Skeptical News for 26 December 2008

Archive of previous NTS Skeptical News listings

Friday, December 26, 2008

Evolution education update: December 26, 2008

"Strengths and weaknesses" is absent from the third, and final, draft of Texas's science standards, and the two antievolution bills in Michigan have finally died.

"STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES" NIXED IN TEXAS

The third draft of Texas's science standards is available -- and the creationist catchphrase "strengths and weaknesses" is absent. The current standards for high school biology include a requirement that reads, "The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information." In 2003, the "strengths and weaknesses" language was selectively applied by members of the board attempting to dilute the treatment of evolution in the biology textbooks then under consideration, and so it was clear that the "strengths and weaknesses" language would be a matter of contention when the standards were next revised.

The first draft of the revised standards replaced the "strengths and weaknesses" language with "The student is expected to analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing." The change was hailed by the Texas Freedom Network, Texas Citizens for Science, and the 21st Century Science Coalition, as well as by the editorial boards of the Austin American-Statesman (October 6, 2008), and the Corpus Christi Call-Times (November 20, 2008). Additionally, a survey conducted by Raymond Eve and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund demonstrated that the vast majority of biologists at universities in Texas rejected the idea of teaching the supposed weaknesses of evolution.

Nevertheless, when the Texas board of education began to hear testimony about the new standards on November 19, 2008, it was presented not with the first draft but with a second draft, in which the "strengths and weaknesses" language was replaced with a variant: "The student is expected to analyze and evaluate strengths and limitations of scientific explanations including those based on accepted scientific data, and evidence from students' observations, experiments, models, and logical statements." At the meeting, defenders of the integrity of science education argued that "strengths and limitations" was no improvement over "strengths and weaknesses." The third draft reverts to the first draft's "analyze and evaluate" language.

In its discussion of the nature of science, the third draft is similar but not identical to the first draft. According to the first draft, "Science uses observational evidence to make predictions of natural phenomena and to construct testable explanations. If ideas are based upon purported forces outside of nature, they cannot be tested using scientific methods." The third draft reads, "Science, as defined by the National Academy of Sciences, is the 'use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena, as well as the knowledge generated through this process.' ... Students should know that some questions are outside the realm of science because they deal with phenomena that are not scientifically testable."

According to the Texas Education Agency's website, the third draft will be considered by the state board of education at its January 21-23, 2009, meeting, with a public hearing regarding the proposed revisions scheduled for January 21, 2009. The January meeting will presumably constitute the first reading of the new standards, with a period for further public comment following; the second reading and final vote are expected, but not guaranteed, to occur at the board's March 26-27, 2009, meeting. The stakes are high: the standards will determine what is taught in Texas's public school science classrooms and the content of the biology textbooks approved for use in the state for the next ten years.

In the meantime, evidence continues to accumulate that calling for teaching the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution in Texas is, in practice, simply a form of stealth creationism. For example, in a post on the website of the San Antonio Express-News (December 12, 2008), a representative of the San Antonio Bible Based Sciences Association offered to provide "scientific evidence of weaknesses in evolution and for creation," including "the fact that evolution violates the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics, as well as the Law of Biogenesis," as well as "creation evidence in the fields of microbiology, genetics, probability, biochemistry, biology, geology and physics which support creation and undermine evolution."

And in a December 1, 2008, post on its blog, the Texas Freedom Network examined how members of the antievolution faction on the state board of education have responded to a Texas religious right organization's questionnaire over the past few election cycles. According to TFN, in 2008, they strongly favored" forcing publishers to include strengths and weaknesses of the theory of evolution" in biology textbooks, while in 2006, they "strongly favored" the teaching of intelligent design" as a viable" theory in public school science classrooms, and in 2002, they "strongly favored" the same -- even though the question was prominently, and not inaccurately, labeled "Creationism" then. "Who," TFN asked, "do they think they're fooling?"

For the current Texas state science standards (PDF), visit:
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter112/ch112c.pdf

For the first, second, and third drafts of the revised standards (PDF), visit:
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/teks/Sci_TEKS_9_12_091608.pdf
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/teks/science/Draft2SciTEKS9_12_1108.pdf
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/teks/Sci_TEKS_9-12_Clean_010509.pdf

For the websites of the pro-science organizations in Texas, visit:
http://www.tfn.org/
http://www.texscience.org/
http://www.texasscientists.org/

For the editorials in the American-Statesman and the Call-Times, visit:
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/10/06/1006science_edit.html
http://www.caller.com/news/2008/nov/20/texas-heads-for-another-squabble-over-evolution/

For a report on the survey conducted by Eve and the TFN Education Fund (PDF), visit:
http://www.tfn.org/site/DocServer/FinalWebPost.pdf?docID=861

For the TEA's information on the standards revision procedure, visit:
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/teks/scienceTEKS.html

For the post on the San Antonio Express-News's website, visit:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/36076039.html

For the post on TFN's blog, visit:
http://tfnblog.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/creationists-with-a-political-thesaurus/

And for NCSE's previous coverage of events in Texas, visit:
http://www.ncseweb.org/news/texas

ANTIEVOLUTION BILLS DEAD IN MICHIGAN

When the Michigan legislature ended its last voting session for 2007-2008 on December 19, 2008, two antievolution bills -- House Bill 6027 and Senate Bill 1361 -- died in committee. The identical bills were instances of the "academic freedom" strategy for undermining the teaching of evolution; as NCSE's Glenn Branch and Eugenie C. Scott recently wrote in their article "The Latest Face of Creationism," published in the January 2009 issue of Scientific American, "'Academic freedom' was the creationist catchphrase of choice in 2008: the Louisiana Science Education Act was in fact born as the Louisiana Academic Freedom Act, and bills invoking the idea were introduced in Alabama, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina, although, as of November, all were dead or stalled. ... The appeal of academic freedom as a slogan for the creationist fallback strategy is obvious: everybody approves of freedom, and plenty of people have a sense that academic freedom is desirable, even if they do not necessarily have a good understanding of what it is."

The Michigan bills contended that "the teaching of some scientific subjects, such as biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, human impact of climate change, and human cloning, can cause controversy and that some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on such subjects." If enacted, the bills would have required state and local administrators "to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages pupils to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues" and "to assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum in instances where that curriculum addresses scientific controversies" by allowing them "to help pupils understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught."

In a press release dated May 20, 2008, Michigan Citizens for Science blasted HB 6027, writing that "it does a disservice to teachers, school administrators and local school boards by urging them to incorporate material into science classes that is at odds with well-established science ... HB 6027 ushers schools down a path that will inevitably lead to expensive and divisive court battles." Similarly, in July 2008, the Michigan Science Teachers Association decried both bills, arguing (document) that the stated goals of the bills are already addressed by the state's educational system. The MSTA added, "Whereas evolution, climate change and cloning are the only 'controversial topics' cited in these bills while 'controversial topics' in non-scientific fields are noticeably omitted and whereas the Curriculum Expectations already address the pedagogical & educational goals of these bills, the legislative intent of these bills is called into question. ... . This type of legislation may enable the introduction of non-scientific ideologies, such as 'intelligent design (ID) creationism', into the public science classroom."

For information on both bills from the Michigan legislature, visit:
http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?2008-HB-6027
http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?2008-SB-1361

For Branch and Scott's article in Scientific American, visit:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-latest-face-of-creationism

For Michigan Citizens for Science's press release, visit:
http://michigancitizensforscience.org/main/nfblog/2008/05/20/mcfs-press-release-on-hb-6027

For the Michigan Science Teachers Association's statement (document), visit:
http://www.msta-mich.org/downloads/about/Academic_Freedom_Law.doc

And for NCSE's previous coverage of events in Michigan, visit:
http://www.ncseweb.org/news/michigan

NOTICE

Evolution Education Update's vacation plans changed, enabling this final update for 2008.

Thanks for reading! And as always, be sure to consult NCSE's web site: http://www.ncseweb.org where you can always find the latest news on evolution education and threats to it.

With best wishes for the new year,

Glenn Branch
Deputy Director
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509
510-601-7203 x305
fax: 510-601-7204
800-290-6006
[email protected]
http://www.ncseweb.org

Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools
http://www.ncseweb.org/nioc

Eugenie C. Scott's Evolution vs. Creationism
http://www.ncseweb.org/evc

NCSE's work is supported by its members. Join today!
http://www.ncseweb.org/membership

What do you imagine Rick Warren thinks about evolution?

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/12/what_do_you_imagine_rick_warre.php

Category: Creationism

Posted on: December 25, 2008 3:09 PM, by PZ Myers

Go ahead, guess. Would you be surprised to learn that Warren is a creationist?

I believed that evolution and the account of the Bible about creation could exist along side of each other very well. I just didn't see what the big argument was all about. I had some friends who had been studying the Bible much longer than I had who saw it differently...Eventually, I came to the conclusion, through my study of the Bible and science, that the two positions of evolution and creation just could not fit together. There are some real problems with the idea that God created through evolution... My prayer is that you will have this same experience!

The Bible's picture is that dinosaurs and man lived together on the earth, an earth that was filled with vegetation and beauty...man and dinosaurs lived at the same time...From the very beginning of creation, God gave man dominion over all that was made, even over the dinosaurs.

Isn't it nice of Obama to grant this clown a prominent place on the national stage?

The Touch That Doesn't Heal Article

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123024234651134037.html

Feeling a tad listless? Perhaps your DNA is insufficiently activated. You may want to consult the healers at Oughten House Foundation, specializing in "tools and techniques for self-empowerment . . . through DNA Activations." Oughten House recommends regular therapy as part of its DNA Activation Healing Project, at $125 per hour-long session.

The foundation isn't as far from the mainstream as you might think. A survey of 32,000 Americans by the National Center for Health Statistics, released earlier this month, suggests that 38% of adults use some form of "complementary and alternative medicine," or CAM -- now aggressively promoted for everything from Attention Deficit Disorder to the Zoster virus. The survey polled consumers on 10 provider-based therapies -- for example, acupuncture -- and 26 home remedies, such as herbal supplements.

