What else can I say? UMM students are the best.

I attended Paul Nelson's talk here at the university this evening, and I wasn't impressed. It went on too long—about an hour and a quarter—and I think he was actually cutting his own throat in the first half. He was being careful to set up the scientific issues, so he spent a fair bit of time building up with relatively non-controversial material: a definition of evolution (organisms related by common descent by natural causes), an admission that having open questions is not a shortcoming in science (that one really came back to bite him in the ass later), and giving examples of unsolved problems that are poorly formed and predicated on incorrect assumptions, and are therefore invalid. About half of the audience consisted of faculty and students from the science division, and I think they were familiar with this kind of thing, were a bit bored, and pent up some bloodlust…not a good strategy with a mob of evilutionists.

Then there was a section where he focused on developmental biology. I really appreciate the plug he gave for the importance of development for understanding evolution, but I found his discussion aggravating. I don't know if the rest of the audience found his points as flawed as I did, but the argument was extremely weak. He was trying to set up the processes of early development as refractory to change, and that evolution was therefore unable to act on them. Unfortunately, in every case, he used as examples highly derived forms with determinate early cleavages—Halocynthia, Drosophila, C. elegans—that were of course resistant to changes in their early development. If he'd instead discussed more plastic, regulative organisms, like vertebrates or echinoderms, it would have contradicted the point he was making. It was a selective presentation of the evidence that was obvious to me; I had a few of my developmental biology students there who also, I hope, recognized what he was doing.

He also trotted out a series of quotes from serious biologists such as James Valentine and Wallace Arthur who argue that there is more to evolutionary history than selection. Again, though, it was misleading: I know that these people are no friends of intelligent design creationism, and what it really was was a kind of verbal quote-mining that will only persuade the already converted and annoy those who recognize what he is doing.

I'm afraid the talk really disintegrated in its closing section. It was an unconvincing hodge-podge that somehow led to the idea of an agency within organisms. Or something. His analogy was clever, but very weird. He used part of the Gettysburg Address, a call for sacrifice and dedication, and broke it down into its constituent words. Then he took those same words and rearranged them into an anarchist's manifesto, the point being that meaning doesn't reside in the component elements, but in the intent and arrangement imposed on them by the agency of the author…an interesting point that he then demolished by using it as an analogy for the action of genes: genes are the words, and we can have the same words, such as the 'master control gene' for eye formation, that have different effects in flies and mice. In one it triggers the formation of a compound eye, in the other a simple lens eye. Sadly, his explanation had something to do with agency. That somehow, the higher level properties of the organism impose a different meaning on the genes, in the same sense that his intent could change the meaning of the words of the Gettysburg Address.

The problem here is that we can trace how the master control gene induces different structures to form in different organisms (much of developmental biology is dedicated to basically step-tracing gene effects as development unfolds), and it has been very successful at that. Nowhere do we need to invoke intent or a designer or unseen global properties of the organism, and nowhere have we ever needed the Intelligent Design hypothesis to guide our work. It's all gene interaction and natural processes, and it's an example of the uselessness of ID, and the power of evo-devo.

The best part of the evening, though, was when Nelson opened up the floor to questions. He was kept hopping for the next hour and a half; a few of us faculty spoke up, but mainly it was our students who hammered him with awkward questions. You know, simple stuff like asking him for evidence for ID. A few mentioned the negative nature of his argument, and reminded him that "having open questions is not a shortcoming". I was impressed and proud, although I can't take credit for it: we don't have any classes where we specifically coach our students in critiquing creationists, although they do get a grounding in what to expect of a good scientific theory. Nelson kept up a cheerful front, but I don't think the Q&A was going in exactly the direction he expected.

In fact, in that 90 minutes of grilling, he only got one comment from a pro-creationist attendee, and it was basically, "it's all a matter of opinion; there aren't any transitional fossils; and evolution is all based on faith, anyway." To Nelson's credit, he looked more uncomfortable with that ill-informed point than all the criticisms he was getting. It must be hard to live with the fact that all of your friends are morons.

Man, though, but our students are good. I left that talk feeling very optimistic, that there is hope for the future of science in this country when our students can be that strong and informed and critical.

I hope Nelson can now convince his pals at the Discovery Institute to send a few more sacrificial lambs out to friendly UMM. The students would have a grand time eating Dembski and Behe and Meyer and Richards and whoever alive. Hey, maybe we could agree to send just the freshman class up against them. Not that it would change the outcome, but it would prolong the sport a bit more.

You don't have to just take my word for it all—there are a few other webloggers here at UMM, and a couple of them attended the talk, too. Nic McPhee concurs with my opinion of UMM students, and one of our students is too angry to talk about it.