THE END OF ACSI V. STEARNS

So I was catching up on some of my unread e-mails and while reading the NCSE's weekly e-mail, from 2 weeks ago, keeping up to date on the Creation vs Evolution debate (sign up here) and came across the article with the same title as mine. For those of you who don't know what this case is about here is an update (from the NCSE's webpage on the case).

On August 25, 2005, the Association of Christian Schools International, the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, California, and six students at the school filed a lawsuit against the University of California. The plaintiffs objected to the UC policy of rejecting certain high school biology classes from Christian schools as "inconsistent with the viewpoints and knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community;" they claimed that this policy violated applicants' rights to "freedom of speech, freedom from viewpoint discrimination, freedom of religion and association, freedom from arbitrary discretion, equal protection of the laws, and freedom from hostility toward religion."

On August 8, 2006, Judge S. James Otero dismissed the claims against individual UC officials, but allowed the claims against the university system as a whole to proceed. On March 28, 2008, Judge Otero ruled in favor of UC's motion for partial summary judgment, which established that the university system's admissions policies were constitutional; on August 8 of that year, he further ruled that these policies were properly and constitutionally applied in the case of the applicants in question.

The Supreme Court is not going to hear the case (see their order here) so that means that the case will stand as it was last called. This is a victory for science education and should make it harder for creationists to be able to insist that their science education is the same as true science education.

Boo!!

I scared you I know don't pretend I didn't but let me just say:

Happy Halloween

So this post will be Halloween related links and may be updated with new links throughout the day.

We will start with a scientific explanation for ghost encounters.

How about 7 Urban Legends that happen to be true?

Yes I know that cracked is a mainly comedic site but they at least cite their sources. So now that that is cleared up lets move on to 6 creepy real life places.

Moving right along 6 of the most strangely convincing real world curses.

Devil's footprints have been found for centuries in Italy proving that he exists, they couldn't possibly have been something that can be explained scientifically.

The Witmer Lab has some fun with Halloween, as I was always told you work hard but you also have to play hard.

The Paleochick's Digs have featured paleontology inspired Jack-o-Lanterns all month (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

PHD Comics unveils their Halloween inspired comic, Trick or T.A. That reminds me I have some grading I need to get to. :-\

P.Z. shows off Jack-O-Lanterns sent to him by readers in his honor

I Expected Better!

There was a paper published within the last few days makes the claim that anthropoid
primates diversified initially in Asia and then moved into Africa from there instead of the other way around (Jaeger et al., 2010). I don't really feel the ability to comment on this since monkeys, as well as the Eocene, are outside of my area of expertise. No, I wanted to compare the way two different blog posts on this same paper covered this paper, I am going to focus mainly on the headlines because this is where the two articles are the most different.

This first headline says this:

Instead Of Originating In Africa, Human Ancestors Colonized There From Asia, Says Study

This headline, from here, seems to imply that early relatives to humans, such as the hominids (yes I know I am pushing this back to the great apes), evolved in Asia. While this headline is not incorrect but perception is the key. My initial thought when I saw this was that it was about a paper that was going to claim that humans evolved in Asia and moved to Africa where we found them later. If I can make this mistake and I am a scientist who, mostly, understands human evolution imagine what a non-scientist would think. Part of what makes this worse is probably the fact that this post is part of a blogging community known as Scientific Blogging.

The other headline/article title reads:

Where did all these monkeys come from? – Fossil teeth may hint at an Asian origin for anthropoid primates

This title, from this article, leaves very little to the imagination, and if you want a good summary of the paper I recommend this article, and doesn't confuse you into thinking that humans evolved in Asia and then migrated to Africa. This particular article was written by Brian Switek who maybe one of the best science bloggers out there. I follow both of his blogs Laelaps and Dinosaur Tracking, and now the author of Written in Stone, and if you want to keep up on paleontology related papers I highly recommend both of them.

