Turnabout is fair play

Phil Senter has published the most deviously underhanded, sneaky, subtle undermining of the creationist position I’ve ever seen, and I applaud him for it. What he did was to take them seriously, something I could never do, and treat their various publications that ape the form of the scientific literature as if they actually were real science papers, and apply their methods consistently to an analysis of taxonomy. So on the one hand, it’s bizarre and disturbing to see the like of Ken Ham, Jerry Bergman, and Henry Morris get actual scientific citations, but on the other hand, seeing their claims refuted using their own touted methods is peculiarly satisfying.

Senter has published a paper in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology that takes their claims at face value and analyzes dinosaur morphology using their own methods. ‘Baraminologists’ have published a set of taxonomic tools that use as input a matrix of morphological characters for an array of animals, and then spits out numbers that tell whether they were similar enough to be related. You can guess what the motivation for that is: they want to claim that Noah didn’t have to carry representatives of every dinosaur species on the Ark, but only representatives of each ‘kind’, which then diversified rapidly after the big boat landed to generate all the different species found in the fossil record.

The problem for them is that Senter found that it works far too well. Using creationist techniques, all of the Dinosauria reduce to…eight kinds. That makes the boat haulage problem relatively even easier.

Here is the summary diagram, illustrating the derived creationist tree of common descent. Oops.

i-cf7aed20267bbf27bd8d0565d5df2681-creationisttree.jpeg
Summary of results of taxon correlation analyses across Dinosauria. Each boxed group of silhouettes indicates a group for which taxon correlation found within-group morphological continuity; for silhouette groups in different boxes, taxon correlation found morphological discontinuity between the groups. Dotted lines represent uncertainty as to whether morphological discontinuity is truly present. On the cladogram, triangles indicate paraphyletic groups.

At first, the results of the taxon correlation analyses appear to imply good news for the creationist world view, on several fronts. First, seven major dinosaurian groups (birdlike coelurosaurs, Tazoudasaurus + Eusauropoda, Stegosauria, Ankylosauridae, Neoceratopsia, Hadrosauridae and basal Hadrosauriformes) are separated from the rest of Dinosauria by morphological gaps (Fig. 15). Creationist inferences that variety within Eusauropoda (Morris, 1999) and Ceratopsidae (Ham, 2009) represent diversification within separately created kinds are congruent with these results. Second, each morphologically continuous group found by taxon correlation includes at least some herbivores. This is congruent with the creationist assertion that all carnivorous animals are descendants of originally herbivorous ancestors (Unfred, 1990; Gish, 1992; Ham, 1998, 2006, 2009; Larsen, 2001; McIntosh & Hodge, 2006). Third, although creationists have answered the problem of room on Noah’s ark for multiple pairs of gigantic dinosaurs by asserting that only about 50 ‘created kinds’ of dinosaurs existed (Ham, 1998, 2001, 2006, 2009; Morris, 1999), the problem is solved even better by the results of this study, in which only eight dinosaur ‘kinds’ are found.

Awww. I guess I’m going to have to become a creationist, now that the evidence shows that dinosaurs are related by common descent…oh, hey, wait. Isn’t that what evolution says? And isn’t that easier to accommodate within the idea that they did this over millions of years, rather than the freakishly unrealistic hyper-speciation within a few thousand years that the creationists insist on?

However, a second look reveals that these results are at odds with the creationist view. Whether there were eight dinosaur ‘kinds’ or 50, the diversity within each ‘kind’ is enormous. Acceptance that such diversity arose by natural means in only a few thousand years therefore stretches the imagination. The largest dinosaurian baramin recovered by this study includes Euparkeria, basal ornithodirans (Silesaurus and Marasuchus), basal saurischians, basal ornithischians, basal sauropodomorphs, basal thyreophorans, nodosaurid ankylosaurs, pachycephalosaurs, basal ceratopsians, basal ornithopods and all but the most birdlike theropods in an unbroken spectrum of morphological continuity. The creationist viewpoint allows for diversification within baramins, but the diversity within this morphologically continuous group is extreme. Also, the inclusion of the Middle Triassic non-dinosaurs Euparkeria and Marasuchus within the group is at odds with the creationist claim that fossil representatives of the predinosaurian, ancestral stock from which dinosaurs arose have never been found (DeYoung, 2000; Ham, 2006; Bergman, 2009).

So, effectively, these results, made using the creationists own tools, demonstrate a genetic relationship between a diverse group of animals that evolution predicted, and confronts young earth creationists with the problem of a kind of frantically prolific speciation that is unimaginably rapid. If species are that fluid and can change that rapidly, their own claims of fixity of species are patently wrong.

The final word:

The results of this study indicate that transitional fossils linking at least four major dinosaurian groups to the rest of Dinosauria are yet to be found. Possibly, some creationist authors will hail this finding as evidence of special creation for those four groups. However, such enthusiasm should be tempered by the finding here that the rest of Dinosauria–including basal members of all major lineages–are joined in a continuous morphological spectrum. This confirms the genetic relatedness of a very broad taxonomic collection of animals, as evolutionary theory predicts, ironically by means of a measure endorsed and used by creation science.

