An Evolutionary Prediction with Teeth

I don't think this needs additional comment. From the author summary of a paper published earlier this month:

Enamel is the hardest substance in the vertebrate body. One of the key proteins involved in enamel formation is enamelin. Most placental mammals have teeth that are capped with enamel, but there are also lineages without teeth (anteaters, pangolins, baleen whales) or with enamelless teeth (armadillos, sloths, aardvarks, pygmy and dwarf sperm whales). All toothless and enamelless mammals are descended from ancestral forms that possessed teeth with enamel. Given this ancestry, we predicted that mammalian species without teeth or with teeth that lack enamel would have copies of the gene that codes for the enamelin protein, but that the enamelin gene in these species would contain mutations that render it a nonfunctional pseudogene. To test this hypothesis, we sequenced most of the protein-coding region of the enamelin gene in all groups of placental mammals that lack teeth or have enamelless teeth. In every case, we discovered mutations in the enamelin gene that disrupt the proper reading frame that codes for the enamelin protein. Our results link evolutionary change at the molecular level to morphological change in the fossil record and also provide evidence for the enormous predictive power of Charles Darwin's theory of descent with modification.

Reference:

Meredith RW, Gatesy J, Murphy WJ, Ryder OA, Springer MS. (2009) Molecular Decay of the Tooth Gene Enamelin (ENAM) Mirrors the Loss of Enamel in the Fossil Record of Placental Mammals. PLoS Genet 5(9): e1000634.

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President Uchtdorf's Creation Conundrum

I've been kind of lazy about blogging lately. So here is something quick that I had intended to post on a while ago, but had forgotten about.

Last year at the October 2009 General Relief Society meeting, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf gave a talk that included counsel to exercise individual creativity. That portion of the talk served as the basis for this brief Church video.




Here is an excerpt:

...remember that you are spirit daughters of the most creative Being in the universe. Isn’t it remarkable to think that your very spirits are fashioned by an endlessly creative and eternally compassionate God? Think about it—your spirit body is a masterpiece, created with a beauty, function, and capacity beyond imagination.

It struck me as odd that President Uchtdorf used spirit bodies as examples of masterpieces of creation. First, to say that most people have never seen a spirit body is--I think it's safe to say--an understatement. When I read those words all I can do is imagine that he's right. Why choose something that most people can't directly identify with?

But beyond that, the human (physical) body is often held up as an example of God's marvelous creations. (For examples, see here, here, and here.) Why didn't President Uchtdorf follow suit? Maybe he just wanted his example to correspond to his earlier use of the words "spirit daughters". Or maybe he was being sensitive to the body-conscious among his audience by using a more abstract and idealized example. But I can't help but wonder: Is it possible that he intentionally avoided a traditional example of natural theology? If so, why?

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What Is BYU Doing for Science Education in Utah?

An article in the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach describes an outreach program in Utah for aiding the teaching of evolution in state public schools. The program is called the Utah Evolution Education Program and six of the nine authors of the article are BYU faculty (plus at least one former). From the article, Evolution Education in Utah: A State Office of Education–University Partnership Focuses on Why Evolution Matters:

The Utah Evolution Education Program is a partnership between the Utah State Office of Education, individual school districts throughout the state, and a group of seven university professors with backgrounds in evolutionary biology, genetics, and geology. Our primary goal is to provide resources to teachers as they apply the state science standards in biology and earth systems, both of which rely on knowledge of the theory of evolution. Beyond this, our efforts are focused on creating a forum in which school boards, public school administrators, public school teachers, and our university team can openly discuss concerns and challenges to teaching evolution in each respective school district. Finally, our program is designed to empower public school teachers with recent advances in evolutionary biology that can be integrated into their curricula and that clearly illustrate the value of evolutionary biology as a theory with practical applications to improve the human condition. In short, our approach is to show all members of the public school community—including elected school boards, administrators, public school teachers, and ultimately students—what evolution is and why it matters.

If you would like more detail, go read the whole thing. Oh, and Go Cougars!

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BYU Is Different, But Not So Different

Recently Elder Jan Paulsen had the following to say about teaching evolution in Church schools.

To those who teach at our colleges and universities, let me say that you have a demanding, often difficult, but sacred assignment. It is a ministry you hold in trust. It is understood that to care for your ministry responsibly you have to take your students on many a journey of findings into various disciplines of study. They need to know what they will meet in their profession and in life. As part of that exercise you will also expose them to the elements and concepts of evolution. That is understood.

...however, I appeal to you that when you take your students out on the journey, you bring them safely back home before the day is over. And their home must always be in the world of faith. You owe it to the students, you owe it to God, you owe it to their parents, you owe it to the church, and you owe it to yourself as a believer to safely guide them through difficult moments on their journey.

