But if Behe had read White's 2003 paper (table 1) "The de novo selection of drug-resistant malaria parasites." N J White and W Pongtavornpinyo Proc Biol Sci. 2003 March 7; 270(1514): 545–554. he would have read thatThe number of one in 1020 is not a probability calculation. Rather, it is statistical data.
Luskin is correct, the number is not a "mere guess", it's a speculative estimate. Glad we got that right. Why Luskin failed to mention this is beyond me since he does seem to quote the paper in question. Perhaps if Luskin had spent more time on reading the papers and less on emphasizing the academic achievements of White, he might have found the error in Behe's claim himself. What Behe meant when he said thatThe estimates for chloroquine and artemisinin are speculative. In the former case, this assumes two events in 10 years of use with exposure of 10% of the world’s falciparum malaria (Burgess &Young 1959; Martin&Arnold1968; Looareesuwan et al. 1996; Su et al. 1997
is less clear. Surely since ID proponents are so critical of evolutionary scientists when it comes to confusing fact and fiction, Behe may wants to revise his statement. Now it has already been well document that the paper from which Behe lifted this single data point was careful to state that this was merely a guestimate by the author.the 1020 statistic is an empirically derived fact
In a review paper published in TREE, Nick Matzke further demolishes Behe's guestimateAs I have discussed, Behe asserts that the probability associated with a “CCC” is 1 in 10^20. Where does this number come from? From footnote 16 in the first excerpt given above - White, N. J. 2004. Antimalarial drug resistance. J. Clin. Invest. 113:1084-92. Here is the actual passage from the review by White that mentions the number 10^20:
“Chloroquine resistance in P. falciparum may be multigenic and is initially conferred by mutations in a gene encoding a transporter (PfCRT) (13). In the presence of PfCRT mutations, mutations in a second transporter (PfMDR1) modulate the level of resistance in vitro, but the role of PfMDR1 mutations in determining the therapeutic response following chloroquine treatment remains unclear (13). At least one other as-yet unidentified gene is thought to be involved. Resistance to chloroquine in P. falciparum has arisen spontaneously less than ten times in the past fifty years (14). This suggests that the per-parasite probability of developing resistance de novo is on the order of 1 in 10^20 parasite multiplications. “
The argument collapses at every step. Behe obtains the crucial 1020 number from an offhand estimate in the literature that considered only the few CQR alleles that have been detected because they have taken over regional populations. What is needed, however, is an estimate of how often any weak-but-selectable CQR originates. A study conducted in an area where CQR is actively evolving [5] showed that high-level CQR is more complex than just two substitutions but that it is preceded by CQR alleles having fewer substitutions; moreover, Behe’s two mutations do not always co-occur. As a result, CQR is both more complex and vastly more probable than Behe thinks. This sinks his one in 1020 estimate for CQR, in addition to his notion that protein-protein binding sites are more complex and, therefore, less probable than CQR.
16 Comments
PvM · 4 November 2007
Joshua Zelinsky · 4 November 2007
Two typographical notes: "artemisininare speculative" should have a space in it. In the section quoting Nick Matzke at the end the various "1020"s should of course have the 20 as an exponent.
Tex · 4 November 2007
I have not read Behe's original comments, but does he mean that drug-resistant malaria parasites cannot arise by typical evolutionary methods?
If so, and given the fact that they do exist, then this implies that the Intelligent Designer is changing the parasites so they can continue to kill thousands and thousands of poor people he placed in shitty environments in the first place. This ID guy, whoever he is, is a bigger prick than I thought.
Peter Olofsson · 4 November 2007
Tex: No, he says that they can. His argument is that although 1 in 10^20 is
such a minuscule probability, it can still happen because there are so many
individuals. The reasoning is circular because if you have a population of N
individuals, any mutation event that is observed once has an estimated probability of 1/N. So if this is a small number, it is still not impossible because
N is large enough. In fact, Behe must accept that any observed mutation can be
attributed to evolution. He cannot point to any specific mutation where there
are both mutants and wildtypes around and say that the mutation cannot have been produced by evolution,
because his arguments are based on estimated probabilities. Beyond what is
attributable to evolution, he can only speculate (and does so). His probability-based arguments are entirely unconvincing although they may seem impressive to
a layman.
Dale Husband · 5 November 2007
The improbablity arguments spit out by Creationists and ID promoters are so lame because improbability does not imply impossibility, and they are based on the assumption that evolution is a RANDOM process, which it is not. You have trillions upon trillions upon trillions of organisms on this planet living over billions of years, and natural selection operating all the while, that in itself renders Behe's improbability arguments moot.
Joshua Zelinsky · 5 November 2007
Tex, Behe's primary argument focuses on the fact that observed changes are small. He argues that the malaria (and the humans who have evolved against it) are so constrained by evolution that they can only take small steps which are often damaging.
Tex · 5 November 2007
Pole Greaser · 8 November 2007
Just Bob · 9 November 2007
Yes, PG, if the being you worship really is as you think he is, and as much of the Bible portrays him to be, then he is, in fact, pathetically prickish. I, for one, won't worship one who orders the wholesale massacre of men, women, and children, or who commits the ultimate massacre himself (i.e. the Flood).
If that being does in fact exist, and I do have to appear before him at some point, I will tell him that to his face. Along with Huck Finn, if failing to follow "biblical morality" means going to hell--very well then, I'll go to hell.
Bill Gascoyne · 9 November 2007
"[In Christianity] we are taught to believe there's an invisible man who lives in the sky who has a list of ten things he doesn't want you to do who watches you every minute and if you do something he doesn't like you're going to burn forever, yet he loves you. To me that's absurd."
