Doesn’t matter. “Eddie” was wrong either way. Not a single person in the history of the English language has correctly used the term “colleague” in the way he claims the common man on the street does. Just wait and see if he is able to come up with even one example.
And we might as well keep talking about this, because there is no way he is going to acknowledge the total refutation of Buggs’s claims regarding phylogenetic trees that has been made in this discussion
I believe that is a picture of the Jonestown mass suicide. Otherwise, point well taken.
It is also noteworthy are that these instances in which large groups of people start to believe things that are patently absurd, with a fervor that it takes over their entire lives, tend to occur in groups of people who have been indoctrinated into a cult under the sway of a charismatic leader. Which is a pretty good description of early Christianity.
But don’t be distracted by this, @Eddie. We want to hear your thoughts on Buggs’s claims regarding phylogenetic trees. Have you determined whether the scientific data backs him up?
They do, you just don’t have a framework that allows you to understand them.
That’s because most of your statements regarding this have been false.
Why would I do that for someone who has always despised me? As Roy wrote:
Yes, you are. Your authoritarian, hierarchical mindset is what is keeping you in the dark. I’ll address the false assumptions that illustrate that.
I’ve never called any of the professors I’ve worked for “Professor” or “Dr.” to their faces. No American (or Russian) I’ve supervised has called me “Professor” or “Dr.” either. Indians start by doing that, but I correct them.
On campus. Where did that come from?
All of the above. Except for the PI, they are all colleagues. Your harping on that term reveals your total inability to understand the collaborative environments in which science is done.
Are you kidding? Grants pay. If I’m a professor on life support on departmental funds, I’m not taking on undergrads.
You really have no clue.
Nope.
His colleagues. It’s a collaborative thing that authoritarians like you have trouble understanding.
All of your questions assume an authoritarian, hierarchical environment that does not exist.
Let’s review. I told you:
Do you not understand what that means?
I’m certain that everyone reading my comments understands them except you, because they aren’t rabid authoritarians. If I’m wrong, anyone who doesn’t is welcome to PM me.
No. Not this thread, Eddie.
That’s because there isn’t a range. Another thing you don’t understand is how the forum is constructed.
Maybe if you started by admitting you don’t have the slightest clue about how science gets done, instead of pretending to be some sort of lofty authority on academia, you’d learn more.
And the same thing happened with Meyer’s false claim that peptidyl transferase (the enzymatic core of the ribosome) is a protein. Meyer cited the Wally Gilbert N&V paper in Nature that described the prediction clearly. So we’re supposed to think that his misrepresenting the fulfillment of that prediction is a mere error?
That’s strong evidence for deception.
What claims? From what I can see he doesn’t actually make any, except that different genes don’t always give you the same tree. He may imply other claims, but it’s not entirely clear what he’s implying.
Ahh yes I see I got my cults mixed up.
Yes, my mistake. So we are back to the earlier question: Exactly what is supposed to be interesting about this lecture, in terms of the topic of phylogenetics? If it was true that most evolutionary biologists believe that the existence of even a single gene tree that diverges from an associated species tree is inconsistent with common descent, then I highly doubt we would hearing about the existence of such divergences for the first time in Buggs’s lecture. And, in any event, that claim is clearly not true. It is based on nothing more than a very trivial misstatement that Richard Dawkins made in a single Youtube video.
Any interest in this video, as far as I can see, is related to it being an example of ID propaganda techniques, with @Eddie and @colewd demonstrating the sort of mentality that allows one to be taken in by such propaganda.
I think you are not right about that. And I will try to address this in as friendly a spirit as I can.
The fact that you found Buggs’ talk “interesting” tells me that you simply haven’t tried to learn anything at all about phylogenetics. That’s fine; most people don’t. I live on a very large city block and there probably aren’t more than a handful of people on this block who could define “phylogenetics” with reasonable accuracy, much less accurately describe its methods.
But you take a particular interest in ID. ID is, as I am sure you understand, directed primarily as a critique of the existing dominant paradigm in biology. That’s why your ID people are always going on about Kuhn and telling us that the next big shift is just 'round the corner.
I think that people expect that since you take a particular interest in this notion, you would try to be well informed about it. And what is the first thing a person must do, if he thinks he has got a line on the best and most penetrating critique of an existing scientific paradigm? He needs to understand the existing paradigm. Without understanding that, he has no hope of meaningfully evaluating a critique thereof.
When you find the mere fact that trees derived from single genes differ from one another “interesting,” it suggests that you haven’t taken an interest in the subject at all. This isn’t hard knowledge to come by. Read a few decent ordinary books on biology that touch the subject of phylogenetics, and you’ll discover it. It’s no secret.
Now, again, not knowing this isn’t at all unusual, since most people don’t spare a single thought in their day, or their year, for molecular phylogenetics. But it IS unusual, or ought to be, for someone who is so very sure that the ID proponents are being treated unfairly by their critics. How can you know that? How can you even suspect that, without taking a good long look at the merit of what they have to say? And how can you evaluate the merits of what they have to say without taking an initial interest in knowing basic facts about the fields whose work they critique?
