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e host of remaining dangers faced by these delicious important fish postscript the paper is publicly available at http biology plosjournals org perlserv request get document doi 10 1371 journal pbio 0060265 posted by susan johnson at 10 17 pm no comments update on my life so i haven t posted since late september since i try to write meaty posts that explore research papers and other topics not talked about elsewhere rather than writing fluffy chatter on something someone else has gotten to first the result is that these things take me a long time to write hours so what i m trying to say is that fall semester turned out to be killer i decided to spend my time writing for my science journalism course assignments and doing a million other things required for academic survival rather than writing for the denizens of the internet so for my three fans i apologize as we speak i m seriously pursuing a career in science journalism working as an intern at the kojo nnamdi show a daily talk show on washington d c s local npr station and applying for a couple science writing internships i just finished a mock news article for my aaas mass media fellows program application on a recent journal article of my choice and i thought it might be interesting for people to read it follows posted by susan johnson at 10 09 pm 1 comment labels personal sunday september 28 2008 god likes matter he invented it c s lewis a talk by kenneth miller at the university of maryland on thursday i came back to my office to find a ripped down poster haphazardly taped to my door announcing a talk friday by ken miller the author of popular books about evolution such as this year s only a theory the culprits a couple friends of mine in the department had misunderstood miller s stand on evolution due to vague wording in the poster and stuck it on my door to piss me off they didn t know of course that i just finished only a theory last week loved it had no idea miller was coming to speak and was overjoyed to be informed of it needless to say they were annoyed that the guy wasn t in fact a creationist and i wasn t in fact pissed off the talk was wonderful though he is as good of a speaker as he is a writer i think he fills a very needed role in the evolution creationist debates as a christian himself he is able to speak directly to fears that evolution and theism are fundamentally incompatible as miller points out people s beef with evolution is not really scientific it s philosophical the fear that evolution takes away our ability to be moral human beings with purpose in our lives his talk was basically a summary of oat but for those who haven t had a chance to read it yet i ll outline the talk for you here he started off with an overview of all the legal challenges to evolution that have been cropping up within only the last four years there have been two federal trials outlined below and two state elections oh and ks that hinged on questions of evolution anti evolution measures were passed in six state legislatures during this period and 44 states had local measures passed in counties or in individual communities at the federal level there was the 2004 case in cobb county georgia where the school board decided to put warning labels on the inside of the local high school biology textbook written by miller incidentally the stickers read this textbook contains material on evolution evolution is a theory not a fact regarding the origin of living things this material should be approached with an open mind studied carefully and critically considered miller pointed out that the scientific definition of theory is not we don t really know and really a theory is of a higher order than a fact since theories explain sets of facts additionally he protested that the sticker conveys a false sense of certainty about all other fields of biology and implies that for instance ecology and cell biology should not be approached with an open mind studied carefully or critically considered kind of insulting to all biologists really and then of course there was the famous dover trial in 2005 for which he served as an expert witness for the side of science in this case the local school board was guided by the discovery institute s booklet intelligent design in public school science curricula a legal guidebook and bought two sets of the intelligent design textbooks of pandas and people for the school library as recommended by the booklet the board also demanded that the biology teachers re write their curricula to include intelligent design they refused the school board pushed back demanding then that the teachers at least use an intelligent design lesson plan that the school board wrote for them they refused the school board finally asked the teachers to just read a statement to the class about the weaknesses of evolutionary theory and the teachers once more refused forcing the school superintendent to come in and read the statement to the classes while the teachers stood outside there was immediate protest from the community of course and a first amendment lawsuit was quickly filed against the dover area school district a group of scientists including miller volunteered to serve as expert witnesses miller noted in his talk that despite id proponents eagerness to subpoena evolutionists for a courtroom trial and force them to speak under oath 5 of 8 id witness volunteers dropped out of the case including william dembski who wrote the document linked to in this paragraph the details of the ruling and the evidence is really quite fascinating and you can find a thorough summary at wikipedia along with a link to the judge s decision the judge ruled by the way on the side of evolution miller then went on to outline just some of the purported evidence for intelligent design in his talk on friday he just went over one major piece of the id case the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum but his book has many more all of which he carefully considers and thoroughly destroys michael behe one of the major id theorists defines irreducible complexity basically as the inability to produce a complex structure piece by piece while maintaining one function for example you couldn t evolve a mousetrap because a mousetrap with only a couple of its parts is no longer a mousetrap all of the parts are necessary for its mouse catching function the iders say that the bacterial flagellum is an example of such an irreducibly complex structure as it would not be able to function as a flagellum without any of its parts as miller described in his talk and in oat the major problem with this argument is that it assumes that modern day biological structures have evolved from earlier structures with similar functions the fact is as structures evolve they often acquire radically new functions see my earlier post on the tryptophan operon for a biochemical example of this the same goes for the bacterial flagellum it turns out that the base of the flagellum has incredible homology with another bacterial structure called a type iii secretory system used by bacteria to pump poisons additionally other parts of the flagellum are made of a number of other proteins that exist elsewhere in the cell performing other functions so unlike the predictions of the irreducible complexity argument it is in fact possible to take away parts of a complex biological machine and have it still function it s just a different function at this point