“Poyekhali!” (”Let’s Go!”) - Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin

On this day in 1934, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born. Gagarin was the first man in space. He shouted this expression on April 12th, 1961, as the engines fired on the launch-pad to propel him on this historic mission.

On this day in 1618, Johannes Kepler formulated his Third Law of Planetary Motion. This third law states that “the square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.”

Important stuff, this.

I got cut-off in traffic today on my way to classes. Twice. Both times, I was cut off by somebody that did not respect the right-away rule at 4-way stops. Both times, I honked at them. Both times, I was given the finger.

This made me realize something. When something happens in traffic, some controversy of some kind, if I am in the right and I want to tell the person how I feel, I never give them the finger. I usually give them a thumbs up, as if to say “Nice going, ass-clown.” Or I will point to my temple to say “THINK!” But never the finger. The only time I give the finger is when I’m too flustered to think of something else, which is when I have done something wrong (and know it).

I’m a good driver (and, I admit, an aggressive one). But I occasionally make a mistake in traffic. Everyone does. But to give somebody the finger, at this point, just doesn’t do anything. It’s a way of saying “I don’t care what you think.” If you care about making the other person know they were wrong, you don’t give them the finger, you make them feel stupid (because they are).

With that in mind, I realized today that I am never going to be offended or apologize about a traffic incident if the other person gives me the finger. Instead, I’ll take it as an admission from the other person that they are wrong, stupid, shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car, or all three.

Don’t give the finger. It’s dumb, and you admit you’re wrong.

I love things like this…

Here’s a video that has been floating around for the interwebs for a couple weeks. It’s freaky-cool.

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.)

Ryan Gregory of the Genomicron blog has put together a quick, but excellent, list of predictions made by the theory of evolution that have later been confirmed. The list can be found at:

http://genomicron.blogspot.com/2009/09/does-evolutionary-biology-make.html

Even though I’m sure this is old and that most evolutionists in America have probably seen it already, it is new to me and I think its great!

“If anybody had that cure out there, like so many people swear they do, you’d be two things. You’d be very rich, and you’d be very famous. Otherwise, shut up.” — Patrick Swayze (1952-2009) to the cancer cure quacks.

Thanks to wastrel on the SGU Forums for this quote.

Wow, it’s been a long time. No promises of more posts to come (I’d like to start writing in here again, but who knows if I’ll have time), but here’s a funny atheist video that my colleague Tim sent to me.

The clincher was the reverend claiming some kind of “mutation” explaining everything. Brilliant.

On this day in 1796, English physician Edward Jenner administered the first vaccination against smallpox to an eight-year-old boy. Jenner innoculated an 8-year-old boy, James Phipps, with material from the sores of dairymaid Sarah Nelmes who had a mild case of cowpox. A few weeks later, on 1 Jul, he subsequently tested the boy’s resistance to smallpox, by inoculating Phipps with smallpox virus. Fortunately, the immunization had been successful. This tested a conventional wisdom he had heard that those who had survived cowpox seemed to be immune to the deadly smallpox disease. By 1798 he had 23 cases, which he recorded in An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae. Jenner’s work was rapidly taken up in Europe and America.

Stealing a line from Penn and Teller, “And then there’s this asshole:”

To read about WHY she is an asshole, and why I put her in this post, read this!

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.

On this day in 1811, The original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, were born of Chinese parents in Siam (Thailand). Upon immigrating in to the U.S., they adopted Bunker as their surname. They were joined at the waist by a band of cartilage, about 8 in. circumference and 4 in. long. Only after their death was it found that this could have been easily separated. Robert Hunter, a British merchant, discovered them in 1829 and contracted with them to be exhibited as a curiosity in a world tour. Later, they went into business for themselves. In 1839, they visited Wilkesboro, N.C. with P. T. Barnum. They found the town appealing and settled there. The twins later became United States citizens, and married two sisters with whom they raised 10 children.