Of course. And I can predict, with uncanny accuracy, not merely that they will be declared to be so, but that they WILL be so. I can predict this because, though my training does not compare to that of the great many scientists here, and the other scientists who have spoken with me about these subjects, I have taken sufficient interest in the underlying biological topics to have at least the amateur’s summary of these subjects in mind when I am reading them. I am not infrequently wrong; I accept correction from people who know better, and I learn from it. I often miss things that are wrong with ID works.
And I do read these ID works. Some of what is in them is such raging garbage – but you have to have SOME idea what the reality is before you can see that. When Dembski and Wells say that the homology between mammalian middle-ear ossicles (which they misidentify as “inner ear” ossicles) and reptilian jaw bones is based on nothing better that a “bone count,” I know not only that they are wrong but why. When Meyer says that there are no fossils to show us the precursors of mammals, I know that he is wrong and I can point to the fossils. I am far from an expert in any of these fields. But I know very well that if you don’t know anything about the evidence and the theory which constitute the existing paradigm, you will be in no condition to criticize it, or to evaluate anyone else’s critique. Having, as I do, that basic, summary knowledge, I am able to see, again and again, that the ID proponents do not merely goof; they LIE. They lie constantly. They lie with the ignorance of their audience in mind, to exploit it in the promotion of religiously-motivated pseudoscience.
You do that disclaimer a lot, though. And you don’t seem to take on board what people are showing you. Buggs exploited the fact that his audience – including you – would not know that trees derived from different genes will not always be identical. He made no effort to show that these differences, in his examples, were sufficient to raise a problem for evolutionary theory, because he couldn’t, and because, for his audience, he doesn’t need to. He can just leave it there, and let those who didn’t know this be convinced by a completely absurd argument.
And you fully expected everyone would say he was wrong. What you should have fully expected, whether everyone would say it or not, is that he would BE wrong. And if you are really interested in these issues, you should inform yourself, through reading conventional, ordinary biological texts, about them so that you aren’t as vulnerable as his intended audience is.
The constant drumbeat that ID authors are being treated unfairly, honestly, is rather hollow. It doesn’t resonate well. Because in no case can you actually DEFEND them when their dishonesty is pointed out. In most cases you decline even to try. It may be that you should decline, because you are not able; but it may also be that you should not have taken an interest in what they had to say, because you were unable to evaluate it.
I’m not even sure it was a misstatement, since he was giving specific examples of species.
It seems to me that the distance between the ones he offered would likely greatly attenuate the effects of both sequencing errors and systematic errors, an example of the latter being scoring a fixed mutation and its reversion, also fixed, as 0 instead of 2 differences.
That’s very easy to do nowadays. 
Even experts do, because there is so much that is wrong with them.
I think that on some level, @Eddie is aware of this. It explains his repeated refusals to dive into the evidence.
Where is the dishonesty in the video? He simple discredited the claim of a popular evolutionary biologist. Now when Dawkins made this claim there was less data then there is today so I would not claim he is being dishonest. I do, however, find his worldview is based on circular reasoning.
Do you think that the data showing inconsistent trees supports the idea of common descent or descent with modification?
The problem for those hoping for a natural explanation for life’s diversity is as we get more data the theory (TOE) is often contradicted. This is the point I got out of Buggs lecture which is consistent with other data points.
I’m sure Buggs will be very pleased that some people got that point out of his lecture. And I suppose he can’t be too picky as to who those people will be.
I addressed this earlier when I said:
And, as noted previously, I would try to disabuse you of your strange notions, but your long history here tells me that there’s no point. You either will not understand, or will pretend not to understand.
Since Buggs is a professor of biology and has a different view point then yours on what basis can you judge he is trying to fool people? @John_Harshman made the observation:
On what basis? The basis of not being illiterate in biology. Note, by the way, that Harshman isn’t saying Buggs isn’t trying to fool people.
In order to be properly fooled, it helps to be in the right frame of mind to hear all of Buggs’s dog whistles. Bill, I think, is exactly the target audience.
I will assume for arguments sake you have enough grasp of biology to make a judgement based on the limited view phylogenetic theory gives us. This does not give you insight into Buggs motives. He may very well doubt the viability of large scale common descent among plants.
As Richard Dawkins believed in large scale common descent when the data supported more consistent trees among different genes…
The possibility that Buggs is a raging idiot is, of course, always on the table, as you suggest. I think it’s contradicted by the evidence of his ability to work productively in science.
It is quite possible that Buggs has succeeded in fooling himself.
This is the aspect of all this that I find both fascinating and distressing. Bill, of course, is Bill so he may simply not get any of this. No more need be said there. And @Eddie, at the end of the day, has not ever demonstrated any better an understanding of science, though he may more artfully conceal this.
Buggs and some of the other ID Creationists and Neo-Creationists not only have sufficient scientific training that they should know better than Bill or “Eddie”. They also have a curious habit of not quite completely saying what Bill, “Eddie” and others of their ilk clearly hear them as saying. In the case of, say, Behe this is phrased in the manner of “Darwinism cannot explain x, and if a designer existed capable of creating x, then design could be an explanation.” Well, that is not really a lie, exactly, is it? However, it does neglect to mention that there is at least one very well evidenced explanation other than Darwinism or design that is widely accepted by mainstream scientists. And that Bill or @Eddie do not know what that explanation is, is not really the fault of Behe, or Buggs, or whoever. Is it?
That still leaves open the question of how Behe or Buggs or whoever justify to themselves the lies of omission that they surely ought to know they are telling.