lucaspa

 

Dont underestimate the value of human trials and cruelty free methods like computer models, cultures of human cells, and so on. Perhaps governments should use a few millions of dollars to develop new methods of drug testing without animal participants. No AR activist ever says anything about stopping drug testing in its entirety, just animal testing.

Don't overestimate them, either. The government has ALREADY spent tens of millions to develop drug testing without animals. Where do you think the computer models and cultures of human cells came from?

All of these methods have limitations. For clinical trials, there are the ethical questions of using humans where they could be harmed. Cells in culture don't address problems of absorption, distribution, modification, and excretion of the drugs. Computer models are only as good as the data that goes into them, and the whole animal/human system is very complex.

But theres no difference between killing animals and mentally similar humans.

That's a premise. I challenge it. There are several differences, one being that the animals are not of our species. Ethics and morals are what we decide applies to our species.

Its ironic that people insist on testing on animals who are killed at a rate 1000s of times faster than whats possible for human experimentation, but say that human testing is wrong because it would take too many lives.

It's not ironic. The goal is to save human lives. Mice and rats aren't of our species.

Animal testing kills animals who are feeling beings with an experiential welfare (and they are just as valuable as mentally similar humans),

This presumes a couple of things:

1. That animals are indeed "feeling beings"

2. That ethics based on the ability to experience are indeed valid.

3. That animals are just as valuable as mentally similar humans.

I challenge all of those premises. I say none of them are valid. Without the premises, your conclusions collapse.

You keep coming back to a principle that says "testing on people is wrong because its hurts people", but your not even thinking about the equivalent "testing on animals is wrong because it hurts animals". Thats a naive ethic, you cant determine whether something is morally permissible by the way it affects only the beings you care about, you have to make decisions based on all the beings affected;

No, you don't. Morals applies to your own species. ALL species on the planet survive by hurting other species. Even plants survive by crowding out plants of other species and taking nutrients which would feed those other species of plants. The naivete is that you can extend "morality" to just those species you want to while claiming what you do above.

We hurt animals all the time. Every time we farm, we hurt the animals that used that land when it was not farmland. We mustdo so or we wouldn't be able to grow the plants we need to survive. Ever see the movie NIMH? It starts with all the rodents in a field scrambling because it is "moving day" -- when the farmer plows his field. Now, do you advocate that farmers go thru their fields each spring and gently move any nests of rodents that are there?

otherwise you validate an ethic that says "we can perform tests on certain races because we just dont care about those races very much".

No, you don't. Non-sequitor. Races are, by definition, members of our own species. In fact, the whole history of "rights" is in getting us to view other groups of humans (such as races) as human! Once we do that, then we automatically extend morality and ethics to them. You want to extend ethics beyond our species. That is very difficult at best, impossible when the species are not sentient.

But also, keep in mind, not all groups of humans care about all other groups equally; many only care about members of their own family, country, race, or religion.

And they do so by downgrading the other group to a status less than human. "Slopes", "kikes", "ragheads", etc. are all terms designed to demote the group out of humanity.

Basically, the choice to protect only humans, or only white humans, or only mammals because they happen to be a member of your species / race / biological family is arbitrary;the possible groups that people belong to can be as narrow or wide as possibly imaginable,

If that is so, then you have a problem. Because you cannot exist without harming members of other species. If you extend this, you can't even take antibiotics because you are killing millions of bacteria! Nor can you use soap for the same reason.

but there is no argument that non-members of their group have no claim to moral value

Fine, then non-members of the species H. sapiens have no claim to moral value. We're done.

The value of a being has everything to do with its mental and feeling capacities and it doesnt matter what species they belong to, because species membership (like race or sex membership) is not a morally relevant characteristic.

You just said above that it was! After all, you said that non-members of a group have no claim to moral value.

Yes, what species you belong to is completely relevant. Is a beaver being "immoral" when it builds a dam? Think of the number of other species it harms as it floods the valley behind its dam. That isn't immoral because the beaver is not harming other beavers.

Think of a deciduous forest replacing a grassland. The species of the forest are harming any number of species of grasses, yet this isn't immoral. Because the trees are not harming their own species.

Think of any carnivore. They must kill animals for food, but you don't consider them immoral. They are harming other species. Only when a carnivore is "cannibal" do we even entertain the idea of immorality.

