Jonathan Wells apparently felt the sting of my rebuttal of his assertions about Hox gene structure, because he has now repeated his erroneous interpretations at Dembski’s creationist site. His strategy is to once again erect a straw man version of biologist’s claims about genetic structure, show that biologists have refuted his dummy, and claim victory. The only real question here is whether he actually believes his historical revisions of what we’ve known about Hox genes, in which case he is merely ignorant, or whether he is knowingly painting a false picture, in which case he is a malicious fraud.
…one of evo-devo’s most widely advertised claims has turned out to be false. Hox genes, which are important in embryo development, are lined up on the chromosome in the same order in which they’re expressed along the body axis, and the order is the same in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as it is in vertebrates. For years, Darwinists have been claiming that this similarity in Hox gene order provides powerful evidence for the common ancestry of insects and vertebrates. But biologists have now discovered that the order of Hox genes in other species of Drosophila is different; apparently, the order in Drosophila melanogaster is a relatively recent acquisition. In the jargon of evolutionary biology, it is “derived” rather than ancestral.
No, this claim that the Hox genes are identical in order in every animal is an invention of Wells — it is most definitely not “one of evo-devo’s most widely advertised claims” — and it is false. “Creationist wrong again” is not something newsworthy, though.
As I pointed out in the earlier article and will reiterate now, we’ve known for a long, long time that the Hox genes (even before they were called Hox genes!) in Drosophila are not contiguous, but are broken into two complexes, the antennapedia complex and the bithorax complex. Seriously—read Ed Lewis’s brilliant Nobel lecture to see what I mean; for Wells to claim that we “have now discovered” that the Hox genes aren’t arrayed in precisely the same linear order in every animal when we knew this from work in classical genetics, when Lewis had figured this out back when I was in grade school, is disingenuous and profoundly ignorant for someone who claims expertise in developmental biology.
Wells also takes quotes from me out of context to try and play as if I’ve acknowledged his scholarship, when exactly the opposite is true—I’m pointing out that he is deeply in error when he makes claims about what evo-devo (heck, genetics and developmental biology) have said about the Hox genes.
Myers acknowledged that “it is true that there are significant rearrangements in the Hox genes,” but he took me to task for neglecting to point out that “the evidence in the paper shows a pattern of inheritance of structure and variations from structure in the Hox genes… The paper is trying to explain the mechanism behind this slow pattern of changes in the Drosophila lineage, and it makes a good argument.”
Every biologist who has looked at the literature for Hox evolution knows about the changes in structure. We’ve known that Drosophila is a highly derived genus for as long as we’ve been working on it. What I was chewing Wells out for was his ignorant assumption that we’ve been claiming that Hox structure is inviolate, so that variations show one of our “most widely advertised claims” false.
He might as well go all the way. Why not announce the death of Darwinism because scientists admit that humans did not evolve from rutabagas? That’s equivalent to what he has done here: he has invented a false claim, one known to be wrong by decades of research, one not made by biologists, and then found a recent paper that explores in a little detail the exceptions from Wells’ false claim, and he does a victory dance over the ‘disproof’ of evo-devo.
Actually, the 2006 paper I cited includes the data to prove my point that Hox gene order in Drosophila melanogaster is derived rather than ancestral, but the paper also bravely tries to interpret the data in a Darwinian context. I didn’t mention this; if I had, I would have explained why I think the paper’s attempt to protect Darwinian orthodoxy fails. No matter. Myers ignored the point I made and criticized one I didn’t make.
What?
“bravely tries to interpret the data in a Darwinian context”?
Ay-yi-yi. The paper is not making an “attempt to protect Darwinian orthodoxy”. It is using evolutionary theory to assess the phylogeny of a clade of flies, and using a property of the Hox cluster, its greater freedom from constraint in these rapidly developing species, to infer properties of gene regulation. The variation in structure that Wells claims biologists have been denying is precisely the phenomenon that the authors are studying!
Read my summary. In particular, look at the diagram from the paper that maps out the pattern of breaks and inversions and deletions in the Hox cluster—it reveals a beautiful historical pattern of evolutionary change. I also described work in chordates on the same phenomenon, documenting variations in Hox organization that reveal a) patterns of descent, and b) positional constraints on gene regulation.
All we’ve really learned from Wells’ forays into the scientific literature is that the Intelligent Design creationists possess only caricatures of what evolutionary biologists say, and that their caricatures are completely false. The only veracity that has been impeached here is that of Jonathan Wells.
