I prefer nerdy scientific debates that have insignificant political implications. I like to see two groups of scientists arguing about the evidence over some narrow scientific question.  That way you get pure science without all the distortion and nonsense of politics and ideology. That is when you see how science really works.

Take for example the Younger Dryas. The last glacial maximum ended about 20,000 years ago. That glacial period was followed by interstadial (warm) periods and stadial (cold) periods. The term Dryas refers to the indicator genus (Dryas octopetali) which is a tundra flower that was much more widely distributed during cold periods. Its pollen in core samples is therefore a good indicator of an stadial period.

Following the last glacial period there were three Dryas mini-cold periods, the Oldest Dryas from 18,000-15,000 bp, the Older Dryas from 14,000 to 13,700 bp, and the Younger Dryas from 12,800 to 11,500 bp.

The Younger Dryas is of particular interest because it coincides with not only a cold period but a major drought, and with it the extinction of much of the North American megafauna (like the mammoths) and the Clovis culture. The Clovis, named after Clovis, New Mexico, are a paleoindian culture defined by their distinctive stone spear points. They were big game hunters, so it’s not surprising that the Clovis industry went away with the big game (it’s not clear if the people went away, or just their hunting culture, which had to be replaced with a small game culture).

There are lots of interesting questions about the Dryas and the Clovis, but the raging controversy I have been building up to is this – what triggered the Younger Dryas? There are two main theories. The first is that the melting of the North American ice sheet at one point opened a river of fresh water into the north Atlantic ocean. The sudden dumping of massive amounts of fresh water into the Atlantic reduced its salinity and shut down the ocean currents that bring warm tropical waters north, warming the continent. This lasted until the ice sheets melted and the fresh water river stopped.

A more recent rival theory, however, has been making headway. A recent study, in fact (and the trigger for today’s post), adds additional support to the theory that a meteor impact triggered the Younger Dryas.

For completeness I will mention that there is also a theory that a massive eruption of the Laacher See volcano in Germany threw up enough ash which spread over North America to cause the sudden cooling. This is a minority theory, however – the main dispute is over glacial melting vs meteor or comet  impact.

Much of the controversy surrounds the presence of microspherules and other markers of a large impact. Several research teams claimed to find such spherules in the Younger Dryas boundary layer, while two teams did not, disputing the original results. Yet another team therefore independently and blindly examined the relevant samples and did find microspherules. The evidence seemed to be heading in the direction of an impact.

Now a research team lead by James Kennett, who is part of the team who proposed the impact theory, recently published a thorough analysis of the Younger Dryas boundary layer:

Now, in one of the most comprehensive related investigations ever, the group has documented a wide distribution of microspherules widely distributed in a layer over 50 million square kilometers on four continents, including North America, including Arlington Canyon on Santa Rosa Island in the Channel Islands. This layer –– the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) layer –– also contains peak abundances of other exotic materials, including nanodiamonds and other unusual forms of carbon such as fullerenes, as well as melt-glass and iridium.

They had previously reported microspherules and nanodiamonds, but their results and interpretation were disputed. Volcanic eruptions, lightning strikes, and forest fires can also produce many of the same findings. In the new study, however, they address these alternate sources of the boundary layer findings.

Examinations of the YDB spherules revealed that while they are consistent with the type of sediment found on the surface of the earth in their areas at the time of impact, they are geochemically dissimilar from volcanic materials. Tests on their remanent magnetism –– the remaining magnetism after the removal of an electric or magnetic influence –– also demonstrated that the spherules could not have formed naturally during lightning strikes.

The study involved 28 colleagues from 24 institutions, so this is no longer one isolated research team making claims.

Don’t think this ends the controversy, however. Just a few months ago another team published a paper in which they claim to have ruled out the impact theory.

Researchers argue that no appropriately sized impact craters from that time period have been discovered, and no shocked material or any other features of impact have been found in sediments.

They also found that samples presented in support of the impact hypothesis were contaminated with modern material and that no physics model can support the theory.

“The theory has reached zombie status,” said Professor Andrew Scott, from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway. “Whenever we are able to show flaws and think it is dead, it reappears with new, equally unsatisfactory, arguments.

Impact theory proponents argue that a large airburst by a comet could have done it without leaving a crater.  It remains to be seen if this newest analysis will answer some of the criticisms of opponents of the impact theory.

Let the controversy rage. These are always the best science stories, because we get to watch from the sidelines as scientists duke it out, using logic and evidence to make their case. It shows how complex and subtle science can be, and how disputes within science are resolved.

Eventually we will get to a consensus. The various sides will figure out what evidence will be convincing, they will gather the evidence and we’ll see what happens. Sometimes the minority view clings on longer than it should, but the majority consensus generally follows the evidence wherever it leads.

Personally I don’t really have a preference. Both the impact and the ice sheet melting theories are interesting in their own way. For now, I’m just enjoying the show.

What the DSM-V does represent, to some degree, is an attempt to advance psychiatry to the next stage of our understanding of illness. It seems that we are not quite ready for this step in psychiatry, but the effort is sincere and interesting.

For background, the DSM (now in the fifth edition) is essentially a list of official psychiatric diagnoses, based upon clinical criteria. For mental illness and disorders we mostly lack clear biological markers or pathology, and so we have had to make do with clinical descriptions – lists of signs and symptoms. This is very much a descriptive phase of scientific understanding.

What almost every popular article I read on the subject gets terribly wrong, however, is in characterizing this as a unique feature of psychiatry, unlike the rest of medicine. A recent Wired article, for example, writes:

In most areas of medicine, diagnoses are based on the cause of illness. Heartburn and heart attacks both cause chest pain, but they’re different diagnoses because they have different underlying causes.

At least they added the qualifier “most”, but even that is misleading.

In fact most disorders and medical illnesses begin their life as a description of signs and symptoms – a purely clinically defined entity. Scientists then investigate possible causes, with the full spectrum of success. For some illnesses we have very little idea, nothing but guesses, about the cause and pathology. In others we have a completely fleshed out model of what is happening, down to the most reductionist level.

The Wired article also notes:

What doctors now diagnose as schizophrenia may in fact be several disorders with different causes that happen to produce an overlapping set of symptoms.

True, but his is also true of many medical illnesses. ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease, which causes progressive weakness), for example, is a clinical syndrome. We don’t know the ultimate cause, so it is entirely defined clinically. It is very likely to be multiple pathophysiological diseases with a common manifestation.

Migraine headaches are another favorite example. They are diagnosed by a list of symptoms, just like DSM diagnoses. Migraine is likely many different underlying biological entities that all manifest in a similar fashion. It is also possible that underlying biological traits manifest in some people as classic migraines, in others as a different type of headache, and in still others with no symptoms.

Medical diagnoses span the entire spectrum from a pure description of clinical features, to some knowledge of mechanism, to fairly complete pathophysiological description.  Mental illness is not unique for being at the clinical description end of the spectrum.

What neuroscientists focusing on mental illness are seriously trying to do is advance psychiatric diagnoses to the next step, from pure clinical description to at least classification by underlying mechanism. No one thinks this is going to be easy. The brain is very complex, and the higher cognitive manifestations of the brain are subject to a host of influences. Teasing apart those influences to determine their relative contribution to a mental disorder is a herculean task, but not impossible.