Ironically enough the Laelaps article ended like this:

Given how often news about fossil primates gets hyped and framed with “missing link” imagery, it is also worth considering how this story has hit the headlines. [...] Nevertheless, the Daily Mail gets off to a terribly start by pulling out that old bit of bullshit boilerplate “The human family tree may have to be rewritten” in the first line of their coverage before confusing themselves by trying to tie this discovery to the later origin of hominins over 30 million years later. In contrast, Dan Vergano of USA Today presents the story well, as does Ann Gibbons at Science NOW and Ewen Callaway at the Nature “Great Beyond” blog. For once, I don’t have very much to complain about!

You win some, you lose some I guess.

Reference

Jaeger, J., Beard, K., Chaimanee, Y., Salem, M., Benammi, M., Hlal, O., Coster, P., Bilal, A., Duringer, P., Schuster, M., Valentin, X., Marandat, B., Marivaux, L., Métais, E., Hammuda, O., & Brunet, M. (2010). Late middle Eocene epoch of Libya yields earliest known radiation of African anthropoids Nature, 467 (7319), 1095-1098 DOI: 10.1038/nature09425

Golden Crocoduck awards 2010

Potholer54 maybe one of my favorite pro-science YouTube channels, if you have a YouTube account I recommend you subscribe to him, but he also does an excellent job on his second channel Potholer54debunks. Recently he brought us the 3rd annual Golden Crocoduck award, named after the crocoduck of creationist fame. And the winner is...



surprise, surprise NephilimFree. I have so many gripes with Neph that I don't even know where to being but at least Potholer does a decent job of refuting some of the claims.

Falsifying Phylogeny IV

This is a really good series by AronRa so I am going to keep posting the series (Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part V).

Taking on Creationist Books

Today's Vintage Dinosaur Art post over at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs featured images from Duane T. Gish's, the creator (although maybe not the perfecter) of the Gish Gallop, Dinosaurs by Design. As I read through the article I found this:

Update: Check out the comments below to links for the Stupid Dinosaur Lies posts on this title and others. Also added excerpt from the book on Michael Barton's kind suggestion.

I had to check out the site, I will admit I had not read the comments so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. What I found made me excited the author of the articles on the webpage takes time and, in most cases, goes page by page through creationist books and refutes the lies and misinformation that is often found within them. Take this excerpt from Ken Ham's kids book The Dinosaurs of Eden (here):

Ham's Hypocritical Accusation

Ham, on page 52, falsely and hypocritically accuses 'evolutionists' of being "willfully ignorant" of the truth, like what II Peter 3:5 tells us. Creationists have long asserted that the verse in II Peter was warning the reader about evolution and the people who advocate it according to the passage. This is false. Peter is not referring to evolution when he wrote that passage. He never knew what evolution is, let alone what is science back then. The verse when put in full context warns the reader against those living in the End Times who refused to believed that Jesus was coming back to earth soon. They acknowledged that the earth was created by God, but thinks everything have stayed entirely the same since then. Peter, on the other hand, objects to this. Peter wrote that in the beginning, the same water that God cause land to rise from was the same water that brought along the Flood to the world, the known world, not the global world mind you, to punished mankind for his sins.

The bible is not only neutral of evolution (meaning "unfolding"), it's entirely irrelevant to it. Although I admit I get real mad when people at church claims that evolution didn't occurred when God created everything, in a way they're right. Evolution has zero to do with origins. Instead, it has only everything to do with after god created everything. Evolution simply means "to unfold and change." When God made the Heavens and the Earth, He made all things possible for all things to change over time. Just because an animal, plant, or human is fully formed to perfection doesn't mean they can't change and modify over a period of time. All around us we see evidence of evolution at work in the past as well as in the present. The nylon bug is the best example of evolution being witnessed at work.

I fully support this site and will probably be coming back there on multiple occasions.

