A few years ago, James Tour challenged various prominent origin-of-line researchers to meet any of five various challenges:
Linking of amino acids into chains (aka polypeptides)
Linking of nucleotides into RNA molecules
Linking of simple sugars (aka monosaccharides) into chains known as polysaccharides
Origin of biological information
Assembly of components into a cell
Tour assigned three of the OOL researchers to evaluate the results, none of which were forthcoming! No replies were received, none of the challenges was met.
Can you explain what it is you are asking or think is noteworthy in the article? What you posted simply seems to indicate:
James Tour makes demands and “assigns” tasks to various people and is complaining that they’ve ignored him…
… and OOL research is just one of many scientific fields of study which proceeds slowly, as in decades or even centuries before its grandest mysteries get explained.
So your point is that none of the scientists involved works for or answers to Tour in their employment or academic positions but Tour is impatient that nobody responded with the alacrity he demanded? (Indeed, the “60 day challenge” is particularly presumptuous, and even a bit silly, especially when Tour is not a major researcher in the field himself.)
I know from occasionally following this “challenge” online that a number of researchers have indeed responded in various academic venues—though perhaps not to Tour directly—but Tour is assuming that he and he alone is the final arbiter of what is an adequate answer. He expects them to address him directly and not just comment/publish on the topics he broaches, which are questions many in that field are exploring and discussing.)
I have two questions for you:
Why would anyone want to take time away from their research to help bolster Tour’s public visibility—especially if they don’t want to give the Discovery Institute (and their “center”) the attention they don’t believe it deserves? After all, the Discovery Institute has often promoted pseudo-science, such as anti-vax conspiracy theories. They lost my respect long ago and I will assume that many scientists share my reservations about their science and culture center. I certainly wouldn’t want to give the DI any more attention than what it deserves—nor any of its affiliated speakers/writers.
I don’t know whether your views on OOL research are shaped by the Book of Genesis but isn’t it obvious from the Biblical text that it describes humans coming from “the dust of the ground” (i.e., the chemical elements of the physical world) and plants in general being the result of “Let the land bring forth” (Genesis 1:11)? And verse 24 says the same of living creatures.
That is why I certainly affirm abiogenesis: the Bible describes it and the emerging science finds nothing which contradicts it. Abiogenesis simply means living things from non-living materials. That’s what the “dust of the ground” is: soil. [That is, fundamentally in geological terms it is non-living. I do realize that healthy soil is teaming with life.] Indeed, we see this process all the time: plants convert non-living materials in the soil and air and water and produce living material—which feeds other living things. And unless one affirms the opposite of abiogenesis, eternal biogenesis, then there must have been a time in the past when non-living materials first “brought forth” something biologically alive. That’s what OOL research is trying to better understand
On that topic I’ll just mention that I find it interesting that many of my fellow Christ-following, Bible-affirming associates seem to get confused over the difference between ultimate causation and proximate causation. I happen to affirm that God is the ultimate cause of life but that he created proximate causes to bring it about. And those proximate causes, those natural processes, can be summarized under the term abiogenesis, life from non-life. Unless someone insists that God magically “poofs” living things into existence, I suggest that God used the natural processes he created to bring about biological life. Indeed, those natural processes continue. Babies are born every day. Nothing magical or “poofing” about it. The same with the very first living organisms.
I’m fascinated to see what scientists will discover as they identify those natural processes that “brought forth” the first living things from the non-living chemical elements of planet earth. And I’m willing to wait more than 60 days to see those questions answered. Slowly, scientific progress marches onwards.
@lee_merrill, I do appreciate you posting here. And I look forward to your reply. (Nothing is more annoying than a drive-by post-and-run. We get some of those here.)
Well, James Tour is on a mission to point out that we are not making progress, even on the simplest steps! Thus the challenge. And the goalposts keep moving further away, the more we know about the cell and its astonishing complexity. So he points out that origin-of-life claims are actually quite misleading, most people, in fact, believe scientists have created simple cells! Here is one example that seems to say we have made substantial progress, implying we are close, even speaking of creating proto-life in the lab: “From sparking amino acids to evolving entire protocells, these 15 groundbreaking experiments reveal just how close science has come to unraveling life’s ancient mysteries. Each achievement pushes the boundaries of synthetic biology, challenging our ideas about what it means to be ‘alive.’ As we continue to create proto-life in the lab, we not only deepen our understanding of our origins but also invite profound questions about humanity’s place in the universe.” Tour says instead, “It’s a scam!” Here is a talk Tour gave recently, it’s a scream.
And yes, Genesis does record God making Adam from dust, and saying “let the earth produce”, but no one claims a human can come directly from dust by a natural process, and the prospect that life came from non-life is very problematic.
I would be interested in the details! And I’m sure Tour would be interested, too. But again, Tour asked three origin-of-life researches to evaluate any results, he didn’t set himself up as the arbiter.
Tour has actually had public discussions with Lee Cronin, as I recall, and Jack Szostak responded to Tour’s critique of a article Szostak had written. So they are not totally ignoring him, and the lack of response to Tour’s challenge seems to indicate that they actually have no answers.
Well, the problem is that OOL research is stuck! See the talk mentioned above. And it actually seems to be going backwards, we keep discovering more and more complexity that would be required in the first cell, the goalposts are constantly getting farther away. It is not proceeding slowly.
And the claims being made, and trumpeted, and believed, are alas, preposterous. This is what Tour is saying.
Welcome to the world of pop-science websites, such as that sciencesensei.com. Yes, what scientists state with careful nuance, journalists (and non-journalists with websites) hype with reckless abandon. That’s not the fault of the scientific method.