Possible influence include genes, epigenetic factors, developmental factors, biological factors such as nutrition, and all possible environmental factors.

Scientists understand this complexity, but you would not know that from reading many popular treatments of the current DSM and efforts to advance our understanding of mental illness. For example, a recent Slate article, Double Inanity, claims right in the subtitle that “twin studies are pretty much useless.” It opens with this howler of a straw man (actually two).

One of the main messages of science over the last couple of decades is that genes are destiny. With every new issue of a psychology journal, it seems that the portion of your life governed purely by your own free will gets smaller and smaller. Genes determine 50 percent of the likelihood that you will vote. Half of your altruism. One-quarter of y our financial decisions.

A rebuttal is Psychology Today points out that no serious scientist claims that genes are destiny. This is just plain nonsense. Further, the author, Brian Palmer, completely confuses the interpretation of genetic influence. They write:

However, the degree of genetic influence varies from trait to trait, the mechanisms of genetic influence are highly complex and dependent on environmental input, and genes alone are never determinative of anything, except perhaps for rare single gene disorders like Huntington’s Disease.

Further, he confuses population data with individual data.

Genetic and environmental explanations of behavior apply only to differences among individuals. It is meaningful to say that 80% of differences in height among individuals in the modern world are associated with genes, the statement that 80% of a single person’s height is explained by genes is completely meaningless.

If neuroscientists are going to go beyond clinical descriptions of mental disorders, which we know are placeholders pending deeper understanding, then we will have to rethink our categorization of mental disorders. This too is not unique to psychiatry.

For example, muscular dystrophies were first described as clinical syndromes – defined by the distribution of weak muscles (so we have fascioscapulohumoral muscular dystrophy, and limb-girdle). It was not until decades later that we started to discover the actual genetic mutations that cause many dystrophies, and this forced a re-categorization along genetic lines. Some clinical diagnoses survived (FSH is, in fact, a discrete genetic disorder) while others didn’t (limb-girdle is a mixture of many genetic disorders).

The hope is that the same will happen in psychiatry. If neuroscientists are successful in deepening our understanding of mental illness, then in 50 or 100 years the list of mental disorders may be entirely different than what it is today. That would be a good thing, not a sign that mental illness is not real.

There are two main efforts to better understand mental illness. Playing off the new information provided by the genome project, some scientists are trying to find specific gene variants that are linked to mental disorders. No one expects to find “the schizophrenia gene.” What scientists are looking for are large numbers of genes that each affect the risk of developing a specific mental disorder (while recognizing that our list of specific mental disorders may not break down the same way that the genetics do).

There has been some success. Autism research, for example, has yielded a large number of associated genetic variants.

With this kind of research, however, we are likely to generate more questions than answers for some time. This is expected, and is not a sign that the entire endeavor is misguided.

The second major effort to redefine mental illness uses the latest (and continually developing) technology to image brain function. If we can identify the modules and networks in the brain that underlie specific mental functions, and then further identify networks that are behaving differently in patients with certain mental disorders, this may provide yet another way to reclassify and understand mental illness.

In this effort neuroscientists are stepping back from the DSM. The DSM is useful clinically, because it describes the problems with which people present. But perhaps it does not reflect the actual underlying brain malfunction. So neuroscientists studying mental illness are trying to think about disorders in terms of basic mental functions, then identify the network in the brain that correlates with that function, and perhaps identify how it is misbehaving in people with a specific deficit.

In order words, rather than thinking about full clinical syndromes, neuroscientists are trying to reduce them to specific and well-defined neurological phenomena. In a recent interview on the SGU with one such researcher, Heather Berlin, she described how in her research of obsessive compulsive disorder she is looking at the brain responses to disgust. OCD patients, it turns out, have an increased disgust response.

Perhaps, then, we may eventually understand a subset of what are now called OCD patients as hyperactive disgust response disorder.

Conclusion

Mental function of the brain is one of the most, if not the most, complex thing that humans study. Researchers who spend their career studying mental function and disorders of mental function know this. They understand the limits of our current understanding and research methods and the complexity of influences involved.

Progress is therefore understandably slow, when compared to some other areas of research. The challenges faced by neuroscientists focusing on mental disorders, however, are not unique. Criticisms of mental diagnoses, while often pointing to legitimate limitations, are also not unique to psychiatry.

There is a subculture of psychiatry denial, however, that utilizes all the methods of denial to argue that the limitations, challenges, and slow progress of psychiatry mean it is not a legitimate science, and some even argue that mental disorders therefore do not exist.

Ironically they are now using the fact that scientists are pushing the study of mental disorders forward by trying to explore the underlying genetics and specific brain functions that are manifesting as what we describe as mental disorders, as evidence that the entire endeavor is flawed and not legitimate.

This is an identical strategy to that of the creationists who argue that changes in evolutionary theory over the last 150 years is evidence that evolution is wrong.

As with the study of evolution, the study of mental illness is a useful scientific paradigm. We are now venturing into a new era of increased genetic and neuroscientific understanding – progressing from the earliest phase of pure clinical description. This is a good thing. It is a sign of scientific robustness – not evidence that the house of cards is collapsing as some would have you believe.

This, of course, does not mean that the consensus must be correct, but (along with other data) it makes it unreasonable to claim that there is no consensus, or that there is significant scientific controversy on this topic. In fact, the 97% figure exactly matches prior surveys. Many scientific organizations have also officially endorsed this consensus.

One of the common methods of deniers is to pretend as if there is a raging scientific controversy when in fact there is a solid consensus. Creationists, for example are constantly trying to portray evolution as a “theory in crisis,” when in fact it is doing quite well, thank you.

The study employed an interesting methods. They reviewed 12,000 peer-reviewed published papers on topics relevant to climate change. They then tabulated, for those papers in which the researchers expressed a clear opinion about climate change, whether or not they supported the conclusion of anthropogenic global warming. In over 97% of cases they did.

From the abstract:

We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.

No survey is ever perfect – whenever you evaluate a subset of people in order to draw conclusions about the larger group, there is the possibility of selection bias. In this case one might argue that scientists who reject anthropogenic global warming are less likely to express those views in a peer-reviewed paper, or to have such views published.

This method, however, is reasonable. They also backed this up with another phase of the study in which they invited authors to rate their own research and opinions, and 97.2% endorsed the consensus of global warming. While it’s possible to quibble about this number, given the strong agreements among various methods around the 97% figure, it’s difficult to argue that the true figure is significantly different.

Why do we care about the consensus? Isn’t this just an argument from authority? Well, yes and no.

It seems reasonable, especially for those who consider themselves skeptics, to argue that facts and logic should determine a scientific question, not authority. Or that we should “let the facts speak for themselves.”

Unfortunately, facts cannot speak for themselves. Scientific evidence needs to be examined, rated for quality, interpreted, and put into a broader context. There is often no simple connect from facts to conclusions in science – background knowledge, knowledge of the processes of science, familiarity with critical thinking, logical pitfalls, and the effects of bias on interpretation are all necessary to come to a reliable conclusion about what those facts are telling us.

Different individuals are likely to have different biases and knowledge bases, and therefore may come to different conclusions about the same set of data. No individual, therefore, can be the ultimate authority on any scientific question.

