Evolutionists Misattributing Credit in Biomimetics Research

1. Creationism News -- July 2012创造论新闻 – 2012年7月 Dedicated to David Coppedge who sacrificed his career as the Head Systems Administrator for the Cassini Spacecraft in JPL to honor the Creator of the Universe. He also spent literally thousands of hours to make his excellent websites. The contents of this presentation were taken from David Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. Pray for the results of his discrimination lawsuit against JPL. Pastor Chui http://ChristCenterGospel.org ckchui1@yahoo.com 12/19/2019 1

2. Evolutionists Taking Credit for Biomimetics进化论者信用仿生学 • Biomimetics is all about design – intelligent design, mimicking the superb designs found in nature.  Why, then, are some scientists claiming evolutionary theory is where the biomimetic beef is? • Gecko toes: the impossible dream.  PhysOrg titled an article in big, bold print: “How sticky toepads evolved in geckos and what that means for adhesive technologies.”  Based on a paper in PLoS ONE 12/19/2019 2

3. Evolutionists Taking Credit for Biomimetics进化论者信用仿生学 • PhysOrg filled its coverage with the e-word evolution or its derivatives no less than 15 times.  The amazing thing, though, is that believing the research paper requires accepting the authors’ claim that geckos “evolved” their intricate toe pads that allow them to walk on walls and ceilings multiple times: “Geckos have independently evolved their trademark sticky feet as many as 11 times, and lost them nine times, according to research published June 27 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.”  The lead author, Tony Gamble (U of Minnesota) seemed astonished himself at the gecko’s luck in the mutational lottery: “To discover that geckos evolved sticky toepads again and again is amazing,” he exclaimed. 12/19/2019 3

4. Evolutionists Taking Credit for Biomimetics进化论者信用仿生学 • What, exactly, does evolutionary theory contribute to the engineers who want to copy gecko technology?  It’s not apparent how speculating about gecko habitat changes in the unobservable past would help a design engineer, nor does this statement by a co-author of the paper: “The loss of adhesive pads in dune-dwelling species is an excellent example of natural selection in action.”  Where does he put that on the design specifications, if he is trying to use intelligent design? Maybe this statement about repeated evolution will help: 12/19/2019 4

5. Evolutionists Taking Credit for Biomimetics进化论者信用仿生学 • Repeated evolution is a key phenomenon in the study of evolutionary biology. A classic example is the independent evolution of wings in birds, bats and pterosaurs. It represents a shared solution that organisms arrived at separately to overcome common problems. • Our representative engineer is still shaking his head.  The authors tell about how they studied the family trees of more than 100 gecko genera.  “The family tree will also allow the authors to revise gecko taxonomy to best reflect the group’s evolutionary history.”  The engineer is still wondering how this helps. 12/19/2019 5

6. Evolutionists Taking Credit for Biomimetics进化论者信用仿生学 • The best attempt to give evolution credit is at the end of the PhysOrg article.  Play engineer and see if it tells you how to design a sticky-foot robot any better than if you didn’t know anything about gecko evolution, but were just intrigued by the mechanism on living geckos: • “Gaining a better understanding of the complex evolutionary history of gecko toepads allows bio-inspired engineers to learn from these natural designs and develop new applications,” says co-author Anthony Russell, of the University of Calgary. 12/19/2019 6

7. Evolutionists Taking Credit for Biomimetics进化论者信用仿生学 • While scientists have a good understanding of how geckos stick at the microscopic level, they are just beginning to understand how geckos use their adhesive toepads to move around complex environments in the wild. Learning how gecko toepads have evolved to move in nature is an important step in developing robotic technologies that can do similar things. “It’s one thing to stick and unstick a piece of ‘gecko tape’ to a smooth surface in a lab, but something else altogether to get a robotic gecko to move across a complicated landscape in the real world and stick to all the different shapes and textures it will encounter,” says Gamble. Examining the repeated evolution of gecko toepads will let scientists find common ways natural selection solved these problems and focus on the characteristics shared across different gecko species. • It seems that information could be gained from observing living geckos without knowing anything about a presumed evolutionary history. 12/19/2019 7

