Zoo animals are low hanging fruit, but a study based on them is not going to be to definitive. If a study includes wild primates, costs could be in the millions. At that point though, we might as well get whole genome sequences, which would be useful for all sorts of things. So that might be possible to fund.
For groups like @Agauger’s, they should start by beg borrowing and pleading for samples that already exist. The results of that study would do much to tell is two things:
They are working to falsify their hypothesis like real scientists.
Whether or not the prevailing models of HLA evolution are going to pan out.
Of course the risk here is that this could uncover more evidence against their position. So I’m not sure if many groups would step up. I think @Agauger would if she had the resources.
They? They? They would if they could but they haven’t got the resources or the expertise to do it. Believe, if they had it would have been done a long time ago.
You are not sure if we will step up because, you imply, we are afraid of the results? Because we are not real scientists?
If you were an airline pilot but had no plane, would it be fair for people to declare you weren’t a pilot because you didn’t fly from New York to London on demand?
@Agauger
At some point, the Discovery Institute has to take a hard look at itself and decide if it just wants to be a public relations organization or take its arguments seriously and spend money on the science. I know that you are chomping at the bit to spend millions of dollars on a state of the art lab, so I don’t include you in this criticism.
Just curious - How much does the DI spend on producing propaganda like the film Human Zoos and promoting things like Behe’s and Meyer’s popular press books as opposed to spending on scientific research? What is stopping you guys from generating some testable hypotheses then writing up grant requests from places like Templeton Foundation?
I’m sure you’re not responsible for the DI’s budget but still - It’s pretty hard to swallow the “we’re too poor!” excuse when there’s always money for anti-evolution hype.
I think this is an important point. A scientist like @Agauger, unfortunately, does not have control over how funds are spent. From her point of view, she is resource poor, because funds havent been given to her.
I wonder what would happen if, from multiple sources, we encouraged DI to fund her to this work? If they did, I also think it would be great if scientists outside the ID bubble helped with sample acquisition and sequencing. @Agauger picked a good and testable hypothesis. Like a legitimate scientist would, she wants to do it even if it would falsify her case. I think she deserves our support on this.
If DI does not prioritize this, on the otherhand, that is not @Agauger’s fault, though it might tell us something about them.
Well @Agauger it is more complicated than that. You can be the best pilot in the world but if you don’t have the requisite hours in flying or in simulator this past month, you are no longer qualified to fly anywhere. You’re grounded.
The same is with science research. You may have been at one time, the tops in the field, your lab producing results after results. But then time passes with no new results, no new discoveries, you no longer are at the top of the field. You get relegated to science “historian”. You get to go to conferences to INTRODUCE the new hotshots in the field and moderate the sessions. You get to ask the first questions to these new hotshots that refers to your old work, which the hotshots quickly thank you for and say that they no longer apply and have been superseded by their work.
How do you think Darwin would feel at the 2019 Premier Evolutionary Biology Conference?
How much of a lab would you really need? A freezer for the samples, kits for extractions, maybe a little PCR machine for amplification if you want to go that route. The sequencing could be contracted out fairly cheaply.
Once things die down with Behe, we should look into doing a “Primate HLA Intron” Drive, to see how many donations we can get from labs. What do you think @John_Harshman? How many samples do you think we could get just by beating the internet pavement?
There have to be phylogeographic studies for a fair number of primate species. I’d look for them in the literature and contact the authors. Presumably all the samples for those studies would be in somebody’s tissue collections. Don’t all institutions require that these days? And I’d ask somebody who works on primates, if you know anyone.
It depends heavily on what is going to be sequenced. I’m not an expert on sequencing projects, but I am familiar with cloning techniques. This will probably require cloning large chunks of the genome into a BAC, or something similar. There is a lot of equipment that comes with this, from tissue culture to imagers for BAC screening.
Can’t imagine why. The only reason I can think of for cloning would be to separate heterzygous alleles. But you would only need to clone some short PCR products, and there are kits for that too. Nothing elaborate is required.
The problem here is the context you set up with the phrases “well-supported” and “scientific hypothesis”. This is an over-reaction.
In the Western world, there are lots of scientists who also claim to be good and devout Christians. Generally speaking, nobody challenges Scientists to explain how they can be men or women of scientists… and still believe Jesus was born miraculously… or whether he was resurrected!
Adam and Eve, being made in miraculous ways, but in the midst of thousands of humans who were created earlier by means of Evolution, should not be much more trouble to understand than a geneticist who puts up Christmas time stockings!
