Media Science

Yet another bare assertion.

That’s exactly what you assume with your arguments around things like ubiquitin.

That is a bare assertion.

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No based on your argument from ignorance.

No,
I know there is more then one possible target.

No T this is an observable fact. Lotteries have 5 or 6 balls in the sequence. Human proteins have 50 to 30000 amino acids in their sequences.

I didn’t use an argument from ignorance.

Then what are those targets, and why aren’t they included in your argument? Why do you only ever calculate the odds of a specific ubiquitin sequence emerging?

How many of those sequences have function? You are never able to answer that question with anything approaching valid evidence.

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So you have a model that can build an eye or other complex adaption by evolutionary mechanisms? Please provide a link and I apologize if you show I am wrong here.

Sure I have. We can estimate this by sequence preservation.

We can estimate it but it is so remote calculating it is silly.

The model is mutation and selection, and it is supported by the observation of a phylogenetic signal.

No, you can’t. That can only estimate how many residues you can change in a single protein without losing a specific function. It can’t tell you how many amino acid sequences have function.

Bare assertions.

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Here is one example but I guarantee Bill won’t read it.

Eye evolution and its functional basis
Nilsson
Visual Neurosci. 2013 Mar; 30(1-2): 5–20.

Abstract: Eye evolution is driven by the evolution of visually guided behavior. Accumulation of gradually more demanding behaviors have continuously increased the performance requirements on the photoreceptor organs. Starting with nondirectional photoreception, I argue for an evolutionary sequence continuing with directional photoreception, low-resolution vision, and finally, high-resolution vision. Calculations of the physical requirements for these four sensory tasks show that they correlate with major innovations in eye evolution and thus work as a relevant classification for a functional analysis of eye evolution. Together with existing molecular and morphological data, the functional analysis suggests that urbilateria had a simple set of rhabdomeric and ciliary receptors used for directional photoreception, and that organ duplications, positional shifts and functional shifts account for the diverse patterns of eyes and photoreceptors seen in extant animals. The analysis also suggests that directional photoreception evolved independently at least twice before the last common ancestor of bilateria and proceeded several times independently to true vision in different bilaterian and cnidarian groups. This scenario is compatible with Pax -gene expression in eye development in the different animal groups. The whole process from the first opsin to high-resolution vision took about 170 million years and was largely completed by the onset of the Cambrian, about 530 million years ago. Evolution from shadow detectors to multiple directional photoreceptors has further led to secondary cases of eye evolution in bivalves, fan worms, and chitons

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Just to get back to what I assume is a slightly ironic dig at climate change, let me ask Jon Garvey something (though I think it has already been asked). Nearly sixty years ago when I first attended grammar (High) school, a fact I remember learning was the mix of gases that made up the atmosphere and that carbon dioxide was about 280 ppm. I see today it is more than 400 ppm. Does Jon think the consensus explanation for this change (increased combustion of fossil fuel) is accurate?

Yes. But if that is so, it doesn’t explain film-makers making misleading documentaries, and then doubling down by refusing to reveal where and when they filmed, which confusion would take far higher concentrations (an experiment we did in physiology at Cambridge).

So I ask a simple (so far unanswered) question in return: Do you believe the filmmakers’ claim that no polar bears were at the site of filming, when bears actually appear in their footage picking amongst the dead walruses?

Maybe a supplental question, once you’ve responded to that: Is “the noble lie” a valid concept in science?

Oh! OK then.

Good. At least you recognize that.

I’m not sure what that is all about.

Propagandists will use the methods that work for propaganda. That should not be surprising.

I suspect that part of the issue is that people are confused on the question of what is science and what is propaganda. But there’s no reason for that confusion. It ought to be obvious that propaganda is not science.

We’ve known that humans are changing the CO2 balance. We have known that for maybe 60 years. For most of that time, the scientists have been busy studying the issue and its consequences, and trusting the policy makers to act on the information that they were providing.

After 50 years of inaction on the policy front, some scientists have started engaging in policy discussions. And yes, that can involve propaganda, as a way of getting people’s attention. That’s hardly surprising. Scientists are humans, too. And they have human concerns about the future of our species.

Here’s the rule: if it appears in a research journal, it is science. If it appears in public policy discussion, it is not science but it might be scientists trying to persuade the policy makers.

Yes. Goebbels did that, but it matters that he lied in order to gain public support. I don’t hear Greta Thunberg saying, “Believe the scientists, but take the documentaries and the demonstrations and the government expressions of horror wiith a pinch of salt.”

Me, I just prefer evidence that isn’t manipulated.

By the way, I was around the Green Movement 50 years ago, and the threat was then global cooling. It’s bloody lucky they ignored the Russian guy promoting ice-cap melting to save the planet in 1972.

Then restrict yourself to the scientific research journals. Because everything else is manipulated.

But I do. And it was to articles on walrus haulouts going back for decades that I first drew attention. But for the people paying the tax bills for climate change, David Attenborough is the most scientific they;ll be given by the BBC (and it’s his B.Sc. zoology credentials that get touted here). It’s sad, because I first started watching Attenborough 60 years ago, and his books that helped get me into zoology. It is very disillusioning to hear him as a mouthpiece for manipulative fiction.

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The existence of a snake oil salesman does not mean all medications are snake oil.

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Sounds like you two need to argue it out.

But there is an interesting paper trail from Goebbels to a literal snake oil saleman, in that before Hitler’s rise, the German Eugenics movement in science, which became the euthanasia programme in medicine, was funded by the US Eugenics movement in the guise of John D Rockefeller, owner of Standard Oil, whose father actually was a genuine snake oil saleman.

Ironically, Rockefeller also took over the pharmaceutical industry in the US and used his money and monopoly to get his influence into the medical school curriculum, which increasingly placed most of its emphasis on patent pharmacology - an influence which had become global by the time I studied medicine and which it was hard for me to get into better perspective through my career. Big oil and big pharma are still things we owe directly to the son of the snake oil saleman.

In 1929 Rockefeller combined Standard Oil with I G Farben, the German chemical and pharmaceutical giant, and provider of Zyklon gas, amongst many other products useful to Mr Goebbels ambitions.

So the paper trail suggests that, at the time of Goebbels, there was a real sense in which many, if not all, medications were indeed snake oil. History is fascinating, isn’t it?

I’m guessing that no amount of information is going to budge you?

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From what, exactly? This thread has been about documentaries giving false information, but nobody, least of all you, has provided even one jot of information about that, or about anything else, really.

But I’ve been reading some very informative papers whilst the crickets have been singing.