So, it’s been a very long time since I’ve updated my blog. Long-story made very short, I’ve had little time. I would say that I’m going to start updating this thing again, but I don’t know that I can live up to that promise right now. I will be making a new “Science of Yesteryear” in just a few minutes, so hopefully that will hold you over until I have time again to do something more creative.

On this day in 1997, the successful cloning of an adult mammal was announced: a female lamb named “Dolly” that was born July 5th, 1996. The accomplishment of a group of scientists supervised by Ian Wilmut at Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland, was primarily the work of biologist Keith Campbell. Dolly was the first mammal ever successfully cloned from a cell of an adult animal. Using microscopic needles, scientists had replaced the nucleus of an egg cell with the nucleus from a parent udder cell. The resulting embryo was implanted into the womb of a third, surrogate sheep. Dolly’s DNA was matched to show she was a clone. Dolly lived until February 14th, 2003, when she was put down due to the effects of a progressive lung disease.

I genuinely wonder when (NOT if) we humans will ever clone other humans. I’m not sure where I stand on the ethical issue with cloning of humans. I don’t have a fundamental problem with cloning humans (and I certainly don’t have a religious objection), but the practicality of it bothers me; is it really necessary to clone entire humans?

As for cloning organs, I have no problem with that at all. I think that, should research provide a viable process, the production of human organs by means of cloning has the potential to help in a lot of medical ways, providing “donor” organs for people in need of transplants.

This is kind of old news, but it is new news to me. I don’t know why, but I found this particularly interesting.

From Scientific American:

“Researchers have discovered two living species—so recently that they have yet to be named—of this Alavesia fly, a genus that had previously only been seen preserved in Cretaceous-era amber in Spain and Burma. 
 

The flies, captured in dry streambeds along Namibia’s highest mountain, the Brandberg Massif, have wings only about 0.08 inch (two millimeter) long. The discovery came out of a 2002 bug inventory on the plateau-like mountain (which predates the separation of the southernmost four continents) that also yielded a new suborder of carnivorous insects known as Mantophasmatodea. The new species of this ancient “dance fly” genus were only recognized by researchers Bradley Sinclair, an entomologist at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and Ashley Kirk-Spriggs, who leads the Entomology department at the South Africa National Museum, in 2007.”

Pretty damn cool.

Happy 200th birthday to Dr. Charles Darwin. Later this year (in November) we will also be saying happy 150th anniversary to the release of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Indeed today, Darwin Day, is a special day.

Today is also the celebration of the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States and a person largely responsible for the ending of slavery in the U.S. in the 1860’s. Kudos on this day go to you, too, Abe.

(Note: Today is the “celebration” of Academic Freedom day by proponents of Intelligent Design. Lets just say for now that Academic Freedom is being misused and misinterpreted by the ID crowd. I’ll have a post about that soon, but we’ll let it go for now).

On this day in 1932, the “neutron” was described in an article in the journal Nature by its discoverer, James Chadwick, who coined the name for this neutral particle he discovered present in the nucleus of atoms. By bombarding beryllium with alpha particles, Chadwick discovered the neutron for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1935.

There was a time when it was believed that the atom was the smallest particle there is, that nothing smaller could be discovered. We knew nothing about the neutron, proton, electron, quarks, etc. I think of what has happened in the field of science in the last 150 years, and I’m astonished. It was only about 75 years ago that we first learned of neutrons, but think of the amazingly huge amount of knowledge that is based solely on that discovery. This same line of thinking can be applied to other aspects of physics, biology, genetics, astronomy, medicine, and all the sciences alike.

So, it’s been a long while since I’ve been able to post to the blog. I just finished moving (actually, I still haven’t even come close to being unpacked), and it has sucked most all of my spare time out of me for the last month.

Rest assured…NEW POSTS SOON!

On this day in varying years, Thomas Edison received several of his patents:

1. In 1886, a patent for an “Electrode for Telephone-Transmitters” (No. 348114). The patent application was dated one year earlier on 12 Jan 1885.

2. In 1897, one of the various patents for a “Phonograph” was issued (No.575151). It was one of several patents relating to Edison’s invention received by the patent office on 3 Dec 1890 that were issued on various dates between 27 Jun 1893 and 30 Sep 1898.

