We skeptics are often called cynics by true believers. If only it were that easy. Still, I love when skepticism actually DOES take the form of cynicism…
It will be interesting to see what response, if any, the anti-vaccination crowd will have for this report that the National Health Service (UK) Information Centre has found that the rates of autism in adults directly correlates to the rates of autism in children.
The anti-vax movement, spearheaded by Jenny McCarthy, has been pushing the idea that vaccinations cause serious illnesses as side-effects to preventing others. In particular, the MMR vaccine (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) is blamed by anti-vaxers to cause Autism.
The MMR vaccine has been available only since the early 1990s. Thus, it would be expected that, if this vaccine were causing autism, that rates of autism in children would be higher than rates of adults, since children with the MMR vaccine have not had time to become a part of the adult population.
The NHS study, however, shows that this is not the case:
“The NHS Information Centre found one in every hundred adults living in England has autism, which is identical to the rate in children.”
Case closed. If the MMR vaccine was causing autism, then rates of autism rates in children should be higher than adults. They are not, so the MMR vaccine is not causing autism.
This study goes beyond the simple rates, though. Autism in girls as compared to women were completely equal and the same is true of boys compared to men. The rates are constant, whether the person has received the MMR vaccine or not.
Why is this an issue? What’s the harm in not getting your child vaccinated? To find out, check out www.whatstheharm.net/vaccinedenial.html.
(as usual, Dr. Steve Novella has a much more thorough analysis of this study on his blog, neurologica.)
Those of you who don’t know her, the above is our pal Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy began her career as a Playboy Playmate, and moved on to an acting career which landed her in amazing acting roles like a spot in the “Lingerie Bowl.” So naturally, this makes her an authority on the toxicity of vaccines.
McCarthy, whose son is autistic, believes that “her son was developing normally until he received his measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (at 15 months of age) and claimed that they were the cause. McCarthy has stated at many talk shows and rallies that chelation therapy [pronounced kee-lay-shun] helped her son recover from autism; the underlying rationale for chelation, which is that mercury in vaccines causes autism, has been roundly rejected by scientific studies, with the National Institute of Mental Health concluding that autistic children are unlikely to receive any benefit to balance the risks of cognitive and emotional problems posed by the chelating agents used in the treatment.” (Wikipedia page on Jenny McCarthy, May 14th, 2009).
McCarthy has since become a major spokesperson for the anti-vaccination movement in America. The key point to be taken out of the above context from the Wikipedia page on McCarthy is that “the underlying rationale for chelatioin…has been roundly rejected by scientific studies.” The National Institute of Mental Health, who would know a thing or two about a mental illness like autism, reject chelation as a valid treatment for autism. Of course, facts do not stop McCarthy. Nor do they stop Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who simply states that the above is simply a large pharma-industrial complex and government conspiracy. As was pointed out on a recent episode of “The Skeptics Guide to the Universe”, it’s interesting to see a Kennedy proposing a conspiracy theory. Those of you who don’t know why, just go here. (You may want to go there anyways; conspiracies are always good for a laugh.)
I would go on about this, but the absurdity of it brings me to simply say that, once again, Dr. Novella has written extensively on the topic and is a much better source for the nitty gritty details. To read more, I suggest using this link to do a search of the good doctor’s Neurologica blog for “McCarthy.” There is a wealth of information there too vast to summarize in my one short post.
It has been brought to my attention recently (thanks Justin!) that this blog harps on creationism a lot. While this is true, that is certainly not my intention. A large part of the reason I have been going to the creation/intelligent design topics a lot lately is because of my “‘Evidence for Creation’ Debunked” series, which took more time than I expected it would. Also, creationism is sort of my go-to topic in skepticism, principally because I cannot understand how people in the creationist camp that know the information about evolution can still deny its existence.
I hope to be blogging more about other scientific and skeptical topics very soon. I am going to be writing a conclusion for the “Debunked” series and posting the entire set as a separate page to this blog, but afterwards I will be writing on logical fallacies, vaccination fear, and some other topics. Look for these in the near future.
STATEMENT: “The human brain is the most complicated structure in the known universe.”