Science is not a Democracy

After my post yesterday and coming across this post yesterday as well I figured I would point this out, science is not a democracy. Science is based on evidence and in order for an idea to be accepted by other scientists it must be supported by the evidence. Evolution is one of those ideas. At one time it was not largely supported by other scientists but as more and more evidence was combined to support it the idea became a theory. So Glenn Beck may not think that humans are related to monkeys and he is entitled to that opinion but the genetic and fossil evidence suggest otherwise. Likewise Rep. Barton (R-TX) and others like him are allowed to think that global warming is not happening but the evidence would suggest otherwise. Now there is a difference between these two men, however. While Glenn does have a loyal following he does not make policy. Rep. Barton is a member of the House of Representatives and as so his opinions effect all of us here in the U.S. This means that I will say that what Glenn said was wrong and a misunderstanding but allow him his opinion. To Rep. Barton, however, you need to read and understand the actual science and stop letting the money that you get from the oil companies speak louder than the truth. Also while we all may not want to be related to monkeys or even want to live in a world that is warming but that does not make these false also we don't take a vote to decide the truth. Let me end this post the same way the post about Rep. Barton ended.

Congressman Barton, if you read this — and I certainly hope you do — I will point you to your own words in your editorial: "I think Mr. Mann is entitled to make up his own mind, but not his own truth." That is ironic indeed, given that this is precisely what you have been doing for a long, long time. The actual truth is clear: the climate is changing, the globe is warming, and all the denying, all the noise, all the letter writing you can do will not change those simple facts.

You are not fighting a political battle, you are fighting against reality itself. And if you win, we will all lose.

Creationism lives on in US public schools

5 years ago this week was the start of the Dover trial (Kizmiller v. Dover) and to remember it New Scientist published an article on creationism still existing in U.S. public schools.

Chemistry teacher Robert Eschbach, who was also a plaintiff, says the trial has made teachers less afraid to step on people's toes when it comes to evolution. It "forced me to be a better educator", he says. "I went back and read more of the history around Darwin and how he came to his conclusions."

None of this means that the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based think tank that promotes intelligent design, has been idle. The institute helped the conservative Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), headed by Christian minister Gene Mills, to pass a state education act in 2008 that allows local boards to teach intelligent design alongside evolution under the guise of "academic freedom".

Philosopher Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University, another key witness for the Dover plaintiffs in 2005, testified against the Louisiana education act. "Louisiana is the only state to pass a state education bill based on the Discovery Institute's template," she says. Similar measures considered in 10 other states were all defeated

I think the article has too broad a focus and needed to pick either talking about the Dover trial itself or about the current brand of creationism taking place in the U.S. right now and why it gets so much support. I have covered the controversy in Livingston Parish in a couple of earlier posts but I feel the Dover trial forced a major change in the way that creationists operate and in fact has made it more difficult for them to try to force their religion into science class.

Great Summary of Cave Fossil Preservation

Expect me to reference this post by David Bressan over at History of Geology regarding cave taphonomy anytime I am talking about fossils found in caves. It is so well done here read a paragraph or two.

A peculiar bone bed formation found in caves is under sinkholes. Fissures, hidden under vegetation, snow cover or a thin soil layer can act like a pitfall trap - animals fell trough them and die on the impact or later by starvation. Under these natural traps a talus of rubble accumulates that contains a chaotic assemblage of bones from animals died at different times.

In parts of the cave accessible by animals, and used as shelter or resting place, animals that die of natural causes, get lost or become entrapped can became accumulated. Many carnivorous animals, mammals and birds, carry their prey or parts of it in their shelter, were the bones later are found (a prominent recent example is the den of the man-eaters of Tsavo).

This is a great read as is most of the stuff over at History of Geology so if you are a huge dork (me a dork, what?) I recommend you subscribe to the feed and keep on reading the other excellent posts that will come in the future. Also expect another post from me soon where I will reference this particular article.

This does not supprise me

It turns out Glenn Beck does not "believe" in the Theory of Evolution.


If the video doesn't show up go to the Media Matters site here.

Glenn science is a democracy it doesn't matter how many people "believe" in evolution for it to be true, sorry. Also if you don't think evolution has happened to the populations that eventually gave rise to humans were monkey like, no you were not ever a monkey but you share a common ancestor with them evolution works on populations not individuals (my students have this drilled into their heads), I recommend reading the Wikipedia article on Human Evolution and then maybe move on to some of the sources at the bottom of the article.

