The Scientific Method & Macroevolution?

justlookinla said:

You're either in agreement that science is error free or science is not error free. Which is it?

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Error:
1. a deviation from accuracy or correctness; a mistake, as in action or speech
2. belief in something untrue; the holding of mistaken opinions.
3. the condition of believing what is not true

Guess: an opinion that one reaches or to which one commits oneself on the basis of probability alone or in the absence of any evidence whatever.

Supposition: something that is supposed.

Suppose: to believe or assume as true; take for granted.

It looks like "error" is not the same thing as "guess" or "supposition". So I can agree that science contains error while simultaneously believing that the scientific evidences are not "guesses and suppositions". Thus your nonsensical conclusion that my request for you to provide examples of "guesses and suppositions" in scientific evidence means that I think science is error-free, is shown to be the manure that everyone reading it knows that it is.

Now that we are done with this particular facet of your avoidance strategy, I reiterate my request for an example of the "guesses and suppositions" that you claim litter all scientific evidence.

DerelictJunction said:

Error:
1. a deviation from accuracy or correctness; a mistake, as in action or speech
2. belief in something untrue; the holding of mistaken opinions.
3. the condition of believing what is not true

Guess: an opinion that one reaches or to which one commits oneself on the basis of probability alone or in the absence of any evidence whatever.

Supposition: something that is supposed.

Suppose: to believe or assume as true; take for granted.

It looks like "error" is not the same thing as "guess" or "supposition". So I can agree that science contains error while simultaneously believing that scientific conclusions are not "guesses and suppositions". Thus your nonsensical conclusion that my request for you to provide examples of "guesses and suppositions" in scientific conclusions means that I think science is error-free, is shown to be the manure that everyone reading it knows that it is.

Now that we are done with this particular facet of your avoidance strategy, I reiterate my request for an example of the "guesses and supposition" that you claim litter all scientific conclusions.

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I think it is important to put justlookinla's comments in context.

I asked him to focus on evidence instead of out of context, or apparently made up, quotes. His response was to claim that the evidence is guesses and suppositions. He did not say that the conclusions were guesses or suppositions, but that the facts the conclusions were based on are guesses and suppositions.

What he is trying to do is run away from the facts, and we shouldn't let him do that. As the old saying goes, you can have your own opinions, but not your own facts.

Loudmouth said:

I think it is important to put justlookinla's comments in context.

I asked him to focus on evidence instead of out of context, or apparently made up, quotes. His response was to claim that the evidence is guesses and suppositions. He did not say that the conclusions were guesses or suppositions, but that the facts the conclusions were based on are guesses and suppositions.

What he is trying to do is run away from the facts, and we shouldn't let him do that. As the old saying goes, you can have your own opinions, but not your own facts.

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Thanks. I edited my post to keep us on the same track....not that we'll get any substantive response.

DerelictJunction said:

Error:
1. a deviation from accuracy or correctness; a mistake, as in action or speech
2. belief in something untrue; the holding of mistaken opinions.
3. the condition of believing what is not true

Guess: an opinion that one reaches or to which one commits oneself on the basis of probability alone or in the absence of any evidence whatever.

Supposition: something that is supposed.

Suppose: to believe or assume as true; take for granted.

It looks like "error" is not the same thing as "guess" or "supposition".

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Guesses and suppositions may, or may not, produce error.

So I can agree that science contains error while simultaneously believing that the scientific evidences are not "guesses and suppositions".

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The errors of science were based on claimed evidence, which wasn't evidence for the claim after all. The evidence wasn't based on the scientific method, the evidence wasn't based on anything but guesses and suppositions, which isn't evidence.

If no evidence was claimed for the error of science, the same guesses and suppositions would be the basis for the error.

Either way, claimed evidence or not, guesses and suppositions birthed the scientific error

Thus your nonsensical conclusion that my request for you to provide examples of "guesses and suppositions" in scientific evidence means that I think science is error-free, is shown to be the manure that everyone reading it knows that it is.

Now that we are done with this particular facet of your avoidance strategy, I reiterate my request for an example of the "guesses and suppositions" that you claim litter all scientific evidence.

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We both agree that science is not error free. The conclusion then is that the claim of evidence in those errors is a false claim, there's no evidence after all.

justlookinla said:

Guesses and suppositions may, or may not, produce error.



