https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/kirk-durston-on-evolution-and-faith/

His main point, discussed here many times is that breeding for improvement reaches endpoints beyond which only deterioration occurs. Secondly, more bad mutations occur naturally than good ones. So how did evolution go, naturally, from bacteria to humans? The implied answer is not naturally .

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/whose-job-is-it-to-help-build-public-...

Science isn’t always practiced ethically or with social justice in mind. How can they, the journalists especially, perform a watchdog role, demand accountability of the scientific community, expose bad actors, bad science and adverse impacts and build public trust in science? How do they reconcile these roles in the Trump era, when science about the most urgent questions of our day is presented to the public as fundamentally flawed?

Many science journalists feel it is not their job to champion science. They give the public the truth, they say, and let people decide for themselves. Another line of argument is that it’s the scientist’s responsibility. In any case, they say, the public trusts scientists more than journalists.

***

For their part, researchers at Cardiff University found that press releases from scientists’ own academic institutions about their work were a significant source of exaggerated claims and spin, even though most scientists can approve their wording.

Their study of press releases from 20 leading British universities on health-related science news found that when the press releases exaggerated, it was likely the news stories would too.

An analysis of 41 news articles on randomized controlled trials based on 70 press releases showed only four articles that contained exaggerated claims not included in the press release or journal abstract. Interestingly, they also found the hype and spin intended to tempt the media did not result in more news coverage.

Jamieson turned to science writers,.. outlining three story lines that tend to dominate science news coverage:

The hero’s quest. The scientist pursues knowledge, overcomes challenges and obstacles and makes path-breaking discoveries.

The dishonorable quest. The dishonest scientist deceives his/her colleagues and hoodwinks reviewers and scientific journals by making claims that cannot be verified, promoting flawed science or pseudoscience, or concealing hidden financial interests that may influence research results.

Science is broken/in crisis. Widespread systemic problems and dysfunction within science are the source of these problems and are allowed to persist.

***

Scientists and science writers are both watchdogs of the integrity of the scientific process. Their thoughtful work and the criticism that may ensue is, paradoxically, a trust-building exercise. Scrutiny can result in corrective action. An individual scientist may violate norms, but legitimate processes by which scientific inquiry occurs can be strengthened, safeguards added and impacts assessed more thoroughly.

To make this happen, scientists, research institutions, science writers and journalists need to more clearly define their professional standards and civic roles to enable the public to more easily identify responsible practitioners and recognize value added. It’s a huge ask to expect the public to figure out without guidance what constitutes trustworthy science.

Jamieson says science can only be characterized as being truly broken when integrity-threatening problems are ignored. The same can also be said of science writing and science journalism.

Comment: Jamieson is too hopeful since university support systems continuously want grant money and exaggeration is a way to get it. Note the bolded paragraphs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/confirmation-bias-hurts-social-science-11551831789?mod=Mor...

"Humility can be hard to come by in professional research, which is why it’s worth noting the retraction last month of a major study on the social effects of attitudes toward sexuality. The journal Social Science & Medicine withdrew a 2014 analysis purporting to show that widespread traditional beliefs about sexual morality—or “structural stigma”—gravely imperil the health of people who don’t identify as straight, whom the study classified as “sexual minorities.”

***

"It was yanked because its key claim—that stigma reduces life expectancy for sexual minorities in the United States by an average of 12 years—came to naught. It was entirely the result of a coding error to which Mr. Hatzenbuehler himself, to his credit, owned up.

***

"This case has the marks of confirmation bias—a problem that bedevils social science, especially when research concerns controversial issues. Remember when UCLA graduate student Michael LaCour’s study indicated that people’s minds could be changed about same-sex marriage merely by gay canvassers engaging them in a simple conversation? Columbia political-science professor Donald Green signed on as a co-author of that study without closely scrutinizing the data. When those data were exposed as having been fabricated by Mr. LaCour, Mr. Green commendably called for the study’s retraction, which came swiftly.

