Despite the hypocrisy and outright lying of Republicans (“We want health care reform too, just not this bill, and we is going too fast anyway”), the Congress made history.  What a bonus for those of us who voted for Obama!  Paul Krugman, who, I’m glad to see, is becoming increasingly blunt, has a nice column about it in today’s New York Times.

This is, of course, a political victory for President Obama, and a triumph for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. But it is also a victory for America’s soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out.

And of course, as I promised,  we shall have a contest for an autographed copy of WEIT.  Details later this week.

You may recall Suzan Mazur’s breathless reporting on “The Altenberg 16” (which she has apparently turned into an online book, Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry.

Her thesis has been not only that modern evolutionary biology is rotten to the core, but that we evolutionists all know it and are desperately trying to cover up a crumbling paradigm.  Her interviews with people like Stuart Pivar and my old boss, Dick Lewontin, are really funny: Mazur desperately wants them all to admit that evolutionary biology is bankrupt, no matter what they think.  Instead of finding out what they think, she presses and presses them to agree with her. It seems that most of these hilarious interviews have disappeared from the internet, but you can get a taste of them here and here.

Well, of course she quite likes What Darwin Got Wrong, but claims that it doesn’t go far enough in exposing the corrupt evolution industry.  In other words, it wasn’t looney enough!

There is no mention of right or wrong fresher perspectives like that of Stuart Pivar, whose toroidal model Piattelli-Palmarini found initially interesting, or of geologist Mark McMenamin, who thinks the famous Dolf Seilacher Namibian tongue fossil is a flattened morphogenetic torus, a “paleotorus”.

Some of these scientists have discussed with me at length in online interviews various mechanisms of evolution — particularly, Stuart Newman — saltational mechanisms of embryonic development, chemical oscillation, etc. Scott Gilbert, who gets no attention in What Darwin Got Wrong, referred to “five main mechanisms for the generation of anatomical diversity” in our Q&A last year: heterochrony, heterotopy, heterometry, heterotypy, heterocyberny. Almost every scientist I’ve spoken to, however, does admit that the PROCESS of evolution remains elusive.

I was glad to see that the Italian edition of the Fodor, Piattelli-Palmarini book references my coverage (“la saggista e giornalista”) of the Altenberg 16 saga and (“fieramente indipendente”) Scoop Media. Lynn Margulis too is acknowledged in Italian via our phone interview from Oxford, in which she recounts how she and Francisco Ayala pronounced neo-Darwinism dead one night at a meeting with Whiteheadian philosopher John Cobb. Philosopher and zoologist Stan Salthe with his “poisonous” view that Darwin’s theory is “unexplainable caprice from top to bottom” is cited in Italian as well, and rightly so, because Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini agree to a degree.

. . . What happens next as the neo-Darwinist house of cards collapses and the turnaround in evolutionary science proceeds with the circle drawn wider and wider to include more of the public? “The Jerry Coyne crowd will just fade into the background,” one evolutionary scientist whispered to me. . .

Nice!  I’m sad that she doesn’t identify that “evolutionary scientist,” who apparenently had to “whisper” out of fear that our evil, hornéd cabal would bring down the wrath of Darwin. But I’m flattered and honored to have the crowd of sane evolutionary biologists named after me!

Mazur is a real hoot, and I really don’t worry about her attacks on evolution because, so far as I can determine, nobody takes her seriously.

I haven’t yet watched this, but Bloggingheads.tv has a discussion of natural selection (and the incoherence thereof) with Jerry Fodor (co-author of What Darwin Got Wrong) and philosopher of science Elliott Sober.  You can find the link here (note, video starts most of the way in; scroll back to beginning).

p.s.  If the health care bill passes I’ll give away another copy of WEIT (after a contest, of course) on this site. Go Obama!

BBQ, cowboy boots—need I say more?  Starting tomorrow I’ll be in Texas for a week, first visiting Texas State in San Marcos, where I’ll give a public talk on evolution (and sign books), a departmental seminar on my day job, and a panel discussion with theologians, philosophers, and psychologists.  These folks are getting their money’s worth, so I expect copious amounts of BBQ.