8. Evolutionists Taking Credit for Biomimetics进化论者信用仿生学 • Sponge semiconductors:  Evolution appeared in the title of another biomimetics article, this time on New Scientist: “Evolution could generate new semiconducting structures.”  Here, evolutionary theory was not claimed to provide insight on how to design things, as in the previous article.  Instead, the engineers look at sponges and their proteins, and then thought they could do better.  They randomly varied the proteins with the goal of discovering structures useful for the semiconductor industry.  This is another case of artificial selection, therefore – not undirected, unguided, purposeless evolution in the Darwinian sense.  It’s like cattle breeding; i.e., intelligent design. 12/19/2019 8

9. Evolutionists Taking Credit for Biomimetics进化论者信用仿生学 • Self-assembling proteins:  Another biomimetics article on Science Daily gave evolution only a brief, passing mention.  In this story, researchers at the University of Montreal came up with a better way to visualize how proteins self-assemble in living cells.  “Enabling bioengineers to design new molecular machines for nanotechnology applications is one of the possible outcomes” of the study – that’s the biomimetics angle.  What’s the evolution angle or contribution to understanding? • Proteins are made of long linear chains of amino acids, which have evolved over millions of years to self-assemble extremely rapidly — often within thousandths of a split second — into a working nanomachine. 12/19/2019 9

10. Evolutionists Taking Credit for Biomimetics进化论者信用仿生学 • Someone joked that a Senator is someone who looks which way the crowd is going, runs up to the front of the line and declares himself their leader.  That’s what Senator Charlie D. from Down-Down-Down House is trying to do.  He’s leading a shrinking band of disciples down the hill to the Museum of Has-Beens. 12/19/2019 10

11. Evolutionists Taking Credit for Biomimetics进化论者信用仿生学 • Darwinists, keep your grubby hands off of biomimetics.  It doesn’t belong to you.  You have nothing to contribute.  If you want us to believe that geckos evolved toes so well designed they use Van der Waals atomic forces to stick to ceilings, and not only that, but did it 11 times independently, then we will thank you (for the funny joke).  If you want to tell us that evolution produced proteins that assemble within thousandths of a split second into working nanomachines by chance over millions of years, sayonara. 12/19/2019 11

12. Evolutionists Taking Credit for Biomimetics进化论者信用仿生学 • The rapid rise of biomimetics over the last decade is a sign that people are tired of useless just-so stories.  Real cutting-edge science for the 21st century, on the rise in both medical genetics and biomimetics, is based on the implicit assumption that natural structures are intelligently designed and full of potential for enlightenment, wonder, invention, benefit, application, and progress. 12/19/2019 12

13. Dinosaur Feather Story Gets Hairy恐龙羽毛的故事生了毛 • Another “feathered dinosaur” story has caused a flap and flurry of news reports.  But are they really feathers, and do they help evolutionary theory? • An exceptionally preserved juvenile in typical “dinosaur death pose” was unearthed in German limestone and given the name Sciurumimus (“squirrel-mimic”).  Labelled Jurassic by the researchers who announced the discovery in PNAS,1 this is the first non-coelurosaur species described with integumentary structures.  It is leading some to postulate that all the branches of dinosaurs had “feathers,” as stated in National Geographic’s article: “‘Probably all dinosaurs were feathered,’ scientist concludes.” 12/19/2019 13

14. Dinosaur Feather Story Gets Hairy恐龙羽毛的故事生了毛 • One will look in vain, though, for veined feathers with barbs and barbules as found in birds.  The authors label the structures “type 1 feathers,” meaning single filaments protruding from the skin (see 9/15/2011 entry).  They are actually little more than fuzz, barely noticeable in the photos.  Co-author Helmut Tischlinger said, “Under ultraviolet light, remains of the skin and feathers show up as luminous patches around the skeleton.” 12/19/2019 14

15. Dinosaur Feather Story Gets Hairy恐龙羽毛的故事生了毛 • Some, like Brian Switek at Nature News, dub them “protofeathers.”  He wrote, • Palaeontologist Paul Barrett of London’s Natural History Museum agrees that the structures on Sciurumimus are probably protofeathers. Although additional geochemical work is needed to study the features’ details, Barrett says, the fossilized wisps are very similar to the fuzz seen on other dinosaurs. But he notes that the presence of these filaments among all dinosaurs is “speculation”. Feathery structures might be a common feature of dinosaurs, but it’s also possible that they evolved multiple times. “We need more examples in both non-coelurosaurian theropods, and particularly in the other big dinosaur groups, before we can really speculate that these features are a character of dinosaurs as a whole,” Barrett says. 12/19/2019 15