XKCD for the win

I am sure that this image will circulate the internet a lot over the next few days, example here. Another line of evidence that supports true science and goes against pseudoscience, ok not really evidence but an evidence based comic.



This should serve as a pretty good response to Conservapedia's anti-relativity stance lately. I highly recommend xkcd for all of your nerdy comic needs, I am subscribed to the feed.

A Child's Science Experiment Shows CO2 is a Greenhouse Gas

So I just got back home yesterday from the 70th annual SVP meeting in Pittsburgh so I haven't really had much time to put together real blog posts yet but in case there was anyone out there who didn't realize that CO2 was a greenhouse gas the experiments in this video support that hypothesis.



Another great video from Greenman3610 (see prior videos here, here, here, here, and here).

Falsifying Phylogeny III

So I am going to leave to get on an airplane to head up to the 70th anniversary meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Pittsburgh, PA but I figured I would leave you all with part 3 of AronRa's on going series Falsifying Phylogeny. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, and Part 5)



Expect posting to be a little quite for a little while around here.

Fossils to Kitty Litter?

So I was sad to see this posted on a friend's facebook page yesterday.

Harvard-trained Archibald, an expert in the 50-million-year-old Eocene period, said one of his prime exploration sites near Cache Creek, B.C. called the McAbee fossil site allows commercial fossil hunting, roadbuilding and mining for cat litter.

"There are two claims on the McAbee, one by the fossil dealers and one by the miners who are grinding up the fossil-bearing shale," he said.

Archibald is calling on the government to assume ownership of the site, including the areas claimed by the fossil dealers and cat-litter miners.

"The province has ignored paleontology to a great degree (and) other jurisdictions have embraced it," he said.

At least with the story about the Allosaurus from yesterday we at least have an idea of what we are losing but with this operation who knows what we are losing.

State of Education in America

So last night was apparently focus on education night on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report it all started with a typical Back in Black segment with Lewis Black

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Education Crisis
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

Funny yes but do we really learn much? No not really. But the guest segment from the Colbert Report was actually involved someone doing something that might be helpful.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Leon Botstein
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

His point about needing to educate people about what their rights are is very true. People know that they have freedom of speech and religion but far too many feel that this freedom doesn't mean that other's get to criticize their views. Not true if your views are wrong or I think they are crazy I have a right to say so, just like you do right back to me. I'm not going to reiterate his views on science he did a good enough job himself but I would like to point out Colbert's state of what the truth scientifically being what feels right is a view accepted by far to many people in the US today. This is not true, I may want to be better than the rest of the animal kingdom and not just a species of ape, but this isn't the way it works we are just a species of ape no matter how you look at it.

Who knew you could actually learn something from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.

Also don't forget if you are going to be in the D.C. area on October 30th to attend either The Rally to Restore Sanity or The March to Keep Fear Alive, and let me know how it goes.

VOTE!!!!

Coming up in November the U.S. is holding our annual elections. This year is as important as every year to make sure you get out and vote. Now some of you may be asking yourself, why is he posting this so early? Well the answer is quite simple, I know there are a lot of people out there who will be away from their permanent residents on election day due to being at school and what not. I wanted to remind all of these that there is a way to go about voting. One option is to declare your residency in the area where you are currently going to school but for many of you this just will not be possible for any number of reasons. The other option, and the one that inspired me to write this post, is the absentee ballot. Every state has an option to fill out an application form for an absentee ballot but you need to make sure that you do so shortly. I received my ballot in the mail on Monday and this will allow me to participate in the voting process even though I will be attending school over a thousand miles away. So no matter who you vote for or if you have to vote absentee make sure that you do.

Allosaurus for Sale

In an auction at Sotheby’s France yesterday there were many paleontological specimens for sale but the highlight was an Allosaurus that was supposed to fetch around €800,000–1 million ($1.09-1.36 million). That is a lot of money, and in fact it ended up getting more than that according to some sources €1,296,750 ($1,805,743.73). A BBC report said this.

