http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?p=27970680#post27970680
http://www.christianforums.com/t3885734-time-article-woefully-inaccurate-about-evolution.html
shernren (#4) : I agree that the 98-99% comparison was pretty misleading without quantifying what was being compared - gene vs. gene or the whole sequence?
Tomk80 (#7) :
I voted "a true and accurate report", because as more often with Mark's poll options, it lacks the necessary nuanced options.
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.
USIncognito (#8) :
What, you mean three seperate iterations of "a load of crap" and one for "100% utterly true and proven" isn't nuanced? I'm shocked!
Split Rock (#10) :
This is one part that was misleading. They did not specify how they were making the comparison.
sfs (#14) : The 98-99% figure is the difference between bulk sequence, but counting only substitutions (single-base changes between the two species).
shernren (#26) : I would respectfully disagree with your [Tomk80's] 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.
shernren (#35) : The 98%-99% figure isn't "inaccurate" per se, merely unquantified.
Tomk80 (#38) :
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.
shernren (#42) : When comparing chimp
genes vs. human
genes, the percent non-synonymous difference is 0.6%. That quite justifiably equates to a 99.4% equivalence between chimp genes and human genes.
I agree that they should not have fudged the basis of comparison, being typical media hype (I might as well say chimps and humans are 100% identical - they both love bananas!) ... but there
are bases of comparison upon which chimps really are less than 1% divergent from humans.
(citation: Wildman DE, Uddin M, Liu G,
et al. 2003. Implications of natural selection in shaping 99.4% nonsynonymous DNA identity between humans and chimpanzees: enlarging genus
Homo.
Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100: 7181-7188.)
Tomk80 (#46) :
Why do you switch topics Mark? I'm asking for an accurate portrayal of my position, as well as the position of several others who have chosen the fourth option in your poll. Several people, and I among them, have made objections to the poll choices your provided and chosen the fourth option with those objections in place.
I already stated that the article was not worded accurate enough. Why do you pretend I didn't?
...
As I stated already, if you had included options like 'fairly good, but not accurate enough' I would have chosen that one. But that was not an option, it was either the option "accurate" (the fourth option) or "complete bunk" (the first three options). What is the matter with you Mark? Why can you not admit that your poll did not contain the possibility for anyone to choose an accurate reflection of his/her position, and why do you pretend that those who made objections against the poll and chose the option nearest to their position.
I bolded the word inaccurate above, because I stated the article was inaccurate. It wasn't a lie, it was inaccurate.
I bolded the sentence "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." because that, again, is not an accurate portrayal of my position. The article is not lying, it is inaccurate. But amidst it's inaccuracies, it covers the lines of evidence quite well. There is a large difference between inaccurate and lying or wrong, and only lying or wrong were represented in your poll. Had you included "inaccurate", I would have gone for that option. I already explained this well enough in my first post in this thread.
Why do you misrepresent what I and others are saying Mark? What do you think to gain with that?
Chalnoth (#49) : Seriously, what does it even matter to the layperson? What difference does it really make?
Split Rock (#56) :
If they omitted the indels, then that is why they ues 99-98%. It is an ommission, which is why many of us indicated that was inaccurate. You have not shown that any deceit was intended.
Do you really think it matters to the public whether the similarity between human and chimp DNA is 98% or 96%? Do you think they will say, "ohhh... its only 96%??... then we didn't come from monkeys afterall!!" Only people like yourself think this somehow brings down Common Descent.
sfs (#55) : Objecting to the description of the genetic distance between humans and chimpanzees was pointless, since nothing in the article depended on the particular value they used.
Assyrian (#56) : Say you were a teacher correcting essays and two seem very similar. There are three sections from one essay, paragraphs 3, four sentences from paragraph 4 and three sentences from paragraph 6, copied almost word for word in the second essay. The thing is, in the second essay they are all at the end, in the conclusion.
Do they count as similarities between the essays? According to Mark's analysis, they are indels, even though the sections are almost identical, because they are in a different place they do not count as similarities between the essays.
I have to agree with Split Rock. 96% proves we aren't related to chimps? You have got to be kidding.
Tomk80 (#77) :
Yes, because the other three options were definitely not applicable and I and a few others told you this. Don't blaim us because you fail to provide for the option 'inaccurate'.
Tomk80 (#78) :
If you've never really gone into DNA before, the issue on how similar chimp and human DNA is precisely, is indeed something many people will not understand. The same way that I hope they will dumb it down if they're going to explain general relativity in the magazine. I won't be able to follow the math if they go into that.
It's not about being too stupid, it's about having studied it before. If you are writing an article for a magazine for lay-persons, you cannot go into expert details.
Chalnoth (#79) : Come off it. The fact that there is a large amount of commonality between the human and chimpanzee genome isn't propaganda. It's a fact. Does 98% vs. 95% really make any difference? And it's also worth noting that both numbers are correct, by different methods of measuring the difference. Quoting the exact numbers is only going to be useful to somebody who is familiar to the techniques used to measure the differences, and is familiar with other differences between other species for comparison.
The way I see it, quibbling over such a thing is really silly. It's like quibbling over me telling you that the mass of a proton is 1GeV, where the real number is closer to 0.938GeV. The basic idea of what makes a proton a proton doesn't change either way.
Tomk80 (#83) :
But that is not the problem. The 95% figure is just as inaccurate, if they do not state what was measured. Both figures are correct, because they measure different things. The question then becomes which figure is the best representation of the differences.
In that sense the 98% figure may even be better then the 95% figure, as in the latter case the number of differences is not necessarily equal to the number of needed mutations. In the 98% figure, the number of differences is also the actual number of mutations.
========================
We were "not even concerned that the percentage was absolutely wrong" because the percentage was
not absolutely wrong and we demonstrated this multiple times in the thread.