Hundreds of colleges operating in all 50 states offer coursework in sundry CAM disciplines. Many more advertise online. Typical is the Global College of Natural Medicine, which is somewhat more welcoming than traditional medical schools: Its literature cheerfully advises that even "if you do not hold a high school diploma or equivalent you can still enroll online today." A 60% grade on an admission exam puts you on the path to becoming a nutritional consultant, master herbalist or holistic chef for animals.

This should be a laughing matter, but it isn't -- not with the Obama administration about to confront the snarling colossus of health-care reform. Today's ubiquitous celebration of "empowerment," combined with disenchantment over the cost, bureaucracy and possible side effects of conventional care, has spurred an exodus from medical orthodoxy. As a result, what was once a ragtag assortment of New Age nostrums has metastasized into a multibillion-dollar industry championed by dozens of lobbyists and their congressional sympathizers. Among the most popular therapies are acupuncture, at $50 to $100 per session; reflexology, which involves massaging various parts of the hands and feet, starting at $35 an hour; and aromatherapy, which relies on the supposed healing properties of about 40 "essential oils," with treatments at $30 to $90 an hour.

The largest well-documented study of CAM's financial footprint, a decade ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association, estimated that Americans spent $36 billion to $47 billion on CAM in 1997, depending on how one defined the category. Since then, at least 40 states have begun licensing CAM practitioners. Major hospital systems, notably Baltimore's Johns Hopkins and New York's Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, incorporate CAM-based programs like aromatherapy and therapeutic touch, often bracketed as "integrative medicine."

Indeed, one of the great ironies of modern health care is that many of the august medical centers that once went to great lengths to vilify nontraditional methods as quackery now have brought those regimens in-house. "We're all channeling East Indian healers along with doing gall-bladder removal," says Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics. Mr. Caplan harbors no illusions about what's behind the trend: "It's not as noble as, 'I want to be respectful to Chinese healing arts.' It's more, 'People are spending a fortune on this stuff! We could do this plus our regular stuff and bill 'em for all of it!'"

Fees for CAM services are increasingly passed on to insurance through a creative -- some might say fraudulent -- interpretation of the Current Procedural Terminology codes that govern reimbursement for authorized services. (Various tutorials, some online, guide practitioners through the reimbursement maze.) Such creativity may soon be unnecessary if the alternative medicine proponents have their way. For example, ABC Coding Solutions, a medical-software company, has been promulgating a set of 4,000 treatment codes that cover "nearly every healing modality practiced by alternative healthcare providers," to quote one report. If such codes are fully absorbed by the health-care industry, CAM will have been mainstreamed -- while bypassing all the customary peer review, controlled studies and other hallmarks of sound medicine.

Not by coincidence is CAM most avidly touted by a loose alliance of self-help gurus (Andrew Weil, Deepak Chopra, et al.) and veteran hucksters like erstwhile infomercial king Kevin Trudeau. Mr. Trudeau has been sued for deceptive business practices several times by the Federal Trade Commission. In 2004, the agency deemed his sins so egregious that it barred him from "appearing in, producing, or disseminating future infomercials that advertise any type of product, service, or program to the public." Undaunted, Mr. Trudeau reinvented himself as a health-care expert and, the following year, published the runaway best seller "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want You to Know About." The book continued to sell briskly even after the New York State Consumer Protection Board warned that it "does not contain the 'natural cures' for cancer and other diseases that Trudeau is promising."

Meanwhile, CAM has secured its own beachhead within the National Institutes of Health in the form of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). "Special commercial interests and irrational, wishful thinking created NCCAM," writes Wallace Sampson, a medical doctor and director of the National Council Against Health Fraud, on the Web site Quackwatch.com. And Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa), who credited bee pollen with quelling his allergies, was single-handedly responsible for the $2 million earmark that provided seed money for NCCAM, chartered in 1992 as the Office of Alternative Medicine. Despite the $1 billion spent in the interim, the center has failed to affirm a single therapy that can withstand the rigors of science.

Even the center's own fact sheets unfold as unintentionally comical. After noting that echinacea is "traditionally used to treat or prevent colds, the flu and other infections," the center concedes that "most studies to date indicate that echinacea does not appear to prevent colds or other infections." St. John's Wort as a natural antidepressant? "Two large studies, one sponsored by NCCAM, showed that the herb was no more effective than placebo in treating major depression." Evening primrose for hot flashes? "Does not appear to affect menopausal symptoms." And so forth. "It is the only entity in the NIH devoted to an ideological approach to health," writes Dr. Sampson, who has called for the center to be defunded.

Is there anecdotal evidence that unconventional therapies sometimes yield positive outcomes? Yes. There's also anecdotal evidence that athletes who refuse to shave during winning streaks sometimes bring home championships. It was George D. Lundberg, a former editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, who said: "There's no alternative medicine. There is only scientifically proven, evidence-based medicine supported by solid data." We'd do well to keep that in mind as we plot the future of American health care. It's not like we've got billions to waste.

Mr. Salerno is the author of "SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless." He blogs at www.shamblog.com.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

How Kenneth Miller Used Smoke-and-Mirrors to "Refute" Michael Behe on the Irreducible Complexity of the Blood-Clotting Cascade (Part 1)

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/12/how_kenneth_miller_used_smokea.html#more

During the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial three years ago, biologist Kenneth Miller claimed that biochemist Michael Behe's arguments in Darwin's Black Box regarding the irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade were false. Miller's testimony led federal district court judge John Jones to assert in his decision that "scientists in peer-reviewed publications have refuted Professor Behe's predication about the alleged irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade."

But an analysis of Miller's arguments demonstrates that he refuted Behe in no way whatsoever, and that in fact it was Behe who refuted Miller at trial, although Judge Jones ignored Behe's testimony. Miller continues (I am told) to go around lecturing on this topic, claiming that the blood-clotting cascade of lower vertebrates demonstrate that Behe was wrong and that the blood-clotting cascade is amenable to explanation by Darwinian evolution. Like many Darwinist claims of refutation of Behe, this one is based on smoke and mirrors.

First, A Mirror
During his Kitzmiller testimony, Miller's first misrepresentation was to equate Michael Behe's arguments in Darwin's Black Box regarding the blood-clotting cascade with those in the textbook Of Pandas and People (Pandas). Miller stated, "[W]hen I read through the pages of Darwin's Black Box, I was struck by how many of the arguments used against evolution that are found in Of Pandas and People are also used in Darwin's Black Box. And the one that really stuck in my mind was the discussion of the blood-clotting cascade in both Dr. Behe's book and in Of Pandas and People. It struck me as essentially--the two discussions struck me as essentially identical." (Miller, September 26 AM testimony, pg. 108, emphasis added.) So according to Miller, the treatment of the blood-clotting cascade in Pandas is "essentially identical" to the treatment of the blood-clotting cascade in Darwin's Black Box.

The problem is that Miller's claim is false. Behe's treatment of the blood-clotting cascade in Darwin's Black Box is much more precise than the treatment in Pandas, and in fact Behe made it very clear that he was limiting his argument for irreducible complexity to a particular segment of the blood-clotting cascade that had been well-studied and was well-understood.

Then A Puff of Smoke
By equating Behe's treatment of blood clotting with that of Pandas (see above), and by quoting Pandas' statement that "Only when all the components of the [blood clotting] system are present and in good working order does the system function properly," Miller implied to Judge Jones that according to Darwin's Black Box the entire blood-clotting cascade is irreducibly complex. Wrong. While Pandas made the claim of irreducible complexity with respect to the entire blood-clotting cascade, Behe in Darwin's Black Box did not.

To understand the difference between Behe's views and the account in Pandas, one needs to understand some basics about blood-clotting cascades. Roughly speaking, in land-dwelling vertebrates, there are two different pathways by which the blood-clotting cascade can be initiated — the "intrinsic" pathway, and the "extrinsic" pathway. (There can be some crossover between the two pathways.) The final stages of the blood-clotting cascade take place after either pathway reaches factor X, also called the Stuart factor. These final stages of the cascade are what Behe calls "beyond the fork" or "after the fork." Figure 1 below contains a very rough description of how the blood-clotting cascade can be initiated by either the extrinsic or intrinsic pathway before it forms a final clot, and Figure 2 contains a full description of the land-dwelling vertebrate blood-clotting cascade.

Figure 1: Rough sketch of the intrinsic and extrinsic pathways of the blood-clotting cascade:

Figure 2: The blood-clotting cascade of land-dwelling vertebrates with both intrinsic and extrinsic pathways labeled (click on graphic to see the full diagram):

(Information sources for figure: Of Pandas and People, Darwin's Black Box, Wikipedia, Barbara Forrest, Paul Gross, "Biochemistry by design," Trends in Biochemical Sciences, Vol. 32(7):301-310 (2007).)

In Darwin's Black Box, Behe specifically stated that his argument for irreducible complexity only pertained to irreducible complexity "beyond the fork" where the intrinsic and extrinsic blood-clotting cascades converge. As Behe writes:

Leaving aside the system before the fork in the pathway, where some details are less well known, the blood-clotting system fits the definition of irreducible complexity. … The components of the system (beyond the fork in the pathway) are fibrinogen, prothrombin, Stuart factor, and proaccelerin. … in the absence of any one of the components, blood does not clot, and the system fails. (Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, pg. 86 (Free Press, 1996), emphasis added.)

Behe even explained this very point to Judge Jones, making it clear that his own argument was not as expansive as that of Pandas:

The relative importance of the two pathways in living organisms is still rather murky. Many experiments on blood clotting are hard to do. And I go on to explain why they must be murky. And then I continue on the next slide. Because of that uncertainty, I said, let's, leaving aside the system before the fork in the pathway, where some details are less well-known, the blood clotting system fits the definition of irreducible complexity. And I noted that the components of the system beyond the fork in the pathway are fibrinogen, prothrombin, Stuart factor, and proaccelerin. So I was focusing on a particular part of the pathway, as I tried to make clear in Darwin's Black Box. If we could go to the next slide. Those components that I was focusing on are down here at the lower parts of the pathway. And I also circled here, for illustration, the extrinsic pathway. It turns out that the pathway can be activated by either one of two directions. And so I concentrated on the parts that were close to the common point after the fork. So if you could, I think, advance one slide. If you concentrate on those components, a number of those components are ones which have been experimentally knocked out such as fibrinogen, prothrombin, and tissue factor. And if we go to the next slide, I have red arrows pointing to those components. And you see that they all fall in the area of the blood clotting cascade that I was specifically restricting my arguments to. And if you knock out those components, in fact, the blood clotting cascade is broken. So my discussion of irreducible complexity was, I tried to be precise, and my argument, my argument is experimentally supported.

