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Education

Expel the Creationists
December 16, 2008
Apparently Eugenie Scott of the NCSE is feeling no remorse from her appearance in Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, where she defended the actions of those who ruined careers, denied tenure, and deprived students and teachers of their academic freedom because they dared to question Darwin.  Her latest piece in Scientific American is […]
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Fossils

Not Even Wrong: Darwin’s Tree Suffers Base Blow
April 11, 2008
Darwin’s “tree of life” icon is suffering another blow.  The root of multicellular life was supposed to be the simplest, most primitive animal.  Now, scientists are seriously considering that the mother of all animals was a complex animal with a gut, tissues, a nervous system and amazing light displays: a comb jelly.     PhysOrg […]
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Education

Darwin on a Chip
April 8, 2008
PhysOrg, EurekAlert and and Science Daily announced “Evolution on the table top.”  Reporting on a paper in PLoS Biology by Brian Paegel and Gerald Joyce at Scripps, the article claims that the two scientists “have produced a computer-controlled system that can drive the evolution of improved RNA enzymes—biological catalysts—without human input.”  The scientists claim they […]
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Genetics

How to Translate Darwinese
March 6, 2008
A unique culture has sprung up around evolutionary biology.  Since evolutionary theory encompasses far more than just change in living species (touching on, for instance, ultimate origins, the nature of humanity and the destiny of the universe), its supporters sometimes get a little carried away in their language.  The tendency in science reporting to embellish […]
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Early Man

Paleofantasy: Brain Evolution Is Mere Storytelling
February 22, 2008
When it comes to explaining the brain, evolutionists are completely in the dark.  That was the surprising message in a presentation to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science by Harvard evolutionist Richard Lewontin.  James Randerson blogged the presentation in the UK Guardian, beginning, “We know nothing about brain evolution.  […]
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Genetics

Molecular Phylogeny Is a Mess of Uncertainty
January 26, 2008
Genomes galore – a great opportunity to study evolution, right?  Think again.  A paper in Science by Wong et al1 revealed systematic uncertainty in the way genomes are compared, leading to bias that makes genetic comparisons essentially useless.  Antonis Rokas, in the same issue,2 began his commentary on this problem thus: Darwin relied on fossils, […]
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Biomimetics

Two Ways to Look at a Fin
August 21, 2007
Two science articles this month showed very different ways to look at a fish fin.  One looked for evolution; the other looked for design.  One tried to trace an evolutionary story with no practical application; the other tried to find ways to improve our lives.     The evolutionary story involved a fossil coelacanth.  Science […]
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Cell Biology

Immune System Appeared Early
August 12, 2007
“Social amebas” or slime molds have gotten praise recently as inventors of the immune system.  These amebas can band together in a “slug” that can move as a unit and generate stalks and spores.  Science Daily reported on research at Baylor College of Medicine that found “sentinel cells” in a colony of amebas that patrol […]
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Dumb Ideas

Darwinism Seen in Action!
August 3, 2007
An example of Darwinian evolution in action was reported by EurekAlert.  This dramatic announcement called it a “rare example” of a “controversial theory of genetic conflict” in the reproduction of certain fish: The conflict has been likened to a “battle of the sexes” or an “arms race” at the molecular level between mothers and fathers.  […]
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Cell Biology

Crisis at Both Ends of Darwin’s Tree
June 21, 2007
Two assumptions about evolution – one about the earliest multicellular organisms and one about the rise of mammals – have run into trouble.  Eukarya sans Mechanista:  “In the absence of direct evidence, science should proceed cautiously with conjecture,” wisely advised Anthony Poole and David Penny in Nature.1  They scorned the researchers who glibly invent fables […]
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Dumb Ideas

Invent Animals: Just Add Phosphorus
June 11, 2007
“Phosphate does a body good,” announced Leslie Mullen in an article for Astrobiology Magazine, a NASA website.  So good, in fact, it builds whole new body plans.  Her story suggests that the Cambrian explosion was due to a rise in phosphate in the oceans.     In the Cambrian explosion, virtually all the animal phyla […]
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Intelligent Design

Origin of Life Made Simple: Stochastic Innovation Answers I.D.
June 8, 2007
A press release from UC San Francisco teases, Before life emerged on earth, either a primitive kind of metabolism or an RNA-like duplicating machinery must have set the stage – so experts believe.  But what preceded these pre-life steps?     A pair of UCSF scientists has developed a model explaining how simple chemical and […]
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Marine Biology

Did Sponges Invent Nerves?
June 6, 2007
Scientists didn’t expect to find working neurons in a sea sponge, among the simplest of multicellular organisms.  Sponges lack internal organs and a nervous system.  Yet there they were, according to Science Daily, with synapses and apparent means of communication across them.     “This pushes back the origins of these genetic components of the […]
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Genetics

More “Candy” Found in Junk DNA
April 24, 2007
Powerful regulators that play a crucial role – this is how non-coding sections of DNA are now being described.  A story in Science Daily says that these regions of “junk DNA” once dismissed as “gene deserts” actually orchestrate the expression of genes during development.     In a related paper in PNAS,1 researchers found regulatory […]
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Uncategorized

Desperately Seeking Macroevolution
March 28, 2007
With Intelligent Design critics hot on their heels, Darwinian evolutionists are hot to find transitional forms that they can exhibit as evidence for large-scale evolution (macroevolution).  A symposium on that very subject was held last October by the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), but a report on the conference did not come out till […]
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