Found in Wyoming in the US, the 33-ft long skeleton is the most complete of its species, with 70% of its bones.

This of course brings up the question of if this is good paleontology (you can probably guess how I feel) which gets good coverage in the BBC article.

"I see so many things being lost to commercial dealers, who sell them on to rich buyers," says Dr [Darren] Naish.

"We have so much trouble finding money for research of any kind. But then there seems to be people with limitless money to buy for their private collection.

"They are used as if they are expensive pieces of art," he says.

[...]

Prof Kevin Padian, a palaeontologist and curator from the University of California in Berkeley, says the "problem is that it robs us of our patrimony".

"Not every specimen is priceless in scientific or educational terms, but who should make this decision - auctioneers?"

In general, he says: "There's no guarantee that the skeleton you're buying is correctly identified, you don't know what has been restored or reconstructed (often from very different animals).

"So they are not good investments, except in the minds of other people who want to impress their friends."

But Dr [David] Martill disagrees, saying he does not believe scientists have "some God-given right" to fossils.

Both sides bring up good arguments and overall the BBC article does a good job not favoring either side. This article by ArtInfo.com shows that many people just view them as pieces of art.

Although institutions are a natural market for such an enormous object, Mickeler said that “for several years now in France you have important collectors who actually have the space to put such items in their home, not just natural history collectors but also modern and contemporary art collectors.” The dinosaur, he added, is “perfectly suited for a contemporary interior.” According to the specialist, “there has been demand, a real interest” since the sale was announced, with certain French entrepreneurs indicating that they may be interested in acquiring the dinosaur to give or loan it to a museum.

They also go on to mention what else is being sold.

Other top dinosaur lots in tomorrow's sale include the skeleton of a Plesiosaurus, a 190-million-year-old aquatic reptile that is one of the most complete specimens in existence (est. €320-370,000, or $436-504,000), and a rare fossil of a Dorygnathus, a flying reptile that resembles a Pterodactyl (est. €162-200,000, or $221-272,000). Geological marvels are also featured, including a citrine crystal nicknamed “The Magic Flower,” and a large tourmaline crystal on a base of white albite (each est. €320-350,000 or $436-477,000).

But if mammals are your thing, don’t despair: also galloping onto the auction block are a complete woolly rhinoceros skeleton from Pleistocene-era Siberia (est. €70-90,000, or $95-123,000) and a European cave bear displayed in a setting of moss and tree trunks, a relative bargain at €20-25,000 ($27-34,000).

Argh, they say other animals in the dinosaur lot and then don't list a dinosaur must..resist...urge...to...rant...about...how...this...shows...we...need...more...education.

Looking at ID by religious studies professor

How do you tell that I think something is a hot button issue? Three posts on it in less than a week. The issue is the Discovery Institute's event at SMU last week. When we last left the issue a group of professors had written a letter to the SMU school paper. This morning another article was published in the same paper, this one by the chair of the Department of Religious Studies a Dr. Mark A. Chancey. Dr. Chancey does not say what one might expect from a professor of religious studies he says that evolution is a scientific theory and ID is at its heart a religious theory.

Intelligent Design (ID) has not gained much traction in the scientific community. It originated within certain religious circles and has credibility only within those same circles-mostly theologically conservative Christian groups that find aspects of evolutionary theory threatening.

This is true ID is a religious idea a court case can attest to this fact, see Kitzmiller v. Dover. Dr. Chancey then brings up something that I really thought was important and did not know prior to this, and it helps explain why there was so much backlash against the DI at SMU.

Why the sensitivity over IDers' appearance at SMU? Here, historical context is important.

Unfortunately, the Discovery Institute has a track record of using SMU's prestige and academic reputation to bolster its own claims to legitimacy. Consider this quote from Phillip E. Johnson, a chief ID architect: "The movement we now call the Wedge made its public debut at a conference of scientists and philosophers held at Southern Methodist University in March 1992."

Johnson goes on to characterize that conference as "a respectable academic gathering." This language implies that SMU sponsored an academic conference in which ID proponents participated as full-fledged scholars. In fact, the 1992 event, too, was sponsored not by any academic unit of the university but by a campus ministry-a detail conspicuously absent from Johnson's description.