But the, you'd have to wonder why people would object to breeding humans for experimentation but not animals, even if they were both renewable resources? I think the reason would have to do with the fact that humans are feeling beings with a value in themselves, and their value is NOT diminished by the utility to others, so testing on them no matter for whatever benefit it brings to people is categorically unjustified..

Remember above where you said there were clinical trials? That contradicts the sentence I bolded. After all, we DO conduct testing on humans for the benefit it brings to people. So it is not "categorically unjustified". We can and do justify it under certain circumstances.

... the reason for the difference in attitudes in human and animal experimentation has nothing to do with animals being a renewable resource or not, it has everything to do with people just not caring about animals. Thats it.

No, it doesn't. Many scientists -- like me -- who animal research care deeply about animals. We are pet owners. We take exquisite care to avoid unnecessary pain and suffering to animals. We design our experiments so that we use the minimum number of animals possible.

However, we simply recognize that morality applies to our own species. That all species exploit other species for survival and that there is no immorality in doing so. The one exception would be a sentient species like us. However, even you aren't claiming that rats and mice are sentient. There's no schizophrenia involved. People killing people is wrong. But it isn't wrong for a shark or a polar bear to kill a person. Nor is it wrong for people to kill other species.

I think that gives a good indication that no matter if animal testing leads to more clinical trials and drugs on the shelves, that its based on such a naive ethic and so full of unforgivable moral contradictions that the permissibility of animal testing refutes itself.

The only naive ethic is the one that you are using. And the only moral contradictions are the ones that arise from your position: it's immoral to kill animals in research but just fine to kill them with plows.

What are your thoughts on Animal Testing?

Done within IACUC guidelines, it's fine.

I recently visited http://www.stopanimaltests.com and got a very graphic education on the subject. I always knew that I didn't vouch for animal testing but this has REALLY opened my eyes. Also, check out http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com This is unbelievable. Are there any scientists part of this community that are involved in any way with animal cruelty / testing?

You got a very biased set of propaganda. The second site has nothing to do with animal testing -- it is food processing of chickens.

I notice that you put "cruelty/testing" together as tho they are the same thing. No bias there.

Yes, I am involved in research on regenerative medicine and I use animals. We have a paper under review where we used adult stem cells to regenerate the meniscus in the knees of rabbits. This week I will be making gaps in the thigh bones of rats to test the ability of adult stem cells to regenerate bone to heal hip and recalcitrant fractures, especially in the elderly.

115 million animals (not counting rats,mice, and birds because they are not covered by the Animal Welfare Act and go uncounted which also account for 80-90 percent of all animals tested) are killed in the US alone each year. This is ridiculous.

How many are killed in the wild by predators?

The animals I am working on get surgeries done basically as they are done in humans. The animals are anesthetized thruout the surgery and receive analgesics for 3 days post-op. They have an internal plate similar to what is affixed to human fractures, and the sutures are ones taken from the operating room.

You have objections to this? Why?

I do however strongly dislike pontentially harmful testing on more intelligent species such as primates. I would much prefer if we used violent criminals in their place (beings who had actually EARNED potential harm and torment)

Many people have agreed to this. However, what happens when, years later, DNA evidence exonerates the "violent" criminal? How much testing on people who may be innocent do we as a society tolerate?

There is a host of non-sequiturs in here. "Forget about genetics....natural selection....happens because of inheritence and variation...genetics is how (sic) inheritence and variation happen in the first place."

 

Sorry, but this makes no sense. Oh, and why do you think that natural selection is "something that happens" because of inheritence and variation? Cart before horse here, I think.

Xerxes, go to my post where I post Darwin's summary of natural selection. All you need to know is that traits are inherited. You don't need to know why inheritance happens. And Darwin didn't know why. He didn't have modern genetics when he discovered natural selection.

As I tried repeatedly to explain on the WiSci (I was Ben there, by the way), genetics, as the study of variation and its inheritence, its spread through populations etc, does not, in any way, require a knowledge of the molecular mechanisms underlying. It is still genetics in the classical sense - the study of inherited variation.

And like genetics doesn't require the molecular mechanisms underlying it, so understanding natural selection doesn't require knowledge of the source of variation and inheritance. Variation and inheritance are the premises of Darwin's syllogism of natural selection. He demonstrates that these premises are true, but not the underlying mechanisms for them.

That is why we have Neo-Darwinism (also called the Modern Synthesis). That was the integration of classical genetics with evolution.

