Evolution and the myth of "scientific consensus"

[Loudmouth]

That's an interesting point of view – that problems with p-values, bias in researchers, and problems with multiple groups investigating the same questions cause problems with false positives is something that ONLY occurs within biomedical research.

It happens whenever you analyze large, complex data sets in any field, from physics to economics to biology.

Evolutionary research, I suppose, never uses p-values.

Statistics is a basic feature of phylogenetics and evolutionary research.
http://statweb.stanford.edu/~susan/papers/chapihp04.pdf

 

[Loudmouth]

Consensus may also indicate that it is tentatively accepted as the most ideologically preferable explanation and/or the most potentially lucrative model available. Actual scientific merit may only be of secondary or tertiary consideration.

Ideologically, scientists do prefer the most accurate theory and the theory that works. That is why they use the theory of evolution.

 

[sfs]

That's an interesting point of view – that problems with p-values, bias in researchers, and problems with multiple groups investigating the same questions cause problems with false positives is something that ONLY occurs within biomedical research.

Evolutionary research, I suppose, never uses p-values. There is no bias of any kind among evolutionary biologists. There are never multiple teams investigating the same question.

Good to know!

Well, that would have been an interesting point of view if anyone had advanced it. As it is, you're not arguing with anyone. You quoted the paper saying that most fields of have this problem. I pointed out (correctly) that by "most fields" he means most fields in biomedical research. Why you then invented a strawman to attack I don't know. I also don't know how well evolutionary biology does in terms of rigor. No one knows until they do some research on the subject. But of course, you don't think research leads to knowledge, so what would be the point?

Good reasons that you don't bother to elaborate on.

Exactly. I'm not going to engage in a philosophical argument with you about whether we can know anything beyond what we can directly observe. Some scientific research is bad and some of it is good, regardless of whether you are an instrumentalist or a realist. Some leads to useful conclusions, again regardless of your philosophical take. The philosophical issue is a red herring.

 

[sfs]

Oh, excuse my ignorance, thank you for solving my doubts.

You didn't post your doubts. You posted a statement about evolution that reflected confusion about the meaning of the word "theory". That was what someone responded to, because all we can respond to are the words you actually write.

 

[sfs]

Despite what you may believe, listing anatomical traits is not an argument.

Despite what you may believe, listing hypothetical behavior by imaginary scientists is also not an argument.

 

[Wryetui]

You didn't post your doubts. You posted a statement about evolution that reflected confusion about the meaning of the word "theory". That was what someone responded to, because all we can respond to are the words you actually write.

That's what you understood, but let me state what I posted or not, since I know better

 

[RickG]

That's what you understood, but let me state what I posted or not, since I know better

I pretty much got the same impression that sfs did. There is a huge difference between that of a common layman's theory definition and that of a scientific theory; for example, "gravitation" is just a theory.

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

Neither is that blatant strawman.



Despite what you may believe, listing anatomical traits is not an argument.

If you think that pointing out how the coccyx is a vestige from a previous species is merely listing an anatomical trait you are very, very mistaken. It comes, of course, from being blind to the truth of it. Its as plain as the spoor of the game to an experienced tracker.

 

[The Cadet]

Saying "Evolution is just a theory" is sort of like saying "This is just a check for winning the powerball lottery" or "He's just got AIDS and brain cancer".

 

[lifepsyop]

It's about understanding the meaning of the word in science. Evolution is the only theory in science that gets this treatment. There's no large contingent of people saying that germ disease is "just a theory". Displaying it next to these other theories helps illustrate the point.

All it illustrates is the general trend of evolutionists to equivocate everything into oblivion. Here is a helpful hint. Just because something is regarded as a "scientific theory" does not mean it has automatically arrived on some equal footing with all other popular scientific theories. A scientific theory can be well supported. A scientific theory can also be not as well supported. Scientific theories can have varying levels of robustness. Make sense? You bring no clarity to anything by lining up a bunch of theories next to each other.

The irony is that you make the word 'theory' even more useless than its"colloquial" usage that you were criticizing.

By comparison, evolution makes testable predictions based on naturalistic mechanisms. Darwin's phylogeny, for example, was tested in its entirety when the field of genetics was discovered, and it turned out to be remarkably stable, with the morphological nested heirarchy being almost completely concordant with the genetic nested heirarchy.

Believe me it's a really nice sounding sales pitch, but not nearly as impressive when you look under the hood. You're presenting a fundamentally misleading picture of the nature of phylogenetics. I have to wonder if even 5% of you really examine these claims in depth or just copy and paste them around the internet.

We expected to find, on the basis of morphology, various fossils, which we found not only in the location predicted, but with the qualities predicted. Every time a new genome is sequenced or a new fossil is dug up, the theory opens itself up to potentially be falsified - if the fossil cannot be fit into the phylogeny or it's in the wrong strata

That's not true. The fossil can be at least tens of "millions of years" out of sequence and still be accommodated. Discordant morphology can also be rescued by assuming convergences. Morphological and molecular predictions can fail on a regular basis and not put a dent in the theory. Evolution theory has the structure of congealed pudding.

(see also: fossil bunnies in Cambrian strata and their complete lack of existence),

It seems that your evolutionary high priests have convinced you that any potential falsification automatically means that your theory is ironclad. This is very poor reasoning indeed.

or the genome shows genetics which cannot be matched to any existing phyla, there's a problem.

Right, like if dogs were more genetically similar to turtles than cats. That would have been a big problem. Behold the predictive powers of Evolution theory.