RESPONSE: This statement is rather dubious, and there are a number of problems with it:
1. Semantics: What is meant by “complicated”? What is meant by “structure”? This statement assumes we can compare the structural complexities of brains and anything else “in the known universe.” But how are we to compare the structural complexity of the human brain to the structural complexity of the earth, the galaxy, a black hole, dark matter, etc. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to to say it is the most complicated biological organ or even just the most complicated brain in the known universe? But then, that wouldn’t be accurate either, because…
2. Inaccuracy: …the human brain is NOT the most complicated structure in the known universe. “The dolphin brain is larger than a human brain and more complex in structure.” (see also here).
3. So what?: Even if it were true that the human brain is the most complicated structure in the known universe, so what? Just because the brain is complicated in structure doesn’t make it special. It just makes it complicated. At the very least, this complexity in no way infers that it is “created” by God.
STATEMENT: “It contains over 100 billion cells, each with over 50,000 neuron connections to other brain cells.”
RESPONSE: About half-right. The human brain does contain about 100 billion cells, but the only estimate I could find about neuron connections to other cells estimated the number to be about 7,000, not 50,000. Admittedly, I have not watched the PBS Video (”The Brain, Our Universe Within”) cited as the source for this statement, so it may be that there is conflicting data with regards to neuron connections.
STATEMENT: ”This structure receives over 100 million separate signals from the total human body every second.”
RESPONSE: I have been unable to verify this number in my research, but for the sake of response will assume it is true (as this number is irrelevant).
STATEMENT: ”If we learned something new every second of our lives, it would take three million years to exhaust the capacity of the human brain.”
RESPONSE: How do we know this? What is the math that gives us these numbers? Is the assumption that every new thing learned is stored in one brain cell, and that it would take three million years to store one thing in every one brain cell? (By my calculations, that would take three thousand years, not three million.) What are we defining as exhausting the capacity of the human brain? And why do we have to assume that we learn something new every second? We don’t. I’m certainly not learning anything new when I’m asleep. I know that this statement doesn’t make the claim that we do learn something every second, but why use a number that isn’t accurate to what actually happens?
This statement makes the assumption that the “capacity” of the human brain is entirely for learning. But much of the brain’s 100 billion neurons have nothing to do with learning, but have to do with regulatory functions (i.e. keeping respiratory and heart rates at proper levels), bodily functions (i.e. the manipulation of limbs), or other non-learning based functions. I get the feeling that this statement comes from the idea that we only use 10% of our brains (or some other arbitrarily low number). However, this assumption is highly inaccurate.
The final thing I will say about this statement is that the source cited for this information is a video by Moody Publishers titled “Wonders of God’s Creation”. The front page of Moody Publishers’ website states “Proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ and a Biblical Worldview” and Moody Publishers distributes Christian books and videos, “promoting inexpensive Christian books for Christians to grow and non-Christians to have a quick introduction to the gospel” (Moody Publishers’ “Our History” Page). Using this as a source is hardly the stuff of an unbiased, objective observer, thus making it unscientific and invalidating its use as “evidence.”
STATEMENT: ”In addition to conscious thought, people can actually reason, anticipate consequences, and devise plans - all without knowing they are doing so”
RESPONSE: All true, but how does this serve as “evidence for creation”?
CONCLUSION: “Evidence for Creation” is not making an argument at all in this entire section. It provides nothing to serve as “evidence” for a creation as described in the biblical record. Read the “argument” as a whole and see if you can find what is being argued or what evidence in presented:
“The human brain is the most complicated structure in the known universe. It contains over 100 billion cells, each with over 50,000 neuron connections to other brain cells. This structure receives over 100 million separate signals from the total human body every second. If we learned something new every second of our lives, it would take three million years to exhaust the capacity of the human brain. In addition to conscious thought, people can actually reason, anticipate consequences, and devise plans - all without knowing they are doing so.”
Even if everything in this argument were true, it makes no point; it would just be a list of facts. So what if the brain were “the most complicated structure in the known universe”? So what that it contains “100 billion cells, each with 50,000 neuron connections”? So what if it “receives over 100 million separate signals from the total human body every second”? So what that humans can “reason, anticipate consequences, and devise plans - all without knowing they are doing so”? What is the argument? How does this prove creation?!
The only thing that I can see as being an argument in here at all is the part about learning something new every second, taking three million years to exhaust the capacity of the human brain. But this is not an argument for creation. If anything, it is an argument that the brain doesn’t exist! I think it would go something like this: “How could we possibly learn something new every second? And how could we possibly live three million years to exhaust the capacity of the brain? Obviously, the brain must not exist.”
