The Skepchick forums have bestowed upon us a bounty of crazy the likes of which have not been seen since the glory days of Gene Ray.
It's all there. Kabbalah. I Ching. Numerology. Aliens. Bullshit martial arts. Vibrations. Pineal gland as the third eye. Atlantis. The Pyramids. Da Vinci. Nostradamus. Cayce. Shangri-La. Falun Gong.
And the pictures - some of them are so utterly random. Hitler, the Premier of China, and the five pictures of typical grey aliens. For some reason there's even a picture of a Magic card in here. Look, there's nothing I can say that will do justice to this post. Just go and read it, and bask in the pure insanity radiating from your computer monitor.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Richard Milton's "alternative science," part 2
http://www.alternativescience.com/talk.origins-transitions.htm
One of Milton's longer articles, this page is a critique of Katherine Hunt's talk.origins transitional fossil FAQ, with a focus on the section concerning the evidence for a transition from early jawless fishes to cartilaginous marine vertebrates such as sharks, skates, and rays.
If Milton wanted to present a truly withering critique of the FAQ he should have gone after what were explicitly described by Hunt as the strongest transitional sequences. Instead, he characterizes the jawless fish to shark sequence as though it's presented as a clear species-to-species transition, when Hunt said nothing of the sort.
Milton even quotes her as saying that "[We] don't know which jawless fish was the actual ancestor of early sharks." At the very beginning, in a section Milton himself quotes, Hunt makes it abundantly clear that the FAQ includes descriptions of both general trends and specific transitional sequences in evolution, so why on earth would Milton assume that this is one of the latter when Hunt herself expresses unsureness about the exact ancestry? Portraying the jawless fish -> shark fossil record as characteristic of the strongest transitional fossil sequences is ridiculous, and a clear case of misrepresentation. I'm starting to see a pattern here.
So why didn't Milton pick something more strongly supported to criticize? Well, it just so happens that the FAQ goes in chronological order - and as jawless fishes were some of the first vertebrates, this one happens to be the first one listed. From reading this article, I would guess that Milton didn't read the entire FAQ in order to find a strong sequence to critique, or even a representative sequence. I would even go further and say he didn't get past the first page - he saw that the first sequence presented was not very strong, wrote up a few words about it, and summarily dismissed the rest of the FAQ as being no better without having read it. There will be more evidence for this in a bit.
In the next section, Milton criticizes the idea of looking at not-entirely-complete transitional fossil sequences as a method of establishing descent. Indeed, the question of how one can determine where divisions between species occur is a rather hard one when only fossils are concerned, as there can be no test of what can reproduce with what.
Oh wait, there's an explanation of exactly this on talk.origins that Milton conveniently ignores.
And it's in the exact same FAQ that he's supposed to be critiquing.
This is absolutely mind-boggling - he's written multiple paragraphs on how there should be loads of transitional fossils just waiting to be found, and failed to see an answer by Hunt to this exact position, just one paragraph after a section that he quoted earlier . One wonders if Milton willfully ignored that section while writing this or, as I suggested earlier, he simply didn't read the FAQ.
Incidentally, the talk.origins page on the creationist claim that there should be lots of transitional fossils makes for some good reading on this topic, as the equivalent section in Hunt's FAQ is rather long.
Milton has little or nothing to say about the rest of the FAQ, including the more well-supported transitions, such as those found in marine invertebrates - which he brushes away as not constituting speciation ("shells getting a little longer or a little shorter"). Good thing too, my head is starting to hurt.
In short, Milton's article is a mess. Not only is it abundantly clear that he has done little outside research on the subject (for instance, he claims that biologists see the peppered moth as evidence of speciation), he apparently neglected to read extremely important parts of the FAQ he purports to be presenting a critique of, and grievously misrepesents the author on more than one occasion. This cavalcade of ignorance and seemingly willful misrepresentation is hardly isolated, as seen in his complete catastrophe of an article on speciation. Anyone who sees an article like this as a serious threat to any part of the mdoern theory of evolution needs to do some homework, and find a source that has done the same.
One of Milton's longer articles, this page is a critique of Katherine Hunt's talk.origins transitional fossil FAQ, with a focus on the section concerning the evidence for a transition from early jawless fishes to cartilaginous marine vertebrates such as sharks, skates, and rays.
