While browsing The Guardian today, I came across a fun creationist smackdown. An article from the Institute for Creation Research (one of the larger, well-known creationist organizations) suggested that evolutionary presuppositions led to the initial incorrect judgment that pterosaurs could not fly. Paleontologist Dave Hone, who studies pterosaurs, would have none of that and effectively shows not only that the article is wrong on historic grounds (i.e. the history of science), but that it was actually creationists of the time who originally thought pterosaurs couldn't fly. Speaking to creationists and referring to current knowledge, the last sentence sums it up nicely:
It is scientific researchers who got us here, not you; those outmoded ideas you are sneering at as having come from incorrect preconceptions came from your philosophical ancestors, not ours.
I have a long-standing rule of thumb that creationists simply cannot be trusted, and it is because of things like this. That's not to say that everything mainstream scientists write is 100% accurate (scientifically or historically), but I find that it's best never to accept a creationist argument at face value. The moment you think that a creationist has a good point is the moment you should be very cautious.
When Darwin first proposed the idea of common descent there seemed to be no evolutionary connection between humans and apes. Then the bones and fossils of extinct Neanderthals and other human/ape-like creatures began to come forth--some more like humans, some more like apes--providing confirmation that Darwin was on the right track. Meanwhile scientists began to discover that the proteins of humans and other apes were similar. When the structure and coding of DNA was worked out, scientists began determining the sequence of genes, culminating in the sequencing of whole genomes in the last 15 years or so, including that of Neanderthals. What scientists found in genetic sequence solidified the inferences already arrived at by other means: that among living species, humans are most closely related to chimpanzees and gorillas, with which they share a common ancestor. The evidence for common descent contained in our DNA is rich and multi-layered.
Creationists, however, counter that similarity of DNA is not evidence for common descent. Rather, it is evidence of common design. The basic idea is that since humans and chimpanzees (or any other grouping of species) have similar anatomy and physiology, it makes sense that the Designer would use similar genetic sequences. This assertion certainly has a commonsensical appeal since it casts biology as an extension of human experience in the modern era of mass production, computer programming, and bio-engineering.
The central paradox of this assertion is that in attributing commonalities to common design, one must also attribute to design many ordinary and mundane genetic characteristics that are otherwise explainable on principles of microevolution. Those who make the common design assertion rarely address the patterns of both similarities and differences.
The ABO blood system makes for an interesting case study. The system is a classic example of genetic co-dominance that is often taught in high school biology class, and is also a classic example of the need for matching in blood transfusions or organ transplants. The basis for the system is the pattern of certain molecules expressed on human blood cells and other organs and tissues. Everyone expresses the basic molecule called the H antigen, and if your blood type is O, that's the end of the story. People with A, B, or AB blood-type also have genes for glycosytransferases, which are enzymes that add an extra sugar molecule onto the H antigen--kind of like topping off a Christmas tree with a star, or adding a cherry to an ice cream sundae. The difference between A and B is the type of sugar molecule added to the H antigen. The A enzyme adds one kind, the B enzyme adds a different one. People with type O don't technically lack the transferase genes, they just have versions that are broken due to mutation, though there are no known diseases associated with this. The immune system of people with O or A type will react against type B antigen as a foreign invader, and the same applies to people with O or B in relation to A antigen. People with both genes (A and B) will make both antigens (A and B), and therefore their immune system will not react against A antigen, B antigen, or H (O) antigen.
The A and B glycosyltransferases are actually extremely similar. In fact, there are only four amino acids different between them, and only two of those determine which sugar the enzyme adds to H antigen. I have aligned the protein sequences [1] of the A and B transferases in the following figure. Letters are standard abbreviations for different amino acids (building blocks of proteins), and periods represent identical amino acids. I have highlighted the four differences, and the blue arrows point to the two key amino acids that determine which sugar is added:
If we were to look at the DNA sequence we would see seven differences, instead of just four. However, three of those differences do not change the amino acid sequence. The reason is that many amino acids have several three-letter DNA codes (codons), so changing one of those DNA letters may simply change the three-letter codon to an equivalent codon. Such mutations are called silent because they have no effect on protein function. In contrast, in the four highlighted examples the change in the underlying DNA resulted in a codon for a different amino acid.