The power of consensus is that individual quirks and biases will tend to average out. The consensus of scientific opinion, therefore, is a way to gauge the agreement and power of the scientific evidence.

The only other alternative is to evaluate all the scientific evidence first hand and come to your own conclusion. The potential pitfall here, however, is that individuals who are not experts in the relevant field believe that they can do this by examining secondary sources, such as popular writings on the topic. This is naive, however.

In order to really understand the evidence base for any scientific question you need to be able to read the technical literature first hand, and have a reasonable working knowledge of this literature. You then need to challenge your understanding of the evidence by discussing it with other experts, who may be familiar with evidence you missed, or have a perspective you do not. In other words – you have to engage intimately and extensively with the evidence and with the community.

In order to do this you pretty much have to be a full-time scientist focusing on the relevant area of study.

It seems absurd, when you really look at it, to substitute your own opinion based upon reading a smattering of simplified popular writings for that of the consensus of scientific experts who live and breathe the science.

What typically happens is that individuals who reject the consensus often come to the conclusion that science itself is broken. They reject science and the institutions of science, in order to justify their rejection of the particular consensus on which they disagree. Scientists, they believe, are therefore closed-minded, corrupt, or mindlessly follow the herd.

This is little more than ad-hoc special pleading, however (they are just making it up). Anyone who works with actual scientists would find such statements to be hopelessly out of sync with reality. Sure, there are individual scientists who are corrupt or closed-minded, but most vigorously defend their own intellectual independence.

Conclusion

For the average person (someone who is not a working expert in a particular field) the consensus of scientific opinion must be taken very seriously, and should not be casually tossed aside. In grappling with any scientific question, you should first try to understand what the scientific consensus is, how confident are scientists, is there any significant and viable minority view, and why scientists have come to that conclusion.

Humility and reason dictate that the consensus view should be given appropriate respect. I am not discouraging anyone from trying to understand the evidence first hand, in fact I recommend it. Learn and understand the primary evidence as much as your interest, time, and ability take you. Just be extremely cautious before you believe your opinions trump those of hundreds or thousands of working scientists.

With respect to anthropogenic global warming, there is a solid and confident consensus. You should be especially cautious of rejecting this consensus because it does not agree with your political world view.

In parts 2 and 3 I addressed Don’s stasis and suddenness arguments. They are classic denialist fallacies – focusing on lower order details as if they call into question higher order patterns (they don’t). In this case, Don is arguing that the fact that many (not all) species display relative morphological stability in the fossil record, with episodes of (geologically) rapid speciation events, calls into question the bigger picture of the change of species over time in an exquisitely evolutionary pattern.

The former is a reflection of the tempo of evolutionary change and an artifact of the fossil record, while the latter is home-run unequivocal evidence for common descent and evolutionary change. Don has not provided any explanation for why the pattern of change we see in the fossil record presents any problems for evolutionary theory.

In this post I will address Don’ other main point, which he feels is the greatest weakness of evolutionary theory – the complexity of the cell. His premise seems to be that, if evolution were true, then evolutionary biologists should be able to provide detailed evidence for the specific evolutionary history of many biochemical pathways and cell structures. He argues that they cannot, and therefore the evidence for evolution is weak.

Before I get into what the current evidence for the evolution of cellular complexity is, let me address the logic of Don’s position. First – his major premise is false, and therefore his argument is not sound. Evolution can be true even if we are currently unable to provide robust evidence for the evolution of biochemical pathways.

His false premise reflects a misunderstanding of how science operates. Science operates by posing testable hypotheses. Often the greatest challenge for scientists is to figure out a practical method for testing their ideas. They generally start by picking the low-hanging fruit – looking where the evidence is robust and accessible.

In other words, biologists ask – if evolution is true, then what should the evidence we do have look like? They then see if the evidence matches the predictions of evolution.

If the theory makes predictions about evidence that we are unable to obtain, for practical reasons, this is not a weakness of the theory or evidence that it is wrong, it is simply a reflection of practicality.

Life on Earth is at least 3.4 billion years old. Multicellular creatures first appear in the fossil record about 540 million years ago. That means that most of the history of life on Earth, about 3 billion years, was nothing but single-celled creatures. That is a very long time in which to evolve biochemical pathways and cellular complexity – more that 5 times as long as it took to get from a single cell to a person.

Cells, proteins, RNA, organelles, and biochemical pathways do not fossilize. They are scantly preserved at all. We are therefore limited in our ability to reconstruct the evolutionary history of billions of years of evolution on this scale.

Scientists only have a few methods available from which to infer the evolutionary history of cell structures and biochemical pathways. The main method is to look for patterns in living organisms. By analyzing thousands of species they can partially reconstruct the evolutionary tree.

Perhaps the best method available is genetic analysis. Genes are a sort of fossil – they do record to some degree their evolutionary past. We can see when genes duplicated and then evolved to take on new functions. We can sometimes see inactivated genes, truly fossil genes, and infer past function from them.

Scientists can also investigate plausible pathways – they can demonstrate the functionality of possible antecedents to current biochemical pathways or structures. This is not the same as evidence for the actual evolutionary pathway to current complexity, it just shows possible pathways.

In short scientists are doing the best they can unraveling an extremely complex picture with the relatively little evidence available to them.

An unbiased way to approach this evidence is to ask – does the evidence we do have support evolutionary theory? Is any biochemical evidence incompatible with evolution? The answers are yes and no – what evidence we have supports evolution, and there is nothing that is incompatible with evolution.

Don is not asking those questions, however. He is not really asking any cogent question. He is simply asserting that the paucity of evidence for cellular and biochemical complexity is evidence of the weakness of evolutionary theory. It clearly isn’t.

Further, Don’s assessment of the current state of the evidence is extremely flawed. He is using popular books and high-school level textbooks as if they were an accurate reflection of the current state of the evidence. The evolution of cellular and biochemical complexity is a very advanced area of biology. I would argue it is not suitable for a high-school level textbook. Any treatment of it at that level, and in popular writing, is by necessity superficial. Don is taking this superficiality as evidence for weakness of evidence.

This also gets to another flaw in Don’s reasoning – his belief that he, as a dentist and engineer, can reasonably challenge the conclusions of the broad scientific community. Many scientists have dedicated their careers to studying evolution, and even tiny areas of the evolution of certain biochemical pathways. They are steeped in a highly technical literature. It is a fatal mistake to confuse familiarity with popular writings with deep knowledge of the technical literature.

Of course, scientists can be wrong, and the consensus does at times change. But there are many scientific consensuses that have not changed in decades and will probably never be overturned. DNA is the substrate of inheritance, for example. The brain is the organ of the mind. The Earth and Sun revolve about their center of gravity. Stars are fueled by nuclear fusion. None of these conclusions are going anywhere. New knowledge about the details of genetics or star mechanics do not threaten the more basic conclusions.

Likewise – all life on Earth is related through common descent. Life changes over geological time in an evolutionary pattern. These scientific conclusions are as solid as any in science, and are not going anywhere. The details of what evolved from what and how are another layer to evolutionary history, but don’t address the higher order conclusions.