(Michael Behe, Oct. 18 testimony, pg. 25-28, emphasis added)

The components that Behe claimed were irreducibly complex are contained in the red box seen in the diagram of the land-dwelling vertebrate blood-clotting cascade below:

Figure 3: Components that Michael Behe argued comprised the irreducibly complex core of the blood-clotting cascade:

Behe provided Judge Jones with an experimentally verified case for irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade with respect to particular proteins within the cascade: fibrinogen, prothrombin, and tissue factor. He discussed the cascade "after the fork" where the intrinsic and extrinsic pathways converge. Behe didn't want to extend his argument too far, because adequate experimental tests had not yet been performed to demonstrate irreducible complexity with respect to some of the other factors, particularly those involved in the intrinsic pathway.

And Then Another Mirror
In his effort to refute Behe, Miller also discussed the fact that blood-clotting cascades in whales and dolphins lack factor XII (also called the Hageman factor), and the blood-clotting cascade in puffer fish lacks factors XI, XII, and XIIa. As Miller testified: "Whales and dolphins, in 1969, well before Pandas was published, were shown to lack factor 12. … The proposal is that we take away the three parts which are known as the contact phase system. Now, that includes factor 12, which we talked about a second ago, but also factor 11 and also the factor that catalyzes the conversion of 12 to the active form. It turns out these three parts are missing in a vertebrate known as the puffer fish. " (Miller, September 26 AM testimony, pgs. 126-128).

Miller concluded that since these cascades "are missing three parts of the system and their blood clots perfectly well," that therefore the irreducible complexity of the entire land-dwelling vertebrate blood-clotting cascade is "refuted by the scientific evidence." (pg. 129) The implication was that Behe's argument for irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade had been refuted as well as the more expansive argument in Pandas. But Miller did not refute Behe's argument, because Miller only gave evidence that some vertebrates (like dolphins or jawed fish) lack certain components involved in the intrinsic pathway (factors XI, XII, and XIIA) found in land-dwelling vertebrates. What Miller failed to acknowledge is that land-dwelling vertebrates, jawed-fish, and water-dwelling mammals like dolphins and whales still have the extrinsic pathway intact, as well as everything after the point where the intrinsic and extrinsic pathways combine in land-dwelling vertebrates. In other words, dolphins and jawed fish still have the factors in the blood-clotting cascade that Behe considers irreducibly complex (i.e. those "after the fork"). They even have the factors on the blood-clotting cascade's extrinsic pathway. The only factors they appear to be missing are the portions on the intrinsic pathway. Since Behe's argument did not include any of those factors on the intrinsic pathway, and only dealt with factors shared by jawed fish (like the puffer fish), water-dwelling mammals, and land-dwelling vertebrates, Miller's argument did not refute Behe's argument at all.

But there is more.

The Blood-Clotting Cascade's Irreducible Core
The blood-clotting cascade pathway of jawed fish has an important difference from that of land-dwelling vertebrates because fish don't have an intrinsic pathway found in land-dwelling vertebrates. That doesn't mean that the rest of the cascade isn't irreducibly complex, for both may have a core system of parts that is irreducibly complex. And how do we know there's an irreducible core comprised of parts Miller didn't address in his testimony? Because experimental evidence, cited by Michael Behe during the Kitzmiller trial and in Darwin's Black Box, shows that some components of this system are absolutely necessary to have a functional blood-clotting system.

The "irreducible core" is a long-standing concept within ID thinking that William Dembski and Jonathan Wells define as follows:

A functional system is irreducibly complex if it contains a multipart subsystem (i.e. a set of two or more interrelated parts) that cannot be simplified without destroying the system's basic function. We call this multipart subsystem the system's irreducible core. ... We therefore define the core of a functionally integrated system as those parts that are indispensible to the system's basic function: remove parts of the core, and you can't recover the system's basic function from the other remaining parts.

(Jonathan Wells and William Dembski, The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems, pgs. 146-147 (Foundation for Thought and Ethics, 2008).)

Dembski also discussed the concept of the "irreducible core" in his 2001 book No Free Lunch where he wrote, "Consider an old-fashioned pocket-watch with a winding mechanism. The basic function of the watch is to tell time. What's more, many parts of the watch are indispensible to that basic function, for instances, the spring, the face, the hand, and the minute hand. On the other hand, other parts of the watch are dispensable, for instance the crystal, the metal cover holding the crystal, and the chain. By focusing purely on the indispensible parts of the pocket watch one obtains what can be called an irreducible core that has all the crucial properties of irreducibly complex systems considered so far. It therefore makes sense to define an irreducibly complex system as one that contains an irreducible core whose parts are each indispensible, but where the system is itself permitted to certain unnecessary or redundant elements." (No Free Lunch, pg. 285)

I like to explain the "irreducible core" using the analogy of a bicycle: A bicycle has an irreducible core that requires a frame, two wheels, a motor mechanism (like legs on pedals), and a steering mechanism (like handle-bars attached to the front wheel). A bicycle also has a seat, but obviously you can ride a bike without a seat (though it wouldn't be very fun). So, while the seat sure helps a lot, it is not part of the irreducible core of a bike. Same could be said for light deflectors, etc. So the fact that a bike has a couple dispensable parts doesn't mean that there isn't an irreducible core to a bike.

In this regard, under Miller's style of argument, at the very least, the blood-clotting cascade of jawed fish and land-dwelling vertebrates might all share the parts seen in the diagram below, meaning that their blood-clotting cascade might have an irreducible core which looks like this (the diagram below basically shows the blood-clotting cascade of jawed-fish):

Figure 4: The blood-clotting cascade of jawed fish, which also represents the components of the blood-clotting cascade of land-dwelling vertebrates that Michael Behe argued formed an irreducibly complex core:

(Information Sources for Figure: Of Pandas and People, Darwin's Black Box, Wikipedia, Barbara Forrest, Paul Gross, "Biochemistry by design," Trends in Biochemical Sciences, Vol. 32(7):301-310 (2007).)

By finding that both jawed vertebrates and land-dwelling vertebrates contain all of the above components — the extrinsic pathway and everything "after the fork" — Miller's arguments, at most, show that there is an irreducible core comprised of the components in the above diagram. Perhaps the intrinsic pathway of land-dwelling vertebrates (missing from this diagram) is not part of this irreducible core. If that's the case, this does not refute irreducible complexity for the rest of the system; it just shows that those components in the intrinsic pathway aren't indispensable to the system. The fact that land-dwelling vertebrates have an intrinsic pathway does NOT negate the existence of an irreducible core. Incidentally, this diagram contains all of the components which Behe said are part of the irreducible core. So Miller in no way refuted Behe.

Figure 5: This diagram shows the blood-clotting cascade of land-dwelling vertebrates. The red box shows the components that Michael Behe argues form the irreducibly complex core of the blood-clotting cascade. The green box shows the components which Ken Miller claims are dispensable to the blood-clotting cascade. Since the boxes don't overlap, it can be seen that Miller didn't even address Behe's arguments. In other words, none of Miller's comparative biochemistry examples of blood-clotting cascades in various species lacked any of the factors that Behe claimed were part of the irreducibly complex core. Nonetheless, Judge Jones had the temerity to rule that "scientists in peer-reviewed publications have refuted Professor Behe's predication about the alleged irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade."

Posted by Casey Luskin on December 24, 2008 12:00 AM | Permalink

Sometimes, I think public school administrators are the real enemy

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/12/sometimes_i_think_public_schoo.php

Category: Creationism

Posted on: December 12, 2008 9:33 AM, by PZ Myers

A student, Brandon Creasy, submitted an opinion piece on evolution to the school news magazine. The principal, Kevin Bezy, rejected it and has held up publication of the magazine until it is revised. Bezy explains himself, and it's the usual kind of weasely nonsense that makes me very snarly in the morning.

When asked his opinion of evolution and how that may have factored into the situation, Bezy declined to discuss his feelings on the theory. He said he considers that irrelevant to the matter, believing it important to remain unbiased when making decisions.

I don't give a good greasy squirt of slimy spit for Mr Bezy's "feelings" about evolution. He is supposed to be a professional educator, and the unbiased status of the theory is that it is the only legitimate explanation for life's diversity; no other explanation, including the page and a half of poetic metaphor and myth included in the book of Genesis, is even close. When censoring well-supported scientific ideas, hiding behind a false objectivity is not an option.

"The law gives the principal the responsibility to edit publications of the school," Bezy said. "It is an important responsibility because the principal has to look out for the rights and sensitivities of all students, especially in a diverse and multicultural area."

Man, this guy sounds like a pompous gasbag. All this talk about sensitivities and multiculturalism isn't being used to promote a diversity of ideas: he's using it to squelch the expression of any opinions that differ from the flavorless, mealy pablum to which he wants the cultural environment of the school reduced. A "diverse and multicultural area" should be one where there is an outspoken clash of ideas, not one where disagreement is silenced.

Continuing, he said of the piece: "It didn't present the theory with a sensitivity for those who hold other theories. The teacher of the student was asked to take out language that stated his theory is the only theory."

Other theories? Like what? Name some, Mr Bezy. Show us the courage of your convictions that these other ideas are worth abusing science for. Does it include young earth creationism, the claim that the universe didn't exist prior to the time a few Hebrew patriarchs started scribbling down notes about how to control their tribes? Or perhaps you are thinking of Intelligent Design creationism, a fatuous pretense to scientific thinking that has no evidence, no research program, and no rationale other than that they want to put a false front over some silly old myths?

So far, evolution is the only theory deserving of the name … unless Bezy is confusing the scientific meaning of the word "theory" with the colloquial, and thinks it is equivalent to "brain fart". It is not the business of a public school to inundate students with a variety of brain farts — they get enough of those in church on Sunday — but to provide a disciplined introduction to the best scholarly ideas. Which of those two alternatives is the mission of the Gereau Center?