3. In 1909, a U.S. patent for “Waterproofing Paint for Portland Cement Buildings” was issued (No. 909,167) and another for “Waterproofing Paint for Portland Cement Structure” (No. 909,169). Edison also received a patent for “Waterproofing Fibers and Fabrics” (No. 909,806)

4. In 1919, a U.S. patent for  a “Method and Means for Improving the Rendition of Musical Compositions” was issued (No. 1,323,218). Edison’s patent application was dated three years earlier, on 12 Jan 1916.

Some people might argue that Edison was not a scientist, but an inventor. What I would say about this is that the study of History of Science includes the study of History of Medicine and History of Technology. Given that Edison’s inventions were largely technological creations, most often come upon through a scientific process, I believe that it is fitting for this page.

“Evidence for Creation” is an easy target for a debunking article. Nevertheless, it is important to go through with reviewing this type of information because it can, and does, get repeated and used in other places. For instance, a comment was left by a high school teacher on the introduction to this series of blogs stating “I have students that use that site as a veritable atom bomb to ‘volutionary idiocy’, and it is enthralling to read a logical and scientific examination of their ‘fact’.” I had an email exchange with this commenter and discussed how often this sort of thing happens in our schools.

It is often the opinion of scientists that the creationists and intelligent design proponents should not be debated because by giving them the platform we are treating them as equals, when there is no real science in their ideas. While I agree with this sentiment, the internet makes me reconsider. I still don’t think that a “debate” is something that should be granted, but propaganda such as “Evidence for Creation” can be put up on the internet for all to see. Anyone without knowledge of the scientific process and unaware of the wealth of knowledge supporting the theory of evolution may come across articles like “Evidence for Creation” and unquestioningly accept its arguments as fact.

It is for this reason that I have taken the time to write my responses to the arguments proposed in “Evidence for Creation”. My hope is that, from time to time, someone my come across my blog before seeing the article and, perhaps, gain a new perspective on creationism, evolution, and science in general.

Stephen Hawking was born on this day in 1942. Hawking is an English theoretical physicist who is one of the world’s leaders in his field. His principal areas of research are theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity. Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University (formerly held by Sir Isaac Newton). Afflicted with Lou Gehrig’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; ALS), Hawking is confined to a wheelchair and is unable to speak without the aid of a computer voice synthesizer. However, despite his challenges, he has utilized his intelligence, knowledge and abilities to make remarkable contributions to the field of cosmology (the study of the universe as a whole).

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”

-Stephen Hawking

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.

This is Part 10 of the ten part blog debunking the claims made on CreationEvidence.org’s “Evidence for Creation.” This blog examines point #10.

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.

George Washington Carver died on this day in 1943. Carver was an American agricultural chemist, agronomist, and experimenter who helped revolutionize the agricultural economy of the South. Carver demonstrated to farmers how fertility could be restored to their land by diversification, especially by planting peanuts and sweet potatoes, to replenish soil  impoverished by the regular growth of cotton and tobacco. He showed that peanuts contained several different kinds of oil, and peanut butter was another of his innovations. In all he is reported to have developed over 300 new products from peanuts and over 100 from sweet potatoes.

On this day in 1958, the Russian Sputnik I satellite, the first man-made object to orbit the earth, fell back into the atmosphere and disintegrated, after 92 days in space. The Sputnik I (meaning “companion” or “fellow traveller”) was launched from Kazakhstan. The craft circled the earth every 95 minutes at almost 20,000 miles per hour 500 miles above the Earth.

On this day in 1919, Professor Ernest Rutherford succeeded in splitting the atom. By bombarding nitrogen atoms with alpha particles emitted by radioactive materials he transmuted the nitrogen atoms into oxygen.

This is Part 9 of the ten part blog debunking the claims made on CreationEvidence.org’s “Evidence for Creation.” This blog examines point #9.

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.

“There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.”

-Isaac Asimov, born this day in 1920.