaction steps and ten different compound names.
Tour tries to present this issue as if it means scientists are disingenuously claiming to be much closer to solving the origin of life than they are because they are deliberately trying to make it appear simpler than it is, and that this kind of leaving out details in public presentations is somehow uniquely excessive a problem in the OOL field, which is where his complaints jumps off the rails. It’s part of his “in the backrooms of science” apologetic.
I’d just like to challenge anyone to go find pop-sci articles from other fields and find that they are accurate and fully represent all the details.
The conversion of fiber (that’s not fiber in the diagram, it looks like a trimer of something that is impossible to tell what is, could be benzene rings? cyclic hexane?) into Butyrate (here depicted as 2-Methylpentane) leaves out basically all the reaction steps catalyzed by enzymes in the bacteria, and countless other simplifications. Clearly the dietary researchers are trying to keep the details hidden and pretend they’re much closer to a cure or understanding of obesity than they are.
Scientists have sensitive BS detectors, and they are made even more sensitive when it is apparent someone has a theological axe to grind. It is obvious that Tour has a theological problem with the basic concept of abiogenesis, so it is a bit difficult to take his criticisms seriously at face value. What Tour has done is try his hardest to seed doubt through obsfucation and bad arguments, all in an effort to arrive at a conclusion he already held, which is “God did it”.
The origin-of-life model offered by Rana and Ross fails on two grounds. First, their biblical model slips in considerable scientific material without acknowledgment, and they then failed to present any evidence for those parts that are original. Second, they have offered a caricature of origin-of-life research in their so-called “naturalistic predictions.” The greatest difference of course is that science never appeals to divine intervention to do the heavy lifting.
Do we know how life originated on earth? No. Is every one of the innumerable chemical and geological events that led to the origin of life preserved? No. Is this “proof” of a supernatural origin of life? No. Nevertheless, the origin of life will be the last refuge for “God of the gaps” arguments in decades to come.
Thanks for your honesty @Rumraket. Regarding the diagram in question, I think we all agree that it’s a minor issue overall. But whether a popular piece or original research, the diagram and article in question was published with the backing of one of the world’s most prestigious science journals and written by one of the world’s leading authorities on origin of life research. So in that setting I would say it’s a notable blunder.
Looking over your other comments I’m having a hard time following exactly what your general complaint is. So if you don’t mind, I’m just going to put down my take on things and see what you’re response is.
If you watch his youtube talk for about 30 min. from about 14:00 - 43:00 he talks about all the obstacles that OOL faces from facts established in chemical research. Then for about 7 min. from 43:00 to about 50:00 he talks about the mistakes and misrepresentations that are in print, namely in text books and scientific journals.
So as far as I can tell, first he’s making his main case for how complex the problems for OOL is in order to show that in his estimation there’s no way that we’re even close to finding a solution. Then he’s making a briefer related case for how errors and misrepresentations of OOL research are present in publications where, to him, the mistaken impression is given that OOL research is close to finding a solution.
Now it’s arguable as to whether the latter is argued well or not. But that’s really just a side issue. What the main issue of his talk is, and seems to me what needs to be dealt with by those who disagree with him, is the actual established facts from chemical research that he puts forth as evidence for his main claim.
Seems to me, since rather than an absence of evidence, the abundance of evidence that is in dispute is in support of theism, I think it’s more a dim view of naturalism when it can only be found in our ignorance.
According to Hurd, Tour was lying when he criticized as scientifically inaccurate two figures in Jack Szostak’s article labeled “Simple sugars.” When I asked Tour about this criticism, he responded that Szostak himself conceded to him that these figures were inaccurate! Tour wrote me:
As listed, the sugars do not look like sugars. One needs to have the double bond shown to one of the oxygen atoms or they are not sugars. Shown are a diol and a triol. Even Jack, when he and I spoke on the phone, conceded that point. And he blamed the error on a staff artist from Scientific American, and the mistake was transcribed when the article was used by Nature."
Now from me to Jack Szostak, and he to me;
Did you admit that the Nature illustration was a fraud?
Did you blame the fraud on the magazine illustrators?
"Dear Gary,
Of course the answer is no to your {X} questions. "
There is more I’ll use in a new YouTube, and blog.
I’d say it’s almost totally irrelevant, because anyone who looks at the diagram and knows anything about organic chemistry, and genetics, can see what it’s supposed to be. I could see it was supposed to be an RNA nucleotide, despite the lacking double bonds, and I don’t have a PhD in organic chemistry.
If you think it’s a “notable blunder” then there is simply no limit to how many notable blunders you can find in pop-sci articles. I gave an example above, from the same journal. All the reaction steps are missing, and both compounds have very unclear or straightforwardly wrong structures, and it’s a diagram detailing some findings of medical research. Much science is simplified when presented to the public, this isn’t uniquely a problem in the origin of life field. Why isn’t James Tour picking on all these other fields of science for how public presentations are simplified?
