Ciencia y Religión.

The New York Times y el creacionismo en las escuelas

2008-06-16T22:02:00.003+02:00

Últimamente, este periódico estadounidense ha dedicado mucho espacio al creacionismo como consecuencia del debate reabierto en Texas sobre si merece o no ser una asignatura curricular. A continuación, y gracias a la amable colaboración de los señores Kat y Peis, un Editorial y una retahíla de cartas al director. Lo mejor, la viñeta para ilustrar todo esto, de Mikel Urmeneta (director creativo de kukuxumusu).

Mikel Urmeneta

Editorial
The Cons of Creationism
When it comes to science, creationists tend to struggle with reality. They believe, after all, that evolution by means of natural selection is false and that Earth is only a few thousand years old. They also believe that students who are taught a creationist view of biology — or who are taught to disregard the Darwinist view — are not being disadvantaged.
The Texas State Board of Education is again considering a science curriculum that teaches the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, setting an example that several other states are likely to follow. This is code for teaching creationism.
It has the advantage of sounding more balanced than teaching “intelligent design,” which the courts have consistently banned from science classrooms. It has the disadvantage of being nonsense.
The chairman of the Texas board, a dentist named Don McLeroy, advocates the “strengths and weaknesses” approach, as does a near majority of the board. The system accommodates what Dr. McLeroy calls two systems of science, creationist and “naturalist.”
The trouble is, a creationist system of science is not science at all. It is faith. All science is “naturalist” to the extent that it tries to understand the laws of nature and the character of the universe on their own terms, without reference to a divine creator. Every student who hopes to understand the scientific reality of life will sooner or later need to accept the elegant truth of evolution as it has itself evolved since it was first postulated by Darwin. If the creationist view prevails in Texas, students interested in learning how science really works and what scientists really understand about life will first have to overcome the handicap of their own education.
Scientists are always probing the strengths and weakness of their hypotheses. That is the very nature of the enterprise. But evolution is no longer a hypothesis. It is a theory rigorously supported by abundant evidence. The weaknesses that creationists hope to teach as a way of refuting evolution are themselves antiquated, long since filed away as solved. The religious faith underlying creationism has a place, in church and social studies courses. Science belongs in science classrooms.

Letters
Evolution and Creationism in Schools

To the Editor:
Re “The Cons of Creationism” (editorial, June 7):
The debate over science versus creationism is in part fueled by the notion that everybody’s opinions and beliefs are equally valid. While in a democratic society we should be respectful of each other’s opinions and beliefs, this is not how science operates.
The scientific method has well- defined rules by which we decide whether a solution to a scientific problem is correct or not. It is not that we believe or have the opinion that a certain solution is correct — we prove it scientifically one way or another.
Thus there are right and wrong solutions that may seem unfair, undemocratic and elitist. But this is how science advances and produces the marvelous technological developments that surround us. And this is not a belief. It is a fact.
Ivan K. Schuller La Jolla, Calif., June 7, 2008
The writer is a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego.
•
To the Editor:
In addition to the points you raise, I’d add the fact that time wasted teaching the “nonsense” of creationism is time that could be spent teaching real science in order to improve our ability to compete globally.
It is highly unlikely that the children of those countries that outperform the United States on international science examinations are taught a “creationist system of science.”
Colleges and universities, through their admissions process, can play a positive role in encouraging the teaching of widely accepted scientific fact. Admissions officers should carefully evaluate whether a graduate of any school that teaches creationism, in any of its guises, is appropriately equipped for college-level course work.
Benjamin HodesPittsburgh, June 7, 2008
•
To the Editor:
Each time yet another school district considers including creationism in its science curriculum, I find myself wishing that the role of theory in science were more widely understood.
Theories are not simply speculations about how the world works. They’re intellectual tools that suggest and guide research, and in order to do so, they must be disprovable.
Creationism, resting on the actions of an all-powerful being whose intentions are not fully knowable, cannot specify what evidence would prove the “theory” false. That is, there are no findings that couldn’t be explained away by saying God simply makes the evidence look the way it does — for reasons no human can fully comprehend.
Teach creationism in a class on comparative religions or contemporary social issues, if you like. But don’t confuse it with science; it is not. School board members should know that.
Susan Mayer Chicago, June 7, 2008
•
To the Editor:
Re “Opponents of Evolution Are Adopting New Strategy” (news article, June 4):
If the faith-based Texas state legislators, Texas State Board of Education members and advocates at institutions like the Discovery Institute are serious about improving classroom instruction by requiring “strengths and weaknesses” analysis to the factual claims of evolution, why do they not take it a step further and require the same method of inquiry for religious studies?
Somehow, I think this is not about to happen!
Theo DzielakNorth Seattle, Wash., June 4, 2008
•
To the Editor:
Your article quotes Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist who is chairman of the education board in Texas, as saying: “I believe a lot of incredible things. The most incredible thing I believe is the Christmas story. That little baby born in the manger was the god that created the universe.” I am very surprised to read that Jesus Christ created the universe.
It is well to remember that the theory of evolution rests on paleontology, paleoanthropology and biology, which rest on geology; geology on geophysics; and geophysics on physics (including cosmology).
Rejection of evolution is therefore the same as rejecting all of science, the evolution from the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago to the present. Surely, mysteries remain. We may never understand all of them, but try we must.
Oswald WernerAlbuquerque, June 4, 2008
The writer is professor emeritus of anthropology at Northwestern University.
•
To the Editor:
I was surprised to read that scientists are panicked that groups are advocating that public schools teach and discuss the strengths and weakness behind the theory of evolution.
Quite frankly, I thought this is what scientists were supposed to do, and I thought this is what we want our youth to do during the educational process.
Our body of scientific knowledge grows because scientists continue to explore, examine and research the weaknesses and strengths of all scientific theories. This was Albert Einstein’s brilliance, questioning and probing the prevailing beliefs of theoretical physics to prove them correct or to correct their errors.
Any scientist who is afraid of an honest, open discussion and exploration of the weaknesses and strengths on any scientific theory is not a good scientist and should be barred from academic research.
Unfortunately, we are living in an era where the scientific community is not open to allowing individuals to question the prevailing theories of evolution. We will all lose if this attitude prevails.
Linn HowardPittsburgh, June 4, 2008
•
To the Editor:
No reputable college or university will teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of atomic theory or the theory of gravity.
Evolutionary theory is no different, although I begin to despair whether it will ever be possible to drive a stake through the heart of the ever-shifting manifestations of the creationist.
David P. BarashRedmond, Wash., June 4, 2008
The writer, an evolutionary biologist, is professor of psychology at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Cuasiespecies y poder

2008-05-26T11:21:00.001+02:00

Antes de empezar, un aviso para navegantes. Si piensas que los virus no son modelos válidos para estudiar evolución porque opinas que son tan simples como un chupete no pierdas el tiempo. Esta no es la entrada que necesitas leer ahora. Primero acércate al mundo de los virus, conoce cómo funcionan, cómo son las relaciones que establecen con los hospedadores a los que infectan, y cuando veas la enorme complejidad que aportan a la biología de los "otros" seres vivos, vuelve y lee esta entrada. No es de recibo encontrar comentarios del tipo "extrapolar los datos experimentales con virus a evolución en general es mucho extrapolar".

Un tema tremendamente interesante en evolución y poblaciones es el de la estructura poblacional denominada cuasiespecie (fue tema de este blog allá por octubre de 2007). Para recordar un poco el concepto, una cuasiespecie es un conjunto de individuos diferentes pero íntimamente relacionados que se caracterizan por ser, como conjunto, el elemento de selección. Esta última aseveración ha podido ser demostrada empíricamente en dos trabajos muy buenos de los grupos de Karla Kirkegaard en Stanford (Plos Pathogens) y Raul Andino en UCSF (Nature), aunque Juan Carlos de la Torre trabajando en el laboratorio de John Holland en La Jolla ya dio una primera pista (JVI). Como podréis observar en estos artículos, el modelo de estudio son virus RNA de cadena positiva. Hasta ahora se han encontrado estructuras poblacionales de tipo cuasiespecie en virus RNA de cadena positiva y negativa, y en virus DNA de genoma pequeño (tipo parvovirus). Y esto es debido a que son virus que replican con una alta frecuencia de mutación como consecuencia de la falta de actividad correctora de errores de las polimerasas que dirigen su ciclo replicativo.

Pero el objetivo de esta entrada no es profundizar en la biología de las cuasiespecies, sino en la filosofía del concepto. ¿Filosofía? SI. Un trabajo muy bueno que están llevando a cabo Isabel Cacho (filósofa) y Jordi Gómez (biólogo) tiene como núcleo central analizar desde la perspectiva de las cuasiespecies las relaciones que se establecen en términos de poder. Empezaron con Nietzsche y las conclusiones que mostraron dan para mucho, aunque aquí intentaré ser breve. El artículo original lo podéis encontrar aquí. Como comentan los autores en el artículo (las negritas son mías),

"For Nietzsche, the idea that the struggle of life can be explained as a competition (a war of all against all) ignores the immense amount of co-operation in the struggle (simultaneous co-operation and competition), because this struggle is not to preserve one’s life, but rather in the main to achieve power:

«My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (its will to power) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement (‘union’) with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they conspire together for power. And the process goes on» [F Nietzsche, La voluntad de poderio (Madrid: EDAF,S.A., 1981), 271-465].

In order to remain coherent with this premise, Nietzsche could not agree that the result of the struggle of life is the triumph of the fortunate individual endowed with the strongest constitution. Rather, the result is that average individuals will finally beat the exceptional ones, and this is so because average individuals, being greater in number than their exceptional counterparts, in their urge for self-improvement, will interact to confront the strongest [G Deleuze, Nietzsche y la filosofía, ed. S.A.Editorial Anagrama, (Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, S.A., 1986), 59-104; F Nietzsche, Crepúsculo de los ídolos, ed. Alianza Editorial S.A., (Madrid: Alianza Editorial S.A., 1973), 85-128; F Nietzsche, La gaya ciencia, ed. S.A.R.B.A.Proyectos Editoriales, (octava: R.B.A. Proyectos Editoriales,S.A., 1984), 169-217.]"

Y para subrayar la conexión experimental con el tema del poder los autores continúan diciendo,

"To date, science has not produced a mechanistic description of how power relationships operate that would allow us to investigate Nietzsche’s criticisms of Darwin experimentally. Moreover, as pointed out by J. Gayon in a recent systematic evaluation of Nietzsche’s work with regard to Darwinism [J. Gayon, Biology and the Foundation of Ethics, eds. J.Maienschein and M.Ruse, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 154-97], such studies have been rare in philosophy since the middle of the last century [...] Average individuals will finally beat the exceptional ones, and this is so because average individuals, being greater in number than their exceptional counterparts, in their urge for self-improvement, will interact to confront the strongest".

Por tanto, a la pregunta inicial, ¿sobrevive el más adaptado, el más fuerte, el más fit? Para los virus RNA, para las estructuras denominadas cuasiespecies, la respuesta parece que es NO. ¿Y para el resto de organismos? Los conceptos tipo organismo y especie se emplean aunque cada vez con menos fundamento. Si tenemos en cuenta que nosotros mismos somos una amalgama de componentes, algunos de ellos con entidad propia como bacterias y virus, y todos ellos cooperando, la respuesta se complica. Aunque viendo como se comporta el mundo en general y los seres humanos en particular, me apunto a la conclusión subyacente en el trabajo:

"...mutants distinguished by a lower replication component may outnumber those distinguished by the highest component, but the main point is that this happens within the structure of internal interaction relationships, and in particular within the structure of Nietzschean power relationships, and not as a result of a comparison-selection process."

De Plos Biology

2008-05-20T18:25:00.001+02:00

Un artículo sobre creacionismo y evolución en las aulas:

Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait

en una revista con acceso libre (Plos Biology).

El País vs. New England Journal of Medicine

2008-05-19T09:12:00.005+02:00

En El País de hoy aparece un artículo firmado por Mónica Salomone titulado:

¿Dios creó al hombre o el hombre creó a Dios?
Científicos de Oxford investigan la estructura cerebral que aloja la creencia religiosa

Y Einstein aviva el debate desde la tumba

Todo va muy bien hasta que se dice:
"En uno de los trabajos se pedía a voluntarios -un grupo de creyentes y otro de no creyentes- que recitaran textos mientras se les sometía a un escáner cerebral. Al recitar un determinado salmo, en los cerebros de creyentes y no creyentes se activaban estructuras distintas. No es sorprendente. "Se da por hecho", explica Cudeiro; lo mismo que hay áreas implicadas en el cálculo o en el habla."

No he leido el trabajo, lo haré, y se lo que puede ocurrir cuando hablas con periodistas. Pero esa conclusión, así sacada... Esa frase: "se da por hecho"... comparando el hecho religioso con el cálculo o el habla.

Prefiero el comentario a un artículo aparecido en New England Journal of Medicine el pasado enero, firmado por SH Snyder:

Seeking God in the Brain — Efforts to Localize Higher Brain Functions

Menos periodístico, más neutro.

Viajar, cambiar (II)

2008-05-19T09:12:00.003+02:00

Volviendo al tema de la entrada del 14 de abril, sobre la importancia de conocer otros sitios y maneras de trabajar-pensar, y cambiar, tan importante en el resto de actividades creativas y tan poco estimulado en la actividad investigadora.

Hace poco, en un tribunal de habilitación le echaron en cara a un amigo que había cambiado mucho de tema durante su carrera investigadora. Y no le habilitaron, entre otras cosas, por esto. Quien hizo este comentario es desde hace unos meses presidenta de la parte sanitaria del sistema investigador español. Vaya. Cambiar de tema es malo. Se lo diré este otoño a CW, que va mal, que ese no es el camino, que debe cambiar de actitud porque si no lo hace, su carrera investigadora será un fracaso. Aunque creo que llegaré tarde y no podré evitar que el mismo investigador destaque primero como biólogo molecular biotecnológico (site-directed mutagenesis), más tarde como virólogo evolutivo (cuasiespecies), descubridor de los genes de los interferones, y una de las dos patas de los priones junto a Prusiner. Claro que, hacer lo que a uno le va llevando la vida, los resultados y/o el placer de trabajar, en ciertos lugares no será bien visto, nunca.

Sin embargo, es importante. Cambiar de tema y/o de enfoque enriquece nuestro trabajo. Y te pone las pilas. Por eso, y también por evitar la endogamia, es importante cambiar.

Enlace al blog de Roque (uamblogger)

2008-05-17T22:22:00.004+02:00

Porque me parece imprescindible que todo lo que ocurre se conozca y que igualmente se sepa que existen soluciones, que estas soluciones se aplican en otros países, y que aquí cuesta un riñón siquiera que te escuchen, copio y pego una entrada del blog de Roque (http://uamblogger.blogspot.com/2008/05/los-ms-precarios-de-los-ms-precarios.html ).

Lo mejor, las propuestas:
- Creación de sistema de evaluación de tutores por parte de doctorandos, con la posibilidad de impedir la tutela académica a tutores reincidentes en malas prácticas. Valoración de la tutela recibida de cada doctorando que abandone el doctorado.
- Sustitución de ayudas-puente de posgrado por contratos-puente de sueldo mínimo interprofesional, por un año.
- Inclusión de todos los doctorandos en todos los protocolos del servicio médico.
- Inclusión de todos los doctorandos en todos los programas de riesgos laborales y riesgo psicosocial.
- Creación de una comisión tutelar sobre doctorando y Director de Tesis al estilo sueco.
- Creación de un protocolo de riesgos sobre muestreos.
- Apoyo a la creación de una figura Nacional de Defensor del Investigador tal y como establece el charter europeo.
- Apoyo y firma desde la UAM de la Carta Europea del Investigador y su Código de conducta en la Contratación.

Y el compromiso firme de intentar aplicar en mi universidad los protocolos descritos.

Recogida de firmas

2008-05-08T19:25:00.014+02:00

La asociación Círculo Escéptico está recogiendo firmas para:
1.- La inmediata transposición al Ordenamiento Jurídico Español de la Directiva 2005/29/CE, especialmente urgente si tenemos en cuenta que el plazo que la propia Directiva establecía para su incorporación al Derecho interno de los Estados miembros finalizó el 12 de diciembre de 2007.
2.- La adopción de cuantas modificaciones legislativas sean necesarias para la prevención, persecución y adecuado castigo de los fraudes perpetrados aprovechando las creencias religiosas o paranormales de las víctimas, incluyendo la reforma del Código Penal con el fin de considerar como constitutivos de estafa aquellos fraudes cometidos aprovechando la credulidad de las víctimas.
3.- La aplicación de políticas activas de prevención de este tipo de fraudes, incluyendo la realización de inspecciones, el control de la publicidad engañosa o desleal, y la creación de procedimientos administrativos sencillos y rápidos para la tramitación de denuncias y alertas promovidas por los ciudadanos y las asociaciones de consumidores.

Si te interesa, el enlace a la carta es:

http://www.circuloesceptico.org/cartas.php?ver=5

Adnar Oktar encarcelado

2008-05-08T19:25:00.012+02:00

Hace un año hablábamos en este blog, aquí y también aquí, de Adnan Oktar, un autor muy prolífico y creacionista convencido, que envió a cientos de profesores de biología un atlas de la creación. Ha sido procesado y condenado a tres años de prisión según comunica la agencia Reuters. Parece que además de creer que Dios creó todo, pensaba que lo creó para su beneficio.

Apadrina un postdoc

2008-04-22T22:41:00.003+02:00

Y todavía estamos así...
El enlace aquí.

Charles Darwin on-line

2008-04-17T13:52:00.005+02:00

La obra completa de Charles Darwin junto a muchísimo material relacionado ya está accesible on-line en http://www.darwin-online.org.uk/

Noticia comentada en El País hoy.

En El Mundo ya salió el 20 de mayo de 2007, y la comentamos en este blog.

Edward Lorenz

2008-04-17T05:34:00.002+02:00

Muere Edward Lorenz, padre de la teoría del caos, a los 90 años

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Edward Lorenz, padre de la teoría del caos y quien mostró cómo pequeñas acciones pueden provocar grandes cambios en lo que podría ser conocido como el "efecto mariposa," falleció el miércoles a los 90 años debido a un cáncer, dijo el Instituto de Tecnología de Massachusetts.
Lorenz, un meteorólogo, descubrió en la década de 1960 que las pequeñas diferencias en un sistema dinámico como la atmósfera podrían desencadenar enormes cambios. En 1972 presentó un estudio titulado "Predictibidad: ¿El Batir de las Alas de una Mariposa en Brasil Provoca un Tornado en Texas?."
Nacido en 1917 en West Hartford, Connecticut, Lorenz obtuvo títulos en matemáticas de la Escuela de Dartmouth en 1938, de la Universidad de Harvard en 1940, y títulos en meteorología del Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts (MIT, por sus siglas en inglés) en 1943 y 1948.
Mientras trabajaba como hombre del tiempo para la División Aérea del Ejército de Estados Unidos en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, decidió estudiar meteorología.
"Cuando era niño siempre estuve interesado en hacer cosas con números y también estaba fascinado con los cambios en el clima," escribió Lorenz en una autobiografía.
"Al mostrar que ciertos sistemas deterministas tienen límites de predictibilidad formales, Lorenz puso el último clavo en el ataúd del universo cartesiano y fomentó lo que algunos han llamado la tercera revolución científica del siglo 20, pisándole los talones a la relatividad y la física cuántica," dijo Kerry Emanuel, profesor de ciencia atmosférica en MIT.
"También era un perfecto caballero y a través de su inteligencia, integridad y humildad fijó un muy alto estándar para las generaciones siguientes," añadió Emanuel en un comunicado.
En 1991, Lorenz ganó el Premio Kioto de ciencias básicas en el campo de tierra y ciencias planetarias.
El comité del premio dijo que Lorenz "hizo su más atrevido logro científico al descubrir el 'caos determinista', un principio que ha influenciado profundamente un amplio rango de ciencias básicas y provocó uno de los más dramáticos cambios en la visión que la humanidad tenía de la naturaleza desde Sir Isaac Newton."
Lorenz, quien disfrutaba del excursionismo y el esquí de fondo, se mantuvo activo hasta dos semanas antes de su muerte en su hogar en Cambridge, Massachusetts, dijo su familia. Dejó a tres hijos y a cuatro nietos. (Reporte de Maggie Fox; Editado en español por Ricardo Figueroa)
© Reuters 2008 All rights reserved.

Viajar, cambiar

2008-04-14T17:09:00.004+02:00

Hace tiempo que quiero escribir sobre este tema pero sacar algunos minutos de tranquilidad para pensar cómo hacerlo se ha convertido en una misión imposible. Sin embargo, ciertos acontecimientos que han ocurrido a mi alrededor últimamente me han permitido encontrar el enfoque perfecto. Siempre pensamos sobre religión en términos científicos, pero ¿qué tiene de religioso la ciencia?

En cuanto a creencia en algo, en el mundo científico encontramos muchas personas profundamente religiosas, pero muchas más supersticiosas. ¿Somos los científicos supersticiosos? La respuesta, contundente, SI. La diferencia entre religión y superstición es grande, hay que ser consciente de esto. Pero están emparentadas.

Es normal que, como consecuencia de nuestro trabajo, tengamos la necesidad de tener todo bajo control, desde los sujetos de estudio a las condiciones en las que dicho estudio se realiza. Sin embargo, muchas veces damos tanta libertad a esa necesidad real que termina convirtiéndose en algo mágico, así como en una esclavitud. Todos tenemos malas rachas de resultados y, cuando al final del túnel encontramos la solución, la manera en que llegamos a ella se convierte en LA VERDAD. ¿Con razón? Obviamente NO.

Todos tenemos nuestra superstición particular y por eso es tan importante cambiar, viajar. Te das cuenta de que no solo es tu manera la que funciona, la de los demás también. Al final, viajar, cambiar, es una cura para muchas enfermedades. Y en este negocio mucho más. Cuando en investigación se apela a la necesidad de cambiar de laboratorio, evitar que la gente realice toda su carrera investigadora en el mismo sitio, no es solo por evitar la endogamia, que también. Se evita la superstición, que es aún peor.

PD: hoy en El País.

Artículo en Campus (El Mundo)

2008-04-11T11:10:00.002+02:00

http://www.elmundo.es/suplementos/campus/2008/514/1207692006.html

INVESTIGACIÓN
El 'Ramón y Cajal' no evita el éxodo de cerebros Pese al esfuerzo económico del estado en este programo, muchos científicos son reacios a incorporarse a centros de investigación en España. La falta de transparencia en la carrera y la ausencia de incentivos salariales parecen ser algunos de los escollos
E. LANDALUCE

Durante los debates entre José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero y Mariano Rajoy, el incremento de la inversión en I+D+i por el ejecutivo durante la pasada legislatura fue presentado por el ganador de las elecciones como la mejor cura para sanear la maltrecha economía española. No le falta razón. Sin embargo muchos científicos piensan que la apuesta por la ciencia en España peca todavía de falta de ambición y es poco atractiva para los cerebros españoles que en la actualidad trabajan en centros en el extranjero.
Es el caso de Miguel Cámara, especialista de Microbiología Molecular que en la actualidad investiga para la Universidad de Nottingham. En 2001 le fue otorgada una de los asignaciones del programa Ramón y Cajal para establecer en una universidad española su propia área de investigación en comunicación intercelular en bacterias. Tras años en el inhóspito clima británico, el retorno resultaba una opción muy atractiva.
¿Por qué no la aceptó? "Entonces no se me ofreció garantía de una plaza al final de mi contrato. Además, la universidad en la que actualmente trabajo me proporciona otras cosas impensables en instituciones y centros españoles, como posibilidades de ascenso y una infraestructura de investigación puntera. Se me remuneran debidamente mis logros con subidas extras de sueldo...". También afirma que muchos científicos españoles prefieren seguir en el extranjero "porque se les reconocen mucho más sus méritos en investigación y se les acepta por estos y no por sus contactos". Laura Morales, investigadora de la Universidad de Manchester, también fue seleccionada por el programa Ramón y Cajal en la convocatoria de julio de 2007.
Sin embargo todavía no sabe si aceptará la oferta de algún centro de investigación. "Volver a tu país es siempre un aliciente. Pero significaría perder un tercio de mi sueldo, además de la libertad y autonomía de la que gozo en Manchester, donde cuento con mi propio equipo de investigación. Pasaría a depender de un catedrático o de un jefe de departamento que en ocasiones incluso tiene un currículo inferior al mío".
"También me preocupa que no haya un reglamento claro sobre cómo escalar puestos, ni tampoco incentivos económicos. Un ejemplo es que nosotros no tenemos derecho a los complementos salariales que puede tener un ayudante doctor. Y que no nos promocionan antes de que transcurran los cinco años porque entonces pierden las ayudas económicas que supone el programa". Cámara coincide en este análisis: "Si un científico tiene un currículo brillante en el extranjero y se le quiere convencer para que regrese a España se le debe dar una oferta atractiva y razonable. Lo mínimo es -aparte de una plaza fija- una infraestructura decente. Nadie con una carrera establecida estaría dispuesto a aceptar estas condiciones. Por mi parte, mantengo que España está a años luz de Reino Unido".
Por otro lado, la rigurosidad burocrática limita el afán de superación de los científicos, como denuncia Noemí Cabrera, secretaria general de la Asociación Nacional de Investigadores Ramón y Cajal (Anirc): "En el CSIC hay un investigador al que le queda un año de contrato y acaba de recibir bastante dinero de Europa por un proyecto que acaba de presentar. Pero el CSIC le ha rechazado la investigación porque sólo le queda un año de contrato". También defienden desde Anirc que "la financiación de las universidades debería ligarse a objetivos de investigación -y no sólo a alumnos egresados-. Así se lograría un mayor compromiso por parte de las instituciones". "Es una pena ver que se entrena a gente muy buena en nuestro país y que luego otros países se aprovechan de sus cerebros. Como español que adora su gente y su cultura, esto me duele mucho", concluye Cámara.
Estabilidad garantizada por el ministerio
La estabilidad de la plaza en el centro que les reclamaba era una de las preocupaciones de los científicos repatriados con el Programa Ramón y Cajal. Una vez transcurridos los cinco años que duraban las ayudas, el contrato se extinguía. Sin embargo, desde 2007 los contratos por obra y servicio que hasta ahora se podían ofrecer a los investigadores pasan a tener carácter indefinido y obliga a los centros contratantes a garantizar la plaza a los investigadores. Noemí Cabrera afirma que "es cierto que desde el Gobierno se está haciendo todo lo posible por estabilizar laboralmente a los investigadores. Sin embargo, todavía quedan muchos de las primeras convocatorias que se les están a punto de extinguir los contratos sin que se les ofrezca ninguna solución. No obstante, Cabrera reconoce el apoyo del Ministerio de Educación a estos
investigadores: "Aparte de iniciativas como I3, programa que incentiva los contratos estables a investigadores pagando los tres primeros años de sueldo, se está pensando en trabajar con alguno de los Cajales mediante líneas independientes de financiación".

Carta en El País

2008-03-28T09:47:00.002+01:00

Programa Ramón y Cajal
JOSÉ VICENTE DIE, PRESIDENTE DE LA FEDERACIóN JóVENES INVESTIGADORES (FJI). CÓRDOBA. ÁNGELES LARIO (Presidenta de la Asociación Nacional de Investigadores Ramón y Cajal (ANIRC)) - Madrid - 28/03/2008

El pasado 18 de marzo aparecía en su periódico un artículo sobre el descenso de solicitudes de investigadores en el Programa Ramón y Cajal.
Los gestores de dicho programa achacan la disminución del número de solicitudes al descenso de la motivación de los estudiantes de ciencias, como si fueran estos últimos quienes realizan las solicitudes en dicho programa.
Nada más lejos de la realidad, ya que para optar al mismo se requiere estar en posesión del título de doctor y tener un currículo con méritos más que probados. La edad media de quienes consiguen estos contratos está en torno a 38 años (10 años después de haber leído su tesis doctoral).
Si uno observa las estadísticas del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, responsable de este programa, encontrará que el número de nuevos doctores en 2004 fue de 7.500, mientras que en 1994 fue de 5.000. Es decir, el número de potenciales candidatos nacionales a presentar solicitud en el Programa Ramón y Cajal ha aumentado desde finales de los años noventa en casi un 50% para mantenerse estable en cifras que rondan los 7.000 nuevos doctores cada año.
Quizá los gestores en su análisis sobre las vocaciones no han pensado que dicho programa no contempla inversiones iniciales significativas y continuadas para que el recién llegado pueda poner en marcha sus investigaciones, lo que puede ser crucial para investigadores de su experiencia. Es posible que tampoco hayan considerado importantes los estragos en el número de solicitudes producidos por la negativa de varios centros a acoger beneficiarios de este programa, tras requerirse a los centros en el año 2007 el lógico compromiso de estabilizar al investigador que superara las evaluaciones pertinentes durante sus cinco años de contrato.
Con análisis como éste por parte de los responsables de las políticas de recursos humanos en I+D+i, uno comprende quizás por qué estamos como estamos.

Sexo, mentiras y cintas de video

2008-03-05T11:10:00.004+01:00

Como una película.

Estamos asistiendo al tira y afloja entre un periodista y un ministro a golpe de blog. Desde su rincón en El Mundo, Arcadi Espada tiraba la primera piedra, el ministro de Sanidad y Consumo Dr. Bernat Soria, ha inflado su nota autobiográfica. El ministro, desde su propio blog, se defiende basándose en la presunción de inocencia. Hoy Arcadi demuestra como falsas algunas de las afirmaciones curriculares.

