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Ugh, I hate reporting about evolutionary biology. This isn't an egregious example, but the 'it challenges the idea that complexity increases over time', 'it cal

by sago 12y ago

Ugh, I hate reporting about evolutionary biology. This isn't an egregious example, but the 'it challenges the idea that complexity increases over time', 'it calls into question the origin of the brain', 'forces scientists to question how animals got their start', 'evolution debate', etc, gives me the creeps. In a country where more than 50% of the population thinks that evolution is bullshit, it doesn't help to try to phrase scientific disagreements to make it sound like it is some fundamental problem being argued about, instead of the placement of one phylogenetic branch. Now, the science itself is interesting. The DNA sequencing is quite weak evidence, from what I can see (its been 20 years since I did my PhD, though), but the radical difference in biochemistry is a good sign that, if they didn't evolve twice from scratch, at least the common ancestor probably used the cells that later became neurons in a fundamentally different way.

Jedd 12y ago
My initial reaction too - though the phrase that triggered it for me was 'challenges the deeply entrenched idea that evolution progresses steadily forward'. I am clueless about the identity of the demographic that holds this deeply entrenched idea, other than the vaguely labelled 'breathtakingly bewildered'. When you say 'in a country where more than 50%' ... are you referring to the country that you're currently in, or the one I'm in, or the one where you assume most people who are reading this article are in, by the way?
- Elrac 12y ago
  He's most likely referring to the US. Depending on who does the polling and how, about half the population thinks the Theory of Evolution is a bad joke or a scientific conspiracy or something. The opposing side is known as "Creationists." They like to characterize scientifically informed people as "Evolutionists" but of course that's more misinformation. One of the various tracks of Creationist argumentation is that scientists make the "unjustified assumption that change progresses at a more-or-less constant rate" or, "that the rate of change today is the same as the rate of change way back when." They like to claim we can't know the decay rate of radioactive carbon (carbon dating, y'know) was the same a few thousand years ago (when the Earth was created) as it is today. I mention all this because this red herring about steady evolutionary progress is one of the arguments of Creationists, and so it's annoying to see those words used in that context in a science-y article.
- dbbolton 12y ago
  > 'challenges the deeply entrenched idea that evolution progresses steadily forward' My inner devil's advocate wants to say that the writer meant that that idea is deeply entrenched in the general public's view of evolution, but that is very difficult to argue given the tone of the rest of the article. Back in my undergrad days (at a small state university), during one of the very first lectures in Biology, the professor really hammered the idea that evolution is not worse -> better or simple -> complex, but rather is governed by fitness, which constantly changes with the environment (so what's really awesome and complex might wind up being very maladaptive when circumstances change). She also made the point, through several counterexamples, that humans are not the pinnacle of evolution, which strangely seemed to offend some students. At any rate, I kind of assumed that this was standard knowledge in the scientific community if it was being taught in freshman Bio at my modest school.

by sago 12y ago

Jedd 12y ago

My initial reaction too - though the phrase that triggered it for me was 'challenges the deeply entrenched idea that evolution progresses steadily forward'. I am clueless about the identity of the demographic that holds this deeply entrenched idea, other than the vaguely labelled 'breathtakingly bewildered'. When you say 'in a country where more than 50%' ... are you referring to the country that you're currently in, or the one I'm in, or the one where you assume most people who are reading this article are in, by the way?

Elrac 12y ago
He's most likely referring to the US. Depending on who does the polling and how, about half the population thinks the Theory of Evolution is a bad joke or a scientific conspiracy or something. The opposing side is known as "Creationists." They like to characterize scientifically informed people as "Evolutionists" but of course that's more misinformation. One of the various tracks of Creationist argumentation is that scientists make the "unjustified assumption that change progresses at a more-or-less constant rate" or, "that the rate of change today is the same as the rate of change way back when." They like to claim we can't know the decay rate of radioactive carbon (carbon dating, y'know) was the same a few thousand years ago (when the Earth was created) as it is today. I mention all this because this red herring about steady evolutionary progress is one of the arguments of Creationists, and so it's annoying to see those words used in that context in a science-y article.
dbbolton 12y ago
> 'challenges the deeply entrenched idea that evolution progresses steadily forward' My inner devil's advocate wants to say that the writer meant that that idea is deeply entrenched in the general public's view of evolution, but that is very difficult to argue given the tone of the rest of the article. Back in my undergrad days (at a small state university), during one of the very first lectures in Biology, the professor really hammered the idea that evolution is not worse -> better or simple -> complex, but rather is governed by fitness, which constantly changes with the environment (so what's really awesome and complex might wind up being very maladaptive when circumstances change). She also made the point, through several counterexamples, that humans are not the pinnacle of evolution, which strangely seemed to offend some students. At any rate, I kind of assumed that this was standard knowledge in the scientific community if it was being taught in freshman Bio at my modest school.