in the talk miller switched gears he asked well if the best arguments the iders can come up with don t hold water why is there such popular support for id he put a lot of emphasis on a quote from an npr interview about evolution with former sen rick santorum which i think is significant enough to reproduce here in its entirety it has huge consequences for society it s where we come from does man have a purpose is there a purpose for our lives or are we just simply the result of chance if we are the result of chance if we re simply a mistake of nature then that puts a different moral demand on us in fact it doesn t put a moral demand on us miller s point was that santorum and approximately half of americans reject evolution because they see it as materialistic to a fault denying souls denying order purpose and meaning essentially miller argued the design movement has forced science into a corner out of opposition to the id movement scientists find themselves having to take the exact opposite position that there is no design in the universe miller argued the opposite the universe has a design it is the design of evolution basically he said that evolution is an inherent predictable property of life it explores adaptive space in a predictable way filling the same ecological niches with similar types of organisms all organisms and biological structures do have a function but it is a function that is driven by evolution miller went through several examples such as the elegance of the genetic code the specificity of proteins the homology between different sorts of animals to illustrate this evolutionary design he would probably note that the fact that i just put the word design in quotes in that last sentence is a sign that i am a scientist who has become afraid of the word because of its attachment to the anti science id movement we as the science loving public must reclaim that word he argued regardless of our own beliefs about religion we must show that the design of evolution does not mean our species and our lives are ruled only by chance and accident we can still have purpose in our lives and we are not mistakes science s derided materialism is its virtue not its downfall because it allows science to find natural explanations for natural phenomena the id movement was founded on an opposition to this materialism but miller like c s lewis in the title of this post argued that materialism shouldn t frighten us as a society away from science the scientific process cannot make claims about good and evil this is society s job as a whole science and specifically evolution miller argued will not make us immoral it will only teach us about our place amongst the life on earth a place uniquely suited for us and our lives each with its own unique purpose for the greater good miller deftly answered the questions from the audience after his talk this is obviously a man who has given many many talks to diverse audiences has heard every possible question and has thought about all of them his answers were eloquent and well considered if there were any iders in the audience they did not speak up in the q a period as a friend and i discussed afterwards they really wouldn t have much to protest in the talk miller really covered all of the bases and as a practicing roman catholic could hardly be told that evolution is threatening to religion if you haven t yet read only a theory i suggest you pick it up at your local library not only does it thoroughly annihilate the id position from every angle useful reading for when you are forced to argue with a creationist and discuss the larger anti science implications of the anti evolution movement but it also provides a useful and much needed perspective on the relationship between evolution and philosophical questions of morality and purpose read the book and if you are lucky enough to see an announcement of a talk by ken miller go and see him and bring your friends posted by susan johnson at 5 10 pm 2 comments labels creationism evolution sunday september 21 2008 increase in measles cases the cdc has issued a press release on an increase in the number of measles cases in the u s this year with 131 cases reported so far of those measles patients 95 were eligible for vaccination but 63 of them were not vaccinated because of their or most likely their parents belief that vaccines are dangerous i m not sure how much evidence there need to be to convince parents that the mmr vaccine and or the preservative in it do not cause autism obviously piles of evidence accrued from gigantic longitudinal studies of thousands of children over many years are not enough see here here here here and here for starters will an epidemic of preventable deadly infections be the only thing that will change some people s minds if people want to put themselves in harm s way because of their willingness to believe a bunch of pseudoscientific wackaloons that s their problem it s a terrible shame that they re putting their kids at risk too posted by susan johnson at 11 58 pm 2 comments labels health science stupidity vaccines trickery and sex in the firefly world this is not news in the scientific world but it s news to me i ran across this in some reading i have to do for a seminar tomorrow further evidence that bugs are awesome fireflies lightning bugs or lampyrids if you were the nerdy type who didn t spend innumerable summer evenings in childhood chasing after these beetles empty pickle jar in hand but you might not have known of the high drama and shakespearian trickery that was going on among these insects right there in your own childhood backyard there s multiple species and genera of lampyrids in north america each with its own characteristic flashing pattern males and females of the same species locate each other for mating using these unique signals however females of the genus photuris have evolved a deadly trap they lure males of other genera by imitating their own females flashes when the males come a courtin the photuris females pounce and devour them with gusto you may wonder how the photuris females ever mate if they re always on the prowl for dinner during mating time turns out that male photuris capitalize on their female s predilection for firefly meat by imitating the flashing patterns of males of other genera the very insects that the female is trying to lure to their death some photuris males go even farther in their imitation by flashing not only the right pattern but also at the right time of night in the right location to be even more convincing as the potential prey in some species of photuris this imitative behavior has gone so far that the species has completely lost the ability to produce its own unique flashing pattern instead conducting all its business using signals stolen from others i m unaware of any papers that detail what happens next after the flash exchange how does the male photuris end up as the mate and not the dinner of the female i ll do some more searching because this has piqued my interest and let you know if i find an answer posted by susan johnson at 8 11 pm 2 comments labels entomology thursday september 11 2008 the darwin particle my father works with the particle accelerator at fermilab in illinois as a child when i would visit him at work and we would walk through the underground tunnels where the beam control equipment was kept the towering machines on each side of the walkway would terrify me they thundered blinked screamed warning radiat...