Y resonando aquellas palabras a los investigadores españoles que trabajan en el Karolinska Institute: "¿Qué tenemos que hacer para que volváis?"

Las entradas a cada blog, ordenadas cronológicamente, son:

1. La primera de Arcadi:
http://blogs.elmundo.es/elmundo/2008/03/01/elmundopordentro/1204369700.html

2. La respuesta de B. Soria:
http://www.elblogdebernat.es/?p=33

3. La réplica de Arcadi:
http://blogs.elmundo.es/elmundo/2008/03/04/elmundopordentro/1204633203.html

Y mientras, los demás, luchando por nuestra gente que no se puede estabilizar (nosotros mismos no podemos), por los proyectos, los artículos...

Del blog El Retorno de los Charlatanes

2008-03-02T19:23:00.004+01:00

Acabo de leer una entrada muy buena, con cartel incluido, sobre todas esas "religiones" paralelas y paralelos (ovnis, curanderos...) El enlace es:

http://charlatanes.blogspot.com/2008/03/ovnis-ostepatas-y-otras-ondas.html

Encontrar el cartel me ha resultado muy curioso porque ilustró un seminario en mi universidad sobre la sanidad en la II República española.

En ABC ayer.

2008-02-29T11:25:00.001+01:00

Europa premia una investigación española rechazada cuatro veces por el Gobierno

S. BASCO. MADRID.
El pasado día 15, el Consejo Europeo de Investigación (ERC, European Research Council), en el marco de su programa «Ideas», seleccionaba entre más de nueve mil trabajos una línea de investigación presentada por Eduardo Moreno Lampaya, jefe del Grupo de Competición Celular -adscrito al Programa de Patología Molecular- del Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO).

La selección del proyecto de investigación «Supercompetidores» por parte del ERC conlleva una dotación económica de un millón de euros durante cinco años, a la mitad de los cuales Eduardo Moreno deberá presentar una memoria sobre el curso de sus trabajos, que ahondan en el estudio del mecanismo biológico por el que las células cancerosas prosperan en las etapas pretumorales, eliminando a las células sanas sin provocar malformaciones ni señales de alarma. La beca da al científico la posibilidad de trasladar sus estudios a otras instituciones de investigación europeas, ya que es personal, y Moreno podría formar un nuevo equipo de trabajo fuera de España. Sin embargo, el jefe del Grupo de Competición Celular del CNIO prefiere seguir sus investigaciones en nuestro país.

Valoración a la baja
Lo relevante del caso no es, con ser importante, la selección del proyecto por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, sino que esta misma línea de trabajo fue propuesta durante cuatro años consecutivos al Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia con el fin de obtener fondos para su desarrollo, y otras tantas veces fue desestimada, en cada ocasión con una valoración más baja que en la anterior.

Esta repetida descalificación no ha impedido que la ministra de Educación y Ciencia, Mercedes Cabrera, felicitara al investigador en una carta remitida el pasado día 20, a la que ha tenido acceso ABC, en la que afirma que la selección del proyecto de Moreno Lampaya «es una merecida recompensa al esfuerzo y al trabajo realizado a lo largo de su carrera, y un estímulo para perseverar en el futuro. Como ministra de Educación y Ciencia -continúa Cabrera-, quiero transmitirle mi reconocimiento y animarlo a continuar desarrollando su trabajo de investigación dentro de los máximos estándares de calidad».
No parece que antes de la distinción por parte del ERC el proyecto de Moreno Lampaya transitara «dentro de los máximos estándares de calidad», a juzgar por la opinión del Ministerio y de sus comisiones de evaluación.

Eduardo Moreno, en declaraciones a ABC, considera que «algo extraño, cuya naturaleza se me escapa, ha ocurrido en el Ministerio con relación a este proyecto». El investigador ha respondido a la felicitación de la ministra con una carta abierta, a la que ha accedido también este diario, en la que comunica a Cabrera que «este mismo proyecto de investigación ha sido rechazado cuatro años seguidos por la agencia de evaluación de su Ministerio».

«Los dos primeros años se me dijo que no funcionaría -continúa Moreno-, que era demasiado ambicioso y que no había evidencia de que lo que yo buscaba existiese... Cuando ya era evidente que el proyecto funcionaba y que los genes que yo buscaba sí parecían existir... de modo extraoficial se me vino a decir que yo era un arrogante. Este año..., en parte porque ya no tengo confianza en su sistema de evaluación, ni siquiera me he presentado a la convocatoria de su Ministerio».

«¿El siguiente paso será tener que marcharme del país? -se pregunta el investigador-... Esencialmente me van echando poco a poco, y de momento Europa me acoge por segunda vez».
Moreno Lampaya, que hizo su tesis de la mano de Ginés Morata, Príncipe de Asturias de Investigación Científica, ha desarrollado su labor, entre otros centros, en el Instituto de Biología Molecular de Zúrich, en el Instituto de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa, del CSIC, y ahora en el CNIO. No es en absoluto un recién llegado, puesto que ha publicado ya buen número de trabajos en las más prestigiosas revistas científicas. El último, el pasado 14 de enero, en «Nature Reviews Cancer», sobre cómo las células tumorales prosperan por «asesinato» de las células sanas, su campo de trabajo favorito. Y no le ha faltado la financiación de la Comunidad de Madrid, Caja Madrid y la Mutua Madrileña.

«Becarios exprimidos»
Ayer, mientras un grupo de «becarios exprimidos», pertenecientes a la Federación de Jóvenes Investigadores, entregaba a la ministra Cabrera un simbólico cesto de naranjas en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Eduardo Moreno comentaba a este diario que «más que un problema político es cultural... en España las autoridades se asustan ante los proyectos arriesgados e innovadores. Te dicen «esto no lo ha hecho nadie en el mundo». Claro, si ya se hubiese hecho no lo investigaríamos». El joven científico -Madrid, 1970-, cree que «debe modificarse el sistema de evaluación de proyectos, que aquí es anónimo a diferencia de Europa; y falta, sobre todo, una apuesta decidida por la investigación y el futuro».

Lo racional y lo razonable

2008-02-07T11:20:00.000+01:00

Gracias al Blog de Arcadi Espada (http://www.arcadiespada.es/) he llegado hoy a un interesante artículo de Fernando Savater publicado hoy por El País (http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/racional/razonable/elpepiopi/20080207elpepiopi_4/Tes)
Me gusta el artículo porque aporta una pausa y una reflexión. Savater hace el esfuerzo de pararse y pensar. Ese es su trabajo al fin y al cabo. Define conceptos elementales que a veces se nos olvidan. Y concluye, entre otras cosas, que "es preciso no confundir lo racional con lo razonable".
Apunta con tino que: "sólo los bárbaros, es decir los profetas integristas, pretenden darlas (las tradiciones) por nulas y no avenidas en nombre de alguna verdad incontrovertible y aplastante, revelada por Dios o por la ciencia".
Y es que lo divertido es razonar y discutir. O no?
PD: Además aprovecha para repudiar a James Watson. Cosa que a mi personalmente, después de la lectura de la Doble Hélice, me llena de placer.

La evolución es un hecho científico

2008-01-16T11:10:00.001+01:00

Esto es lo que dice la revista Nature en su editorial del último número. También proporciona un enlace (http://www.nap.edu/sec) a un librito muy útil. Lo publica la Academia Nacional de Ciencias de USA. Se puede descargar gratis. Habla de lo que es y lo que no es ciencia, de los últimos descubrimientos, discute el creaccionismo... en fin interesante.

Aunque con retraso... vamos allá!

2008-01-14T22:49:00.002+01:00

Para empezar el año con congoja (acongojados más bien), la noticia de la que ya se han hecho eco todos los blogs del mundo mundial, charlas creacionistas que aterrizan en España, y algunas de ellas en universidades... Comentarios en Magonia, La Muerte de un Ácaro, Evolucionarios, El PaleoFreak, y muchos otros que se pueden descubrir en Evolucionarios.com.

Las charlas en la universidades han ido siendo canceladas... una lástima. Se pierde una buena oportunidad de poner en claro los fundamentos lógicos de cada una de las posturas. Como ejemplo, lo que se cuenta en el blog ERV (en inglés), un sitio mantenido por una estudiante de doctorado americana que asistió a una de estas charlas, y que ha dedicado buena parte de las entradas (enlazadas aquí) a destronar a los creacionistas que se cruzaron en su camino. A veces llega a ser divertido.

Aunque después de pasar las vacaciones navideñas con la familia, unos días tan preñados de creencia, la sensación de que vivimos con lo que creemos más que con lo que sabemos la tengo muy presente. Y la mayoría de la gente prefiere creer que saber.

No se vayan todavía... que aún hay más!!!

2007-12-12T14:20:00.000+01:00

Siguiendo con el tema de política científica, un poco de publicidad de la mala para nuestro deteriorado sistema. Una carta al director de El País:

¿Que investiguen ellos?
Alejandro Pérez de Luque (Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible-CSIC Alameda del Obispo, Córdoba y 54 firmas más) 12/12/2007

Aquellos que no estén familiarizados con la investigación, deben saber que los recursos para investigar (equipamiento, reactivos, personal técnico y de apoyo, etcétera) se obtienen a través de convocatorias públicas de ayudas para proyectos de investigación. Dentro del Plan Nacional de I+D+i existe una modalidad que permite a jóvenes investigadores (de hasta 40 años) optar a estas ayudas como investigadores principales liderando un proyecto. Es una de las pocas opciones que tienen las jóvenes promesas de la investigación en este país, como los contratados Ramón y Cajal, de conseguir recursos para desarrollar sus propias líneas de trabajo y demostrar que están capacitados para liderar y coordinar un proyecto de investigación.

Sin embargo, los investigadores de la "promoción" 2007 del programa Ramón y Cajal van a perder esa oportunidad. Los 250 mejores jóvenes investigadores (de edad media 35 años) que han sido seleccionados para disfrutar del codiciado contrato, para muchos de los cuales ha supuesto la única posibilidad de volver desde el extranjero, no podrán optar este año a la convocatoria de proyectos para jóvenes investigadores. La resolución de convocatoria del Plan Nacional de I+D+i de este año los deja automáticamente imposibilitados para solicitar ninguna ayuda, ya que establece que los investigadores deben formar parte de la plantilla del centro en el que se solicita la ayuda desde el día en que se publica la resolución. Y hasta la fecha, y por el injustificable retraso de más de dos meses del mismo Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, todavía no se ha formalizado ningún contrato Ramón y Cajal de la convocatoria de este año.

Pues eso... y luego el ministro pregunta a los españoles del Karolinska que qué tienen que hacer para que vuelvan... como si no fueran evidentes los defectos del sistema.

Bueno, a este paso cambiaré la temática del blog, me olvidaré del creacionismo (ganas de dejar de leer tonterías no me faltan) y me pasaré a la política científica.

Un poco más de política científica

2007-12-10T06:44:00.000+01:00

Desde el Instituto de Salud Carlos III se lanza ahora otro tipo de contrato de nombre muy sonoro, Miguel Servet. No teníamos bastante con Ramón y Cajal, y Juan de la Cierva (y está pendiente también Severo Ochoa)... mucho nombre que solo busca publicidad en los medios. Será que Flora de Pablo, como Bernat Soria, a pesar de toda su experiencia en el laboratorio no conoce la realidad científica española?

Qué envidia me dan los franceses a veces. Y aunque su sistema está empezando a hacer aguas, me dan mucha envidia con sus planes de empleo científico. Distintas categorias dependiendo de tu experiencia y de lo que busques en tu futuro profesional. Y sin marca publicitaria. Dos ejemplos enlazados, el INSERM (como el ISCIII) y el CNRS (el paralelo del CSIC).

Cerebros y loterías

2007-12-08T18:48:00.001+01:00

Hoy, el diario El País, da la noticia: Que vuelvan los cerebros.

Desde 1992 el gobierno de España quiere que vuelvan los cerebros.

Pero vamos mal, muy mal. El ministro de Sanidad y Consumo Bernat Soria, se dirigió a un grupo que investiga en el Instituto Karolinska de Estocolmo (Suecia) con esta pregunta: "¿Qué podemos hacer para que volváis a España?"

Que un ministro como Bernat Soria que, según la biografía del ministerio

"es doctor en Medicina y Catedrático Extraordinario de Medicina Regenerativa. Ha sido presidente de la Sociedad Española de Biofísica (1997-2000), de la Sociedad Española de Ciencias Fisiológicas (1996-98), de la Sociedad Española de Diabetes (2000-2004) y presidente la Federación Europea de Sociedades de Biofísica (2003-2005). Ha sido Profesor Visitante en distintas universidades y conferenciante invitado por las principales sociedades científicas. Ha recibido numerosos premios en reconocimiento de su labor científica, entre ellos la Medalla de Oro y Premio de la Real Academia Nacional de Medicina"

pregunte a los que están fuera y no sepa cuáles son los problemas de la carrera investigadora en este país no dice nada bueno. Y que otros como Javier Sáez Castresana, director de la Unidad de Biología de Tumores Cerebrales en la Universidad de Navarra, autor de un reciente artículo titulado "Diez razones para que investigadores españoles en el extranjero no vuelvan", lo tengan tan claro, sigue sin decir nada bueno del ministro y su ministerio. Por cierto el artículo de Sáez Castresana no lo he podido localizar en la hemeroteca de El País...

Vamos, al final será que
desde 1992 el gobierno de España quiere que vuelvan los cerebros.
Y yo quiero que me toque la loteria, pero no juego.

Creacionismo, creacionismo, creacionismo... en la entrada número 100

2007-12-03T16:34:00.000+01:00

En el número de este mes de EMBO Reports encontramos un interesantísimo comentario sobre creacionismo, ciencia, religión, sociedad... Eso si, en inglés. Para ser la entrada número 100 creo que no está mal.

EMBO reports VOL 8 NO 12 2007 1107
analysis science & society

As the noted geneticist and evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900–1975) amously commented, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” However, creationism in its many forms insists that everything in nature was created by a deity: from the movement of chloride ions through a channel in response to the binding of a ligand, to the bizarre life-forms that were deposited in the Burgess Shale more than 500
million years ago. To any mainstream biologist, creationism sounds ludicrous and scientists have repeatedly fought attempts to introduce the teaching of creationism generally, and intelligent design particularly, into school curricula. However, like many scientists and commentators, Jerry Coyne, Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, IL, USA, fears
that the social impact of these movements could extend far beyond the purely scientific
debate. Therefore, scientists need to counter the claims of the proponents of creationism and determine which arguments best support the case for evolutionary theory and, more generally, support science itself in the public arena.

From its heartland in America’s ‘Bible belt’, creationism is slowly extending its reach. “It’s difficult to quantify, but my strong sense is that creationism is spreading across Europe,” said Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the University of Cambridge, UK. “Ten years ago the movement was negligible. Today, it is clearly more substantial.” Last year, the Guardian reported that 59 schools in the UK were using information about intelligent
design as “a useful classroom resource” (Randerson, 2006).

Biologists have long-debated whether and how to respond to claims that the theory of evolution must be taught together with more or less biblical interpretations of the origins of life on Earth. However, the fervour of the anti-evolutionary lobby means that it is now a question of how, not whether, biologists must educate the public about evolution and natural selection. Yet, scientists face a dilemma. The danger is that if scientists engage the proponents of creationism and intelligent design in direct debate, they risk giving further credence to anti-evolutionary arguments by inferring that the ideas are worthy of discussion. Conversely, a failure to engage in debate could allow creationists to argue that biologists cannot, rather than will not, counter their arguments.

Creationism itself is not a unified movement; its various incarnations encompass a gamut of philosophical positions (Scott, 2000), including intelligent design. As Michael Coates, in the
Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago, IL, USA, noted: “[intelligent design] covers a wide spectrum of beliefs—just as creationists include anything from believers in a god that did no more than light the blue touch-paper of life, the universe and everything, through to a strongly interventionist deity who counts dead sparrows, answers prayers and directs the occasional thunderbolt.”

The Catholic Church—one of the most historically ardent opponents of Darwin’s grand theory of evolution—has made its peace with the subject. Before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote that, “[w]e cannot say: creation or evolution, inasmuch as these two
things respond to two different realities. The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the ‘project’ of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary— rather than mutually exclusive—realities” (Ratzinger, 1995).

Taking on creationism Which arguments and evidence counter pseudoscience? …the fervour of the antievolutionary lobby means that it is now a question of how, not whether, biologists must educate the public about evolution and natural selection. Proponents of intelligent design might
accept some minor aspects of evolutionary theory. However, intelligent design by definition denies that mutation and natural selection can explain, for example, the evolution of chordates from echinoderms. It draws its intellectual roots from a teleological argument that has been supported by some philosophers since Plato’s Timaeus. The English theologist William Paley (1743–1805) formulated the most famous example: if one found a watch, the order, complexity and purpose would argue for a watchmaker. Similarly, because the universe shows order, complexity and purpose, there must be a creator.

According to Conway Morris, such teleological seeds often fall on fertile ground. “Many creationists are genuinely astonished by the diversity of living organisms,” he said. “[A]s biologists, we tend to use mechanistic metaphors, which implicitly encourage the idea of a maker. So, one can see why the idea of an intelligent designer appeals to someone not versed in evolutionary theory. [Intelligent design] is not science and I think it’s bad theology, but I can see why people hold the view.”

This might explain why so many educated people take intelligent design seriously, as Coyne commented: “Intelligent design is attracting some serious attention, it’s not just a few quacks who think that the earth is flat.” During a debate held in May, three out of the ten Republican candidates for the US presidency said that they did not believe in evolution. “We should worry when the fundamentalists start to run public budgets and gain, or attempt to gain, political influence,” Coates said.

Intelligent design and creationism do not just limit themselves to refuting the theory of evolution; the attack on science extends to other fields including geology, astronomy and even scientific materialism. The Center for Science and Culture (Seattle, WA, USA), which describes itself as “the nation’s leading think-tank challenging various aspects of evolutionary theory” comments on its website: “We think the materialistic world view that has dominated Western Intellectual life since the late 19th century is false and we want to refute it […]

Materialism is a dehumanising philosophy” (Discovery Institute, 2003). Coyne commented,
“[c]reationism is an attack on the materialistic basis of science […] This carries forward into [the creationist] view of other evidence. Many creationists believe that global warming is a hoax, for example. They simply don’t accept scientific evidence.” Coyne agrees with the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, one of the staunchest defenders of evolutionary theory, that engaging creationists in direct debate is a waste of time. “The whole history of the debate shows us that such debates of rhetorical fencing are futile,” he said. Conway Morris, however, objects to the intellectual arrogance of some biologists. “Some of the more extreme secularists
who effectively say that anyone who believes in [intelligent design] is stupid don’t help to move the debate forward,” he said. “It’s insulting and it’s not surprising that the debates become acrimonious.”

A better strategy might therefore be to let the scientific evidence speak for itself. “It’s hard for anyone to claim that evolution hasn’t taken place when they’re presented with the evidence,” Coyne agreed. “And it’s worth pointing out that many people who believe in God also regard evolution as fact. The two aren’t incompatible.” However, countering the rhetoric of the proponents of intelligent design and creationism with scientific evidence is not an easy task; evolutionary theory does not quite stir the belief and passion in most people that the grandeur
of an Almighty does. Given the difficulties, what evidence can biologists use to counter creationist dogma?

For example, how can biologists counter the creationist argument that there are still many missing links in the fossil record that make evolutionary theory unworkable? Conway Morris noted that an understanding of what those missing links are is a good start. He pointed out that a marked phenotypic change, facilitating rapid evolution, might arise from a single-nucleotide polymorphism. “Life often seems as if it walks on a knife edge,” he said. “But in cases such
as this there won’t be an intermediate in the fossil record.” In any case, the fossil record
contains numerous transitional forms that allow the reconstruction of, for example, the
development of the modern whale (Balaena spp.) from the hippo-like Diacodexis spp., which existed some 50 million years ago. Missing links emerge regularly and it is quite likely that palaeontologists have simply not discovered them all yet.

Some biologists find that evolutionary convergence offers a powerful argument against intelligent design and highlights the effectiveness of natural selection. Creationists often cite the eye as a complex organ that could not have evolved without intervention. However, Conway Morris counters that, “[y]ou can track the evolution of the eye on several different occasions […]
Despite very different origins, the pathways converge.” He cited the examples of the octopus and the trout; both have a similarly altered lens composition that corrects for spherical aberration. “They both produced the ideal parabola as described by physicists,” he explained. “But then again, both had to adapt to overcome the same limitation, so is it that surprising that they solved it in the same way?” In other words, the ancestors of the octopus and trout were
selected for because these changes to their eye conferred increased fitness to the organism—they were better able to see and escape predators, and find food—and hence the change was propagated. No design was required, only the natural selection of a series of advantageous mutations.

Other examples of convergent evolution include silk, copper proteins and carbonic anhydrase. “Through examples such as this we can see the footprints of history even without the fossil record,” Conway Morris said. “There’s almost a sense that these examples have to work in this way because of the environmental circumstance. Rather than being random, common phenotypes developed to adapt to common pressures.” “In instances of convergence, evolutionary evidence is found in the detail,” Coates commented. “Molluscan and vertebrate
lens composition might be remarkably similar, but vertebrate retinal structure remains ‘back to front’. A designer would orient the tips of photoreceptors so that they point …scientists face a dilemma…a failure to engage in debate could allow creationists to argue that biologists cannot, rather than will not, counter their arguments During a debate held in May, three out of the ten Republican candidates for the US presidency said that they did not believe in evolution towards the light source, and the parts of the retina that carry signal towards the brain should be farther removed. This seems fair enough, and this is how the squid retina is built, but vertebrate examples are assembled the other way around—perversely, light has to plunge the full depth of the retina to reach the point of reception.”

Similarly, the HOX gene family that controls limb formation in vertebrates offers another example of evolution in action. “The evolution of paired fins into limbs with digits is a classic example of morphological transformation,” Coates said. “Evidence for homology between paired fins and limbs is compelling—from an evolutionary perspective, vertebrate limbs are best viewed as a specialized subset or kind of paired fins.” Indeed, the pattern of morphological
change—the evolutionary sequence of anatomical transformation—is pretty well established. “This sets an agenda for developmental biology, concerning questions about differences between fin buds and limb buds, cell populations, tissues, signals and patterns,” Coates added. “As
these questions are answered, the evolutionary transition from fins to limbs is likely to become an exemplar of changing pattern and process underpinning large-scale morphological change.”

However, although biologists can present good arguments for evolution, they still need to reach out to the general public and explain those arguments and engage in a dialogue. “Part of the answer is to introduce more evolutionary biology into early school curricula,” Coates commented. “Children need to grow up with the fact of evolution, and [the] awareness that it underpins biology. Teachers should be encouraged to be bold enough to talk about this early and often, from infants onwards—whatever the parents’ faiths or the school governors’ and/or
trustees’ faiths. There seems to be a widespread fear of treading on toes.” Coyne added that, “[t]oo often school science regards evolution as a given and focuses on the mechanisms, mimicry and so on […].

It rarely presents the evidence from, for example, the fossil record.” In any case—like in any scientific field— there are still numerous areas of controversy in evolutionary theory. “Evolutionary theory remains a really fertile field,” Coyne agreed. “For example, we don’t understand how species form.” His main area of research aims to ascertain whether speciation
involves many or only a few genes, whether genetic drift plays a significant role, and whether the movement of transposable elements causes hybrid sterility or whether it undermines viability. Similarly, Conway Morris has built his reputation on another controversy: the
interpretation of the Burgess Shale that records an explosion of the numbers and types of life-form during the Cambrian period. His research group has recently submitted two papers that illustrate how body plans as amazingly diverse as those found in the shale might have emerged,
and how nature ended up with organisms as different as starfish and fish. However, the basic question of what caused the Cambrian explosion—why life needed to adapt so quickly—remains open. “Before the Cambrian, life evolved fantastically slowly, then there was this sudden seachange,” Conway Morris said. “An increase in oxygen levels is one possibility, but we
don’t really know.”

The British geneticist and evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane (1892–1964), one of the pioneers of classical population genetics, which reconciled Mendelian and Darwinian theory, once remarked that “fossil rabbits in the precambrian” would invalidate evolution. But his quip makes a serious point and highlights a key difference between evolutionary theory and creationism: as with any scientific theory, Darwinism is constantly challenged and reinforced by
new evidence. Creationism, on the other hand, rejects scientific theory and new evidence and favours a more or less narrow world-view based on divine intervention. Therefore, until a Precambrian rabbit comes bounding out of the fossil record, the theories of natural selection and evolution remain the only valid explanations of how life on Earth developed.

REFERENCES
Discovery Institute (2003) The “Wedge Document”: “So What?”. Seattle, WA, USA: Discovery Institute. www.discovery.org
Randerson J (2006) Revealed: rise of creationism in UK schools. London, UK: Guardian, Nov 27
(http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1957858,00.html)
Ratzinger J (1995) In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the
Fall. Grand Rapids, MI, USA: Eerdmans
Scott EC (2000) The Creation/Evolution Continuum. Oakland, CA , USA: National Center for Science Education. www.ncseweb.org

Mark Greener

Del blog "A Bordo del Otto Neurath"

2007-11-23T13:58:00.000+01:00

Buena entrada con buenos links en este blog administrado por Jesús Zamora Bonilla. El enlace, aquí.

Hay que ser idiota...

2007-11-16T12:25:00.000+01:00

Sabiendo como sabemos que el cáncer es una enfermedad autoprovocada y que para curarte lo primero que hay que hacer es un ejercicio de catársis (mediado por el Dr. Nueva Medicina, que lo hace todo por amor a los demás), van unos idiotas y se pasan un montón de años trabajando para decir tonterías como las que publican en la revista Science (del número de hoy):

Research Articles
The Genomic Landscapes of Human Breast and Colorectal Cancers
Laura D. Wood,1* D. Williams Parsons,1* Siân Jones,1* Jimmy Lin,1* Tobias Sjöblom,1* Rebecca J. Leary,1 Dong Shen,1 Simina M. Boca,1,2 Thomas Barber,1 Janine Ptak,1 Natalie Silliman,1 Steve Szabo,1 Zoltan Dezso,3 Vadim Ustyanksky,3 Tatiana Nikolskaya,3,4 Yuri Nikolsky,3 Rachel Karchin,5 Paul A. Wilson,5 Joshua S. Kaminker,6 Zemin Zhang,6 Randal Croshaw,7 Joseph Willis,8 Dawn Dawson,8 Michail Shipitsin,9 James K. V. Willson,10 Saraswati Sukumar,11 Kornelia Polyak,9 Ben Ho Park,11 Charit L. Pethiyagoda,12 P. V. Krishna Pant,12 Dennis G. Ballinger,12 Andrew B. Sparks,12 James Hartigan,13 Douglas R. Smith,13 Erick Suh,13 Nickolas Papadopoulos,1 Phillip Buckhaults,7 Sanford D. Markowitz,14 Giovanni Parmigiani,1 Kenneth W. Kinzler,1 Victor E. Velculescu,1 Bert Vogelstein1
Human cancer is caused by the accumulation of mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. To catalog the genetic changes that occur during tumorigenesis, we isolated DNA from 11 breast and 11 colorectal tumors and determined the sequences of the genes in the Reference Sequence database in these samples. Based on analysis of exons representing 20,857 transcripts from 18,191 genes, we conclude that the genomic landscapes of breast and colorectal cancers are composed of a handful of commonly mutated gene "mountains" and a much larger number of gene "hills" that are mutated at low frequency. We describe statistical and bioinformatic tools that may help identify mutations with a role in tumorigenesis. These results have implications for understanding the nature and heterogeneity of human cancers and for using personal genomics for tumor diagnosis and therapy.

¿¿¿¿¿Pero es que nadie les ha avisado????? Aunque una posibilidad es que sean de la industria farmacéutica y su objetivo sea adueñarse del mundo mundial...

Una de Stuart Kauffman. De Tendencias 21.

2007-11-12T22:42:00.000+01:00

Copio y pego el resumen de este interesante artículo que podéis enlazar completo desde aquí.

Más allá del reduccionismo: Stuart Kauffman reinventa la sacralidad
La ontología autocreativa de la materia produce un universo sacral.
Stuart Kauffman ha sido y es una de las mentes más preclaras en el desarrollo de la moderna biología evolutiva. Sus teorías sobre la auto-organización de la materia han complementado la explicación ordinaria del darwinismo y las teorías de la complejidad. En una reciente contribución a la revista Zygon, fechada el 22 de octubre de 2006, Kauffman se abre a la aceptación de los factores cuánticos en la emergencia de la vida, al mismo tiempo que ofrece una imagen autocreativa y sacral de la naturaleza, aunque distinta del teísmo tradicional. El teísmo moderno se encuentra mucho más a gusto con la sacralidad “atea” de Kauffman que con el robotismo reduccionista del “antiguo régimen” de la ciencia. El teísmo no es sino la apertura al último nivel superior que explica el origen ontológico de la vida, de la sensibilidad y de la conciencia, en el universo físico. Por Javier Monserrat.

Peter y Rosemary Grant. De El Pais hoy.

2007-11-07T15:56:00.001+01:00

Hoy han publicado en este periódico un reportaje que cubre la visita y charla del matrimonio Grant, de los que ya hice un pequeño apunte aquí. Los afortunados han sido los barceloneses que pudieran asistir en el Cosmocaixa de Barcelona ha dicha charla.