The errors of science were based on claimed evidence, which wasn't evidence for the claim after all. The evidence wasn't based on the scientific method, the evidence wasn't based on anything but guesses and suppositions, which isn't evidence.

If no evidence was claimed for the error of science, the same guesses and suppositions would be the basis for the error.

Either way, claimed evidence or not, guesses and suppositions birthed the scientific error



We both agree that science is not error free. The conclusion then is that the claim of evidence in those errors is a false claim, there's no evidence after all.

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All that blah-blah and not one example of scientific evidence that is a guess or supposition.
I wish I could pick the Powerball lottery as precisely as I predict your avoidance strategy.

DerelictJunction said:

All that blah-blah and not one example of scientific evidence that is a guess or supposition.
I wish I could pick the Powerball lottery as precisely as I predict your avoidance strategy.

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Were the errors of science based on evidence, supported by the scientific method?

Loudmouth said:

Ayala says that he said no such thing, and that he accepts the accumulation of mutations.

Your point?

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my point of the post was the part you left out of it.
ayala never wrote to science concerning this matter.
the website ayala wrote to, NAIG, never wrote to science concerning this matter.
science never amends or corrects this article in any way.
none of the letters received by science regarding said article never mentions ayala and this alleged "misquote"

it almost sounds unbelievable doesn't it?
can you offer a reasonable explanation to this?

This is off the topic currently being discussed but I emailed David Sepkoski about the Ayala quote yesterday and he responded this morning. If anyone is interested in what he has to say I'll be happy to post it as soon as whois gets back.

justlookinla said:

Were the errors of science based on evidence, supported by the scientific method?

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We are aware that deflection is also an inept weapon in your avoidance strategy arsenal.
You have an example scientific evidence that was a guess or supposition?

DerelictJunction said:

We are aware that deflection is also an inept weapon in your avoidance strategy arsenal.
You have an example scientific evidence that was a guess or supposition?

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We both agreed that science had errors, didn't we?

Here is my original email and the first reply I received from Sepkoski:

Dear Mr Sepkoski
>
> My name is [Redacted]. I am a [Redacted] student at [Redacted]. During a recent conversation with fellow students, your paper on Quantitative Revolution has come up. Early on in your paper you mention a quote from Francisco Ayala. Specifically this quote: "we could not have predicted stasis from population genetics, but I am now convinced from what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate." Ayala has denied the entire quote, including the snippit in your paper. Do you have some opinion on this? Do you think it is accurate? Do you think it represents the opinion of Mr Ayala?? I will appreciate any correspondence.
>
>
> Thank you
>
>
> [Redacted]


Dear [Redacted],

I'm aware that this quotation has caused some confusion, and also that it has come up in some discussions about evolution vs. creationism debates. I'm not sure what context of the discussion between you and your fellow students has been, but I can assure you that in no way was Dr. Ayala questioning the legitimacy of evolution via gradual accumulation of small genetic changes. Ayala is one of the leading supporters of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, and this quotation--which was reported by Roger Lewin in an article in Science, and which I merely re-quoted in my own article--was probably an error.

After I wrote that article, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Ayala as I was writing my book Rereading the Fossil Record. Dr. Ayala told me that he did not say what Lewin attributed to him, and he quite convincingly explained to me that the statement wouldn't have even made any sense. I'm not sure how Lewin got the quotation wrong, but this sometimes happens when journalists quickly transcribe statements from people they're interviewing.

I've seen that on some websites creationists have argued that this was somehow an admission from Dr. Ayala that the foundation of evolutionary theory is wrong. This interpretation makes no sense. It would imply that in one, off-the-cuff statement, Dr. Ayala was repudiating the validity of literally every scientific publication he had written before or since he made that comment. Surely, if he was willing to "admit" this belief to Roger Lewin, he would have gone on to demonstrate this surprising about-face in subsequent research articles. The fact that he has not done so, and that he has consistently insisted that he was mis-quoted (to me and to others), makes his explanation much more plausible.

My guess is that what happened is that Lewin asked Dr. Ayala whether he was convinced by arguments by some paleontologists that evolutionary stasis--a phenomenon associated with Stephen Jay Gould and Nile's Eldredge's theory of "punctuated equilibrium" in which certain evolutionary lineages experience little morphological (physical) change for many generations--is a valid interpretation of the fossil record. He may have been trying to say that he agreed with some of these interpretations.


