#47134: — 11/04  at  10:47 AM
I've seen talks by Ken Catania of Vanderbilt University. He studies the organization and evolution of the nervous system associated with the "star" of the star-nosed mole and other relatives. He always puts up as sort of a joke slide an image of one of the moles on the cover of Creation Science magazine. He uses it in his talk, pointing out how they misinterpret his data, ending with a slide that says "Darwin 1, Creation 0". I think that's a pretty good way to deal with it.

#47143: — 11/04  at  11:13 AM

Besides, I'd love to face off against a creationist who tried to use some of my zebrafish development movies, for instance, as an argument against me. It would be a perfect Annie Hall moment.

Sort of like telling a federal judge that the concept of separation of church and state is a myth?

#47147: — 11/04  at  11:29 AM
So long as it is published in an accepted peer reviewed journal before being co-opted by pseudo-science. Otherwise it gives the impression that the research was published without proper peer review in order to get the ideas diseminated without proper scrutiny.

#47152: Jonathan Badger — 11/04  at  11:44 AM
Re: "Annie Hall moment".

I realize that in popular culture the phrase has come to mean a devastating blow against somebody that one considers an arrogant fool, but consider: in the context of the movie, the magical intervention of McLuhan never happened -- that was just the Woody Allen character's fantasy. What did happen is he challenged an legitimate authority on McLuhan and got smacked down; the real fool was the Woody Allen character.

#47154: — 11/04  at  11:53 AM
Under no circumstances would I give permission for my work to be (mis)used to support any pseudo-scientific argument. The fact that it might happen without my knowledge (or after I pass on) is an entirely different matter.
Example: I recently read an article that used the Hubble red-shift phenomenon and time-dilation (relativity) theory to show how the 6 days of creation (Genesis) is correct. The article is well written and fooled some reasonably well-read friends of mine into saying "Genesis is supported by Hubble and Einstein."
Less than ethical pseudo-science peddlers could easily take it further and say "Hubble and Einstein support Genesis."

#47157: — 11/04  at  11:58 AM
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your view, anyone can misuse the results of a scientific investigation without the investigators' permission, once the results are published. It's the same principle that lets PZ cite the idiotic ramblings of IDers that he so often writes about. As I pointed out in Chad's blog, scientists have to resign themselves to the fact that today their job includes refuting idiots.

#47160: — 11/04  at  12:04 PM

#47154: HPLC_Sean — 11/04 at 11:53 AM
... The article is well written ...

I have seen that term used a couple times recently and it bothers me. A "well-written" scientific paper implies not just grammatical and persuasive prose, it requires good underlying science; i.e. sound and accurately described experimental methods and intelligent analysis.

Am I being too picky, or is there a more appropriate term for what you are relating?

#47164: charlie wagner — 11/04  at  12:16 PM
Beautiful...



Compliments of "Seeing The Forest"
http://www.seeingtheforest.com

#47165: Ron Zeno — 11/04  at  12:17 PM
While I wouldn't refuse the request, I'd probably ask for a written statement detailing how they will use the material.

#47167: — 11/04  at  12:25 PM
Ultimately there is no option that prevents one's work from being cited. If you refuse permission to use your own figures and video, they can't use them, but they can still cite your work and twist it beyond recognition if they want. There is absolutely no way you can control what anyone wants to say about your work. All you can do is prevent their use of copyrighted material; you cannot prevent them from describing the results in their own words or coming up with their own figures.

Trackback: Scientific communication with scientists who might not get it Tracked on: Adventures in Ethics and Science (66.159.239.140) at 2005 11 04 12:34:59
PZ Myers is blogging on the scientific ethics beat ... so maybe I should blog about zebrafish? But honestly, there's plenty of material to go around on scientific ethics. No worries! The question today is whether it's a good idea for scientists to grant permission to Creation Magazine to reproduce their figures and video clips. The scientists in question were studying the pollen-launching mechanisms of the bunchberry dogwood, among other plants. Their findings were published in Nature.…

#47171: — 11/04  at  12:56 PM

"Darwin 1, Creation 0".

I think it's more like this from the world of soccer:

Len Shackleton after putting six past Newport County in a 13-0 win by Newcastle in 1946: "They were lucky to get nil."