Can a Magnetic Connection Cure Pain?

http://www.healthnews.com/natural-health/alternative-medicine/can-a-magnetic-connection-cure-your-pain-2265.html

By: Lara Endreszl
Published: Sunday, 14 December 2008

As a kid, I had a bunch of little round magnets that were supposed to be glued onto the back of homemade refrigerator magnets. Instead I used to stack them up on the kitchen table and turn them around and around attracting and repelling the little discs for the sheer wonder of the power they held. Little did I know magnets have been widely used as an alternative method of treating pain from headaches and motion sickness to joint pain.

For centuries magnets have been used for various health purposes and were first used in stone form. Called lodestones, ancient Greeks used the magnetized stones as a way to cure certain ailments. To keep patients from bleeding, physicians used amber pills that were magnetized, as well as magnetic rings, to ease arthritis suffering. The Middle Ages found magnets being used against poison, gout, and the threat of baldness, as well as for pulling out objects containing iron (like arrowheads) and as an antiseptic for cleaning wounds.

Ancient healers thought that the blood contained magnetic energy and when it became low or displaced, the patient became ill. After the Civil War, magnets were put into clothing in order to reduce the need for doctors, which were hard to find. In the United States, magnets are still in use today, not so much in clothing to replenish deficiencies in the body, but for shoe insoles to stabilize painful foot symptoms, inside a mattress pad for general body well being, and inside discreet elastic bands to wear against pressure points (most common on the inside of your wrist) to ward off sickness from the sea, from altitude, or motion in genera—like a long car ride in the backseat.

Multiple conditions are said to be fought by manipulating the magnetic fields coursing through your body. Liver and kidney problems, back pain, and fibromyalgia are some of the major health concerns people look to magnets to solve.

Popular, yes, but healthy? No one can say for sure. Dr. Andrew Weil—renowned alternative medicine doctor and famous for being a specialist in giving practical health advice related to his field to public figures such as Oprah Winfrey—says the jury's still out. Weil addresses their popularity and widespread use on multiple causes, but isn't sure spending money on gimmicky magnets are worth your while in the long run, especially because there have been no previous studies confirming their positive results.

Weil says there are two main types of magnets, static and electromagnetic. Static magnets are like the ones I used to play with on my kitchen table which don't change their magnetic field. These are the types that are usually associated with small adhesive patches and the elastic bands for cabin pressure and motion sickness and inside shoes and key rings and other devices said to "balance" out the body. Some people have claimed that these types of magnetic fields are able to help temporarily relieve pain associated with chronic back symptoms and can even give you a boost of energy throughout daily wear, but concrete research has yet to back those theories up.

On the other hand, electromagnets are often used in hospitals in devices like MRI machines using magnetic fields with an active electrical current, using radiation to help doctors see inside the body and sometimes speed up the bone-healing process. As recently as March, a medical journal published a paper that touts researchers' findings that electromagnetic technology was able to reduce depression in people who didn't respond to other methods of treatment. With all of these methods, more research always has to be done.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) cites that science may find a way to propose the worth of magnets for the body and have conducted small trials using animals instead of humans. Possibilities are that magnets may be able to change nerve cell functions and block pain signals from getting to the brain, blood flow and oxygen transport can be increased thereby inducing body temperature to ailing areas of the body, and by balancing the rate of cell growth and death. With every type of medicine there are risk factors involved and a consultation from a doctor or natural healer would always be wise before starting any type of radical therapy.

Whatever type of medical theory you subscribe to, doctors and researchers alike warn to use your own judgment when applying magnetic fields to what ails you. Talk to your physician and rate the pros and cons. Whether or not this type of magnetic manipulation appeals to your common sense, I think we all have learned that magnets aren't just for the refrigerator anymore.

Inhofe: less honest than the Discovery Institute

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/inhofe_less_honest_than_the_di.php

Posted on: December 13, 2008 8:42 PM, by Tim Lambert

Inhofe's list of 650 scientists that supposedly dispute the consensus on AGW reminded me of another list: The Discovery Institute's list of scientists who dissent from Darwinism, so I thought I'd compare the two lists.

First, numbers. The Discovery Institute's list has 751 names, while Inhofe's has only 604. (Not "More Than 650" as he claims -- there are many names appearing more than once.)

Second, how do you get on the list? Well, you have to sign up to get on the Discovery Institute's list, but Inhofe will add you to his list if he thinks you're disputing the global warming consensus and he won't take you off, even if you tell him to do so. Yes, there is someone less honest than the Discovery Institute.

Third, what sort of scientists are on the lists? Well, the Discovery Institute list has a distinct shortage of biologists, while Inhofe's is lacking in climate scientists. It does have a lot of meteorologists, but these are people who present weather forecasts on TV, not scientists who study climate.

Fourth, who is on both lists? There are five names, and two are from the University of Oklahoma.

Here are the five people who couldn't stop at rejecting just one science:

Edward Blick, Professor Emeritus of the Mewbourne School of Petroleum and Geological Engineering, University of Oklahoma. In an article published by the Twin Cities Creation Science Association, he wrote:

The predecessors of today's unbelievers replaced the Holy Bible's book of Genesis with Darwin's Origin of the Species. Now with the help of Al Gore and the United Nations they are trying to replace the Holy Bible's book of Revelation with the U.N.'s report Anthropogenic Global Warming. They tell us that man's use of fossil fuels results in too much atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) which causes excessive warming and melting of polar ice caps. They say if we don't take drastic steps (trillions of dollars of taxes, year after year, after year), we will either roast to death, or drown in the rising seas. The plan is for the U.N. to take control of the world's economy and dictate what we can use for transportation (bikes?), what we can eat, where we can live, and what industries we must shut down. This whole scheme is a "Trojan Horse" for global socialism! ...

For thousands of years our earth has undergone cooling and warming under the control of God. Man cannot control the weather, but he can kill millions of people in his vain attempt to control it, by limiting or eliminating the fuel that we use. How does God control our warming and cooling? Scientists have discovered it is the Sun! Amazing, even grade school children know this. The Sun's warming or cooling the earth varies with sunspot and Solar flairs.

David Deming, Associate Professor of Geosciences, University of Oklahoma. In an op-ed in the Edmond Sun he wrote

Obama is a vapid demagogue, a hollow man that despises American culture. He is ill-suited to be president of the United States. As the weeks pass, more Americans will come to this realization and elect McCain/Palin in a landslide.

So you can guess that his writing about climate in this week's Washington Times is likely to be as accurate as his election prediction:

But the last two years of global cooling have nearly erased 30 years of temperature increases. To the extent that global warming ever existed, it is now officially over.

Despite a strong La Nina this year, 2008 was much warmer than any year in the 70s.

Guillermo Gonzalez, former Associate Professor of Astronomy Iowa State University.

Robert Smith, Professor of Chemistry University of Nebraska, Omaha

James Wanliss, Associate Professor of Physics, Embry-Riddle University

And I must also include this awesome quote from Edward Blick:

In an absolutely beautiful description, [Isiah] declares that these obedient ones "shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint" (Isa. 40:28-31).

In addition to the obvious spiritual truth conveyed in this context, science has determined that this passage was rather ahead of its time in terms of aerodynamic information.

Dr. Edward F. Blick, who served as a professor in the School of Aerospace at the University of Oklahoma, did extensive wind-tunnel studies at the university with eagles. In doing research in 1971, Dr. Blick and his colleagues discovered that the eagle's six-slotted feathers (at the end of each wing) curve upward in gliding flight. Wind tunnel measurements demonstrated that this design reduced the size of the vortex (whirling current) that emanates from each wing tip. This, in turn, reduces drag on the wings and allows the eagle to soar great distances on the air currents--without even having to beat its wings.

Professor Blick, impressed with the accuracy of the Bible in this regard, stated: "Thus 2,700 years after the scripture in Isaiah was written, science has stumbled onto the same truth."

It's right to ask questions about evolution

http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/36146419.html

By Ken Mercer - Former state Rep. Ken Mercer is an elected member of the State Board of Education.

I want to present the other side of the State Board of Education's debate on teaching scientific strengths and "weaknesses" of evolutionary theory in future textbooks.

The Texas Freedom Network (TFN), an ultra-liberal advocacy group, funded and published the research study quoted by the Express-News.

Using political "red herrings," TFN testifiers incorrectly implied teaching scientific weaknesses is a new requirement. They argued that allowing discussion of weaknesses would lead to teaching religion and subsequent litigation.

The fact is Texas has allowed teaching scientific weaknesses in science textbooks for the last 20 years. In that period of time, not one lawsuit was filed; and for the record, the teaching of creationism and intelligent design is not found in any current textbook adopted by the State of Texas.

TFN's real agenda may be illustrated in this consistent, three-fold testimony to the State Board of Education: (1) Evolution is a fact; (2) there are no weaknesses to that theory; and (3) students are "unqualified" to ask questions.

Is evolution a fact? Most people of faith agree with what is commonly referred to as "micro" evolution," small changes that are clearly visible. We see this in new vaccines and new strains of flu. You can witness evidence of microevolution downtown in any city via the thousands of varieties of stray dogs and cats.

The controversial "macro" evolution was commonly understood as those major changes that could occur if one species jumped to another. For example, have you ever seen a dog-cat, or a cat-rat? The most famous example of macroevolution is the Darwinian "man from an ancestral primate."

Realizing the weakness in macroevolution, Darwinists changed the meaning. Whatever their new definition, where is the evidence for one species changing to another?

Are there weaknesses to the theory of evolution? I asked the testifiers at the SBOE meeting about Dr. Ernst Haeckel's embryo drawings, which appeared in science textbooks for almost 100 years. His drawings implied that a fish, salamander, turtle, pig, etc. — each had almost the identical embryology of a human.

When I redirected the question, the testifiers admitted that Darwinist Haeckel was a fraud and that his "research" should never have appeared in textbooks. But it did.

The famous "missing link," the Piltdown man, survived scientific method and peer review for almost 40 years. Finally someone was allowed to ask a question and found a weakness. This missing link was really the jawbone of an orangutan fused to a human skull. British Broadcasting called this the greatest scientific fraud of the 20th century.

The third part of the liberal agenda is most troubling. How can anyone state that students are "unqualified" to ask questions?

I consistently argued for freedom of speech and academic freedom. The opposition publicly argued against these freedoms.