Milton is indeed correct that the definition of a species-to-species transition given by Hunt here is rather unambiguous. However, nowhere does she say that the transition discussed here is one such instance. Indeed, in the section where she differentiates between the two different kinds of transitional fossil sequences, she is careful to emphasize that "General lineages are known for almost all modern groups of vertebrates, and make up the bulk of this FAQ." Nowhere in the definition of a species-to-species transition series are marine vertebrates mentioned. However, she does specifically mention that "Many 'species-to-species transitions' are known, mostly for marine invertebrates and recent mammals (both those groups tend to have good fossil records)...."Hunt begins her "FAQ" by drawing a distinction between transitional fossils that show a 'general lineage' and those that demonstrate 'species-to-species transition'. The latter she defines as 'a very fine grained sequence documenting the actual speciation event.'
This is a courageously unambiguous definition and one that leads any rational person to expect that Hunt will then present evidence for such a 'fine grained sequence' that documents an 'actual speciation event'. Unfortunately, however, that is not what is presented in her "FAQ".
[Milton goes on to quote from the jawless fish to shark section of the FAQ]
Notice that, where we are promised a 'fine-grained sequence documenting an actual speciation event,' what we are actually given is conjecture and suppositions ...
If Milton wanted to present a truly withering critique of the FAQ he should have gone after what were explicitly described by Hunt as the strongest transitional sequences. Instead, he characterizes the jawless fish to shark sequence as though it's presented as a clear species-to-species transition, when Hunt said nothing of the sort.
Milton even quotes her as saying that "[We] don't know which jawless fish was the actual ancestor of early sharks." At the very beginning, in a section Milton himself quotes, Hunt makes it abundantly clear that the FAQ includes descriptions of both general trends and specific transitional sequences in evolution, so why on earth would Milton assume that this is one of the latter when Hunt herself expresses unsureness about the exact ancestry? Portraying the jawless fish -> shark fossil record as characteristic of the strongest transitional fossil sequences is ridiculous, and a clear case of misrepresentation. I'm starting to see a pattern here.
So why didn't Milton pick something more strongly supported to criticize? Well, it just so happens that the FAQ goes in chronological order - and as jawless fishes were some of the first vertebrates, this one happens to be the first one listed. From reading this article, I would guess that Milton didn't read the entire FAQ in order to find a strong sequence to critique, or even a representative sequence. I would even go further and say he didn't get past the first page - he saw that the first sequence presented was not very strong, wrote up a few words about it, and summarily dismissed the rest of the FAQ as being no better without having read it. There will be more evidence for this in a bit.
In the next section, Milton criticizes the idea of looking at not-entirely-complete transitional fossil sequences as a method of establishing descent. Indeed, the question of how one can determine where divisions between species occur is a rather hard one when only fossils are concerned, as there can be no test of what can reproduce with what.
Finding transitional fossils should be easy, then! So since we haven't found more, it's clear that evolution has not occurred, and modern species have not descended from primitive equivalents. What other possible explanation could there be for not finding a complete, undeniable transitional sequence for every single modern organism?What this means is that there remains only one valid scientific test that would enable an objective observer to claim that one fossil is related by descent to an earlier fossil and that is an unbroken (or practically intact) chain of evidence linking the earlier and later fossils.
It is sometimes said that this demand is for an impossibly high standard of evidence -- like expecting an archaeologist to find an intact tomb of Caesar or Cleopatra with their personal diary beside the body. The reality is somewhat different.
Three-quarters of the Earth's land surface is covered with sedimentary rocks. A great proportion of these rocks are continuously stratified where they outcrop and the strata contain distinctive fossils such as sea urchins in the chalk and ammonites in many Mesozoic rocks. The case for Darwinism would be made convincingly if someone were to produce a sequence of fossils from a sequence of adjacent strata (such as ammonite species or sea urchins) showing indisputable signs of gradual progressive change on the same basic stock, but above the species level (as distinct from subspecific variation).
[...]
Yet there are so many billions of fossils available from so many thousands of strata, that the failure to meet this modest demand is inexplicable if transitions have taken place in the way Hunt describes.
It ought to be relatively easy to assemble not merely a handful but hundreds of species arranged in lineal descent. Schoolchildren should be able to do this on an afternoon's nature study trip to the local quarry...
Oh wait, there's an explanation of exactly this on talk.origins that Milton conveniently ignores.
And it's in the exact same FAQ that he's supposed to be critiquing.