What is the current evidence base for the evolution of biochemical pathways? Well, I am no expert, and so I am in no position to give a definitive answer to this question. But as a familiar lay person, I am aware of much more evidence than Don claims exists.

Here, for example, is an interesting technical review – Biochemical Pathways in Procaryotes can be Traced Backwards through Evolution Time. The paper reviews current knowledge about aromatic biosynthesis, DAHP synthase, PABA synthase, and many others.

Here is an overview and list of technical papers on the evolution of eukaryotic pathways by endosymbiosiss of prokaryotes.

Here is another paper, the main conclusion of which is that as biochemical pathways evolved, cells became less dependent on exogenous material and more independent.

This brings up another major premise implied by many of Don’s statements, and typical of creationist arguments. Essentially he echoes the “irreducible complexity” arguments of Michael Behe – how could the cell have functioned prior to developing critical complexity? This is addressed by the plausibility research, as with the paper above, showing that simpler pathways and structures were perfectly functional, just inefficient. RNA can replicate itself without ribosomes, just slowly. As complexity developed, cell metabolism became faster, more efficient, and less dependent on specific nutrients from the environment (although, of course, not completely).

Conclusion

The final pillar of Don’s argument, reflected in his proposed changes to science textbooks, has now collapsed. His premises are faulty, his logic is not valid, and therefore his arguments are not sound. He neither understands or accurately represents the process of science or the current findings of evolutionary biology. He further uses popular writing and high-school level textbooks as if they represent the technical literature.

Don also gives away a major flaw in his approach – during the interview I accused him of criticizing one of the weaker legs of support for evolutionary theory, and he essentially responded that of course he is. This is not a scientific approach, however.

The relevant question is – how robust is the scientific evidence for common descent and evolutionary change, and how solid are our current conclusions? In order to answer this question you have to look at all the evidence. When you look at evidence from fossils, geology, genetics, developmental biology, the morphology of living organisms, and laboratory experiments on short term evolutionary change, the picture that emerges is one of highly robust evidence all firmly pointing to evolution as the conclusion. Further, there is no alternative scientific theory that is even compatible with evidence, let alone predicts the evidence.

Evolutionary theory is  a solid scientific conclusion, without rival.

The robustness of the different types of evidence reflects only our practical ability to get at the evidence – not the predictive power of evolutionary theory.

As a research paradigm, evolution has proven to be very powerful and successful. It shows no signs of ever being overturned – no more so than any foundational scientific theory.

Don’s arguments, which are those of the creationist/ID mainstream, reflect pure pseudoscientific denialism.

Don has been traveling a bit this week, so our e-mail conversation has been slow, but we have had a few exchanges. For today’s post I want to simply reprint that exchange and then add a few thoughts, before I go onto new territory, which I will do in tomorrow’s post.

Here is Don’s response to my prior posts:

Steven,

I do have time for one reply.

First, you keep bringing up creationism while I do not; I am only discussing the evidence for evolution–the idea that all life is descended from a common ancestor as a result of unguided natural processes.

This is also the focus of the actual language adopted; they read:  ”7(B) analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record; “and ” 7(G) analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning the complexity of the cell.” That’s it.

As reported in “Science” back when the standards were adopted in June 2009,  Kenneth Miller said these additional standards  would give him the opportunity to present the robustness of evolutionary explanations. He does not seem to agree that it would be inappropriate to discuss these in a high school class; he seems to welcome the opportunity. I wonder why more evolutionists do not agree with him.

Next, I believe there are several strong arguments against evolution. Like the Texas standards I will limit myself to the explanations for the patterns in the fossil record and the explanations for the development of the complexity of the cell.

Despite what you have written about the fossil record, it does present major evidentiary problems for evolution. It seems that evolutionists have “moved the goalposts” for what the fossil record should demonstrate. Originally it was an interminable number of “intermediate” (not the modern definition of “transitional”) fossils; now it seems any pattern of fossils will do.  ”Punctuated equilibrium” is a very convenient explanation.

But for me, the lack of scientific evidence  for the evolutionary development of the complexity of the cell–which must underlie morphological complexity–is evolution’s greatest difficulty. Historical science is tested by the evidence–period. It is not tested by “just-so stories” and unsubstantiated statements.  I challenge your readers to present specific facts to explain the amazing complexity we find in the cell.

Jerry Coyne and his  readers did not even make a dent in presenting  evidence for what must be explained.

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/don-mcleroy-leaves-creationist-comment-evolution-cant-explain-biochemical-complexity/

Kenneth Miller in his  text submission, only provides two facts; most of his text is just waving a magic wand. Check out what I have written that is posted on my website.( I am including a copy of  his lessons submitted in 2011 to comply with our new standards. You tell me if they are strong or weak.)

I challenge your readers to read my analysis and decide for themselves if the explanations are strong or weak.

http://pages.suddenlink.net/don_mcleroy/page8.html

http://pages.suddenlink.net/don_mcleroy/page15.html

http://pages.suddenlink.net/don_mcleroy/page12.html

Richard Dawkins does no better. Ironically, in his book The Greatest Show on Earth, he fails to present evidence for the development of biochemical complexity. The only detail he cites is a double mutation in E. coli that allows it to digest citrate. Like Coyne and Miller, he offers no evidence for how the process developed initially. He describes the cell as “breathtakingly complicated,” and states “the key to understand how such complexity is put together is that it is all done locally, by small entities obeying local rules.” He also states that some of the features of the cell descended from different bacteria, that built up their “chemical wizardries billions of years before.” These statements are not evidence; they are vain imaginations.

Historical science is tested by evidence. Unlike continental drift,  which is basically a division of one part into two parts (for example, Africa and South America), cell mitosis is a dividing of billions of molecules and hundreds of complex organelles. I would argue that you need overwhelming facts  to demonstrate how unguided natural processes created the complexity of the cell. The evidentiary requirements to demonstrate evolution are immense; this evidence has not been presented.

Even Jerry Coyne is left speculating about  an imaginary common ancestor of sea cucumbers and vertebrates. To get a perspective of how little Coyne’s imaginary common ancestor explains, take a quick look at these “Biochemical Pathways” charts produced by Roche Diagnostics. These charts cover 27 square feet; for evolution to be true, every molecule and pathway would have to be explained by unguided natural processes. The lonely evidence Coyne produces is speculation about a single molecule-fibrinogen!

Finally, this talk summarizes much of my thinking.

http://pages.suddenlink.net/don_mcleroy/page16.html

I am very careful to argue that I am not saying evolution is false but only that the evidence for it is not convincing; it is weak. This has especially been demonstrated when I search out evidence for the development for the complexity of the cell.

Don

I replied:

Don,

Thanks for the reply. I will address the complexity of the cell in a future post. This one is about the fossil evidence.

You write that for evolutionary biologists now  – “any pattern of fossils will do.”

This directly contradicts what I wrote in my post, and strikes me as a straw man. I specifically listed several patterns that would falsify evolution and common descent. None of which have been found. They include
Species significantly out of temporal sequence. Not just slightly out of sequence, forcing a redrawing of lines, but impossibly so from an evolutionary perspective. Horses in the Cambrian.
New body plans emerging out of nowhere without antecedents.
Species containing features that appear to be borrowed from other evolutionary lines entirely – and not simply analogous morphology, but feathered bird wings on a mammal.

