Time article woefully inaccurate about evolution

[Tomk80]

Ditto! Is the human brain three times the size of the chimpanzee's and do you consider that a dramatic difference?

You consider a cranial capacity of 800 to 900 cc well within human range. Chimps have a cranial capacity of around 400 cc.

Somehow, methinks that either you don't really believe Turkana boy was fully human, or that cranial capacity has doubled from chimp to human.

Which is it?

 

[Dr.GH]

Regardin' brain capacity;

For those able to "eyeball" data, that is a fairly smooth curve. Mark?

 

[Chalnoth]

I have to wonder how much of that variation is removed if you adjust by the length of the skeleton. Obviously the number of data points would be reduced, but I think it might still be interesting.

 

[mark kennedy]

Regardin' brain capacity;

For those able to "eyeball" data, that is a fairly smooth curve. Mark?

You have to look closer, the devil is in the details Doc, notice how the range between 800cc and 2,000cc marks the range of anatomically modern humans :

"It was once thought that the evolution of the genus Homo was an example of anagenesis, the continual and gradual change of one parent species into its daughter species in a linear fashion. As the fossil record began to expand and more early human fossils were found dating to the period between 2 million and 1 million years ago, some questions as to the validity of this hypothesis were raised. "

The Homo habilis Debate

The canidates for the ancestors of KNM-15000 'Turkana Boy' would be ER 1470 (2 mya) and ER 1813 ER (1.9 mya)

"1470 has a cranial capacity of 775cc, where ER 1813 has a cranial capacity of only 510cc (which is above the australopith average, but well below the accepted 600cc cutoff for Homo)" (Homo habilis debate, Smithsonian Human Family Tree)

Then you have Turkana Boy at 1.6 mya with a cranial capacity of about 900cc. It sounds like a neat linear progession doesn't it? There is just one major problem, the habilines were little more then apes and with the advent of ergaster/erectus this dramatic spike in cranial capacity just stops. Mind you, the previous canidates for human ancestors are not all that different from apes while the Homo erectus fossils are pretty much human.

This is followed by a long period of stasis that pretty much continues to this day. You keep asking me about the cranial capacity so lets look at that. Two anthropologists teamed up with two paleontologists to do endocast comparisons of Homo erectus fossils, Turkana Boy and modern Chinese cranial capacities. This is what they reported:

"Compared with the ZKD, Indonesian, and African Homo erectus specimens, Hexian has more morphological features in common with ZKD. Principal component analyses indicate that Hexian is closest to the ZKD Homo erectus compared with the modern Chinese and other Homo erectus, but its great breadth distinguishes it. Metric analyses show that the brain height, frontal breadth, cerebral height, frontal height, and parietal chord from Homo erectus to modern humans increased, while the length, breadth, frontal chord, and occipital breadth did not change substantially."

Endocranial Cast of Hexian Homo erectus from South China

The Hexian and ZKD skulls are all dated between 400 ka and 500 ka with the Turkana Boy being 1.5 mya and of course modern Chinese being contemporary. Here are the measurements of the cranial capacities:

Hexian adult, 412 ka, 1,025 cc
ZKD III juvenile, 423 ka, 915 cc
ZKD II, adult, 585 ka, 1,020 cc
ZKD X, adult, 423 ka, 1,225cc
ZKD XI, adult, 423 ka, 1,015cc
ZKD XII, 423 ka, 1030cc
Sm 3, adult, 100ka, 917cc
KNM-WT 15000, juvenile, 1.5 mya, 880cc
Modern Chinese, adult, 1,140-1,540

The first thing that sticks out in my mind is that there is not a lot of variance between Turkana Boy and the Chinese Homo erectus skulls. Bear in mind we are looking at a million years of evolution and relative stasis. Notice that Sm3 is an adult with a cranial capacity of 917cc, that is pretty close to Turkana Boy.