I seem to recall from Shermer’s “Why Darwin Matters” that, in fact, Wells is a good buddy of his, and they talk about how this is just business for Wells.
So, indeed, he’s a fraud.
If what Chet posted is true, my respect for Shermer just went way, way down.
The evidence is in, malicious fraud. And they talk about morality….
So, if Wells is just in this for money, does this mean he really knows this stuff but is lying out of his ass for a buck, or is he a genuinely stupid fanatic who stands to make a profit from lying out of his ass?
Let us assume Wells is not the fraud Chet reports he is. If so, he simply can’t read with comprehension. His description of how Hox genes lines up clearly is misbegotten, overgeneralizing and simplifying the situation to the point of incoherence.
And, it is very clear, even to this layperson, that the illustrations in PZ’s post support what he wrote:
“…if you look closely at that diagram and puzzle out the rearrangements, something interesting pops out at you: the pattern of seemingly arbitrary changes in the arrangement of the genes fits neatly into a nested hierarchy, as if, for instance, the last common ancestor of D. melanogaster and D. willistoni had the Antp/Ubx split, and they just inherited the common pattern.”
But Wells is claiming that either no such pattern exists or the inference is uncalled-for. Given the amount of other evidence for precisely these kinds of patterns and its clear existence here, Wells’s claims are utterly absurd.
Or completely dishonest.
And it don’t take no scientist to see that.
Wells seems to be hammering on this idea of colinearity in the Hox genes and clusters. But how is colinearity or lack thereof instrinsically relevant to the expression and regulation of Hox genes?
I think it’s rather interesting that there’s a broad pattern of an anterior-posterior axis of development mirrored by a 3′-5′ genetic architecture, but I don’t see how a completely different structure would be any less interesting.
Is Wells trying to imply that gene regulation and developmental processes are somehow inextricably linked together by spatial arrangment? Who expected a simple front-to-back, 1:1 mapping of genes and phenotypes?
I’m confused. Sorry. I should probably just avoid reading anything by or about Wells ever again.
Why am I not surprised at Wells in the least? He could use his own trilemma of his own: Either Wells is (1) a fraud, (2) an insane fruitcake, or (3) a prophet. A ‘lord; liar; lunatic’ of our own, if you will. I personally think he’s a little bit of both: just crazy enough to think he’s right, but also willing to spit out nonsense like a TV psychic.
I took a look at my copy of Why Darwin Matters, and while Shermer may be a ‘buddy’ of Wells, I couldn’t find any source of this in the index. In both cases, Shermer positively drips disdain off the page at the mention of ‘Wells’:
“For each of these icons [from Icons of Evolution], Intelligent Design theorists also fail to provide an alternative theory to account for the data… But even if this is wrong, as Wells says, what is the Intelligent Design explanation…? … What answer do Wells and the other Intelligent Design advocates offer?” (Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters, p.86)
“Wells is a Moonie — a member of the Unification Church and a follower of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who assigned Wells the task of destroying evolution.” (ibid., p.110)
*shrug* Its just Borat, folks. Wells has a ‘fun’ character thats making him $$ with little to no effort, he probably gets a kick out of getting uptight scientists all flustered, and he has probably rationalized his behavior with something along the lines of ‘If I dont take money from *stupid* people, someone else will, so why not?’
The only way to break up his scheme is to catch him out of character, but PZs damage control is the best we can hope for until someone catches him.
A fruad is a fruad to me, whether for god, money or both. Morality is morality, it cannot be justified blurred rationalized, etc, when you lie you lie.
Okay fruad = fraud.
Shermer may be friendly towards Wells, but I doubt they’re buddies. From an interview with Shermer:
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Wells must read all this. I have a few thoughts for him:
Whatever his goal, I sometimes wonder that people like him don’t occasionally think about what really awaits them in their long-term futures.
Wells might get TV coverage, and be famous among a certain segment of the population. He might even make a lot of money. But … what price will he pay for it?
Vampires in early fiction seemed wonderfully self-contained – we could see them in delicious horror as pure animal hungers bent on preying on little defenseless us. Later fiction humanized them to convey something of the horror IN being a vampire: Who can you ever relax with? Who can you love? Who do you even talk to? Fellow heartless killers who could no more care for you than they did for their prey? Or the prey itself – cattle on two legs that you HAD to kill to survive?