This is so wonderfully, evilly devious. Superficially, it seems to support creationist methods—but what it actually is is a grand reductio ad absurdam. Laugh wickedly at it now, but laugh even harder when you see creationists citing this paper in the future, as you know they will.

Senter P (2011) Using creation science to demonstrate evolution 2: morphological continuity within Dinosauria. J Evol Biol. doi: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2011.02349.x.

The Bergman live!

If you’re really interested, that Cretinist Jerry Bergman is going to be on some weird “Ask the Expert” show at Creation Conversations, a site I’m going to have to browse more often because it is one of the lamest creationist web sites I’ve seen yet — it’s all young earth creationism presented with the goofiest arguments, like that vestigial snake limbs disprove evolution.

One warning: in order to access everything on the site, they insist that you fill out a little questionnaire with your date of birth, home town, etc., and one of the questions is “Who created the world?” You don’t get to leave it blank; Allah, Jehovah, and No One are not acceptable answers, and it only let me through when I typed “Jesus”. Way to stack your audience with clown clones, guys! Since I was honest with all the other answers, unfortunately, I doubt that they’ll approve my application.

By the way, here’s how they describe Bergman:

Ask the Expert is all new with Jerry Bergman, PhD. He has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology on the college level for over thirty years.

I genuinely pity the students who’ve had him as an instructor. Thirty years of an incompetent dilettante miseducating students…it’s tragic.

Evangelical Christians are not our friends

The Pew Foundation has surveyed evangelical Christians on a variety of topics, and here’s an interesting result: only 3% accept evolution. And it’s worse than that, since that 3% seems to be just in the bounds of noise and the frequency of individuals who essentially reject the basics of Christianity.

To put the 3% figure in perspective, it is the same as the percentage of evangelicals who answered that it is not “essential to follow the teachings of Christ in one’s personal and family life”: pretty much the defining feature of evangelical Christianity. Furthermore, the 3% figure for support of evolution by evangelicals was consistent across all geographic regions.

In further news, most of them regard secularism as their greatest threat, and also regard unbelievers as the most fertile field for evangelism. Isn’t that sweet?

What has Kent Hovind done now?

Kent Hovind has been transferred to a new prison, Florence Admax.

The United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) is a supermax prison for men that is located in unincorporated Fremont County, Colorado, United States, south of Florence. It is unofficially known as ADX Florence, Florence ADMAX, Supermax, or The Alcatraz of the Rockies. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. ADX, a part of the Florence Federal Correctional Complex (FCC), houses the prisoners who are deemed the most dangerous and in need of the tightest control of all the prisoners within the United States Federal Prison System.

Whoa. Somebody doesn’t like him, or he’s been up to mischief.

By the way, another strange thing: Hovind used to get letters out that would be transcribed to a blog at the Creation Science Evangelism site. These were bizarre ravings in which he’d recount how God was telling him just last night how good and wonderful and important Kent was. Now those are all gone, and CSEblogs.com just redirects to Eric Hovind’s version of the site, and while Kent Hovind is still listed as an “author”, all of the missives from jail have been purged, and instead, there are only what look like excerpts from his past talks, presented as current.

I think there is a personal tragedy playing out here. We’re not seeing the full story, but there are hints that something has gone even more wrong in Hovind’s life.

Hang on, there’s more info on the prison.

The Administrative Maximum (ADX) facility in Florence, Colorado, houses offenders requiring the tightest controls. It is part of the Florence Federal Correctional Complex (FCC). The ADX supervises a minimum security satellite prison camp (outside the secure perimeter of the ADX) that houses male offenders.

Presumably, then, he’s in the minimum security camp rather than hanging out with the father-rapers in the big house.

The Expelled auction is over

Someone, not yet identified, paid $201,000 for that piece of crap. It wasn’t the Talk Origins Archive Foundation, either; they had nowhere near that sum to spend, nor would it have been worthwhile to cough up that much cash.

I’m hoping some creationist organization just got fleeced.

Help me put the Bergman-Myers debate on YouTube!

I’ve received a suggestion that one potential source of a lot of the recent nonsensical creationist literature-quoting has a plausible source: Jerry Bergman. That guy is completely nuts, as I learned in a debate a while back; he’s also pretentious while not knowing much, and he’s painfully prolific, publishing lots in fringey creationist pseudo-journals.

So now I have a technical question. I have a DVD copy of that wretched debate, and I’ve even gone so far as to rip it, and now have five MP4 files sitting on my computer (I also have a folder of the raw ripped files, a bunch of .bup, .ifo, .vob files). And that leads to a terribly naive question: how do I put them on youtube? I’ve had no trouble uploading short, simple things to youtube, but this is about two hours worth of video. I just want to click on something that will segment the files as necessary and neatly upload them without me having to fuss over them. Any experts willing to give me suggestions? I am only going to do this on a Mac, so don’t tell me about PC solutions.

Alternatively, if someone else would like to host them and put them online in their youtube account, I’d be happy to email them or put them on a server somewhere for downloading. Just let me know how.