When you are talking about the human brain you are talking about profound energetic costs associated with both it's adaptations and it's maintanance. We are not talking about a neat, linear model here, we are talking about an unprecedented leap. It would require hundreds if not thousands of mutations in hundreds if not thousands of genes. This would have started suddenly, been accomplished in an astonishingly brief period of time and ended just as abruptly.

 

[mark kennedy]

You consider a cranial capacity of 800 to 900 cc well within human range. Chimps have a cranial capacity of around 400 cc.

Somehow, methinks that either you don't really believe Turkana boy was fully human, or that cranial capacity has doubled from chimp to human.

Which is it?

First of all the cranial capacity of modern humans is closer to 3x that of apes.

Homo habilis has a cranial capacity about half the size of Homo erectus even though they would have probably been contemporaries. Everything prior to Homo habilis is ape and everything from Homo erectus is human.

 

[shernren]

The article is reasonably accurate, but some statements are not clear enough, such as the 98% to 99% comment already discussed. It's not that the comment is wrong, it's that it only applies to gene-gene comparisons. In a comparison of the complete stretch, indeed the difference is around 95%.

The problem is, of course, that the article is directed at a largely lay public. Explaining this difference to such a public would be extremely hard and probably add more confusion then it would give clarity. This becomes apparant from Mark's own OP, where it is immediately clear that he himself still doesn't understand the real difference between the two measurements and why the 98 - 99% figure is still correct. So the 98 - 99% figure is accurate enough for this article.

I would respectfully disagree with your comment that the 98%-99% figure is "accurate enough for this article", it isn't accurate at all unless a proper basis of comparison is supplied. It wouldn't have cost too much confusion to throw in (difference between bulk sequence, but counting only substitutions) right after that 98%-99% figure, or even to put it into a footnote. The media should show some indication that they know what they're talking about, even if it flies right over the layman's head, if only to avoid accusations of obfuscation which might, might, might just be justified here. Just saying "we are 98%-99% chimpanzee" simply doesn't do justice to the idea that our genomes and the chimpanzee genome differ by only 1-2%, when we count substitutions, in the entire genome and not just in genes or functional areas.

Having said that I have a question for Mark. According to you, the human cranial capacity ranges from 800cc-2000cc. And according to you, all humans descended from a single human pair about 10,000 years ago (to quote a common creationist maximum put on the age of creation). Here's my question. When you think that a leap from 300cc to 800cc in a few million years is impossible, what makes you think the creation of 1200cc of variation in 10,000 years is? What more when the genes controlling the development of the human brain are, by your estimation, strongly conserved? Here's what the picture looks like:

500cc in 6 million years (say) -> impossible, because genes pertaining to the human brain are highly conserved.
1200cc in 10,000 years -> possible, even though genes pertaining to the human brain are highly conserved, because Lubenow says so and I believe him.

 

[mark kennedy]

I would respectfully disagree with your comment that the 98%-99% figure is "accurate enough for this article", it isn't accurate at all unless a proper basis of comparison is supplied. It wouldn't have cost too much confusion to throw in (difference between bulk sequence, but counting only substitutions) right after that 98%-99% figure, or even to put it into a footnote. The media should show some indication that they know what they're talking about, even if it flies right over the layman's head, if only to avoid accusations of obfuscation which might, might, might just be justified here. Just saying "we are 98%-99% chimpanzee" simply doesn't do justice to the idea that our genomes and the chimpanzee genome differ by only 1-2%, when we count substitutions, in the entire genome and not just in genes or functional areas.

Did you see the poll results, I was the only one who didn't think the article was accurate. I have been posting the facts reported in Nature last year so many times I'm supprised I'm not being accused of spaming. Dispite the fact that most of the regulars are aware that it is more like 95%, 98-99% was good enough for them. That sure demonstrates a lot of intellectual intergrity to tolerate an error that underestimates the level of divergance by over 100,000,000 base pairs. Way to go guys.

Having said that I have a question for Mark. According to you, the human cranial capacity ranges from 800cc-2000cc. And according to you, all humans descended from a single human pair about 10,000 years ago (to quote a common creationist maximum put on the age of creation).