16. Dinosaur Feather Story Gets Hairy恐龙羽毛的故事生了毛 • Reporters seem unsure what to make of the news.  Co-author Mark Norell said, according to Science Daily, “This is a surprising find,” noting that it appeared in the same limestone in northern Bavaria as Archaeopteryx (discovered 150 years ago), that was fully fledged with flight feathers: meaning, at the very least, that this creature and birds with powered flight were contemporaries.  Clearly whatever the fuzz was on this creature, it had nothing to do with flight.  Though the juvenile in the fossil was only 28″ long, “Adult megalosaurs reached about 20 feet in length and often weighed more than a ton,” Science Daily reported.  “They were active predators, which probably also hunted other large dinosaurs.”  Not even believers in dinosaur-to-bird evolution think this creature was closely related to birds. 12/19/2019 16

17. Dinosaur Feather Story Gets Hairy恐龙羽毛的故事生了毛 • Of note is that this fossil came from a private collector and looks, at first glance, almost too good to be true.  Assuming it is authentic and trustworthy, though, paleontologists have their work cut out for them.  “Although the feathers look similar among different dinosaur groups, it’s still possible the trait evolved independently, without a common ancestor,” National Geographic suggested (look for phrase “repeated evolution” in the 7/01/2012 entry).  Everyone seems to agree there’s not enough information to make sweeping conclusions.  NG reporter Christine Dell’Amore quoted Corwin Sullivan saying, “We paleontologists are going to need to find more fossils—of things even less closely related to birds than Sciurumimus—to be sure.” 12/19/2019 17

18. Dinosaur Feather Story Gets Hairy恐龙羽毛的故事生了毛 • Moreover, the discovery “upends [the] feather theory,” National Geographic headlined, and also upends the portrayal of dinosaurs as “overgrown lizards.”  Switek remarked, “If so, we will have to start thinking about what kind of feathery covering these creatures display when we depict them in art and film.” • 1. Rauhut, Foth, Tischlinger and Norell, “Exceptionally preserved juvenile megalosauroid theropod dinosaur with filamentous integument from the Late Jurassic of Germany,” PNAS, published online July 2, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1203238109. 12/19/2019 18

19. Dinosaur Feather Story Gets Hairy恐龙羽毛的故事生了毛 • You have type 1 protofeathers, too.  They’re called hairs.  Imagine finding a fossil skeleton of a horse so well preserved, impressions of its mane and tail were clearly seen in the rock (but strangely, none of the internal organs).  Would you be justified in saying that horses were evolving flight?  Horsefeathers.  Would it make any sense to say that the trait originated further back than expected, implying that the common ancestor of birds and Pegasus had protofeathers?  If you didn’t already “know” the evolutionary story about how mammals, dinosaurs and birds are supposed to have evolved, it would be a similar inferential fallacy. • There’s still something very weird about these “feathered dinosaur” discoveries.  They are found in Germany or China, often involve the same fossil-hunters, and often come from private collectors. 12/19/2019 19

20. Dinosaur Feather Story Gets Hairy恐龙羽毛的故事生了毛 • Even giving the evolutionists the maximum credibility about the authenticity of the fossils, they still usually create problems for Darwin.  They don’t show a clear path from fuzz to flight.  The  “protofeathers” are on the wrong animals.  They have an unknown function.  Their dates overlap, or belong in the wrong eras.  They don’t show a progression in complexity over time till true powered flight is thought to have evolved.  They are either simple protrusions, or complex feathers found on animals that clearly used them for flying or gliding.  Given how quickly animals equipped for flight could conquer the globe, one would expect to find them everywhere (compare pterosaurs, flying insects, bats).  Informed skepticism is still in order. 12/19/2019 20

21. Dinosaur Feather Story Gets Hairy恐龙羽毛的故事生了毛 • Another lesson is how readers can be distracted by the wrong questions.  Stop listening to the evolution tales, and ask other questions: Why are dinosaurs so often found in the typical death pose, suggesting rapid suffocation in  water (11/23/2011)?  Why are they exquisitely preserved?  Why do so few reporters fail to question the dates and stories of the Darwinists?  Why don’t they focus, instead, on the high levels of complexity required to have an animal run, hunt, fly, or live at all? 12/19/2019 21