Fig. 1.  BBQ Texas style: beef brisket and “hot guts” at Kreuz Market, Lockhart.

Then I head to Austin to give another talk on flies to the Section of Integrative Biology (what a name!) at The University of Texas.  Chicken-fried steak is there.

Fig. 2. Chicken-fried steak with the trimmings.  Hoover’s, Austin.

And, of course, visits to the local bootmakers.

Fig. 3.  Shoe of the week for my little bagels. Water buffalo boots by Lee Miller, Texas Traditions, Austin.

The usual pinch-bloggers, Greg Mayer and Matthew Cobb, will be filling in for the next week. Greg promises to finally finish his series on the color of tapirs.

God help us.  Michael Ruse, touting his new book Science and Spirituality, has begun publishing a series of essays at BioLogos called “Accommodationist and Proud of It”.

Part I is an extended whine on Ruse’s mistreatment by people like Richard Dawkins, P. Z. Myers, and me.  He’s still harping on the moniker that P.Z. hung on him: “clueless gobshite.” (Ruse must have mentioned this a dozen times in the last year–see here and here for example). I won’t go as far as P.Z.  The clueless gobshitery is not incessant—it’s evident mainly when Ruse is discussing science and faith, which is only about 65% of the time.  Like this time. From his essay:

And yet, I am excoriated at every turn. Why? Simply, because I am an “Accommodationist.” I think that some kind of intellectual meeting is possible with religious believers, including Christian religious believers. As it happens, I believe that in America it is tremendously important politically to bring evolutionists together with people of religious commitment, but I absolutely and completely would not argue for a position that I thought wrong because it was politically expedient to do so. I would not say that emotion plays no role in my position. It does indeed. That helps me to take a stand that I think right against folk with whom I would much rather be a friend than a scorned enemy. But I think one can make a sound case for the position I have taken and still accept strongly today. In this essay, I try to explain what I believe and why I believe it. Why I am an “Accommodationist,” whatever that might mean, and proud of it.

Please understand: this piece I am writing now is not so much a response as a reaction. What I mean by this is that I don’t want to whine about being mistreated or misunderstood or whatever.

If he doesn’t want to whine, why is he always doing it?

Part II deals with his “Christian Childhood.” And, unfortunately, there will be more parts.  BioLogos loves this kind of stuff.

Speaking of going downhill, the Center for Inquiry, whose stated mission is “to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values,” seems to have one foot on Templeton Avenue.  Its latest production is a particularly poorly written and edited piece (e.g., “the thir d argument against the march of organized atheism is it’s tendency toward an angry, uncompassionate line of attack”), called “The problems with the atheistic view of the world,” by Michael De Dora, Jr.  De Dora, executive director of the New York CfI, is described as a “public voice for science, reason, and secular values,” as well as an erstwhile newswriter and editor at FOXNews.com and CUNY.  You couldn’t document either of these qualifications from this essay.

De Dora is apparently an atheist, but his post is a masterpiece of extended concern trolling. Here are his “arguments,” if you can call them that (see an earlier dissection on Butterflies and Wheels):

1. This is the first argument against atheism. It is not a philosophy or a worldview, it is a lack of a specific religious belief, and that isn’t enough to carry us forward in any meaningful way.

Is that a problem?  And, really, isn’t it “carrying us forward” to sweep away false beliefs that hold us back?

2. This brings us to the second argumen t: [sic] atheists tend to view religion as either the problem, or the cause of the problem, even when other problems are apparent. But while theism is a problem, it is not the problem, and while atheism might be correct, atheism is not the answer. As the philosopher Massimo Pigliucci has noted, the larger predicament we face is uncritical adherence to ideology — a problem that spans more than just religion (5).

