Re: [asa] Building a flagellum step by step

On Apr 25, 2007, at 6:32 AM, Iain Strachan wrote:

> Rich,
>
> There is an amusing irony here. A few months back I gave, on
> request, a presentation to my church house-group a presentation on
> the Evolution/Creation/ID controversy. I had to tread carefully
> because three of the members of the group are YEC-leaning and the
> rest aren't. However, I did make my view clear, that so-called
> "creation science" was for the most part just a case of wishful
> thinking. Lest it be seen that I was just bashing creationists, I
> pointed out that a lot of science was a case of wishful thinking,
> and that the more you wanted a thing to be true the less careful
> you were about the controls on your research. I gave the "Cold
> Fusion" fiasco as an example. Here a lot of money was wasted at
> Harwell labs, where I used to work, attempting to replicate Pons
> and Fleishmann's results. If P&F hadn't been so excited about the
> prospect of solving the world's energy needs maybe that money could
> have been saved.
>
> But it now seems ironic to me that there is now an embarrassing
> example of what was perhaps wishful thinking in the publication of
> this "flashy" result in a peer reviewed journal.
>
> Iain
>

You saw all the same dynamics on Pharyngula. People question the
messenger (in this case Nick Matzke and PZ Meyers(!)). There was hand
wringing that maybe it was the less rigorous of the two PNAS
processes was used (it wasn't). The concern about what the ID people
would do with this and thus they needed to circle the wagons. I have
to give both Matzke and Meyers props for holding their own here and
it is to our shame that we are shown up by secularists and atheists.
When we note to ID proponents that their case may be similarly
overstated we get banned from their web site. I really should note
that once you remove the alleged error you get a bacterial flagella
that is 95% not irreducibly complex rather than 100%. The "gap" while
not completely filled is getting there with the identification of new
homologs. The problem as I see it is the attempt to move too quickly
to bring that gap to zero. Nick's analysis is not the great win for
ID as they think it is. Furthermore, Nick understood that by quickly
removing the overstated arguments now he avoids a huge P.R. debacle
in the future. If only our side would get this.

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Received on Wed Apr 25 10:20:11 2007