This is absolutely mind-boggling - he's written multiple paragraphs on how there should be loads of transitional fossils just waiting to be found, and failed to see an answer by Hunt to this exact position, just one paragraph after a section that he quoted earlier . One wonders if Milton willfully ignored that section while writing this or, as I suggested earlier, he simply didn't read the FAQ.
Incidentally, the talk.origins page on the creationist claim that there should be lots of transitional fossils makes for some good reading on this topic, as the equivalent section in Hunt's FAQ is rather long.
Milton has little or nothing to say about the rest of the FAQ, including the more well-supported transitions, such as those found in marine invertebrates - which he brushes away as not constituting speciation ("shells getting a little longer or a little shorter"). Good thing too, my head is starting to hurt.
In short, Milton's article is a mess. Not only is it abundantly clear that he has done little outside research on the subject (for instance, he claims that biologists see the peppered moth as evidence of speciation), he apparently neglected to read extremely important parts of the FAQ he purports to be presenting a critique of, and grievously misrepesents the author on more than one occasion. This cavalcade of ignorance and seemingly willful misrepresentation is hardly isolated, as seen in his complete catastrophe of an article on speciation. Anyone who sees an article like this as a serious threat to any part of the mdoern theory of evolution needs to do some homework, and find a source that has done the same.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Richard Milton's "alternative science"
For the most part, the talk.origins archive is a great reference for responses to common creationist arguments. It's essentially a compendium of arguments for and against evolution, with refutations of common fallacious arguments and various essays and debates on the subject. The amount of information contained within is massive, and it can be kind of intimidating to slog through if you don't know exactly what you're looking for.
Until now I haven't found many creationist sites that respond to talk.origins directly. Most seem to tread the Behe/Dembski party line of "information theory disproves evolution" or parrot the old, tired arguments that even Answers in Genesis is wary of (moon dust, helium, the strength of Earth's magnetic field, etc.). On a forum that I frequently attend, however, someone posted a link to a site - or rather, a subsection of a site - that takes on talk.origins directly.
http://www.alternativescience.com/faq_or_fiction.htm
The site is maintained by Richard Milton, author of such books as The Facts of Life and Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, who appears on the talk.origins site in a debate over the hominid fossil record. Mr. Milton purports to set straight "a few of the more gross errors of scientific fact" in the talk.origins FAQ archive in a series of four pages: a response to the Observed Instances of Speciation FAQ, another to the Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ, a third to Kathleen Hunt's account of equine evolution, and finally, a discussion of whether the development of antibiotic resistance among modern disease-causing organisms can be considered "Darwinian evolution."
I'm no biologist, but when browsing through the first of these responses, a couple of rather glaring problems caught even my eye:
This seems like a deliberate mischaracterization, if not a straw man. The determination of what is and what is not a species depends not upon individuals, but upon populations. Additionally, the example that he proceeds to give of size-discrepant dogs like Great Danes and Chihuahuas being "reproductively isolated" is actually untrue. If you ask your friendly local dog lover, they'll probably tell you many hilarious tales of smaller male dogs trying to mate with larger female dogs, or of tragic and messy results when the opposite is attempted. Comedy aside, such unions can and do happen - a dachschund/rottweiler cross, for instance, is hardly unheard-of.
Milton's conjecture about Boxhorn only using behavioural isolation as a delineating factor between species because he's writing a FAQ defending evolution is similarly bogus. Including behavioural isolation in the definition of species is quite common in biology, and characterizing it as some kind of dodge on Boxhorn's part seems ignorant at best and intellectually dishonest at worst. Of course, defining what exactly makes a species is a pretty controversial topic and probably will be for a long time to come, so for now we can accept Milton's rather conservative definition - a population can only be said to be a different species from its neighbours when a union between the two produces either no offspring or infertile offspring. While some would of course argue that two populations that are behaviourally isolated - say, due to the fact that one mates in winter and the other in summer - should not be considered different species on this basis alone, I doubt anyone would argue that two populations that cannot produce fertile offspring through interbreeding are the same species. Amazingly, Milton manages to find a well-supported example that fits this rather strong defintion of speciation, though he doesn't recognize it. Here, he quotes a citation from the FAQ:
Milton's response here seems to be a complete misunderstanding of the FAQ's citation. While the Colombian strain was initially able to produce fertile hybrid offspring when mated with the Orinocan strain, the same was not true five years later. Attempted crossbreeding of the same Colombian strain with conspecific Orinocan strains produced only infertile male offspring, indicating that speciation had occurred. Behavioural isolation appeared only later on in the study (assortative mating, in this case, is a form of whole or partial behavioural isolation).