These two sequences are so similar that it shouldn't surprise you to learn that scientists believe that one of them originated from the other. At some point one of the genes was duplicated (a common occurrence), and mutations gave one of the two copies a different specificity. And the changes didn't stop there. What I have shown are the two most common sequences for A and B, but some people have variants (alleles) that have other mutations. Most of those mutations are silent, but some of them do change amino acids in various parts of the protein.
The ABO blood groups have been looked at in other animals, and primates have the same basic system. The following (modified) figure shows the evolutionary relationship of various primate species and the blood types that have been found [2]. (Click for bigger image.)
The ABO types are found in varying combinations among hominoids, old world monkeys, and new world monkeys. Previously it was thought that the B alleles were re-created from the A allele in several different lineages. However, a more recent study [2] found that the A and B alleles of the various species are more closely related to one another (A to A, B to B) than any of the A alleles are to the B alleles (with the apparent exception of orangutans). This implies that both A and B were present in the ancestor of primates, and that in some lineages one or the other has been independently lost. In contrast, the O alleles are not all closely related to each other (since there are many ways to break a gene).
Remember, the part of the protein that determines whether the transferase acts as type A or B is dependent on those two amino acids. Interestingly, some primates have a silent mutation in their A gene at one of the important amino acids. I have illustrated this difference with the following figure (compare to the blue arrows in the first figure above):
For each transferase gene, A and B, the DNA sequence is given with the amino acid translation below. The A gene has two versions of the DNA sequence, with the silent mutation (T) in red. Although you might expect CTG and TTG to code for different amino acids, a quick consultation of a codon table shows that both code for leucine (L).
Now here's where things get interesting. Let's look again at the figure showing primate evolutionary relationships, but this time I'll show it without modification [2].
It turns out that the silent mutation in the A gene is only found in old world monkeys; hominoids and new world monkeys have the other version (CTG). Overall, hominoids are more closely related to old world monkeys than new world monkeys, as shown in the figure. But for this piece of the A gene, old world monkeys are different. The simple evolutionary interpretation is that the silent mutation, which is probably selectively neutral, occurred in the lineage of old world monkeys just after they split away from the hominoid lineage. An alternative explanation is that there were multiple independent mutations in the old world monkey lineage. Clearly, several different species independently having the exact same mutation arise and become dominant in the population is of much lesser probability.
So What?
With all of that as background, let's turn our attention to the assertion that similar DNA represents similar design rather than an evolutionary relationship. If the Designer was using similar genetic sequence to make similar organisms, why make a silent DNA change only in old world monkeys?
There are three basic creationist responses that I can think of. First, it could be that each old world monkey species with type A independently had that mutation arise and become fixed in the population. This is essentially the same alternative that was rejected above.
Second, a creationist might argue that the pattern of A alleles represents a sense of whimsy and artistry by the designer. After all, sometimes we do things just because we feel like it. That such alleged artistry happens to also fit an evolutionary scenario might give us pause. At any rate, if the defense of someone's hypothesis when contradicted by the data is simply to assert that the Designer just felt like it, they clearly are not engaged in a scientific discussion and are instead simply seeking to rationalize a conclusion they have already made.
A third creationist argument is more subtle. He/she might note that silent mutations can have an effect on the efficiency with which a protein is made. So perhaps that silent mutation in the A gene actually plays an important role in the context of old world monkey gene expression and physiology. This argument contains at least a grain of legitimate science. That this one silent mutation affects the efficiency of gene expression is highly doubtful, but is testable in principle. However, the notion that it is important for the long-term survival of old world monkeys becomes absurd when you consider that:
1. Like humans, not every member of a particular old world monkey species will have the A gene. Whatever effect the mutation has is irrelevant for those individuals.
2. At least two old world monkey species have apparently lost the A gene altogether! Clearly the mutation has no relevance for those species.
3. As mentioned above, there are other alleles of the A gene found in humans that contain other mutations, and the same holds for old world monkeys. Natural mutations clearly do occur in the A gene. How can naturally occurring mutations be differentiated from designed ones?
Conclusion
Here we summarize and circle back to the paradox of the common design argument. Considering the variability of the presence of A and B genes within individuals, populations, and species, and considering the fact that various polymorphisms exist within each species (some of which are silent, some of which are not), can the difference of a single silent nucleotide really be justified on principles of common design?