REPORTAJE
Cambia el canto de los pinzones
Una pareja de biólogos continúa la labor de Darwin en las islas Galápagos

Un trabajo impresionante el de esta gente. La página web de Peter está enlazada aquí; la de Rosemary acá.

Del blog A Bordo del "Otto Neurath"

2007-11-05T23:07:00.000+01:00

Un muy buen comentario del último libro de Daniel Dennett. El enlace, aquí.

Acerca del esfuerzo

2007-11-05T10:32:00.000+01:00

Ayer publicaron un interesante artículo en Tendencias 21. El resumen y el enlace están al final de esta entrada. Y me gusta el artículo por su oportunidad, porque abre un tema en el que habría que meterse a fondo ahora que el bachillerato está cambiando (por n-ésima vez). Siempre se habla del esfuerzo que el científico investigador debe hacer para que la gente conozca y entienda su trabajo pero nunca del esfuerzo que debe hacer la gente para entenderlo. No resulta lógico hacer un ascensor hasta la cima del Everest para que todo el mundo pueda experimentar lo que se siente en su cima, cuando lo verdaderamente importante ha sido el recorrido. De la misma manera nuestra única aspiración no puede ser que la gente en general conozca tal o cual avance, debe implicarse en la medida de sus posibilidades. Y eso se consigue sobre todo leyendo acerca del tema, aunque la competencia es muy fuerte (salsa rosa, aqui hay tomate...). Si la sociedad en su conjunto opta por la ignorancia nada podremos hacer por evitarlo. Y por más y mejor que se expliquen las cosas nada cambiará este orden.
Ayer, el programa Redes emitió su último programa. En hora de máxima audiencia.

La ciencia está enlatada como un bien de consumo
El mercado está convirtiendo a los científicos en sacerdotes
Cuando la divulgación científica abandona el mundo académico para ofrecerse el gran público, se convierte en un bien de consumo. En campos abstractos como la física cuántica o la relatividad, entender la ciencia como un producto entraña un riesgo fundamental: el consumidor puede creer fenómenos que no comprende en absoluto, en un mero acto de fe. Esta situación no sólo vulnera la esencia del espíritu científico, sino que abre la puerta a productos de escaso rigor científico. Es el riesgo de convertir a nuestros científicos en sacerdotes. Por Joan Morera Morales.

Comentarios a Dawkins y Ruse. De Tendencias 21.

2007-10-29T11:55:00.000+01:00

De la revista Tendencias 21 extraigo un comentario a dos bandas de los últimos libros publicados por Richard Dawkins (El espejismo de Dios) y Michael Ruse (¿Puede un darwinista ser cristiano? La relación entre ciencia y religión). El enlace aquí.
Un comentario, a mi juicio, muy acertado. Y con mucha información adicional y muchos enlaces a trabajos interesantes.

Daños colaterales

2007-10-26T18:11:00.000+02:00

Las estupideces no suelen ir solas. Es muy normal que los grupos creacionistas promuevan además corrientes de pensamiento que nieguen el cambio climático o que el HIV es el agente causal del sida.
Otro tema preferido de estos grupos o personas es el de las empresas farmacéuticas. Y concretamente la rama oncológica. Sugieren (o pregonan directamente) que las empresas nos estafan (claro que algo habrá, seguro, pero, ¿es la norma?) con medicamentos con poca o nula eficacia. Incluso hay un médico que promueve lo que llama Nueva Medicina, basada en que el cáncer es la consecuencia de algún conflicto interior (no seré yo quien le dé publicidad con un enlace aquí). En dos palabras, que la culpa es tuya y te lo tienes que hacer ver. Por supuesto, este tipo no ha montado un negocio de todo esto y a los incautos que pasan por su consulta no les cobra... JA.
Bueno, al grano. Analizando un poco el tema de la actitud frente a la enfermedad, he pillado un estudio gracias al blog Respectul Insolence. El resumen del estudio es:

Emotional well-being does not predict survival in head and neck cancer patients
A radiation therapy oncology group study
James C. Coyne, PhD 1 *, Thomas F. Pajak, PhD 2, Jonathan Harris, MS 2, Andre Konski, MD 3, Benjamin Movsas, MD 3, Kian Ang, MD 4, Deborah Watkins Bruner, PhD 5
1Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania2Radiation Oncology Group, Statistics Department, American College of Radiology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania3Department of Radiation Oncology, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania4Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas5School of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
email: James C. Coyne (jcoyne@mail.med.upenn.edu)
*Correspondence to James C. Coyne, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania Health System, 3535 Market Street, Room 676, Philadelphia, PA 19104Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society, Orlando, Florida, March 3-6, 2004.Fax: (215) 349-5067

Abstract
BACKGROUND.
The objective of the current study was to examine whether emotional well-being predicted survival in a large sample of patients with head and neck cancer who were participating in multicenter clinical trials.
METHODS.
Participants were enrolled in 2 Radiation Oncology Group (RTOG) clinical trials (RTOG 9003 and RTOG 9111) and completed a baseline measure of quality of life (the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General [FACT-G]), which included an Emotional Well-Being subscale. The outcome measure was overall survival. Main statistical analyses included overall survival rates, which were estimated by using the Kaplan-Meier method with univariate comparisons analyzed using the log-rank test. A multivariate Cox proportional hazards model was used to determine whether emotional well-being had prognostic impact on survival after accounting for tumor-related and sociodemographic variables. Additional exploratory analyses examined possible subgroup effects.
RESULTS.
No statistically significant univariate or multivariate effects were observed for emotional well-being, and there were no effects limited to subgroups. These results stand in sharp contrast to the prognostic value of a variety of demographic and clinical variables.
CONCLUSIONS.
The current results add to the weight of the evidence that emotional functioning is not an independent predictor of survival in cancer patients. The study had the advantage of a large number of deaths to be explained in a sample with the uniformity of treatment and quality of care that is required in clinical trials. Cancer 2007. © 2007 American Cancer Society.

Del blog "La lógica del titiritero"

2007-10-22T11:18:00.000+02:00

Aquí va el enlace a la entrada de este blog, en la que el autor comenta un artículo muy ilustrativo sobre evolución y sus mecanismos.

http://pablorpalenzuela.wordpress.com/2007/10/21/azar-0-necesidad-1/

Entrevista a J Craig Venter

2007-10-21T23:12:00.000+02:00

Gracias al blog ERV he llegado a una entrevista que hizo Carl Zimmer a J Craig Venter hace unos días en el espacio bloggingheads.tv.
¡¡¡Muy recomendable!!! El enlace, aquí.

Se pueden elegir las partes de la entrevista... y la última es la respuesta a la misma pregunta que ya se hicieron en The Edge... What is life? El enlace, aquí.

De Tendencias 21

2007-10-21T22:59:00.000+02:00

Un nuevo libro sintetiza el debate entre neurociencias y religión
Para el profesor norteamericano Kevin Seybold, los creyentes no deben temer a la ciencia

Un nuevo libro del profesor norteamericano Kevin Seybold sintetiza el debate entre ciencia y religión, particularmente en los aspectos relacionados con las neurociencias y la psicología. Para el autor del libro, estos temas preocupan a los cristianos porque muchos de ellos se preguntan si la ciencia puede estar cuestionando unas creencias que son esenciales para sus vidas. Los creyentes, señala Kevin Seybold, no deben eludir o temer la ciencia porque es posible ser una persona de fe y al mismo tiempo mantenerse bien informado acerca de los últimos descubrimientos científicos, incluidos aquéllos que, desde la neurociencia o desde la psicología, tienen implicaciones directas en las creencias religiosas. Por Olga Castro-Perea.

El enlace al artículo completo, aquí.

From The Edge

2007-10-18T23:30:00.000+02:00

Dos entradas muy interesantes en The Edge:

1. On "Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion" By Jonathan Haidt. Crítica de este ensayo por DAVID SLOAN WILSON, MICHAEL SHERMER, SAM HARRIS, PZ MYERS y MARC D. HAUSER. El enlace, aquí.

2. ¿Cuál es tu fórmula favorita? Un montón de fórmulas de gente tan dispar como Mandelbrot, Dawkins o Venter. El enlace, aquí.

De "The Panda's Thumb"

2007-10-17T18:02:00.000+02:00

Este blog se hace eco de esta noticia:
Creationism to be banished from Swedish schools.

En inglés. Respecto al tema de los idiomas, me gustó mucho este artículo de Opinión:
"La lengua de la Ciencia"

Por esto me gusta la revista Nature

2007-10-11T10:37:00.000+02:00

El comentario con su enlace:

News and Views
Nature 449, 665-667 (11 October 2007) doi:10.1038/449665a; Published online 10 October 2007
Linguistics: An invisible hand
W. Tecumseh Fitch1
Abstract
Quantitative relationships between how frequently a word is used and how rapidly it changes over time raise intriguing questions about the way individual behaviours determine large-scale linguistic and cultural change.

De los artículos con sus enlaces:

Letter
Nature 449, 713-716 (11 October 2007) doi:10.1038/nature06137; Received 20 March 2007; Accepted 27 July 2007
Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language
Erez Lieberman, Jean-Baptiste Michel, Joe Jackson, Tina Tang & Martin A. Nowak
Human language is based on grammatical rules. Cultural evolution allows these rules to change over time5. Rules compete with each other: as new rules rise to prominence, old ones die away. To quantify the dynamics of language evolution, we studied the regularization of English verbs over the past 1,200 years. Although an elaborate system of productive conjugations existed in English's proto-Germanic ancestor, Modern English uses the dental suffix, '-ed', to signify past tense. Here we describe the emergence of this linguistic rule amidst the evolutionary decay of its exceptions, known to us as irregular verbs. We have generated a data set of verbs whose conjugations have been evolving for more than a millennium, tracking inflectional changes to 177 Old-English irregular verbs. Of these irregular verbs, 145 remained irregular in Middle English and 98 are still irregular today. We study how the rate of regularization depends on the frequency of word usage. The half-life of an irregular verb scales as the square root of its usage frequency: a verb that is 100 times less frequent regularizes 10 times as fast. Our study provides a quantitative analysis of the regularization process by which ancestral forms gradually yield to an emerging linguistic rule.

Letter
Nature 449, 717-720 (11 October 2007) doi:10.1038/nature06176; Received 30 April 2007; Accepted 17 August 2007
Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history
Mark Pagel, Quentin D. Atkinson & Andrew Meade
Greek speakers say "", Germans "schwanz" and the French "queue" to describe what English speakers call a 'tail', but all of these languages use a related form of 'two' to describe the number after one. Among more than 100 Indo-European languages and dialects, the words for some meanings (such as 'tail') evolve rapidly, being expressed across languages by dozens of unrelated words, while others evolve much more slowly—such as the number 'two', for which all Indo-European language speakers use the same related word-form. No general linguistic mechanism has been advanced to explain this striking variation in rates of lexical replacement among meanings. Here we use four large and divergent language corpora (English, Spanish3, Russian4 and Greek5) and a comparative database of 200 fundamental vocabulary meanings in 87 Indo-European languages to show that the frequency with which these words are used in modern language predicts their rate of replacement over thousands of years of Indo-European language evolution. Across all 200 meanings, frequently used words evolve at slower rates and infrequently used words evolve more rapidly. This relationship holds separately and identically across parts of speech for each of the four language corpora, and accounts for approximately 50% of the variation in historical rates of lexical replacement. We propose that the frequency with which specific words are used in everyday language exerts a general and law-like influence on their rates of evolution. Our findings are consistent with social models of word change that emphasize the role of selection, and suggest that owing to the ways that humans use language, some words will evolve slowly and others rapidly across all languages.

Y esta dedicada a...

2007-10-10T11:24:00.000+02:00

http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8790

Un poco de humor

2007-10-09T11:27:00.000+02:00

http://web.mac.com/arnold_zwicky/TomorrowVirus05.jpg
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007/02/26/tomo/index1.html

Más Venter... ¿vida artificial?

2007-10-05T23:04:00.001+02:00

Se podía leer hoy en El Mundo:
Venter asegura estar a punto de crear la primera forma de vida artificial
El artículo, aquí.

Hace unos años ya se adelantaron, aunque claro, con virus, unos bichos mucho más manejables:
Chemical synthesis of poliovirus cDNA: generation of infectious virus in the absence of natural template.
Cello J, Paul AV, Wimmer E.
Science. 2002 Aug 9;297(5583):1016-8.
El artículo, enlazado aquí.

Por cierto, que trajo mucha cola por cuestiones de bioterrorismo...

Creacionismo en el Consejo Europeo

2007-10-05T23:04:00.000+02:00

Gracias al blog que mantiene Luis Alfonso Gámez (Magonia, enlace aquí) he tenido conocimiento de y acceso a la resolución del Consejo de Europa "The dangers of creationism in education. Resolution 1580 (2007)". El enlace aquí.

Los que votaron y como lo hicieron aquí.

Los 25 en contra:
Mr Miloš ALIGRUDIC
M. Claudio AZZOLINI
M. Walter BARTOŠ
Mrs Marie-Louise BEMELMANS-VIDEC
Ms Guðfinna S. BJARNADÓTTIR
M. Luc Van den BRANDE
M. Lorenzo CESA
Mr Valeriu COSARCIUC
M. Vlad CUBREACOV
Ms Åse Gunhild Woie DUESUND
Mr Iván FARKAS
Mr Axel FISCHER
Mr Holger HAIBACH
Mr Andres HERKEL
Mr Raffi HOVANNISIAN
Mr Tomáš JIRSA
Mr Marek KAWA
Mr Eduard KUKAN
Mr Eduard LINTNER
Mr Mikhail MARGELOV
Mr João Bosco MOTA AMARAL
Mr Zbigniew RAU
Mr Andrea RIGONI
Mr Egidijus VAREIKIS
Mr Piotr WACH

17 del EPP/CD (Partido Popular Europeo / Democracia Cristiana)
6 del EDG (Grupo Demócrata Europeo)
2 del ALDE (Alianza de Liberales y Demócratas)

y para ser justos, votaron a favor:
8 del EPP/CD
4 del EDG
7 del ALDE
18 del SOC (Grupo Socialista)
2 del NR (No Representados por partidos)
5 del UEL (Grupo de Izquierda)

y tres se abstuvieron (todos del SOC).

Para más información, otros documentos, estadísticas, etc... el enlace a las votaciones aquí.

Je, je, je.

2007-10-04T10:29:00.000+02:00

Esto suena muy bien. Salió hoy en PNAS (early edition).

Coevolution of languages and genes on the island of Sumba, eastern Indonesia
J. Stephen Lansing , Murray P. Cox ¶, Sean S. Downey , Brandon M. Gabler , Brian Hallmark , Tatiana M. Karafet ¶, Peter Norquest , John W. Schoenfelder , Herawati Sudoyo , Joseph C. Watkins , and Michael F. Hammer ¶
Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, 1009 East South Campus Drive, Tucson, AZ 85721; ¶Division of Biotechnology, Biosciences West, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87521; Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona, 617 North Santa Rita Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721; Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, 308 Charles E. Young Drive North, Los Angeles, CA 90095; and Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology, Diponegoro 69, Jakarta 10430, Indonesia
Edited by Simon A. Levin, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and approved August 23, 2007 (received for review May 15, 2007)
Numerous studies indicate strong associations between languages and genes among human populations at the global scale, but all broader scale genetic and linguistic patterns must arise from processes originating at the community level. We examine linguistic and genetic variation in a contact zone on the eastern Indonesian island of Sumba, where Neolithic Austronesian farming communities settled and began interacting with aboriginal foraging societies 3,500 years ago. Phylogenetic reconstruction based on a 200-word Swadesh list sampled from 29 localities supports the hypothesis that Sumbanese languages derive from a single ancestral Austronesian language. However, the proportion of cognates (words with a common origin) traceable to Proto-Austronesian (PAn) varies among language subgroups distributed across the island. Interestingly, a positive correlation was found between the percentage of Y chromosome lineages that derive from Austronesian (as opposed to aboriginal) ancestors and the retention of PAn cognates. We also find a striking correlation between the percentage of PAn cognates and geographic distance from the site where many Sumbanese believe their ancestors arrived on the island. These language–gene–geography correlations, unprecedented at such a fine scale, imply that historical patterns of social interaction between expanding farmers and resident hunter-gatherers largely explain community-level language evolution on Sumba. We propose a model to explain linguistic and demographic coevolution at fine spatial and temporal scales.

Un concepto importante en evolución de virus cumple 30 años

2007-10-04T06:37:00.000+02:00

En breve se cumplirán 30 años de la publicación de lo que los anglosajones denominan un artículo seminal, un descubrimiento que abrió una línea de conocimiento impresionante. El artículo en cuestión, un Cell del año 1978, está enlazado aquí, y el resumen es:

Nucleotide sequence heterogeneity of an RNA phage population
Esteban Domingo *, Donna Sabo†, Tadatsugu Taniguchi and Charles Weissmann
Institut für Molekularbiologie I Universität Zürich Hönggerberg 8093, Zürich, Switzerland
Received 19 December 1977. Available online 26 April 2004.
Abstract
The nucleotide sequence of 32P-RNA from Qβ phage clones was sampled by two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of the RNAase T1-resistant oligonucleotides (T1 fingerprinting). About 15% of the clones derived from a multiply passaged Qβ population showed fingerprint patterns which deviated from that of the RNA from the total population. All deviations examined could be attributed to one and, less frequently, to two or more nucleotide transitions. Since the fingerprinting technique allows the analysis of only about 10% of the RNA sequence, we estimate that each viable phage genome in a multiply passaged population differs in one to two positions from the “average” sequence of the parental population. Several deviant clones were tested by growth competition against a “wild-type” population; after 10–20 generations, the resulting phage showed the “wild-type” T1 fingerprint pattern. We propose that a Qβ phage population is in a dynamic equilibrium, with viable mutants arising at a high rate (Batschelet, Domingo and Weissmann, 1976; Domingo, Flavell and Weissmann, 1976) on the one hand, and being strongly selected against on the other. The genome of Qβ phage cannot be described as a defined unique structure, but rather as a weighted average of a large number of different individual sequences.

La importancia de este artículo radica en la aplicación práctica de un concepto totalmente teórico y especulativo, cuasiespecie, desarrollado por Manfred Eigen para intentar explicar como serían las poblaciones de elementos replicantes prebióticas.

Me gusta particularmemnte este párrafo de la discusión:
"It is of interest to note that if members of an equilibrium population deviate, on the average, in two positions from the “wild-type” sequence, then only 14% of the population consists of “wild-type” phage. For three and five deviations per strand, this value drops to 5% and 2%, respectively. One thus arrives at the concept of a phage genome which is statistically defined but individually indeterminate insofar as most of the individuals differ in a few positions from the average sequence. On the basis of theoretical considerations, M. Eigen (personal communication) has predicted this situation and coined the term “quasi-species” to describe such a population. Heterogeneous populations of this kind should be capable of rapid adaptation to a changing environment, not only because of the high mutation rate, but also because of the presence of a large proportion of variants. If each particle of an RNA phage population of 10” members contains an average of two nucleotide substitutions, then the number of particles with one, two, three and four nucleotide transitions will be 2.7 xE10, 2.7 x E10, 1.8 x E10 and 0.9 x E10, respectively, as given by a Poisson distribution. Since the number of different RNAs with one, two, three and four transitions are 4.5 x E3, 1 x E7, 1.5 X E10 and 1.7 x E13, it is clear that all possible single, double and triple transition mutants, as well as about 0.05% of the quadruple mutants, preexist in the population."

Y lo mejor de todo. Tenemos la suerte de tener muy cerca al primer firmante, hoy profesor de investigación del CSIC. La página web de su grupo, aquí.

Una de virus

2007-10-03T11:48:00.000+02:00

Hoy salió un ensayo acerca de evolución de virus escrito por Edward C. Holmes que merece la pena leer. Además es en la revista Plos Biology que tiene libre acceso a todos sus contenidos. El artículo está en este enlace, aunque tembién lo copio a continuación.

Aunque algunos no lo crean, los virus, sus comportamientos evolutivos y sus estructuras poblacionales aportan muchos datos extrapolables a evolución de organismos superiores e incluso a comportamientos humanos... pero de esto hablaremos otro día.

Que lo disfrutéis!

Viral Evolution in the Genomic Age
Edward C. Holmes

Series Editor: Simon Levin, Princeton University, United States of America
Citation: Holmes EC (2007) Viral Evolution in the Genomic Age. PLoS Biol 5(10): e278 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050278
Published: October 2, 2007
Copyright: © 2007 Edward C. Holmes. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Edward C. Holmes is a Professor of Biology within the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Department of Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America, and an affiliate member of the Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America. E-mail: ech15@psu.edu

Genome sequence data will undoubtedly deliver much to the study of viral pathogens and their diseases. A prominent example of this new genomic perspective is influenza A virus, for which a large-scale genome sequencing project begun in the year 2005 has, to date, generated around 2,500 complete viral genomes [1]. While this alone is newsworthy, the rise of rapid, high-throughput genome “pyrosequencing” promises to take the production of viral genomes to a level once unimaginable [2].
Yet advances in genome sequencing also create a major intellectual challenge; rather than simply maintaining ever-larger genomic databases for relatively straightforward surveys of viral biodiversity and molecular epidemiology, it is crucial that we direct the power of genomics to help address questions of more fundamental biological importance. Genome sequence data has the potential to shed new light on many key questions in viral evolution and epidemiology, and here I outline three research avenues where the large-scale comparison of genome sequences will be of particular importance.
Interactions among Pathogens
Evolutionary studies of viral pathogens have, with few exceptions, tended to focus on individual species. If an attempt is made to place their evolution “in context,” this usually only relates to the different host species that a virus infects. For example, there is currently great interest in determining the viral and host determinants for the sustained transmission of H5N1 influenza A virus in birds as opposed to humans. Although such studies are an essential part of modern molecular epidemiology, an exploration of how the multiplicity of pathogens that co-circulate within a single host population might influence each other's evolution and etiology is strikingly absent. Similarly important questions include: What role does cross-protective immunity play in shaping microbial diversity? How widespread is ecological interference among pathogens?
Existing data already hint at the importance of evolutionary interactions among pathogens. For example, the HIV pandemic has resulted in an abundance of people with pronounced immune deficiency, stimulating a resurgence in opportunistic pathogens like Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is also possible that widespread immunodeficiency will assist the emergence of new pathogens [3], perhaps by extending the infectious period of normally acute viral infections. Similarly, the nature of the interactions among the four serotypes of dengue virus has been a subject of much debate, particularly whether immunological responses to different serotypes are usually cross-protective [4] or enhancing [5]. Not only might these interactions dictate underlying patterns of genome evolution [6], but they will evidently have a major bearing on successful vaccination.
Finally, it has long been known that influenza-associated mortality is largely due to secondary pneumonia caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria [7]. However, although we now have a wealth of data on the genetic diversity of influenza virus in both time and space, there has been no attempt to tie these evolutionary patterns with those of the co-infecting bacterial population. Influenza virus is also just one of the respiratory pathogens that circulate in human populations, with other notables including parainfluenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus, and the abundant rhinoviruses. Despite the disease burden due to these viruses, little is known about how they interact at the evolutionary and epidemiological scales. The comparative analysis of their genome sequences, in which changes in genetic diversity (or phylogenetic structure) in one virus are placed in the context of the contemporaneous evolutionary patterns and processes exhibited by co-circulating pathogens, may provide a valuable way to study their interactions.
Linking Evolutionary Change at the Intrahost and Interhost Scales
Large population sizes, rapid replication, and extremely high mutation rates mean that populations of RNA viruses usually harbor extensive genetic diversity [8]. Despite this, the vast majority of studies of genetic diversity in RNA viruses, particularly for acute infections, have been conducted at the epidemiological level, in which a single consensus sequence is generated from each infected individual. This sequence must then describe the average diversity in the intrahost viral population, masking myriad variable mutant sequences, some of which may have a major bearing on fitness. However, determining the extent and structure of intrahost genetic variability and how it relates to that observed at the epidemiological scale is of fundamental importance for understanding many aspects of evolutionary dynamics, including the likelihood of successful cross-species transmission and emergence [9].
For studies of RNA virus evolution to truly come of age, it is critical that the relationship between intra- and interhost evolution be explored in depth. Major questions include: What is the fitness distribution of mutations sampled from within hosts? Do the processes of intra- and interhost differ in fundamental ways? What proportion of intrahost diversity is passed between hosts at transmission? Thankfully, the barriers of time and cost that prohibited studies of this kind in the past have now largely been dismantled in the age of genomics. Experimental infections may represent a particularly profitable research avenue in which intrahost evolution is documented in samples collected every few days (or even hours), and also allowing viruses to be passed among hosts, thereby providing a window on the dynamics of interhost transmission.
Genome-Wide Interactions
If there is a lesson to be learned from the history of population genetics, it is that the more fine-scaled the data available for analysis—from allozymes to genomes—the more powerful the biological inference. Not only does the comparison of complete genomes invariably provide greater resolution of the spatial and temporal dynamics of viral spread, but it obviously enables the study of genome-wide interactions. As a case in point, the complex evolutionary processes that underpin the recent dramatic rise of resistance to adamantane drugs in influenza A virus, including the central role played by epistasis, were not revealed until an analysis of complete genome sequences was undertaken [10]. Rather than focusing on single genes in isolation, it is therefore essential that we examine the similarities and differences in evolutionary patterns among all the genes in a viral genome.
Although many microbes would benefit from large-scale genomic comparisons, it is striking that the most common human viruses, including the respiratory viruses mentioned above and the diarrhea-causing rotaviruses, are distinguished by the least amount of available genome sequence data. It is hoped that the influenza virus genome project, where the added value of genomic data has been amply demonstrated, will serve as model for other viral pathogens. Some key questions within this research agenda include: How frequent, and of what type, are the epistatic interactions among genes? What role does epistasis play in the development of drug resistance and immune escape? Do viral antigens drive the evolution of viral genomes as a whole?
The Challenge of Genome Data
Despite the wealth of evolutionary and epidemiological data contained within viral genomes, there is little doubt that the availability of computational tools to analyze such an enormous data resource represents a major obstacle to those working at the interface of genomics and bioinformatics. Indeed, we are now entering the age where effective data analysis, rather than data availability, is set to become the major factor limiting progress. To date, most comparative studies of viral populations have considered tens, and at most a few hundred, of gene sequences. However, the rise of pyrosequencing means that the in-depth analysis of many thousands of genomes is now essential. Further, and perhaps more importantly, the power of genomic data is only truly realized if they are combined with detailed functional, experimental, and epidemiological information. As such, the analysis of viral genome data not only requires tools for sequence manipulation but those that can associate these data with a wider range of biological variables.
The remarkable increase in the number of viral genome sequences represents both opportunities and challenges to those working in the arena of disease ecology and evolution. Rather than being overwhelmed by the scale of the data that will characterize the genomic age, we must let it stimulate us to address questions that were previously considered out of reach.
References
Ghedin E, Sengamalay NA, Shumway M, Zaborsky J, Feldblyum T, et al. (2005) Large-scale sequencing of human influenza reveals the dynamic nature of viral genome evolution. Nature 437: 1162–1166. Find this article online
Margulies M, Egholm M, Altman WE, Attiya S, Bader JS, et al. (2005) Genome sequencing in microfabricated high-density picolitre reactors. Nature 437: 376–380. Find this article online
Weiss RA (2001) The Leeuwenshoek lecture 2001. Animal origins of human infectious disease. Phil Trans R Soc Lond B 356: 957–977. Find this article online
Wearing H, Rohani P (2006) Ecological and immunological determinants of dengue epidemics. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 103: 11802–11807. Find this article online
Halstead SB (1988) Pathogenesis of dengue: Challenges to molecular biology. Science 239: 476–481. Find this article online
Zhang C, Mammen MP Jr, Chinnawirotpisan P, Klungthong C, Rodpradit P, et al. (2005) Clade replacements in dengue virus serotypes 1 and 3 are associated with changing serotype prevalence. J Virol 79: 15123–15130. Find this article online
McCullers JA (2006) Insights into the interaction between influenza virus and pneumococcus. Clin Microbiol Rev 19: 571–582. Find this article online
Domingo E, Holland JJ (1997) RNA virus mutations for fitness and survival. Ann Rev Microbiol 51: 151–178. Find this article online
Kuiken T, Holmes EC, McCauley J, Rimmelzwaan GF, Williams CS, et al. (2006) Host species barriers to influenza virus infections. Science 312: 394–397. Find this article online
Simonsen L, Viboud C, Grenfell BT, Dushoff J, Jennings L, et al. (2007) The rapid global spread of reassortant human influenza A/H3N2 viruses conferring adamantane-resistant. Mol Biol Evol 24: 1811–1820. Find this article online

EVO-DEVO. Mecanismos evolutivos.

2007-09-27T11:01:00.000+02:00

Salió hoy en la revista Nature. Y parece muy interesante. El enlace aquí. El resumen, a continuación:

Article
Nature 449, 427-432 (27 September 2007) doi:10.1038/nature06153; Received 20 April 2007; Accepted 7 August 2007
Predicting evolutionary patterns of mammalian teeth from development
Kathryn D. Kavanagh1,3, Alistair R. Evans1 & Jukka Jernvall1,2
Evolution & Development Unit, Institute of Biotechnology, PO Box 56 (Viikinkaari 9), FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
Department of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA
Present address: School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA.
Correspondence to: Kathryn D. Kavanagh1,3Jukka Jernvall1,2 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to K.D.K. (Email: kathryn_kavanagh@yahoo.com) or J.J. (Email: jernvall@fastmail.fm).