***

"Confirmation bias—and its converse, the aggravated denial of unfavored results—flourishes when there is a lack of viewpoint diversity in scholarship. As such diversity has waned in the American academy, scholarly journals and federal funding agencies have too often become intellectually inbred. They sometimes constitute an academic version of interlocking directorates on corporate boards, in which decision makers who share the same outlook tend to view each other’s work with an insufficiently critical eye. Research that pleases everyone in the club sometimes doesn’t get enough scrutiny, even when its results are strikingly implausible.

"“Prudent” scholars are often afraid even to mention the rise of confirmation bias, much less try to do anything about it. Yet following the example of Mr. Regnerus, any hope of rescuing social-science research from further disrepute will require a little less “prudence” and more guts."

Comment: The worst cases are in the sociology and psychology sciences where much research cannot be confirmed. But this clearly points out skepticism is needed when reading any article with Darwin-inculcated authors.

DAVID:: Always read scientific news with a critical eye, as this article shows. I have continuously presented origin of life lab results and pointed out the hype. Currently governments provide grant funds to push research. The result, due to the fact that many university labs must live on grants, the lust for money drives grant requests beyond what should rationally proposed.

dhw: All this is now common knowledge. But at the same time, one should always be careful not to assume that any research which counters one's own fixed beliefs is the product of grant-hunting.

I know the difference. Again , note all the junk research I've shown about origin of life.

All this is now common knowledge. But at the same time, one should always be careful not to assume that any research which counters one's own fixed beliefs is the product of grant-hunting.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/02/19/blame-academia-junk-science-and-media-hype-13826

"Though we've been debunking junk science for more than 40 years, we never cease to be amazed by the amount of hype and exaggeration that continues to permeate the mainstream press.

"The following constitute just a tiny sample of the nonsense we read on a daily basis: Multiple international news outlets, such as The Guardian and The Times of London, reported that asparagus (yes, that disgusting but quite healthy vegetable) causes breast cancer; Reader's Digest reported that vegetable oil will turn girls into lazy, TV-watching diabetics; and media outlets all over the world breathlessly reported that the popular Nutella spread is linked to cancer.

"How on Earth does the media print such inanity over and over again? Two reasons immediately come to mind. First, the media cares more about internet traffic (and money) than anything else, which is why they write "clickbait" headlines and push sensationalist scaremongering. They want these stories to go viral; accuracy is of secondary importance. Second, science journalists often have no formal education in the field, so they have no idea if what they're reporting is sensible or hogwash.

"But there's another place we should be assigning blame: University press offices.

A paper published in 2014 in The British Medical Journal analyzed 462 press releases issued by universities in the UK. They found that "40%... of the press releases contained exaggerated advice, 33%... contained exaggerated causal claims, and 36%... contained exaggerated inference to humans from animal research."

"The authors also discovered that if a press release contained exaggerated information, news reports were also likelier to contain exaggerations. Specifically, the odds of exaggerated advice were increased 6.5 times, the odds of exaggerated causal claims were increased 20 times, and the odds of exaggerated inference to humans from animal research was increased 56 times. In other words, university press offices greatly influence the tone of subsequent media coverage.

"In an ideal world, universities perform serious research and don't worry about marketing themselves to journalists. But, that's not the world we live in. The ever-constant pressures of fame and fortune compel academics to behave in ways that are counterproductive to the scientific enterprise and public health.

"There are no easy solutions to this. Like hyperpartisanship, some problems require a fundamental shift in our culture and societal thinking. Let's hope we wise up sooner rather than later."

Comment: Always read scientific news with a critical eye, as this article shows. I have continuously presented origin of life lab results and pointed out the hype. Currently governments provide grant funds to push research. The result, due to the fact that many university labs must live on grants, the lust for money drives grant requests beyond what should rationally proposed. Read Sabine Hossenfelder to see her critiques of modern theoretical physics which seems to study 'head-of-the-pin' angels much too often.:

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/02/never-again-confuse-dark-matter-with.html

DAVID: Dan Graur's comment highlights his discomfort at the new discoveries, as they destroy his Darwin theories.

dhw: Then he should comfort himself that even if 100% of DNA proves to be functional, it merely proves the efficiency of Darwinian natural selection in discarding unwanted material. But if he feels uncomfortable because of all the complexities of these various processes, I for one would share his scepticism concerning the efficiency of Darwinian random mutations as their originator.