2. Ségurel L, Thompson EE, Flutre T, Lovstad J, Venkat A, Margulis SW, Moyse J, Ross S, Gamble K, Sella G, Ober C, Przeworski M. The ABO blood group is a trans-species polymorphism in primates. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Nov 6;109(45):18493-8. Figure 1 from the paper contained a mistake; the corrected version is here.
The current issue of the journal Science has a policy article discussing the pitfalls of using race in medical and genetic studies (Taking race out of human genetics). It is very easy to conflate race and ancestry, so I was struck by this paragraph that concisely explains the difference:
It is important to distinguish ancestry from a taxonomic notion such as race. Ancestry is a process-based concept, a statement about an individual's relationship to other individuals in their genealogical history; thus, it is a very personal understanding of one's genomic heritage. Race, on the other hand, is a pattern-based concept that has led scientists and laypersons alike to draw conclusions about hierarchical organization of humans, which connect an individual to a larger preconceived geographically circumscribed or socially constructed group.
Maybe that doesn't seem straightforward on a first reading, but it isn't that difficult to unpack. Ancestry is about who your ancestors were and where they came from. Basically it's the process of how you came to be. Race is a categorization that is made based on how you match up to a pattern. Barack Obama, for example, is equally of European and African ancestry. Yet in the United States his divided ancestry is usually collapsed into the racial category of black, based primarily on outward features that match the pattern associated with that race. If he had grown up in northern Minnesota, associated only with white people, and married a woman exclusively of Scandinavian ancestry, he still would never be considered white in the United States because he just doesn't look white (which is to say that his features don't match the pattern associated with being white).
I suppose this is all fairly mundane, but it is very easy to forget the distinction, and perhaps difficult to articulate. If I ever have reason to explain the difference, I'll remember that it boils down to process vs. pattern.
Richard Muller is a University of California, Berkeley physicist who took an interest in climate science. Concerned that the temperature data analysis done by other climate research groups might be flawed, a popular accusation of climate skeptics at the time [1], in 2010 Muller founded Berkeley Earth, an independent non-profit organization, to independently investigate the modern climate record. Climate skeptics were enthusiastic, with Anthony Watts even pledging to accept whatever result Muller found. Unsurprisingly, when Berkeley Earth's results basically confirmed those of NOAA, NASA, etc [2], Watts and other skeptics found reasons to be dissatisfied.
With that as background, last week Berkeley Earth released their analysis of 2015 and found it to be "unambiguously" the warmest year of the modern era.
In their press release, Berkeley Earth highlights the fact that they were conservative in not being willing to declare 2014 as the warmest year, as NASA and NOAA did.
Berkeley Earth has taken a cautious approach to announcing hottest years. A year ago, we announced that 2014 was not a clear record, but only in a statistical tie with 2005 and 2010. Now, however, it is clear that 2015 is the hottest year on record by a significant margin.
As you can see from the figure above, the average global temperature fluctuates from year to year, yet there is clearly an underlying trend. Skeptics have charged that there has been no warming since 1998, which was a strong El Niño year. This 'pause' in warming has been trumpeted as though it is incompatible with warming due to CO2 emissions. Although the timescale was too short to be certain of any particular trend, even some mainstream climate scientists began to treat the pause as a real phenomenon, though usually attributing it to temporary secondary factors (e.g. La Niña). Others thought it might just be statistical noise. In the press release Muller says,
This new high temperature record confirms our previous interpretation that the pause was temporary and that global warming has not slowed.
Now that 2015 is the unambiguously warmest year (NOAA, NASA, and the U.K.'s Met Office Hadley Centre all agree on this), will talk of the pause vanish? It would not be surprising if the next few years--maybe even a decade--are not as warm as 2015 [3]. Is it too cynical of me to think that skeptics will start speaking of 2015 as the beginning of a new pause? Alternatively, they may discount 2015 as a strong El Niño year, ignoring the fact that 1998 was also a strong El Niño year. Or perhaps we will hear a lot more about the virtues of satellite data, which are more amenable to the skeptical view as demonstrated by a recent hearing held by Rep. Lamar Smith and Sen. Ted Cruz?
I'll end this post by including a short video of an interview with Richard Muller from a couple of years ago, where he explains how he came to join the scientific consensus.
Notes:
1. The 'climategate' brouhaha began at the end of 2009. You remember climategate, right? Remember how stolen emails were breathlessly reported to show that the warming was based on a biased and dishonest analysis?