True.  Nonetheless, religion is the biggest and most pervasive (and dangerous) source of “uncritical adherence to ideology.”  And not all atheists devote all of their time to attacking faith.  Many of us also deal with other types of unreason: homeopathy, climate-change denial, and the like.  Would De Dora just have us go after “irrational ideologies” in general without mentioning religion?

3. The thir d argument [sic] aginst the march of organized atheism is it’s [sic] tendency toward an angry, uncompassionate line of attack. . . However, there is something to hearing these men [Dawkins and Hitchens] speak, and reading certain of their writing, that sends the message they have a short temper for religious belief (and the occasional believer). This attitude has trickled down, as well: for their followers, too often pride has led to arrogance — and not arrogance about the specific position on religion, but general intellectual arrogance at that.

Yes, the old arrogance argument again.  It’s not what we say, but our tone.  We’re arrogant and uncompromising.  When you can’t address the argument, attack the tone. Sheesh!  If anyone is arrogant, it’s the believers who are certain, in the face of all evidence, that a loving and beneficent God’s in his heaven, Jesus is his messenger, and if we’re good, one day we’ll disport ourselves with Ceiling Cat.  I wonder what De Dora would say about the advocates of civil rights in the ’60s.  Did they have a “short temper” for segregation?  Do advocates of gay rights have a “short temper” for homophobia? I remember, again back in the 60s, when people told freedom riders and other “uncivil” activists that they were hurting their cause by their in-your-face tactics.  That was garbage.

Here’s Dan Dennett’s take on “incivility” in an interview with Julian Baggini in The Philosopher’s Magazine:

“I listen to all these complaints about rudeness and intemperateness, and the opinion that I come to is that there is no polite way of asking somebody: have you considered the possibility that your entire life has been devoted to a delusion? But that’s a good question to ask. Of course we should ask that question and of course it’s going to offend people. Tough.”

Back to De Dora:

4. This brings us to the fourth argument: this view of the world divides people rather than bringing them together. This is a symptom of the atheist tendency to see the world through religion.

Doesn’t De Dora recognize that advocating any cause that isn’t universally popular will divide people?  How about civil rights, or gender equality?  How about opposing the Catholic Church’s attitude toward AIDS, condoms, and homosexuality? Oh dear—so divisive!  Does De Dora, like his colleague Mooney, thinks we should shut up in the interest of universal harmony?

5.  The fifth argument against using “atheist” is that atheists already face is that people have the tendency to see the atheist approach as “against” and not “for.” Of course, one cannot debunk or be against anything without really being for something. We are seemingly only able to critique if we have something to weigh the critiqued belief against. When Hitchens rips apart a religious idea, he is surely tearing something down — but he is doing so because he values evidence, reason, critical thinking, science, democracy, and more. The term atheism doesn’t tell others the reasons for critique.

This is weird. De Dora starts out by saying that his article is about “arguments against atheism,” but here he seems to be attacking only the term “atheism.” Personally, I don’t think that when we criticize it’s incumbent on us to suggest a replacement.  Isn’t it enough to decry the systematic cover-up of child abuse by the Catholic Church without having to outline what kind of church it should become?  When we go after astrology, do we have to suggest other ways for people to read their future? Steve Gould once published an essay (which I can’t locate) arguing that it’s worthwhile in itself to get rid of nonsense. He’s absolutely right.

And besides, many atheists are concerned with positive accomplishments.  Most of us recognize that faith fulfills certain needs that might be met in other ways. In The End of Faith, Sam Harris talked about non-God-based replacements for spiritual needs, like meditation.  In his 2009 book Living with Darwin, Philip Kitcher outlined ways that secular communities might be organized to meet the need for  “community” that religion currently satisfies.  But until this happens, and despite the clueless gobshitery of people like De Dora, we’ll keep fighting the grip of religious irrationality on our world.

What has happened to the Center for Inquiry?  First Mooney, now this?  Has the CfI made a conscious decision that the best way to “foster a secular society” and promote “reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values” is to criticize atheists and cuddle up to the faithful?