I’ll look into some of the suggestions I’ve been given. For now, though, I’ve tossed up the files on a free hosting service — if anyone wants to download and do something with these, feel free, and if you put them on youtube or vimeo send me a link to let me know.

http://www.filefactory.com/file/cc1c6ec/n/VTS_01_1.mp4
http://www.filefactory.com/file/cc1dacc/n/VTS_01_2.mp4
http://www.filefactory.com/file/cc1c65b/n/VTS_01_3.mp4
http://www.filefactory.com/file/cc1c68d/n/VTS_01_4.mp4
http://www.filefactory.com/file/cc1c67d/n/VTS_01_5.mp4

It’s always good to go straight to the source

I tell other scientists all the time that their work is being appropriated by creationists who barely understand it, and that it is getting distorted to support bogus pseudoscience. Whenever you see a creationist quote a genuine science paper, you can pretty much trust that it is going to be mangled beyond recognition.

For instance, Jonathan MacLatchie raised a peculiar collection of questions to grill me with; here’s one of them.

9) If, as is often claimed by Darwinists, the pharyngeal pouches and ridges are indeed accurately thought of as vestigial gill slits (thus demonstrating our shared ancestry with fish), then why is it that the ‘gill-slit’ region in humans does not contain even partly developing slits or gills, and has no respiratory function? In fish, these structures are, quite literally, slits that form openings to allow water in and out of the internal gills that remove oxygen from the water. In human embryos, however, the pharyngeal pouches do not appear to be ‘old structures’ which have been reworked into ‘new structures’ (they do not develop into homologous structures such as lungs). Instead, the developmental fate of these locations includes a wide variety of structures which become part of the face, bones associated with the ear, facial expression muscles, the thymus, thyroid, and parathyroid glands (e.g. Manley and Capecchi, 1998).

You might be wondering about what that paper actually says, and you should. Never trust a creationist! And here’s where I get to pull Marshall McLuhan into the frame from offscreen.

Nancy Manley of the University of Georgia wrote to me today.

As a fan of both your website and of the pharyngula stages of development, I was intrigued to see the questions posed to you by ID followers before your recent talk. And kind of surprised, and bit taken aback, when one of my postdoctoral papers was cited in one of the questions – I am the Manley of Manley et al.

Since the ID questioners used a reference to one of my papers in the question, and this is actually an issue I am personally interested in from a scientific point of view, I feel compelled to answer also. In a way, it is ironic that they used this paper to illustrate their question, since it was our analysis of the pharyngeal pouch phenotype of the Hoxa3 null mice that led to our own interest in why terrestrial animals don’t have gills, and how the thymus and parathyroids may have evolved. We hypothesized that the evolution of morphology in the pharyngeal region (i.e. loss of gills and gain of pouch-derived organs like the thymus and parathyroids) was due to changes in the expression and/or function of the Hoxa3 gene. This hypothesis was proposed in a book chapter that I co-authored (Manley, NR and CC Blackburn. Thymus and Parathyroids. In Handbook of Stem Cells, Vol. 2: Embryonic Stem Cells, R. Lanza (Ed). Academic Press, 2004 v. 1:pp 391-406). I even obtained an NSF grant (now defunct) to test this hypothesis, and recently published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about it (Chen, et al., 2010, PNAS 107(23):10555-10560). We haven’t solved the problem yet, but the data so far indicate that changes in both the expression and function of Hoxa3 may have been involved in the evolution of pharyngeal region derivatives during vertebrate evolution, including loss of gills and development of pharyngeal pouch-derived organs.

I wish I could magically pull scientists out of a hat every time some po-faced creationist stooge raises a hand at one of my talks and starts lecturing me on their memorized quotes from the scientific literature. They always get them wrong.

By the way, I’ve been playing a game with MacLatchie. Every time I look into one of his citations, I go to google and type in both the author’s name and that of Harun Yahya, the Turkish creationist. It’s amazing — every time, I get a couple of quotes from one of his books, and they’re almost exactly the same as MacLatchie’s comments.

For example,
Harun Yahya also cites Manley. Compare this with what MacLatchie wrote, above.

Those human emryonic “gill slits” are just another Darwinian myth. These pharyngeal pouches do not develop into homologous structures such as lungs or gill-like structures. The developmental fate of these pouches include a wide variety of structures that become parts of the face, ear cavities, bones of the middle ear, muscles of masticulation and facial expression, the lower jaw, certain neck parts, and the thymus, thyroid, and parathyroid glands. (Manley, N.R. and Capecchi, M.R., Developmental Biology, 195 (1):1-15, 1998)

Isn’t this just weird? Now Yahya is a notorious plagiarist who rips off everything he’s written from the Christian creationist literature, and I don’t think MacLatchie is getting it from him. On the other hand, MacLatchie is a nobody, so I don’t think Yahya stole it from him. I think there’s another creationist source book somewhere, which both are borrowing from to make their claims, and I’m itching to know what it is.

The one thing I know for sure is that neither MacLatchie nor Yahya are at all original or creative, and that both are just trained parrots echoing some other source. If anyone recognizes where these claims are coming from, let me know — I’d like to go straight to the original compendium of nonsense and prune it at the root.