2. It turns out that government grants are so powerful that even an organization not funded by the government is compelled to arrive at the scientific consensus. Government grants are some seriously strong stuff!
Last month the journal Nature published a news article, The science myths that will not die. It lists five myths that, while based on a kernel of truth, are actually false. They are:
1. Screening saves lives for all types of cancer
2. Antioxidants are good and free radicals are bad
3. Humans have exceptionally large brains
4. Individuals learn best when taught in their preferred learning style
5. The human population is growing exponentially (and we're doomed)
Myths can extend into the history of science as well, as a linked article from 2013 illustrates. Most of it revolves around Joseph Meister, the first person saved from rabies by a vaccine made by Louis Pasteur. The story goes that when the Nazis invaded Paris, they asked Meister, who was working as a caretaker at the Pasteur Institute, the location of Pasteur's grave. In an act of loyalty, Meister shot and killed himself rather than give up the location of the tomb.
However, newer research tells a very different and more tragic tale. (Those darn revisionist historians!) As the Nazis approached Paris, Meister sent his wife and children away. Believing that they had been killed in a bombing campaign, he committed suicide by gas a few hours before they returned. Eugene Wollman, a scientist at the Pasteur Institute, wrote of this in his diary, "Life has an extraordinarily refined cruelty."
Anyway, back to the first article: It is accompanied by a box where Nature lists the myths most frustrating to doctors and scientists polled by Nature.
1. Vaccines cause autism
2. Paracetamol (acetaminophen) works through known mechanisms
3. The brain is walled off from the immune system
4. Homeopathy works.
OK, really? The idea that acetaminophen works through known mechanisms frustrates doctors and scientists? I guess I fell for this one in that I assumed the mechanism of acetaminophen's actions were known. But how on earth does this rise to such levels of irritation as to be listed with vaccines/autism and homeopathy? Is this just a thing among pharmacologists? Does anybody out there know?
The post title may be a little clickbaity, but the words aren't mine. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks published a column yesterday in which he wrote that on climate change,
the G.O.P. has come to resemble a Soviet dictatorship — a vast majority of Republican politicians can’t publicly say what they know about the truth of climate change because they’re afraid the thought police will knock on their door and drag them off to an AM radio interrogation. [1]
Comparisons to Hitler, the Nazis, Stalin, or other authoritarian regimes of history are a dime a dozen these days. Ordinarily we might expect the charge that Republicans are acting like Soviets to come from someone on the left wing of the U.S. political spectrum, but Brooks comes from the right and seems to be giving voice to a quiet minority (presumably) within his own party [2].
Brooks's column led New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait to muse about the GOP's orientation toward climate change, citing data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to rebut a Wall Street Journal columnist's recent assertions. Continuing, Chait wrote,
Of course, refuting climate-science skepticism with NOAA data runs into the problem that Republicans reject NOAA data. House Science Committee chairman Lamar Smith has used his power to accuse federal scientists of falsifying climate data. Smith has no evidence to support his charge, but the accusation is in keeping with the conservative belief that the theory of anthropogenic global warming is the product of a vast conspiracy among thousands of scientists worldwide to enrich themselves. (The chairman of the Senate’s environment committee is a fellow subscriber to this theory.) The theory is just as bonkers as the belief that the government faked the 9/11 attacks or the moon landings, with the main difference being that it informs a first-order public policy question and is also accepted doctrine within one of the two major American political parties.
The current spat between Smith and NOAA is where Brooks's comparison to the Soviets perhaps becomes most relevant. Soviet agriculture and biology were harmed for decades because the ideas of Trofim Lysenko became party doctrine. Thousands of mainstream Russian biologists were disposed of in one way or another and the Russian people suffered the consequences of such wrong-headed biology. It may seem absurd that a political organization would take a stand on the proper way to understand biology, but such is life in the political world, I guess.
This is not to say that the GOP treatment of government scientists in any way rises to that of the Soviets. Nevertheless, the Soviet experience does serve as a historical warning of the foolishness of political parties standing against the scientific mainstream. And it certainly must be demoralizing to many scientists to persistently be held in such contempt by roughly half of the legislative branch of government, and most of their potential executive heads.