Anywhere from 6-10 thousand years is fine with me but you were saying...

Here's my question. When you think that a leap from 300cc to 800cc in a few million years is impossible,

You don't quite follow what I am telling you, the austropithecines and Homo habilis were apes. Then Homo erectus comes along between 1.9 mya and 1.6 mya with brain sizes comparable to modern proportions. I'll let you finish before I get to the point...

what makes you think the creation of 1200cc of variation in 10,000 years is? What more when the genes controlling the development of the human brain are, by your estimation, strongly conserved?

The genes need not change to fit the creationist model, in fact, that would be as rare at best. Gene expressions, random variations, prions and a host of other genetic mechanisms can account for human variation pretty well.

Here's what the picture looks like:

500cc in 6 million years (say) -> impossible, because genes pertaining to the human brain are highly conserved.

No, that's 500cc from Homo habilis to Homo erectus which is more like 300,000 years. This is followed by a million years of stasis and a small growth spurt 400,000 years ago. This is not the neat linear picture the anagenesis model predicted, it is accellerated evolution or it is impossible.

1200cc in 10,000 years -> possible, even though genes pertaining to the human brain are highly conserved, because Lubenow says so and I believe him.

We are talking about both a mean average and two rather wide variation out to the outside limit. In the last 10,000 years humans have went through a lot of changes and adapted in limited ways to different environments, actually all of them. What I am emphasising is that an adaptation of an vital organ like the primate brain would come with enormous energetic costs, deadly dangerous deleterious effects from mutations in highly conserved genes and virtually no known genetic mechanisms identified as an efficient cause.

 

[mark kennedy]

No doubt Mark you are one of the most respectable Creationist on the board here. I feel like you genuinely do care and have a framework of knowledge you deem and hold as logical. I can read you post and see that you live in a very logical world. I don't agree with a lot of it, but you are a nice guy and have respectful debate and when you make claims like you'd stand behind any of your arguments, I can't help but believe it from you.

I wish I could say TIME isn't waiting for a Creationist or 100,000 to write back and give them the bad news, but you know that.

I can't believe I almost missed this post entirely, I just wanted to say thanks, it's nice when someone gets a kind word in here and there.

Grace and peace,
Mark

 

[Dr.GH]

You have to look closer, the devil is in the details Doc, notice how the range between 800cc and 2,000cc marks the range of anatomically modern humans ...

Mark, I understand that you will accept any nonsense from creationist sources, and misinterpret all science as some bent apologetics. I didn't post for your benefit.

 

[mark kennedy]

Mark, I understand that you will accept any nonsense from creationist sources. I didn't post for your benefit.

Doc, I understand you didn't read a word of what I wrote but there was this article written by two paleontologists and two archeologists you might have liked in that post. I actually did write it for your benefit, the article gave very precise details of the anatomical features of Turkana Boy, the Asian Homo erectus skulls and modern Asian population they sampled. You only got as far as the part you quoted and assumed I get my information from creationist websites.

The truth is I learned everything I know about creation science from evolutionists. I found the essays creationists write to be weak on the details so I now read scientific literature on a regular basis.

I know for a fact that the Time article is dead wrong and I can prove it, in fact I did. Then when the details are brought out here the defenders of science in the C&E defended error because it told them what they wanted to here. If evolution is such an irrefutable fact then why can't evolutionists defend it on the facts of science?

 

[Dr.GH]

Doc, I understand you didn't read a word of what I wrote but there was this article written by two paleontologists and two archeologists you might have liked in that post.

Not so Mark. I did read your post,and your references/links. I also realize that you do not understand what you have read, or linked, or referenced. This is based on reading your posts for about a year now.

 

[USincognito]

Mark, instead of messing around with small potatos like letters to the science editor of time, if you're so sure you've found the magic bullet that will kill human ape common ancestry, why don't you contact some of the fellows at DI or ICR and produce a paper for review? I'm sure there's a Nobel in it for you.

Why muck about with message boards and letters to the editor when you can shatter the scientific establishment?

