It seems pretty obvious to me that Art is aware that “RNA world” refers to the OoL hypothesis. To be honest, suggesting that anyone even vaguely familiar with the evolution/ID “debate” sphere is unaware of what the “RNA world” is with relation to the origin of life is pretty far-fetched.
You took the first part of his comment, “If you live in an RNA world”, and disagreed with it. It seems to me that the appropriate response would have been “Yes, we live in an RNA world now, but that doesn’t prove that the origin of life involved an RNA world scenario”, not “No, I don’t (live in an RNA world now)”.
Yes, he is, which is why I found it counter-productive when he shifted meanings on me. He knew, or should have known, that I was talking about the phrase as it is used in origin of life discussions. He has read Meyer, talked to Nelson, etc.
I would never say that, because the presence of the “RNA World” origins scenario always colors that phrase for me, and in terms of that scenario, we DO NOT live in an RNA world now. Read Cech’s statement again. We now live in a world in which RNA does not perform all the functions it is supposed to have performed in the RNA world. Those multiple functions are now handled by the DNA-RNA-protein arrangement. The world we live in today is a DNA-RNA-protein world, not just an RNA world. The phrase is materially misleading as a description of the workings of modern cells. So I would never use it.
But even allowing that Art meant something like “a world in which RNA is very, very important”, which I have no problem with, the fact that RNA is very important in modern life doesn’t count against my original comment. (And you have to go up one more exchange than you did to find my original comment and Art’s original response.) I was taking a shot at the “RNA world” origin of life hypothesis.
If Art wanted to refute my point, which was wholly about origins, he should have shown me why the “RNA world” is a good origins hypothesis. Instead, he shifted ground to talk about how important RNA was in modern organisms (which I grant). And even then, he exaggerated. To describe a system of life which is based on a close interaction of three necessary components – DNA, RNA, and proteins – as an “RNA world” is just plain intellectually sloppy, and it’s not any less sloppy because biologists with famous names do so.
@Eddie presumes to call Tom Cech intellectually sloppy. I think it far more likely that @Eddie doesn’t have clue one about any of this. There is plenty of evidence in this thread that supports my contention.
Really? Is the peptide transferase that synthesizes ALL of the proteins in your body a protein, or is it a ribozyme?
Would you mind dialing the arrogance WAY back? In addition to being arrogant, you’re just wrong.
That’s pure sophistry. Art is an RNA biologist. Here’s his latest paper:
Do you see anything about plants in there, Eddie?
@moderators, I think that we need to prohibit those who use pseudonyms from saying anything about their own or others’ qualifications. This is just ludicrous, as Eddie’s descended to deception about Art’s in this case.
As usual, John Mercer makes errors. First of all, he chides me for calling Arthur Hunt a Plant Biologist instead of an RNA biologist. Well, presumably with Arthur’s own consent, his handle here reads: “Plant Biologist”. I think I can be forgiven for characterizing Art with a label of his own choosing.
Second, the article JAM cites is not about the origin of life, and therefore is not a counterexample to my claim.
This thread has gotten a bit out of hand. We’ve spent 30 posts and 5 hrs discussing the phrase “RNA Wold” itself and gotten basically nowhere on the topic at hand. So, let’s all take a deep breath, stretch, take a walk or something, and then perhaps start over in a new thread on the current state of OoL research. Does that seem reasonable?
I am curious to hear from @Art and others more details about what’s going on in RNA and I’m curious how @Eddie would define “progress” in OoL research and how we might make some measure of it. Sometimes science goes in fits and starts, sometimes it seems like fair steady headway. This may need to be another thread though, as I said, if we can’t get back on track here.
The subject under dispute was never simply “RNA”. My very first comment, which started this whole mess, was very clearly about the “RNA World” theory of the origin of life. All responsibility for diverting the subject from that to RNA in general must be laid at the doorstep of others here, not myself.
The problem wasn’t that you “called him” a plant biologist, it’s that you presumed that (even a self-described) “plant biologist” had no relevant expertise when discussing RNA. My handle (which I’m happy with) says I’m an “evolutionary biologist”, but that doesn’t mean I have no expertise outside of “evolutionary biology”. In fact, I’m really an “evolutionary developmental biologist”, but that’s a bit of an unnecessarily long title. It means that I have some expertise relevant to discussions about developmental biology, even though my handle doesn’t make that obvious.
TL;DR don’t assume that a 2-word handle adequately communicates a person’s breadth of expertise.
A subject about which Art knows far more than you do. You are engaging in pure sophistry. Please stop.
I’m interested in an answer to my question:
Is the peptidyl transferase that synthesizes ALL of the proteins in your body a protein, or is it a ribozyme?
@Jordan, buried in some of my posts above are some ideas from me and from a review authored by Tom Cech. I am happy to pull things together, if you can give me some guidance.
@Art@Mercer You make a very good point about anonymous users. They should not be able to cast judgment on others’ credentials, nor should they be able to tout their own. A virtual person has no credentials.
No, I didn’t presume that, and I didn’t say or imply it. I said that Art Hunt was not an expert in the origin of life, and did not publish in that area. If that is false, I will retract it.
Obviously a plant biologist could have great knowledge of RNA. But we were discussing the meaning of one term – RNA world – as that term is used in discussions of the origin of life (How many times do I have to repeat that qualification, before biologists here register?)
I never questioned Art Hunt’s knowledge of RNA. Presumably he knows much more about it than I do. It doesn’t follow that he knows any more about how the term “RNA World” is used in discussions of the origin of life than I do. Some people here have the odd idea that ID proponents never read any scientific literature. In fact, the meaning I had in mind for the term is the one given by Cech in his first definition – the one pertaining directly to origin of life.
If this were a graduate seminar in the humanities, this terminological confusion would have lasted all of two minutes. Any questioner would have said, “OK, I see what you mean by that term now, and for the purpose for which you are using it, it is accurate.” Once my clarification of the term was explicitly stated, that should have been enough to drop all quarrels about the term and get on with the substance. But now we’ve spent thousands of words arguing about a mere term, about who is a specialist in what, and all kinds of things that are just froth on the surface of the subject I raised, which is whether RNA World is a very plausible hypothesis for the origin of life. There is a weird combativeness here that makes some scientists defensive about very small matters – words and personalities and who is in whose weight class and who is not.
I wish this principle had been in force on BioLogos, when some prominent posters here, using pseudonyms instead of real names, cast judgment on others’ credentials, and touted their own. Oh well, consistency across internet origins sites is not to be expected, I guess, even when the personnel are the same…
Moderators shut this thread down. This is ridiculous. This is happening to more and more threads here now and it’s making the forum lose its attractiveness