George Carlin
ben · 9 November 2007
Abram · 20 March 2008
It's you ego centric view to the world that prevent you from seeing things as they are... The data is not wrong it is always the perspective and assumptions that the person has...
As for microbial evolution it is not like what you know as evolution... we use only vertical transfer of genes and microbes also use horizontal transfer.
horizontal transfer videos here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4i0Q_irM8o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPvuc9j1t-k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8xr9Tv9jFY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkl2gvzcC4U
An important thing to understand is how advanced cells are and in fact how much more advanced microbes are...
Example: If you suck a protozoan up into an eyedropper it will find it's way out... If you suck it up again it gets out faster... that is one cell learning. Yes learning.
Groups of microbes can act as one entity as our cells do yet by choice. They can form group decisions.
Interesting read : "Bacterial linguistic communication and social intelligence"
http://ctbp3.ucsd.edu:8080/pubpdf/427.pdf
For the creationists(
Religon called microbes spirits as they could not be seen. If you got an infection it was said that evil spirits that came from the ground did it. Was it not said that the spirit of truth couldn't be received into the world because you could not see it, yet it lived in you and you had to eat it for it to live in you.
)
My argument is that both creationist and evolutionists are wrong. That one must change perspective to understand.
Nature is more managed then one would think. It's the challenges to an absolute of freewill that deludes many into not excepting data... Evolution can happen very quickly. Perhaps that evolution is horizontal in nature and a process of symbiosis.
I'd suggest not the question of whether microbes can be intelligent but whether people can be without them.
The thin line between genius and insanity.. I argue is one of how much truth one can handle at one time before a snap. Determining truth requires a method to connect what one thinks is possible.
John · 1 December 2009
So i read Dembski's book "The design of Life" and he does a fantastic job in defending Intelligent design based on so many different facts. One of the facts i love most is the one entitled "Natural Selection At The Monkey's Shoulder. Great stuff! he writes:
The odd are overwhelmingly against monkeys randomly typing even two lines of "Hamlet", much less the entire works of Shakespeare. But what if each monkey has someone stand at its shoulder and erase every error it makes (thereby keeping only what Shakespeare actually wrote). According to Darwinist and education lobbyist Eugenie Scott, this is exactly what natural selection does: {Suppose} you got a million monkeys sitting there typing on their machine. If you want to make this an analogy that makes sense from the standpoint of evolution, you've got a million technicians standing behind them with a very large vat of white out and every time the monkey types the wrong letter, you correct it. That's what natural selection basically does. It's not just the random production of variation.
But with technicians like this backing up the monkeys, there's no need for an army of monkeys. Given even one such technician, a single randomly typing monkey will , in short order, type all of Hamlet and even all the works of Shakespeare. Within Darwinism, natural selection is supposed to fulfill the role of Scott's technicians. Thus natural selection is said to monitor the course of evolution, get rid of evolution's "mistakes" and thereby ensure that evolution moves along efficiently and doesn't get stuck in dead-ends.
Although Scott's error-correction approach to overcoming randomness sounds plausible, it is in fact deeply confused. In the case of a monkey at a typewriter, what exactly are the qualifications of the technician standing at the monkey's shoulder doing the erasing? Indeed, how does the technician know what to erase? The whole point of having monkeys at a typewriter is to account for the emergence of Shakespeare's works without the need to invoke and intelligence (like shakespeare) that already knows Shakespeare's works. In other words, the whole point was to get Shakespeare's works without Shakespeare. But thats not what is happening here. Clearly, the only way to erase errors in the typing of Shakespeare's works is to know Shakespeare's works in the first place. Indeed, the very concept of error presupposes that there is a right way that things ought to be. That's the problem: Eugenie Scott's technicians, to do their work, need already to know the works of Shakespeare.
When Eugenie Scott calls for a technician to stand over a monkey's shoulder and correct its mistakes, she commits the fallacy of begging the question or arguing in a circle. In other words, Scott presupposes the very thing she needs to establish as the conclusion of a sound scientific argument. Indeed, scientific rigor demands that we ask who in turn is standing over the technicians shoulder and instructing the technician what is and is not a mistake in the typing of Shakespeare. If the technician's assistance to the monkey is to mirror natural selection, then the technician needs to help the monkey without knowing or giving away the answer. And yet that's exactly what the technician is doing here.
Bottom line: Monkeys cannot type Shakespeare apart from Shakespeare!
I love how this completely throws a kink in the chain of evolution and how this goes on to make so much sense for the case of INTELLIGENT design.
Kevin B · 1 December 2009
DS · 1 December 2009
John wrote:
"But what if each monkey has someone stand at its shoulder and erase every error it makes (thereby keeping only what Shakespeare actually wrote)."
But what if someone stands behind one million monkeys and deletes only those mistakes that make the typing less comprehensible? How long do you think that it would take for something comprehensible to be produced?
See John, that is the way that evolution actually works. There are many random errors in many replicating systems. Most of them are not selected against. Some of them are weakly selected against and some are very strongly selected against. A few are actually beneficial in a particular environment and are not selected against. In any event, there is no one goal or correct solution. If nothing beneficial is produced, all the organisms may eventually die. That has happened many times in the history of ife on earth.
Selection will act to increase the representation of beneficial variants in future generations. Then cumulative selection will act on these variants in subsequent generations. This process has been modelled mathematically and has been shown to work in theory, in the laboratory and in nature.
There is no argument against evolution here John and there certainly is no argument for ID. No one takes Dembski and his make believe math seriously. If you think they do, just ask yourself, why doesn't he publish anything in any real science journal? He claims it is because it takes too long. He has been claiming that for fifteen years now!
stevaroni · 1 December 2009