It doesn't have to be this way. Just a couple of weeks ago The Atlantic did an article on conservative solutions to climate change. If Republicans would take the issue seriously, they might be able to build a legacy on this issue to be proud of.
Increasingly I have seen political commentators suggest that the GOP is becoming post-truth and post-policy [3]. I hope that they are wrong, but lately my hope finds little encouragement. However, as the saying goes, hope springs eternal.
Notes:
1. Maybe it's just me, but I get the feeling Brooks's statement is true for a number of issues.
2. Senator Lindsay Graham has been outspoken on this, but he seems to be alone among presidential candidates. And anyway he has almost no support in the polls.
3. Post-truth, meaning that party leaders tell blatant lies as a matter of course. Post-policy, meaning that the party has no meaningful policy solutions, but lives only by stoking resentment over current policies and advancing purely symbolic fights.
Recently I became aware that the evolutionary history of whales is based on fraudulent information. At least that seems to be the common belief of creationists. We might expect them to be resistant to the fossil and genetic evidence for whale evolution, but what makes it fraudulent?
Some Background
First we need to step back a few decades to get some historical perspective. Prior to 1979 very little was known about the early evolution of whales. Mammals evolved on land long before whales appeared in the fossil record. Therefore, since whales are mammals, you would expect whales to have their evolutionary roots in land mammals. However, there wasn't much fossil evidence to go on. That started to change when, working in Pakistan, paleontologist Philip Gingerich discovered the skull of a land mammal that was similar in form to a wolf. Gingerich noticed a couple of grape-sized bones of the middle ear that were only known to exist in cetaceans (whales, dolphins, etc). This strongly suggested that the newly discovered animal, Pakicetus, was a relative of whales. Over the next few decades, Gingerich and his former student, Hans Thewissen, discovered a number of other related fossils showing various degrees of adaptation to water, and each with the distinctive cetacean middle ear bones.
Scientists initially believed that whales were most closely related to a group of extinct mammals called Mesonychids, which are related to Artiodactyls (cattle, pigs, hippos, etc). However, most experts now believe that whales are more closely related to Artiodactyls based on two principle lines of evidence [1]. First, in the late 1990s a Japanese group found that whales and hippos share some common genetic markers (LINEs and SINEs) that are not shared by other Artiodactyls, suggesting that they share a common ancient ancestor that is not shared by other Artiodactyls or Mesonychids. Second, some of those fossils discovered by Gingerich and Thewissen turned out to have an ankle bone (double-pulley astragalus) that is a defining feature of Artiodactyls.
Let's pause for a moment to make this clear. We have fossils that have one feature diagnostic for cetaceans, and another feature diagnostic for Artiodactyls. Also, modern whales share some unique genetic markers with hippos (which are Artiodactyls). It's almost as if...whales....evolved from....a group of ancient Artiodactyls [2].
The Fraud
So where does the fraud come in? A creationist named Dr. Carl Werner (apparently a physician by training) interviewed some of the paleontologists that study cetacean evolution, especially Gingerich (2001) and Thewissen (2013). Werner produced an anti-evolution video series and published an accompanying book titled, Evolution: the Grand Experiment, with one chapter devoted to whales. For the 2014 third addition of his book, Werner produced a press release that breathlessly lays out the main charges, even though much of it pertains to information over a decade old. During his filmed interviews, Gingerich and Thewissen spilled the beans on how shaky the whale evolutionary scenario is. These amazing revelations included the following:
1. Although the tail of the ancient cetacean Rodhocetus has not been found, Gingerich initially speculated that it had a fluke at the end of it. Also, initially the limbs were not recovered so he speculated that Rodhocetus had flippers. Limbs were later recovered, leading Gingerich to doubt that they were flippers, and ultimately doubt that it had a tail fluke. However, various museums were still displaying drawings of Rodhocetus with flippers and a fluke. Somehow all of this disqualifies Rodhocetus as a transitional fossil and serves as evidence that evolutionary scientists freely spread misinformation.
2. When Thewissen discovered the skeleton of Ambulocetus, part of the upper jaw was missing, along with the nasal opening. The remaining lower jaw allowed him to judge how long the upper jaw would have been. However, the location of the nasal opening is not known. Thewissen's model placed the nasal opening a few inches back from the end of the snout. Since the actual location of the nasal opening isn't known, Thewissen's model is biased and misleading.