#47178: — 11/04  at  01:37 PM
Regarding well-written, B. Bouffant said:

"Am I being too picky, or is there a more appropriate term for what you are relating?"

Of course, in a perfect world a well-written article would be scientifically correct in addition to being gramatically correct, but by well-written I mean something more.
Even the most ridiculous ideas can be presented in prose that is seductive, enchanting, or enticing; good grammar and syntax is a given. The article I'm referring to was easy to read, has nice analogies and metaphores, and made bogus conclusions without sounding like total bunk.

#47180: — 11/04  at  01:50 PM
An irrelevant aside: from the description given in the linked blog, the dogwood pollen launcher sounds like a catapault, not a trebuchet. AFAIK, the former launches by elastic energy, the latter by a counterweight. (Not that I'm an expert on medieval ordnance, or anything. Corrections welcome.).

#47185: — 11/04  at  02:35 PM
Maybe a bit off-topic, but I'm somewhat confused as to why the permission was being sought from the author himself rather than the journal....in most cases, once it's published the journal holds the copyright, not you.

Hell, I had to get the journal's permission to include my own papers in my dissertation.

#47187: — 11/04  at  02:47 PM

“I wouldn't have to think twice. I'd give my approval. The data is there, and if I trust it to be an accurate reflection of the real world, but of course I would want it disseminated, even if the agent were as untrustworthy as a creationist.” -- PZ Meyers

What a pleasure to read. Further, as a (non-literal) creationist I feel my brief exchanges on the “gun for hire thread” were responded to with considered opinion. “Data rules” in intellectual endeavors and data points outside a model’s parameters are always of concern, even in a contrary manner. In practice, if a data set is very large – and if there are no data points outside the prescribed parameters – one should become suspicious. A high number of observations or measurements will likely include some human error or equipment deviation. Data points must be vetted when they are outside of the range of projected boundaries.

John Timmer challenged my intimations that research from Ted Steele and Lynn Caporale are data points outside of a “fully random” process model of evolution. In the “gun for hire thread” it was not established if there is further evidence that supports this. Ted Steele responded to me, as follows, in a private email regarding the thread:

“Here is a reasoned response of the core point in #45619 " John Timmer -
10/27 at 09:98AM. And I send you a Powerpoint presentation of a paper I delivered earlier this year at a conference which contains reference to some key recent findings of the Yagi group in Japan about nervous system development re synaptic cadherin gene family ( I will send some pdfs of this group in separate e-mails).NB: the conference paper is just that - it has not been published although pieces of it would have appeared in earlier papers of mine).

John Timmer may have once been correct to assume that genomic rearrangements are not part of the development of the central nervous system. However a few years ago (2001) a form of somatic hypermutation was discovered for the synaptic cadherin receptor genes (at the RNA level but the authors speculate that a reverse transcriptase step may copy the variant sequence to DNA and thus integrate it back into the DNA of the genome ). They then showed genomic rearrangements ( this year in Nature Genetics). But they have not drawn a formal link between the two ( - nor did they cite our prior work on the RT-model in their 2001 paper, which I have since brought to their attention).

In any case the existence of this work contradicts Timmer's point that " no such (genomic) changes occur during nervous system development" as well as the statements in the last paragraph of his posting.

However the main point I make in that conference presentation is the generality of 'environmentally induced hypermutation' in biology. Different organisms opportunistically utilize some or all of the molecular processes, which result in an expanded substratum of diverse genes on which selection acts - but the process can occur rapidly, and is 'directed' in the sense that the variation is usually around a 'theme' ie. the expressed genes induced into hypermutation will usually only be 'selectable' if they have not deviated too far from the functional constraints already dictated by the gene and protein sequence.

I hope this and the associated pdfs are of help.”

By citing T. Steele please note that I am not suggesting in any way that he may support any of my own positions, such as all living things designed themselves through observation and mental work. My point is only that new research is putting out some data sets that are a challenge to having the best possible model as the received model. Further, I see a naïve and objective view of Behe’s IC concept as another of these new challenges.

Could a vetted and considered view of M. Behe be presented in clear cybernetic terms and modeled like the organized instructions to a programmable logic controller (PLC)? I think then a FMA (failure mode analysis) would be clear or specific examples of his IC concept could be acknowledged as a data set to be taken seriously.