In the 19th century, William Wilberforce, the focus of the recent biographical movie "Amazing Grace," argued against the intellectual elite of Great Britain. He is credited with ending the racist English nightmare known as the "Black Slave Trade."

History is not kind to Darwinian evolutionists who push their theory as truth, no weaknesses and no questions allowed. In this 21st Century, scientific research that opposes academic freedom will never pass any "smell test."

I stand for students who will always ask questions and search for truth.

An agenda that opposes both freedom of speech and academic freedom is unpatriotic, un-American, and unscientific.

Teaching intelligent design could help students learn to think

http://lubbockonline.com/stories/121508/edi_367667992.shtml

Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
Monday, December 15, 2008
Story last updated at 12/15/2008 - 2:03 am

Currently, a national debate is raging over whether or not to teach intelligent design in public schools. For the most part, fundamentalist Christians support the idea while scientists and most other academics oppose it. Despite my status as an academic, I think intelligent design should be taught in public schools, if it is done the right way.

To begin with, it is important to disabuse ourselves of the notion intelligent design is an alternative to, or the opposite of, evolution. The opposite of evolution is creationism, the theory that the Earth was created in six days, less than 6,000 years ago.

For good or ill, the Supreme Court has already held creationism cannot be taught in public schools. Consequently, for practical purposes, that discussion is off the table.

The opposite of intelligent design is no intelligent design, or atheism. It is possible to believe that an intelligent designer designed evolution as many (I have been told, including Darwin) believe. It is also possible to believe evolution occurred without an intelligent designer as the prominent British scientist, Richard Dawkins, believes.

Most of the objection to teaching intelligent design is predicated on the ground that the subject matter is religious, and should be taught only in church. I disagree. The characteristics of the intelligent designer are most assuredly a matter for religious training and belief. On the other hand, most religions posit the existence of an intelligent designer (usually denominated God), but do not seek to examine all of the scientific/philosophic evidence for or against that supposition. In short, they accept it on faith.

While faith is everything in religion, it is not everything in schools. Every proposition has to be empirically examined to determine its validity. Thus, when intelligent design is examined in school, there is no a priori assumption of its correctness, or incorrectness. The evidence is examined and the chips can fall where they may.

The reason that I am so supportive of teaching intelligent design in public schools is because I studied essentially the intelligent design/no intelligent design debate in an English literature course at Boston University. We read essays from people like C.S. Lewis, supporting intelligent design, and Aldous Huxley, opposing it.

What I remember most about that material was not the conclusions I drew from the reading, but the thought process I was forced to go through. For the first time, I was forced to grapple with cosmic questions of ultimate reality. In Sunday School, I was taught that there was a God who created the world. It never occurred to me to question that. Now, for the first time, I was confronted with the fact that some people did not believe what I always thought was the unquestioned truth.

I would propose a comparable course for high school seniors. I would have them read a book like "Of Pandas and People," a book designed by proponents of intelligent design. I would also have them read a book like Richard Dawkins' book, seeking to prove that there was no intelligent designer.

Frankly, this course of action is not risk-free for fundamentalists. Although I concluded that it was more likely than not that there was an intelligent designer, I suspect some of my classmates were not similarly persuaded. Consequently, if we do adopt the "teach the controversy" perspective that many fundamentalists are advocating in regard to intelligent design, there is a real risk that some percentage of the students will conclude that there is no intelligent designer, and hence no God.

For me, this is a risk worth taking. What I most want for our citizens is to learn how to think. What they think is far less important. Because I believe that teaching the intelligent design/no intelligent design debate will help students learn to think, I am willing to accept the risk that some of the students won't reach the same conclusion that I reached.

If, however, I were a deeply religious fundamentalist, I might think otherwise.

ARNOLD H. LOEWY is George Killam professor of criminal law at the Texas Tech School of Law.

The DI's Shameless Fundraising Tactics

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/12/the_dis_shameless_fundraising.php

Posted on: December 24, 2008 9:23 AM, by Ed Brayton

The desperation of the Discovery Institute is clearly on display in a fundraising appeal they've sent out seeking to exploit the suicide of a college student to get people to send them money. Cheryl Shepherd-Adams has the fundraising letter, which is based on the story from a few weeks ago about Jesse Kilgore killing himself and his parents and the right wing media blaming it on having read a Richard Dawkins book.

This isn't the first time they've tried to exploit this guy's suicide for their own purposes. Anika Smith already wrote an idiotic post on the DI blog declaring that Kilgore's suicide shows "the Consequences of Teaching One Side of Evolution." After all, this kid was raised a creationist; he already got the other side. But it's even more shameless to try and raise money off his death. Here's how the letter begins:

December 11, 2008

Dear [name redacted]:

Jesse Kilgore was an earnest young college student who loved to debate issues. But just a few weeks ago, Jesse killed himself.

According to friends and relatives, Jesse had read biologist Richard Dawkin's book The God Delusion and was devastated by it. One of Jesse's relatives recalled a recent conversation:

"[Jesse] mentioned the book he had been reading - The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins - and how it along with the science classes he had eroded his faith. Jesse was always great about defending his beliefs, but somehow, the professors and the book had presented him information that he found to be irrefutable."

When I read Jesse's story, my heart broke - not only for Jesse, but for all of the other students who are facing similar despair right now.

Ideas do have consequences, and the Darwinists' assertion that life is the product of an unguided process can have a devastating impact on young hearts and minds.

That second to last paragraph should read, "When I read Jesse's story, my eyes lit up with dollar signs knowing I could exploit this to get my credulous followers to send in more money." Here comes the pitch:

*$2000 will provide a full scholarship for a college student to attend our summer seminar.

*$200 will fund the production of an episode of our internet radio show.

*$50 will enable us to send free educational materials to a teacher.

There used to be a series of ads with the slogan "a mind is a terrible thing to waste." That statement is true for Jesse Kilgore, and it's true for the millions of young people right now who remain unprepared to face the claims of the Darwinian atheists. Please enable us to challenge these claims head-on in the coming year with a message of hope.

Shameless. Absolutely shameless.

What Parrots Tell us About the Origin and Evolution of Birds

http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2008/12/the_evolution_and_origin_of_pa.php

Topic Categories: Birds • Evolution • Molecular Biology • Ornithology • Parrots

Posted on: December 24, 2008 1:58 PM, by "GrrlScientist"

One of the most contentious issues among scientists who study the evolution of birds is identifying precisely when the modern birds (Neornithes) first appeared. This is due to conflicts between the fossil record and molecular dating methodologies. For example, fossils support a Tertiary radiation whereas molecular dating methodologies suggest that the birds radiated in the early Cretaceous. But there is another way to address this discrepancy. Because the evolution of parrots and cockatoos reflects the evolution of Aves themselves, studying the psittaciformes offers compelling insights into this mystery. Further, because psittaciformes generally are not migratory and because they tend to occupy discrete ranges, their ancient patterns of diversification are easier to discern than for many other taxonomic orders of birds that have dispersed widely.

To this end, an international team of researchers, headed by Timothy Wright, a professor at New Mexico State University and a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, collaborated to study the early evolution of the parrots. To do this work, they sampled individual representatives from 69 of the 82 extant genera of parrots and eight additional avian orders that have been idnetified as outgroups, for a total of 77 avian taxa. Outgroups are defined as those taxa that possess a character, such as a hooked beak or zygodactyl toes, that is likely to have been ancestral to the parrots.

Wright and his colleagues chose the Falconiformes (Falcons), Passeriformes (songbirds), Columbiformes (pigeons and doves), Cuculiformes (cuckoos), Piciformes (woodpeckers), Coraciiformes (the "near passerines", such as kingfishers, etc), Strigiformes (owls), and Coliiformes (mousebirds) as outgroups because each was considered an ally of the parrots at one time or has been identified as a sister group in recent molecular phylogenetic work [for example, see here].

The team sequenced and analyzed 3,915 basepairs (bp) of DNA per individual, consisting of 1,668 bp from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that encodes two genes, and another 2,247 bp from nuclear (chromosomal) introns. Using these data, they used Maximum Parsimony analysis to recover this cladogram that describes the relationships between the 69 parrot genera and the eight outgroups (figure 1);

FIG. 1. -- Cladogram of relationships among representatives of 69 parrot genera and 8 outgroup taxa based on a strict consensus of 4 trees obtained from combined parsimony (MP) analysis of the 4 sequence partitions (COI + ND2, TROP, TGFB2, and RDPSN) with coded gaps. MP bootstrap support values for each node are shown above the branches with values of 100% indicated by asterisks; Bremer decay index values are shown below. The classifications of Rowley (1997) and Collar (1997) are indicated by bars on the right: I) family Cacatuidae, II) subfamily Loriinae, and, within the subfamily Psittacinae, the tribes a) Strigopini, b) Nestorini, c) Psittrichadini, d) Psittacini e) Arini, f) Psittaculini, g) Micropsittini, h) Platycercini, and i) Cyclopsittacini [larger view]. DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msn160.

The team then used Bayesian analysis to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the parrots and recovered this phylogram, which describes very similar relationships to those in the above cladogram (figure 2);

FIG. 2. -- Phylogram of relationships among representatives of 69 parrot genera and 8 outgroup taxa based on Bayesian analysis of the 4 sequence partitions (COI + ND2, TROP, TGFB2, and RDPSN) and a fifth partition consisting of coded gaps from the 4 sequence partitions. Bayesian posterior probabilities 0.90 are indicated as percentages above the branches, values of 1.0 are indicated with an asterisk. The scale bar indicated the number of changes (base substitutions or changes in state of indel characters) [larger view]. DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msn160.

The team then estimated divergence times using both two different analytic methods that relied upon incorporation of one of the two contrasting calibration dates (either based on fossil data and molecular data) (figure 3);

FIG. 3. -- Chronograms showing divergence times among parrot genera based a Bayesian relaxed-clock approach, with 2 alternative dates for the basal divergence between the New Zealand endemics Nestor and Strigops and the remaining psittaciforms: (a) node dated to 50 MYA, based on the hypothesized divergence between modern psittaciforms and fossils dated to the Lower Eocene; and (b) node dated to 82 MYA, based on the split between New Zealand and Gondwana. Uncertainty in the timing of these alternative divergences is incorporated with both calibration estimates representing means of normal distributions with SD 5 2; error bars on the nodes illustrate the 95% HPD of node ages. Shaded vertical bars indicate timing of major geological events that may have contributed to diversification through vicariance: separation of New Zealand from Gondwana, 80-85 MYA; the K/T boundary, 65 MYA; the initial separation of Australia from East Antarctica, 58-61 MYA; the final separation of Australia from East Antarctica, 36-41 MYA; the final separation of South America from West Antarctica, 28-32 MYA; and Australia and New Guinea approach southeast Asia, 20-24 MYA [larger view]. DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msn160.