I thought it was after Chauser wrote (the Cantiberry tales?) that modern English was first really used by most of the people, as an importan piece of literature, being available widely, it kept the language relatively the same in different areas despite their distance from each other.

Chaucer isn't really "modern" English; it's "Middle" English. Most students read a translation of the original (with updated spelling, too). Reading the original requires quite a bit of study of the idioms and some of the words have different definitions than they have now. Notice the extensive glossary included in this online edition of Canterbury Tales: http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm

So I doubt that the OPer would be able to easily have a conversation with Chaucer or people of his time.

Had no idea where to put this so here it is.

 

I know languages evolve so to aid the question' date=' how long has english existed in a form where I could carry out a conversation with these ancient fellows?[/quote']

 

English began after the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066. Basically, it comes from the attempt of Norman soldiers to seduce Saxon barmaids.

 

English is a blend of French of the time and the languages spoken by the native Saxon inhabitants of Britain.

 

In terms of a conversation you could work with, probably around 1500 or so.

Does she have medical insurance? If she does, then the cost is partially covered.

She does need to go get checked out. But not necessarily in a hospital. She can start as an outpatient. First go to a physician. Probably an internist. She has neural symptoms but they could be due to a more systemic problem.

He may recommend tests, but they should be as an outpatient. She does not have to let herself be admitted to a hospital. It sounds like she would rather refuse until somebody has a diagnosis. And she has the right to do that. Of course, the internist might give her a diagnosis that means she will accept being hospitalized.

Let us know how this goes.

It is my understanding that there is a lower limit to the number of individuals required to constitute a genetically viable population. In other words, Adam and Eve alone could not found a successful population. The resulting population would die out due to a lack of genetic variability.

That's not true. It turns out that 2 individuals contain 75% of the genetic variability of the entire population. Founder events -- where there is just one breeding pair to start a population -- are relatively rare but not unknown. Drosophila in Hawaii, for instance, are the result of a founder event.

"A colony founded by a small number of colonists will suffer some loss of genetic variation: uncommon alleles, in particular are unlikely to be represented. Teh average level of heterozygosity, however, is not greatly reduced in the first generation: it is (1-1/2N)H0, where N is the number of founders and H0 is the heterozygosity in the source population. Thus in a colony founded by one mating pair (N=2), the heterozygosity is, on average, reduced by only 25% in the first generation. Recalling that the genetic variance of a character is proportional to the population's heterozygosity at loci that affect that character, we see that most of the heterozygosity and genetic variance of a large population are, on average, carried over into a colony founded by a few individuals."Evolutionary Biology, D Futuyma, pg 304

It's mononuclear. Probably a monocyte or a leukocyte. You say it was in the pus? Then possibly a dying monocyte or leukocyte. That would account for the odd shape (both cells should be spherical). Or perhaps your processing squished it.

I think Coyne overlooked one obvious and devastating rebuttal to Coulter: most evolutionary biologists in history have been Christians!

Also, Coyne falls for the "Christians are IDers, evolutionists are atheists" argument and never challenges it.

"Coulter finally gives away the game on page 277: "God exists whether

or not archaeopteryx ever evolved into something better. If evolution

is true, then God created evolution." "

What Coulter does is very common in the creationist community: turing the creationism vs evolution debate about two scientific theories into an atheism vs theism debate. What I dislike is that Coyne goes along with it!

Why? I suspect because Coyne is an atheist and would like to "prove" his faith by science just as much as Coulter wants to "prove" her faith by science. But Coyne's acceptance of Coulter's basic logical error does is also harmful to science. Having science "prove" there is no deity is just as erroneous as Coulter trying to have science "prove" there is one.

isn't neutral evolution stuff like random allele dropout in small populations' date=' genetic drift, stuff like bottlenecking etc? i.e., prosesses that cause allele-frequency changes, but not in a manner that is affected by the fitness-of-survival benifit that the allele confurs to the possessing individual (or, i suppose, totally random 'evolution').

 

if not, what do those phenomena fit under?[/quote']

 

It's both. It's confusing. You have the neutral theory of speciation, which is what the OP and I were talking about. And you also have the neutral (genetic) drift to allele fixation, which is what you are thinking of.

 

Bottlenecks are a different concept. If you have a bottleneck where the population drops to a low number, then fixation of traits by genetic (neutral) drift is more likely.

This is correct. String theory has made a few vague, general, but useful predictions in the past. The point is they were wrong[/i']. The discovery of a cosmological constant was a huge blow to the field.