22. Animalympics动物奥运会 • As summer Olympics season approaches, we should remember that we humans are not the only ones with some amazing physical abilities. • Giraffe-alympics:  Humans may dive from 10 meters or more, but the distance between heart and head does not change significantly.  Giraffes, by contrast, can lower their heads 18 feet to drink water without their brains exploding.  Then they can take off galloping if a predator approaches, all the while maintaining constant fluid pressure.  PhysOrg wrote in a short article, “Giraffes are living proof that cells’ pressure matters.”  It’s about researchers in France who came up with a better model to explain fluid pressure in tissues when cells divide.  The new model explains how a tissue maintains a steady state between cell division and cell death.  “If that were the case, very tall organisms such as giraffes could not exist, because the cells in their lower body would die under pressure.” 12/19/2019 22

23. Animalympics动物奥运会 • Lizard diving competition:  Like cats, lizards land on their feet after a fall; but unlike cats, they do it with a twist of the tail.  “Lizards in their natural environment encounter various situations where they could fall, PhysOrg explained.  “For instance, they could fall while fighting over territory, seeking food, or even mating. To avoid injuries, they must have a way to turn themselves during a fall to land safely on their feet. ” PhysOrg reported how researchers from UC Berkeley took high-speed video of green anoles and flat-tailed house geckos to see how they do it.  They were impressed enough to design a Righting Bot robot that imitates the tail-flick trick.  They believe their findings “could also help engineers to design air– or land-based robots with better stability.” 12/19/2019 23

24. Animalympics动物奥运会 • Ageless diving seabirds:  One might think that animals with the most strenuous lives would age sooner, but guillemots (a species of diving bird) maintain fitness until their last dive, without showing signs of aging.  “The guillemots — which look similar to penguins but can fly — have the highest flight costs of any bird and expend substantial energy for diving,” Science Daily explained.  “Their high metabolisms and frequent dives should produce oxidative stress, causing the birds to deteriorate as they age. But, the researchers discovered that the birds stay fit and active as they grow older, maintaining their flying, diving, and foraging abilities.”  Kyle Elliott (U of Manitoba) remarked, “Not only do these birds live very long, but they maintain their energetic lifestyle in a very extreme environment into old age.”  Maybe they could help humans in the Aging Competition in which everyone is participating. 12/19/2019 24

25. Animalympics动物奥运会 • Now, back to our regular stadium coverage.  Dr. Michael Wilkinson still thinks Olympic runners would train better by kicking off their training shoes.  He’s been running barefoot for six years, studying the performance and health benefits of running unshod.  It’s not just more natural; Science Daily quoted him explaining, “There’s a difference between shod and barefoot running gaits that comes about from feeling the ground. The sensory feedback when running barefoot encourages runners to put their feet down more gently in an attempt to avoid the impact forces that would cause discomfort and are also linked to injury.”  Need more reasons? 12/19/2019 25

26. Animalympics动物奥运会 • In new research, Dr. Michael Wilkinson found that when runners who always wear shoes run barefoot they immediately alter their gait to that characteristic of habitual barefoot runners, and also use less oxygen during barefoot running compared to running with shoes at the same speed. This indicates greater running economy which is an important determinant of distance running performance, especially in elite runners. • Habitual barefoot runners have a distinctive running gait — using mid-foot landings, shorter stride lengths, faster stride rates, and less time in contact with the ground. They are also known to hit the ground with lower impact force and loading rates than runners who land on the rear foot in trainers. This cushions the force of landing, avoiding the discomfort associated with striking the ground heel-first common in runners who wear shoes. 12/19/2019 26

27. Animalympics动物奥运会 • According to Wilkinson, barefoot running is a hot topic among physiologists and foot racers, but he warns against misinformation on some internet sites.  With proper supervision, athletes new to barefoot running can quickly adapt and enjoy the benefits of those who habitually run barefoot, some of whom see a 3% to 6% performance boost.  See the 1/27/2010 entry, “Barefoot is better.” 12/19/2019 27

28. Animalympics动物奥运会 • Look at us.  We applaud our champions at the Olympics and carry on as if we inhabit this planet alone.  We think we are so smart and fit, because we don’t spend enough time learning from our animal trainers – not humans who train animals, but animals who can train us, if we paid closer attention.  For me, I’d like to learn how the guillemots do it. 12/19/2019 28

29. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Epigenetics refers to codes, processes and functions “above” genetics, that control and regulate the genetic code: a “code above the code,” as it were.  Unlike a simple DNA strand, the epigenetic code has a multitude of players that scientists are still struggling to understand.  For a good introduction, watch this 12-minute video on YouTube; for more depth, read the book The Mysterious Epigenome: What Lies Beyond DNA by Woodward and Gills (available from the C.S. Lewis Society and  Amazon.com). • One thing is becoming clear; DNA is just a bit player in a much vaster array of information.  The big story now is what controls and regulates the DNA.  Many things in the nucleus once considered “junk” are turning out to be the stars of the show.  In addition, the findings are becoming more and more difficult to explain by neo-Darwinian mechanisms.  Even more startling, epigenetics is undermining some key Darwinian principles. 12/19/2019 29

30. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Aging and epigenetics:  Let’s begin with one close to home: aging.  “Epigenomes of Newborns and Centenarians Differ: New Clues to Increasing Life Span,” announced Science Daily in bold red type, alongside a photo of a grandfather holding an infant.  A new study shows defects due to mutations not just to genetic code base pairs, but to some of the epigenetic marks like methyl tags that help switch genes on and off.  “The results show that the centenarian presents a distorted epigenome that has lost many switches (methyl chemical group), put in charge of inappropriate gene expression and, instead, turn off the switch of some protective genes.”  Understanding these epigenomic processes will, obviously, be vital to improving the health and longevity of every human who gets older. 12/19/2019 30

31. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Micro-RNA regulators of regulators:  Nature(June 28) reported that two enzymes “autoregulate” the production of micro-RNA’s (miRNA) which, in turn, regulate gene expression in many pathways (Zisoulis et al, Nature486, pp. 541–544, doi:10.1038/nature11134).  This discovery is “expanding the functions of the miRNA pathway in gene regulation,” they said. 12/19/2019 31

32. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Make space for the non-junk:   “The myth of junk DNA” continues to get exposed.  New Scientist reported that mouse “junk DNA” is vital for gene regulation.  Hannah Krakauer’s opening sentence gives the gist of the article: “Some junk is worth keeping. Non-coding, or junk, mouse DNA contains vast amounts of information vital to gene function – and those regulatory functions take up much more space on the genome than the all-important coding segments.” 12/19/2019 32

33. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Master regulator:  PhysOrg’s article title summarizes the message: “Forty’s a crowd: Study shows that master regulator protein brings plethora of coactivators to gene expression sites.”  After a discussion of a “behemoth” protein named Mediator, this paragraph was notable: • Researchers know that all DNA-binding factors partner with other proteins to switch genes on or off. What is remarkable here is their sheer number. “It would be very interesting to find out whether this is the norm,” says Ron Conaway. “This work raises a ton of little questions about mechanism.” 12/19/2019 33

34. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Epigenetic disease:  If diseases can be genetic in origin, so can it be egigenetic in origin. Science Daily wrote that epigenetics alters genes implicated in rheumatoid arthritis.  “It’s not just our DNA that makes us susceptible to disease and influences its impact and outcome,” the article began.  “Scientists are beginning to realize more and more that important changes in genes that are unrelated to changes in the DNA sequence itself — a field of study known as epigenetics — are equally influential.” 12/19/2019 34

35. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Epigenomes and cancer:  One more example of the growing interest in epigenetics over plain old genetics is seen in an article in Science, “Genetic Events That Shape the Cancer Epigenome” by Ryan and Bernstein (Science, 22 June 2012: Vol. 336 no. 6088 pp. 1513–1514,DOI: 10.1126/science.1223730).  Sure enough, “there is increasing recognition that transmissible epigenetic changes—chemical modifications to the genome or its scaffold that do not involve a change in the nucleotide sequence—may be acquired de novo, and that these “epimutations” may also contribute to carcinogenesis.”  Scientists would not have understood this had they not looked above and beyond the genome into the epigenome.  The Greek prefix “epi-” (above) appears poised to latch onto a number of old genetic vocabulary words. 12/19/2019 35

36. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Grammar and syntax, form and function:  Remember the phrase, “The Human Genome”?  It sounds almost quaint in hindsight.  Not much more than a decade ago, scientists thought mapping the DNA letters would help us understand health, disease, and human evolution.  The new term, according to Science Daily, is The Functional Genome – beyond mere base-pairing.  Starting with the mouse genome, scientists are trying to understand the paragraphs and superstructure within the genetic code, a language above the code itself.  So far, they figure they only understand 11% of the mouse functional genome.  Non-coding “cis-regulatory elements,” for instance (once considered junk), regulate adjacent DNA, the article explained. 12/19/2019 36

37. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Popularly dubbed “the book of life,” the human genome is extraordinarily difficult to read. But without full knowledge of its grammar and syntax, the genome’s 2.9 billion base-pairs of adenine and thymine, cytosine and guanine provide limited insights into humanity’s underlying genetics.… • As expected, the researchers identified different sequences that promote or start gene activity, enhance its activity and define where it occurs in the body during development. More surprising, said Ren, was that the structural organization of the cis-regulatory elements aregrouped into discrete clusters corresponding to spatial domains. “It’s a case of form following function,” he said. “It makes sense.” 12/19/2019 37

38. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Good interference creates epigenetic memory:  Why would some RNA transcripts interfere with others?  It’s all part of a regulatory dance, scientists are finding out.  Now, a new role for RNA interference (RNAi) was announced on PhysOrg: recognizing and silencing foreign DNA, such as strands introduced by viruses.  It’s heritable, too:  “Once identified, an ‘epigenetic memory’ of the foreign DNA fragments is created and can be passed on from one generation to the next, permanently silencing the gene.”  This has an eerie echo of Lamarckian “inheritance of acquired characteristics.” 12/19/2019 38

39. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Once the DNA is identified as foreign and silenced, an epigenetic memory is created that silences the foreign gene from one generation to the next. While the inheritance of this memory requires further exploration, the authors showed that successive generations of C. elegans are unable to express the foreign DNA even if the corresponding piRNA is absent. 12/19/2019 39

40. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • A vaster landscape:  Geneticists used to speak of the “genetic landscape” but now there’s a vaster field: the “epigenetic landscape.”  James Ferrell discussed this concept in his review, “Bistability, Bifurcations, and Waddington’s Epigenetic Landscape” in Current Biology (Volume 22, Issue 11, R458-R466, 5 June 2012), saying, “Waddington’s epigenetic landscape is probably the most famous and most powerful metaphor in developmental biology.”  His rather lengthy review did not contain any of the following words: Darwin, phylogeny, evolution. 12/19/2019 40

41. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • In the book The Mysterious Epigenome: What Lies Beyond DNA mentioned above, Woodward and Gills describe in verbal animation what it would be like to ride a sci-fi ship into the nucleus of a cell and watch gene regulation at work.  Their second-to-last chapter, “An Infinitely More Complex Genome,” is like a 4th of July Grand Finale – a rapid-fire series of new discoveries and possibilities that portend a golden age of research in the years ahead, described in vivid metaphors like air traffic control, overlapping messages, codes here there and everywhere, and functional treasure in the “junk“ yard. 12/19/2019 41

42. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Two practical effects of the Epigenetic Revolution will be: (1) a realization that we are not slaves of our DNA, but that with healthy lifestyle changes, we can control the expression of genes (for instance, a vigorous workout at the gym makes observable effects on gene regulatory tags); (2) increasing pressure against Darwinism.  The realization is growing that there is far more functional information in the cell than neo-Darwinists ever imagined.  If the genetic code was a challenge to explain by undirected processes operating stepwise by natural selection, what will be the reaction to codes upon codes, master regulators of other regulators, and millions of molecules performing a living symphony? 12/19/2019 42

43. Epigenetics: the 21st-Century Scientific Revolution表观遗传学：21世纪科学革命 • Got irreducible complexity?  Here, Charlie.  Come and look what we brought you: a little gift for your ailing stomach. • Dr. Thomas Woodward,* a Christian theology professor, historian of science and president of the C. S. Lewis Society in Tampa, Florida, feels justifiably excited to see this vast new panorama of epigenetics as vindication par excellence for the Biblical world view.  Not only that, he and co-author Dr. James P. Gills, a world-renowned ophthalmologist and modern pioneer of cataract surgery, see that world view in light of these discoveries contributing to human health: a new way to cultivate a spirit of wellness.  This is not surprising, since Jesus said that a good tree produces good fruit (Matthew 7:17), and both ends of the Bible describe the Tree of Life that God planted. 12/19/2019 43

