Is this how ID Creationists think science is done?

[T.j_Runyon]

@T_aquaticus

It didn’t sound like a major conference. I count just 24 talks, which is extremely tiny.

Yes, thank you! My local (state level) archaeology conference had twice that. This wasn’t some huge conference like the ID side was making it out to be.

[Faizal_Ali]

@Eddie

Faisal Ali, who isn’t an evolutionary biologist, but a psychiatrist, has said the whole Royal Society conference was a waste of time, but I don’t believe that the organizers would have invested the time and effort to bring so many evolutionary biologists together if they thought the whole exercise was a waste of time – and presumably they know more about the state of evolutionary theory than Faisal Ali does.

Douglas Futuyma almost certainly knows more about evolutionary biology than the organizers of the conference or anyone else who was there. He seems to think it was a waste of time.

But, hey, if it wasn’t, then why don’t you cite some of the ground breaking and paradigm shifting research that has resulted from the conference? Provide some of the recent papers that have cited the work presented there.

BTW, exactly what is your field of expertise? I don’t actually know. It says “Religious Studies and Natural Theology” beside your name, but that must be some kind of joke, right? I can hardly think of a field less relevant to evolutionary biology. With the air of expertise and authority you imbue your posts here, you must be at least an Associate Professor in the biology department of some major university, right? Which one, exactly? Don’t be so modest and try pass yourself off as a mere enthusiast of “natural theology”, as if anyone even takes that seriously anymore.

[Robert_Byers]

I remember this conference as it was given a great deal of ink at the time. Cool to see it brought up again. most science conferences end with the desert.~
The merits of it must come from everyone and not the OLD GUARD.
Claims that biology origins have been figured out is strange considering its glorious complexity.
Of coarse as a YEC i would say NEVER have i seen bioogical scientific evidence for evolution and all that. This because they have none.
I think the educational syatem for kids must/should be involved in discussing options about origins. It would introduce, interest, move kids into thyese fields.
the present immoral, illegalt censorship from the post WWoo liberal left judicial wing can be ignored and , hopefully, new cases overthrow the misuse of the constitution to ban the search for truth in our mutual inheritance of origins. Something Trumb could do with better judges etc etc.
Anyways.
the attrition of truth will bring a soon completion of the revolution in origin matters.
Not just ID but YEC were relevant folks. Lets not go to court over patents eh.

[Faizal_Ali]

There ya go, @Eddie. Someone who agrees with you. You must be so proud.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Eddie

Would they have held a whole conference if the only person out of step, was, say, Shapiro? I can’t imagine they would have gone to all the work to deal with the objections of one man. Obviously more than a handful of people were making rumblings about the current state of evolutionary theory, or the conference would never have been held. Perhaps, since you seem to have implicitly declared yourself an expert on evolutionary theory, you can tell us what those rumblings were, and why the conference organizers were persuaded they at least deserved a hearing.

You’re still grasping at straws…

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

I have attended meetings like the ASM general conference. That is a major conference. There are over 4,000 abstracts submitted for this years conference, and there are usually 7,000 to 8,000 attendees.

All the papers were on just one area of biological theory?

Anyhow, I didn’t mean major in terms of number of attendees. I meant major in terms of the issue addressed. The issues addressed was whether current evolutionary theory was fine, and just needed the usual adjustments needed by any scientific theory, or whether it needed a major rethinking. That is an important question. As I already said, you don’t find societies of civil engineers holding a conference to deal with the charges of a significant minority of their members that the principles used in building all the dams in the world may have been seriously faulty, and hence a large number of dams will probably burst in the next ten years. There are no civil engineers who hold such a radical view, so such a conference would never be held to address such a view.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