Uh, the point was that the predictions were wrong was MY point. "Again, I have seen articles in the physics literature that complain that predictions made by ST have not been found. "

String theory certainly doesn't make any predictions now in the form(s) that it is.

You just said that the predictions were wrong. They didn't go away. So ST is still making predictions now. Your complaint seems to be that advocates of ST are simply ignoring that the predictions are wrong.

Just relax. If that is the case, then the accumulation of those anomalies and falsified predictions will refute the theory.

As for the Feynman quote, I've heard it too, but as much as I still agree with it, the truth is it was said decades ago and string theory is really an entirely different animal now.

Not basically different, is it? We still have vibrating strings/'branes, right? So the theory has been modified. Can't complain about that, can we? That's what is supposed to happen to scientific theories in the face of data.

An issue might be: have string theorists deliberately modified the theory so that it is now unfalsifiable by any conceivable data? That is, have they added ad hoc hypotheses such that they have covered all the falsifications?

IF that is the case, then they have violated some of the rules of being good scientists.

Besides Smolin isn't critisizing the math he's criticizing the science of it. String theory has been pursued in a very old fashion, ie I think that the universe works like this, and I can write all these pretty equations that would tell me what the universe would look like if it did look like this. and while this mehod is all well and good for a pet theory or something similar it shouldn't suck up all of the research positions for an entire field.

String theory has not been pursued in any "odder" fashion than other theories in physics. Dirac used to write pretty equations and even went so far as to say that the accuracy of the theory should be judged by the beauty of the equations.

Einstein's Relativity started out as a lot of pretty equations that told him what the universe would look like. Hawking's No Boundary fits exactly your description of String Theory.

Your objection seems to be the sociology of the situation, not the science. That is, your opinion is that too much effort has gone into String Theory and not enough resources have been allocated to alternative theories. That may indeed be a valid criticism. Allocation of resources within science is not organized. However, I notice that Smolin himself has always had a job! So the resource allocation can't be THAT bad.

I remember someone posted a feynmann quote about string theory on the amazon page not to long ago where he spoke very dissaprovingly about string theory.

And String Theory may indeed be incorrect. But the point here is that Smolin is not going to decide THAT issue in a book directed to the lay public. The issue of the accuracy of String Theory is going to be decided by those best able to evaluate the math and the data: the physics community. And it is going to be decided on the data.

As far as I can see, all Smolin is doing is confusing everyone and not letting science get on with doing science.

But of course one CAN take him as insightful and objective if one so chooses.

 

My point is that there are alternatives. There are actually published reviews by people with credentials and professional reputation that one can read. One doesnt have to read his review that has now been deleted and re-submitted some halfdozen or more times to the Amazon open forum.

Martin' date=' let's clarify. The questions are:

a. Is Motl's review an accurate representation of the book and the state of physics?

b. Is Motl's personality sufficient reason to dismiss the review?

I never said that X was insightful or objective. I agreed that he used ad hominem arguments, synedoche, and other forms of weak argumentation. My point was that his obvious personal failings were not sufficient, in and of themselves, to dismiss the review. In the process of doing that, I tried to show several deficiencies of fact and evidence in the review that led me to question its accuracy.

You said in your post: "I noticed him making what I perceived as technically inaccurate statements about non-string QG as early as 2003 on Usenet sci.physics.research. I was glad that his list of objections to LQG were eventually deleted from Wiki because I think they probably misled a number of people. I personally don't take seriously anything he says about non-string QG because I don't think he knows what he is talking about---or cares if it is accurate. "

Notice your "I perceived as technically inaccurate statements"! Guess what? That's testing the accuracy of the review! You've also tested his objections to LQG and found them to be inaccurate. Therefore if we have the hypothesis: X always writes accurate statements concerning physics, then you have refuted that hypothesis.

Now comes the question: are any of X's statements about physics accurate and, if so, which ones? This gives you a position of skepticism. It is the same position I reached by reading the one review. In my case, it was because Motl did not adequately document -- by direct quotation -- that Smolin held the positions Motl attributed to him.

2. And yes, there are other reviews that one can read.

The trouble with discussing that person is that since he is strident and colorful, the discussion of his personality TAKES OVER FROM THE MAIN TOPIC EVERY TIME!

But it should not! We should be above and beyond that. So the question is: why would anyone focus on the personality when the issue is the accuracy of the review?