44. Psychologists Go Demonic心理学家进入恶魔 • Doctrines of demons:  Clare Wilson at New Scientist reported on how psychologists at the University of British Columbia are using Ouija boards to probe the unconscious of experimental subjects.  Many conservative theologians consider these devices to be devices for contacting deceiving spirits  (I Timothy 4:1; see The Berean Call), and not a few non-theologians consider them dangerous (search Google on “ouija board dangerous”).  Even if such theological views are deemed unscientific by secular psychologists, there is no question that these devices have an occult reputation: “Beloved of spiritualists and bored teenagers on a dare, the Ouija board has long been a source of entertainment, mystery and sometimes downright spookiness,” Wilson wrote up front. 12/19/2019 44

45. Psychologists Go Demonic心理学家进入恶魔 • It’s not as if the psychologists are trying to debunk paranormal theories in their experiments.  The psychologists employed the devices as probes of inner mental mysteries, believing in a Freudian doctrine that “the unconscious plays a role in cognitive functions we usually consider the preserve of the conscious mind.”  One of them asked a question that borders on contact with the devil: “How can we communicate with that unconscious intelligence?” 12/19/2019 45

46. Psychologists Go Demonic心理学家进入恶魔 • The experimenter may not realize whose intelligence he is communicating with.  According to Wilson, the results were a little spooky: “When using the computer, if the subjects said they didn’t know the answer to a question, they got it right about half the time, as would be expected by chance. But when using the Ouija, they got those questions right 65 per cent of the time — suggesting they had a subconscious inkling of the right answer and the Ouija allowed that hunch to be expressed.”  (Note: the experimental subjects were blindfolded.)  Maybe that’s why the URL to Wilson’s story asked, “is-there-anybody-there”. 12/19/2019 46

47. Psychologists Go Demonic心理学家进入恶魔 • Father of lies:  Jesus spoke of Satan as a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44), the classic first lie starting in the garden (Genesis 3:4–5).  All humans fall prey to bearing false witness at times, but it is especially egregious when scientists, ostensibly committed to intellectual integrity, follow the father of lies.  Last year the fraud of Diederik Stapel “shook the field to its core” (see11/05/2011); now, another psychology fraud from the Netherlands was reported in Science magazine (6 July 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6090 pp. 21–22), this time by a software algorithm devised by Uri Simonsohn to detect fraud.  In the category “Scientific Ethics,” Martin Enserik headlined, “Fraud-Detection Tool Could Shake Up Psychology” because the ripple effect could affect more than just the career of latest perpetrator, Dirk Smeesters of Erasmus University Rotterdam: 12/19/2019 47

48. Psychologists Go Demonic心理学家进入恶魔 • The method may help the field of psychological science clean up its act and restore its credibility, he adds—but it may also turn colleagues into adversaries and destroy careers. The field will need ample debate on how to use it, Nosek says, much the way physicists had to grapple with the advent of nuclear physics. “This is psychology’s atomic bomb,” he says. • Simonsohn already created a stir last year with a paper in Psychological Science showing that it’s “unacceptably easy” to prove almost anything using common ways to massage data and suggesting that a large proportion of papers in the field may be false positives. 12/19/2019 48

49. Psychologists Go Demonic心理学家进入恶魔 • While the validity of Simonsohn’s statistical tool is still being evaluated, Smeesters didn’t help matters much when he included in his explanation this cop-out: ” the odd data patterns found by Simonsohn emerged because of what he calls ‘questionable research practices’ that aren’t uncommon in his field, such as doing multiple analyses and picking the most convincing one, or leaving out certain subjects.” 12/19/2019 49

50. Psychologists Go Demonic心理学家进入恶魔 • Update 07/12/2012: Nature News reported another catch.  Simonshohn found suspicious anomalies in the data of Lawrence Sanna, who retired inexplicably at the end of May from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, after requesting retraction of 3 of his papers.  Again, Sanna’s data was too good to be true.  Simonsohn had been questioning Sanna since fall, but the university would not explain the reason for his resignation, and Sanna is not responding to requests for information.  Simonsohn denies being on a fishing expedition.  ““Some people are concerned that this will damage psychology as a whole and the public will perceive an epidemic of fraud,” he said.  Claiming that retractions are common in many fields, he said, “I think that’s unfounded.”  He claims he’s just trying to set an example for how research data should be reported. 12/19/2019 50