DAVID: You obviuosly don't know Graur. His entire faith in Darwin is based on the existence of much of DNA as junk. You are thinking about him through your biases. He is not skeptical about random mutation, but insists they created junk which had to be left behind.

dhw: Of course I don’t know him, but if his entire faith in Darwin is based on junk DNA and he is not sceptical about random mutations, then I’m sorry, but why bother? There are thousands of people whose views you could bombard me with, and I can only offer you my personal response.

He is a confirmed atheist and a close friend of Larry Moran. I'm just showing you their viewpoint.

dhw: Then he should comfort himself that even if 100% of DNA proves to be functional, it merely proves the efficiency of Darwinian natural selection in discarding unwanted material. But if he feels uncomfortable because of all the complexities of these various processes, I for one would share his scepticism concerning the efficiency of Darwinian random mutations as their originator.

DAVID: You obviuosly don't know Graur. His entire faith in Darwin is based on the existence of much of DNA as junk. You are thinking about him through your biases. He is not skeptical about random mutation, but insists they created junk which had to be left behind.

Of course I don’t know him, but if his entire faith in Darwin is based on junk DNA and he is not sceptical about random mutations, then I’m sorry, but why bother? There are thousands of people whose views you could bombard me with, and I can only offer you my personal response.

DAVID: Dan Graur's comment highlights his discomfort at the new discoveries, as they destroy his Darwin theories.

dhw: Then he should comfort himself that even if 100% of DNA proves to be functional, it merely proves the efficiency of Darwinian natural selection in discarding unwanted material. But if he feels uncomfortable because of all the complexities of these various processes, I for one would share his scepticism concerning the efficiency of Darwinian random mutations as their originator.

You obviuosly don't know Graur. His entire faith in Darwin is based on the existence of much of DNA as junk. You are thinking about him through your biases. He is not skeptical about random mutation, but insists they created junk which had to be left behind.

DAVID: The quote comes from a very confirmed Darwinist Dan Graur. He means it. Don't slough it off! 'Junk' means a chance undirected process (Darwin evolution) which created all sorts of mistakes which were left behind in our giant DNA. It proves Darwin! The problem is 80% of DNA looks functional. The junk theory to support purposeless Darwin is out the window. Your theistic evolutionist is not my man. His reasoning is not mine, and natural selection did not jettison junk DNA because there isn't much.

dhw: Please explain the 20% of DNA that is considered to be junk.

DAVID: We didn't know that 80% was functional to some extent until the past few years of research. We don't know that the 20% isn't of some importance. [dhw's bold]

Your theistic response is exactly as I forecast above in bold. Theists and atheists can always find an answer, and so whether some DNA is junk or not won’t make the slightest difference to their or your beliefs.

DAVID: Coding for proteins doesn't explain life. It doesn't explain embryologic development of the fetus. There is a huge blank slate still to be explored.

Agreed. Anyone, theist or atheist, who claims to know all the answers is to be treated with suspicion!

DAVID: Dan Graur's comment highlights his discomfort at the new discoveries, as they destroy his Darwin theories.

Then he should comfort himself that even if 100% of DNA proves to be functional, it merely proves the efficiency of Darwinian natural selection in discarding unwanted material. But if he feels uncomfortable because of all the complexities of these various processes, I for one would share his scepticism concerning the efficiency of Darwinian random mutations as their originator.

dhw: I hate this point-scoring by both sides. There is no dagger in the heart, complete destruction or losing a game. Whether “junk” DNA is or isn't junk proves nothing about the existence or non-existence of a designer. If it IS, a theistic evolutionist can say his God did not design every organism individually but simply created the mechanisms by which organisms have evolved; harmful elements were jettisoned by natural selection, and harmless elements were not. Or he can say science has not yet discovered the uses of so-called junk. If it is NOT junk, but you do not believe in a designer, you can say natural selection jettisoned anything that was not useful.