However, punctuated equilibrium is often misunderstood as being anti-Darwinian. It is not. Evolutionary stasis can happen through a phenomenon called stabilizing selection, in which random small genetic changes in a large population of organisms don't be come "fixed"--that is, they aren't preserved in the population--because OTHER small random changes, in the opposite direction, balance them out. This usually happens when these small random changes don't offer an adaptive advantage to the organism--say, thicker fur that keeps an animal warmer in a cold environment and gives it a reproductive advantage over other animals in the same species. In a very large population living in an environment that doesn't change very much over a long period of time, and where the gene pool is very large, stabilizing selection can produce this kind of evolutionary stasis. According to the theory of punctuated equilibrium (which some, but not all, evolutionary biologists support), if a small group of organisms are separated from that larger population--say, a group of birds that get blown out to sea in a storm and settle on a small island--that smaller population can "suddenly" (i.e., over perhaps several thousand years) experience rapid evolutionary change, because a) the new environment may present new challenges in which random or recessive mutations are suddenly advantageous, and b) in a much smaller population new genetic mutations have a higher chance of becoming "fixed" in that population. There is nothing anti-Darwinian about this, though.

I hope this clarifies things.

Best wishes,

David

sfs said:

Ayala didn't (as far as we know) contact Science about a disputed quote in a news report; frankly, that would have been a pretty bizarre thing for him to do.

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it would not be bizarre at all for ayala to ask the horses mouth "hey, why are you misquoting me?"
what IS bizarre is for ayala to contact an unrelated website about this matter and not take it up with the responsible party.

What he did do was write a long, thoughtful piece about all of the issues involved, and published it in Science the next year (here). No, he did not agree with Gould.

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"science", gould, and sepkoski says he did.
the article has NOT been amended by "science".

Who said what at the conference doesn't matter at all. What matters is whether the scientific community was convinced or not.

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and what is the scientific community expected to believe when it reads the article on JSTOR servers?

justlookinla said:

We both agreed that science had errors, didn't we?

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Didn't we already cover deflection?

I pointed out that errors are not automatically guesses and suppositions.
You claim that science is rife with evidence that is actually guesses and suppositions.
After you made such a claim concerning scientific evidence, I don't consider it inordinate to request one example from the many you must have observed in order to come to such a conclusion.


Or...are you just guessing?

DerelictJunction said:

Didn't we already cover deflection?

I pointed out that errors are not automatically guesses and suppositions.
You claim that science is rife with evidence that is actually guesses and suppositions.
After you made such a claim concerning scientific evidence, I don't consider it inordinate to request one example from the many you must have observed in order to come to such a conclusion.


Or...are you just guessing?

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The issue of science having errors isn't an issue then, we agree on it.

Now, what were the errors of science based on? Evidence? If so, the evidence was wrong, the evidence was nothing more than guesses and suppositions, not fact.

The errors of science were not based on evidence? Then they were again based on guesses and suppositions.

Either way, guesses and suppositions which were wrong produced the errors.

whois said:

it would not be bizarre at all for ayala to ask the horses mouth "hey, why are you misquoting me?"
what IS bizarre is for ayala to contact an unrelated website about this matter and not take it up with the responsible party.

"science", gould, and sepkoski says he did.
the article has NOT been amended by "science".

and what is the scientific community expected to believe when it reads the article on JSTOR servers?

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Address post 373. You are wrong.

crjmurray said:

Address post 373. You are wrong.

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then i respectfully request that you produce the letters to "science" about the ayala quote.
"science" is the responsible party, they published the quote and they are legally responsible for it.

whois said:

then i respectfully request that you produce the letters to "science" about the ayala quote.
"science" is the responsible party, they published the quote and they are legally responsible for it.

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You have got to be joking. I took the time to email a person you have been claiming supports your point. He took the time to write that very long and detailed email explaining how the quote was an error. Quit trying to act as if the quote has any legitimacy. You have lost.

whois said:

then i respectfully request that you produce the letters to "science" about the ayala quote.
"science" is the responsible party, they published the quote and they are legally responsible for it.

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You were respectfully requested to address your claim of "fraud" from yesterday and completely ignored the request.

Are you going to address it?