There are countless patterns in the fossil record that would falsify evolution. None have been found.

Further, you cannot simply dismiss punctuated equilibrium. 150 years ago, when the fossil evidence was very scant, Darwin thought that change would be continuous and gradual. Not a bad guess, and it is true sometimes, but this turned out to be mostly wrong. Rather we see periods of fast change and periods of slow change, even equilibrium (even within periods of equilibrium some change is detectable, if we have enough specimens). But the larger pattern of sequential change in a proper temporal and geographical pattern with nestled hierarchies of related species is exactly what we have found and continue to find in the fossil record.

Biologists have not “moved the goalpost” (you are misusing that term), they have adjusted the details of evolutionary theory to fit the evidence – adjust at a level of detail that does not call into question the bigger picture of common descent.

You have also not connected the dots here – how does the pattern that we find in the fossil record in any way call into question common descent or evolutionary change over time? It only contradicts absolute gradualism, which is no longer the accepted theory.

Further – give me a theory that better explains the fossil record or predicted what we would find.

Regards,

Steve

To which Don further replied (sent from a mobile device, so I assume he is still traveling):

You are right on the “any pattern;” that was not fair. I noticed that on the plane.

Change it to “now the requirements to demonstrate evolution seem alot weaker.”

I stand by the rest of my comments.

The key is like I argued in the interview; the evolutionist and the skeptic make their case–may the strongest evidence prevail.

Any my final response:

Don,
Thanks for the clarification. I know you are traveling so I want to give you time to respond, no rush. For the purpose of furthering this discussion, can you answer the following questions:

- Can you explain how punctuated equilibrium is “weaker” than gradualism? These are just different tempos, how evolutionary change proceeds over time. They don’t even address common descent (the sequential and nestled hierarchy pattern in the fossil record).
- How do creationists account for the temporal sequence in the fossil record? Were there thousands of mini creations over time? Why does the sequence match an evolutionary pattern? To clarify exactly what I mean by that -
- The fossil record shows a pattern in which new species arise from older species that appear morphologically related. Entirely new body plans or even body parts do not arise from nothing.
- The fossils do not occur out of temporal sequence – no horses in the Cambrian or elephants living with dinosaurs. In fact there isn’t a single dinosaur fossil seen above the K-T boundary.
- Fossil and living species are geographically distributed by apparent evolutionary relationships also. Why are Marsupials clustered in the southern continents, for example?
- As we discover more and more fossils, we discover more species clearly transitional between major groups. We have not filled in all the gaps, but new fossils seem to be filling in an evolutionary picture, not occurring at random. We now have feathered dinosaurs, walking whales, reptile-mammals, and ape-men. Aren’t these stunning predictions of evolution that have been verified?

You seem to want to confine your comments to criticizing evolution, rather than defending a positive case for creation. I know this approach was necessary for the textbook standards for legal reasons, but would you be willing to address evidence for creation (not just against evolution) in this discussion? If so, then
- What would creationism predict we should see in the fossil record and why?
- Is that what we see?

Regarding your comment about Kenneth Miller and having the opportunity to present the evidence for evolution, I think you are missing the point of scientists’ concern over standards like these. The concern is that they will be used to politically pressure textbook publishers to include creationist talking points in their textbooks, watering down coverage of evolution, or confusing students as to the nature of science or the current findings of science. Of course, if we have to live with the standards we will try to make the best of it – that doesn’t meant the standards are not a problem.

The scientific community should be free to determine what is science and what the evidence currently says. Political interference never turns out well. But let’s continue with the discussion above. That will make my case stronger than anything – your points are simply not scientifically valid. That is why they don’t belong in the science classroom. If you disagree, than let me have it.

Cheers,

Steve

Conclusion

As you can see in the exchange, Don wants to stick to criticisms of evolution, rather than being put in a position where he has to defend evidence for creationism. This is a typical denialist strategy, and also matches the current political strategy of creationists – they cannot mention any religious belief in public school standards, so they have to be content introducing “weaknesses” of evolution. However, these “weaknesses” are imaginary.

Don’s weaknesses so far can be put into two categories – patterns in the fossil record, and the complexity of the cell.

Regarding patterns in the fossil record, he has acknowledged that there is an evolutionary temporal sequence in the fossil record. He has also now acknowledged that not any pattern of fossils is compatible with evolution, but the one we find is.

He argues, however, that the fossil record also shows periods of stasis, and this weakens it as evidence for evolution. This is simply not true – relatively short periods of stasis in some (not all) species does not weaken the larger pattern of progressive change over relatively longer periods of time. This pattern simply replaces absolute gradualism (which was a guess, and never based on evidence) with punctuated equilibrium, which fits the later-discovered evidence better.

Don also points to “sudden” appearance. I have already pointed out that “sudden” is confusing as it refers to geologically sudden, not biologically sudden. Geologically sudden is still thousands of years.

A commenter also reminded me of another point that evolutionary biologists make – speciation events likely tend to occur in fringe populations, not in large outbred populations. By statistics alone we would expect to find few fossils from small fringe populations. Most will likely be from the large stable population. Therefore, speciation events likely won’t be well documented in the fossil record.

In other words, the “sudden” appearance of new (but derivative) species in the fossil record is an artifact of the fossil record, not a reflection of actual suddenness.

All of this also applies to Don’s other example of “suddenness” – the Cambrian explosion. This first emergence of multicellular life (actually the second, after the Ediacaran fauna, but that’s another story) took millions of years to unfold. The suddenness (meaning millions of years) here is also an artifact of the first emergence of hard parts, which fossilize much better than soft parts. So of course, as soon as hard parts  are evolved the fossil record suddenly “turns on.” There is evidence, however, for three billion years of life prior to the Cambrian, just relatively little (because of lack of hard parts to fossilize).

In short, Don’s “stasis” and “suddenness” arguments simply do not hold up under scrutiny.

His next “weakness” of evolutionary theory is the complexity of the cell. He thinks this is his stronger case. He has made his case above, with links to longer articles. I will address this point in tomorrow’s post.

In this post I will include Don’s response and then my further analysis of his response. I will then extend the discussion to other points that Don raised during the SGU interview.

Don McLeroy Responds to Part I

Steven,

Thank you for this opportunity to respond.

We are mirror images of each other. I see you as you see me-as “an excellent example of the power of motivated reasoning,” as “firmly in phase 2,” and as someone who might be considered “embedded” in a culture of their own publications, institutions, and websites.

At least we both agree to follow the evidence where ever it leads.

I do now admit that I was wrong about the atheist being compelled only to accept evolution; the atheist is also free to follow the evidence in another direction or say “I do not know.” As you wrote, “If the evidence were ambiguous or scant, than perhaps the current answer would be, we don’t know.”

In fact, I believe this is a perfectly satisfactorily answer for both the creationist and the atheist. Let us allow the students to evaluate the evidence for themselves. Concerning the Texas standards amended by the board, the Fordham report on state science standards stated “There are no concessions to ‘controversies’ or ‘alternative theories.’ In fact, the high school biology course is exemplary in its choice and presentation of topics, including its thorough consideration of biological evolution.” In Texas, we have not abandoned the “scientific consensus.”

