#27072: coturnix — 06/03  at  11:17 AM
Yikes! But you bet they will tout this to laypeople as a great example of peer-reviewed published paper on IDC!

#27084: — 06/03  at  11:53 AM
I truly don't understand how Well's paper relies necessarily on design. From reading the abstract, there doesn't seem to be a smidgen of a difference between asserting irreducible complexity and Well's basing his hypothesis on the assumption of design. Was that his intent?
How complex is a turbine anyways? Is it more complex than a prehensile tail? Is it more complex than muscle cell contraction? Is the structure or the function complex? Are non-functional structures complex?

#27086: Chris Clarke — 06/03  at  12:01 PM

It's the same mistake Behe made: assuming that naming something after a designed artifact (a truck, a turbine) means that it must have all the properties of a designed artifact, including design.

I went out last night and saw a million lights in the sky. Afterward, I couldn't sleep, wondering where they keep all the dimmer switches.

#27088: Alon Levy — 06/03  at  12:05 PM
I still gauge the respectability of a theory by how much it publishes in Nature and Science rather than by how much it publishes in journals nobody reads.

#27091: — 06/03  at  12:13 PM
'm srprsd n n hs mntnd tht Wlls nd Dvsn bth gt pprs pblshd n th sm dtn f th sm jrnl. Nthr n f thm wll lk th ssctn. Thr's bt f hmr thr f nthng ls.

Drwnsts r clmng tht D mks n prdctns nd whn Wlls gs t n lmb mkng prdctn t's mmdtl ph-phd b th sl sspcts. H's prdctng tht th fnctn f th cntrl s bsd pn prncpl frst dscvrd b knwn ntllgnt dsgnr Jms Cngr wh ptntd th trbn wtr whl n 1830.

Grntd, t crtnl dsn't prv nthng bt ccdnt r dsgn bt t ds, f t trns t t b tr, shw tht D hs mrt fr dvlpng ln f nqr whch m hv thrws bn vrlkd.

#27096: Orac — 06/03  at  12:24 PM
How, precisely, would such a result show that ID has merit for developing a line of inquiry? Even if centrioles were were shown to function like turbines, it would not demonstrate that the centriole was "designed" any more than the fact that the heart functions a pump necessarily indicates "design," nor would one have to invoke "design" to be interested in such a "turbine" function of a centriole.

In fact, perhaps you would be so kind to tell me what, exactly, the hypothesis of intelligent design is, so that I might understand how such a "prediction" comes from ID. After that, please let me know what kind of evidence could falsify that hypothesis.

#27097: PZ Myers — 06/03  at  12:28 PM
DaveScot is persona non grata around here. He's been banned at the Panda's Thumb, and I think he deserves the same status here.

Go away, Dave. Seriously.

#27098: Duncan Kitchin — 06/03  at  12:38 PM
DaveScot wrote:

"Darwinists are claiming that ID makes no predictions and when Wells goes out on a limb making a prediction it's immediately pooh-poohed by the usual suspects."

the thing is, it isn't good enough to just make a prediction - to be a useful prediction vis-a-vis the theory, the prediction has to arise necessarily from the theory, and would need to falsify the theory if the prediction turns out to be wrong.

None of these is actually true with respect to this prediction:

a) the "prediction" is being made by Wells, and isn't a necessary prediction of the theory

b) if the prediction turns out to be incorrect, Wells and everybody else can just shrug their shoulders and say "oh well, we'll just look for another one"

Regards
Duncan

#27100: Joseph ODonnell — 06/03  at  12:39 PM

In fact, perhaps you would be so kind to tell me what, exactly, the hypothesis of intelligent design is, so that I might understand how such a "prediction" comes from ID.

Pfft the theory is simple:

"Godditit".

I shall take my nobel prize now plz.

#27104: Orac — 06/03  at  12:58 PM
PZ: I was unaware of that. I'll try in the future not to feed the troll.

#27105: Duncan Kitchin — 06/03  at  01:00 PM
likewise - I wasn't aware of DaveScot either. My post crossed PZ's in the ether somewhere...

Regards
Duncan

#27107: Alon Levy — 06/03  at  01:06 PM
Why disemvowel? It only makes me spend a greater effort reading his comment, whereas leaving it as it is makes me skim and move on in disgust.

