“The whole story needs to be presented” — and other creationist lies

June 6th, 2008 Bones

On another website a creationist posted the following:

Students should be allowed to discuss and debate evolution in the classroom. That’s hardly possible when only one side is given. Besides, we’re not even talking about ID or Creationism here. We’re just talking about teaching evolutionary theory in a scientific manner. The whole story needs to be presented.

Only one side?

And which side is that? And which side is being omitted? This complaint really boils down to — the side that is taught is science, and the side that is omitted is religious belief. And not just any religious belief, but a fundamentalist belief in the inerrancy of the bible. That is the “side” that they want taught.

Read the rest of this entry »

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More Evidence for Evolution (a never-ending series)

June 3rd, 2008 Bones

Lizards Show Proof of Adaptive Change

AMHERST, Mass. — In 1971, five pairs of Italian wall lizards were transplanted by biologists from their home island of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, to the neighboring but subtly different island of Pod Mrcaru, where none lived, as an experiment in evolution.

How, if at all, would these creatures change?

…

“It’s good evidence that not only can evolution happen rapidly, but animals can evolve new structures as well (in a short time span),” he said.

The interesting thing about this study is that the lizards developed new structures, a part of their gut called a ‘cecal valve’ (which separates the chambers) and they remained genetically identical to the parent population released three decades previously.

Hmmmmm. Unless the intelligent designer was working overtime on a tiny island off the west coast of Croatia these past few decades, we seem to have some very interesting insights into one or more of the mechanisms behind evolution.

And that’s one of the strengths of science. We keep learning new things!

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Evolution As Experimental Science

June 3rd, 2008 midwifetoad

From Science News via Dispatches From the Culture War, we have this news.

Science News has a report on a very cool experiment done by Dr. Richard Lenski at Michigan State (Lenski is also with the Digital Evolution Lab at MSU, along with Rob Pennock and Wes Elsberry, but this is an experiment with real bacteria, not artificial organisms). This is a really cleverly designed test of how a mutation that does not confer a survival advantage can later be coopted by a second mutation that can be selected for.

Lenski’s team watched 12 colonies of identical E. coli bacteria evolve under carefully controlled lab conditions for 20 years, which equates to more than 40,000 generations of bacteria. After every 500 generations, the researchers froze samples of bacteria. Those bacteria could later be thawed out to “replay” the evolutionary clock from that point in time.
After about 31,500 generations, one colony of bacteria evolved the novel ability to use a nutrient that E. coli normally can’t absorb from its environment. Thawed-out samples from after the 20,000-generation mark were much more likely to re-evolve this trait than earlier samples, which suggests that an unnoticed mutation that occurred around the 20,000th generation enabled the microbes to later evolve the nutrient-absorption ability through a second mutation, the researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Check out the links.

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