Abstract
One motivation in the study of development is the discovery of mechanisms that may guide evolutionary change. Here we report how development governs relative size and number of cheek teeth, or molars, in the mouse. We constructed an inhibitory cascade model by experimentally uncovering the activator–inhibitor logic of sequential tooth development. The inhibitory cascade acts as a ratchet that determines molar size differences along the jaw, one effect being that the second molar always makes up one-third of total molar area. By using a macroevolutionary test, we demonstrate the success of the model in predicting dentition patterns found among murine rodent species with various diets, thereby providing an example of ecologically driven evolution along a developmentally favoured trajectory. In general, our work demonstrates how to construct and test developmental rules with evolutionary predictability in natural systems.

Elementos transponibles endógenos

2007-09-24T22:35:00.000+02:00

Se va lejos del tema religioso pero solo para introducir un nuevo enlace que he puesto en los favoritos (ERV), aquí van un par de artículos con los que reflexionar sobre este tema, piedra angular de otras teorías antidarwinistas encontradas en la red.

Nature. 2005 Jan 27;433(7024):430-3.
APOBEC3G cytidine deaminase inhibits retrotransposition of endogenous retroviruses.
Esnault C, Heidmann O, Delebecque F, Dewannieux M, Ribet D, Hance AJ, Heidmann T, Schwartz O.
Endogenous retroviruses are multicopy retroelements accounting for nearly 10% of murine or human genomes. These retroelements spread into our ancestral genome millions of years ago and have acted as a driving force for genome evolution. Endogenous retroviruses may also be deleterious for their host, and have been implicated in cancers and autoimmune diseases. Most retroelements have lost replication competence because of the accumulation of inactivating mutations, but several, including some murine intracisternal A-particle (IAP) and MusD
sequences, are still mobile. These elements encode a reverse transcriptase activity and move by retrotransposition, an intracellular copy-and-paste process involving an RNA intermediate. The host has developed mechanisms to silence their expression, mainly cosuppression and gene methylation. Here we identify another level of antiviral control, mediated by APOBEC3G, a member of the cytidine deaminase family that was previously shown to block HIV replication. We show that APOBEC3G markedly inhibits retrotransposition of IAP and MusD elements, and
induces G-to-A hypermutations in their DNA copies. APOBEC3G, by editing viral genetic material, provides an ancestral wide cellular defence against endogenous and exogenous invaders.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 Oct 17;103(42):15588-93. Epub 2006 Oct 9.
High-molecular-mass APOBEC3G complexes restrict Alu retrotransposition.
Chiu YL, Witkowska HE, Hall SC, Santiago M, Soros VB, Esnault C, Heidmann T, Greene WC.
APOBEC3G (A3G) and related deoxycytidine deaminases are potent intrinsic antiretroviral factors. A3G is expressed either as an enzymatically active low-molecular-mass (LMM) form or as an enzymatically inactive high-molecular-mass (HMM) ribonucleoprotein complex. Resting CD4 T cells exclusively express LMM A3G, where it functions as a powerful postentry restriction factor for HIV-1. Activation of CD4 T cells promotes the recruitment of LMM A3G into 5- to 15-MDa HMM complexes whose function is unknown. Using tandem affinity purification techniques coupled with MS, we identified Staufen-containing RNA-transporting
granules and Ro ribonucleoprotein complexes as specific components of HMM A3G complexes. Analysis of RNAs in these complexes revealed Alu and small Y RNAs, two of the most prominent nonautonomous mobile genetic elements in human cells. These retroelement RNAs are recruited into Staufen-containing RNA-transporting granules in the presence of A3G. Retrotransposition of Alu and hY RNAs depends on the reverse transcriptase machinery provided by long interspersed nucleotide elements 1 (L1). We now show that A3G greatly inhibits L1-dependent retrotransposition of marked Alu retroelements not by inhibiting L1 function but by sequestering Alu RNAs in cytoplasmic HMM A3G complexes away from the nuclear L1 enzymatic machinery. These findings identify nonautonomous Alu and hY retroelements as natural cellular targets of A3G and highlight how different forms of A3G uniquely protect cells from the threats posed by exogenous retroviruses (LMM A3G) and
endogenous retroelements (HMM A3G).

Sobre Milton

2007-09-21T10:30:00.000+02:00

Me leí el documento de Richard Milton encabezado por la carta “Scientific Censorship and Evolution”, que se puede encontrar en este enlace (http://www.lauralee.com/milton2.htm). Único documento recibido, aunque encontrados hay unos pocos más, para intentar comprender el razonamiento antidarwinista. Y casi párrafo a párrafo intentaré comentarlo.

“In the first five decades of this century -- the heyday of the theory -- zoologists, palaeontologists and comparative anatomists assembled the impressive exhibits that generations of school children have seen in Natural History Museums the world over: the evolution of the horse family; the fossils that illustrate the transition from fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal; and the discovery of astonishing extinct species such as "Archaeopteryx", apparently half-reptile, half-bird.
Over successive decades, these exhibits have been first disputed, then downgraded, and finally shunted off to obscure museum basements, as further research has shown them to be flawed or misconceived.”

Del Museo Americano de Historia Natural:
“One of the premier attractions in New York City is the Museum's series of fossil halls, including its two famed dinosaur halls. The Museum is home to the world's largest collection of vertebrate fossils, totaling nearly one million specimens. More than 600 of these specimens, nearly 85 percent of which are real fossils as opposed to casts, are on view. Completely renovated between 1994 and 1996, the fossil halls now stand as a continuous loop on the fourth floor, telling the story of vertebrate evolution. Unlike most fossil exhibits, which are arranged in chronological order, the Museum's fossil halls display the specimens according to evolutionary relationships, dramatically illustrating the complex branches of the tree of life, in which animals are grouped according to their shared physical characteristics. Such relationships are determined through a method of scientific analysis called cladistics, which the Museum helped pioneer. The halls' renovation also allowed for new scientific interpretations of favorite displays, as well as the restoration of the fourth floor to its original architectural grandeur.“
El enlace, con mucha más información, aquí.

“In 1981, molecular biologists working under Dr Morris Goodman at Ann Arbor University decided to test this hypothesis. They took the alpha haemoglobin DNA of two reptiles -- a snake and a crocodile -- which are said by Darwinists to be closely related, and the haemoglobin DNA of a bird, in this case a farmyard chicken.
They found that the two animals who had _least_ DNA sequences in common were the two reptiles, the snake and the crocodile. They had only around 5% of DNA sequences in common -- only one twentieth of their haemoglobin DNA. The two creatures whose DNA was closest were the crocodile and the chicken, where there were 17.5% of sequences in common -- nearly one fifth. The actual DNA similarities were the _reverse_ of that predicted by neo- Darwinism.”

Lástima que la referencia que da sea tan difícil de encontrar (Patterson, Colin, presentation to the American Natural History Museum, 5 November 1981), aunque existe bibliografía, como la que se reseña aquí. Es particularmente interesante este review del propio Patterson, que se puede conseguir aquí. De la discusión destaca el siguiente párrafo: “The conclusion one might draw from all this is that the criterion used to define homology-i.e., the criterion of common ancestry-is a theoretical concept. Like truth, we must approximate it as best we can, and we have no touchstone to tell whether we have found it. The criteria we use to recognize homology are the same in morphology and in molecular biology. But because molecular sequences are one dimensional, recognition of molecular homology is a statistical problem, and the limit between homology and nonhomology is set by the resolving power of statistical procedures. In morphology, homologies concern three- or four-dimensional structures, and recognition of homology is a problem of systematics. In morphology the limit between homology and nonhomology is set by the resolving power of systematics, the confidence with which we can resolve monophyletic groups by congruence of features; and so in morphology it is legitimate to equate homology and synapomorphy. In molecular phylogenetics, there is no exact equation between homology and synapomorphy, first because the operational limit between molecular homology and nonhomology is statistical, and second because the theoretical criterion of homology-i.e., the criterion of common ancestry-does not distinguish between taxon lineages and gene lineages, which may ramify between and within taxa.”

De todas formas, hablar de homología de genomas con información incompleta es fatuo. Y bastante incompleta a escala de genomas es comparar el gen de la alpha-hemoglobina e intentar obtener conclusiones. Por poner un ejemplo, este gen en humanos tiene 12841 nucleótidos y representaría un 0.000428% del genoma total.

“Further, if neo-Darwinist evolutionary ideas of gradual genetic change were true, then one would expect to find that simple organisms have simple DNA and complex organisms have complex DNA. In some cases, this is true. The simple nematode worm is a favorite subject of laboratory study because its DNA contains a mere 1,000 nucleotide bases. At the other end of the complexity scale, humans have 23 chromosomes which in total contain 3,000 million nucleotide bases.”

No hay ningún gusano con 1000 nucleótidos... ni el virus más sencillo tiene 1000 nucleótidos. Solo algunos viroides (agentes infecciosos de plantas) tienen menos de 1000 nucleótidos. Una tabla comparativa de tamaños de genomas la podemos encontrar fácilmente en la wikipedia.

“Unfortunately, this promisingly Darwinian progression is contradicted by many counter examples. While human DNA is contained in 23 pairs of chromosomes, the humble goldfish has more than twice as many, at 47. The even humbler garden snail -- not much more than a glob of slime in a shell -- has 27 chromosomes. Some species of rose bush have 56 chromosomes. So the simple fact is that DNA analysis does _not_ confirm neo- Darwinist theory. In the laboratory, DNA analysis falsifies neo- Darwinist theory.”

Cuantificar cromosomas, como analizar la homología en los DNAs, es una cuestión de cantidad (y de estadística como se comentaba en párrafos anteriores) y no de calidad.

“An even more damaging blow to the theory was the discovery that the very centerpiece of neo-Darwinism, Darwin's original conception of natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, is fatally flawed. The problem is: how can biologists (or anyone else) tell what characteristics constitute the animal or plant's 'fitness' to survive? How can you tell which are the fit animals and plants? The answer is that the only way to define the fit is by means of a post-hoc rationalization -- the fit must be "those who survived". While the only way to characterize uniquely those who survive is as "the fit". The central proposition of the Darwinian argument turns out to be an empty tautology. C.H. Waddington, professor of biology at Edinburgh University wrote; "Natural selection, which was at first considered as though it were a hypothesis that was in need of experimental or observational confirmation, turns out on closer inspection to be a tautology, a statement of an inevitable although previously unrecognized relation. It states that the fittest individuals in a population (defined as those who leave the most offspring) will leave most offspring. Once the statement is made, its truth is apparent.”

Un poco más sencillo y menos tautológico. La selección natural puede ser expresada como la siguiente ley general (tomada de la conclusión de El origen de las especies):
1. Si existen organismos que se reproducen, y
2. Si la progenie hereda características de sus progenitores, y
3. Si existen variaciones de características y
4. Si el medio ambiente no admite a todos los miembros de una población en crecimiento
5. Entonces aquellos miembros de la población con características menos adaptadas (según lo determine su medio ambiente) morirán con mayor probabilidad y
6. Entonces aquellos miembros con características mejor adaptadas sobrevivirán más probablemente.

Y de esta página, resaltar el siguiente párrafo: “Let us begin our reply to this argument in the most direct way possible. It is asserted that within evolutionary theory, the fittest organisms are defined as those who survive. This is the crux of the argument, and it is completely incorrect. In reality, the fittest organisms are the ones who, based on their physical characteristics and the environment in which they find themselves, would be expected to leave the most offspring. Gould described the point this way:
My defense of Darwin is neither startling, novel, nor profound. I merely assert that Darwin was justified in analogizing natural selection with animal breeding. In artificial selection, a breeder's desire represents a “change of environment” for a population. In this new environment, certain traits are superior a priori; (they surive and spread by our breeder's choice, but this is a result of their fitness, not a definition of it). In nature, Darwinian evolution is also a response to changing environments. Now, the key point: certain morphological, physiological and behvioral traits should be superior a priori as designs for living in new environments. These traits confer fitness by an engineer's criterion of good design, not by the empirical fact of their survival and spread. It got colder before the wooly mammoth evolved its shaggy coat.“

“Simpson's reformulation means all this must be dropped: it is not the characteristics that directly matter -- it is the animals' capacity to reproduce themselves. The race is not to the swift, after all, but merely to the prolific. So how can neo-Darwinism explain the enormous diversity of characteristics? Not only are neo-Darwinist ideas falsified by empirical research, but other puzzling and extraordinary findings have come to light in recent decades, suggesting that evolution is not blind but rather is in some unknown way _directed_. The experiments of Cairns at Harvard and Hall at Rochester University suggest that microorganisms can mutate in a way that is beneficial. [8]

Experiments with tobacco plants and flax demonstrate genetic change through the effects of fertilizers alone. [9] Experiments with sea squirts and salamanders as long ago as the 1920s appeared to demonstrate the inheritance of acquired characteristics. [10] Moreover, as Sir Fred Hoyle has pointed out, Fossil micro-organisms have been found in meteorites, indicating that life is universal -- not a lucky break in the primeval soup. This view is shared by Sir Francis Crick, co- discoverer of the function of DNA”

El artículo de Barry G Hall está aquí para quien lo quiera leer. Solo una puntualización. La manera de ver mutaciones en este y otros trabajos es mediante análisis de cambios en el fenotipo (por ejemplo, uso de nutrientes), es decir, lo que se ha seleccionado, sin tener en cuenta, ni conocer, el camino transcurrido hasta esa selección. De esta autor me gusta más el siguiente artículo:
“Perspective
Nature Reviews Microbiology 2, 430-435 (May 2004) doi:10.1038/nrmicro888
Innovation: Predicting the evolution of antibiotic resistance genes
Barry G. Hall
Abstract
Antibiotic resistance is thought to evolve rapidly in response to antibiotic use. At present, we lack effective tools to assess how rapidly existing resistance genes are likely to evolve to yield resistance to newly introduced drugs. To address this problem, a method has been developed for in vitro evolution experiments to help predict how long it will take antibiotic resistance to arise — potentially allowing informed decisions about usage to be made.“

Respecto al artículo de Cairns, cuyo abstract es:
“The origin of mutants
John Cairns, Julie Overbaugh & Stephan Miller
Department of Cancer Biology, Harvard School of Public Health, 665 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA
Nucleic acids are replicated with conspicuous fidelity. Infrequently, however, they undergo changes in sequence, and this process of change (mutation) generates the variability that allows evolution. As the result of studies of bacterial variation, it is now widely believed that mutations arise continuously and without any consideration for their utility. In this paper, we briefly review the source of this idea and then describe some experiments suggesting that cells may have mechanisms for choosing which mutations will occur.“

No comprendo donde está el problema.

“Experiments with tobacco plants and flax demonstrate genetic change through the effects of fertilizers alone. [9] Experiments with sea squirts and salamanders as long ago as the 1920s appeared to demonstrate the inheritance of acquired characteristics. [10] Moreover, as Sir Fred Hoyle has pointed out, Fossil micro-organisms have been found in meteorites, indicating that life is universal -- not a lucky break in the primeval soup. This view is shared by Sir Francis Crick, co- discoverer of the function of DNA”

¿Alguien ha visto las microfotografías de microfósiles? Si llegamos a la conclusión racional de que la vida es universal no será gracias a ellas... de la herencia de caracteres adquiridos... hay unas pocas entradas en este mismo blog y es un tema de viva discusión. Y de todas formas... And so what? No parece que cambio y selección sea el tema que el autor analiza en este párrafo.

Y para acabar...

“Not surprisingly, the work of this new generation is heresy to the old. When Rupert Sheldrake's book "A New Science of Life" with its revolutionary theory of morphic resonance was published in 1981, the editor of "Nature" magazine, John Maddox, ran an editorial calling for the book to be burned -- a sure sign that Sheldrake is onto something important, many will think. [12, 13] The current mood in biology was summed up recently by Sheldrake as, 'Rather like working in Russia under Brehznev. Many biologists have one set of beliefs at work, their official beliefs, and another set, their real beliefs, which they can speak openly about only among friends. They may treat living things as mechanical in the laboratory but when they go home they don't treat their families as inanimate machines.' It is a strange aspect of science in the twentieth century that while physics has had to submit to the indignity of a principle of uncertainty and physicists have become accustomed to such strange entities as matter-waves and virtual particles, many of their colleagues down the corridor in biology seem not to have noticed the revolution of quantum electrodynamics. As far as many biologists are concerned, matter is made of billiard balls which collide with Newtonian certainty, and they carry on building molecular models out of coloured table-tennis balls. One of the twentieth century's most distinguished scientists and Nobel laureates, physicist Max Planck, observed that; 'A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.'”

Esto nada tiene que ver con la racionalidad del asunto... decir que hay gente que no se siente bien expresando sus ideas puede significar i) pobrecitos, a pesar de estar en posesión de la verdad la mafia no les deja expresarse, tildándoles de bestias o, ii) el razonamiento que lleva desde la suposición hasta la conclusión no es correcto, por más que se empeñen. Empezando por la tautología darwinista y terminando por la estadística de las comparaciones. De esta párrafo, es especialmente sangrante la siguiente frase: “They may treat living things as mechanical in the laboratory but when they go home they don't treat their families as inanimate machines”. Y mete una charla sobre los físicos que rompen moldes... los mismos que llevan toda la vida empeñados en reducir todas las leyes universales en una sola... reduccionismo puro y duro... si, también los más innovadores de los cuánticos... De la wikipedia: La mecánica cuántica, conocida también como mecánica ondulatoria y como física cuántica, es la rama de la física que explica el comportamiento de la materia a escala muy pequeña. (Estrictamente, su campo de aplicación pretende ser universal, pero es en "lo pequeño" donde sus predicciones divergen radicalmente de la llamada física clásica). El concepto de partícula "muy pequeña" atiende al tamaño en el cual comienzan a notarse efectos como la imposibilidad de conocer con exactitud, arbitraria y simultáneamente, la posición y el momento de una partícula (véase Principio de indeterminación de Heisenberg), entre otros. A tales efectos suele denominárseles "efectos cuánticos". Así, la mecánica cuántica es la que rige el movimiento de sistemas en los cuales los efectos cuánticos sean relevantes. Se ha documentado que tales efectos son importantes en materiales mesoscópicos (unos 1000 átomos).

FIN

Y lo mejor será no confundir...

2007-09-17T16:36:00.000+02:00

Como se dice en la entrada de la wikipedia para evolución biológica (enlace aquí):

"A menudo existe cierta confusión entre hecho evolutivo y teoría de la evolución. Se denomina hecho evolutivo al hecho científico de que los seres vivos están emparentados entre sí y han ido transformándose a lo largo del tiempo. La teoría de la evolución es el modelo científico que describe la transformación evolutiva y explica sus causas."

Por eso será mejor discutir primero si existe o no el hecho evolutivo, y una vez lleguemos a una conclusión más o menos racional, entonces, y solo entonces, discutiremos sobre el mecanismo por el cual se produce.

Primero discutiremos sobre los hechos, cuáles se basan en realidades y cuáles en ficciones, y más tarde lo podremos hacer sobre los mecanismos por los cuales se producen dichos hechos.

O llanamente, primero será evolución vs. creacionismo, y si concluimos que la evolución es un hecho, entonces, y solo entonces, podremos hablar de darwinismo si darwinismo no.

Para saber de qué estamos hablando.

2007-09-17T13:08:00.000+02:00

evolución.
(Del lat. evolutĭo, -ōnis).
1. f. Acción y efecto de evolucionar.
2. f. Desarrollo de las cosas o de los organismos, por medio del cual pasan gradualmente de un estado a otro.
3. f. evolución biológica. Ver más adelante.
4. f. Movimiento de una persona, animal o cosa que se desplaza describiendo líneas curvas. U. m. en pl.
5. f. Movimiento que hacen las tropas o los buques, pasando de unas formaciones a otras para atacar al enemigo o defenderse de él.
6. f. Mudanza de conducta, de propósito o de actitud.
7. f. Desarrollo o transformación de las ideas o de las teorías.
8. f. Cambio de forma.
9. f. Fil. Doctrina que explica todos los fenómenos, cósmicos, físicos y mentales, por transformaciones sucesivas de una sola realidad primera, sometida a perpetuo movimiento intrínseco, en cuya virtud pasa de lo simple y homogéneo a lo compuesto y heterogéneo.
~ biológica.
1. f. Proceso continuo de transformación de las especies a través de cambios producidos en sucesivas generaciones.

Aunque hay cosas que no solo necesitan respuestas

2007-09-14T10:48:00.000+02:00

Lo que ya no me deja indiferente son las opiniones acerca de virus, bacterias, y su relación con la enfermedad. Que las bacterias y los virus son vehículos perfectos para la transferencia horizontal de genes, y que son un aspecto muy importante para la vida y evolución de los organismos, con lo que se sabe desde hace décadas no parece muy discutible (algo si lo será, todo es discutible). Pero que con lo que sabemos debemos cambiar nuestra manera de afrontar las enfremedades infecciosas... ¡córcholis! ¡NO!

La gente enferma y muere por culpa de algunos microorganismos (una mínima parte de microorganismos, eso sí). Podemos llegar a decir que la mayoría de las bacterias y virus son beneficiosos, pero lo que creo es incontestable es que en ciertos ambientes o condiciones, por ejemplo, un cambio de hospedador (lo correcto es hospedador, no huésped) o un crecimiento descontrolado, provocan la enfermedad e incluso la muerte del organismo que colonizan (¿infectan?).

Cuando esto ocurre, ¿qué podemos hacer?

Hay entradas que hablan del SIDA. Miedo dan. La infección de humanos por el HIV es responsable de miles de muertes anuales. Y muchísimas de ellas (la mayoría) allá donde no hay tratamientos antirretrovirales.

Hay entradas que hablan del cáncer. Miedo dan. Y si encima se hace mención a Ryke Geerd Hamer, raya el delito. Sólo tres enlaces, uno del "Study Group for Complementary and Alternative Methods in Cancer (SCAC) and the Swiss Cancer League (SCL)", otro a la lista de pacientes alemanes que se pusieron en sus manos y murieron, y el último, un obituario.

La gente padece enfermedades (padecer según la RAE: Sentir física y corporalmente un daño, dolor, enfermedad, pena o castigo). ¿Qué podemos hacer para aliviarles? ¿Lo que se hace funciona?

Para quien pueda responder

2007-09-14T09:21:00.000+02:00

Desde hace tiempo estoy leyendo críticas al darwinismo (Darwin era de todo menos guapo) y a la selección natural (espejo biológico del comportamiento humano ultraliberal), de personas o colectivos pertenecientes o cercanos al ámbito de la biología.

De todas las críticas que he leído, solo he encontrado un intento de fundamentar con datos de campo este tipo de historias (leyendo algunas de ellas ya no se si emplear la palabra teoría). El intento en cuestión (enlazado aquí), de Máximo Sandín, no lo voy a reproducir por la siquiente nota aclaratoria que figura en su página web:

Quiero hacer constar que la utilización de textos procedentes de esta página por personas y organizaciones cuyos principios e intereses chocan de un modo evidente con los que la inspiran, ha sido llevada a cabo sin autorización o mediante engaños sobre la verdadera identidad de las personas implicadas. Las únicas ideas de las que me hago responsable son las que se exponen en mis artículos.
Máximo Sandín

Claro que esta frase ya es suficiente.

El resto de opiniones se basan en frases del tipo "El pensamiento darwinista no es más que la extrapolación de la teoría del liberalismo económico a los fenómenos naturales".

Y me parece muy bien. Pero me deja un poco frío. ¿Algo más que aportar?

Más creacionismo en Europa

2007-09-12T07:26:00.001+02:00

Gracias al blog Evolucionarios me entero de que se ha censurado en Holanda todo comentario evolutivo del documental de Sir David Attenborough 'The Life of Mammals'. El enlace aquí, donde podréis encontrar más información.

Más enlaces recomendados

2007-09-08T09:10:00.000+02:00

Gracias a una noche de insomnio he dedicado unas horas a navegar para encontrar algunas páginas que merecen mucho la pena. Entre ellas son de destacar:
http://golemp.blogspot.com/
http://evolucionarios.blogalia.com/
http://blogs.elcorreodigital.com/magonia
http://circuloesceptico.org/index.php
http://pikaia.wordpress.com/
http://charlatanes.blogspot.com/
Ya están en enlaces recomendados.

¡Más madera que es la guerra! HERITABLE LATERAL GENE TRANSFER

2007-09-06T14:30:00.000+02:00

En la revista Science publican un artículo en el que demuestran la transferencia horizontal de genes desde procariotas a eucariotas, concretamente entre la bacteria Wolbachia pipientis y células de insecto y nematodos. El artículo lo tenéis en este enlace. El resumen está a continuación:

Widespread Lateral Gene Transfer from Intracellular Bacteria to Multicellular Eukaryotes.
Although common among bacteria, lateral gene transfer—the movement of genes between distantly related organisms—is thought to occur only rarely between bacteria and multicellular eukaryotes. However, the presence of endosymbionts, such as Wolbachia pipientis, within some eukaryotic germlines may facilitate bacterial gene transfers to eukaryotic host genomes. We therefore examined host genomes for evidence of gene transfer events from Wolbachia bacteria to their hosts. We found and confirmed transfers into the genomes of 4 insect and 4 nematode species that range from nearly the entire Wolbachia genome (>1 megabase) to short (<500 base pairs) insertions. Potential Wolbachia to host transfers were also detected computationally in three additional sequenced insect genomes. We also show that some of these inserted Wolbachia genes are transcribed within eukaryotic cells lacking endosymbionts. Therefore, heritable lateral gene transfer occurs into eukaryotic hosts from their prokaryote symbionts, potentially providing a mechanism for acquisition of new genes and functions.

LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT!

2007-09-04T06:37:00.000+02:00

Así es el título de la entrada de The Edge.
Y promete mucho.
Una reunión de unos pocos elegidos en una granja en Connecticut para charlar acerca de la vida. Por ahora solo se puede acceder a algunos videos y a los resúmenes (muy escuetos) de lo que dijo cada participante (Freeman Dyson, J. Craig Venter, George Church, Robert Shapiro, Dimitar Sasselov, and Seth Lloyd). Durante el próximo otoño irán colgando las charlas y discusiones.

Al final de esta página hay un intercambio de opiniones entre Dawkins y Dyson:
RICHARD DAWKINS—FREEMAN DYSON: AN EXCHANGE.
Intercambio debido a un artículo publicado por Dyson en New York Review of Books y titulado "Our Biotech Future".
Un ensayo acerca del futuro de nuestro planeta y de las especies que habitan/habitarán en el.

No es binomio ciencia-religión pero no está mal para empezar el curso después del verano.

Religión en la revista Nature

2007-09-03T11:01:00.000+02:00

En el número del 23 de agosto de 2007 aparece esta carta:

Correspondence
Nature 448, 864 (23 August 2007) doi:10.1038/448864a; Published online 22 August 2007

Scientists should unite against threat from religion
Sam Harris1
Address withheld by request http://www.samharris.org

Sir
It was genuinely alarming to encounter Ziauddin Sardar's whitewash of Islam in the pages of your journal ('Beyond the troubled relationship' Nature 448, 131–133; 2007). Here, as elsewhere, Nature's coverage of religion has been unfailingly tactful — to the point of obscurantism.

In his Commentary, Sardar seems to accept, at face value, the claim that Islam constitutes an "intrinsically rational world view". Perhaps there are occasions where public intellectuals must proclaim the teachings of Islam to be perfectly in harmony with scientific naturalism. But let us not do so, just yet, in the world's foremost scientific journal.

Under the basic teachings of Islam, the Koran cannot be challenged or contradicted, being the perfect word of the creator of the Universe. To speak of the compatibility of science and Islam in 2007 is rather like speaking of the compatibility of science and Christianity in the year 1633, just as Galileo was being forced, under threat of death, to recant his understanding of the Earth's motion.

An Editorial announcing the publication of Francis Collins's book, The Language of God ('Building bridges' Nature 442, 110; doi:10.1038/442110a 2006) represents another instance of high-minded squeamishness in addressing the incompatibility of faith and reason. Nature praises Collins, a devout Christian, for engaging "with people of faith to explore how science — both in its mode of thought and its results — is consistent with their religious beliefs".

But here is Collins on how he, as a scientist, finally became convinced of the divinity of Jesus Christ: "On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains... the majesty and beauty of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ."
What does the "mode of thought" displayed by Collins have in common with science? The Language of God should have sparked gasping outrage from the editors at Nature. Instead, they deemed Collins's efforts "moving" and "laudable", commending him for building a "bridge across the social and intellectual divide that exists between most of US academia and the so-called heartlands."

At a time when Muslim doctors and engineers stand accused of attempting atrocities in the expectation of supernatural reward, when the Catholic Church still preaches the sinfulness of condom use in villages devastated by AIDS, when the president of the United States repeatedly vetoes the most promising medical research for religious reasons, much depends on the scientific community presenting a united front against the forces of unreason.

There are bridges and there are gangplanks, and it is the business of journals such as Nature to know the difference.

Es por esto...

2007-08-25T11:50:00.000+02:00

A través del blog que Javier Sampedro mantiene en El Pais, y leyendo los comentarios a una de sus entradas, he llegado al siguiente vídeo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnmBaWy4DJo&mode=related&search=

Y esto ocurre con Darwin y sus acólitos... ¿qué habría pasado sin ellos o alguien que se les pareciese? Miedo da y miedo dan las voces a coro, sea del signo que sean.