Happy to say that Smolin's book has been number one on the list for OVER A WEEK NOW.

.

OK, why are you happy about that? Does Smolin present an accurate picture of physics?

Martin's got some links about that in another thread. It appears we're getting to the point where we can tell. http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=22722

 

I think the combination of determining size' date=' mass and orbit get you a significant fraction of the information you need.[/quote']

 

From the article:

"We find that 54 out of 158 (34%) giant planetary systems in our sample permit an Earth-like planet of at least 0.3 M to form in the habitable zone (Fig. 3). The fraction of known systems that could be life-bearing may therefore be considerably higher than previous estimates (30). "

 

Now, that increases the possibility of earth-like planets. But it doesn't guarantee any earth-like planets in any given system or that a planet of the appropriate size is going to be habitable. After all, they also note:

 

"The surviving planets can be broken down into three categories: (i) hot Earth analogs interior to the giant planet; (ii) "normal" terrestrial planets between the giant planet and 2.5 AU; and (iii) outer planets beyond 2.5 AU, whose accretion has not completed by the end of the simulation. Properties of simulated planets are segregated ... Both the hot Earths and outer Earth-like planets have very high water contents [up to >100 times that of Earth (28)] and low iron contents compared with our own terrestrial planets. ... The high water contents of planets that formed in the habitable zone suggest that their surfaces would be most likely covered by global oceans several kilometers deep. Additionally, their low iron contents may have consequences for the evolution of atmospheric composition "

 

The article ends with a hope that missions inside the solar system can detect Earth-like planets. I've gone to JPL and looked at the Terrestrial Planet Finder pages. It's an idea that MAY be possible. It depends on being able to do a spectral analysis of a planet's atmosphere from light years away. But I don't see any hard data that this can be done.

http://tpf.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/mission.html

 

They at least know what they want to look for:

http://tpf.jpl.nasa.gov/earthlike/earth-like.html

 

But can they get those spectra?

 

 

"Upcoming space missions such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Kepler and Terrestrial Planet Finder and the European Space Agency's COROT and Darwin will discover and eventually characterize Earth-like planets around other stars."

Martin's got some links about that in another thread. It appears we're getting to the point where we can tell. http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=22722

 

I think the combination of determining size' date=' mass and orbit get you a significant fraction of the information you need.[/quote']

 

I've looked at the Science paper. It tells us HOW an earth-like planet could form in a system with a hot Jupiter-sized planet close to the sun. But it doesn't say it will form or any indication that we can detect that a planet is, indeed, earthlike.

 

 

One way of determineing if a planet is habitable is to use a large interferometer. The best places for this (for Earth) would be in one of the L points. This gets it far enough away from earth to redeuce any interfereance from here and the L piints are fairly stable.

 

Using a base line of a few tousand kilometres you could get a decent resolution that would be able to detect planets. The larger the base line the better' date=' and if it is large enough, you should be even able to map the surface in good detail.

 

However the further away the plaent is the less detail you will see, so this would only be useful for nearby planets [/quote']

 

http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/technology_index.cfm Typical of articles on interferometry I've gathered. It does allow better resolution but not nearly the magnification you would need to map an eath-sized planet 4 light years away. Nor would it tell you the mean temperature or the composition of the atmosphere from what I can see. Even if you get a map of the continents of an earth-sized planet and see that it has liquid water, what happens if there are a lot of volcanic eruptions and the atmosphere has toxic levels of sulfur dioxide.

 

As far as I can tell, you still need a probe.

Perhaps a new topic could be introduced. It could be called Ponderables' date=' for those of us who like to nibble at the edges of the unknown and share those thoughts with others.

 

Then the discipline-bound scientists would not be offended and would not even have to open the threads; and the rest of us could exchange wild ideas, new theories, estoteric propositions and questions regarding the boundary fields of known science without being labeled as lesser beings.[/quote']

 

I would suggest naming the Topic "Speculations". But I would still insist that, on a science forum, that the people making the speculations 1) test their speculations first to try to show them wrong and 2) accept falsification when someone else refutes the speculation with existing data.

This is vastly different from pondering and/or exploring the boundaries of existing knowledge in an intellectual discourse.

 

Although I agree that research should be performed and any results presented' date=' there are times when the pure thought should excite some interest in pursuing the subject further.