Either Milton has misread the article or he has failed to understand his own carefully chosen definition of what constitutes speciation. By any defintion, even the behaviour-independent one used by Milton, while two species may produce offspring through interbreeding, they cannot be considered the same species unless the result of such a union is fertile. By citing this study, Milton has completely shot himself in the foot - a population of Drosophila, once able to produce fertile offspring when crossed with conspecific populations, became unable to do so with the same populations after five years of reproductive isolation. This is speciation, and unless I've missed something major in my reading of Milton's article and the quoted FAQ it seems ridiculous to characterize it otherwise.
There are a few more errors and fallacies in Milton's articles, and I might go into them sometime later. Incidentally, the guy who linked me to this article is a veritable fountain of crazy on his own - he think evolution is bunk, not because he's a creationist, but because he believes Falun Gong tells him otherwise. Homosexuality is unnatural and immoral, lasers are actually death rays from Atlantis, Shangri-La was razed to the ground by the Chinese Communist Party to prevent a spiritual awakening by the Chinese people, and Edgar Cayce was the greatest prophet the world has ever known. He also believes himself to be a reincarnation of the Egyptian god Thoth. I could probably get a whole series of articles out of him, but I suspect there's more on the way, so I'll hold off for now. In the meantime, expect more entries on Milton in the future!
Until now I haven't found many creationist sites that respond to talk.origins directly. Most seem to tread the Behe/Dembski party line of "information theory disproves evolution" or parrot the old, tired arguments that even Answers in Genesis is wary of (moon dust, helium, the strength of Earth's magnetic field, etc.). On a forum that I frequently attend, however, someone posted a link to a site - or rather, a subsection of a site - that takes on talk.origins directly.
http://www.alternativescience.com/faq_or_fiction.htm
The site is maintained by Richard Milton, author of such books as The Facts of Life and Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, who appears on the talk.origins site in a debate over the hominid fossil record. Mr. Milton purports to set straight "a few of the more gross errors of scientific fact" in the talk.origins FAQ archive in a series of four pages: a response to the Observed Instances of Speciation FAQ, another to the Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ, a third to Kathleen Hunt's account of equine evolution, and finally, a discussion of whether the development of antibiotic resistance among modern disease-causing organisms can be considered "Darwinian evolution."
I'm no biologist, but when browsing through the first of these responses, a couple of rather glaring problems caught even my eye:
Under the promising heading 'Telling whether a speciation event has occurred', [Boxhorn] says that 'One advantage of the Biological Species Concept is that it provides a reasonably unambiguous test that can be applied to possible speciation events. Recall that under [this definition] species are defined as being reproductively isolated from other species. Demonstrating that a population is reproductively isolated (in a nontrvial way) from populations that it was formerly able to interbreed with shows that speciation has occurred.'
This only leaves one question: what exactly does Boxhorn mean by 'reproductively isolated'? A little later he tells us. 'Behavioral isolating mechanisms,' he says, 'rely on organisms making a choice of whether to mate and a choice of who to mate with.'
So there you have it. If two individuals choose not to mate then, according to Boxhorn's definition, they are 'reproductively isolated.' And if they are reproductively isolated then -- voila! They are now no longer the same species. A 'speciation event' has occurred.
This seems like a deliberate mischaracterization, if not a straw man. The determination of what is and what is not a species depends not upon individuals, but upon populations. Additionally, the example that he proceeds to give of size-discrepant dogs like Great Danes and Chihuahuas being "reproductively isolated" is actually untrue. If you ask your friendly local dog lover, they'll probably tell you many hilarious tales of smaller male dogs trying to mate with larger female dogs, or of tragic and messy results when the opposite is attempted. Comedy aside, such unions can and do happen - a dachschund/rottweiler cross, for instance, is hardly unheard-of.