Desde el blog "Un Universo invisible bajo nuestros pies"

2007-08-24T22:34:00.000+02:00

Gracias al blog "Un Universo invisible bajo nuestros pies" que gestiona Juan José Ibañez, he tenido noticias de un artículo publicado en el New Journal of Physics:

Tsytovich, V. N., Morfill, G.E., Fortov, V. E., Gusein-Zade, N.G.,Klumov, B.A. and S V Vladimirov, 2007. From plasma crystals and helical structures towards inorganic living matter. «New Journal of Physics, New Journal of Physics 9 (2007) 263.

donde describen la autoorganización de la materia, un paso inicial imprescindible en los procesos de evolución prebiótica.

Este blog tiene otras entradas muy buenas, algunas de ellas relacionadas con evolución. Espero que lo disfrutéis.

Extraído de Tendencias21

2007-07-31T09:05:00.000+02:00

Nace el proyecto Sophia Iberia en Europa sobre la evolución humana.
Gran reflexión colectiva sobre las raíces antrópicas de la historia de nuestra especie
La evolución humana se ha producido dentro del universo físico y en el marco de un proceso viviente general que ofrece el marco inmediato en que aparece la especie humana. El hombre es, pues, “real” porque el universo y la vida poseen ciertas propiedades “antrópicas”; es decir, capaces de producir al hombre. El proyecto Sophia Iberia in Europe on Human Evolution se orienta hacia una reflexión que nos haga entender las raíces antrópicas de la evolución humana cómo vía para entender nuestra propia naturaleza. Sophia Iberia se desarrollará a lo largo de los tres próximos cursos. Su primera actuación será una “Academic Conference” para los días 6-7-8 de septiembre de 2007, en la Universidad Comillas. Por Guillermo Armengol.

El artículo completo en este enlace.

De Darwin, neodarwinianos y sus anti.

2007-07-29T23:48:00.000+02:00

Desde hace unos años existe una corriente anti-neodarwinista muy fuerte que intenta desbancar, creo que con éxito, el concepto de selección natural como motor de la evolución. Ni siquiera Darwin confiaba plenamente en dicho concepto:

"I had two distinct objects in view, firstly, to shew that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of change, though largely aided by the inherited effects of habit, and slightly by the direct action of the surrounding conditions. Nevertheless I was not able to annul the influence of my former belief, then widely prevalent, that each species had been purposely created; and this led to my tacitly assuming that every detail of structure, excepting rudiments, was of some special, though unrecognised, service. Any one with this assumption in his mind would naturally extend the action of natural selection, either during past or present times, too far. Some of those who admit the principle of evolution, but reject natural selection, seem to forget, when criticising my book, that I had the above two objects in view; hence if I have erred in giving to natural selection great power, which I am far from admitting, or in having exaggerated its power, which is in itself probable, I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations."
THE DESCENT OF MAN, AND SELECTION IN RELATION TO SEX.

Sin embargo tenía claro dónde quería llegar:

"to overthrow the dogma of separate creations".

No perdamos de vista que no se cuestiona si las especies evolucionan. Y dejémoslo claro en cada una de nuestras opiniones.

Sobre el estudio de la evolución

2007-07-29T07:18:00.000+02:00

Hace una semana salió publicado en la revista Science un artículo sobre abejas, diversidad y el origen de la poliandria en la naturaleza. Me resultó muy llamativo, sobre todo por el título. Cualquiera que trabaje con evolución de virus verá que este artículo no puede dejarnos indiferentes. El artículo en cuestión es:

Science. 2007 Jul 20;317(5836):362-4.
Genetic diversity in honey bee colonies enhances productivity and fitness.
Mattila HR, Seeley TD.
Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. hrm24@cornell.edu
Honey bee queens mate with many males, creating numerous patrilines within colonies that are genetically distinct. The effects of genetic diversity on colony productivity and long-term fitness are unknown. We show that swarms from genetically diverse colonies (15 patrilines per colony) founded new colonies faster than swarms from genetically uniform colonies (1 patriline per colony). Accumulated differences in foraging rates, food storage, and population growth led to impressive boosts in the fitness (i.e., drone production and winter survival) of genetically diverse colonies. These results further our understanding of the origins of polyandry in honey bees and its benefits for colony performance.

¿Qué ocurre cuando disminuimos la diversidad de un virus aumentando, por ejemplo, la fidelidad de la enzima que copia su genoma? Esto fue publicado por el grupo de Karla Kirkegaard en PLoS Pathog hace un par de años:

PLoS Pathog. 2005 Oct;1(2):e11. Epub 2005 Oct 7.
Increased fidelity reduces poliovirus fitness and virulence under selective pressure in mice.
Pfeiffer JK, Kirkegaard K.
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.
RNA viruses have high error rates, and the resulting quasispecies may aid survival of the virus population in the presence of selective pressure. Therefore, it has been theorized that RNA viruses require high error rates for survival, and that a virus with high fidelity would be less able to cope in complex environments. We previously isolated and characterized poliovirus with a mutation in the viral polymerase, 3D-G64S, which confers resistance to mutagenic nucleotide analogs via increased fidelity. The 3D-G64S virus was less pathogenic than wild-type virus in poliovirus-receptor transgenic mice, even though only slight growth defects were observed in tissue culture. To determine whether the high-fidelity phenotype of the 3D-G64S virus could decrease its fitness under a defined selective pressure, we compared growth of the 3D-G64S virus and 3D wild-type virus in the context of a revertible attenuating point mutation, 2C-F28S. Even with a 10-fold input advantage, the 3D-G64S virus was unable to compete with 3D wild-type virus in the context of the revertible attenuating mutation; however, in the context of a non-revertible version of the 2C-F28S attenuating mutation, 3D-G64S virus matched the replication of 3D wild-type virus. Therefore, the 3D-G64S high-fidelity phenotype reduced viral fitness under a defined selective pressure, making it likely that the reduced spread in murine tissue could be caused by the increased fidelity of the viral polymerase.

¿Y qué pasa si un virus pierde su capacidad de diversificarse? ¿Y si se restaura esta capacidad de manera artificial? El año pasado, el grupo de Raul Andino contestó esta pregunta empleando poliovirus y su neurotropismo.

Nature. 2006 Jan 19;439(7074):344-8. Epub 2005 Dec 4.
Quasispecies diversity determines pathogenesis through cooperative interactions in a viral population.
Vignuzzi M, Stone JK, Arnold JJ, Cameron CE, Andino R.
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143-2280, USA.
An RNA virus population does not consist of a single genotype; rather, it is an ensemble of related sequences, termed quasispecies. Quasispecies arise from rapid genomic evolution powered by the high mutation rate of RNA viral replication. Although a high mutation rate is dangerous for a virus because it results in nonviable individuals, it has been hypothesized that high mutation rates create a 'cloud' of potentially beneficial mutations at the population level, which afford the viral quasispecies a greater probability to evolve and adapt to new environments and challenges during infection. Mathematical models predict that viral quasispecies are not simply a collection of diverse mutants but a group of interactive variants, which together contribute to the characteristics of the population. According to this view, viral populations, rather than individual variants, are the target of evolutionary selection. Here we test this hypothesis by examining the consequences of limiting genomic diversity on viral populations. We find that poliovirus carrying a high-fidelity polymerase replicates at wild-type levels but generates less genomic diversity and is unable to adapt to adverse growth conditions. In infected animals, the reduced viral diversity leads to loss of neurotropism and an attenuated pathogenic phenotype. Notably, using chemical mutagenesis to expand quasispecies diversity of the high-fidelity virus before infection restores neurotropism and pathogenesis. Analysis of viruses isolated from brain provides direct evidence for complementation between members in the quasispecies, indicating that selection indeed occurs at the population level rather than on individual variants. Our study provides direct evidence for a fundamental prediction of the quasispecies theory and establishes a link between mutation rate, population dynamics and pathogenesis.

¿Y, finalmente, qué ocurre si los virus RNA leen a Lewis Carroll?

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1994 May 24;91(11):4821-4.
The red queen reigns in the kingdom of RNA viruses.
Clarke DK, Duarte EA, Elena SF, Moya A, Domingo E, Holland J.
Department of Biology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0116.
Two clonal populations of vesicular stomatitis virus of approximately equal relative fitness were mixed together and allowed to compete during many transfers in vitro as large virus populations. Eventually, one or the other population suddenly excluded its competitor population, yet both the winners and losers exhibited absolute gains in fitness. Our results agree with the predictions of two major theories of classical population biology; the Competitive Exclusion Principle and the Red Queen's Hypothesis, where (in Lewis Carroll's words) "it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place."

¡¡¡Echan a correr!!!

Hoy en PNAS

2007-07-25T08:54:00.000+02:00

Hoy en PNAS aparece un artículo de revisión que puede merecer la pena. El resumen es:

PERSPECTIVE

The new mutation theory of phenotypic evolution
Masatoshi Nei*

Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics and Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University, 328 Mueller Laboratory, University Park, PA 16802

Edited by Daniel L. Hartl, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved June 13, 2007 (received for review April 16, 2007)

Recent studies of developmental biology have shown that the genes controlling phenotypic characters expressed in the early stage of development are highly conserved and that recent evolutionary changes have occurred primarily in the characters expressed in later stages of development. Even the genes controlling the latter characters are generally conserved, but there is a large component of neutral or nearly neutral genetic variation within and between closely related species. Phenotypic evolution occurs primarily by mutation of genes that interact with one another in the developmental process. The enormous amount of phenotypic diversity among different phyla or classes of organisms is a product of accumulation of novel mutations and their conservation that have facilitated adaptation to different environments. Novel mutations may be incorporated into the genome by natural selection (elimination of preexisting genotypes) or by random processes such as genetic and genomic drift. However, once the mutations are incorporated into the genome, they may generate developmental constraints that will affect the future direction of phenotypic evolution. It appears that the driving force of phenotypic evolution is mutation, and natural selection is of secondary importance.

Y éste el enlace al artículo completo para quien tenga subscripción.

Biología humanista.

2007-07-19T09:42:00.000+02:00

Emilio Cervantes ha creado este blog que se presenta así:

El fundamento de la biología debe ser experimental. Pero los aspectos de la vida que se pueden estudiar por el método científico son limitados.

Aunque el fundamento de la biología deba ser experimental, su desarrollo es teórico, porque como dijo Ortega y Gasset: “La biología es lo que hacen los biólogos”.

Esto puede, hoy, cambiar el mundo.

Y que en la primera entrada hacía esta reflexión:

"Comienzo este blog con un objetivo: hablar de Biología en español.Se nos dice que la Biología estudia la vida y también oimos que la Biología es una ciencia experimental. ¿Acaso no hay ahí una contradicción?. Puede que la Biología sea el estudio de aquellos aspectos de la vida que pueden someterse a experimentación. ¿Estaríamos de acuerdo en ese punto de partida?"

Una página muy recomendable.

Hoy en Nature.

2007-07-19T09:30:00.000+02:00

Hoy aparece la crítica de varios libros sobre el juicio de Dover:

Books and Arts
Nature 448, 253-254 (19 July 2007) doi:10.1038/448253a; Published online 18 July 2007

The case of creation
Kevin Padian
Abstract
Last year's Dover trial resulted in intelligent design being removed from the science curriculum.

BOOK REVIEWED-The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA
by Gordy Slack
Jossey-Bass: 2007. 240 pp. $24.95

BOOK REVIEWED-40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin® and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania
by Matthew Chapman
HarperCollins: 2007. 288 pp. $25.95

BOOK REVIEWED-Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul
by Edward Humes
Ecco: 2007. 400 pp. $25.95

Y el enlace a esta página es: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7151/full/448253a.html

Sobre hechos y teorías.

2007-07-19T07:59:00.000+02:00

En el siguiente enlace

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact-and-theory.html

encontraréis una de las mejores columnas escritas por S. J. Gould, y que formó parte del libro "Dientes de Gallina, Dedos de Caballo". Con gran y envidiable facilidad expone su punto de vista sobre el creacionismo y sus seguidores.

Sobre nuevas especies y sus implicaciones. Publicado en Plos Biology.

2007-07-18T09:03:00.000+02:00

New Taxonomy and the Origin of Species
Shai Meiri*, Georgina M. Mace
PLoS Biol 5(7): e194 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050194
Published: July 17, 2007

Copyright: © 2007 Meiri and Mace.

Shai Meiri is a postdoctoral research associate and Georgina M. Mace is Director of the NERC Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College London, Ascot, SL5 7PY, Berkshire, United Kingdom. Georgina M. Mace is also a professor with the Division of Biology, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: s.meiri@imperial.ac.uk

On March 15th 2007, the World Wildlife Fund announced a new species of clouded leopard, Neofelis diardi, from Borneo and Sumatra. The media was enthusiastic; the Times of London, for example, published a picture of the new species on its front page, declaring this to be the first new species of big cat to be identified “in almost two centuries.” Disappointingly however, N. diardi is far from new. It was described by Cuvier in 1823, then relegated to a subspecies of the mainland species N. nebulosa. Recent morphological [1] and genetic [2] studies, however, now suggest that it is sufficiently distinct to merit specific status.

Describing new species of mammals is an increasingly common event; a process sometimes referred to as “taxonomic inflation” [3–5]. The total number of mammal species has risen from 4,659 in 1993 to 5,418 in 2005 [6,7] and the announcement of Neofelis diardi exemplifies the trend for increased species recognition, based not on new discoveries in the wild but on the elevation of known allopatric subspecies (i.e., with no geographic overlap) to species. While we welcome the stronger support for conservation that species status will provide, it is important that species status be assigned appropriately.

Most of these recently described species are allopatric or parapatric (i.e., with ranges that abut but do not overlap) populations, separated by barriers such as rivers. Given a barrier to gene flow, the accumulation of genetic and morphological differences is expected [8] and may be of limited biological importance. It seems, however, that many recent taxonomic studies regard the presence of allopatric populations as an indication that speciation has occurred. We suggest that stronger evidence is needed to show that populations are sufficiently distinct to merit specific status. This evidence should be capable of discriminating genuine ecological and evolutionary distinctiveness from minor differences that could result from geographic isolation [9]. Mayr [8] claimed that taxonomy has three major impacts on evolutionary thought: Advancing the predominance of allopatric speciation, introducing the biological species concept, and indicating the prevalence of polytypic species (Rassenkreis [8,10]) that vary over geographic space. The current trend of splitting species endorses the first, ignores or disagrees with the second, and denies the third.

In resurrecting N. diardi, Kitchener et al. [1] are relying on the phylogenetic species concept whereby species are defined as groups that share at least one uniquely derived character. They distinguish two clouded leopard “species” solely on the basis of pelage (fur color and pattern) characteristics, despite the fact that differences in hair color often reflect minor geographical varieties in many mammals. Borneo and the Malay Peninsula differ in several biotic and abiotic factors. Thus genetic and morphological differences between populations of the 144 mammalian species they share [11] are to be expected, and there could potentially be equivalent evidence to merit specific status for all of these; an outcome that would certainly be unjustified.
The biological species concept is broadly inapplicable for allopatric populations separated by barriers. Regarding any derived character as conferring specific status is, however, not justifiable. Using such criteria, we would see a return to the taxonomic practices of the era of Merriam [12], who split North American brown bears into 82 species (in two genera), promoting GG Simpson to remark that Merriam “had a (fortunately) unique conception of the character of a species, giving it less scope than most authors give a minor geographic race, not much more than an individual genetic family group. On such a system twin bear cubs could be of different species” [13]. North American brown bears are nowadays believed to represent two subspecies in a single Holarctic species, Ursus arctos, but if any derived character is enough to confer species status, then certainly Merriam was closer to the truth.

We suggest re-introducing the notion of the polytypic species; putting the Rassenkreis into taxonomy. Genetic and morphological differences between populations are expected to evolve in allopatry but should be substantial to merit specific status. Although there are no a priori criteria for just how different populations have to be to be called species, geographic variation should certainly be taken into consideration.

Splitting allopatric populations into species makes each of these more vulnerable than the polytypic species has been, because ranges and population sizes are smaller [3]. If, as seems likely from the World Wildlife Fund announcement, conservation resources are directed towards newly identified endangered species, then accepting N. diardi will benefit the conservation of Bornean and Sumatran clouded leopards. Conservation funds are however limited, so this may in fact be achieved by diverting funds away from other species.. We are not suggesting that there should necessarily be reduced conservation for these forms. Conservation actions should support species across their ranges, perhaps favoring phenotypically distinct populations or geographically isolated subsets so as to fully conserve variation. Rather, we note that splitting species per se does not necessarily have conservation value [14].

Where should the burden of proof lie when naming new species? Given the importance of species designation for conservation and for comparative studies that contribute to our understanding of biodiversity, we believe species status needs to be awarded after careful consideration of the evidence to support its biological significance based on morphological, geographical, ecological, behavioral, and genetic information [15]. Furthermore, the choice of characters used in classification should not be focused on highly labile traits that show clear patterns of geographic variation [16]. Simply identifying differences is not enough; a quantitative comparative approach should show (as in [2]) that the degree of observed differences is similar to differences observed between closely related sympatric (i.e., geographically overlapping) species.

We should celebrate the discovery of new species when they genuinely add to the pool of evolutionary diversity (e.g., [17]), but we must be careful not to simply reduce the threshold. In practice, we suggest that when splitting previously recognized polytypic species, taxonomists present sufficient evidence that morphological, ecological, behavioral, and genetic differences between the two forms are of a magnitude that would merit specific rank in closely related sympatric forms.

Acknowledgments
We thank Tim Barraclough, Rich Grenyer, Joaquin Hortal, Ally Phillimore, Andy Purvis, and Gavin Thomas for stimulating discussion.

References
1.Kitchener AC, Beaumont MA, Richardson D (2006) Geographical variation in the clouded leopard, Neofelis nebulosa, reveals two species. Curr Biol 16: 2377–2383. Find this article online
2.Buckley-Beason VA, Johnson WE, Nash WG, Stanyon R, Menninger JC, et al. (2006) Molecular evidence for species-level distinctions in clouded leopards. Cur Biol 16: 2371–2376. Find this article online
3.Agapow PM, Bininda-Emonds ORP, Crandall KA, Gittleman JL, Mace GM, et al. (2004) The impact of species concept on biodiversity studies. Quar Rev Biol 79: 161–179. Find this article online
4.Isaac NJB, Mallet J, Mace GM (2004) Taxonomic inflation: Its influence on macroecology and conservation. Trends Ecol Evol 19: 464–469. Find this article online
5.Mace GM (2004) The role of taxonomy in species conservation Philos Trans R Soc London Ser B. 359 711–719.
6.Wilson DE, Reeder DM (1993) Mammal species of the world 2nd edition Washington (District of Columbia): Smithsonian Institution Press. 1206 p.
7.Wilson DE, Reeder DM (2005) Mammal species of the world 3rd edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2142 p.
8.Mayr E (1942) Systematics and the origin of species New York: Columbia University Press. 334 p.
9.Crandall KA, Bininda-Emonds ORP, Mace GM, Wayne RK (2000) Considering evolutionary processes in conservation biology. Trends Ecol Evol 15: 290–295. Find this article online
10.Rensch B (1938) Some problems of geographical variation and species formation. Proc Linn Soc 150: 275–285. Find this article online
11.Corbet GB, Hill JE (1992) The mammals of the Indo Malayan region Oxford: Oxford University Press. 484 p.
12.Merriam CH (1918) Review of the grizzly and big brown bears of North America (genus Ursus) with the description of a new genus, Vetularctos. North Amer Fauna 41: 1–136. Find this article online
13.Simpson GG (1945) The principles of classification and a classification of mammals. Bull Am Mus Nat Hist 85: 1–350. Find this article online
14.Chaitra MS, Vasudevan K, Shanker K (2004) The biodiversity bandwagon: The splitters have it. Curr Sci 86: 897–899. Find this article online
15.Mayr E (1996) What a species is and what is not? Phil Sci 63: 26–77.
16.Helbig AJ, Knox AG, Parkin DT, Sangster G, Collinson M (2002) Guidelines for assigning species rank. Ibis 144: 518–525. Find this article online
17.Jenkins PD, Kilpatrick CW, Robinson MF, Timmins RJ (2005) Morphological and molecular investigations of a new family, genus and species of rodent (Mammalia: Rodentia: Hystricognatha) from Lao PDR. Syst Biodiv 2: 419–454. Find this article online

En Scientific American

2007-07-11T09:08:00.000+02:00

FEATURE ARTICLES July 2007 issue

DEBATE

Should Science Speak to Faith?

Two prominent defenders of science exchange their views on how scientists ought to approach
religion and its followers

By Lawrence M. Krauss and Richard Dawkins

Editors’ Introduction
Although the authors are both on the side of science, they have not always agreed about the best ways to oppose religiously motivated threats to scientific practice or instruction. Krauss, a leading physicist, frequently steps into the public spotlight to argue in favor of retaining evolutionary theory in school science curricula and keeping pseudoscientific variants of creationism out of them. An open letter he sent to Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, urging the pontiff not to build new walls between science and faith, led the Vatican to reaffirm the Catholic Church’s acceptance of natural selection as a valid scientific theory.

Enlace al artículo:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=25A5DA8D-E7F2-99DF-32F53BCD97024B43

En Nature hoy

2007-07-05T09:22:00.000+02:00

Hoy se publica en Nature una carta que hace referencia a una noticia aparecida el 24 de mayo en la misma revista. La noticia hace referencia al caso de Guillermo González, astrónomo que apoya el diseño inteligente y que cree que esta creencia ha sido el impedimento para que consiga una plaza permanente de investigador en la Universidad del Estado de Iowa. De hecho, ha recurrido la decisión del tribunal apelando que dicha decisión se ha tomado por sus creencias religiosas.
La carta publicada hoy hace hincapié en que si González opina que sus creencias religiosas son las causantes del rechazo, entonces es de la opinión de que el diseño inteligente es en si mismo más religión que ciencia.
A continuación el artículo de mayo y la carta de hoy.

===============================================

News
Nature 447, 364 (24 May 2007) doi:10.1038/447364a; Published online 23 May 2007
Darwin sceptic says views cost tenure
Geoff Brumfiel

Abstract
Astronomer blames setback on his support of intelligent design.

N. MAJUMDAR/AP
Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez has been actively promoting his book on intelligent design.
He's a young astronomer with dozens of articles in top journals; he has made an important discovery in the field of extrasolar planets; and he is a proponent of intelligent design, the idea that an intelligent force has shaped the Universe. It's that last fact that Guillermo Gonzalez thinks has cost him his tenure at Iowa State University.

Gonzalez, who has been at Iowa State in Ames since 2001, was denied tenure on 9 March. He is now appealing the decision on the grounds that his religious belief, not the quality of his science, was the basis for turning down his application. "I'm concerned my views on intelligent design were a factor," he says.

Advocates of intelligent design are rallying behind Gonzalez in the latest example of what they say is blatant academic discrimination. "Academia seems to be in a rage about anything that points to any purpose," says Michael Behe, a biochemist and prominent advocate of intelligent design at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. "They are penalizing an associate professor who's doing his job because he has views they disagree with."

But other researchers think that the department's decision was entirely justified. "I would have voted to deny him tenure," says Robert Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park. "He has established that he does not understand the scientific process."
Gonzalez's early career was far from controversial. He graduated with a PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1993 and did a postdoc at the University of Texas in Austin. "He proved himself very quickly," says David Lambert, director of the university's MacDonald Observatory. He and Gonzalez co-authored several papers on variable stars, and Lambert says that while there, the young Cuban immigrant was an impressive scientist. "He is one of the best postdocs I have had," he says.

In 1996, Gonzalez returned to the University of Washington to do his second postdoc, and again distinguished himself — producing two papers (1, 2) that linked a star's metal content to the presence of extrasolar planets around it. The papers are still highly cited, and they have encouraged other researchers to search for planets around metal-rich stars.
The 43-year-old astronomer is also a deeply religious evangelical Christian, and his faith has shaped his views on science. He considers himself a "sceptic" of Darwin, and says that his Christianity helps him to understand Earth's position in the Universe. "Our location in the Galaxy, which is optimized for habitability, is also the best place for doing cosmology and stellar astrophysics in the Galaxy," he says. In other words: "The Universe is designed for scientific discovery."

Gonzalez refrained from mentioning his beliefs in his teaching and peer-reviewed works, but in 2004, he co-authored a book entitled The Privileged Planet, which included many of his pro-design arguments (3). He has since travelled the country delivering talks that support the thesis of his book.

His work did not go unnoticed at Iowa State. In 2005, Gonzalez's rising profile led a group of 131 faculty members to sign a petition disavowing intelligent design. "We were starting to see Iowa State mentioned as a place where intelligent-design research was happening," says Hector Avalos, a religious-studies professor who helped lead the signature drive. "We wanted to make sure that people knew the university does not support intelligent design." Avalos adds that they did not name Gonzalez directly, and he takes no position on the astronomer's tenure.
Nevertheless, proponents of intelligent design point to the signature drive as evidence of a widespread academic hostility to those who support the idea. "There is a pattern happening to everybody who's pro intelligent design," says one pro-design biologist, who declined to be named because his own tenure process has just begun. "The same thing could happen to me," he says. "I don't want to get into trouble."

But Park says that a researcher's views on intelligent design cannot be divorced from the tenure decision. Anyone who believes that an intelligent force set the Earth's location doesn't understand probability's role in the Universe, Park argues. Such a person is hardly qualified to teach others about the scientific method. "We're entrusting the minds of our students to this person," he says.

But not all scientists agree. "Nothing I have seen in his refereed papers leads me to believe his beliefs are impinging on his science," says David Lambert. "I would have said he was a serious tenure candidate."

Eli Rosenberg, who chairs Iowa State's physics department, concedes that Gonzalez's belief in intelligent design did come up during the tenure process. "I'd be a fool if I said it was not [discussed]," he says. But, he adds, "intelligent design was not a major or even a big factor in this decision." Four of twelve tenure candidates have been turned down in the past decade, he says. "We are a fairly hard-nosed department."

Iowa State's president Gregory Geoffroy is now reviewing Gonzalez's appeal. He has until 6 June to make his final decision.

References
1. Gonzalez, G. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 285, 403–412 (1997).
2. Gonzalez, G. Astron. Astrophys. 334, 221–238 (1998).
3. Back, C. H. & Pescia, D. Nature 428, 808–809 (2004).

===============================================

Correspondence
Nature 448, 22 (5 July 2007) doi:10.1038/448022b; Published online 4 July 2007
Admission that intelligent design is a religious view
H. A. Lessios
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Box 0843-03092, Balboa, Panama

Sir
The case of Guillermo Gonzalez being denied tenure at Iowa State University should figure prominently in court next time there is an attempt to introduce intelligent design into the school science curriculum. According to your News story (Nature 447, 364; 2007), Gonzalez, as a proponent of intelligent design, is appealing against the decision on the grounds that his application was rejected because of his religious beliefs, rather than his science. Is there any better evidence that intelligent design, by the admission of its own supporters (when convenient), belongs in classes teaching religion, not science?

Excelente artículo de Fernando Savater en El Pais

2007-07-04T11:22:00.000+02:00

TRIBUNA: FERNANDO SAVATER
¿Ciudadanos o feligreses?
FERNANDO SAVATER 04/07/2007

En los últimos tiempos han proliferado los libros en torno al fenómeno religioso o, más bien, contra la religión: Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Michel Onfray, Sam Harris, André Comte-Sponville, Christopher Hitchens... En ese catálogo, los autores anglosajones destacan por su agresividad y también por un cierto candor misionero en su refutación de las viejas creencias. Incluso dedican numerosas páginas a demoler las pruebas tradicionales de la existencia de Dios (que no han mejorado desde Tomás de Aquino), empeño que a estas alturas del siglo XXI, y con Hume, Kant y Freud a nuestras espaldas, resulta casi conmovedor de puro antiguo, como bordar fundas para almohadas o algo así. Al parecer dan por descontado que aportando razones lograrán librar a los ilusos de convicciones que, ay, ninguno de ellos ha adquirido por vía racional. Dicho sea en su descargo, los autores citados son más bien científicos (o partidarios de subordinar la filosofía a la ciencia, como antaño fue "criada de la teología"), o sea, expertos en el manejo de los números y en la experimentación con los hechos, pero deficientes en la comprensión de los símbolos.

También hace simpática su irritación la obstinación oscurantista con que los creyentes norteamericanos se emperran en convertir la Biblia en un tratado de geología o de paleontología inspirado por la divinidad. Que hoy todavía, cuando tanto ha llovido ya desde el Diluvio, en el país científicamente más desarrollado del mundo, el llamado "diseño inteligente" tenga el triple de aceptación popular entre la población que lo enseñado por la biología actual sobre la evolución de las especies es como para impacientar a cualquiera. Sobre todo cuando este abuso de piedad tiene efectos prácticos peligrosos, pues uno de cada tres norteamericanos piensa que no es urgente tomar ninguna medida contra el cambio climático porque en esas cosas hay que fiarse de la voluntad de Dios...