When the team used the molecular calibration date of 82 million years ago (MYA), they found that the evolutionary split between the cockatoos and the remaining psittaciforms occurred prior to the K/T boundary at 65 MYA. Subsequent parrot lineage radiations then occurred between 60 and 65 MYA, which corresponds to the initial separation of Australia and New Guinea from East Antarctica. According to this estimate, diversification into the major parrot subclades was complete by 30 MYA, by which point Australia, Antarctica, and South America were completely separated.

On the other hand, when the team instead used 50 MYA (fossil data) to calibrate the diversification in basal parrot lineages, they found that the split between the cockatoos and the remaining psittaciforms occurred 45.04 MYA -- just prior to the time Australia is thought to have separated from Antarctica. Radiation of Neotropical parrot lineages is estimated to have occurred starting 33 MYA, a period roughly coincident with the separation of South America from West Antarctica.

These results support the hypothesis that Australasia was probably where the parrots originated. This hypothesis is based in the high number of genera endemic to the region, several of which are rooted at or near the base of the psittaciform tree. Further, the basal split between the New Zealand taxa, Nestor and Strigops, suggests that this origin occurred while New Zealand and Australasia were still part of the Gondwana supercontinent during the Cretaceous period. Additionally, other recently published analyses using similar methods suggest that both Passeriformes and Columbiformes originated in Gondwana during the Cretaceous.

Other interesting findings include the confirmation that the cockatoos are a monophyletic group -- as are the lories (Loriinae), whose sister groups include Melopsittacus, Cyclopsitta, and Psittaculirostris -- a finding that agrees with my data (unpublished). Unsurprisingly, these data indicate that the remaining parrots form a polyphyletic jumble, with the exception of the tropical African parrots and the Neotropical Arini, each of which were recovered as separate well-supported clades.

The team also found that their various phylogenies did not produce any consistent placement of the eight outgroups as sister to the parrots, reinforcing the idea that the parrots and cockatoos do not have any close sister relationships with other modern birds.

This research indicates that Aves appeared during the Cretaceous, and that parrots are an ancient lineage without any close evolutionary relationships. Additionally, these data also support the hypotheses that there are several separate and well-defined clades of parrots, particularly cockatoos and the lories, while the remainder of the parrots need some serious phylogenetic work to be done -- work that I would absolutely love to devote my life to completing.

Source:

T. F. Wright, E. E. Schirtzinger, T. Matsumoto, J. R. Eberhard, G. R. Graves, J. J. Sanchez, S. Capelli, H. Muller, J. Scharpegge, G. K. Chambers, R. C. Fleischer (2008). A Multilocus Molecular Phylogeny of the Parrots (Psittaciformes): Support for a Gondwanan Origin during the Cretaceous. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 25 (10), 2141-2156 DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msn160.

Evolution Theory Is Not Scientific

http://www.dakotavoice.com/2008/12/evolution-theory-is-not-scientific.html

Calvin Smith has a good piece at Creation Ministries International on whether evolution theory measures up to the definition of "science" as defined by evolutionists themselves.

So is evolution "scientific?"

Smith made a short list of the elements of criteria laid out by the pro-evolution National Science Education Standards (NSES):

1-Observational data

2-Accurate predictions

3-Logical

4-Open to criticism

5-Accurate information

6-No presuppositions

Sounds reasonable, right? So how does evolution theory measure up?

Smith cites vociferous evolutionist Richard Dawkins to indict evolution theory in the area of observational data:

After being chided recently by a creationist on a UK TV program about his comment; 'Evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening', Dawkins attempted to parry with a prepared comment:

'The refusal to believe in anything you can't see yourself is absurd. Think about it, I never saw Napoleon with my own eyes, but that doesn't mean Napoleon didn't exist.'

And Bible believers everywhere said, Amen! However, I'd reckon atheists were figuratively banging their heads against their TV sets because of Dawkins 'letting the cat out of the bag'. The existence of Napoleon or Jesus Christ can only be known through historical records, not operational science. So the scientific method cannot be invoked.

Once again the world's most vocal champion of evolution and the outgoing Oxford University Chair for the Public Understanding of Science has revealed that evolution hasn't been observed! So according to the NSES, (' … all scientific ideas depend on experimental and observational confirmation … ') evolution fails their first criteria as being scientific.

But apostles of the religion of evolution can make "accurate prediction" and thus fulfill criteria #2, right? Well, not really.

The fossil record has never panned out as Charles Darwin hoped it would. Smith cites a recent National Geographic article which admits:

'Illuminating but spotty, the fossil record is like a film of evolution from which 999 out of 1,000 frames have been lost.'

Wow. That's a lot to build a sound theory upon, isn't it? One frame out of 1,000? Uh huh.

Speculation about vestigial organs has proven to be all wet, too. Hmm. Maybe evolution can't make the predictions we thought.

But hey, at least it meets criteria #3 and is perfectly logical, right? Well....

Imagine you open your front door and see a robot walking on two legs along the street carrying a package on its shoulder. The package is marked with an address, that the robot has followed and arrived at.

Glancing at your neighbour you say 'Who do you think made the robot?' To which he says 'I don't think anyone made it, I think it made itself!' With even a lay person's knowledge of basic engineering, would this be a logical conclusion?

Okay, but evolution theory and evolutionists meet #4, being totally open to criticism. After all, they have all the facts on their side. They have nothing to fear. This issue was settled a long time ago, so criticisms are no problem, right? Well...

The newly released documentary Expelled blows the whistle on what many evolutionists have been doing for decades, which is brooking no opposition to anything that challenges Darwinian dogma.

The movie reveals that even Darwinists themselves, when attempting to be open-minded, are often removed from their positions for daring to allow other points of view. A recent example is evolutionary Prof. Michael Reiss, the Royal Society's former director of education, who resigned within a couple of days after suggesting that creationism and ID should be discussed in classrooms.

Hmmm. Okay, so evolution theory has miserably failed four out of the six criteria, so far. But it can still pull in the big win with the last two, right? After all, what we know and teach about evolution relies on completely accurate information, right? At the risk of sounding repetitive, "Well...."

Those that have been around the creation/evolution debate are usually familiar with hoaxes like Piltdown Man, Archaeoraptor (the Piltdown Bird!), Nebraska man and the Staged photos of peppered moths, all fraudulent 'evidences' used to promote the theory of evolution.

One such fraud refuses to die it seems. I was shocked days ago when flipping through my daughter's science text book to find Haeckel's forged embryo drawings! I knew these had still been used in textbooks up to a short while ago but couldn't believe my eyes to see it used in 2008 science curricula. This false 'evidence' was created in the 1860's

Alright, but hey: at least it isn't full of presuppositions like creation science and intelligent design theory is. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllll...

In order to be truly neutral (hold no presuppositions) regarding the theory of origins, one would have to be open to the view that life could have arisen completely naturalistically, while simultaneously accepting that it may have been intelligently designed. You would then conduct investigations to see which hypothesis is better supported. But many evolutionists are atheists or were taught by atheists. By definition an atheist is;

A person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.13

So how can an atheist be unbiased or hold no presuppositions when their world view pre-supposes 'no-God'?

Smith also cites this admission of bias from evolutionist Richard Lewontin:

'It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.'

Author Aldous Huxley, grandson of "Darwin's bulldog" T.H. Huxley, admitted the license of Godlessness was central to his acceptance of this worldview:

'I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.'

Smith's article also mentions a very interesting 1983 quote from the Official Journal-American Humanist Association

'I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly view their role as the proselytizers of a new faith … The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new; the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of Humanism …

Notice that this humanist at least had the intellectual integrity to admit that humanism is a faith, a religion?

Well, it looks like evolution theory fares no better than creation science or intelligent design in these six criteria put forth by the NSES.

So if both evolution theory and creation science can now start on a level playing field of consideration, the next step is to examine the theories and contentions of both and see how well they fit the evidence.

Interestingly, evolution does pitifully here, too. I won't take time to go into the details (which can be found easily across the internet) and make this post any longer, but the elementary implications alone are enough to doom evolution theory before it gets off the launch pad.

There are a great number of hinge-pins required to make materialism/naturalism/evolution a workable theory. They include a universe that sprang from absolutely nothing (in violation of scientific principles) with no cause (in violation of scientific principles), and required stars and other planetary bodies to form (in violation of scientific principles), and life to spring from lifeless matter (in violation of scientific principles).

And since evolutionists make an a priori insistence that there cannot be supernatural intervention or causation, they are left with events which must happen without supernatural help...yet are impossible according to the laws of nature.

Creation, on the other hand, assumes an infinite, all-powerful creator who spoke a universe into being, and had it completely ordered and fully functional--including human life--in six days.

The science of such a feat definitely inspires curiosity and wonder. Yet if one can believe Genesis 1:1, then every other truth-claim in the Bible is very easy to accept.

To put it simply, the claims of creation science are entirely possible within its own framework.

The claims of evolution, however, are impossible within its own framework.

Evolution comes up woefully short in the "scientific" department.

Posted by Bob Ellis at 6:30 PM

UK quackery on trial

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/12/24/uk-quackery-on-trial/

Simon Singh is a skeptic in the UK, and a well-known science writer. He coauthored a book called Trick or Treament, Alternative Medicine on Trial basically lambasting many forms of chiropractic as pseudoscience — this is the idea that somehow realigning your spine can fix all sorts of ailments, from toothaches to asthma.

He wrote in article in the UK newspaper The Guardian about this, and the British Chiropractic Association, unsurprisingly, took some exception to it. In fact, they sued him for libel. That lawsuit has been going on for some time, and you can find details by searching Google.