“Evidence for Creation” has ten arguments, this being the last; but it really only has nine.
STATEMENT: ”A living cell is so awesomely complex that its interdependent components stagger the imagination and defy evolutionary explanations.”
RESPONSE: The first thing to say about this statement is that it is a great example of the logical fallacy “Argument from Personal Incredulity.” While a living cell is awesomely complex, that complexity does not “stagger” my mind, nor most biologists. If it truly staggered the mind, we would not be able to comprehend its complexity in a meaningful way, or dissect and understand the many parts of its complexity. Just because it staggers your mind doesn’t make its complexity “created” by God.
The second thing is that the interdependent components do not defy evolutionary explanations. In fact, they ARE the evolutionary explanations. The complexity of a living cell developed over billions of years. Let’s not forget that it took approximately 3 billion years of evolution before there were even multi-cellular organisms. What do you think was happening in those 3 billion years? The answer is that what constituted life and eventually evolved into multicellular organisms was developing greater and greater complexity as time passed. If it were not for this complexity, multi-cellular life would never have developed.
This strikes me as being a very similar argument as the intelligent design argument of “Irreducible Complexity,” from which the name of this blog is derived (as an antonym of sorts). I will here only state that irreducible complexity is a very poor argument for intelligent design or creationism (one in the same, in my mind). For more information on irreducible complexity and why it is not a valid scientific theory, I suggest reading the About R.C. page of this blog, the Wikipedia page on irreducible complexity (particularly the Response of the Scientific Community section), or Ken Miller’s “The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of ‘Irreducible Complexity’”.
STATEMENT: “A minimal cell contains over 60,000 proteins of 100 different configurations.”
RESPONSE: This appears to be a true statement, though I was unable to conclusively verify it within a few minutes of searching through Google. Nevertheless, 60,000 proteins in 100 different configurations is not staggeringly complex and certainly does not “defy evolutionary explanations,” as noted above.
STATEMENT: “The chance of this assemblage occurring by chance is 1 in 10 4,478,296 .”
RESPONSE: At the time of this writing, that is the exact way it is written in the “Evidence for Creation” article on creationevidence.org. This was a simple copy and paste; the poor grammar and typos are not produced by me.
I will assume that 1 in 10 4,478,296 is actually 1 in 10^4,478,296 (one in ten to the power of four million four hundred and seventy-eight thousand two hundred and ninety-six), a truly impressive number.
I don’t know why I bothered to fix that typo or spell out the number so that people might understand what is actually being argued because the number, while truly impressive, is irrelevant. In fact, the entire statement is irrelevant because evolutionary theory does not state that this assemblage occurs “by chance.” Rather, “Chance certainly plays a large part in evolution, but this argument completely ignores the fundamental role of natural selection, and selection is the very opposite of chance. Chance, in the form of mutations, provides genetic variation, which is the raw material that natural selection has to work with. From there, natural selection sorts out certain variations. Those variations which give greater reproductive success to their possessors (and chance ensures that such beneficial mutations will be inevitable) are retained, and less successful variations are weeded out. When the environment changes, or when organisms move to a different environment, different variations are selected, leading eventually to different species. Harmful mutations usually die out quickly, so they don’t interfere with the process of beneficial mutations accumulating” (Mark Isaak, “Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution”).
CONCLUSION: This entire argument is based on a completely ignorant point of view. If evolutionary theory taught that the evolution of life happens by chance, then the creationists would have a very valid point. But it doesn’t, so they don’t. But the ignorance is spelled out in the first sentence of this argument: “staggers the mind.” It doesn’t stagger the mind. Life’s complexity is impressive, and the complexity is awesome; but we can wrap our heads around it, study it, learn life’s inner workings, and decipher exactly how it is that life, and all the organisms that represent it, exists, lives, survives, dies, genetically mutates, etc. and determine how we got here.
STATEMENT: “Astronomical estimates of the distance to various galaxies gives conflicting data.”
RESPONSE: The source used to derive this statement is a news item from September 9th, 1995, titled “Further Evidence of a Youthful Universe” by R. Cowan. The story tells of how astronomers at the University of Cambridge in England concluded that the distance to the Coma cluster of galaxies indicates that the universe’s age is approximately 9.5 billion years as opposed to the previous estimates of 13 to 16 billion years.