 

[USincognito]

Mark, I understand that you will accept any nonsense from creationist sources, and misinterpret all science as some bent apologetics. I didn't post for your benefit.

(bolding mine)

Mark, I understand that you will accept any nonsense from creationist sources. I didn't post for your benefit.

Doc, I understand you didn't read a word of what I wrote but there was this article written by two paleontologists and two archeologists you might have liked in that post. I actually did write it for your benefit, the article gave very precise details of the anatomical features of Turkana Boy, the Asian Homo erectus skulls and modern Asian population they sampled. You only got as far as the part you quoted and assumed I get my information from creationist websites.

Have you no shame at all? At long last have you lost all sense of shame?

 

[Split Rock]

Then you have Turkana Boy at 1.6 mya with a cranial capacity of about 900cc. It sounds like a neat linear progession doesn't it? There is just one major problem, the habilines were little more then apes and with the advent of ergaster/erectus this dramatic spike in cranial capacity just stops.

How can they be "little more than apes" when the cranial capacity doubled and they walked erect? Also, how do you figure that cranial capacity "just stops" after H erectus? Are you claiming the average modern human has the same cranial capacity as an average H. erectus?

Everything prior to Homo habilis is ape and everything from Homo erectus is human.

You have drawn an arbitray line based on cranial capacity. Other creationists draw it in a different place (some consider H erectus to be "just an ape"). What about the other differences in the skull (such as brow ridges), the jaw (such as lack of a chin) and skeleton between H. erectus and H. sapiens?


Tell us Mark, what would a real ape-human intermediate look like?

 

[shernren]

Did you see the poll results, I was the only one who didn't think the article was accurate. I have been posting the facts reported in Nature last year so many times I'm supprised I'm not being accused of spaming. Dispite the fact that most of the regulars are aware that it is more like 95%, 98-99% was good enough for them. That sure demonstrates a lot of intellectual intergrity to tolerate an error that underestimates the level of divergance by over 100,000,000 base pairs. Way to go guys.

The 98%-99% figure isn't "inaccurate" per se, merely unquantified.

You don't quite follow what I am telling you, the austropithecines and Homo habilis were apes. Then Homo erectus comes along between 1.9 mya and 1.6 mya with brain sizes comparable to modern proportions. I'll let you finish before I get to the point...

How exactly do these Homo erectus skulls display modern proportions?

Your own primary source says they don't.

The genes need not change to fit the creationist model, in fact, that would be as rare at best. Gene expressions, random variations, prions and a host of other genetic mechanisms can account for human variation pretty well.

So gene expressions, random variations, prions and a host of other genetic mechanisms can account for 1200cc of human variation, but not for 500cc of habilis->erectus divergence? What qualitative boundaries do you propose so that genetics can account for the fist but not the second?

We are talking about both a mean average and two rather wide variation out to the outside limit. In the last 10,000 years humans have went through a lot of changes and adapted in limited ways to different environments, actually all of them. What I am emphasising is that an adaptation of an vital organ like the primate brain would come with enormous energetic costs, deadly dangerous deleterious effects from mutations in highly conserved genes and virtually no known genetic mechanisms identified as an efficient cause.

(emphasis added) does anybody else see the contradiction here?

 

[shernren]

No, that's 500cc from Homo habilis to Homo erectus which is more like 300,000 years. This is followed by a million years of stasis and a small growth spurt 400,000 years ago. This is not the neat linear picture the anagenesis model predicted, it is accellerated evolution or it is impossible.

By the way mark, what exactly did the anagenesis model predict? And why do you consider the alternative to "the neat linear picture the anagenesis model predicted" to be "accelerated evolution or impossibility"?

I hope you can rectify your mistake yourself, mark, because I don't want to go to the bother of cleaning up after you.

 

[USincognito]

Mark, instead of messing around with small potatos like letters to the science editor of time, if you're so sure you've found the magic bullet that will kill human ape common ancestry, why don't you contact some of the fellows at DI or ICR and produce a paper for review? I'm sure there's a Nobel in it for you.