 

Every single scientific discovery came from someone looking at a thing from a different perspective, and most were laughed at initially. That is what a theory is, a thought process taken to a logical conclusion and then proven repeatedly. A theory is not a fact.

 

I see no problem with someone throwing out a theory for others to disprove or refute; it is how we all learn. Morphology is a great example. When Sheldrake proposed the morphic field in the 70s, he offered a prize for its refutation in the classical manner.[/quote']

 

1. I agree that speculation is a valuable and fun pasttime. However, the key for a fun and valuable discusions is the "for others to disprove or refute". First, the person making the speculation should have tried to refute it. Second, the person making the speculation must be willing to accept refutation. If either condition is not met, then it ceases to be fun and valuable. If (1) is not met, then we are simply rectifying a deficiency in the speculator's knowledge base -- a glaring deficiency. If (2) is not met, then we are in a discussion that has no end and no value.

 

2. A theory is NOT "a thought process taken to a logical conclusion and then proven repeatedly". A hypothesis/theory is a statement or set of statements about some part of the physical universe. Those statements are then tested by deductive logic. If the testing supports the theory, then it is a currently valid theory. If the testing refutes the theory, then it is a falsified theory. So, a theory that has not been "proven repeatedly" -- such as geocentrism -- is still a theory. It doesn't stop being a theory when disproved.

 

3. Yes, a theory is not, technically, a fact. However, we regard many theories as factual. For instance, "the earth is round" is a theory. It has been repeatedly tested and never falsified. So today we regard that theory as "fact". Atomic theory of gasses is another theory that is regarded as factual. So is cell theory.

 

Niles Eldredge in The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism makes a very convincing argument that there is no hard and fast demarcation between hypothesis, theory, and fact. He uses the example of round earth to show how a statement can be regarded as a hypothesis, a theory, and a fact.

Actually, it *isn't* well-defined. Try finding a definition that *everyone* accepts and which works for all animals, sexual and non-sexual. You won't find one. ... What about asexual organisms? Each organism does not mix genes with any other, and thus there *is* no gene pool? This is what I mean about it being difficult to define a species.

As you noted, it is impossible to provide an exact definition of species. That's because evolution is true. Since popuations transform gradually from one species to another, there is ALWAYS a gray area where it is unclear whether there is still one species or two.

Also, as you noted, the idea of species is different with different types of organisms. Mostly biologists use the biological species concept, which deals with the ability to interbreed.

But, for fossils, they use the morphological species concept which is based on differences in appearances.

For unicellular organisms, the genetic species concept is used. This looks at the genetic differences between populations.

Also, there *is* species level selection, though granted it's not important as individual level selection. Imagine two species which are reproductively and geographically distinct, but fill the same niche. Now imagine that suddenly the geographic barrier has been removed, and the two species are competing for the same ecological niche. While natural selection is still acting on the individual, as always, in contrast to competition within a population, there are now two 'teams' (species) which do not exchange genes, rather than a free-for all where genes are mixed.

You would get an argument here from most evolutionary biologists -- particularly Ernst Mayr (What Evolution Is). If you look, selection is STILL at the level of the individual. You still don't select for the group. It's just that one group has many more individuals that do well in the competition for scarce resources.

Think of the situation that the environment has changed -- now the envirionment includes competition for the same resources by individuals from the other species.

Also, what of hybrids? Fertile inter-species hybrids are common, even between obviously distinct species. Hell, I've even seen an inter-generic hybrid (though I don't know if it was fertile).

What this shows is that speciation is not a simple all-or-nothing event. There is a continuum of reproductive isolation during speciation, and in some cases fully separated species have not yet been formed.

This has also been studied in the lab. However, I would be interested in citations for your statement "fully fertile hybrids between obviously distinct species" Thank you.

Not strictly. Think of the genome like a deck of cards. Mutation changes the 3 of clubs into the 3 of hearts, recombination just shuffles the deck.[

 

That said, recombination *can* occur within genes, altering their sequence and thereby causing mutation (like cutting the 3 of clubs and hearts in two, and taping them back together with the peices swapped). But recombination does not necessarily do that; it only happens in some cases.

Not quite. Most traits are combinations of several genes. So a combination of alleles ABCD is a different trait than alleles abcd and AbCD or abCD, etc. Recombination shuffles alleles and can lead to the fixation of some alleles and elimination of others.

Thus, recombination could keep the combination of ABCD and AbCD. In that case, alleles a,c, and d are eliminated from the populationa and alleles A, C, and D are fixed.