@Eddie

Here is a snippet from Gunter Wagner’s homepage at Yale:

hrough our work on the evolution of gene regulation in endometrial stromal cells (see below), we found that transcription factor protein changes are likely to be associated with and may be even instrumental in the origin of evolutionary novelties, such as new cell types (see Lynch et al., 2008, PNAS). Hence we think that in fact, and consistent with the cis-regulatory paradigm, most gene regulatory changes are due to nucleotide substitutions in existing enhancers and promoters. But in the context of evolutionary transformation that require the evolution of novel functional specificities of transcription factors novel protein-protein interaction arise, necessitating the evolution of the transcription factor proteins themselves. We are aware that this is still a poorly tested hypothesis but our research focus is to investigate the biochemical changes that are associated with adaptive amino acid substitutions in transcription factors.
Gunter Wagner | Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

That looks like standard mutations and selection. Can you explain why this doesn’t fit into the modern theory of evolution?

Of course Wagner does not ditch all of modern evolutionary theory. I would not expect him to. It is possible to have bold new insights in a field without rejecting all or most of the field. So the presence of typical genetics discussions in his writing is only to be expected. But he also says some other things.

For example, do you think that most of the people you are calling mainstream evolutionary theorists would warm to this statement from Wagner’s recent book?:

"Life is so much richer than the arid, abbreviated language of population genetics can represent. I say this as someone who spent considerable amounts of my time working in theoretical population genetics. The one glaring omission in the ontology of population genetics is its lack of a concept for “organism,” except as a collection of genes and as the produce of fitness differences.

“This is fine for what population genetics wishes to achieve: understanding changes in gene and genotype frequencies. However, it is a problem if it is seen as the only legitimate perspective on evolution, because important facts about life and evolution are screened from view. Specifically, any aspects of the structure and development of organisms are off the list of relevant phenomena because, in population genetics, there is simply no way to talk about these things. For example, the question of how complex body plans arise is not within the reach of population genetics; neither are questions on how complex organisms can arise from random mutations and selection. The latter is perhaps the biggest problem, given that Darwinism aims to explain all of evolution.”

–Gunter P. Wagner, Homology, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation (Princeton, 2014), p. 11.

For a large chunk of Chapter 1 of the book, see Amazon.com.

I’m surprised you aren’t familiar with this book, given your avowed interest in evolutionary biology. It has the strong endorsement of Futuyma, and it won an NAS award:

“Winner of the 2018 Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal, National Academy of Sciences”

(I note in passing his use of the term “Darwinism” in a way much like that employed by ID people. That a leading Yale evolutionary biologist employs the term in this way gives the lie to the idea that it is never used that way by current biologists. But that’s an aside. I’m more interested in your comments on the passage.)

[Faizal_Ali]

@Eddie

For example, do you think that most of the people you are calling mainstream evolutionary theorists would warm to this statement from Wagner’s recent book?:

No, they won’t. Because it betrays how utterly ignorant of current scholarship Wagner is. How is it possible that he has never heard of Evo Devo??!!

Evolutionary developmental biology

[Faizal_Ali]

@Eddie

I note in passing his use of the term “Darwinism” in a way much like that employed by ID people. That a leading Yale evolutionary biologist employs the term in this way gives the lie to the idea that it is never used that way by current biologists.

It is also used that way by current non-creationist biologists who are not up to date on current evolutionary biology. Biology is a huge field and no one can keep up on everything. Unfortunately, biology is one of those topics upon which people feel entitled to expound with faux authority despite not understanding it.

[Faizal_Ali]

@Eddie

The issues addressed was whether current evolutionary theory was fine, and just needed the usual adjustments needed by any scientific theory, or whether it needed a major rethinking. That is an important question.

Yes, and the answer was clear: Evolution theory is just fine.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

All the papers were on just one area of biological theory?

ASM is the American Society for Microbiology, so it was just one area of biology.

@Eddie

Anyhow, I didn’t mean major in terms of number of attendees. I meant major in terms of the issue addressed. The issues addressed was whether current evolutionary theory was fine, and just needed the usual adjustments needed by any scientific theory, or whether it needed a major rethinking.