The Austin American-Statesman opinions editor invited me to write an op-ed after the report was released.

Where the board amended the standards on evolution, Fordham described them as “exemplary”, where we accepted the standards as submitted by our writing panels, they criticized them. I guess we needed more “creationist” oversight.

My main critique of your post is an apparent confusion about the nature of science. You state “Science is about providing natural explanations.” and then later state “science is about producing testable theories that make predictions about how nature will behave.” I agree with the latter; the key criterion of science is testability. I believe it is the job of science to test theories-not to provide natural explanations.

Don

False Equivalency

It is my opinion (shared by many skeptics and scientists) that creationism is a form of denialism – it is evolution denial.  Throughout this discussion I will point out the features in Don’s position that are typical of the denialist strategy. The first is known as false equivalency – specifically that between evolutionary theory and creationism.

Don’s opening paragraph is the clearest expression of false equivalency I can recall – noting that our positions are “mirror images” of each other. If my position is embedded in any culture, it is that of the broad international scientific community. My position reflects the overwhelming scientific consensus in common descent and evolutionary change over time.

Don’s position, by contrast, is embedded in a particular sect of a religion, one that has had significant conflict with mainstream science when it conflicts with their religious dogma. The two situations are not equivalent.

This also gets to the heart of the context of this discussion – what gets taught is public school science classrooms. It should be clear that what gets taught as science is the consensus of scientific opinion, not the beliefs of one religious sect.

Don’s response to this, reflected in the interview and in his response above, is that the Texas science textbook standards reflect science, and do not insert mention of God or creationism into the books. It can be clearly established, however (documented by those following this debate over the years) that this is just the latest strategy of creationist opposition to the teaching of evolution in public schools.

There is no mention of God or creationism now – only after several Supreme Court decisions struck down those strategies. Insertion of “strengths and weaknesses” language is the current strategy, that Don reflects quite well. Such strategies unfairly target evolution, however, and the “weaknesses” that are referred to are imaginary pseudoscientific creationist arguments that have already been thoroughly refuted by scientists.

With regard to “natural explanations” I think Don misunderstood my point. The natural explanations that science provides need to be testable – these are not exclusive features of science. The points of mentioning “natural explanation” was to emphasize “natural,” as opposed to supernatural.

These two features of science are, in fact, inextricably related. Only naturalistic explanations are testable. Supernatural explanations are not, because by definition they are not constrained by natural laws and can therefore never be falsified. (I discuss this point further here and here.)

Let’s move on to some new issues raised in the interview.

“Stasis” and “Sudden Appearance”

Don brought up in the SGU interview the language he managed to have inserted in the Texas science textbook standards, “analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record.”

He wants students to decide for themselves if the fossil evidence supports evolution or not. This always superficially sounds reasonable, but the counterpoint I brought up during the interview was that we send a powerful message to students by what we choose to present and emphasize. Even presenting stasis and “sudden” appearance as a problem for evolutionary theory or common descent is misleading, because they aren’t.

Don acknowledged that the sequential nature of the fossil record is compelling evidence for evolution, and that he can understand how people would arrive at that conclusion. He thinks this is the most powerful evidence for evolution. I disagree – by far the most powerful evidence for evolution is the genetic and molecular evidence. Perhaps I can entice Don into analyzing and responding to this evidence.

I suspect he positions the fossil record as the strongest evidence for evolution because he feels he can then knock it down with his stasis and sudden appearance argument. This is really a very old creationist argument, dismantled decades ago. Steven D. Schafersman has an excellent discussion on this topic, but I will summarize.

When we look at the entire fossil record what we see are the first appearance of hard parts around 542 million years ago during the Cambrian Explosion (more on this later). These first multicellular organisms were simple compared to later life, but all modern phyla are represented, but many that are now extinct. In the last 500 million years we see new species arise in the fossil record, with clear antecedents. In other words, entirely new body plans do not arise out of nowhere. New species are always variations on older species. Further, species have a definite lifespan in the fossil record – they are not spread randomly over time.

In addition to this sequential nature of the fossil record, there appears to be an overall pattern of nested hierarchies. Apes appear closely related, but can also be grouped with all primates, who can be grouped with all placental mammals, who can be grouped with all mammals, who can be grouped with all vertebrates, etc.

These patterns reflect common descent and are exquisitely evolutionary. As an added feature, species also appear to be geographically located in an evolutionary pattern. Mammals in Australia are more closely related to each other than they are to mammals in North America.

There are also numerous transitional fossils – linking individual species, and major groups. The discovery of a large number of feathered dinosaurs, for example, nicely bridges the gap between birds and theropods. Ambulocetus, the walking whale, nicely links whales and terrestrial mammals – these represent a compelling morphological and temporal sequence.

In Darwin’s time the fossil record was very scant. Evolutionary theory predicted that as the fossil record emerged it would reveal a pattern consistent with evolution, and it has, in spades. There is no legitimate scientific refutation to the implications of this massive amount of physical evidence – evolution happened.

Don does not even try (at least in the interview) to refute this evidence. Rather he employs a common denialist strategy of focusing on smaller details as if they are capable of disproving the bigger picture. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how science operates (which is why scientists are so concerned about inserting these ideas into science standards – they confuse students about how science operates).

The details about how genes work and are organized do not call into question whether or not DNA is the molecule that carries inherited information. The deviations from a perfect sphere in the Earth’s shape cannot be used as evidence that the Earth is actually a cube (it is still basically a sphere, or an oblate spheroid to be technical).

Likewise, details about the pace and tempo of evolution do not even address let alone call into question the sequential,  hierarchical, and geographical patterns in the fossil record that scream evolution and common descent.

Stasis and sudden appearance are not problems for evolution or common descent, nor are they the only patterns we see in the fossil record. Some species do gradually change over time in the record, for example.

Gould and Eldridge proposed a very nice hypothesis about stasis and sudden appearance – punctuated equilibrium. Speciation events tend to be geologically rapid. “Sudden” in this context means between 5 and 50 thousand years. Five thousand years at the low end is still many generations, and is not sudden in terms of evolutionary processes. Creationists misuse the term “sudden” in the context of the geological record and apply it to biological processes in a deceptive way.

The apparent stasis of many species in the fossil record Gould and Eldridge explained as species being in equilibrium with their environment. Research has born this out. Once a species is comfortably optimized to their niche, selective pressures will maintain their optimal state. If the environment changes, species are most likely to simply migrate, to track to an environment to which they are already adapted.

Occasionally species are pushed out of equilibrium with their environment – they colonize an island, adopt a new strategy of survival, a new predator or prey species enters their environment, or climate change significantly alters their environment. Those that don’t or cannot migrate to a better environment, must evolve or die. It makes sense that a species out of equilibrium must adapt quickly – within thousands of years.

Again – this is a dominant feature of the fossil record, but is by no means universal. It also in no way calls into question the bigger picture in the record.

Conclusion

The fossil record is very powerful evidence for evolution (and not even the most powerful). The fact that many species appear suddenly in the record, persist for a few million years on average, then go extinct is completely compatible with evolutionary theory and common descent, and is nicely explained by the current modern synthesis of evolutionary theory. The details are likely to be tweaked as new evidence emerges, but those details do not touch the bigger picture of common descent.