3. In discussing the middle ear of Ambulocetus, Thewissen acknowledged that a part called the sigmoid process, which was previously thought to be diagnostic for cetaceans, was 'questionable'. This admission revealed that there was no basis to consider Ambulocetus a cetacean. When combined with #2 above, it was clear that Ambulocetus as a transitional whale fossil was a figment of wishful thinking.
More to the Story
When I first came across these claims I did some Internet searching to see if there was any response. These charges were clearly popular because all kinds of creationist websites dominated my search results. Eventually I found an anonymous message board where one of the participants claimed to have contacted Dr. Thewissen and received a reply, which he posted. Thewissen confirmed that Werner did interview him.
He had me answer the same question a number of times. Usually journalists do this when the answer that a scientist gives is too technical, so usually the scientist rephrases the answer in a more simple way. When Werner shot in my lab, he would ask the same question multiple times, and I simplified my answers more and more each time he repeated a question. He then put my answers together in a creative way that makes it all look pretty silly....
The written piece that you sent me, I had never seen before. It does not discuss the critical piece of information that shows that Pakicetus and Ambulocetus are whales: the thick inner part of the tympanic bone of the ear, called the involucrum. It is not clear to me why this is not presented, as scientists agree that this is the most critical feature. Instead, the video focusses on another part of the tympanic bone, the outer part, which indeed is different in shape in different whales, and occurs in some whale relatives too (artiodactyls are the closest relatives to whales, no wonder that their ears have similarities). So, that feature needs to be qualified when it is explained. In a simple sound bite such as the ones that Dr. Werner presents, those qualifiers are not present and that causes that particular feature to look pretty inconclusive in the way it is presented there.
Since this comes from some unidentified person on a message board, you might be skeptical that it actually came from Thewissen, as you should be. However, the response also drew attention to a video that Thewissen made to help clarify the issues around Ambulocetus, though without direct reference to the creationists. Indeed, the YouTube video does exist! And it's worth watching.
Let's return to the issue of the sigmoid process and the involucrum for a moment. Werner's website quotes a 1998 publication by another whale expert (Zhe-Xi Luo) as follows.
"Other diagnostic characters, such as the sigmoid process as discussed below, are now open to question in the wake of the new fossil evidence from Pakicetus...[The] sigmoid process [in Pakicetus] is a simple plate [and is] equivocal, [since it is also] present in the artiodactyl Diacodexis...compromising its utility as a "dead ringer" apomorphy [unique trait] for cetaceans."
However, this editing leaves out an important preceding sentence from the original publication (a book, by the way, that was edited by Thewissen) (bolding added).
Cetaceans including pakicetids have only one unambiguous bullar synapomorphy that is absent in all noncetacean mammals--the involucrum, or the pachyosteosclerosis of the medial margin of the bulla. Other diagnostic characters, such as the sigmoid process, as discussed below, are now open to question in the wake of the new fossil evidence from Pakicetus and Ichthyolestes.
Luo's argument is rather technical, but the gist seems to be that the sigmoid process should not be considered a definitive sign that an ancient fossil is a cetacean. However, as stated by Luo, that still leaves the involucrum! I wonder if Werner missed that sentence.
Summary and Conclusion
So let's summarize the answers to the supposedly devastating admissions by Gingerich and Thewissen, numbered as above.
1. So far as I know, Gingerich never responded to Werner. Paleontologists often do not recover all of the bones of a fossil skeleton, so their reconstructions sometimes contain some guesswork based on other information. Carl Zimmer's book, At the Water's Edge, which profiled Gingerich's work, stated that most of the tail of Rodhocetus was missing, "preventing [Gingerich] from knowing whether it had grown flukes at its tip." Zimmer's book was published two or three years before Werner interviewed Gingerich, so Gingerich was hardly making a new admission to Werner. Werner's complaint has some justification as far as accuracy of reconstructions go. However, that does not negate the features that make Rodhocetus a cetacean that could function both on land and in water. Rodhocetus retains its place in the evolutionary transition of cetaceans from land to water.
2. Although Thewissen did not know exactly where the nasal opening of Ambulocetus was, its close relation to another fossil suggested that the opening had migrated a bit from the tip of the snout. The exact location of the opening is not important. When you look at the broad picture of cetacean evolution, you see the nasal opening migrate back from from the tip of the snout toward the eyes, where we know it in modern cetaceans as the blowhole.