The talks and writings of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens are the best thing that’s happened to atheism in decades.  These guys have publicly raised the question, “Have you considered the possibility that your entire life has been devoted to a delusion?”  And people have listened, as witnessed by the millions of books sold and thousands of people turning out for debates and lectures. And yes, some people have even changed their minds.

Over at the Guardian, Oliver Burkeman, a writer who apparently knows nothing about evolution, has a long piece called “Why everything you’ve been told about evolution is wrong.”  Everything?  Really?  Burkeman seems to have a beef with Richard Dawkins, and seems to take delight in how the new “evolution revolution” would vex him:

What if Darwin’s theory of evolution – or, at least, Darwin’s theory of evolution as most of us learned it at school and believe we understand it – is, in crucial respects, not entirely accurate? Such talk, naturally, is liable to drive evolutionary biologists into a rage, or, in the case of Richard Dawkins, into even more of a rage than usual.

Well, maybe Burkeman’s insistence that popular notions about evolution are all wrong is just journalistic puffery.  So what is the new finding that overthrows Darwinism?

Epigenetics.

There are several definitions of “epigenetics” (it once meant simply “development”), but Burkeman uses the term in its more modern sense as “inheritance not based on coding changes in the DNA.” Burkeman cites a couple of recent studies in which nongenetic, developmentally caused changes in an organism (like alterations in physiology due to starvation) can be passed on to one or two generations of  its descendants.  The offspring of stressed Swedish chickens, for example, have difficulty navigating mazes. He gives another two-generation example of epigenesis from humans.

This thin evidence, apparently, is why modern evolutionary theory is wrong.  And so Burkeman gets in another slap at not only Dawkins, but Daniel Dennett:

As years of bestselling books by Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and others have seeped into the culture, we’ve come to understand that the awesome power of natural selection – frequently referred to as the best idea in the history of science – lies in the sheer elegance of the way such simple principles have generated the unbelievable complexities of life. From two elementary notions – random mutation, and the filtering power of the environment – have emerged, over millennia, such marvels as eyes, the wings of birds and the human brain.

It not be immediately obvious why this has such profound implications for evolution. In the way it’s generally understood, the whole point of natural selection – the so-called “modern synthesis” of Darwin’s theories with subsequent discoveries about genes – is its beautiful, breathtaking, devastating simplicity. In each generation, genes cause random mutations, making offspring subtly different from their parents; those mutations that enhance an organism’s abilities to thrive and reproduce in its own particular environment will tend to spread through populations, while those that make successful breeding less likely will eventually peter out.  Yet epigenetics suggests this isn’t the whole story.

All I can say to this is: “Profound implications my tuchus!” There are a handful of examples showing that environmentally-induced changes can be passed from one generation to the next.  In nearly all of these examples, the changes disappear after one or two generations, so they couldn’t effect permanent evolutionary change.  The proponents of epigenesis as an important factor in evolution, like Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, always wind up talking about the same tired old examples, like cases of coat color change in mice and flower pattern in toadflax.  I am not aware of a single case in which an adaptive change in an organism—or any change that has been fixed in a species—rests on inheritance that is not based on changes in the DNA. (For a refutation of the pro-epigenesis arguments that Jablonka and Lamb make in their 2005 book, see Haig [2007].)

Moreover, some examples of “nongenetic” inheritance that do have adaptive significance, such as differential methylation of paternal versus maternal chromosomes, ultimately rest on changes in DNA that promote that differential methylation. And this “inheritance” lasts only one generation, for the methylation profile is reset in each sex every generation.

In contrast to the very few cases of one- or two-generation inheritance that cause nonadaptive changes in the phenotype stands the very, very large number of studies in which inherited changes within and among species map to the DNA.  These include every case of evolutionary response to artificial or human-generated selection, adaptive changes within species (e.g., spiny-ness in sticklebacks), and differences among species in both morphology (e.g., the color differences in fruit flies I study) and reproductive barriers (the many mapping studies of “hybrid sterility” and “hybrid inviability” genes). Burkeman, of course, doesn’t mention these cases: it would ruin his nice story.