Before continuing, take a moment and consider whether you agree with Elder Paulsen.

Alright, now I need to fill in some of the context. First of all, I should mention that Elder Jan Paulsen is the current leader of the Seventh-day Adventists (yes, they call him 'Elder'), and the quote above comes from a statement he released in response to a controversy over the teaching of evolution at La Sierra University, a church-owned school.

Seventh-day Adventists take a literal approach to Genesis. As Paulsen put it,

We reaffirm the Seventh-day Adventist understanding of the historicity of Genesis 1-11: that the seven days of the Creation account were literal 24-hour days forming a week identical in time to what we now experience as a week; and that the Flood was global in nature.

In fact a Seventh-day Adventist, George McCready Price, pretty much pioneered "flood geology," which has become a pillar of young-earth creationism. (Speaking of Price, this is the same George McCready Price that Joseph Fielding Smith was fond of, and James E. Talmage sought to discredit. For more, see here. But I digress.)

You can read about the controversy here. It appears that at least some of the science faculty take pride in their work and try to teach science as science. So when a student wrote a paper that one of the professors judged to be shallow on science while containing creationist apologetics, the professor told the student that the paper was unacceptable and he received a lower grade. Emails were exchanged, and before long the controversy moved beyond the university with outsiders upset that the university was teaching evolution as "fact."

It will all probably blow over. For one thing, the university president is on the side of the professor. And as for the professor,

Bradley says he’s felt no pressure to change anything about his course, and says bluntly that he doesn’t plan to turn his class into a theological seminar, or to present evolutionary theory only to then dismantle it for students. While he’s fine with helping students work through struggles of faith, Bradley says he won’t undercut decades of peer reviewed scientific research in the interest of religious consistency.

“I am not OK with getting up in a science course and saying most science is [B.S.],” he said.

For some strange reason this all seems familiar to me. I mean, it's not like this kind of thing would ever happen at BYU. Oh no, never.

I don't know what morale is like among BYU biologists. My sense is that it's pretty good and that the university is more supportive of them now than ever before. But I imagine there are days when they feel misunderstood. On such days perhaps they can take some consolation that faculty at other religious universities face the same problem. And they can count at least one blessing: the leader of our Church has not affirmed a 24/7 creation week.


Discussion question: Do you agree with Jan Paulsen, even though his world of faith may be different from yours?

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Making Hash of Science, Religion, and Politics

In cryptography a "one way hash function" is a mathematical operation or algorithm that is easy to do, but difficult to undo. For example, one can multiply two prime numbers together quite easily. However, given only the result, it is difficult to figure out which two prime numbers were multiplied together, especially when the number is large. In fact if the the number is large enough, supercomputers may take years to figure it out.

Today I was reading a little essay on FactCheck.org, "Health Care and the 'One Way Hash'" that used the concept of a "one way hash" as an analogy for the kind of work they do--trying to get past sound bites to the more complicated reality. Credit for the analogy actually goes to Julian Sanchez at the Cato Institute, whom they quote:

Sanchez: The talking point on one side is just complex enough that it's both intelligible—even somewhat intuitive—to the layman and sounds as though it might qualify as some kind of insight. (If it seems too obvious, perhaps paradoxically, we’ll tend to assume everyone on the other side thought of it themselves and had some good reason to reject it.)[*] The rebuttal, by contrast, may require explaining a whole series of preliminary concepts before it's really possible to explain why the talking point is wrong. So the setup is "snappy, intuitively appealing argument without obvious problems" vs. "rebuttal I probably don't have time to read, let alone analyze closely."

Upon reading this I immediately thought of the many anti-Mormon or creationist arguments I've encountered that are so wrong-headed that I've hardly known where to begin.

Sanchez's original post is about our need to rely on qualified authorities when making judgments about technical issues. He points out that legitimate authorities often have to contend with "one hash arguments," and that lay people are therefore likely to be misled if they ignore the authorities and try to judge the issues for themselves. And it turns out that the paragraph quoted above was about the "one hash arguments" of Intelligent Design proponents.

Anyway, I love the analogy and I think I may start making use of it. FactCheck concludes with advice that applies beyond public policy.

Keep this in mind the next time you see what looks like a knock-down, one-sentence argument for your favorite public policy option. If it looks like a pretty obvious (but not too obvious) argument, there’s a decent chance that you’ve just found yourself a one way hash.

I think that goes for arguments both for and against.


* You would think that some arguments would be too obvious, but apparently not. Skeptics of global warming, for example, say all kinds of things that seem so obvious that, if they were true, you would wonder how mainstream scientists could be so stupid and still survive into adulthood.

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