Someone like Wells must face this same thing. The people he preys on might express adulation, but the very fact that they’re prey for his posturing must cheapen the value of that adulation. The cows might look at you with big adoring eyes, but they’re still cattle.
His peer group, on the other hand, are fellow phonies – liars and public posturers who can’t afford to let it be known what they actually believe, even to each other.
If I was him, I think I might yearn to feel that accomplished people like PZ, or Richard Dawkins, or Carl Sagan, people truly worth talking to, would respect me enough to have a cordial conversation, or a friendship. But he can never have that, because nobody like that would give him a minute of their time. He’s stuck with phonies, dimwits and cattle – empty hearts or empty heads – the rest of his life.
I actually felt sorry for comically weird healer Kathryn Kuhlman, late in her career, when I read about her crying after one of her evangelical shows, that so many desperate people came up on stage with her expecting holy miracles, knowing that she had nothing to offer them. She KNEW she was a phony, she KNEW she was preying on people’s hope, but she was trapped in the role and could never get free of it.
Some small liberal part of me feels brief compassion when I think of people like that, and what they’ve gotten themselves into. It doesn’t last long, though. Because they DO lie and lie and lie. They DO prey on the weak. Whatever might go on in their heads or their hearts, they DO treat their fellow men as cattle.
When I see parasites like Kent Hovind (or Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, Darlene Bishop, Jim Whittington) meet with a just comeuppance, the logical end result of what they really do, I can’t help but laugh.
Mr. Wells, I look forward eagerly to your future career.
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This is one of the disadvantages of “freedom of religion” in our constitution. It has become the refuge of charlatans. Thars is gold in them thar hills! As long as there are naive minds to exploit, there will be minds that will exploit them, and what better place to do it than under the protection of the constitution.
We have a history of this kind of activity that would make a good case study of religious exploitation. Maybe this is what we should be emphasizing instead of constantly cycling through the same crap year after year.
What? We don’t?! That’s unpossible!
*falls to his knees and reconverts to Christianity immediately*
Hey, Joshua–
If we spot you a Y chromosome that traces back all the way to papayas, will you come halfway back?
As I pointed out at PT, Wells’ new book is published by Regnery – a publishing house dedicated to right wing politics (they admit it, advertize it, and would be insulted if you said they weren’t).
In fact, “Politically Incorrect Guide to…” is a Regnery series. The title alone makes the motivation and intended audience clear.
Regnery isn’t about convincing “swing voters”. It publishes Coulter-style propaganda (yes, she really is part of their stable) for the entertainment of the already-brainwashed. Note that Wells is just sucking money from these people.
It’s hard to imagine a more blatant admission of the true nature of “ID”.
If we share a common ancestor with papayas, then why are there still papayas?
Wells’ approach is a good example of what I call “cockroach creationism”: when nobody’s looking and the lights are out, they come out and make their bolder claims–but once you shine a light on what they’re saying, they scuttle back to the dark recesses of the God of the gaps.
Hey, does anybody wanna review my new textbook, ‘Of Papayas and People’?
I’d have the Rev. Wells do it, but unfortunately my publisher has a rule about these sorts of things: reviewers may not be lying sacks of crap.
Wells said,
Summary: The paper seems to show an evolutionary relationship but it really doesn’t. I didn’t mention this because then I would have to explain why. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
Translation: Darn, I thought nobody would notice this so I left it in. I wasn’t able fabricate an answer that would seem plausible even to my own followers so I guess I will have to weasel my way out of it.
Hank Fox said,
I don’t find this excuse the least bit compelling. These aren’t undead who will shrivel up if they don’t feed on the leaving. These are ordinary people who consciously choose a career path and stick with that path despite the fact that they know it is wrong. A vampire can’t quit being a vampire and survive. A faith healer, however, can easily quit the faith healing business. They may not be able to live quite in the lap of luxury anymore, but they won’t turn to dust either. They can come clean and tell people the truth, attempt to redeem themselves. Or they can take the coward’s way out and make up some excuse. Say they are going to do mission work, meditation and time with God, it doesn’t matter. Even if they made up an excuse for quitting it would still be better than staying and continuing to do harm.
They are not biologically required to continue to operate this way. They do so by choice and choice alone. They can leave any time. Only their own weakness, own pride, or own greed keeps them. I don’t feel the least bit sorry for someone who breaks down in tears because she is a parasite preying off other people, then turns around and continues to prey on them.