So recombination can change the population by itself. In fact, recombination accounts for over 90% of variability within a population.

It's a forum debate, and I am simply asking what he suggested the answer will be if I ask any biologist, how accurate is this that is quoted above.

Not at all accurate. THe part in red reflects a theory within evolution called the "neutral theory" of evolution. It was advanced by Kimura and colleagues and involved speciation.

There were two theories:

1. The original one proposed by Darwin -- where natural selection gradually transforms a population over generations such that the new population is so different from the original as to constitute a new species and be unable to interbreed with the original species. In this theory, reproductive isolation is a product of natural selection.

2. The neutral theory where reproductive isolation happens first to create a new species, then natural selection acts on it to change the new species.

The data is now very clear. #1 is correct can #2 is wrong. The PNAS paper is simply another nail in the coffin of #2. However, there had already been several studies in the lab and in the wild showing that it is natural selection that works on an isolated population of a species -- changing that population to meet the new environment. The result of those changes by natural selection is that the new population can no longer interbreed with the original population.

Sometimes natural selection works directly on genes that influence reproductive isolation. In fact, there is a study finding the genes that control hybrid sterility. When these genes are changed, the hybrids are no longer fertile among themselves or with the parent populations. And these are changed by natural selection.

References available upon request.

Theoretically' date=' yes. Practically, almost. A colleague is getting ready to deploy a device that should be able to do just that, and has already used a lower-resolution apparatus to detect larger objects http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005AAS...207.6813H

 

Larger extrasolar planets have already been detected, of course.

 

addendum (just got an email pointing to this): http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=806 link to paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0608489

 

"As the paper points out, an Earth-sized planet transiting such a star will block about 1 percent of the stellar flux from that star. If in a habitable 3.85-day orbit, the planet will make a transit that lasts about forty minutes. These are workable numbers, as the paper says:"[/quote']

 

Thank you. This gives you an earth-sized planet. But not necessarily an earth-like planet. After all, Venus is approximately earth-sized, but hardly earth-like. Ditto for Mars.

 

Now, unless you go there -- either in person or with a probe -- can you know ahead of time that the planet is going to be habitable?

Right, because book reviews can be judged based on wether they contradict the data[/i'] or not.

Yes, they can. The "data" here being

1. What the book actually states -- and you can document this by direct quotes within the review or comparison to other statements by the book author that you have already read.

2. Whether the review correctly states the position of the field. And here the data is the primary literature of the field.

But deciding the statements are wrong because the reviewer is abusive, insulting, obnoxious, etc, is not valid. Those are personality traits of the reviewer. They can be used to decide some things: whether you want to have dinner with him or have him date your sister. But, those traits don't tell you that the statements in the review about science (or the book) are not accurate.

Why would he put lots of math into it? if he did he would lose every student who is trying to study physics and get a feel for the theoretical physics community.

Because he is supposedly addressing the deficiencies of String Theory. Since ST is mathematics, then criticism should show some of the flaws in the math!

Otherwise, what you have is the equivalent of creationist literature that purport to show the flaws of evolution but never show the particular data or math involved there, either.

You are saying that physics students don't know math and can't follow math? If that is the case, then the physics community has much larger problems than Smolin is talking about.

He would lose every department head who is unfamiliar with the mathmatics of string theory and decides where the funding goes.

1. Department heads don't decide funding. That is done at the level of NSF. And NSF uses peer-review where the reviewers do know the math.

2. You are saying that departmental chairmen in Physics don't know math? Again, if that is true then physics has a lot bigger, but different, problem than Smolin addresses! Incompetence among the students and Chairmen!

He would lose every interested physicist who decided to pick up the book but didn't know anything about the mathmatics of loop quantum gravity or string theory.

Why? How many physicists would be unable to follow the math? If there are many, then the physics community has much bigger problems than Smolin's argument with String Theory!

he is critisizing the way that theoretical physicsis being carried out currently, and he is critisizing the continued funding of a theory that's been going for 23 years without making a single prediction.

1. But he is criticizing String Theory itself.

2. It is untrue that String Theory has not made a single prediction. Why have there been several modifications to String Theory? Because String Theory MUST predict the universe we see already. And several versionso of ST have failed that prediction -- thus the modifications.

This ignorance of how science is conducted, and how ST has been conducted, bothers me. If this is what Smolin, and you, are criticizing String Theory about, then all that has happened is that you have not only made a strawman, but a completely erroneous strawman.