However, as the news story states, “[astronomers] must either embrace a more complex cosmological model or reexamine how they estimate stellar ages.” This is exactly what they have done in the thirteen years since this story was published. Because of a refinement in the process of estimating stellar ages, astronomers have been able to narrow the estimated age of the universe. Within a well-defined error bar, astronomers are now certain that the age of the universe 13.7 billion years. The story even quotes how the study may have been inaccurate in the first place: “cautions theorist Daved N. Schramm of the University of Chicago, ‘You have to be very careful about [drawing conclusions] because all of the [Hubble constant] measurements have huge systematic errors.’”
It should also be pointed out here that “Evidence for Creation” contradicts itself by using this source. If the universe is 6,000 to 10,000 years old, as is proposed earlier (here and here and here), then using a scientific measurement that dates the universe as 9.5 billion years old contradicts the idea of a young-earth. So which is it: 6,000 to 10,000, or 9.5 billion? How about the actual 13.7 billion?
STATEMENT: “The Biblical Record refers to the expansion of space by the Creator.”
RESPONSE: The two biblical passages used as evidence for this statement are Psalm 104:2, and Isaiah 40:22. From the King James Bible, they read as follows:
Psalm 104:2 - Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:
Isaiah 40:22 - It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
I shall leave it to theologians to interpret what these verses really mean, but I will comment on their use: “Evidence for Creation” is attempting, as its title implies, to provide the scientific evidence that supports the hypothesis of a universe created according to the biblical record in Genesis. However, if their “scientific” evidence for the truth of the biblical record is the bible itself, creationists are essentially saying “The bible is true because the bible says so.” Also, the bible is not a scientific work but a mythological, theological doctrine of faith. Therefore, there is no validity in using the bible as scientific evidence for anything, let alone for evidence of its own truth.
STATEMENT: ”Astrophysicist Russell Humphries demonstrates that such space expansion would dilate time in distant space.”
RESPONSE: First, “Evidence for Creation” has misspelled the physicist’s name in the article as well as in the citations. The actual name is Russell Humphreys. This will help any readers that are wanting to find a review of his book or find it on Amazon.com.
Second, Starlight and Time, Humphreys’ book cited for this statement, addresses the rather complex “Starlight Problem” that comes up when considering a young earth/universe. Essentially, the starlight problem is this: if the earth and the universe is young (less than 10,000 years old), then everything in the cosmos is within 10,000 years old; this would mean that no object that we can see could be further than 10,000 light years from Earth because otherwise we would not be able to see them; furthermore, events happening at distant galaxies (say, 150,000 light years away) that are detectable on earth (i.e. gamma ray bursts) could not have actually happened, due to the distance the light would have to have traveled (150,000 light years) in less time than the universe has existed; in this example, the gamma rays that we are detecting on earth as having come from a star or galaxy 150,000 light years away would have to have been placed 10,000 light years away from the earth and 140,000 light years away from the star or galaxy, and be on a trajectory towards the earth, at the beginning of the universe.
Did you follow all that? Basically, the starlight problem means that if the universe is truly only 10,000 years old and created by God according to the biblical record in Genesis, then God purposely set up a universe with a false history, making the universe appear as though it is older than it actually is. However, this argument is rather absurd; why would God do this? Not only that, but how do we then know that the earth is only 10,000 years old and not 100 years old with a similar false history, or 2 seconds old with a false history that includes every memory of your life up until 2 seconds ago? Ockham’s Razor, the idea that the explanation of a phenomenon should introduce as few new assumptions as possible (i.e. assuming God created the universe 10,000 years ago with a false history making the universe look older than it is), dictates that we reject this theory for the simpler idea that the universe really is as old as appears, or 13.7 billion years.
Humphreys’ book “presents a controversial cosmological model in which the Earth is several thousands of years old, but the outer edge of an expanding and rotating 3-dimensional universe is billions of years old, with various ages in between. The model places the Milky Way galaxy relatively near the center of the cosmos (in line with observable data if one disregards the Copernican Principle), though it is not a geocentricmodel of the solar system” (Wikipedia page on Russell Humphreys). In 1998, David E. Thomas wrote of Humphreys’ work, stating that “Humphreys creates a slick, scientific-sounding argument for a ‘young’ Earth, but in the process seriously misrepresents modern consensus. All serious dating methods (radiometric age dating, dendrochronology, ice core analysis, varve deposition, and more) yield ages far older than Humphreys’ methods. [...] D. Russell Humphreys breaks all the rules of science. He uses flawed logic, overly simple models, and twisted data to sell his young Earth” (“‘Creation Physicist” D. Russell Humphreys, and his Questionable ‘Evidence for a Young World’”).