Como en Europa tal uso fundamentalista de la religión no es corriente, el acercamiento que incluso los más críticos tenemos al fenómeno de la creencia religiosa suele ser más matizado. A mi libro La vida eterna algunos le han reprochado un planteamiento demasiado comprensivo de la fe (otros muchos lo han censurado por lo contrario, desde luego). Una reseña acaba con gracia lamentando que "a este paso, acabar con la religión nos va a costar Dios y ayuda". La verdad es que no considero tal liquidación un objetivo deseable (además de que lo tengo por imposible). Me parece que la religión es un tipo especial de género literario, como la filosofía, y combatirla como una plaga más sin atender los anhelos que expresa es empobrecedor no sólo para la imaginación, sino hasta para la razón humana. Temo que tan crédulos son quienes utilizan la Biblia para combatir a Darwin como los que dan por sentado que una dosis adecuada de neurociencia disipará todas las brumas teológicas. Además, he vivido lo suficiente para no pretender privar a nadie de ningún consuelo que pueda hallar frente a la desbandada del tiempo y el dolor, aunque yo no lo comparta. El único consejo adecuado que se me ocurre para los que padecen exceso de celo religioso es el que, inútilmente, ya formuló hace mucho Santayana: "Las doctrinas religiosas harían bien en retirar sus pretensiones a intervenir en cuestiones de hecho. Esta pretensión no es sólo la fuente de los conflictos de la religión con la ciencia y de las vanas y agrias controversias entre sectas; es también la causa de la impunidad y la incoherencia de la religión en el alma, cuando busca sus sanciones en la esfera de la realidad y olvida que su función propia es expresar el ideal".

Sin embargo, parece que los jerarcas eclesiásticos no están dispuestos a que nos olvidemos en España de los aspectos más nefastos de la influencia religiosa en el orden social. La campaña contra la asignatura de Educación para la Ciudadanía, que incluso lleva a algunos orates de confesionario a promover nada menos que la objeción de conciencia de alumnos y profesores, constituye una muestra abrumadora de la manipulación descarada de la ignorancia popular que ha sido durante siglos marca de la Santa Casa. Se engaña con descaro a la gente diciendo que esta materia interfiere con el derecho de los padres a educar moralmente a sus hijos, que sólo los padres poseen tal derecho y que, si el Estado intenta instruir en valores, se convierte en totalitario o al menos en partidista (esto último por culpa de Gregorio Peces-Barba, al que creíamos un bendito). ¡Cuánta ridiculez! Por supuesto, no faltan los que invocan enseguida a la Constitución en su apoyo. Después de que ciertos abogados del Gobierno de Zapatero nos han enseñado asombrosamente que los ciudadanos españoles tienen derecho constitucional a votar a partidos que excusan o amparan el asesinato de sus adversarios ideológicos, he aquí que los antigubernamentales pretenden que la Constitución reserva el monopolio de la educación moral a los padres, sean de la ideología que fuere. A este paso, la gente terminará cogiendo miedo a la Constitución, a la que se presenta como cueva original de tales disparates...

Afortunadamente, en este caso basta con consultar el texto constitucional para salir de dudas. En efecto, el punto tercero del artículo 27 de nuestra Carta Magna establece que "los poderes públicos garantizan el derecho que asiste a los padres para que sus hijos reciban la formación religiosa y moral que esté de acuerdo con sus propias convicciones". Pero antes, el segundo dice que "la educación tendrá por objeto el pleno desarrollo de la personalidad humana en el respeto a los principios democráticos de convivencia y a los derechos y libertades fundamentales". Los padres tienen derecho a formar religiosa y moralmente a sus hijos, pero el Estado tiene la obligación de garantizar una educación que desarrolle la personalidad y enseñe a respetar los principios de la convivencia democrática, etc. ¿Acaso esta tarea puede llevarse a cabo sin transmitir una reflexión ética, válida para todos sean cuales fueren las creencias morales de la familia? También los padres tienen derecho a alimentar a sus hijos según la dieta que prefieran, pero, si el niño a los ocho años pesa 100 kilos o sólo seis, es casi seguro que los poderes públicos intervendrán, porque -más allá de los gustos de cada cual- existe una idea común de lo que es un peso saludable. De igual modo, existe una concepción común de los principios de respeto mutuo y de pluralismo valorativo en que se funda la ciudadanía, y hay que asegurar que sean bien comprendidos por quienes mañana tendrán que ejercerlos. La libertad de conciencia, por fin aceptada por la Iglesia tras perseguirla durante doscientos años, admite perspectivas morales distintas, pero enmarcadas dentro de normas legales compartidas, como mínimo común denominador democrático.

Este planteamiento nada tiene que ver con los excesos del sectarismo izquierdista, como creen o fingen creer los ultramontanos. En su libro La justicia social en el Estado liberal, Bruce Ackerman lo describe así: "El sistema educativo entero, si se quiere, se asemeja a una gran esfera. Los niños llegan a la esfera en diferentes puntos, según su cultura primaria; la tarea consiste en ayudarles a explorar el globo de una manera que les permita vislumbrar los significados más profundos de los dramas que transcurren a su alrededor. Al final del viaje, sin embargo, el ahora maduro ciudadano tiene todo el derecho a situarse en el punto exacto donde comenzó, o puede también dirigirse resueltamente a descubrir una porción desocupada de la esfera". El proyecto de Educación para la Ciudadanía va en esta dirección liberal, y probablemente hará falta cierto rodaje hasta que perfile sus contenidos y los profesores acierten con el método de enseñanza. No todos los manuales serán igual de adecuados (ya rueda alguno deplorable por ahí, junto a otros buenos), pero lo mismo pasa en historia, literatura... o ética, asignatura que nadie consideró totalitaria a pesar de que "competía" con la enseñanza moral familiar.

Lo que me asombra es la postura del PP en este asunto. La presidenta de la Comunidad de Madrid se enorgullece (entrevista en Abc, 1-VII-07) de haber dispuesto de tal modo los asuntos educativos en sus dominios que no se dará Educación para la Ciudadanía. ¡Enhorabuena! Pero ¿qué diríamos si escuchásemos tal muestra de rebelión imbécil a Ibarretxe o Carod Rovira? Si los defensores de la unidad de España -que es la igualdad ante la ley del Estado de Derecho- piensan así, no es raro que prospere el separatismo. Por lo demás, lo de esta asignatura no es más que un síntoma de la complacencia con lo peor del clericalismo y el integrismo antiliberal. Ya he tenido ocasión de leer a César Vidal y a algún otro carca apologías de los gemelos polacos por su firmeza reaccionaria frente al "pensamiento único" progresista. ¿Son realmente éstos los ideólogos de choque del PP? ¿Su proyecto político va a dirigirse hacia la sana y vaticana "polaquización" de España? Pues si es así nada, con su pan se lo coman.

Fernando Savater es catedrático de Filosofía de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

La creación... según Craig Venter

2007-06-30T00:11:00.000+02:00

En la revista Science se publicó ayer unartículo en el que el grupo de Craig Venter convierte una especie bacteriana en otra... el resumen a continuación:

Published Online June 28, 2007Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1144622
Science Express Index
Research Articles
Submitted on May 3, 2007Accepted on June 21, 2007
Genome Transplantation in Bacteria: Changing One Species to Another
Carole Lartigue 1, John I. Glass 1*, Nina Alperovich 1, Rembert Pieper 1, Prashanth P. Parmar 1, Clyde A. Hutchison III 1, Hamilton O. Smith 1, J. Craig Venter 1
1 The J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, MD 20850, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.John I. Glass , E-mail: Jglass@jcvi.org

As a step toward propagation of synthetic genomes, we completely replaced the genome of a bacterial cell with one from another species by transplanting a whole genome as naked DNA. Intact genomic DNA from Mycoplasma mycoides large colony (LC), virtually free of protein, was transplanted into Mycoplasma capricolum cells by polyethylene glycol-mediated transformation. Cells selected for tetracycline resistance, carried by the M. mycoides LC chromosome, contain the complete donor genome and are free of detectable recipient genomic sequences. These cells that result from genome transplantation are phenotypically identical to the M. mycoides LC donor strain as judged by several criteria.

Opinión de Murray Peshkin. Tendencias 21.

2007-06-26T10:13:00.000+02:00

En el número de 19 de junio de 2007 Tendencias 21 publica un artículo sobre Murray Peshkin. Es bastante esclarecedor acerca del pensamiento de este físico teórico y lo más importante, enlaza a una página web creada por el propio Dr Peshkin:
http://home.mindspring.com/~sci-rel/

Comentario en Science del último libro de Okasha

2007-06-08T10:06:00.000+02:00

Science 8 June 2007:Vol. 316. no. 5830, pp. 1428 - 1430
DOI: 10.1126/science.1140806

Books
EVOLUTION:A Multilevel Exploration
David Jablonski*

Evolution and the Levels of Selection
by Samir Okasha
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2006. 275 pp. $55, £30. ISBN 9780199267972.

In the natural world, as in human societies, complexity is almost always organized hierarchically. From the nested structures of armies and corporations to the classical biological progression from molecule to cell to tissue to body to species, the "particles" at each level tend to be grouped into ever more inclusive units. However, despite the ubiquity of natural hierarchies, their evolutionary implications have been anything but clear.

Evolution and the Levels of Selection is a major contribution toward putting this controversial area on a coherent conceptual and philosophical footing. Samir Okasha's argument hinges on two components, neither of them new but here powerfully and creatively integrated and extended. First is the fundamental distinction between two disparate kinds of multilevel selection (MLS), often conflated despite their formal introduction 20 years ago (1), with even earlier precedents. The failure to appreciate this distinction has generated an enormous amount of confusion, at times bordering on fury, and Okasha's use of this conceptual framework brings exceptional clarity and precision to a wide range of issues. In essence, for MLS1 the sole focal level is the individual (at any level), but its fitness depends partly on the group to which it belongs. The classic example is the seeming paradox of altruism: how can selection drive behavior that aids others at the actor's expense? Under MLS1, altruists have lower fitnesses within their groups than selfish individuals, but groups containing a higher proportion of more altruists contribute more individuals to the global population. Okasha (a philosopher of science at the University of Bristol) greatly clarifies this process and shows how its logic can apply to many evolutionary problems, from the operation of selfish intracellular elements to the origin of complex cells.
From unicell to multicell. Evolutionary transitions to multicellular animals required two kinds of multilevel selection, as formerly independent units were subordinated into a large whole.

In contrast, MLS2 involves multiple focal levels, with selection operating on units at each of those levels simultaneously and with effects cascading both upward and downward. The classic example is species selection, where both organisms within populations and species within lineages are subject to differential survival and reproduction according to heritable variation. Variations in speciation rates, extinction rates, or both can thus drive large-scale evolutionary changes independent of the fitnesses of the organisms within those species and can indirectly shift the mean phenotypes of lineages. Okasha notes that such indirect effects, often termed "upward and downward causation," are the essence of multilevel selection. When is the differential proliferation of a given biological property on some level the result of direct selection at that level, and when is it a by-product of processes at a lower or higher level? (As Okasha makes clear for the first time, these cross-level processes are fundamentally different under MLS1 and MLS2.)

To address this problem, Okasha applies the second major element of his argument: the Price equation, a general statistical statement of the covariance between a character and fitness that can provide a formal separation of levels of selection. One of the real pleasures of this book is watching Okasha view a succession of problems in multilevel selection through the lens of the Price equation in its different forms. It proves a powerful conceptual tool, although it does not always perform ideally. For example, Okasha finds the Price equation to be theoretically inferior to an alternative called contextual analysis as an approach to detecting MLS1.

Okasha is not quite as precise on the notion of emergent properties, another highly contentious area in the multilevel selection debates. Okasha recognizes the existence of such properties, irreducible to characters at lower hierarchical levels, but does not see them as required for the operation of multilevel selection. For him, the essence of the problem is the emergent relation between a character and fitness at a given level. This is a reasonable stance, although not the only one possible. In fact, in several places Okasha skates very close to treating emergent species properties as integral to the operation of species selection, as did Stephen Jay Gould in his magnum opus (2). For example, Okasha accepts that the increased frequency over time of gastropod species having larvae that do not feed in the plankton should be classified as species selection because "[d]ifferences in species' fitness were not caused by differences in the fitnesses of their constituent organisms, but by differences in the extent of within-species gene flow." [Such gene flow, with the associated genetic population structure, is arguably a species-level property; for a lucid analysis of opposing concepts of emergence, see (3).]

The final chapter derives fresh insights from Okasha's integrative framework for some of the most profound evolutionary events in the history of life. The evolutionary transitions to new kinds of individuals--from prokaryote to eukaryote, unicell to multicellular organism--must have entailed the subordination of lower-level units into a larger whole. Okasha makes a strong argument that such transitions involve both types of multilevel selection, operating in succession. His deep understanding of the evolutionary models and his integration of the philosophical issues really pay off here. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.
Elsewhere in the book, however, MLS2 seems to get short shrift. This is a shame, because that is another growth area that could benefit from closer philosophical attention. As Okasha notes, most workers concede the plausibility of MLS2; the uncertainty lies in the efficacy of processes above and below the traditional dynamics of bodies within populations. But species selection receives the shortest chapter in the book, and the burgeoning macroecological literature on the size, position, phylogenetic distribution, and organismic correlates of geographic range (accepted by Okasha as a potential factor in strict-sense species selection) is not mentioned. Nor is the even larger paleontological and neontological literature on comparative analyses of clades, where organismic and species properties are tested for their statistical associations with differential diversification rates. I was eager to see Okasha bring his conceptual arsenal more fully to bear on these and other nearly unexplored potential sources of data and theory. [(4) offers an entry into these aspects of the debate.]

A hierarchical view of the evolutionary process, with potentially opposing, reinforcing, or orthogonal forces in play at multiple levels, may be harder to grapple with than the more traditional view, but Okasha has greatly clarified many of the central issues. I can't imagine anyone working on multilevel selection--or attempting to dismiss it--without reading this book.

References
1. I. L. Heisler, J. Damuth, Am. Nat. 130, 582 (1987).
2. S. J. Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002); reviewed by D. J. Futuyma, Science 296, 661 (2002).
3. T. A. Grantham, Palaeontology 50, 75 (2007).
4. D. Jablonski, Palaeontology 50, 87 (2007).

* The reviewer is in the Department of Geophysical Sciences and Committee on Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago, 5734 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. E-mail: djablons@uchicago.edu

Comentario en Science al último libro de M. J. Behe

2007-06-08T09:54:00.000+02:00

Science 8 June 2007:Vol. 316. no. 5830, pp. 1427 - 1428
DOI: 10.1126/science.1145104

Books
EVOLUTION:God as Genetic Engineer
Sean B. Carroll*

The Edge of Evolution
The Search for the Limits of Darwinism
by Michael J. Behe
Free Press, New York, 2007. 331 pp. $28, C$33.99.
ISBN 9780743296205.

"The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands."

Those are the words that Thomas Huxley, Darwin's confidant and staunchest ally, purportedly murmured to a colleague as he rose to turn Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's own words to his advantage and rebut the bishop's critique of Darwin's theory at their legendary 1860 Oxford debate. They are also the first words that popped into my head as I read Michael J. Behe's The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. In it, Behe makes a new set of explicit claims about the limits of Darwinian evolution, claims that are so poorly conceived and readily dispatched that he has unwittingly done his critics a great favor in stating them.

In Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1), Behe had forwarded the notion that certain biochemical systems were "irreducibly complex," could not have evolved stepwise by Darwinian mechanisms, and thus were intelligently designed. Since that earlier book, Behe has played a key role in the intelligent design (ID) movement, including a star turn as a defense witness in the 2005 Dover school board case. Despite his testimony--or, I should say, partly because of what he said (2)--ID was ruled to be a religious concept and its teaching in public schools unconstitutional.

Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, has found an audience among various flavors of creationists who find Darwinian evolution incompatible with their religious views and see scientific validation in Behe's claims. Clearly, this book's main audience would be that constituency, although they will find some parts very discomfiting. For instance, Behe explicitly accepts the ability of random mutation and selection to account for the variation within and differences between closely related species (but not higher taxa such as vertebrate classes). He also accepts (as he has before) the 4.5-billion-year age of Earth and that we share a common ancestor with chimpanzees. That certainly won't go over well in some camps.

Behe also explores some examples of Darwinian evolution at the molecular level, including an extensive treatment of the evolutionary "trench warfare" fought between humans and malarial parasites over the millennia--all in the context of what Darwinian evolution "can do." So what's the problem?

The problem is what Behe asserts Darwinian evolution can't do: produce more "complex" changes than those that have enabled humans to battle malaria or allowed malarial parasites to evade the drugs we throw at them. Behe's main argument rests on the assertion that two or more simultaneous mutations are required for increases in biochemical complexity and that such changes are, except in rare circumstances, beyond the limit of evolution. He concludes that "most mutations that built the great structures of life must have been nonrandom." In short, God is a genetic engineer, somehow designing changes in DNA to make biochemical machines and higher taxa.

But to arrive at this conclusion, Behe relies on invalid assertions about how genes and proteins evolve and how proteins interact, and he completely ignores a huge amount of experimental data that directly contradicts his faulty premises. Unfortunately, these errors are of a technical nature and will be difficult for lay readers, and even some scientists (those unfamiliar with molecular biology and evolutionary genetics), to detect. Some people will be hoodwinked. My goal here is to point out the critical flaws in Behe's key arguments and to guide readers toward some references that illustrate why what he alleges to be beyond the limits of Darwinian evolution falls well within its demonstrated powers.

Behe's chief error is minimizing the power of natural selection to act cumulatively as traits or molecules evolve stepwise from one state to another via intermediates. Behe states correctly that in most species two adaptive mutations occurring instantaneously at two specific sites in one gene are very unlikely and that functional changes in proteins often involve two or more sites. But it is a non sequitur to leap to the conclusion, as Behe does, that such multiple-amino acid replacements therefore can't happen. Multiple replacements can accumulate when each single amino acid replacement affects performance, however slightly, because selection can act on each replacement individually and the changes can be made sequentially.

Behe begrudgingly allows that only "rarely, several mutations can sequentially add to each other to improve an organism's chances of survival." Rarely? This, of course, is the everyday stuff of evolution. Examples of cumulative selection changing multiple sites in evolving proteins include tetrodotoxin resistance in snakes (3), the tuning of color vision in animals (4), cefotaxime antibiotic resistance in bacteria (5), and pyrimethamine resistance in malarial parasites (6)--a notable omission given Behe's extensive discussion of malarial drugresistance.

Behe seems to lack any appreciation of the quantitative dimensions of molecular and trait evolution. He appears to think of the functional features of proteins in qualitative terms, as if binding or catalysis were all or nothing rather than a broad spectrum of affinities or rates. Therefore, he does not grasp the fundamental reality of a mutational path that proteins follow in evolving new properties.

This lack of quantitative thinking underlies a second, fatal blunder resulting from the mistaken assumptions Behe makes about protein interactions. The author has long been concerned about protein complexes and how they could or, rather, could not evolve. He argues that the generation of a single new protein-protein binding site is extremely improbable and that complexes of just three different proteins "are beyond the edge of evolution." But Behe bases his arguments on unfounded requirements for protein interactions. He insists, based on consideration of just one type of protein structure (the combining sites of antibodies), that five or six positions must change at once in order to make a good fit between proteins--and, therefore, good fits are impossible to evolve. An immense body of experimental data directly refutes this claim. There are dozens of well-studied families of cellular proteins (kinases, phosphatases, proteases, adaptor proteins, sumoylation enzymes, etc.) that recognize short linear peptide motifs in which only two or three amino acid residues are critical for functional activity [reviewed in (7-9)]. Thousands of such reversible interactions establish the protein networks that govern cellular physiology.

Very simple calculations indicate how easily such motifs evolve at random. If one assumes an average length of 400 amino acids for proteins and equal abundance of all amino acids, any given two-amino acid motif is likely to occur at random in every protein in a cell. (There are 399 dipeptide motifs in a 400-amino acid protein and 20 20 = 400 possible dipeptide motifs.) Any specific three-amino acid motif will occur once at random in every 20 proteins and any four-amino acid motif will occur once in every 400 proteins. That means that, without any new mutations or natural selection, many sequences that are identical or close matches to many interaction motifs already exist. New motifs can arise readily at random, and any weak interaction can easily evolve, via random mutation and natural selection, to become a strong interaction (9). Furthermore, any pair of interacting proteins can readily recruit a third protein, and so forth, to form larger complexes. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that new protein interactions (10) and protein networks (11) can evolve fairly rapidly and are thus well within the limits of evolution.

Is it possible that Behe does not know this body of data? Or does he just choose to ignore it? Behe has quite a record of declaring what is impossible and of disregarding the scientific literature, and he has clearly not learned any lessons from some earlier gaffes. He has again gone "public" with assertions without the benefit (or wisdom) of first testing their strength before qualified experts.

For instance, Behe once wrote, "if random evolution is true, there must have been a large number of transitional forms between the Mesonychid [a whale ancestor] and the ancient whale. Where are they?" (12). He assumed such forms would not or could not be found, but three transitional species were identified by paleontologists within a year of that statement. In Darwin's Black Box, he posited that genes for modern complex biochemical systems, such as blood clotting, might have been "designed billions of years ago and have been passed down to the present … but not 'turned on'." This is known to be genetically impossible because genes that aren't used will degenerate, but there it was in print. And Behe's argument against the evolution of flagella and the immune system have been dismantled in detail (13, 14) and new evidence continues to emerge (15), yet the same old assertions for design reappear here as if they were uncontested.

The continuing futile attacks by evolution's opponents reminds me of another legendary confrontation, that between Arthur and the Black Knight in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Black Knight, like evolution's challengers, continues to fight even as each of his limbs is hacked off, one by one. The "no transitional fossils" argument and the "designed genes" model have been cut clean off, the courts have debunked the "ID is science" claim, and the nonsense here about the edge of evolution is quickly sliced to pieces by well-established biochemistry. The knights of ID may profess these blows are "but a scratch" or "just a flesh wound," but the argument for design has no scientific leg to stand on

References
1. M. J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (Free Press, New York, 1996).
2. Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District et al., Memorandum Opinion, 20 December 2005; www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/decision.htm.
3. S. L. Geffeney et al., Nature 434, 759 (2005).
4. S. B. Carroll, The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution (Norton, New York, 2006).
5. D. M. Weinreich, N. F. Delaney, M. A. DePristo, D. L. Hartl, Science 312, 111 (2006).
6. W. Sirawaraporn et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 94, 1124 (1997).
7. V. Neduva et al., PLoS Biol. 3, e405 (2005).
8. R. P. Bhattacharyya, A. Reményi, B. J. Yeh, W. A. Lim, Annu. Rev. Biochem. 75, 655 (2006).
9. V. Neduva, R. B. Russell, FEBS Lett. 579, 3342 (2005).
10. Y. V. Budovskaya, J. S. Stephan, S. J. Deminoff, P. K. Herman, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 102, 13933 (2005).
11. P. Beltrao, L. Serrano, PLoS Comput. Biol. 3, e25 (2007).
12. M. J. Behe, in Darwinism, Science or Philosophy?, J. Buell, V. Hearn, Eds. (Foundation for Thought and Ethics, Richardson, TX, 1994), pp. 60-71.
13. A. Bottaro, M. A. Inlay, N. J. Matzke, Nat. Immunol. 7, 433 (2006).
14. M. J. Pallen, N. J. Matzke, Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 4, 784 (2006).
15. R. Liu, H. Ochman, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104, 7126 (2007).

*The reviewer, the author of The Making of the Fittest, is at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
E-mail: sbcarrol@wisc.edu

¿Para qué tienen alas las hadas? ¡Pues para volar!

2007-06-04T10:56:00.000+02:00

Esta pregunta, hecha por una niña en una serie de TV, puede servirnos para ilustrar hasta qué punto la utilidad de los órganos puede llevarnos a conclusiones evolutivas. Esta estrategia ya la empleó S. J. Gould en el ensayo "El Pulgar del Panda" para demostrar que los órganos que no se usan o carentes de sentido en un animal son vestigios de lo que esa especie fue.

Encontrar pulgares que no forman ya parte de la mano o alas que no vuelan nos servirá para conocer mejor las relaciones entre las especies y el camino que han seguido para llegar donde se encuentran ahora.

Hoy en Newsweek... Jugar a ser Dios

2007-06-01T00:02:00.000+02:00

Hoy han publicado un artículo en Newsweek que podría ser interesante acerca de la creación de vida por parte de los científicos... El enlace es: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18882828/site/newsweek/#storyContinued

Pero quizás, lo mejor sea la contestación que da el autor del blog Pharyngula:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/playing_god.php

WHY DO SOME PEOPLE RESIST SCIENCE? Hoy en THE EDGE

2007-05-30T16:57:00.000+02:00

http://edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom07/bloom07_index.html

The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

2007-05-20T18:05:00.001+02:00

Gracias a un artículo publicado hoy en El Mundo he podido conocer (imperdonable no conocerla antes) la página web que da título a esta entrada. Está en inglés, pero seguro que el esfuerzo merece la pena.
El enlace es:
http://darwin-online.org.uk/

La importancia de la equidistancia en el periodismo.

2007-05-13T11:15:00.000+02:00

En El Pais de hoy hay un reportaje sobre Ciencia y espiritualidad. Lo copio entero a continuación, en gris el resumen, en rojo el fragmento dedicado a los creyentes y en azul a los ateos.

REPORTAJE
¿Está Dios en los genes?
Ángela Boto 11/05/2007

En los pucheros, en los que sufren, en los laberintos virtuales de la Red? Omnipresente, se busca a Dios por todas partes. El florecimiento del pensamiento científico parecía esbozar el final de la fe, el desvanecimiento de la espiritualidad trascendente. Dios dejaría de ser la justificación de los hechos inexplicables de la naturaleza porque la ciencia encontraría las respuestas, las razones. Han pasado dos siglos y el 98% de la población mundial afirma creer en una fuerza superior; el 50% la denomina Dios. Ante la evidencia, parece que la ciencia no ha tenido más remedio que plegarse a la búsqueda. Se busca a Dios entre las moléculas. Algunos investigadores escudriñan en el entramado celular del complejo cerebro Sapiens sapiens y otros rastrean la elegante doble hélice del ADN. ¿En qué lugar de la bioquímica se encuentra el templo del Altísimo? ¿Por qué tenemos fe?

Andrew Newberg, investigador de la Universidad de Pensilvania cuyo último libro se titula Por qué creemos lo que creemos, asegura que nuestro cerebro "es esencialmente una máquina creyente porque no tiene otra opción". Por su parte, Dean Hammer, genetista de los Institutos Nacionales de la Salud de EE UU, afirma en El gen de Dios que "la espiritualidad es una de nuestras herencias básicas. Es, de hecho, un instinto. (?) Tenemos una predisposición genética para la creencia espiritual". El fundamento de tal afirmación no sólo lo sitúa en sus investigaciones, sino en una encuesta realizada por la institución a la que pertenece. Más de un tercio de los participantes aseguraba haber tenido algún tipo de contacto con una poderosa fuerza espiritual. Conviene apuntar que al mismo tiempo que se ha constatado un aumento de la fe, han disminuido las prácticas religiosas, subrayando de nuevo que, aunque a menudo se identifican, no es lo mismo religión que espiritualidad.

El área de la ciencia que más pistas ha recabado sobre la posible morada de Dios es la neurología; de hecho, hace años que se habla de una subdisciplina cuyo nombre lo dice todo: neuroteología. Claro que la realidad depende de los ojos que la miren porque los resultados de los experimentos sirven a unos para demostrar la existencia de Dios, y a otros, para afirmar que son la constatación de que el Supremo es sólo un producto mental más. Los más prudentes dicen: "Estamos biológicamente determinados para encontrar sentido a nuestras vidas. Sin embargo, si Dios es una mera creación de nuestro cerebro o no, todavía no está probado científicamente". Así contestaba Newberg por correo electrónico.

Newberg tiene experiencia en la exploración de lo divino en lo humano. Ha tomado numerosas imágenes de los cerebros de monjes de distintas confesiones y de otros voluntarios en estado de meditación u oración profunda. De este modo, ha visto que en los momentos álgidos se producen varios fenómenos neuronales simultáneamente. Aumenta la actividad en las áreas frontales encargadas de focalizar la atención, lo cual corresponde con la concentración propia de los estados de recogimiento profundo; también se observa una sobreactivación del sistema límbico, un grupo de estructuras asociadas a las emociones y a la memoria. Pero el hallazgo más sorprendente fue que al mismo tiempo se desactivan los lóbulos parietales, las regiones situadas aproximadamente debajo de la coronilla en los dos hemisferios. Se podría decir que esta área es la residencia del sentido del yo, es donde radica el concepto de individualidad. La reducción de la actividad durante la meditación o la oración tiene como consecuencia la disolución de las fronteras entre el yo y el entorno y conduce a la sensación de comunión con el universo, de pertenencia a la totalidad. Exactamente lo que describen los que alcanzan un estado profundo de trascendencia espiritual, de misticismo.

Uno de los pioneros de la búsqueda de Dios en el laberinto neuronal es Michael Persinger, neurocientífico de la Laurentian University (Canadá), que hace 20 años escribió un libro titulado La base neurofisiológica de la creencia en Dios. Persinger estaba interesado en descubrir por qué personas de distintas confesiones, culturas y estatus sociocultural podían experimentar estados de iluminación tan similares. Para ello comenzó a aplicar campos electromagnéticos débiles, pero muy precisos, al cerebro de quienes se prestasen. El objetivo era encontrar el área cerebral y la configuración electromagnética que permite a algunas personas experimentar la presencia de seres sobrenaturales. El 80% de las personas que se pusieron el famoso casco de Dios describieron cómo se habían encontrado con la divinidad. Aquellos que ya tenían experiencias previas aseguraron que las sensaciones generadas por el casco eran las mismas que las espontáneas. El propio Persinger, no siendo creyente, experimentó un contacto con Dios mientras aplicaba los campos magnéticos a otro. Para este neurocientífico, la morada de Dios se encuentra en los lóbulos temporales, las regiones del cerebro situadas sobre las orejas. Las conclusiones de Persinger estuvieron en entredicho cuando un grupo de investigación sueco no pudo reproducir sus resultados. La polémica se cerró sin un acuerdo claro.