#27108: Jim Anderson — 06/03  at  01:07 PM
When Wells initially published a working draft of a similar paper on ISCID, he was asked all kinds of questions about how it related to ID as a viable theory. He never answered most of them, because apparently he had no good answers.

#27124: — 06/03  at  02:17 PM
My arm is a lever, a lever is a machine, therefore... Intelligent Design?

#27130: PZ Myers — 06/03  at  02:33 PM
Exactly.

Or, "therefore...vast cosmic intelligence" if you want to nudge your audience closer to what you're really getting at, without raising constitutional issues.

Or, if you are doing a little private fundraising with a Dominionist, "therefore...Jesus".

#27131: — 06/03  at  02:37 PM

How, precisely, would such a result show that ID has merit for developing a line of inquiry? Even if centrioles were were shown to function like turbines, it would not demonstrate that the centriole was "designed" any more than the fact that the heart functions a pump necessarily indicates "design," nor would one have to invoke "design" to be interested in such a "turbine" function of a centriole.

I see his sophisticated scientific argument went right over your head, so I'll explain it to you:

He said it was designed, in a peer-review journal, using sciency-sounding words. Since Wells, et. al. cannot supply real ID science, they will settle for the appearance of science.

It's the same as with the Meyer paper; detractors pointed out that ID was not publishing in peer-review journals, so gosh darn it, they did so. It doesn't matter (to them) that they had to pull an inside job to get it in, and that it was chock-full of truly awful 'science', they got it in.

#27139: — 06/03  at  03:28 PM
I guess I shouldn't be, but I still find myself surprised at just how patently and obviously nonsensical the reasoning in that article is.

They just don't even have a whiff of understanding of how to construct an argument or a hypothesis, do they? I would think they'd at least be able to fake it better.

#27140: Josh Friess — 06/03  at  03:31 PM
His experiment still doesn't satisfy the falsifiabilty criterion. Even if you accept everything Wells has argued for -- as I understand it from this post -- a negative result wouldn't disprove ID, so it still isn't science.

#27143: Ian Musgrave — 06/03  at  04:13 PM
PZ wrote:

It's also peculiar that such a thing has been published. Wells has done no experiments, there's no real data in the paper, and he isn't even in a position to do any proposed experiments (and journals usually frown on speculative papers that consist of nothing but coulda-woulda statements, too).

There is a real place for speculative papers in science, where someone synthesizes existing knowldge and proposes a new direction for research. It performs a parallel function to the review paper. Medical Hypotheses is one journal which is specifically for such speculative papers in the biomedical field (its impact factor is 0.7, not hot, but better than Rivista Di Biologia).

Now, I've read Wells's paper, and aside form the completely illegitimate argument "looks like turbine therefore design", and the use of "holistic" (Wells crows about his holism and then goes on with exactly the same reductionist science everyone else does) the paper isn't that bad. He seems to have reviewed the recent literature in the area, he provides calculations for the forces involved (caveat, I haven't double checked them yet) and provides an overall testable model of the centriole as a turbine. The whole ID thing is marsh gas, but the centriole is a turbine idea is potentially testable shorn of its holism/ID nonsense.

Yet a another caveat, I do need to go over it in more detail, pulling up recent papers (or someone who actually understands the polar ejection force should check it out). In Wells's paper on "cancer as a centriolar malfunction disease" (I am familiar enough with cancer mechanisms to act as an occasional referee) he makes a superfically plausible argument, unless you knew that the abnormmalities he cites as the primary cause of cancer actually occur way, way down the line at the benign-malignant transformation stage (and so on).

It's not peculiar that speculative hypotheses are published. It is peculiar that speculative hypotheses garnished with illogical non-sequiters get published (I think the holism bit annoyed me more that the biolerplate "looks like human-designed object, therefore designed by aliens/entites/God" because I expect him to say silly things about design)

#27144: PZ Myers — 06/03  at  04:38 PM
I agree that speculative stuff is published and is useful, but papers that are only speculation are a difficult sell for someone with no track record in the field. Wells record is worse than that...making it very bizarre that it made it.