Looking over your other comments I’m having a hard time following exactly what your general complaint is.
That James Tour is misrepresenting the state of the field for apologetics purposes. He does a lot of work trying to make it seem as if you can get close to any imaginable nonsense published in the origin of life field, but the examples he picks are bad and not actually from the primary literature.
Since they are not actually from the primary literature, but simplifications intended for a lay audience, whatever issues one may find with details being left out or simplified are not at all unique to the OOL field, as the example that took me 5 minutes to find shows.
If you watch his youtube talk for about 30 min. from about 14:00 - 43:00 he talks about all the obstacles that OOL faces from facts established in chemical research. Then for about 7 min. from 43:00 to about 50:00 he talks about the mistakes and misrepresentations that are in print, namely in text books and scientific journals.
I haven’t watched the whole video and I can’t be bothered because then I’d want to respond to it, but since it’s in video form I then have to try to faithfully reproduce what Tour says, but in writing and that’s just more than I can be bothered with. I have responded in another thread to some of Tour’s writings on the origin of life, so if you can find anything Tour says in that video but online in writing I’d be happy to explain to you why the issues he brings up don’t constitute even mildly significant evidence for his central thesis.
Mind you, Tour has claimed in writing that we know from chemistry that life should not exist. I’m not paraphrasing here. See that other thread.
So as far as I can tell, first he’s making his main case for how complex the problems for OOL is in order to show that in his estimation there’s no way that we’re even close to finding a solution.
And already this I would take issue with. I’m guessing he brings up the same perceived problems he’s brought up in his essay previously. One of the biggest problems in Tour’s entire case is that he assumes, without actually knowing whether it is the case, that the first form of life had a level of complexity comparable to modern bacteria and were based on the same molecules.
This assumption then feeds into almost all the issues he raises. Life today uses homochiral polymers, so Tour thinks if the products of some reaction yields a racemic mixture then it couldn’t work in the origin of life. Life today uses phospholipids for the cell membrane, so Tour thinks if those are not produced, or if alternative lipids are not as effective as phospholipids at forming a barrier, then again it couldn’t work, without even knowing if another type of barrier could function. Autotrophic organisms today can biosynthesize all their constituents from simple precursors found in the environment, so Tour thinks the origin of life requires the first stage of life to also be an autotroph capable of biosynthesizing the same large repertoire of molecules that modern cells are based on.
But how does he know that these are actually universal requirements of life? How does he know there isn’t another chemical reaction network possible that involves, or is at least not rendered incompetent by a racemic mix products? He doesn’t actually know that.
How does he know another type of fatty acids can’t yield a functional cell membrane? He doesn’t actually know that.
How does he know that a form of life that lives as an autotroph but gets some of it’s constituents from the nonbiological chemical sources directly (such as amino acids?) instead of having to biosynthesize them up from simpler precursors, is not possible? He doesn’t actually know that.
One could go on and on here. Basically one of the issues is that Tour only considers life as we know it, but has no idea about life as we don’t know it. Earlier life, more primitive and simpler life, life based on different chemistries that later evolved into life as we know it? This is never factored into any of his emphasized problems.
If we don’t join Tour in making the assumption that life began as we know it, using the same compounds and having relatively similar levels of complexity, then most of his problems just become question marks. Are those things actually required for life? We don’t actually know that they are problems and Tour can’t claim to know that they are. Things are like this now =/= they must have always been that way and couldn’t possibly function in another way.
We don’t know enough about the phenomenon of life to be able to claim what forms it can take. But that’s exactly what Tour is doing. He is claiming to know that “life should not exist, this we know from chemistry”, which implicitly assumes that there is no transitional stage between modern life as we know it, and non-life. Either we are looking at rocks and water, or E coli, and there’s nothing in between. But how does he know that?
Then he’s making a briefer related case for how errors and misrepresentations of OOL research are present in publications where, to him, the mistaken impression is given that OOL research is close to finding a solution.
I’d have to see examples of that because it seems to me researchers are always straightforwardly stating that they don’t know how life originated, that they are working on it, and that there are still open questions to be solved and much debate in the field.
The problem is here that Tour claims there is no progress in the field at all, and that’s just not true.
What the main issue of his talk is, and seems to me what needs to be dealt with by those who disagree with him, is the actual established facts from chemical research that he puts forth as evidence for his main claim.
Besides what has been mentioned above, if you want to see some of those putative facts discussed here you’d have to write them down and I’d tell you what (if anything) I think is problematic about it. I don’t want to have to watch his presentation and then write down every sentence or statement I think is problematic.