Why muck about with message boards and letters to the editor when you can shatter the scientific establishment?

Actually forget this suggestion. Have you contacted David Haussler directly and explained to him how his HAR1 work is the smoking gun standing over the corpse of human chimp common ancestry?
His website was linked to on the webpage you keep posting.
http://www.cbse.ucsc.edu/staff/hausslerlab.shtml
haussler@soe.ucsc.edu

Or have you alredy shared the startling news his discovery has destroyed evolutionary theory with him and just chosen not to share it with us yet?

Come on man, Haussler's not one of those phantasmal "scientists giving up on evolution" we keep hearing about that you're holding out on us are you?

 

[Tomk80]

Did you see the poll results, I was the only one who didn't think the article was accurate. I have been posting the facts reported in Nature last year so many times I'm supprised I'm not being accused of spaming. Dispite the fact that most of the regulars are aware that it is more like 95%, 98-99% was good enough for them. That sure demonstrates a lot of intellectual intergrity to tolerate an error that underestimates the level of divergance by over 100,000,000 base pairs. Way to go guys.

Mark, quit lying. You really do not care for honesty, do you? I, as well as a few others who posted here have posted our position on this, the position being that the choices you present us with are bunk. The middle option is missing. Hence, although the 4th option is not completely accurate, it is the most accurate because the first 3 options are complete nonsense.

Just as with your poll on evidence for human ancestry. Almost everyone chose "multiple disciplines". Then you egged on about how nobody chose fossils, while that is included in the "multiple disciplines" choice.

I think you really are one of the more knowledgable creationists on this board. Although I think you have a lot of misconceptions about the things you talk about, as of yet I did not see you as deliberately dishonest. At this point, I am seriously starting to doubt that.

 

[Tomk80]

(bolding mine)

Have you no shame at all? At long last have you lost all sense of shame?

Okay, make it that a doubt Mark's honesty even more at this point.

It this what creationism does with people, make them into full-fledged liars?

 

[mark kennedy]

Mark, quit lying. You really do not care for honesty, do you? I, as well as a few others who posted here have posted our position on this, the position being that the choices you present us with are bunk. The middle option is missing. Hence, although the 4th option is not completely accurate, it is the most accurate because the first 3 options are complete nonsense.

Speaking of someone who doesn't care for honesty, do you have the intellectual intergrity to answer this simple question, what is 145/3000? Ok, where do you think they got that jacked up estimate? You voted that it was accurate but it is clearly worded in the article that 98-99% of the DNA in chimps and humans is the same. This is untrue, there is absolutely no doubt about this, the only question is whether the article is a lie, an honest mistake or based on some undisclosed criteria for determining homology.

Just as with your poll on evidence for human ancestry. Almost everyone chose "multiple disciplines". Then you egged on about how nobody chose fossils, while that is included in the "multiple disciplines" choice.

It was mutlitple disciples and no one choose biology/genetics until very late in the thread. Whenever there is a poll like that there is no reason why someone can't come on there are describe what they feel is and accurate answer to the question apart from the choices offered. A poll is just a way of getting an overall concensus, in this thread the concensus is that it's ok for Time magazine to lie as long as it favors evolution.

I think you really are one of the more knowledgable creationists on this board. Although I think you have a lot of misconceptions about the things you talk about, as of yet I did not see you as deliberately dishonest. At this point, I am seriously starting to doubt that.

The facts are straight forward and irrefutable, they said 98-99% the same and that is inaccurate. I don't see how you can defend the intellectual honesty of someone who knows the actual level of divergance and lies. I don't know how you can say that this is an accurate figure and then question my honesty when I simply pointed out the obvious errors. I don't know how that works or how evolutionists have can support a figure they know is wrong. It's not ignorance because the actual facts are readily available, it must be something else.

Bias I can handle, I understand what that is all about. But to be such a stickler for accuracy and then completly justify a gross misrepresentation of the actual facts goes back to integrity. You have a nerve to question my honesty because you actually know what 145/3000 is and why it's important, you just refuse to admit it.