DAVID: The quote comes from a very confirmed Darwinist Dan Graur. He means it. Don't slough it off! 'Junk' means a chance undirected process (Darwin evolution) which created all sorts of mistakes which were left behind in our giant DNA. It proves Darwin! The problem is 80% of DNA looks functional. The junk theory to support purposeless Darwin is out the window. Your theistic evolutionist is not my man. His reasoning is not mine, and natural selection did not jettison junk DNA because there isn't much.

dhw: Please explain the 20% of DNA that is considered to be junk.

We didn't know that 80% was functional to some extent until the past few years of research. We don't know that the 20% isn't of some importance. Coding for proteins doesn't explain life. It doesn't explain embryologic development of the fetus. There is a huge blank slate still to be explored. Dan Graur's comment highlights his discomfort at the new discoveries, as they destroy his Darwin theories.

QUOTES: The other control layers are being uncovered and in doing so completely destroying the Darwinists claims that 'junk DNA' proves the Darwin theory of a purposeless chance mechanism etc.
"[…] If we permit the ENCODE consortium to claim 80% of non-coding DNA is useful, then Darwinists have lost' a game to ID?"

dhw: I hate this point-scoring by both sides. There is no dagger in the heart, complete destruction or losing a game. Whether “junk” DNA is or isn't junk proves nothing about the existence or non-existence of a designer. If it IS, a theistic evolutionist can say his God did not design every organism individually but simply created the mechanisms by which organisms have evolved; harmful elements were jettisoned by natural selection, and harmless elements were not. Or he can say science has not yet discovered the uses of so-called junk. If it is NOT junk, but you do not believe in a designer, you can say natural selection jettisoned anything that was not useful.

DAVID: The quote comes from a very confirmed Darwinist Dan Graur. He means it. Don't slough it off! 'Junk' means a chance undirected process (Darwin evolution) which created all sorts of mistakes which were left behind in our giant DNA. It proves Darwin! The problem is 80% of DNA looks functional. The junk theory to support purposeless Darwin is out the window. Your theistic evolutionist is not my man. His reasoning is not mine, and natural selection did not jettison junk DNA because there isn't much.

Please explain the 20% of DNA that is considered to be junk.

DAVID (under "junk DNA"): Using viruses to explore the possible function of long non-coding RNA, 200 or more bases long, a study shows functions, a further dagger in the heart of Darwinist claims about junk DNA:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07692-w
QUOTES: The other control layers are being uncovered and in doing so completely destroying the Darwinists claims that 'junk DNA' proves the Darwin theory of a purposeless chance mechanism etc.
"[…] If we permit the ENCODE consortium to claim 80% of non-coding DNA is useful, then Darwinists have lost' a game to ID?"

dhw: I hate this point-scoring by both sides. There is no dagger in the heart, complete destruction or losing a game. Whether “junk” DNA is or isn't junk proves nothing about the existence or non-existence of a designer. If it IS, a theistic evolutionist can say his God did not design every organism individually but simply created the mechanisms by which organisms have evolved; harmful elements were jettisoned by natural selection, and harmless elements were not. Or he can say science has not yet discovered the uses of so-called junk. If it is NOT junk, but you do not believe in a designer, you can say natural selection jettisoned anything that was not useful.

The quote comes from a very confirmed Darwinist Dan Graur. He means it. Don't slough it off! 'Junk' means a chance undirected process (Darwin evolution) which created all sorts of mistakes which were left behind in our giant DNA. It proves Darwin! The problem is 80% of DNA looks functional. The junk theory to support purposeless Darwin is out the window. Your theistic evolutionist is not my man. His reasoning is not mine, and natural selection did not jettison junk DNA because there isn't much.

dhw: We have long ago agreed that natural selection does not create anything, and so it can't be called the origin of species. However, it does explain the continued existence of features that are useful in the quest for survival and/or improvement. ALL brains are examples of the latter, since bacteria have survived without brains since the year dot. If Darwin were alive today, I suspect that he would rewrite whole sections of his book, including the title (“The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life”). So here’s a challenge for you. Think up a new title. How about: “The origin of species by means of genetic variation in response to environmental conditions”?