What's interesting is that Singh could have simply argued that what he said was a free speech comment (or the UK equivalent), which is what's usually done in these kinds of cases. That lets the paper off the hook, and everyone is happy… though it could be argued there is something of a chilling effect for journalists, who might be afraid to be sued again. But it's an easy solution that gets the job done.

However, it doesn't look like that's what Singh is doing– he and his legal support have turned the tables on the BCA, and are saying that in fact what Singh wrote is true: a lot of chiropractic practices are bogus pseudoscientific quackery. This is beautiful, as it forces the BCA to defend what it does in a court of law. In other words, this goes from a simple libel case to one where an entire sector of garbage "alternative medicine" has to prove what it does is actual medicine.

The details to me aren't clear; in America I have little doubt that a group like the BCA could bring forward three witnesses who say their cold symptoms went away just three days after having their spines adjusted, and a jury would award the chiropractors a bazillion dollars. But the UK has different laws, and I suspect if Singh is taking this strategic route, he'll be well-prepared for such a tactic.

The entire skeptical community will be watching this case very closely, I assure you. This could potentially be huge, bigger than the Dover creationism trial. I would so dearly love to see medical quackery get the justice it oh-so deserves. Most pseudoscience has subtle ramifications, but alternative medicine quackery hurts and even kills people.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Did an angel save girl from dying in hospital?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28364813/

Disabled teen recovered after glowing image appeared on monitor

A 14-year-old girl with a history of serious health issues lay dying of pneumonia in a hospital room. But as her mother waited for the girl to take her last breath, an image of bright light appeared on a security monitor. Within an hour, the dying girl began a recovery that doctors are at a loss to explain.

But Colleen Banton, the girl's mother, has an explanation. "This was an image of an angel," she told NBC News in a story reported Tuesday on TODAY. She credited the apparition with saving the life of her daughter Chelsea.

No hope

The incident happened in Charlotte, N.C., in September. Chelsea had been born five weeks prematurely with developmental disabilities and had battled serious health problems all her life. She is particularly susceptible to the types of pneumonia infections that had taken her to death's door.

Told that there was no hope for Chelsea, Colleen Banton had just instructed doctors to take her daughter off life support and allow nature to take its course when the apparition was seen.

It would be another two months before Chelsea finally left the hospital to return home, where she is about to celebrate her 15th birthday as well as Christmas. Her mother is convinced that Chelsea was saved by divine intervention.

"It's a blessing," she told NBC News. "It's a miracle."

Banton took a picture of the television monitor on which the image appeared. Some who look at it would describe it as a flare of reflected light. Others — including nurses who were on duty as well as Banton — say the three vertical shafts of light are indisputably an angel.

'They walk amongst us'

Banton is hardly alone in her belief in angels.

"I think angels really do exist," the Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook told TODAY's Ann Curry after watching the report on the Bantons' experience. "They protect us. They walk amongst us."

Cook was joined by Rabbi Irwin Kula, who looked at angels as more of a metaphor for the unexplained wonders that life brings.

"Albert Einstein said there are two ways to look at the world: as if everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle," he said.

Angels do not play a large role in the Jewish faith, but they have a prominent place in Christianity, which teaches that an angel told Mary that she was to be the mother of Jesus.

Cook said she believes that angels are messengers from God. "They bring the message of hope," she told Curry.

According to some polls, 75 percent of all Americans believe in angels. That level of belief varies with geography and political affiliation, with more Republicans than Democrats and more Southerners than Northeasterners believing in the existence of the heavenly messengers.

The high level of belief is unique in the developed world. In Canada, Great Britain and Australia, the same polls say, belief in angels does not exceed 40 percent.

Being open to wonder

Kula said whether you believe in angels or not, there is a deeper message in Banton's story.

"The real question is: Can we be open to wonder?" the rabbi told Curry. "Even at the very last moment, the very darkest moment, can we actually be open to the new possibilities that are always there?"

Angels, Kula said, "can be anything." In that sense, he said, one could say that someone who just shows up when you most need a hand can be seen as a very real angel.

"You're having a bad day, and a child comes up to you and smiles and right away you feel better. Is that an angel or is that a child smiling?" Kula said.

Cook had to wipe away a tear of joy after watching Banton's story. It is particularly appropriate, she said, coming at the Christmas season during a year in which many people are experiencing economic hardship.

"People are looking for a miracle right now," Cook said.

Some, like Colleen Banton, feel they've found one.

Which are the top 5 anti-science think tanks?

http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2008/12/which_are_the_top_5_antiscienc.php

Category: Policy and Politics

Posted on: December 22, 2008 7:27 PM, by Josh Rosenau

Climate Progress's Joe Romm is upset with John Tierney. John Tierney pans Obama Science Advisor John Holdren for being on the opposite side from a range of high-profile climate change deniers, delayers, and equivalents. Romm responds (in part):

Tierney is easily the worst science writer at any major media outlet in the country. Pretty much every energy or climate piece he writes is riddled with errors and far-right ideology, including this one.

Amazingly, Tierney quotes CEI attacking Holdren. Now CEI is itself probably one of the top five anti-scientific think tanks in the country. It has taken $2 million of ExxonMobil money in the past decade to run an anti-science disinformation campaign with ads that claim the ice sheets are gaining mass when they are losing it and ending with the absurdist and suicidal tag line, "CO²: they call it pollution, we call it Life!" And those are only some of their ads aimed at destroying the climate for centuries.

That comment about the "top five anti-scientific think tanks" got me thinking. Clearly the Discovery Institute deserves a place on the list (and in private email, Romm agrees). But who else should be on the list, and what criteria should we use to decide which think tank is the very most anti-scientific?

Other likely selections include Heritage, George Marshall, Heartland, Cato, and AEI. The Annapolis Center for Science-based Public Policy never quite took off in a big public way, but has been working away behind the scenes for a while to promote "sound" science. The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness has worked behind the scenes for years to undermine effective regulation of pollutants, including second-hand smoke and carbon dioxide. Several of these are well-documented in The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney.

I've emailed Chris for his nominations, but this is your chance to make a nomination for the top five, and to make your case for the top anti-science think tank of 2008.

Former Diskeeper CIO Says He Was Fired for Refusing Scientology Indoctrination

http://www.dailytech.com/Former+Diskeeper+CIO+Says+He+Was+Fired+for+Refusing+Scientology+Indoctrination/article13752.htm

Tom Corelis (Blog) - December 22, 2008 9:44 AM

Company argues that it has the right to freedom of religion

Former Diskeeper employees Alex Godelman and Marc Le Shay filed suit against their ex-employer earlier this year (PDF), accusing the company of firing them for refusing to sit through thinly-veiled religious indoctrination and join Scientology. Earlier this month, Diskeeper filed its response and, in a move that observers called "unusual" and "inappropriate", motioned to strike (PDF) sections of the pair's arguments.

Godelman and Le Shay's arguments accuse Diskeeper of violating the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and California Labor Law on multiple counts, as well as failing to uphold its legal obligation to maintain a discrimination-free environment.

Diskeeper's response seeks to black out Godelman and Le Shay's request that the company "forever refrain from … requiring any employee, as a condition of employment, to study, adopt and/or apply the [Scientology-authored] 'Hubbard Management Technology' and/or the related 'Hubbard Study Technology' in the workplace." The unusual request is justified by the company's First Amendment rights, of which it argues that injunctions prohibiting religious practice in the workplace are unconstitutional.

Motions to strike are "rarely filed," explains Scott Pilutik of the blog Reality Based Community. "A party will sometimes move to strike language in a pleading which is scandalous and has no relevance to the complaint or relief requested."

Most notable, says Pilutik, is that Diskeeper's argument constitutes an "implicit admission" that both of the Hubbard programs are "religious in nature."

"Why would they advance the argument that Diskeeper has a protected interest in providing religious training to employees?" argues Pilutik. "Diskeeper claims that it in no way concedes that Hubbard Management and Study Technology are religious, but to anyone familiar with both Scientology and Hubbard's supposedly secular 'technologies,' the two brands are basically indistinguishable, and indeed, the establishment of supposedly secular fronts was intended by Hubbard to be a recruiting tool."

The pair's original complaint chronicles the individual, brief periods of time that both Godelman and Le Shay were employed with Diskeeper, where – despite exhibiting stellar performance at both Diskeeper and their former employers – management continuously forced them to attend Scientology-themed company training seminars and ultimately adopt the religion. Godelman, who practices Judaism, had his employment suddenly terminated after half a year with the company in October 19, 2006, while Le Shay was forced to resign less than a month after joining.

The lawsuit goes on to describe a work environment saturated with Scientology influences: religious art adorns the walls, and all new employees receive a copy of L. Ron Hubbard's The Way to Happiness – which includes advice on personal life, including sex. The company frequently mentioned or held a massive library of Scientology books offered for sale and loan, and management often used Scientology lexicon in day-to-day work. Ultimately, the lawsuit argues, Diskeeper employees were "constantly bombarded with Scientology imagery and ideology in the work environment," whether they wanted it or not.

Furthermore, attempts by the pair to seek advice from other members of upper management almost always resulted in an order to conform – for their own good.

Slashdot notes that Diskeeper former CEO and current Chairman Craig Jensen is a "high level, publicly avowed" Scientologist who attributes Diskeeper's success to Hubbard's teachings.

A hearing for Diskeeper's motion to strike will take place on January 27, 2009, and a tentative trial date is set for mid-June.

Scientology refuseniks sue over compulsory workplace courses

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/22/scientology_diskeeper_lawsuit/

By John Leyden

Posted in Applications, 22nd December 2008 13:26 GMT

Two ex-employees of Diskeeper have sued the firm over allegations they were obliged to take part in Scientology training courses as a mandatory condition of employment.

Alexander Godelman, former chief information officer of Diskeeper, and Marc Le Shay, former Diskeeper Automation Planning Officer, filed a joint suit of unfair dismissal at Los Angeles Superior last month alleging that the disc utilities firm made it compulsory to attend Scientology-based courses. They charge that their refusal to participate in the courses led to their dismissal.

The claimants allege that Diskeeper violated Californian employment law and engaged in religious discrimination.