Welcome to the scientific method. Lots of research is slow. And, yes, new mysteries get revealed along the way. Nothing new here. Tour’s argument seems to be “This is a really really really difficult investigation. So it must be impossible!”
I agree—because nobody makes that claim. Including the Genesis text. Indeed, the Bible in general makes no attempt to identify and explain the natural processes (the proximate causes) God utilizes in his creation. Meanwhile, my mother made me from dust (the chemical elements of planet earth) by natural processes so I find nothing surprising about abiogenesis, biological life from non-living ingredients.
Exactly who is getting “scammed” when scientists seek explanations for what they observe?
I certainly agree that journalists and websites love to exaggerate. It’s called clickbait.
But they have responded, at times, as I pointed out in my previous post. Is Tour’s view that OOL research is making no progress, not perceptive? Where is the progress that Tour is looking for, and asking for? These OOL scientists have invested their lives in this, and made their career in this, what have they got to show for it? Recently an OOL scientist said the formose reaction is not an effective way to make sugars. Strike that off the list of prominent claims. Tour has been pointing this out for years.
The problem is that Tour, being a complete amateur in this field, does not know what he should be looking and asking for. And the pros really have better things to do than feed his need for self-promotion.
Well, here we read, “Abiogenesis has occurred in a crude environment, with a limited range of organic molecules, but rich in water and minerals.” That’s an incautious statement, in a scientific paper. How do they know this occurred, exactly? Even the word “protocell” in the article, which gets used a lot in papers, is misleading. People will think “prototype”, right? They made a little cell. But they haven’t, no wonder people get confused. As Tour points out in his talk (you did check it out?) the membranes OOL researchers make are very simple, they are nothing like real cell membranes, with ion channels (protocells don’t have them), carbohydrates, and so on. Real cell membranes are very complex. Real cells are ridiculously complex, so saying you’ve made a protocell is not careful, nor nuanced, at all.
Tour doesn’t say that, actually, he says he doesn’t know if some day this will be solved. And Tour’s point is that no progress has been made, and yet scientists are claiming all over the place to have made progress, and people believe them. In fact, the article referenced above is titled “Protocells: Milestones and Recent Advances”. But this is just misleading, incautious, and wrong.
Well, eggs and sperm are not non-living ingredients. This does not have anything to do with abiogenesis.
The problem is that they are not observing anything! They are not making progress. And also that they have no explanations, as demonstrated by the silence following Tour’s challenge. But people believe what they hear, about protocells, about the building blocks of life being created or being found on meteorites. When we get building blocks, then it’s just a matter of assembly? So close? But that’s a misunderstanding, a profound misunderstanding…
Please do not Quote Mine. That is a review paper, and appears to be referring to the presumed environment of Earth when abiogenesis is thought to have occurred, not to any specific published result.
“Since the early 2000s, there is a body of new works appearing at a steady pace, addressing protocell environments based on predominantly inorganic components. Mizuuchi et al. reviewed possible inorganic environments for compartmentalization, including gas bubbles, atmospheric compartments and ice crystals[117] (Figure 4d–e). Very recently, Laneselli et al. showed evidence that trapped gas bubbles in heated microsized rock pores can affect coacervate protocell populations and support growth, fusion, division and selection of the droplets.[68] Moreover, the formation of multi-compartmentalized layers, consisting of gas bubbles entrapped in a mixture of surfactant-like molecules near the water surface has been introduced as the ‘scum hypothesis.’”
Um, bubbles? Crystals? Droplets? The OOL researchers have produced nothing like a cell membrane, was Tour’s point, which still clearly stands. Where are the ion channels? Without them a cell dies, they are not optional. And so on, and so on.
OK, I challenge you to explain how you know the state of OoL research. You’ve now told me how I should interpret your failure to do so, as well as your lack of response to @Dan_Eastwood’s pointing out your quote mining.
Pretty sure that scientists think a proto-cell is instead a much more simple entity that lies somewhere on the path to cellular life as we know it. And it’s almost like nobody within the field itself is under any illusions that this is what the concept refers to, and since scientists first and foremost publish articles intended to be read by other scientists, it’s rather ridiculous to think they’re trying to mislead the public by calling them proto-cells. If they really did mean to imply they were like extant cells in function and complexity, why would they even bother with the word “proto”?
Protocell to me seems to imply something either/a combination of early, first, simple, and more primitive. Less capable than the more polished, better tested and refined, “final” product. In that sense the word protocell just doesn’t seem to me problematic at all and I detect a certain amount of desire to give very uncharitable and negative readings of the literature in this field.
On the contrary. Protocells are thought to have used fatty acid membranes which are semi-permeable*, and in extant protocell models therefore ion-channels (or other forms of proteins that can transport molecules across the membrane) weren’t necessary to exchange materials with the environment.
In other words, origin of life researchers do not consider it as axiomatic that protocells would need to have modern cell membranes from the beginning, and are pursuing models where the semi-permeability of earlier membrane analogoues could still be functionally useful to early, more primitive cells.
They didn’t answer Tour’s challenge, for one. He has good answers for those who set out to refute him, for another (almost all of them bloggers and YouTube people).
That’s easy, what progress has been made since Miller-Urey in 1953? A few more amino acids? All still racemic? How do you generate sugars, after the formose reaction has been discredited by an OOL researcher? The most basic steps are still needing to be made, Tour’s challenge illustrates that.
James Tour is an expert in synthesis. Should I trust you instead? What progress has been made since Miller-Urey? Do you have any answer to Tour’s challenge?
Again, what is the different meaning when context is included? If there is a different meaning, that would be quote-mining. So what is it?