Los más evolucionistas se preguntarán qué interés evolutivo puede tener para el ser humano la capacidad para tener experiencias místicas. "El cerebro nos da dos funciones básicas: automantenimiento y autotrascendencia. Nos ayuda a adaptarnos y cambiar a lo largo de la vida. La religión y la espiritualidad también nos proporcionan estas funciones básicas, así que ofrecen beneficios sustanciales al individuo", dice Newberg. Dean Hammer comparte su opinión: "Sostengo que uno de los papeles más importantes de los genes de Dios en la selección natural es proporcionar a los humanos un innato sentido del optimismo". Y el optimismo, opina, "mejora la salud humana y prolonga la vida". De hecho, la mayoría de las personas que han vivido una experiencia mística dicen que su vida mejoró y su percepción del mundo cambió. Según Hammer, ese efecto se debe a que esas personas están obligadas a plantearse "la cuestión más importante de la vida: la consciencia. (?) Sin ella no sabríamos quiénes somos ni adónde vamos. Sin embargo, nunca pensamos en ella". Cabe añadir aquí los estudios que indican que la meditación y las creencias religiosas tienen un impacto positivo en la salud y en la longevidad.
Los trabajos de Hammer para buscar los genes de Dios parten de estudios con gemelos. Éstos indican que los gemelos coinciden en sus creencias espirituales más que los hermanos no gemelos. Tras rastrear fragmentos de ADN, el investigador identificó un gen conocido como VMAT2. Como todos, presenta unas cuantas variantes que se diferencian entre sí por algunas de las letras que lo componen. Hammer postula que las personas que tienen en su genoma una de ellas tienen mayor tendencia espiritual, más disposición a lo que describe como autotrascendencia. Curiosamente, el supuesto gen de Dios nos remite de nuevo al cerebro porque el VMAT2 controla el uso de un grupo de neurotransmisores muy interesantes. Entre ellos, la dopamina y la serotonina, dos moléculas asociadas con el placer y la felicidad y también con sus reversos: la adicción y la depresión.

Hammer no es el único experto que relaciona la doble hélice con la divinidad. Un científico del prestigio de Francis Collins, responsable del consorcio público que secuenció el genoma humano, afirma que estudiando el código genético ha encontrado a Dios porque una complejidad semejante sólo puede ser obra de un Creador. Eso sí, aclara que no cuestiona la evidencia de la evolución, pero en su opinión la teoría de Darwin no está reñida con la existencia de una inteligencia superior. Gregg Braden, un ingeniero que ha trabajado en el desarrollo aeroespacial e Internet, es otro buscador de lo divino que ha unido elegantemente ciencia y tradiciones espirituales y que también ha encontrado la huella del Creador en la doble hélice. En El código de Dios expone sus investigaciones sobre la Cábala, la lengua hebrea y su paralelismo con los elementos químicos que componen el código genético. Braden propone que el nombre de Dios está escrito en el ADN de cada una de nuestras células, Dios está en nuestro interior.

Buena parte de la comunidad científica no quiere ni oír hablar de Dios; unos, porque consideran que son campos radicalmente diferentes, y otros, porque los consideran incompatibles. Entre los últimos se encuentra el ferviente ateo y apasionado discípulo de Darwin Richard Dawkins. Este biólogo británico despliega su armamento para fulminar a Dios y defender la teoría de evolución, que, según él, explica la vida ?su último libro se titula El espejismo de Dios?. Dawkins habla sobre todo de religión, no de espiritualidad, y la considera una amenaza para la ciencia y para los espíritus racionales. Hammer, que lo menciona en varios capítulos de su libro, escribe que "irónicamente, al final ha resultado que Dawkins cree en una religión ?la ciencia? que sigue más por fe que por lógica". Por su lado, Newberg afirma que, "puesto que siempre estaremos atrapados en nuestro cerebro, todos nosotros, desde el más devoto hasta el ateo más recalcitrante, tenemos creencias. Simplemente son diferentes".

Y en el repaso de la búsqueda científica de la divinidad, es obligado mencionar la física. Michael Faraday, el descubridor de la inducción electromagnética, decía que "toda la materia se mantiene en su lugar gracias a una fuerza. Tenemos que asumir que detrás de esa fuerza existe una mente consciente e inteligente". Casi dos siglos después, la física persigue la llamada partícula de Dios, es decir, el bosón de Higgs. El apodo viene de que esta escurridiza partícula parece haber existido sólo durante una decena de segundos después del Big Bang, pero en su corta existencia podría haber originado toda la materia. A pesar de que los físicos la buscan desde los años sesenta, aún no ha sido detectada. Dios se hace de rogar.

Algunos metafísicos proponen que Dios ha caído del cielo y que se está despertando en cada individuo para crearse a sí mismo a través de su propia criatura. De modo que tal vez haya que buscar a Dios en las acciones.

Tremendo... y encima no se puede ser ateo.

La contrapartida científica.

2007-05-10T10:17:00.000+02:00

Hoy, la versión electrónica de la revista PNAS, el medio de comunicación de la Academia nacional de Ciencias Americana, publica los resumenes de las ponencias presentadas en "In the Light of Evolution I:Adaptation and Complex Design", reunión promovida por el Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium of the National Academy of Sciences.

El enlace a los resumenes de PNAS es:
http://www.pnas.org/papbysection.shtml#COLLOQUIUM

Algunas de las charlas se pueden ver y escuchar en:
http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=SACKLER_evolution_program

Y destaco la de Francisco Ayala, titulada "Darwin's greatest discovery: Design without designer "
http://progressive.playstream.com/nakfi/progressive/Sackler/sackler_12-01_06_new/FranciscoAyala/FranciscoAyala.html

Museo del creacionismo

2007-05-10T10:12:00.000+02:00

Hoy en El Pais se hacen eco de un museo dedicado al creacionismo:
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Dios/Darwin/elpepusoc/20070510elpepisoc_5/Tes

La página a dicho museo es:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/museum/

donde lo describe como
"The 60,000 sq. ft. Creation Museum located within the greater Cincinnati area will proclaim the Bible as supreme authority in all matters of faith and practice in every area it touches on. Set to open in June 2007, this “walk through history” museum will counter evolutionary natural history museums that turn countless minds against Christ and Scripture."

De Tendencias21. Dawkins vs. Godwin.

2007-04-29T18:06:00.000+02:00

En el último número de Tendencias21 encontramos ún artículo-comentario del libro de R. Dawkins (The God Delusion) a cargo de Javier Montserrat, y una entrevista a R.W. Godwin por Elizabeth Debold. A continuación la entradilla de cada uno con sus links de acceso.

El espejismo de Dawkins
El último libro del biólogo de Oxford sentencia dogmáticamente a favor del ateísmo
Ha salido publicada ya en español (comienzos de 2007), un año después de su aparición en inglés (The God Delusion, 2006), la última versión de la crítica a la religión de Richard Dawkins, con el título El espejismo de Dios. Dawkins argumenta que la probabilidad del ateísmo es casi absoluta desde la objetividad y la evidencia científica. El teísmo, en cambio, apenas tiene probabilidad de ser cierto. La ingenuidad de Dawkins es considerable al fundarse en sus propios análisis para convertirse en tribunal de apelación y sentenciar dogmáticamente a favor del ateísmo. Parece proceder al margen de las reflexiones más elementales de la moderna epistemología de la ciencia. Sus actitudes llevan a un tipo de sociedad donde unos a otros no se respetan, sino que se desprecian. Por Javier Monserrat.

Robert W. Godwin: la próxima evolución es el viaje al interior humano
La espiritualidad posmoderna es para la gente que puede abandonar la adolescencia
Para comprender como el conocimiento científico realmente se alinea con una comprensión mística tradicional de la relación de Dios con la creación, debemos pensar estereoscópicamente: se debe tomar una perspectiva, el pensamiento científico, y tomar la otra, la sabiduría mística, hasta que ambas se sinteticen a un nivel más alto, explica Robert W. Godwin, autor del libro de reciente aparición "One Cosmos under God". Nos encontramos justo en el inicio del paso al próximo estadio, añade, el de una espiritualidad posmoderna para gente que puede abandonar la adolescencia y convertirse en adulto. Para Godwin hoy hay mucha mayor atención al interior como una nueva frontera, un anhelo de nuevos horizontes y de nuevas experiencias. "Ahora nos movemos hacia adentro. Este es el viaje real y la próxima evolución". Entrevista realizada por Elizabeth Debold. Introducción de Carol Ann Raphael.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Es una pena que la tendencia de Tendencias21 quede tan patente. Montserrat no es crítico literario sino, como se pone en el pie del artículo, profesor titular en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, en el Departamento de Psicología Básica, especializado en Percepción y Ciencia de la Visión, y además, miembro de la Cátedra de Ciencia, Tecnología y Religión de la Universidad Pontificia de Comillas.

Semanas después de la traducción al español del libro de Dawkins, hemos tenido que esperar a poder poner enfrente la entrevista de Godwin. Y sin querer polemizar, y solo como juego de palabras, ya es casualidad que se llame God- win, Dios-gana... ¿se sentiría predestinado en si juventud?

Acerca del concepto de especie

2007-04-05T20:02:00.000+02:00

La Asociación Americana de Microbiología ha colgado en su página web un informe acerca del concepto de especie en la era de la metagenómica... Se llama "Reconciling Microbial Systematics and Genomics" y esta on-line en
http://www.asm.org/colloquia.

En palabras del editor,
"The report focuses on how, until a decade ago, scientists categorized microorganisms almost exclusively by their physical characteristics: how they looked, what they ate, their by-products, etc. With the advent of genomic sequencing and advanced genetic analysis in the 1990s, our understanding of the relationships among various microorganisms fundamentally changed. In light of this new knowledge, what exactly is the definition of a microbial species, and how should microbiologists be categorizing microorganisms? These questions are the focus of this new report. "

Diseño inteligente en USA... ¿Y en Europa qué?

2007-04-03T01:09:00.000+02:00

Ya están aquí...

De El Periódico de Cataluña.

Profesores de la UB reciben un misterioso tratado contra Darwin
• El lujoso 'Atlas de la creación', que tiene 800 páginas, es obra de un autor turco
• El volumen, llegado por correo desde Alemania, también se ha difundido en Francia

El libro alude a "relaciones ocultas entre evolucionismo, fascismo y comunismo"
ANTONIO MADRIDEJOS
BARCELONA

"Las alegaciones de Darwin no se sustentan en ninguna prueba científica", subraya en el prólogo el Atlas of Creation (Atlas de la creación). Luego aparecen salamandras, helechos y escarabajos, tanto fósiles prehistóricos como sus equivalentes actuales, "que demuestran que las formas de vida sobre la Tierra no han sufrido jamás el más mínimo cambio y nunca se han transformado en otras". Y concluye: "Estos ejemplos de fósiles bastan para demostrar que la teoría de la evolución es una de las grandes bromas y una de las grandes supercherías de la historia de la ciencia".El volumen, de 800 páginas y encuadernación lujosa, con fotos a todo color y gráficos de extraordinaria calidad, lo han recibido misteriosamente en el último mes al menos 11 profesores de la facultad de Biología de la Universitat de Barcelona (UB), de diversos departamentos, y la biblioteca del centro, explica el decano Francisco Javier Casado, que fue uno de los destinatarios. El mes anterior pasó lo mismo en Francia, pero en aquella ocasión fueron miles de ejemplares los que llegaron no solo a universidades y centros de investigación, sino también a institutos. Los contenidos del libro no son tan sorprendentes si se tiene en cuenta el alud de títulos creacionistas que están llegando al mercado estadounidense y, en menor medida, al europeo. Lo que sorprende es que el autor del texto es Harun Yahya, seudónimo de Adnan Oktar, un autor o predicador turco de fe musulmana. Yahya, explica Juli Peretó, profesor de Biología Molecular de la Universitat de València (UV), emplea textos muy conocidos del creacionismo anglosajón y los adapta a su antojo. Por ejemplo, ni habla del Diluvio universal ni dice que la Tierra tenga 6.000 años, como se puede desprender de una interpretación literal de la Biblia, sino 4.600 millones de años. Su tesis es que las especies nunca han cambiado puesto que fueron creadas perfectamente (aunque algunas se han extinguido). "La creación es un hecho", proclama el autor.Los envíos a la UB empezaron en febrero. "El primer volumen lo recibió la biblioteca, pero en un par de días fue llegando a diversos departamentos", explica Casado. Los paquetes, que llevaban simplemente una etiqueta con el nombre de los profesores, procedían de un remitente anónimo en Dusseldorf (Alemania). El volumen incluye un cedé que resume de forma audiovisual los contenidos del libro.

"El atlas es espectacular --prosigue el decano de Biología--. La impresión es de lujo, con fotos inmensas y gráficos a todo color... Si eso llega al mercado, no bajará de los 150 euros, como mínimo". El volumen tiene una primera parte de 500 páginas con profusión de fotos sobre todas las ramas de la zoología, aunque está especialmente dedicado a los fósiles y su clasificación. "En el tercio final te encuentras la mayoría del texto y eso de que la evolución es falsa porque contradice los dogmas de la fe. Así de fácil", resume Casado. El libro está lleno de diseños evolutivos imposibles, como cabezas humanas con tentáculos y hombres con cuatro piernas, y de fotomontajes. El atlas es un compendio del creacionismo más obsoleto, "más pasado de moda --como lo define Peretó--, pues ni siquiera se apunta a las tendencias del diseño inteligente, tan de moda en ciertos ambientes en EEUU". "Son teorías absolutamente delirantes y anticientíficas", resume el profesor de la UV. El volumen llegó recientemente a numerosos institutos franceses, lo que motivó incluso la intervención de las autoridades. Parece ser que se enviaron entre 1.000 y 2.000 ejemplares, lo que da una idea de la fuerza económica de quien los distribuye. El ministro de Educación, Gilles Robien, pidió que el libro no fuera difundido entre los alumnos jóvenes y nunca fuera clasificado como libro de ciencia. "Y tampoco de religión --insiste Peretó--, porque sería una ofensa a la religión"Lo mismo sucederá en Barcelona. Los destinatarios del libro son libres de hacer lo que les plazca, insiste el decano de Biología de la UB, pero el volumen que llegó a la biblioteca se conservará. "Puede ser interesante por la gran información que ofrece sobre fósiles, pero sobre todo para analizar qué argumentos esgrimen los enajenados que están en contra del darwinismo --dice Casado--. Eso sí, se ha decidido que se coloque junto a los libros inclasificables. Justo al lado de los listines telefónicos".

****************************

Si alguien tiene curiosidad, y ganas, el sitio web del autor de este libro es:
http://www.harunyahya.com/es/

y los links al resumen de los dos volúmenes del libro son:
http://www.harunyahya.com/books/darwinism/atlas_creation/atlas_creation_01.php
http://harunyahya.com/books/darwinism/atlas_creation_II/atlas_creation_II_01.php

**********************************

Y vienen mezclando cosas...

Si en lugar de la entrada en español a la vida y obras de Harun Yahya, abrimos la página en su versión en inglés (http://www.harunyahya.com/index.php) podremos ver una de las mayores falacias que se puedan concebir, que Charles Darwin, al desarrollar su teoría de la evolución, es el responsable de todas las maldades del siglo XX, desde Stalin a Hitler, pasando por Mao y Lenin... Una bonita animación de todos estos tipos rodeando a Darwin sirve como imagen a tan desparramada afirmación.

Y algunos nos preguntamos, cómo podemos ligar a Darwin otras maldades del tipo:

o esta otra:

Todos estos meses pensando en el diseño inteligente anglosajón sin tener en mente a este otro que ve la maldad, la producción de daño, en una teoría científica sin...

**********************************

Sin encontrar la "maldad" del propio creador...

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfermedad_infecciosa

Del blog de Arcadi Espada

2007-03-26T12:27:00.000+02:00

La entrada de hoy del blog de Arcadi Espada trae la introducción del libro de Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" comentado aqui en otras ocasiones: Science comenta The God Delusion y Collins vs. Dawkins.

Publicado hoy en Science

2007-03-23T09:40:00.000+01:00

Hoy se hace público en la revista Science un trabajo sobre adquisición de capacidad de visión a ciertas longitudes de onda mediante la simple transferencia de un gen. El resumen del artículo lo podéis encontrar en Science 23 March 2007:Vol. 315. no. 5819, pp. 1723 - 1725.

La facilidad para adquirir este rasgo fenotípico y los datos que empezamos a tener sobre transferencia horizontal de genes (ver entradas Nature y biodiversidad, Biodiversidad (PLoS Biology, Publicado en Nature hoy) apuntan a algunos de los mecanismos implicados en los grandes fenómenos evolutivos.

Creacionismo en El Gran Cañón.

2007-03-20T19:45:00.000+01:00

En la página de PEER encontramos un artículo muy interesante acerca de lo que está pasando en EEUU, del auge y empuje que tiene el creacionismo en todos los niveles, desde la enseñanza en las escuelas hasta los libros que se venden en los parques nacionales.
Merece la pena saber qué esta ocurriendo.

PLoS Biology. Especiación sin sexo.

2007-03-20T11:26:00.000+01:00

En la revista PLoS Biology ha sido publicado un trabajo basado en los rotíferos, unos organismos acuáticos microscópicos, que abandonaron la reproducción sexual hace unos 100 millones de años, y que desde entonces se reproducen sin necesidad de fusionar gametos, es decir, de manera asexual. Los autores concluyen que la reproducción sexual no es una condición necesaria para la especiación. El resumen de los autores es el siguiente:

Author Summary
The evolution of distinct species has often been considered a property solely of sexually reproducing organisms. In fact, however, there is little evidence as to whether asexual groups do or do not diversify into species. We show that a famous group of asexual animals, the bdelloid rotifers, has diversified into distinct species broadly equivalent to those found in sexual groups. We surveyed diversity within a single clade, the genus Rotaria, from a range of habitats worldwide, using DNA sequences and measurements of jaw morphology from scanning electron microscopy. New statistical methods for the combined analysis of morphology and DNA sequence data confirmed two fundamental properties of species, namely, independent evolution and ecological divergence by natural selection. The two properties did not always coincide to define unambiguous species groups, but this finding is common in sexual groups as well. The results show that sex is not a necessary condition for speciation. The methods offer the potential for increasing our understanding of the nature of species boundaries across a wide range of organisms.

El artículo lo puedes bajar desde aquí, y el comentario de Liza Gross aquí.

Yanoconodon

2007-03-16T08:23:00.000+01:00

Un extraño animal arroja luz sobre la evolución de los mamíferos
El Yanoconodon vivió hace 125 millones de años y era un mamífero que poseía los huesos del oído medio
REUTERS - Washington - 16/03/2007

Los científicos han descubierto el fósil de un mamífero del tamaño de una ardilla que se movía rápidamente entre los dinosaurios, con los huesos del oído medio, una pieza clave en la evolución de los mamíferos, extraordinariamente conservados. Los investigadores han declarado a la revista Nature que el peculiar animal, rescatado en una formación de rocas ricas en fósiles al norte de China, da a conocer un elemento crucial en la evolución de los mamíferos: la estructura del oído que permite una gran sensibilidad de audición.

El animal, llamado Yanoconodon por las montañas Yan de la provincia de Hebei, vivió hace 125 millones de años durante el periodo cretácico, el tercero y último de la era mesozoica, conocida a veces como la Edad de los Dinosaurios. Su cuerpo era muy raro para ser un mamífero, con un torso alargado y extremidades cortas y rechonchas. "En cierto modo, es como el cuerpo de una salamandra en un mamífero", ha declarado en una entrevista el responsable de los científicos Zhe-Xi Luo del museo Carnegie de historia natural en Pittsburgh, Pensilvania.
Los científicos piensan que Yanoconodon - que medía unos 15 centímetros de largo y pesaba alrededor de 30 gramos - era un animal nocturno que comía insectos. Vivió en un ambiente abundante de lagos de agua potable, plantas con flores y otros muchos animales. Entre ellos había una variedad de dinosaurios a los que nada les hubiera gustado más que convertirlo en un aperitivo con pieles.

Luo ha declarado que el Yanoconodon es particularmente importante porque supone una etapa intermedia en la evolución de la estructura auditiva de los mamíferos. Los mamíferos poseen una capacidad auditiva superior al resto de vertebrados, una característica fundamental para la vida del mamífero. Los investigadores creen que muchos mamíferos primitivos adoptaron una existencia nocturna que les mantuvo alejados de las multitudes de dinosaurios y otras bestias que buscaban un alimento fácil.

Los científicos llevan tiempo buscando pistas sobre los orígenes de la estructura auditiva de los mamíferos. Los primeros mamíferos aparecieron hace unos 220 millones de años, no mucho después de los primeros dinosaurios, pero el proceso de adquisición de la anatomía de los modernos mamíferos llevó muchas decenas de millones de años más.

Nature y biodiversidad

2007-03-16T08:12:00.000+01:00

En la revista Nature han publicado un trabajo acerca de diversidad de poblaciones microbianas y de la importancia que tiene la recombinación génica en dichas poblaciones. Estos son los primeros pasos, junto a los trabajos publicados en PLoS, y algunos más relacionados, dedicados a conocer realmente cómo se relacionan los individuos en comunidades naturales de microorganismos, y los procesos evolutivos que en ellas ocurren.
El primer párrafo de dicho trabajo:

Letter
Nature advance online publication 7 March 2007 doi:10.1038/nature05624;
Received 16 November 2006; Accepted 26 January 2007; Published online 7 March 2007

Strain-resolved community proteomics reveals recombining genomes of acidophilic bacteria
Ian Lo1, Vincent J. Denef1, Nathan C. VerBerkmoes2, Manesh B. Shah2, Daniela Goltsman1, Genevieve DiBartolo1, Gene W. Tyson1, Eric E. Allen1, Rachna J. Ram1, J. Chris Detter3, Paul Richardson3, Michael P. Thelen4, Robert L. Hettich2 and Jillian F. Banfield1
University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA
Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, California 94598, USA
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550, USA
Correspondence to: Jillian F. Banfield1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to J.F.B. (Email: jbanfield@berkeley.edu).

Microbes comprise the majority of extant organisms, yet much remains to be learned about the nature and driving forces of microbial diversification. Our understanding of how microorganisms adapt and evolve can be advanced by genome-wide documentation of the patterns of genetic exchange, particularly if analyses target coexisting members of natural communities. Here we use community genomic data sets to identify, with strain specificity, expressed proteins from the dominant member of a genomically uncharacterized, natural, acidophilic biofilm. Proteomics results reveal a genome shaped by recombination involving chromosomal regions of tens to hundreds of kilobases long that are derived from two closely related bacterial populations. Inter-population genetic exchange was confirmed by multilocus sequence typing of isolates and of uncultivated natural consortia. The findings suggest that exchange of large blocks of gene variants is crucial for the adaptation to specific ecological niches within the very acidic, metal-rich environment. Mass-spectrometry-based discrimination of expressed protein products that differ by as little as a single amino acid enables us to distinguish the behaviour of closely related coexisting organisms. This is important, given that microorganisms grouped together as a single species may have quite distinct roles in natural systems and their interactions might be key to ecosystem optimization. Because proteomic data simultaneously convey information about genome type and activity, strain-resolved community proteomics is an important complement to cultivation-independent genomic (metagenomic) analysis of microorganisms in the natural environment.

300 cumpleaños de Lineo

2007-03-15T09:41:00.000+01:00

En el número de hoy de la revista Nature publican un especial sobre Lineo al cumplirse ahora el 300 aniversario de su nacimiento. El especial lo podéis encontrar aquí.

Uno de los artículos con más relación con este blog es la revisión acerca de la especiación de los híbridos. Lo podéis encontrar aquí en formato pdf.

De todo el artículo, muy especializado, me quedo con los párrafos finales:

"Polyploid speciation leaves a clear genomic signature, but we have little idea how common homoploid hybrid species are. They could be abundant:

most speciation involves natural selection;
natural selection requires genetic variation;
genetic variation is enhanced by hybridization;
and hybridization and introgression between species is a regular occurrence, especially in rapidly radiating groups.

Enough suspected animal homoploid hybrid species exist to indicate that it may be at least as common as in plants, in contrast to the situation for polyploidy, where a variety of traits prevent its occurrence (see above). It now seems intuitively unlikely that all biodiversity arose as a result of recombination of existing diversity, but homoploid hybrid species might still represent a large fraction. Nonetheless, there are few convincing cases, probably, in part, because of the difficulty of demonstrating that hybridization has led to speciation. We clearly need more genomic analyses. As for hybrid species as a whole, we have observed recent speciation in the laboratory or nature in seven genera discussed here (Helianthus, Senecio, Primula, Spartina, Rhagoletis, Bombyx and Cottus), and there are many other cases. It would be hard to find another mode of speciation so readily documented historically and so amenable to experimentation.

That hybrid species exist at all reveals something perhaps unexpected about adaptive landscapes. If hybrid ‘hopeful monsters’, with all their problems, are ever to survive in competition with their parents, they must be able to hit (and for polyploid species, hit almost
exactly) new adaptive combinations of genes (Fig. 1). This implies both that many adaptive peaks are scattered about in the adaptive landscape, and also that many are unoccupied. Liberal adaptive landscapes are further supported by the successes of many introduced species, and by fossil evidence: for insects, angiosperms and many other groups, diversity seems to have been increasing more or less continuously over geological time.

The ability of hybrid species to invade hitherto unoccupied niches also means that hybridization can contribute to adaptive radiations such as African cichlid fish and Darwin’s finches. This principle is well demonstrated by the ‘domestication niche’. Humans have unwittingly created many allopolyploid and other hybrid crops and domestic animals while selecting for transgressively high yields. Even our own species may have a hybrid genomic ancestry, although this is contested. Whichever way the debate about humans is resolved, it would be hardly surprising if hybridization was one trigger for the origin of Homo sapiens, the most invasive mammal on the planet."

Biodiversidad (PLoS Biology)

2007-03-14T10:03:00.000+01:00

En el volumen 5 (issue 3) de marzo del 2007 de la revista PLoS Biology hay una serie de artículos con el trabajo del Global Ocean Sample (GOS) Expedition, una expedición liderada por J. Craig Venter que ha recogido muestras oceánicas de superficie de todo el mundo y se ha dedicado a secuenciar y analizar partes de genomas que en ellas encontraba. Los trabajos con los hiperlinks al texto completo son:

The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition: Northwest Atlantic through Eastern Tropical Pacific.
Douglas B. Rusch, Aaron L. Halpern, Granger Sutton, Karla B. Heidelberg, Shannon Williamson, Shibu Yooseph, Dongying Wu, Jonathan A. Eisen, Jeff M. Hoffman, Karin Remington, Karen Beeson, Bao Tran, Hamilton Smith, Holly Baden-Tillson, Clare Stewart, Joyce Thorpe, Jason Freeman, Cynthia Andrews-Pfannkoch, Joseph E. Venter, Kelvin Li, Saul Kravitz, John F. Heidelberg, Terry Utterback, Yu-Hui Rogers, Luisa I. Falcón, Valeria Souza, Germán Bonilla-Rosso, Luis E. Eguiarte, David M. Karl, Shubha Sathyendranath, Trevor Platt, Eldredge Bermingham, Victor Gallardo, Giselle Tamayo-Castillo, Michael R. Ferrari, Robert L. Strausberg, Kenneth Nealson, Robert Friedman, Marvin Frazier, J. Craig Venter
Link al artículo.

The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition: Expanding the Universe of Protein Families
Shibu Yooseph, Granger Sutton, Douglas B. Rusch, Aaron L. Halpern, Shannon J. Williamson, Karin Remington, Jonathan A. Eisen, Karla B. Heidelberg, Gerard Manning, Weizhong Li, Lukasz Jaroszewski, Piotr Cieplak, Christopher S. Miller, Huiying Li, Susan T. Mashiyama, Marcin P. Joachimiak, Christopher van Belle, John-Marc Chandonia, David A. Soergel, Yufeng Zhai, Kannan Natarajan, Shaun Lee, Benjamin J. Raphael, Vineet Bafna, Robert Friedman, Steven E. Brenner, Adam Godzik, David Eisenberg, Jack E. Dixon, Susan S. Taylor, Robert L. Strausberg, Marvin Frazier, J. Craig Venter
Link al artículo.

Structural and Functional Diversity of the Microbial Kinome
Natarajan Kannan, Susan S. Taylor, Yufeng Zhai, J. Craig Venter, Gerard Manning
Link al artículo.

Destaco el último párrafo del segundo de los artículos que refiere la enorme diversidad encontrada y la necesidad de llevar este tipo de proyecto a otros ambientes:
"The GOS dataset has demonstrated the usefulness of large-scale environmental shotgun sequencing projects in exploring proteins. These projects offer an unbiased view of proteins and protein families in an environmental sample. However, it should be noted that the GOS data reported here are limited to mostly ocean surface microbes. Even with this targeted sampling a tremendous amount of diversity is added to known families, and there is evidence for a large number of novel families. Additional data from larger filter sizes (that will sample more eukaryotes) coupled with metagenomic studies of different environments like soil, air, deep sea, etc. will help to achieve the ultimate goal of a whole-earth catalog for proteins."