#47193: Kagehi — 11/04  at  04:48 PM
But, Ncguy, IC and ID are both quite explicit in that they claim the organism cannot, "design itself". They make no implication of an intelligent 'process', but explicitly state that there must be an external 'agent' responsible to explicitely choosing to put all the bits in place and that even changes of the sort you seem to be talking about are an impossibility. In other words, someone *built* everything, then small, but completely insignificant changes took place after, none of which can cause sufficient changes to the organism to make it a different species. If all living things design themselves, then that completely contradicts ID and IC, as well as Behe's own statements that he personally believes 'God' built the original forms. In reality, finding such agency, in which species selectively redesign themselves in some active fashion, would simply extend evolution, completely invalidate IC and require that ID be radically redefined to exclude the assumption that the design comes from an external agency, instead of the animal itself (or in other words ID as currently defined would be 99.9% dicredited, instead of merely 100% like IC would be by such evidence).

#47212: — 11/04  at  09:44 PM
"Data points must be vetted when they are outside of the range of projected boundaries."

This is true for technical applications. Ie, if you are monitoring a process and suddenly a data point is outside 4.5 sigma (6 sigma philosophy) it should be rejected because it probably belongs to some other process (like faulty sensors).

But in science you ususally have much more knowledge and control of each data point. If this is the case ideally no data should be vetted. If it is, it should be motivated and presented.

#47229: — 11/05  at  03:54 AM
Daa points might be vetted from the analysis, but excluded data should still be included among the results, so people can see them, along with the argument of why they were excluded.
Or, in other words, pretty much what Thorbjörn said.

#47230: — 11/05  at  03:54 AM
Sorry, Torbjörn. I used a somewhat more Danish way of spelling it.

#47233: — 11/05  at  05:39 AM
Published data are out there for the benefit of the world. That the world contains idiots who don't know what the data is really telling us is part of the price one pays doing science.

#47238: Keith Douglas — 11/05  at  08:32 AM
Others have the right to use one's data for any hairbrained thing they want. However, one also has the responsibility to criticize what one thinks are bad (or worse) uses of same, I should think.

#47308: — 11/05  at  08:45 PM
Some Indian religious center wanted to use my ice crystal ("Ice flowers" or "Ice insects") photo ..

..in theirs newspaper (or smthing like that).
It is part of my 2nd Law website (against creationism):
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~ktikkane/eJARJ.html
I denied though they were ready to pay for it.

#47334: — 11/06  at  12:22 PM
"Sorry, Torbjörn. I used a somewhat more Danish way of spelling it."

Not at all; I'll take that as a compliment! And thank you for making the point so much clearer.

#47360: — 11/06  at  05:57 PM
Kagehi, thanks for the response.

“If all living things design themselves, then that completely contradicts ID and IC, as well as Behe's own statements that he personally believes 'God' built the original forms. In reality, finding such agency, in which species selectively redesign themselves in some active fashion, would simply extend evolution, completely invalidate IC and require that ID be radically redefined to exclude the assumption that the design comes from an external agency, instead of the animal itself.”

I am a little skeptical at the hard and fast lines drawn above. There are certainly emotional personal positions taken by some ID enthusiasts. I am not so sure that the most general statements made by them really line-up against “directed mutations” that are not necessarily from the hand of a glimmering apparition. Their position, in some writings, seems to represent - as long as the mutations can be seen as strategic and with a foresight of logic, some modest part of the ID argument holds.

You may well be right that M. Behe might see IC as being not compatible with my conjecture. I surely think, in how I understand his argument, the IC conceptualization does support my position. Inanimate systems can achieve a “negative feedback” information exchange model, but cannot act in an adaptive fashion to recover from a break in circumstances. A sense of self, or a centralized process of command and control from a local orientation, is what I would see as embedded in IC systems. Any level of what we would call an intelligent process needs prior establishment from mental work. Behe says that you can’t have a continual functioning, to some standard of success, with totally uncoordinated changes. Each change must be capable of being a selectable trait.

I think you are right that the current spin of ID, as a religious proof, suffers greatly under a process where the mental work from life forms observing and responding to their changing environment fuels evolution. However, as I asserted, a naïve view would see Behe’s concept as still standing as a marker for embedded creative mental work.