It is also important to point out, and a common part of the denialist strategy, that the fossil record in no way supports young earth creationism. If there was one creation over a six “day” period (however you interpret “day”) then why is there a fossil record showing a sequential pattern of nested hierarchies?

That fact is a fatal problem for creationism, while stasis and rapid appearance is not a problem at all for evolution. This reflects the creationist strategy, however, of not even bothering to build a body of evidence for creationism, but rather to just chip away at the evidence for evolution, and then declare victory for creationism by default (a false dichotomy logical fallacy).

The fossil record is clear evidence that evolution occurred, and was predicted by Darwin’s theory. The fossil record could have turned out very differently – there are countless patterns that would have falsified evolution (horses in the Cambrian strata, new body plans popping up out of nowhere, impossible chimeras, lack of a temporal sequence), but none of them were found.

The higher resolution details of the record tell us about what evolved from what and when, and the pace and tempo of evolution, but do not address the larger pattern of common descent. This hierarchical confusion is again typical of denialists. 

The interview was very enlightening. In my opinion it was an excellent example of the power of motivated reasoning – if we have a conclusion in mind, people are very good at finding a mental path to get there.

We rarely do confrontational interviews on the SGU, but the few we have done I am generally happy with. The risk is that the tone of the interview will go sour. I have only done such interviews when I feel that the person being interviewed will be able to stay calm and professional even as we dismantle their position. Another risk is that the interviewee, who likely is a passionate and eloquent defender of their fringe position, will make it difficult to get a word in edgewise, resulting in a Gish Gallop.

Don McLeroy, I have to say, was an exemplary guest. He stayed polite throughout, and did not bristle even when directly confronted on his position. He also did something I find extremely rare in such interviews – occasionally acknowledging a point on the other side or a weakness in his own position. He also had clearly made a genuine effort to read pro-evolution material and criticisms of his position.

I came away with the impression that he is genuinely trying to understand the creation/evolution debate and to rely on only valid arguments. This makes him a very interesting and valuable skeptical subject. I think he demonstrates a few phenomena about which skeptics should be aware.

First is that when we begin to learn critical thinking skills and principles we tend to apply them to the beliefs of others very easily, but only more reluctantly to our own beliefs. Second, when we do apply critical thinking skills to our own beliefs, the pathway of least cognitive dissonance is to use those skills to make our own rationalizations more subtle and sophisticated, rather than to actually change our core beliefs. The more strongly held those core beliefs are, the greater the mental barriers are to change them, the harder it is to get over the hump to actually changing our flawed beliefs (which is the third phase).

Individuals can be in all three of these phases (critical of others, rationalizing our own beliefs, and being truly critical of our own beliefs) at the same time with respect to different beliefs.

With regard to evolution and creationism, Don McLeroy seems to be firmly in phase 2 – he is engaging in a fairly sophisticated form of denialism with respect to evolutionary theory.  In this and in a follow up post I will address what I found to be Don’s main points. I have also invited him to respond and publish his responses.

Free to Believe

One point Don made that was tangential to the evolution-creation discussion, but which I think reveals his perspective, is that he feels as a fundamentalist Christian he is more free to either accept or reject evolutionary theory than I am as an atheist. I have heard this argument before, but still found it stunning because it is exactly opposite to my impression of reality.

His logic superficially makes sense – those with religious beliefs accept both materialist and supernatural explanations of the world, while strict materialist atheists accept only materialist explanations. Therefore an atheist has no choice but to accept evolutionary theory. Meanwhile someone who is religious can either accept or reject it.

The former component of this argument is strictly true in that there are Christians who accept evolutionary theory. One can have faith and accept the findings of science. In fact, I would suggest that those who choose to maintain a personal faith find a way to do so without rejecting science or the findings of science.

However, this ignores the fact that certain denominations of Christianity have as a strong and firmly held part of their core faith the literal accuracy of (their interpretation of) their version of the Bible. They would have to radically change many of their core beliefs – their entire approach to their faith, if they accepted scientific findings that directly contradict their biblical interpretation (specifically in a recently created world).

Don may be free to accept evolution, but doing so would force him to rethink major aspects of his faith, actually changing his denomination to one that is not fundamentalist. I cannot take seriously the claim that this does not provide a powerful motivation to deny evolution.

We should also not ignore the cultural aspects of this. Young Earth creationism is now a subculture of belief, with their own publications, mythology, distorted and cherry picked facts, institutions, and websites. When someone is deeply embedded in this community, young earth creationism is both encouraged and supported with a robust and sophisticated network. This creates a deep psychological and social hole out of which for anyone to dig themselves.

On the flip side, it is also strictly true but misleading to argue that scientists are forced to accept materialism. Yes, science does require methodological naturalism, because the process of science cannot function otherwise. Science is about providing natural explanations for observed phenomena, so it is trivially and pointlessly true that science only offers naturalistic explanations.

Don’s point is therefore the equivalent of saying that mathematicians are forced to provide mathematical answers to mathematical problems, and they do so using mathematical equations and processes.

There is also the assumption in Don’s position that evolution is the only materialist possibility. When you follow the process of science, evolutionary theory is currently the answer to which all the evidence leads. If the evidence pointed in another direction, then that would be the currently accepted theory. If the evidence were ambiguous or scant, then perhaps the current answer would be, we don’t know.

Science is a process of following logic and evidence, so you cannot fault scientists for following logic and evidence to the conclusion of evolutionary theory.

Don’s argument also appears to contain a hidden assumption – that the goal of all this is to arrive at the Truth. This is a bit of a deep philosophical discussion, and there is a range of opinions here, but to give my quick summary – science is about producing testable theories that make predictions about how nature will behave and what we will observe in nature. It is not about metaphysical certitude, but about testable models.

At present evolutionary theory is the best model we have of how life changes over time, and how existing life got to its current form. It has withstood over 150 years of potential falsification. New scientific disciplines have arisen since Darwin (genetics, for example) that could have entirely falsified evolutionary theory, but instead have strengthened it.

Teaching science is about teaching scientific methods and the current best theories that have emerged from applying scientific methods. It is not about Truth or belief.

In my next post I will address more of the arguments that Don put forward in the interview.

The first amendment states that the federal government can neither (sic) or prohibit the exercise of religion. “separation of church and state” is just a propaganda term used by some to stave off religious nuts who use undue social pressures or indoctrination to push their beliefs to others.

Here’s a section of the first amendment.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

And here’s the definition of the word “respecting” from a dictionary dated 5 years after the adoption of the Bill of Rights.

RESPECT’ING, ppr. Regarding; having regard to ; relating to.

A little bit of history is in order. The term “separation of church and state” is not a propaganda term. It is a quote from Thomas Jefferson (who, I understand, had some familiarity with the Constitution) from his letter to the Danbury Baptists. He wrote:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

The commenter appeals to a dictionary definition in order to make their point, but this is not a valid method of argument when it comes to law. The only thing that matters is legal precedence – how have the courts interpreted the law, and in the case of the Constitution what matters most is how the Supreme Court has interpreted the law.