3. The sigmoid process is a strong indicator of being a cetacean, but is apparently now considered not entirely definitive. However, the involucrum is considered definitive, and all of the fossils in question have an enlarged involucrum.
There are other issues I have not addressed, on both sides. Werner and other creationists have a few other criticisms that I haven't run down, some of which are rooted in a cartoon version of how evolution or science works. Similarly, there are other evidences derived from both living and ancient cetaceans that yield further evidence of, and insight into, cetacean evolution.
In conclusion, the notion that evolution, both in general and as applied to whales, has fallen like a house of cards remains a creationist fantasy. Nor is there any evidence of actual fraud; only some perhaps ill-advised artistic license. In this case, Werner has employed classic creationist tactics of selective quotation and ignoring important context. The evolutionary history of whales remains in good shape.
1. There are actually a number of other characteristics that support the relationship, but they are more subtle.
2. Either that, or God created whales on the fifth day of creation, some with a distinctive ankle bone they hardly used, if at all. And then, for some reason, He created a bunch of land Artiodactyls on the sixth day of creation with that same ankle bone, and in a few cases threw in the whale-like middle ear for good measure.
If you paid any attention to last week's Republican primary debate and the subsequent commentary, you'll know that there was some controversy over Dr. Ben Carson's answer to a question about his involvement with a dietary supplement company. From the transcript:
CARL: This is a company called Mannatech, a maker of nutritional supplements with which you had a ten-year relationship. They offered claims that they could cure autism, cancer. They paid $7 million to settle a deceptive marketing lawsuit in Texas, and yet your involvement continued. Why?
CARSON: Well, that's easy to answer. I didn't have an involvement with them. That's total propaganda. And this is what happens in our society. Total propaganda. I did a couple of speeches for them. I did speeches for other people. They were paid speeches. It is absolutely absurd to say that I had any kind of relationship with them.
Do I take the product? Yes, I think it's a good product.
CARL: To be fair, you were on the home page of their website with the logo over your shoulder.
CARSON: If somebody put me on their home page, they did it without my permission.
What Carson called 'total propaganda' turned out to be total truth, leading a writer at the conservative National Review to call Carson's answer "bald-faced lies." Further documentation of Carson's history with the company can be found here and here.
My interest here is in two statements he previously made about the product, separated by about 9 years.
The wonderful thing about a company like Mannatech is that they recognize that when God made us, He gave us the right fuel.
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God gave us [in plants] what we need to remain healthy. In today’s world our food chain is depleted of nutrients and our environment has helped destroy what God gave us.
Underlying much of advocacy for alternative health, anti-GMO, and anti-vaccination is the fallacious belief that 'natural' is better. Taking extracts of various plants is better than taking a drug, natural so-called organic foods are better than those that have been altered by genetic technology, and having an infectious disease somehow gives better immunity than a vaccine. Scientifically this is all baloney, at least in the broad strokes, but it sure has marketing appeal.
Carson's statements could be classified as a theological subset of the fallacious appeal to nature. I don't know whether he actually believes what he said, or whether this is religious rhetoric in the service of sales. It is certainly true that many useful drugs are derived from naturally occurring substances, but that doesn't seem to be Carson's point. Taken at face value, he seems to believe that edible plants in the natural world (created by God) contain the solutions to our health problems. Except, I guess, for the ones we already use.
This seems like a rather presentist belief to hold, by which I mean you have to ignore most of human history, during which life expectancy was pretty low compared to today. Many of our foods are the end products of artificial selection, and increased understanding and technology have allowed us to fortify common food items with a variety of dietary necessities (iodine in salt, vitamin D in milk, folic acid in flour, etc). As a result, dietary diseases like scurvy and rickets are practically unheard of in developed countries. To claim that our food is depleted of nutrients seems exactly backwards, except in the sense that many people choose to eat unhealthy foods.
In Carson's case, prostate cancer supposedly sparked his interest in Mannatech. I say supposedly because Carson has claimed that Mannatech's product alleviated his cancer symptoms. However, the documented timeline suggests that Carson had already had his prostate removed by the time he found Mannatech. At any rate, the notion of adding some exotic supplement to your diet as a way to prevent or treat cancer is the way of snake oil. Wrapping snake oil in praise for the providence of God still leaves you with snake oil.
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