I think if Darwin knew today's science about evolution, he could not have written any oart of his book. His theory has too many holes for that. Reminds me of swiss cheese.

DAVID’s comment (under “magic embryology”): […] Darwin does not explain any of this by his chance process theory.

I’m sure this was only one of many things that Darwin did not know about, which is why he was so reluctant to speculate even on such matters as how a nerve came to be sensitive to light. His “origins” concerned speciation, not the details of mouse embryology. Having said that, though, I am not defending his theory that speciation was caused by random mutations, let alone by natural selection (see later).

xxxxxx

DAVID (under "junk DNA"): Using viruses to explore the possible function of long non-coding RNA, 200 or more bases long, a study shows functions, a further dagger in the heart of Darwinist claims about junk DNA:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07692-w
QUOTES: The other control layers are being uncovered and in doing so completely destroying the Darwinists claims that 'junk DNA' proves the Darwin theory of a purposeless chance mechanism etc.
"[…] If we permit the ENCODE consortium to claim 80% of non-coding DNA is useful, then Darwinists have lost' a game to ID?"

I hate this point-scoring by both sides. There is no dagger in the heart, complete destruction or losing a game. Whether “junk” DNA is or isn't junk proves nothing about the existence or non-existence of a designer. If it IS, a theistic evolutionist can say his God did not design every organism individually but simply created the mechanisms by which organisms have evolved; harmful elements were jettisoned by natural selection, and harmless elements were not. Or he can say science has not yet discovered the uses of so-called junk. If it is NOT junk, but you do not believe in a designer, you can say natural selection jettisoned anything that was not useful.

xxxxx

DAVID’s comment: As is obvious, like Fodor I'm not convinced natural selection is of any importance in the process of evolution. It does not explain our brain, as one paramount example.

A dead horse undergoing one more flogging. We have long ago agreed that natural selection does not create anything, and so it can't be called the origin of species. However, it does explain the continued existence of features that are useful in the quest for survival and/or improvement. ALL brains are examples of the latter, since bacteria have survived without brains since the year dot. If Darwin were alive today, I suspect that he would rewrite whole sections of his book, including the title (“The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life”). So here’s a challenge for you. Think up a new title. How about: “The origin of species by means of genetic variation in response to environmental conditions”?

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/jerry-fodors-enduring-critique-of-neo-Darw...

"Fodor first made his name at M.I.T., in the sixties and seventies, by pioneering a theory of the mind. He offered an updated version of what is sometimes called, in philosophy survey courses, rationalism. He didn’t think it was possible that we started our lives as blank slates and acquired, through experience alone, our mental repertoires; combining aspects of Chomsky’s theory of linguistic innateness with Turing’s insights into mathematical computation, he argued that there had to be a prior, unacquired “language of thought”—the title of his career-making book—out of which everyday cognition emerges.

***

"Fodor thought that the neo-Darwinists had confused the loyalty oath of modernity—nature is without conscious design, species evolve over time, the emergence of Homo sapiens was without meaning or telos—with blind adherence to the fallacy known as “natural selection.” That species are a product of evolutionary descent was uncontroversial to Fodor, an avowed atheist; that the mechanism guiding the process was adaptation via a competition for survival—this, Fodor believed, had to be wrong.

"Fodor attacked neo-Darwinism on a purely conceptual and scientific basis—its own turf, in other words. He thought that it suffered from a “free rider” problem: too many of our phenotypic traits have no discernible survival value, and therefore could not plausibly be interpreted as products of adaptation. “Selection theory cannot distinguish the trait upon which fitness is contingent from the trait that has no effect on fitness (and is merely a free rider),” he wrote. “Advertising to the contrary notwithstanding, natural selection can’t be a general mechanism that connects phenotypic variation with variation in fitness. So natural selection can’t be the mechanism of evolution.”

