Evolution is the Scientific Discovery of the Year
The journal Science has announced that Evolution is the Scientific Discovery of the Year. Funny, I thought it was 'discovered' a hundred and fifty years ago. It seems scientists are only now 'discovering' evolution. Good thing they have been teaching it as veritable fact.

Of course, you have to love those Science people, as they write of this announcement

Today evolution is the foundation of all biology, so basic and all-pervasive that scientists sometimes take its importance for granted.

. Of course, all those biologists who don't think evolution is important to their research are just 'taking it for granted'.

It just gets better though, as they say

Each year, researchers worldwide discover enough extraordinary findings tied to evolutionary thinking to fill a book many times as thick as all of Darwin's works put together. This year's volume might start with a proposed rearrangement of the microbes at the base of the tree of life and end with the discovery of 190-million-year-old dinosaur embryos.

Heh. Notice the 'rearrangement' comment. These new discoveries that falsify previous ideas (which were supposedly also based on evolutionary theory) are perhaps being a little overblown by the Science writer. Add to that the addition of finding a fossilised dinosaur embryo having zero to do with evolution and you have to wonder whether the Science writer has been hitting the eggnog early this Christmas.

Now we get to the crux of the article, where the Science writer highlights the major 'discoveries' that reveal the 'laws' of evolution in action. Claiming that there are 'laws of evolution' is an asburdity.

Discovery 1 -> Chimp genome sequenced and compared to the Human Genome. The Science writer assures us that "The genome data confirm our close kinship with chimps.. " once again ignoring that the whole similarity equals close kinship thing is an ASSUMPTION. As I mentioned the other day, believing that 120 million genetic differences can happen in 4 million years (and so only 400,000 generations) is irrational. Talking about sticking your head in the sand.

Discovery 2 -> Evidence of Speciation. Forget for a second that speciation is not doubted by Young Earth Creationists, Old Earth Creationists, Intelligent Design proponents or, well, pretty much anyone. Obviously that they have found 'emprical' evidence of how this is happening is proof of Darwins Common Descent Evolutionary theory. From the article though, it seems this proof is always prefixed by the word 'may' for instance, in talking about birds called European blackcaps the writer concludes that "This difference in timing b one day drive the two populations to become two species." In talking about two races of European corn borers the writer says they "may also be splitting up" [empasis mine]

The writers then continue to show how evolutionary assumptions have retarded scientific progress

Biologists have often focused on coding genes and protein changes, but more evidence of the importance of DNA outside genes came in 2005. A study of two species of fruit flies found that 40% to 70% of noncoding DNA evolves more slowly than the genes themselves. That implies that these regions are so important for the organism that their DNA sequences are maintained by positive selection. These noncoding bases, which include regulatory regions, were static within a species but varied between the two species, suggesting that noncoding regions can be key to speciation.

Yep. Because of evolutionary theory, scientists have ignored vast regions of the genome as they thought they were unimportant. Another case of predictions of evolutionary theory being wrong.

Discovery 3 -> Health benefits. I'll let the Science writers speak for themselves

Such evolutionary breakthroughs are not just ivory-tower exercises; they hold huge promise for improving human well-being. Take the chimpanzee genome. Humans are highly susceptible to AIDS, coronary heart disease, chronic viral hepatitis, and malignant malarial infections; chimps aren't. Studying the differences between our species will help pin down the genetic aspects of many such diseases. As for the HapMap, its aims are explicitly biomedical: to speed the search for genes involved in complex diseases such as diabetes. Researchers have already used it to home in on a gene for agerelated macular degeneration.

Of course, this has zero to do with common descent evolution, and everything to do with the observation of similarity.

Ultimately, all the recent discoveries do is highlight how common descent evolution doesn't really work. It is a pity that they didn't highlight the empirical scientific discovery that even beneficial mutations conspire to reduce fitness (and this was verified). My guess is that would have been a lot harder to spin as positive to their evolutionary faith.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Friday, December 23, 2005