He goes on to describe the "Wedge Document", another interesting read if you haven't seen it. Read the rest of the article and learn but also learn why there should be a separation between science and religion.

Solutions?

I presented a problem that needed to be fixed this morning well I happened to have found a link this evening to a potential solution. While it deals more specifically with teaching in New Zealand it provides solutions that might be useful in the US as well.

Because of the multiple pressures on the paper I had to be selective: we couldn’t adapt Passmore & Stewart’s program in its entirety. In the end, we combined a range of activities that enouraged the class to: work collaboratively, build models, discuss ideas, and defend their position. This included a session using Rob Gendron’s exercises based on the Caminalcules, intended to get students thinking about the evidence for determining relationships between groups of organisms, and the ways in which organisms might change over time. (The Caminalcules are rather hard-case, & because they look nothing like any animals students will have experience of, there’s less chance of preconceptions around relationships affecting the outcome.) While fun, it also required students to explain and defend their decisions. Another class had them reading & discussing work by Paley, Lamarck & Darwin (as described by Passmore & Stewart) & then analysing these models to identify the assumptions made by each author – & also their shortcomings. The idea here was to allow the class to identify some of the common misconceptions around evolutionary theory, & hopefully to avoid them themselves. It led on to a deeper examination of natural selection, based around some other work from Rob Gendron: a simulation of the action of natural selection, that you can expand on by introducing things like variation & mutation into the discussion. And we originally finished up with a role play, where students took on the role of mediator & protagonists in a creation/evolution debate (script from a debate broadcast in the US some years ago). Then a couple of years later the PBS documentary on the Dover trial came out, & we used that instead as the starting point for a discussion around the nature of science. (This section of the course was definitely not your ‘typical’ university science lab course!)

So if you are a science teacher anywhere the article is pretty good and discusses some very good options to help teach science.

With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel

So this video has been making the round on Facebook and in the blogosphere and while I originally wasn't going to post it after my last couple of posts I figured I would since it does such a good job of explaining how science works. Enjoy!

When will they learn?

A few days ago I talked about the Discovery Institute event that was held at SMU earlier this week. Well this post came out on Friday over at Religion Dispatches and it is worth another quick read. The author sums of ID pretty well here:

As Discovery Institute fellow Jonathan Wells said about the event in a news release, “The evidence is clear: Darwin was wrong about the origin of new species, organs and body plans. We are ready to show the next generation of young scientists just how wrong Darwin was.”

Of course, one of Discovery Institute’s featured tactics is to pretend that Darwin’s theory exists in a vacuum and that the scientific world has learned nothing in the past 150 years to advance knowledge of evolution and how it works. Destroy Darwin, destroy evolution.

But in order to make that argument, they must conveniently discount, ignore or just lie about the vast amount of information made since then in the fields of genetics, molecular biology and evolutionary development. Perhaps to bring him up to speed a bit on the past century and a half, I’d like to make a helpful suggestion to Wells. He should read Sean Carroll’s wonderful book, Endless Forms Most Beautiful (Norton, 2005) for an understanding of how the evolution of genetic switches led to the formation of complex body forms in all their infinite and amazing variations.

OK sorry for all of the posts just sharing links I swear eventually I will write a longer post.

Why we must teach evolution

Now while I said that I would try to avoid talking about politics sometimes in order to support science and science education it is important to say something. Keith and Dr. Steven Pinker are absolutely right in this clip, minus the ad-hominem at the begining but that was cearly meant as a joke.

Mapping Banned Books

So today is the last day of banned books week so I figured I should say something. I have posted in the past about books being banned so why didn't I mention this event at the start of the week? I have too much stuff to read for my current research and classes to have time to read a book, if it makes you feel better my research talks a lot about evolution so I am sure there are plenty of people who would have it banned if they could. The main point of this post was to point everyone to this map put together by the American Library Association (ALA), the group who supported this week. Enjoy and find out what books are being banned near you.