Again, I have seen articles in the physics literature that complain that predictions made by ST have not been found. If there were no predictiions, then how can they say the experiments haven't found them?

You could always have nukes, generating electricity, which goes through wires to local hydrolysis plants, where the electricity (created remotely by the nukes) is used to liberate hydrogen from water.

Yes, but the nukes are going to have to be near the cities involved. That is, you can't have a remote nuclear plant in Wyoming that is shipping electricity to LA. You need the plants in LA. So we have the safety issues.

if and when more effective solar panels are created

I wouldn't hold my breath over this one. Even plants, with 3.8 billion years of evolution trying to find efficient designs, are not that efficient.

I think i heard something about the UK planning to massively nuclearise, and build loads of plants with the new safety improvements. i'll try and find something on it later (remind me if i forget)

It's possible. The looming catastrophe of global warming could be such that the risk of a nuclear accident is now viewed as less than the risk of global warming. Risk vs risk.

Lucaspa I'll refer you to last months issue of scientific american' date=' it had a very good article on the future of nuclear energy. Essentially it stated that nuclear is likely to become competitive with coal over the next decade because of

 

1. Newer nuclear reactor designs are safer (china is buiilding aseris of pebblebed reactors that can literally have their cooling system shut off and they won't melt down)

 

2. modern nuclear reactors burn more of theirfuel, with liquid metal designs consuming 95% (contrasted to curent reactors which consume 5%) of their fuel and leaving waste products that become safe in less than 100 years

 

3. If laws are enacted to require coal plants to burry their waste, then that aditional rise in the cost of coal plants will make nuclear competitive again.[/quote']

 

I'll look at that. My reading is backlogged so that I haven't even looked at last month's SciAm and next month's digital edition is in my e-mail already.

 

You addressed 2 of the problems and a big "IF". By "waste" I assume burying the CO2. None of the rest of the waste is a problem.

 

Some of what you say doesn't make sense. For instance, it would seem that the pebble-bed reactors are inconsistent with liquid metal cooling. Also, uranium itself breaks down to isotopes with long half-lives. Time to read the article in depth to address these questions I have.

I think I get the basic concept of Natural Selection though.

For everyone, let's try Darwin's summary of natural selection:

"If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each beings welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occured useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection." [Origin, p 127 6th ed.]

Notice how this is a syllogism.

Premises:

1. Individuals vary between themselves. Darwin documents the truth of this premise exhaustively in Origin.

2. Struggle for life based on geometric increase in the number of individuals. That is basically: more individuals are born than the environment can sustain. Darwin also exhaustively documents the truth of this premise.

Conclusions:

1. Individuals with variations useful in the struggle will survive the struggle.

2. If the variation is inheritable, then the offspring will also have the variation.

Notice that, like all valid syllogisms, if the premises are true, then the conclusions must also be true. Well, the premises are documented to be true. Therefore, the conclusions are true.

Gutz, you don't need genetics. All you really need to know is that:

1. Individuals vary.

2. The variations are inheritable. The mechanism of that inheritance, as someone pointed out, is irrelevant. It can be saving program lines in a computer or it can be DNA.

There is a simulation of natural selection and evolution somewhere on the web. You can watch the evolution of virtual organisms.

1. Like from the DNA to the production. How basically the DNA describes the chemical procedures and "materials" to construct..."whatever". That process seemed oddly explained for me. I think I need more information or education on biology as a whole.

 

2. I have no idea' date=' I just assumed. I know....nothing about gentics, genome, all that.

 

So Yeah, I guess I need some suggestions for reading. Damn there never is that simple answer is there?[/quote']

 

There are simple examples, but no, things are not usually simple. However, the concept of natural selection as a design competition does, I think, make the concept simpler. OK, reading suggestions:

 

1.Evolutionary Biology by Douglas Futuyma.

2. Li, W-H. Molecular Evolution. Sinauer, Sunderland MA,1997.

 

Also a quote from someone who uses natural selection to design computer chips (who then doesn't understand how the chips work ):

 

"I'm really exploring what evolution can do that humans can't," he [Thompson] explains. "There are properties that humans have great trouble designing into a system, like being very efficient, using small amounts of power, or being fault tolerant. Evolution can cope with them all." Evolving A Conscious Machine BY Gary Taubes Discover 19: 72-79, July 1998