Milton's conjecture about Boxhorn only using behavioural isolation as a delineating factor between species because he's writing a FAQ defending evolution is similarly bogus. Including behavioural isolation in the definition of species is quite common in biology, and characterizing it as some kind of dodge on Boxhorn's part seems ignorant at best and intellectually dishonest at worst. Of course, defining what exactly makes a species is a pretty controversial topic and probably will be for a long time to come, so for now we can accept Milton's rather conservative definition - a population can only be said to be a different species from its neighbours when a union between the two produces either no offspring or infertile offspring. While some would of course argue that two populations that are behaviourally isolated - say, due to the fact that one mates in winter and the other in summer - should not be considered different species on this basis alone, I doubt anyone would argue that two populations that cannot produce fertile offspring through interbreeding are the same species. Amazingly, Milton manages to find a well-supported example that fits this rather strong defintion of speciation, though he doesn't recognize it. Here, he quotes a citation from the FAQ:
5.3.1 Drosophila paulistorum
Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky (1971) reported a speciation event that occurred in a laboratory culture of Drosophila paulistorum sometime between 1958 and 1963. The culture was descended from a single inseminated female that was captured in the Llanos of Colombia. In 1958 this strain produced fertile hybrids when crossed with conspecifics of different strains from Orinocan. From 1963 onward crosses with Orinocan strains produced only sterile males. Initially no assortative mating or behavioral isolation was seen between the Llanos strain and the Orinocan strains. Later on Dobzhansky produced assortative mating (Dobzhansky 1972).
I had to read this twice to assure myself that it wasn't a practical joke. Boxhorn is saying that two fruit flies which he asserts are different species, successfully mate and produce offspring (thereby proving conclusively that they are not different species but the same species.) He calls the offspring 'hybrids' in an attempt to smuggle their 'different' species status in by the back door. Later some of the offspring exhibit 'behavioural isolation' (like Chihuahuas and Great Danes) but this is irrelevant as a sign of species status. So where, in all this, is there an instance of speciation -- or one species turning into another?
Milton's response here seems to be a complete misunderstanding of the FAQ's citation. While the Colombian strain was initially able to produce fertile hybrid offspring when mated with the Orinocan strain, the same was not true five years later. Attempted crossbreeding of the same Colombian strain with conspecific Orinocan strains produced only infertile male offspring, indicating that speciation had occurred. Behavioural isolation appeared only later on in the study (assortative mating, in this case, is a form of whole or partial behavioural isolation).
Either Milton has misread the article or he has failed to understand his own carefully chosen definition of what constitutes speciation. By any defintion, even the behaviour-independent one used by Milton, while two species may produce offspring through interbreeding, they cannot be considered the same species unless the result of such a union is fertile. By citing this study, Milton has completely shot himself in the foot - a population of Drosophila, once able to produce fertile offspring when crossed with conspecific populations, became unable to do so with the same populations after five years of reproductive isolation. This is speciation, and unless I've missed something major in my reading of Milton's article and the quoted FAQ it seems ridiculous to characterize it otherwise.
There are a few more errors and fallacies in Milton's articles, and I might go into them sometime later. Incidentally, the guy who linked me to this article is a veritable fountain of crazy on his own - he think evolution is bunk, not because he's a creationist, but because he believes Falun Gong tells him otherwise. Homosexuality is unnatural and immoral, lasers are actually death rays from Atlantis, Shangri-La was razed to the ground by the Chinese Communist Party to prevent a spiritual awakening by the Chinese people, and Edgar Cayce was the greatest prophet the world has ever known. He also believes himself to be a reincarnation of the Egyptian god Thoth. I could probably get a whole series of articles out of him, but I suspect there's more on the way, so I'll hold off for now. In the meantime, expect more entries on Milton in the future!
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Free Republic bingo
I have a new game that I just invented. I call it Freeper Bingo. Find any Free Republic thread with 50 posts or more, and go nuts:
Not surprisingly, this also works as a drinking game.
Not surprisingly, this also works as a drinking game.
Truth for Youth parody
Hello!
It's been forever since my last update, thanks to a wonderfully short attention span and a similarly constrained schedule. But, I made a parody comic for the Something Awful forums and need somewhere to semi-permanently keep it, so here it is.
It's based on a "Truth for Youth" anti-evolution comic, which can be found here. It's the usual creationist talking points that have been postulated, refuted, and regurgitated a thousand times over the last century or so, along with some spectacular non-sequiturs, so I decided to spice it up by giving the professor some actual knowledge of science.
So, without further ado...
It's been forever since my last update, thanks to a wonderfully short attention span and a similarly constrained schedule. But, I made a parody comic for the Something Awful forums and need somewhere to semi-permanently keep it, so here it is.
It's based on a "Truth for Youth" anti-evolution comic, which can be found here. It's the usual creationist talking points that have been postulated, refuted, and regurgitated a thousand times over the last century or so, along with some spectacular non-sequiturs, so I decided to spice it up by giving the professor some actual knowledge of science.
So, without further ado...
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