Diskeeper founder and chief exec Craig Jensen is a committed Scientologist who allegedly told Godelman, who is Jewish, that his attendance at Scientology-based courses was non-negotiable while talking up the supposed benefits of the course. Le Shay refused to attend the course, and Godelman's support of this stance ultimately led the the dismissal of the duo, the lawsuit alleges.

The suit (pdf) claims unspecified damages as well as an injunction that would prevent Disklabs from making attendance at Hubbard Study Technology courses compulsory. The utility tools firm responded by filling a legal action (pdf) that attempts to remove this sanction from consideration during a possible trial.

Disklabs argues that religious instruction in the workplace is protected by the First Amendment, making the proposed sanction unconstitutional.

The utilities tool firm (formerly known as Executive Software) is no stranger to controversy over its chief exec's adherence to Scientology. The inclusion of the Diskeeper utility in Windows 2000 sparked concerns, never substantiated, that the tool might harvest data from users' machines.

The German government asked Microsoft for the ability to inspect source code before it was prepared to allow the use of the technology of German government systems. Microsoft declined, but resolved the resulting impasse by releasing a tool that removed the utility from systems. ®

Workers Say They Were Fired for Refusing Scientology Training

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/hdw/?p=3842

Posted by Susan Hall on December 22, 2008 at 1:09 pm

Two former employees of Diskeeper have sued the company, claiming they were fired because they refused to sit through thinly veiled Scientology training, reports The Register.

Diskeeper founder and CEO Craig Jensen, a committed Scientologist, allegedly told former Chief Information Officer Alexander Godelman that attending the Scientology-based courses was non-negotiable. Marc Le Shay, former Diskeeper automation planning officer, joined Godelman in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges the acts violate California employment law and constitute religious discrimination.

In response to the pair's request for an injunction to prevent the company from requiring such courses, the company has argued that religious practice in the workplace is protected by the First Amendment, reports Daily Tech.

Advice to an Arrogant Medical Priesthood: Wash Your Hands

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/12/advice_to_an_arrogant_medical.html

There is an internet cottage industry of physicians and scientists who regularly excoriate alternative medicine and other non-traditional or even fringe approaches to health or to scientific understanding. Steven Novella, Orac, and a host of other faux "defenders of science" decry the danger to the public from vaccine "denial," homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic, among others. Now, I agree with my medical colleagues that the scientific basis for most of these practices or viewpoints is missing or minimal. I don't believe that the scientific evidence supports the view that vaccines cause autism. I am not a supporter of "alternative medicine," and I objected when an effort was made some years ago to expand alternative medicine here at Stony Brook. Alternative medicine, like traditional medicine, must be subjected to strict standards of evidence for safety and efficacy. Most types of alternative medicine fail to meet those standards, and therefore should not be endorsed by the medical profession.

Yet there is an irony in the efforts of "defenders of science" to protect the public from treatments and theories that are outside of the mainstream of medical practice. The greatest iatrogenic danger to patients isn't chiropractors or homeopaths or vaccine "deniers." It's the doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel working in the traditional medical paradigm.

The data is uncontestable. Each year in the United States, errors of traditional science-based medical practice kill at least a hundred thousand people, probably substantially more. These errors include medication errors, surgical errors and unnecessary surgery, preventable bedsores, infections caused by poor technique and the failure of medical personnel to practice good hygiene such as hand washing, and many others. Note that none of these deaths are caused by homeopaths, vaccine "deniers," etc.

The harm done by traditional practitioners of medicine is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Where is the introspection by "skeptics" and "science defenders" like Drs. Novella and Orac about the enormous harm done to patients by themselves — traditional medical practitioners? What hypocrites.

Simple measures such as hand washing, site-marking prior to surgery to affirm that the patient and the surgery are correct, and computerized pharmacy and prescriptions to avoid errors can make (and are making) big differences in mortality and morbidity associated with medical care. In my own hospital, we have prevented several hundred deaths (based on mortality rates from past years) by such expedients as mandating and facilitating hand washing by doctors and nurses as they move between patient rooms and by a focused effort to reduce hospital acquired pneumonia and blood infections.

Arrogance of scientists and physicians is an old scourge. Alfred Russel Wallace, who helped develop the theory of evolution in the 19th century and who confronted the scientific arrogance of his own day, famously commented on medical arrogance in a different context (i.e. eugenics), calling it

… an arrogant scientific priestcraft. (1)

Despite all of the enormous benefit to mankind conferred by mainstream science and medicine, considerable harm is done as well. Nothing in non-traditional medicine comes any where near the harm done to patients by mainstream medical errors and even malfeasance (e.g. unnecessary surgery). We are beset by an arrogant medical and scientific priestcraft, eager to call ordinary people "idiots" or "anti-science" or "deniers" because they hold viewpoints with which these particular scientists and physicians disagree. I believe that much of the motivation for the "pro-science" priesthood isn't patient safety or a genuine respect for scientific method but ideological hegemony. What bothers materialist ideologues like Novella and Orac is that there are people who challenge their materialist scientific worldview. There is a deep arrogance to the commentary and tactics of these defenders of science.

Far more damage is done to patients by doctors and other mainstream health care providers than is done by vaccine "deniers," acupuncturists, homeopaths, etc. Fatal disease is much more likely to be spread by a doctor's unwashed hands than by some (mostly misguided) parents who fear that a vaccine may harm their child. I've never known a patient to be harmed by a chiropractor. Tens of thousands of patients each year are harmed in preventable ways by their (usually well-intentioned) surgeons.

My advice to Dr. Novella, Orac, and other arrogant medical clergy: go easy on the parents concerned about autism from vaccines, even though the evidence suggests that their fears are unfounded. They're not idiots, and they shouldn't be treated with scorn. A little humility on the part of doctors, and some respect for the right of people to hold other views (even if those views are wrong), and to act on those views, would be a good thing. Respectful discourse with patients who disagree with our advice, not scornful excoriation, is much needed.

Doctors should be less arrogant with our advice and we should denounce faux "skeptics" like Dr. Novella and Orac who exhibit no skepticism about their own dogma and behavior and are coarsening this discourse because of their own ideological commitments rather than for any rational commitment to public health.

We doctors need to wash our own hands.

(1) James Marchant, Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1916), p 476.

Posted by Michael Egnor on December 23, 2008 2:21 PM | Permalink

Rookie Reiki client sold on alternative healing technique

http://www.independentpub.com/windham/articles/2008122504.htm

By Joshua Shea

In the last few years, I've noticed as I age, I become more open to alternative ideas when it comes to maintaining health. Yes, anybody can go to the gym and take vitamins, but I've always believed that there is an unexplained organic bond between all living things.

People have told me this is a spiritual way of looking at the world, but I disagree. As someone who strongly favors science over sorcery, I've found myself laughing at faith healers, but taking a stronger look at the world of alternative and holistic medicine.

I appreciate the fact that there is a scientific basis behind most alternative and holistic healthcare options, but also appreciate the fact that modern science may not have the tools to quantify the benefits.

If you bust up your leg, you can take pills to quell the pain. You can have an operation. Relief is expected. What about when you don't take the generally accepted scientific way of doing things? If it works, does it make it any less legitimate?

As somebody who is a "show me, don't tell me," kind of person, I recently booked my first Reiki (pronounced Ray-kee) session with Sandra Maguire, Reiki Master Level III Practitioner at Holistic Pathways Yoga and Healing Center in Gorham.

I'm open minded enough to allow alternative medicine to work, but skeptical enough to keep my BS detector tuned-in to any chicanery.

Maybe it was the end of a long week. Maybe the barometric pressure was dropping as the impending storm was near. Maybe I just needed some "me time." Whatever it was, this stuff worked.

Reiki is a Japanese word for "universal life force energy" which flows through all living beings. It's an ancient science that was rediscovered in the late 19th century. There is no dogma associated or spiritual belief needed, just an acceptance of the energy that flows from practitioner to client.

"You don't have to believe that Reiki will work for it to work," Sandra explained to me. "Reiki is a natural system of healing that uses the practitioner as a facilitator, or conduit, to direct energy for the clients body to receive. The body knows how to heal itself, and will use the energy as it is needed. Therefore, the client himself/herself is the healer, and I am assisting that process."

The theory makes enough sense to me. You've seen people who have a self-imposed dark cloud over their head. Conversely, positive thinkers with good attitudes seem to get the most of out of life. Is this scientific? I don't know how to measure it, but having seen it enough times, there certainly seems to be something to it. Energy is everywhere and it seems that if we can make magnets dance around, we can learn to harness human energy.

I've talked to naysayers since my appointment, telling them that while my chronic knee pain isn't magically healed, I felt more relaxed and calm after my session than I have in a long time, including after traditional massage.

My guess is that my open mind may want to see something that's not there, but conversely, I think their closed mind wouldn't allow them to see something, even when it is there.

"There is no traditional medical treatment that works for everyone, or has a 100 percent success rate. The same is true for Reiki and other alternative therapies. For example, chemotherapy, surgery, psychotherapy, and pharmaceuticals all produce different outcomes for each patient, and they are not always completely effective. That is why it is so beneficial for people to consider a combination of traditional and alternative therapies to be used together," said Sandra.

While the non-believers may still have a lack of hardcore scientific evidence to point to for the benefits of Reiki, those days may be numbered, according to Sandra.

"There are several studies that have been done and are being done to measure the benefit patients of all kinds receive from treatment with Reiki, as well as other forms of energy work. These modalities work at such a subtle energy level that it is hard to measure that energy, but outcomes are commonly measured by a reduction of pain, depression, and fatigue, for example. Additionally, nurses right here at Maine Medical Center and other local hospitals are trained in Reiki to provide pre- and post-operative support. This is a great testimonial to the influence Reiki has on reducing anxiety and pain, and inducing a relaxation response," she said.

I may have slept; I was actually a little embarrassed to ask in our post-session conversation. I have explored various modes of relaxation, stress-relieving and healthcare options in articles through the years, and be it a reflexologist or a massage therapist, I always promise them, and myself, I'll be back, but my hectic life gets in the way. I don't think that's going to happen here. Following the session with Sandra, my wife asked about the results. It was when I told her that I'd pick Reiki over a massage that I recognized it had made a lasting impression and I look forward to the next time I can lay down, focus on breathing, and receive the energy of a Reiki treatment, whether anyone else wants to believe or not.