These people at DI are no different. They can quit any time. It may be a bad PR move, they may not make as much money, they may not be as popular, but none of those justify the harm they do so none of those are excuses for continuing to do harm. They are trapped by their own choice or their own weakness, and I have no sympathy for either.
TheBlackCat is quite correct. Marjoe Gortner is a good example of a religious charlatan gone honest. Marjoe hasn’t realized great success, but he hasn’t turned to dust and can, presumably, look himself in the mirror without feeling queasy.
Translation for the uninitiated: what, if anything, does Wells mean by “Darwinian orthodoxy”? From reviews of [i]Icons[/i], and indeed his unqualified use of “derived” here, I find myself forced to conclude he accepts some sort of evolutionary model himself.
Wells wrote:
[quote]For years, Darwinists have been claiming that this similarity in Hox gene order provides powerful evidence for the common ancestry of insects and vertebrates.[/quote]
This might make one conclude he accepts common descent within, but not between, these groups. Cuvier’s embranchements are incongruously brought to mind. However, I can hardly imagine any scientific, philosophical, or religious grounds for taking a such position.
“This might make one conclude he accepts common descent within, but not between, these groups.” – Nescio
That’s always the creationist dance, isn’t it? Make your position as nebulous as possible. If they are forced to take a position, they don’t have anywhere to reatreat when their arguments crumble. Also, they might offend some of the YEC crowd.
Hi PZ, first post here. Just out of curiosity was that Drosophila phylogeny chart from the paper determined from Hox gene sequences and rearrangements or independantly from other sequences or morphology? If its the latter case then its yet more powerfull evidence for evolution OR a creator god who went very far out of his/her way to make things LOOK like they were evolved. Rod
Don’t you normally avoid posting direct links to uncommondescent and their ilk? In the future, please at least provide a NSFW warning.
Let’s see, J. Wells is the guy who said his mission was to “destroy Darwinism” whatever that is.
And, basically, he works at a podunk bible college in Florida where he teaches creationism biology and “intelligent design.”
Oh, no, wait! Even at the Florida bible college he is not allowed to teach creationism biology nor “intelligent design.” My bad. He has to teach Darwinism.
Wow, that must burn his brain something awful to be an agent to distroy Darwinism and have to teach it at the same time.
Do you think the Rev. Moon knows?
So, the fact that Wells is talking smack about real biology is what kind of news? Huh?
Ok, so Wells is wrong about this example, but his main point still stands. Scientists keep correcting earlier mistakes and filling in previous gaps in knowledge. What more proof do you need that science is the wrong way to understand reality?
TV psychics make piles of money because their audience wants to believe. Wells and his ilk know their audience very well. Wells and company, like TV psychics, pander to people who want to believe, relieving them of their hard earned money in the process. Even after their lying is busted in public, they go on to the next audience to present the same lies because that audience wants to believe. Its happening at SMU this month. Its a very, very old profession. Most in those audiences are lost soles. They will never appreciate the eloquence or the weight of science PZ applies demolishing the lies. They, likely will not even be aware of the effort. The vampires have them.
It seems to me, Michael Shermer has it about right when he point to another audience, one that may be skeptical but has not yet made up its mind. This group accounts for a substantial block of votes in school board elections. This audience is approachable and must receive serious attention. How do we get them to understand they’re being lied to? How do we get them to redirect their skepticism to the peudoscience being thrown at them? Once a wedge is driven to separate the truth from the lies a better understanding of science and evolution can be addressed. Say, wait a minute. Wedge? Where’ve I heard that before? Just some thoughts.
I took a look at my copy of Why Darwin Matters, and while Shermer may be a ‘buddy’ of Wells, I couldn’t find any source of this in the index.
I gave my copy away, or else I’d look it up, but I was absolutely certain that Shermer tells a story about one of these ID-creationism guys letting him onto the big secret, and I thought it was Wells.
It was right at the beginning, either the introduction or one of the first few chapters. Does anybody know what I’m talking about?
“Most in those audiences are lost soles.”
Excellent, PZ’s squid army should have no problem dealing with them.
It’s hard to take anything that Wells says at face value. while BillyBoy simply bullshits, Wells very craftily picks things out of papers gambling that no one will trace it back to the actual paper. And that may be OK for a bootlicker’s blog like BillyBoy’s or the disclaimery folks.
delphi_ote: Remember also that the “nebulousity” is consistent with hypothesis that the real “position” is simply destroy and lay waste to one obstacle against their desired theocracy.