#27176: roger — 06/03  at  10:59 PM
It seems to me that Wells has got the wrong end of the stick to prove design. He who finds a watch in a field should expect the country to yield a watch factory. The same with a mousetrap -- in fact, the same is true with any complex intelligently designed product (which, as George C. Williams has pointed out, are products designed with gradual improvements among some series of variations) is that it leaves behind a trail of evidence about its manufacture. Wells should be looking for the remains of a centriole factory, about what -- 100 million years ago? Should be a cinch to find. He should also find various medical tools allowing for the implantation of his designed centriole. I guess this would take a lot of rewiring, so he should be looking for your usual -- canisters of oxygen, blood transfusion equipment, hospital beds. In fact, all of the paraphernalia that accompanies what happens when a real intelligently designed product -- say an artificial heart valve -- is implanted in a body. Given the amount of intelligent design going on in this planet for every one of the more than one hundred million species that have existed on it, surely the earth should be littered with equipment.

I'm looking forward to the first ID dig for the scalpels of the Mesozoic period.

#27199: — 06/04  at  07:59 AM

I'm looking forward to the first ID dig for the scalpels of the Mesozoic period.

Oh, God no. It's gotta be like all those dig for Noah's ark.

Trackback: It's everywhere . . . Tracked on: evolgen (72.9.234.70) at 2005 06 04 10:44:17
. . . so it must be designed. Everyone is chiming in on the Wells Rivista article. Stranger Fruit interprets the relevence of the journals the IDists publish in. John Rennie questions the logic of the argument. And you didn't think PZ Myers would ...

#27218: Bryson Brown — 06/04  at  11:03 AM
Ian has a good point-- Harry Hesse (I seem to remember) called his first paper on tectonic plates an essay in 'geopoetry'. If the speculation is suggestive and interesting enough, it can be worth publishing. Maybe this centriole notion is worth publishing-- but it's an editor's job (with the referees' help) to separate the wheat from the chaff-- so the ID component, with no real connection to the speculative hypothesis presented (other than being the author's pet hypothesis and the real motive for the piece), should have been cut out.

#27235: mynym — 06/04  at  02:28 PM
The critics of the journal say:
"...hardly representatives of mainstream (evolutionary) biology. But to see the nature of this “internationally respected biology journal” you can consider the past nine years. Since 1996, the journal has published articles by anti-Darwinists...."

It is as if Darwinists expect that criticism of hypotheses based on little more than their own urge to merge will somehow get published in journals tightly controlled by pro-Darwinists of the same psychology.

"I wasn't aware of DaveScot either."

Oopsy...you tried to answer his reasonable arguments. The writers here and at the Panda's Thumb can't answer opposition and when the opposition continues they seem to get frustrated with their failures and so have to rely on censorship. It's a dumb move because then they continue to ferment in all their own neuroses while wondering why they continue to remain about 9% of the population, "mountains of evidence" and all.

Their main argument turns into, "We don't publish or allow opposition. So therefore, evolution is a well established fact, fact, FACT! There are just mountains of facts we have accumulated and no opposition!"

They remind one of the eugenics movement and other scientisms, demanding that people publish in journals controlled by...who, them? Shall they publish in journals controlled by the people who can't seem to see text and engage in ridiculous fear mongering about ID? Fear mongering that the whole educational establishment will just collapse if any notions of ID are taught at all. Did science all collapse in the past, is that the argument? It will just collapse if transphysical explanations are allowed...despite the fact that Socrates and the philosophers relied on admitting to the metaphysical and establishing a dialectic between the metaphysical and the physical. I suppose the philosophers weren't good educators and that more funding from the State that is really needed according to Leftist science thumpers. Socrates just needed State funding, then he would have been a good educator like the science thumpers are. Besides, science education has been put in such wonderful shape by the people who do not believe in the metaphysical that currently control it. They obviously know how to teach better than the philosophers did.

"...papers that are only speculation are a difficult sell for someone with no track record in the field. Wells record is worse than that...making it very bizarre that it made it."

Every time you shift over from dealing with what is written to who the writer is you illustrate your intellectual weakness.

Face the facts, it is a small prediction based on design that at least can be falsified. That is better than the majority of evolutionary theorizing that cannot be falsified in the least. More than once Darwinists have claimed both one set of facts and the exact opposite set of facts, both as evidence for Darwinism. It seems that they will believe in Darwinism no matter what the empirical evidence.