Re: [asa] Building a flagellum step by step

The fact that Nick Matzke jumped all over what could have been the
coup de grace of ID is significant in and of itself. But, I want to
look at some more generic lessons here that are mostly independent of
the controversy.

1. As Randy and I have been harping on peer review is necessary and
not sufficient. You need replication before it becomes the scientific
consensus. Also, if you want to critique science try and replicate
the experiment and show that the results don't follow. Nick Matzke
did this in his critique while Michael Behe did not.

2. Don't confuse what you want with what is. I don't know how many
times I repeat this to my kids. This is especially true of something
you REALLY REALLY want. Do you think that Nick wanted this? You
betcha. But he is enough of a scientist to see that the evidence
didn't line up. This is also a cautionary tale about not falsely
accusing people of just following a worldview. When witnessing to
science people appealing to following the truth wherever it leads is
an effective inducement.

3. Negative results don't mean universally negative. Michael Behe
interpreted Nick's critique as disproving step wise development of
the bacterial flagella. What Nick invalidated was that no new
homologues were found. The previous consensus was confirmed but
nothing new was found. This is uninteresting science and certainly
doesn't warrant being in PNAS.

4. When running open source science program be very careful with "out
of the box" parameters. Some filter options apparently were set wrong
in the BLAST run. If this turns out to be the error it explains why
it didn't get caught in peer review as the reviewers rarely look at
your runsets.

5. High profile journals need to tone down "flashy" results. How many
times did we see nanotechnology and step cell papers burn them? At
least, be extra skeptical when things advance past the consensus.

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Received on Wed Apr 25 00:26:34 2007