Over the years the Supreme Court, based on their decisions of specific cases, have established three tests to see if any specific activity violates the establishment clause of the Constitution. They are:

The Lemon Test
Based on the 1971 case of Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-13, the Court will rule a practice unconstitutional if:

1. It lacks any secular purpose. That is, if the practice lacks any non-religious purpose.
2. The practice either promotes or inhibits religion.
3. Or the practice excessively (in the Court’s opinion) involves government with a religion.

The Coercion Test
Based on the 1992 case of Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 the religious practice is examined to see to what extent, if any, pressure is applied to force or coerce individuals to participate.

The Court has defined that “Unconstitutional coercion occurs when: (1) the government directs (2) a formal religious exercise (3) in such a way as to oblige the participation of objectors.”

The Endorsement Test
Finally, drawing from the 1989 case of Allegheny County v. ACLU, 492 U.S. 573, the practice is examined to see if it unconstitutionally endorses religion by conveying “a message that religion is ‘favored,’ ‘preferred,’ or ‘promoted’ over other beliefs.”

Teaching what is essentially a religious doctrine in publicly funded and government run schools promotes those religious beliefs, entangles government in religion, establishes those religious doctrines as favored, and coerces students to participate in a religious activity.  Webster has nothing to say on the matter. The Supreme Court has spoken.

Expectation bias can be powerful enough in some people to lead not only to the perception of a benefit or side effect but to a frank delusion. When this happens on a large scale, that can lead to a mass delusion. There are many episode that demonstrate this effect, but now there is also a controlled experiment that also confirms it.

A recent study looked at sham exposure to wifi signals in 147 subjects. They were first exposed to either a documentary about the dangers of wifi, or to a documentary about internet security. A total of 54% of the subjects experienced

“…agitation and anxiety, loss of concentration or tingling in their fingers, arms, legs, and feet. Two participants left the study prematurely because their symptoms were so severe that they no longer wanted to be exposed to the assumed radiation.”

Further, the group exposed to the wifi documentary experience significantly more symptoms.  This is a small study but it matches prior research showing that those who believe they have electromagnetic sensitivity will experience symptoms when exposed to sham EMF. The difference with the current study is that it used healthy volunteers and controlled for media exposure.

Systematic reviews of the research on EM hypersensitivity show that those who self-identify as having EM hypersensitivity (which has now been renamed in the technical literature as “Idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields”) cannot tell the difference between real and sham EMF. This review concluded:

“ No robust evidence could be found to support this theory. However, the studies included in the review did support the role of the nocebo effect in triggering acute symptoms in IEI-EMF sufferers. Despite the conviction of IEI-EMF sufferers that their symptoms are triggered by exposure to electromagnetic fields, repeated experiments have been unable to replicate this phenomenon under controlled conditions.”

The new study suggest that this nocebo effect can happen on a large scale due to media reports, and cautions the media about sensationalizing such reports.

Perhaps the most famous recent example of this phenomenon is the Pokemon Contagion episode. In December 1997 it was reported widely by the media in Japan that one  particular episode of Pokemon that involved flashing lights provoked seizures in a few susceptible children (they had photosensitive epilepsy). This led to over 12,000 reports of symptoms among children watching the episode. Analysis of cases found that only a very few cases were legitimate seizures, the rest appeared to be anxiety provoked by the media reporting.

Robert Bartholomew is a sociologist who specializes in delusions. He wrote an excellent article for the Skeptical Inquirer in which he documents many of the mass delusions over the last millennium. My favorite is the Seattle Windshield Pitting Episode of 1954. The observation of small pits in the windshield of a car led many in the public to examine their own windshields, finding similar pitting. This led to wild speculation about atomic fallout and other causes.

What is clear from both research and historical cases is that media reporting can provoke a self-fulfilling phenomenon by creating the very symptoms that are being reported. Ideally, media outlets will show restraint and professionalism when reporting on possible medical risks. (I’ll stop there as your hysterical laughter will probably keep you from being able to read further.)

What the true believers repeatedly fail to appreciate, however, is that it is not necessarily their claims that relegate them to the fringe, but their atrocious methods. They giddily squander their credibility by accepting poor-quality evidence, making bad arguments, and dismissing perfectly reasonable alternative explanations.

In short, they are not taken seriously because they are not serious scientists. A version of the Dunning-Kruger effect seems to make them incapable of perceiving their own gross scientific incompetence, and so they have no choice but to whine about those “closed-minded scientists” and the conspiracy of silence against them.

Yet another example of this is the Atacama specimen – a six inch tall humanoid skeletal remains discovered in the Atacama desert, Chile, in 2003. The Disclosure Project, founded by Steven Greer, has promoted the specimen as evidence of aliens. They make the classic mistake of looking for evidence and arguments to support their hypothesis, rather than properly considering other hypotheses or looking for evidence to disprove their hypothesis.

What they are doing is essentially mystery mongering, as is evidenced by the title of their article on the specimen: Stanford University Research: Atacama Humanoid Still A Mystery.

Their approach is similar to that of the Starchild Skull proponents – take a human specimen and look for anomalies, and then declare those anomalies evidence that the specimen is alien. The problem with this approach is that there are numerous causes of anatomical anomalies, including genetic, developmental, pathological, traumatic, or artifacts of what happened to the specimen after death.

Alien proponents would have to convincingly rule out all such possibilities before Occam would be satisfied that a new explanation was needed. Even then, all we would have in an anomaly – not something alien. That conclusion is a classic example of the argument from ignorance logical fallacy.

One way to address the question of whether or not the specimen is human is to analyze it’s DNA. The mere fact that it has DNA, by the way, is good evidence that it is native to Earth. In this case the DNA, as far as it has been currently tested, is 100% human. Further, the mitochondrial DNA is fully human and consistent with the people from that region.

That has not seemed to dissuade believers, however, who are apparently comfortable with an alien with human DNA. Perhaps this is the flip-side of the giant humanoids from Prometheus who also had 100% human DNA.

The simplest interpretation of the Atacama specimen is that it is the sad result of an illegal abortion, discarded in the desert, and then mummified. The changes to the skull are likely the result of the abortion procedure itself. Other skeletal changes are due to the mummified soft tissue, which tightened around the skeleton. The anomalies, in other words, are forensic, not evidence of an alien life form.

One main area of dispute is the age of the child at the time of death. It looks most similar to the developmental age of a fetus of 20-25 weeks old. The Stanford researcher who examined it, however, concluded it was from an older child of 5-6 years old. Critics of this conclusion, however, have pointed out that the mummification process increased bone density, and this may have unduly influenced the Stanford researcher. They point to similar cases with Egyptian child mummies.

Conclusion

The Atacama specimen is entirely human in that all of its parts are human. It has human features in all the right places. Its DNA is also fully human, and consistent with someone from that region. Yes, there are anomalies, which is not unexpected given that it is likely an aborted fetus that was mummified in the desert.

Greer concludes:

“Is the Atacama Humanoid a so-called hybrid? Are we all some type of hybrid? Could this have occurred via contact with other extraterrestrial civilizations over millions of years?”

Ah, the hybrid gambit. This is the exact same special pleading that Lloyd Pye gave for the Starchild skull when its DNA was found to be human. This is the exact special pleading that researchers gave when the alleged bigfoot DNA was found to be human. It must therefore be a human hybrid.

And they wonder why they are not taken seriously.