If we look just at studies of the inheritance of organismal  changes that have evolved over time (and many of these would have detected profound epigenetic effects), the score would be something like this:  DNA  757, Epigenesis 0. (I’m just making these numbers up, of course, to make a point.)  If we look at all “inherited changes”, regardless of their evolutionary importance, we would have a handful of epigenetic changes versus literally thousands of DNA-based changes.  So how can Burkeman say that epigenesis will profoundly revise our view of evolution?

Now I’m not saying that epigenesis was completely unimportant in evolution.  Prions (cases in protein shape that don’t reflect changes in protein sequence), for example, could be considered cases of epigenetic inheritance, and might have played a role in the evolution of some species.  What I am saying is that there is virtually no evidence that epigenetic inheritance has been important in evolution, and that the phenomenon seems, at this point, seems too infrequent to warrant rethinking the tenets of neo-Darwinism.

Burkeman notes that epigenetic inheritance appears to refute one of the prime tenets of evolutionary psychology: the idea that DNA-based changes in human behavior evolved by natural selection:

And now, if epigenetics and other developments are coming to suggest that environment can alter heredity, the very terms of the debate – of nature versus nurture – suddenly become shaky. It’s not even a matter of settling on a compromise, a “mixture” of nature and nurture. Rather, the concepts of “nature” and “nurture” seem to be growing meaningless. What does “nature” even mean if you can nurture the nature of your descendants?

Now, I’ve been a critic of the excesses of some evolutionary psychologists, but it’s simply insane to dismiss that field—and, by extension, the entire field of behavior genetics—because there is some thin evidence for inheritance of acquired traits.

Inevitably, Burkeman got wind of Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini’s new book, What Darwin Got Wrong, a profoundly misguided critique of natural selection. Burkeman notes, correctly, that the book has met with fierce opposition from philosophers and biologists, but insists that it still has value:

It would be jawdroppingly surprising, to say the least, were Fodor to be right. A safer, if mealy-mouthed, conclusion to draw is that his work acts as an important warning to those of us who think we understand natural selection. It’s probably not a bankrupt concept, as Fodor claims. But nor should laypeople assume that it’s self-evidently simple and exhaustively true.

Probably not a bankrupt concept? Not self-evidently simple? (It is—that’s one of its beauties!) Not exhaustively true? (What does that mean? Is there any explanation for adaptation other than natural selection? Fodor has certainly never given one.)

Burkeman’s article represents the most self-serving, lazy, overblown, and irresponsible strain of science journalism.  He lays out strong charges against modern evolutionary biology, and then doesn’t bother to consult a single expert to see if those charges stick.  He touts epigenesis to the skies, but doesn’t bother to find out whether its proponents may have exaggerated its evolutionary importance. (That wouldn’t have required much digging!)  Burkeman apparently lacks the ability to adjudicate claims and controversies in biology.  Granted, we don’t expect all journalists to be able to do this, but if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you ask the experts.

Finally, Burkeman is not even a science writer—he’s a “features” writer. What business does he have telling the public that everything they know about evolution is wrong? He appears to be motivated far more by an animus against Richard Dawkins, and a desire to write catchy and sensationalistic science journalism, than by a desire to get the facts.

Burkeman is an ignorant fool.  He belongs not at the Guardian but on page 3 of the Sun, where he can exaggerate and hyperventilate to his heart’s content.

UPDATE:  The Guardian is backpedaling: there’s been a rebuttal piece posted on the Guardian’s own Comment is Free site (for the link, see Matthew Cobb’s comment #15 on this post).

____________________

Jablonka E, and M. Lamb M. 2005. Evolution in four dimensions: genetic, epigenetic, behavioral and symbolic variation in the history of life. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Haig, D. 2007.  Weissman Rules! OK?  Epigenetics and the Lamarckian temptation. Biology & Philosophy 22:415-428