STATEMENT: “This could explain a recent creation with great distances to the stars.”
RESPONSE: Sorry, but no, it cannot.
CONCLUSION: The evidence presented in this argument is so off the mark that it is barely worth considering. Astronomical estimates showing that the universe is about 9.5 billion years old that have since been overturned is not evidence for young earth of 6,000 to 10,000 years. Biblical verses cannot confirm the validity of the bible; just like I cannot confirm that I am the greatest juggler in the world by telling you that I’m the greatest juggler in the world. And oversimplified models of the universe that essentially say that the universe is set up in such a way as to fool us into thinking it is older than it actually is, or that space expansion “dilates” time in distant space (but not local?) is also not scientific evidence. The argument for creation based on the expansion of space fabric is pseudoscience at its best.
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
-Carl Sagan, deceased this day in 1996. Carl Sagan was an astronomer, exobiologist, and writer of popular science books. Sagan was also a skeptic, and his studies were far-ranging.
It is truly sad to me that I was not as enthused by science in my younger years. A person like Carl Sagan could have had a profound effect on my life. Now that I am enthused by science, Sagan does effect my life…he was truly a great person, scientist, and skeptic. I guess it is just one of those things, where I rather wish I could have had the chance to meet him.
I wanted to clear something up before it becomes a potential issue:
I am an atheist. I am a skeptic. But I do NOT think that the two go hand in hand. I have a fair amount of this page dedicated to religion. While this site is a skepticism/science blog, it is my personal blog and atheism is a topic dear to me.
Skepticism and atheism are two different things. They are related in many ways, but they are not one in the same. Skepticism follows the principles of scientific inquiry, providing evidence for claims. Atheism is simply a lack of belief. If you are a religious person for purely personal reasons and make no claims of “proof” of your beliefs, I don’t have a problem with you. If, however, you say that you can prove that your god or belief exists, then I want you to present me with your supporting evidence. If you cannot or do not do so, then I have a problem with you.
We all have our sacred cows, myself included (which I will not go into for, as fits my statement above, personal reasons). I am a skeptic despite this.
STATEMENT: “Physicist Melvin Cook, found that helium-4 enters our atmosphere from solar wind and radioactive decay of uranium. At present rates our atmosphere would accumulate current helium-4 amounts in less than 10,000 years.”
RESPONSE: Admittedly, the scientific data regarding this argument is a bit complicated, but Dave E. Matson has written a paper titled “How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments?” and addresses the subject of atmospheric helium-4 amounts. Matson goes into great detail, and I shall summarize as best I can:
Helium-4 is the result of radioactive alpha decay. (definition: alpha decay occurs “because the nucleus [of an atom] has too many protons which cause excessive repulsion. In an attempt to reduce the repulsion, a Helium nucleus is emitted” (“Three Types of Radioactive Decay”, thinkquest.org).) Helium-4 is “produced” as it escapes from within the earth to the atmosphere. It is hypothesized that a small amount of helium-4 is lost as it is heated and escapes the atmosphere altogether. However, the “most probable mechanism for helium loss is photoionization of helium by the polar wind and its escape along open lines of the Earth’s magnetic field” (Matson). Polar wind accounts for an escape of helium-4 that is nearly identical to the estimated production. Similarly, helium-4 may escape from the atmosphere through a “direct interaction of the solar wind [...] during the short periods of lower magnetic-field intensity while the field is reversing. Sheldon and Kern (1972) estimated that 20 geomagnetic-field reversals over the past 3.5 million years would have assured a balance between helium production and loss” (Matson).
CONCLUSION: What’s missing from creationevidence.org’s argument (aka what is implied by their argument) is that if helium-4 is being produced at the rate that it is, the amount of helium-4 observed in the atmosphere indicates a young earth. As has been shown, however, there are several mechanisms that account for the loss of helium-4 in the atmosphere. “Thus,” Matson states, “the helium balance calculations provided by creationist Melvin Cook [...] cannot provide a reliable minimum estimate of the earth’s age. [The creationists' argument from helium-4 production] is a fatal oversimplification of a complex problem” (Matson).