 

[The Cadet]

That's not true. The fossil can be at least tens of "millions of years" out of sequence and still be accommodated. Discordant morphology can also be rescued by assuming convergences. Morphological and molecular predictions can fail on a regular basis and not put a dent in the theory.

Let's have some examples, then. Certain changes in the phyla with increasing evidence is almost inevitable. We're constantly refining our understanding of the world. None of this destroys the value of the theory in explaining or predicting the world.

It seems that your evolutionary high priests have convinced you that any potential falsification automatically means that your theory is ironclad. This is very poor reasoning indeed.

Of course that's not what I believe. However. The thing about falsifiability is that the flipside allows us to make useful predictions. Useful as in "because of an understanding of common descent, we understand far more about HIV than we could have without".

Also, you ignored what I had to say about creationism. Care to present or defend your worldview?

 

[Zosimus]

As an author of a paper, you don't get to pick and choose who will review it.

Actually...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/hank-ca...-is-harming-scientific-credibility-1405290747

If you do it right, you can peer-review your own paper.

 

[Zosimus]

It's about understanding the meaning of the word in science. Evolution is the only theory in science that gets this treatment. There's no large contingent of people saying that germ disease is "just a theory".

Germ disease is just a theory.

In fact, there was a very rigorous test proposed to determine whether the theory was true. The test is called Koch's postulates, which are as follows:

1. The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms.
2. The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.
3. The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
4. The microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.

Yet a simple look at the literature of most diseases shows that it's easy to find asymptomatic carriers of cholera, typhoid fever, the HIV virus, polio, herpes, hepatitis, etc.

Yet we don't run around railing at the term theory because, after all...

It's only a theory.

 

[Loudmouth]

Actually...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/hank-ca...-is-harming-scientific-credibility-1405290747

If you do it right, you can peer-review your own paper.

That doesn't happen with the overwhelming majority of papers that are related to evolution.

 

[Loudmouth]

Germ disease is just a theory.

In fact, there was a very rigorous test proposed to determine whether the theory was true. The test is called Koch's postulates, which are as follows:

1. The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms.
2. The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.
3. The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
4. The microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.

Yet a simple look at the literature of most diseases shows that it's easy to find asymptomatic carriers of cholera, typhoid fever, the HIV virus, polio, herpes, hepatitis, etc.

Yet we don't run around railing at the term theory because, after all...

It's only a theory.

Then you wouldn't have a problem being injected with HIV virus?

 

[Zosimus]

It happens whenever you analyze large, complex data sets in any field, from physics to economics to biology.



Statistics is a basic feature of phylogenetics and evolutionary research.
http://statweb.stanford.edu/~susan/papers/chapihp04.pdf

Considering that the article in question complained that "...the high rate of nonreplication (lack of confirmation) of research discoveries is a consequence of the convenient, yet ill-founded strategy of claiming conclusive research findings solely on the basis of a single study assessed by formal statistical significance, typically for a p-value less than 0.05. Research is not most appropriately represented and summarized by p-values, but, unfortunately, there is a widespread notion that [scientific studies] should be interpreted based only on p-values."

 

[Zosimus]

Then you wouldn't have a problem being injected with HIV virus?

I would not.

 

[The Cadet]

Germ disease is just a theory.

In fact, there was a very rigorous test proposed to determine whether the theory was true. The test is called Koch's postulates, which are as follows:

1. The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms.
2. The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.
3. The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
4. The microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.

Yet a simple look at the literature of most diseases shows that it's easy to find asymptomatic carriers of cholera, typhoid fever, the HIV virus, polio, herpes, hepatitis, etc.

Yet we don't run around railing at the term theory because, after all...

It's only a theory.

Quoth Wiki:

Koch's postulates (/ˈkɔːx/)[2] are four criteria designed to establish a causative relationship between a microbe and a disease. The postulates were formulated by Robert Koch and Friedrich Loeffler in 1884, based on earlier concepts described by Jakob Henle,[3] and refined and published by Koch in 1890. Koch applied the postulates to describe the etiology of cholera and tuberculosis, but they have been controversially generalized to other diseases. These postulates were generated prior to understanding of modern concepts in microbial pathogenesis that cannot be examined using Koch's postulates, including viruses (which are obligate cellular parasites) or asymptomatic carriers. They have largely been supplanted by other criteria such as Bradford Hill criteria for infectious disease causality in modern public health. Koch's postulates have been controversially applied to conclude that HIV does not cause AIDS[4] (in support of HIV/AIDS denialism) and that oncoviruses do not cause cancers.[5]​

You should update your understanding of the world. It's about 50 years out of date. Your belief that these microorganisms do not cause disease is simply completely untenable. Yeah, Koch's Postulates do not universally apply. We know why that is. It's because Koch did not know about things like asymptomatic carriers, incubation time, or even viruses at all, let alone things like the lentiviruses, which can incubate for years without becoming symptomatic.

 

[Loudmouth]

Considering that the article in question complained that "...the high rate of nonreplication (lack of confirmation) of research discoveries is a consequence of the convenient, yet ill-founded strategy of claiming conclusive research findings solely on the basis of a single study assessed by formal statistical significance, typically for a p-value less than 0.05. Research is not most appropriately represented and summarized by p-values, but, unfortunately, there is a widespread notion that [scientific studies] should be interpreted based only on p-values."

That is why multiple and independent studies are needed, as is done in phylogenetics.

 

[The Cadet]

You know, coming back to the letter in the first post, I spent quite a bit of time today listening to William Lane Craig debate against Sean Carroll, and oddly enough, there seems to be quite a lot of talk about an eternal universe without a big bang. Coming from Carroll.

Huh.

That's odd.