Y el final de la discusión del primer artículo que apunta a lo poco que conocemos acerca de como varian las poblaciones microbianas y del papel que pueden jugar la transferencia horizontal de genes y los islotes (o islas) hipervariables:
"In conclusion, this study reveals the wealth of biological information that is contained within large multi-sample environmental datasets. We have begun to quantify the amount and structure of the variation in natural microbial populations, while providing some information about how these factors are structured along phylogenetic and environmental factors. At the same time, many questions remain unanswered. For example, although microbial populations are structured and therefore genetically isolated, we do not understand the mechanisms that lead to this isolation. Their isolation seems contradictory given overwhelming evidence that horizontal gene transfer associated with hypervariable islands is a common phenomenon in marine microbial populations. Whatever the mechanism, the role and rate at which gene exchange occurs between populations will be crucial to understanding population structure within microbial communities and whether these communities are chance associations or necessary collections. The hypervariable islands could be a source for tremendous genetic innovation and novelty as evidenced by the rate of discovery of novel protein families in the GOS dataset. However, it is not clear whether these entities are the main source of this novelty or whether this novelty resides in the vast numbers of rare microbes that cannot be practically accessed using current metagenomic approaches. Altogether, this research reaffirms our growing wealth and complexity of data and paucity of understanding regarding the biological systems of the oceans."

Una buena imagen

2007-03-07T11:10:00.000+01:00

Este fue la portada del número de TIME donde se publicó el artículo God vs. Science de David van Biema reflejado en la entrada Collin vs. Dawkins colgada el 12 de febrero de 2007.

The God Delusion in The New York Review of Books

2007-03-02T09:25:00.000+01:00

Encontré una nueva crítica al libro "The God Delusion" (y un par más del mismo tema) en The New York Review of Books. El crítico es H. Allen Orr, biólogo dedicado a conocer los aspectos moleculares de la diferenciación y de la especiación. Creo que merece bastante la pena por ser de signo opuesto a las otras dos que ya están colgadas en el blog. La puedes bajar de aquí.

Volume 54, Number 1 · January 11, 2007
Review
A Mission to Convert
By H. Allen Orr

The God Delusion
by Richard Dawkins
Houghton Mifflin, 406 pp., $27.00

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief
by Lewis Wolpert
Norton, 243 pp., $25.95

Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist
by Joan Roughgarden
Island, 151 pp., $14.95

Scientists' interest in religion seems to come in waves. One arrived after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859. Another followed in the 1930s and 1940s, inspired by surprising revelations from quantum mechanics, which suggested the insufficiency of conventional physical theories of the universe. And now scientists are once again writing about religion, apparently provoked this time by the controversy surrounding intelligent design.
During the last year, a number of popular books on religion by scientists or philosophers of science have appeared. Daniel Dennett kicked things off with his Breaking the Spell (2006), an investigation into the possibility of a science of religion. Reviewing evolutionary, psychological, and economic theories of the origin and spread of belief, Dennett covered much ground but reached few conclusions. In the last few months, three prominent scientists—all biologists—have published their own books on belief. Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, has given us The God Delusion, an extended polemic against faith, which will be considered at length below.

Lewis Wolpert, an eminent developmental biologist at University College London, has just published Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a pleasant, though rambling, look at the biological basis of belief. While the book focuses on our ability to form causal beliefs about everyday matters (the wind moved the trees, for example), it spends considerable time on the origins of religious and moral beliefs. Wolpert defends the unusual idea that causal thinking is an adaptation required for tool-making. Religious beliefs can thus be seen as an odd extension of causal thinking about technology to more mysterious matters. Only a species that can reason causally could assert that "this storm was sent by God because we sinned." While Wolpert's attitude toward religion is tolerant, he's an atheist who seems to find religion more puzzling than absorbing.

Joan Roughgarden, on the other hand, is sold on religion. An evolutionary biologist at Stanford University and a recent convert to Christianity, she attempts in Evolution and Christian Faith both to explain evolutionary biology to fellow believers—laying out what is known, what is speculative, and what is unknown—and to discuss what the Bible has to say on matters relevant to evolution. These are ambitious aims, particularly for so brief a book, and Roughgarden's own views—that, as she writes, "what evolutionary biologists are finding through their research and thinking actually promotes a Christian view of nature"—are not supported by sufficiently detailed arguments.

1. Among these books, Dawkins's The God Delusion stands out for two reasons. First, it's by far the most ambitious. While Wolpert and Roughgarden preach to the choir—each has his or her own audience, rationalist and religious, respectively—Dawkins is on a mission to convert. He is an enemy of religion, wants to explain why, and hopes thereby to drive the beast to extinction. Second, Dawkins has succeeded in grabbing the public's attention in a way that other writers can only dream of. His book is on the New York Times best-seller list and he's just been featured on the cover of Time magazine.

Dawkins's first book, The Selfish Gene (1976), was a smash hit. An introduction to evolutionary theory, it explained a number of deeply counter-intuitive results, including how an apparently self-centered process like Darwinian natural selection can account for the evolution of altruism. Best of all, Dawkins laid out this biology—some of it truly subtle—in stunningly lucid prose. (It is, in my view, the best work of popular science ever written.) While Dawkins has published several other popular books on Darwinism, he has, in recent years, turned to larger issues. In such works as Unweaving the Rainbow (1998) and A Devil's Chaplain (2003), he's explored our sense of wonder before the natural world and, increasingly, the tension between science and religion.
His new book continues this last theme. Dawkins clearly believes his background in science allows him to draw strong conclusions about religion and, in The God Delusion, he presents those conclusions in language that's stronger still. Dawkins not only thinks religion is unalloyed nonsense but that it is an overwhelmingly pernicious, even "very evil," force in the world. His target is not so much organized religion as all religion. And within organized religion, he attacks not only extremist sects but moderate ones. Indeed, he argues that rearing children in a religious tradition amounts to child abuse.

Dawkins's book begins with a description of what he calls the God Hypothesis. This is the idea that "the universe and everything in it" were designed by "a superhuman, supernatural intelligence." This intelligence might be personal (as in Christianity) or impersonal (as in deism). Dawkins is not concerned with the alleged detailed characteristics of God but with whether any form of the God Hypothesis is defensible. His answer is: almost cer-tainly not. Although his target is broad, Dawkins discusses mostly Christianity, partly because this faith has wrestled often with science and partly because it's the tradition Dawkins knows best (he was reared as an Anglican).

The first few chapters of The God Delusion are given over to philosophical matters. Dawkins summarizes the traditional philosophical arguments for God's existence, from Aquinas through pre-Darwinian arguments from biological design, along with the traditional arguments against them. In a later chapter entitled "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God," Dawkins himself plays philosopher, presenting the chief argument of his book. The God Hypothesis, he tells us, is close to "ruled out by the laws of probability." Dawkins's demonstration involves what he calls the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit. This is his variation on a standard creationist argument. By tweaking that argument in a clever way, Dawkins claims it now leads to a conclusion that's the opposite of the traditional creationist one.

The creationist argument works like this. Living things are enormously complex. Even the simplest of present-day organisms, like bacteria, are far more complicated than anything found in the nonliving world. All organisms carry genes, built from a replicating molecule like DNA (which is itself very complex). But DNA alone doesn't make an organism. Organisms also possess many different proteins (each, in turn, made of amino acids), as well as other molecules that help make structures like cell membranes. Moreover, all these parts must be arranged in just the right way: membranes on the outside of the cell and DNA on the inside, and so on. Creationists argue that the idea that such organized complexity could arise by natural means—without the intercession of a designer mind— is absurd. In particular, they argue that the probability that life could assemble itself spontaneously is extremely close to zero. To dramatize this, they suggest that thinking life could arise by natural means is like thinking a tornado could tear through a junkyard and assemble a Boeing 747. Such an event is not, strictly speaking, impossible but it's so extraordinarily unlikely that it is, according to creationists, unworthy of serious consideration.[1]

Dawkins's variation on this argument involves a judo-like move in which he turns its logic against itself. In particular, Dawkins claims that rejecting natural means to explain life and instead invoking a designer God leaves us with a hypothesis that's even more improbable than the naturalistic one: A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right.

In short, only complicated objects can design simpler ones; information cannot flow in the other direction, with simple objects designing complicated ones. But that means any designer God would have to be more complex —and thus even more improbable— than the universe he was supposed to explain. This argument, Dawkins concludes, "comes close to proving that God does not exist": the God Hypothesis has a vanishingly small probability of being right.

The latter half of The God Delusion is partly devoted to Dawkins's discussion of religion as practiced. Not surprisingly, he finds little good to say about it: religion for him is the root of much evil and its disappearance from the world would be an unmitigated good. Religion, he tells us, is certainly not the source of our morality (indeed the God of the Old Testament is, he claims, nothing short of monstrous) and believers are no better morally than nonbelievers; in fact they may be worse. Dawkins regales us with tales of Christian cops who threaten to beat up an atheist; presents statistics on the higher rates of crime in regions that are religious; and argues that, when considering religiously inspired violence and terrorism, "we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism—as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent re-ligion." Late in his book, Dawkins defends a faith-free morality and provides his own, secular, Ten Commandments. (For example, "Do not indoctrinate your children" and "Enjoy your own sex life (so long as it damages nobody else).")

As you may have noticed, Dawkins when discussing religion is, in effect, a blunt instrument, one that has a hard time distinguishing Unitarians from abortion clinic bombers. What may be less obvious is that, on questions of God, Dawkins cannot abide much dissent, especially from fellow scientists (and especially from fellow evolutionary biologists). Indeed Dawkins is fond of imputing ulterior motives to those "Neville Chamberlain School" scientists not willing to go as far as he in his war on religion: he suggests that they're guilty of disingenuousness, playing politics, and lusting after the large prizes awarded by the Templeton Foundation to scientists sympathetic to religion.[2] The only motive Dawkins doesn't seem to take seriously is that some scientists genuinely disagree with him.

Despite my admiration for much of Dawkins's work, I'm afraid that I'm among those scientists who must part company with him here. Indeed, The God Delusion seems to me badly flawed. Though I once labeled Dawkins a professional atheist, I'm forced, after reading his new book, to conclude he's actually more an amateur. I don't pretend to know whether there's more to the world than meets the eye and, for all I know, Dawkins's general conclusion is right. But his book makes a far from convincing case.

2. The most disappointing feature of The God Delusion is Dawkins's failure to engage religious thought in any serious way. This is, obviously, an odd thing to say about a book-length investigation into God. But the problem reflects Dawkins's cavalier attitude about the quality of religious thinking. Dawkins tends to dismiss simple expressions of belief as base superstition. Having no patience with the faith of fundamentalists, he also tends to dismiss more sophisticated expressions of belief as sophistry (he cannot, for instance, tolerate the meticulous reasoning of theologians). But if simple religion is barbaric (and thus unworthy of serious thought) and sophisticated religion is logic-chopping (and thus equally unworthy of serious thought), the ineluctable conclusion is that all religion is unworthy of serious thought.

The result is The God Delusion, a book that never squarely faces its opponents. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology in Dawkins's book (does he know Augustine rejected biblical literalism in the early fifth century?), no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions (are they like ordinary claims about everyday matters?), no effort to appreciate the complex history of interaction between the Church and science (does he know the Church had an important part in the rise of non-Aristotelian science?), and no attempt to understand even the simplest of religious attitudes (does Dawkins really believe, as he says, that Christians should be thrilled to learn they're terminally ill?).
Instead, Dawkins has written a book that's distinctly, even defiantly, middlebrow. Dawkins's intellectual universe appears populated by the likes of Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Carl Sagan, the science popularizer,[3] both of whom he cites repeatedly. This is a different group from thinkers like William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein—both of whom lived after Darwin, both of whom struggled with the question of belief, and both of whom had more to say about religion than Adams and Sagan. Dawkins spends much time on what can only be described as intellectual banalities: "Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question."[4]

The vacuum created by Dawkins's failure to engage religious thought must be filled by something, and in The God Delusion, it gets filled by extraneous quotation, letters from correspondents, and, most of all, anecdote after anecdote. Dawkins's discussion of religion's power to console, for example, is interrupted by the story of the Abbott of Ampleforth's joy at learning of a friend's impending death; speculation about why countries, such as the Netherlands, that allow euthanasia are so rare (presumably because of religious prejudice); a nurse who told Dawkins that believers fear death more than nonbelievers do; and the number of days of remission from Purgatory that Pope Pius X allowed cardinals and bishops (two hundred, and fifty, respectively). All this and more in four pages. Gone, it seems, is the Dawkins of The Selfish Gene, a writer who could lead readers through dauntingly difficult arguments and who used anecdotes to illustrate those arguments, not to substitute for them.

3. One reason for the lack of extended argument in The God Delusion is clear: Dawkins doesn't seem very good at it. Indeed he suffers from several problems when attempting to reason philosophically. The most obvious is that he has a preordained set of conclusions at which he's determined to arrive. Consequently, Dawkins uses any argument, however feeble, that seems to get him there and the merit of various arguments appears judged largely by where they lead.
The most important example involves Dawkins's discussion of philosophical arguments for the existence of God as opposed to his own argument against God, which he presents as the intellectual heart of his book. Considering arguments for God, Dawkins is care-ful to recite the many standard objections to them and writes that the traditional proofs are "vacuous," "dubious," "infantile," and "perniciously misleading." But turning to his own Ultimate Boeing 747 argument against God, Dawkins is suddenly uninterested in criticism and writes that his argument is "unanswerable." So why, you might wonder, is a clever philosophical argument for God subject to withering criticism while one against God gets a free pass and is deemed devastating?

The reason seems clear. The first argument leads to a conclusion Dawkins despises, while the second leads to one he loves. Dawkins, so far as I can tell, is unconcerned that the central argument of his book bears more than a passing resemblance to those clever philosophical proofs for the existence of God that he dismisses. This is unfortunate. He could have used a healthy dose of his usual skepticism when deciding how much to invest in his own Ultimate Boeing 747 argument. Indeed, one needn't be a creationist to note that Dawkins's argument suffers at least two potential problems. First, as others have pointed out, if he is right, the design hypothesis essentially must be wrong and the alternative naturalistic hypothesis essentially must be right. But since when is a scientific hypothesis confirmed by philosophical gymnastics, not data? Second, the fact that we as scientists find a hypothesis question-begging—as when Dawkins asks "who designed the designer?"— cannot, in itself, settle its truth value. It could, after all, be a brute fact of the universe that it derives from some transcendent mind, however question-begging this may seem. What explanations we find satisfying might say more about us than about the explanations. Why, for example, is Dawkins so untroubled by his own (large) assumption that both matter and the laws of nature can be viewed as given? Why isn't that question-begging?

Exercises in double standards also plague Dawkins's discussion of the idea that religion encourages good behavior. Dawkins cites a litany of statistics revealing that red states (with many conservative Christians) suffer higher rates of crime, including murder, burglary, and theft, than do blue states. But now consider his response to the suggestion that the atheist Stalin and his comrades committed crimes of breathtaking magnitude: "We are not in the business," he says, "of counting evils heads, compiling two rival roll calls of iniquity." We're not? We were forty-five pages ago.

Dawkins's problems with philosophy might be related to a failure of metaphysical imagination. When thinking of those vast matters that make up religion—matters of ultimate meaning that stand at the edge of intelligibility and that are among the most difficult to articulate—he sees only black and white. Despite some attempts at subtlety, Dawkins almost reflexively identifies religion with right-wing fundamentalism and biblical literalism. Other, more nuanced possibilities— varieties of deism, mysticism, or nondenominational spirituality—have a harder time holding his attention. It may be that Dawkins can't imagine these possibilities vividly enough to worry over them in a serious way.

There's an irony here. Dawkins's main criticism of those who doubt Darwin—and it's a good one—is that they suffer a similar failure of imagination. Those, for example, who argue that evolution could never make an eye because anything less than a fully formed eye can't see simply can't imagine the surprising routes taken by evolution. In any case, part of what it means to suffer a failure of imagination may be that one can't conceive that one's imagination is impoverished. It's hard to resist the conclusion that people like James and Wittgenstein struggled personally with religion, while Dawkins shrugs his shoulders, at least in part because they conceived possibilities—mistaken ones perhaps, but certainly more interesting ones— that escape Dawkins.

4. Putting aside these philosophical matters, Dawkins's key empirical claim—that religion is a pernicious force in the world—might still be right. Is it? Throughout The God Delusion, Dawkins reminds us of the horrors committed in the name of God, from outright war, through the persecution of minority sects, acts of terrorism, the closing of children's minds, and the oppression of those having unorthodox sexual lives. No decent person can fail to be repulsed by the sins committed in the name of religion. So we all agree: religion can be bad.
But the critical question is: compared to what? And here Dawkins is less convincing because he fails to examine the question in a systematic way. Tests of religion's consequences might involve a number of different comparisons: between religion's good and bad effects, or between the behavior of believers and nonbelievers, and so on. While Dawkins touches on each, his modus operandi generally involves comparing religion as practiced —religion, that is, as it plays out in the rough-and-tumble world of compromise, corruption, and incompetence— with atheism as theory. But fairness requires that we compare both religion and atheism as practiced or both as theory. The latter is an amorphous and perhaps impossible task, and I can see why Dawkins sidesteps it. But comparing both as practiced is more straightforward. And, at least when considering religious and atheist institutions, the facts of history do not, I believe, demonstrate beyond doubt that atheism comes out on the side of the angels. Dawkins has a difficult time facing up to the dual facts that (1) the twentieth century was an experiment in secularism; and (2) the result was secular evil, an evil that, if anything, was more spectacularly virulent than that which came before.

Part of Dawkins's difficulty is that his worldview is thoroughly Victorian. He is, as many have noted, a kind of latter-day T.H. Huxley. The problem is that these latter days have witnessed blood-curdling experiments in institutional atheism. Dawkins tends to wave away the resulting crimes. It is, he insists, unclear if they were actually inspired by atheism. He emphasizes, for example, that Stalin's brutality may not have been motivated by his atheism. While this is surely partly true, it's a tricky issue, especially as one would need to allow for the same kind of distinction when considering religious institutions. (Does anyone really believe that the Church's dreadful dealings with the Nazis were motivated by its theism?)

In any case, it's hard to believe that Stalin's wholesale torture and murder of priests and nuns (including crucifixions) and Mao's persecution of Catholics and extermination of nearly every remnant of Buddhism were unconnected to their atheism. Neither the institutions of Christianity nor those of communism are, of course, innocent. But Dawkins's inability to see the difference in the severity of their sins— one of orders of magnitude—suggests an ideological commitment of the sort that usually reflects devotion to a creed.

What of the possibility that present-day churchgoers are worse morally than those who stay away? They might be. Indeed C.S. Lewis, in perhaps the most widely read work of popular theology ever written, Mere Christianity, conceded the possibility. Emphasizing that the Gospel was preached to the weak and poor, Lewis argued that troubled souls might well be drawn disproportionately to the Church. As he also emphasized, the appropriate contrast should not, therefore, be between the behavior of churchgoers and nongoers but between the behavior of people before and after they find religion. Under Dawkins's alternative logic, the fact that those sitting in a doctor's office are on average sicker than those not sitting there must stand as an indictment of medicine. (There's no evidence in The God Delusion that Dawkins is familiar with Lewis's argument.)[5]

In any case, there are some grounds for questioning whether Dawkins's project is even meaningful. As T.S. Eliot famously observed, to ask whether we would have been better off without religion is to ask a question whose answer is unknowable. Our entire history has been so thoroughly shaped by Judeo-Christian tradition that we cannot imagine the present state of society in its absence. But there's a deeper point and one that Dawkins also fails to see. Even what we mean by the world being better off is conditioned by our religious inheritance. What most of us in the West mean—and what Dawkins, as revealed by his own Ten Commandments, means—is a world in which individuals are free to express their thoughts and passions and to develop their talents so long as these do not infringe on the ability of others to do so. But this is assuredly not what a better world would look like to, say, a traditional Confucian culture. There, a new and improved world might be one that allows the readier suppression of in-dividual differences and aspirations. The point is that all judgments, including ethical ones, begin somewhere and ours, often enough, begin in Judaism and Christianity. Dawkins should, of course, be applauded for his attempt to picture a better world. But intellectual honesty demands acknowledging that his moral vision derives, to a considerable extent, from the tradition he so despises.[6]

5. One of the most interesting questions about Dawkins's book is why it was written. Why does Dawkins feel he has anything significant to say about religion and what gives him the sense of authority presumably needed to say it at book length? The God Delusion certainly establishes that Dawkins has little new to offer. Its arguments are those of any bright student who has thumbed through Bertrand Russell's more popular books and who has, horrified, watched videos of holy rollers. Dawkins is obviously entitled to his views on God, ballet, and currency markets. But I doubt he feels much need to pen books on the last two topics.

The reason Dawkins thinks he has something to say about God is, of course, clear: he is an evolutionary biologist. And as we all know, Darwinism had an early and noisy run-in with religion. What Dawkins never seems to consider is that this incident might have been, in an important way, local and contingent. It might, in other words, have turned out differently, at least in principle. Believers could, for instance, have uttered a collective "So what?" to evolution. Indeed some did. The angry reaction of many religious leaders to Darwinism had complex causes, involving equal parts ignorance, fear, politics, and the sheer shock of the new. The point is that it's far from certain that there is an ineluctable conflict between the acceptance of evolutionary mechanism and the belief that, as William James putit, "the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe." Instead, we and Dawkins might simply be living through the reverberations of an interesting, but not especially fundamental, bit of Victorian history. If so, evolutionary biology would enjoy no particularly exalted pulpit from which to preach about religion.

None of this is to say that evolutionary biology cannot inform our view of religion. It can and does. At the very least it insists that the Lord works in mysterious ways. More generally, it demands rejection of anything approaching biblical literalism. There are facts of nature—including that human beings evolved on the African savanna several million years ago—and these facts are not subject to negotiation. But Dawkins's book goes far beyond this. The reason, of course, is that The God Delusion is not itself a work of either evolutionary biology in particular or science in general. None of Dawkins's loud pronouncements on God follows from any experiment or piece of data. It's just Dawkins talking.

We should not, though, conclude that there's no debate whatever to be had between science and religion. The view championed by Stephen Jay Gould and others that the two endeavors are utterly distinct and thus incapable of interfering with each other is overly simplistic. There have been, and likely will continue to be, real disagreements between legitimate science and authentic religion. Some of the issues involved are epistemological (Do scientific and religious claims simply begin with different premises, the first material-ist and the second not?), and others ethical (Where do we draw the line between what medicine can accom-plish and what it should be allowed to accomplish?). These questions are difficult and might well merit extended discussion between scientific and religious thinkers. But if such discussions are to be worthwhile, they will have to take place at a far higher level of sophistication than Richard Daw-kins seems either willing or able to muster.

Notes
[1] Most evolutionary biologists would argue that we do not need to explain anything as complex as present life to explain the origin of life. We need only explain how a self-replicating molecule could arise. Given such a molecule, natural selection can operate and complex life could then evolve. Although the details are difficult and the case is not proved, there is reason to believe that the origin of life may have involved a replicating molecule called RNA. According to this theory, this RNA was able to replicate by itself —without the assistance of any proteins or other molecules. See James P. Ferris, "From Building Blocks to the Polymers of Life," in Life's Origins: The Beginnings of Biological Evo-lution, edited by J. William Schopf (University of California Press, 2002), pp. 113–139.
[2] For more on this, see Dawkins's interview at Salon.com (www.salon.com/ books/int/2006/10/13/dawkins/index .html).
[3] For an interesting look at Sagan's thought, see Richard C. Lewontin's "Billions and Billions of Demons," The New York Review, January 9, 1997.
[4] T.S. Eliot: "The unbeliever starts... as likely as not with the question: Is a case of human parthenogenesis credible? and this he would call going straight to the heart of the matter." (From Eliot's introduction to Pascal's Pensées, Dutton, 1958.)
[5] Even when comparing believers and nonbelievers, Dawkins is curiously silent on one of the best-known differences. Believers give far more to charities—even nonreligious charities— than do secularists. See, for instance, the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (www.cfsv.org/communitysurvey/results.html).
[6] Dawkins would likely respond that his moral vision derives from either biological or cultural evolution, i.e., from the spread of "memes," his putative unit of cultural evolution. I suspect that biological evolution has endowed us with a rough moral sense; but this can't explain the kind of differences between Judeo-Christian and Confucian cultures noted above. As for memes, I see no difference between saying that my morals derive from, say, Christianity and saying that my brain hosts a "Christian morality meme." In any case, most scientists do not accept Dawkins's theory of memes. Lewis Wolpert's reaction in his new book is typical: "Just what a meme is, and how it is distinguishable from beliefs, I find difficult.... There is no distinction made between memes relating to belief and knowledge. Moreover, no mechanism is proposed for the so-called replication of memes, or what they are selected for."

No es evolución pero... nos afecta

2007-02-27T10:29:00.000+01:00

Se ha publicado en la revista New England Journal of Medicine (la, para la mayoría, mejor revista médica del mundo) un artículo acerca de la influencia de las creencias religiosas de los médicos en la oferta de diferentes tratamientos. Un link al resumen de este artículo lo puedes encontrar aquí.
No se trata de evolución, pero la importancia del artículo es innegable.

Carl Sagan (International Herald Tribune)

2007-02-24T21:54:00.000+01:00

Carl Sagan, posthumously, rejoins debate on faith vs. science
By Dennis Overbye
Published: February 14, 2007

It's been 10 years since we've heard Carl Sagan beckoning us to consider the possibilities inherent in the "billions" of stars peppering the sky and in the "billions" of neuronal connections spiderwebbing our brains.

In his day, the Cornell astronomer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of books like "The Dragons of Eden," "Contact," "Pale Blue Dot" and "The Demon- Haunted World," and impresario of the PBS television program "Cosmos" was one of the world's most eloquent unbelievers, an apostle of cosmic wonder, critic of nuclear arms and a champion of science's duty to probe and question without limit, including the claims of religion. He died of pneumonia after a series of bone marrow transplants in December 1996.

Since his death, the public discourse on his favorite issues — the fate of the planet, the beauty and mystery of the cosmos — has not fared well. The teaching of evolution in public schools has become a bitter bone of contention; NASA tried to abandon the Hubble Space Telescope and censor talk of climate change; and religious fanatics crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center, which helped lead to a war in the Middle East that has awakened memories in some corners of the Crusades.

Now, however, Sagan has rejoined the debate with the publication last month of "The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God" (Penguin). The book is based on a series of lectures exploring the boundary between science and religion that Sagan gave in Glasgow in 1985; it was edited by Ann Druyan, his widow and collaborator.
(Cont. at IHT)

Science (16-02-2007)

2007-02-16T11:31:00.000+01:00

Science 16 February 2007:Vol. 315. no. 5814, p. 925DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5814.925a

News of the Week

FAITH AND SCIENCE:
In Europe's Mailbag: A Glossy Attack on Evolution
Martin Enserink

PARIS--It's the most gorgeous-looking attack on evolution seen in a long time: That's the consensus among European scientists who in recent weeks have received unsolicited free copies of the Atlas of Creation. The 768-page, lavishly produced tome was written by Harun Yahya, a Turkish author who denounces Darwinism as the source of many evils, including 9/11. Its publisher has sent hundreds if not thousands of copies of the book to researchers in at least four countries in Western Europe.
A source of amusement to some, the book has troubled and outraged others--especially in France, where a French translation landed in the mailboxes of hundreds of high school directors and librarians. "This is a nasty attack on our education system," says evolutionary biologist Armand de Ricqlès of the Collège de France, who worries that the book might touch off a battle over the teaching of evolution in Europe. French Education Minister Gilles de Robien swiftly warned schools to keep the book out of pupils' hands.
Mass mailing. Schools in France have received a slick volume that purports to disprove evolution science.
Harun Yahya is the pen name of Adnan Oktar, the head of the Foundation for Scientific Research (BAV) in Ankara, which has promoted Islamic creationism since 1997 (Science, 18 May 2001, p. 1286). Yahya is credited with hundreds of books; he is "more like a brand name" for a group of writers he leads, says Taner Edis, a Turkish-born physicist at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, who has studied Islamic creationism.
Yahya accepts that the world is billions of years old but rejects the concept of evolutionary change. More than 500 pages in the Atlas of Creation (the first in a series of seven volumes) are filled with pictures of fossils, accompanied by modern-day organisms that look strikingly similar--proof, Yahya says, that evolution theory is false. It's an "absurdly ridiculous" logic, says Gerdien de Jong, one of five biologists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who received a copy.
Within Turkey, BAV has been "quite successful" in promoting creationism, says biologist Aykut Kence of the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. One recent survey found that more than 50% of biology teachers in secondary education "are not sure about the validity of evolution," says Kence. Yahya's books have also been translated into Arabic, Urdu, and other languages of the Islamic world.
How BAV can afford mass distribution of books, as well as a plethora of DVDs and Web sites in several languages, is unclear. Rumors abound--for instance, about Saudi or U.S. backers--but Turkish law makes finding out the facts very difficult, Edis says. In an e-mailed response to questions, a spokesperson for Yahya declined to address finances. He added that France "can gather up and burn all the books, just like in the days of the Nazis, … yet the collapse of Darwinism cannot be prevented by prohibitions and bans."
French scientists say they need to operate carefully so as not to inflame tensions with France's sizable Muslim minority. But a response is needed, says de Ricqlès, if only to arm teachers with counterarguments. Kence says he and others have tried to promote evolution, but he says he never engages in direct debates with creationists, because that would enhance their credibility.
Meanwhile, some readers were trying to find new uses for Yahya's book last week. Ecologist Michael Hassell of Imperial College London says he's using the 5-kilogram opus as a lamp stand. His colleague Peter Knight, another recipient, says he donated his copy to his ecology group--"I hope they found it was biodegradable and recyclable," he says.