***

"Fodor was interested in how the distinction between an adaptation and a free rider might apply to our own behavior. It seems obvious to us that the heart is for circulating blood and not for making thump-thump noises.... did not believe this for was defensible, either, but that is for another day.) Pumping is therefore an “adaptation,” the noise is a “free rider.” Is there really a bright sociobiological line dividing, say, the desire to mate for life from the urge to stray? The problem isn’t that drawing a line is hard; it’s that it’s too easy: you simply call the behavior you like an adaptation, the one you don’t like a free rider. Free to concoct a just-so story, you may now encode your own personal biases into something called “human nature.”

***

"When I reread “What Darwin Got Wrong,” there were two sentences that I paused over longest. “What trait did evolution select for when it selected creatures that protect their young? Was it an altruistic interest or a selfish interest in their genes?” The oddity is asking the question in the first place. What sort of creature is it, after all, that must first ideate its own function before being able to fulfill it? ...Neo-Darwinism “affronts a robust, and I should think salubrious, intuition that there are lots and lots of things that we care about simply for themselves.”

***

"He was a naturalist, and he believed that with a proper understanding of Darwin we would never ask nature to tell us who or what to be. “We are artifacts designed by natural selection,” Daniel Dennett wrote, to which Fodor said no. “Darwin’s idea is much deeper, much more beautiful, and appreciably scarier: We are artifacts designed by selection in exactly the sense in which the Rockies are artifacts designed by erosion; which is to say that we aren’t artifacts and nothing designed us. We are, and always have been, entirely on our own.'”

Comment: As is obvious, like Fodor I'm not convinced natural selection is of any importance in the process of evolution. It does not explain our brain, as one paramount example.


> GK: My main point is that I agree with you guys. we have so many people trying for PhD's they have to start making stuff up. Some, not all, PhD's are more about defending the "world changing claim" instead of actually being one. I mean we know so much that area's to study for the regular grad student to study are becoming confining. 
> 
> The result is less than insightful science. Toss in fraud. "POOF" integrity is lost.-Thanks for the explanation. I follow. But I also disagree. I don't think that 'the areas for study are confining'. The real problem is grant money is not as plentiful as it once was, compared to the number of research folks who want it and to live on it. I had some grant money once for a cardiology project. It was a sideline for me, I didn't need it to live on. But today there is open warfare to get the grants and publish anything. We have a science-government complex just like the military-government complex Eisenhower warned about. And you are right. There are few chances for the 'great breakthrough' in new interpretations. String theory is a glorious relic.-Please read the current NY Times article for full clarification:-http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/a-crisis-at-the-edge-of-physics.html?_r=1-"A few months ago in the journal Nature, two leading researchers, George Ellis and Joseph Silk, published a controversial piece called “Scientific Method: Defend the Integrity of Physics.” They criticized a newfound willingness among some scientists to explicitly set aside the need for experimental confirmation of today's most ambitious cosmic theories — so long as those theories are “sufficiently elegant and explanatory.” Despite working at the cutting edge of knowledge, such scientists are, for Professors Ellis and Silk, “breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical.'”-*****-"Recall the epicycles, the imaginary circles that Ptolemy used and formalized around A.D. 150 to describe the motions of planets. Although Ptolemy had no evidence for their existence, epicycles successfully explained what the ancients could see in the night sky, so they were accepted as real. But they were eventually shown to be a fiction, more than 1,500 years later. Are superstrings and the multiverse, painstakingly theorized by hundreds of brilliant scientists, anything more than modern-day epicycles?"

GK yes, I feel the same. When I address an atheist skewing science to support atheism it infuriates them. Then they get so mad at me when I clarify what it is saying and suggest that thiest have a right to science too. &quot;Random&quot; is a great example of this. Like it proves anything anyway.&#13;&#10;> &#13;&#10;> I saw this and it describes me pretty good I think.&#13;&#10;> &#13;&#10;> &quot;no-nothing&quot; < X > &quot;omni-dude&quot;&#13;&#10;> &#13;&#10;> i don&apos;t know what &quot;X&quot; is.-I wish you could explain yourself and where did that quote come from?