Again, you are inventing things that just aren’t true. The vast majority of biologists thought the EES crowd were blowing smoke. The EES supporters created a meeting, and some of the biological community attended. As expected, they were blowing smoke. There was nothing major about the meeting.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

"Life is so much richer than the arid, abbreviated language of population genetics can represent. I say this as someone who spent considerable amounts of my time working in theoretical population genetics. The one glaring omission in the ontology of population genetics is its lack of a concept for “organism,” except as a collection of genes and as the produce of fitness differences.

“This is fine for what population genetics wishes to achieve: understanding changes in gene and genotype frequencies. However, it is a problem if it is seen as the only legitimate perspective on evolution, because important facts about life and evolution are screened from view. Specifically, any aspects of the structure and development of organisms are off the list of relevant phenomena because, in population genetics, there is simply no way to talk about these things. For example, the question of how complex body plans arise is not within the reach of population genetics; neither are questions on how complex organisms can arise from random mutations and selection. The latter is perhaps the biggest problem, given that Darwinism aims to explain all of evolution.”

–Gunter P. Wagner, Homology, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation (Princeton, 2014), p. 11.

Wagner is doing the research showing how complex organisms can arise from random mutations and selection. Didn’t you read his webpage at Yale? Wagner is using the standard theory of evolution to do those very things.

[Art (Arthur Hunt)]

@Faizal_Ali

No, they won’t. Because it betrays how utterly ignorant of current scholarship Wagner is. How is it possible that he has never heard of Evo Devo??!!

I think this is uncalled for. Wagner’s work fits right in with Evo-devo, as his references to (among others) the work of Eric Davidson indicates. The matter of how biochemistry, molecular genetics, and population genetics may mesh is an ongoing and interesting one, and the fields converge ever so slightly with each passing month. No threat to evolution, popgen, or any other sub-field here.

[Art (Arthur Hunt)]

@Eddie

Anyhow, I didn’t mean major in terms of number of attendees. I meant major in terms of the issue addressed. The issues addressed was whether current evolutionary theory was fine, and just needed the usual adjustments needed by any scientific theory, or whether it needed a major rethinking.

I think the point is, @Eddie, you seem to be giving undue credit and influence to what seems to be a “clique” of sorts. It would be much better for you to review the proceedings for any of the recent meetings of the so-called Evolution Conference, or perhaps some other evolution meetings of similar scope.

[Faizal_Ali]

@Art

I think this is uncalled for. Wagner’s work fits right in with Evo-devo, as his references to (among others) the work of Eric Davidson indicates.

Ah, my apologies. I should not have assumed @Eddie was providing a quote that accurately reflected Wagner’s position.

[evograd (Blogging Graduate Student)]

@Faizal_Ali

Ah, my apologies. I should not have assumed @Eddie was providing a quote that accurately reflected Wagner’s position.

I think you may have misread the quote. Wagner is talking about the need for more than just population genetics in evolutionary theory, which is why he works in Evo-Devo, considering the organisms and their structure and development. It’s not a particularly controversial statement, and reflects Wagner’s views quite well.

[davecarlson]

You know who likes to assign and discuss Gunter Wagner’s papers in his evolution classes? Doug Futuyma.

[evograd (Blogging Graduate Student)]

For those who didn’t already know, then audio of all of the talks presented at the 2016 Royal Society meeting are available online to listen to:

New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social...

(Scroll down to the schedule of talks, click on “more details” for one of the sessions, then click on any of the “Listen to the audio (mp3)” links.)

[Faizal_Ali]

@evograd

It’s not a particularly controversial statement, and reflects Wagner’s views quite well.

How odd. @Eddie is saying that Wagner is a highly controversial figure who rejects standard evolutionary theory in ways that will upset most people in the field. Are you saying Eddie is mistaken?

[evograd (Blogging Graduate Student)]

Well, that single statement is non-controversial (despite what Eddie seems to think), but that doesn’t say much about how he’s viewed as a figure. From my perspective he’s not particularly controversial, at least in his published works, but then I’m in his field (Evo-Devo) so I may be on a similar wavelength to Wagner already.