A challenge for evolution/abiogenesis believers

originally posted by: vasaga

I've read so many times in this forum, that in science you only need a single proof of something that contradicts the current theory and that the theory needs to be adapted or discarded. But now that it's something you don't like, you want to make up excuses to discard it.

originally posted by: GetHyped

Well you're wrong. How about you educate yourself about the scientific method instead of attacking a concept you have such a poor grasp on? Really, this entire sub-forum is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Really? So, if tomorrow an experiment shows that heat can flow from cold to hot, it doesn't disprove thermodynamics? That's good to know...

a reply to: vasaga

One crappy study in a journal no one cares about and who's findings no one has replicated would not overturn the mountain of experimental data supporting the laws of thermodynamics. How are you failing to grasp this point?

a reply to: GetHyped

Red herring.

a reply to: vasaga

I kind of object to the embedded premise in the thread title.

It's not about 'believing' or 'disbelieving' anything. In science, these terms are almost useless.

An idea is 'accepted' or 'rejected', rather than 'believed' or 'disbelieved', provisionally based on it's own merits. Ideas are accepted when they are the best current explanation which fits with observations and which stands up to critical review.

Just because an idea is 'accepted' does not necessarily mean people walk around in a cloth-eared daze 'believing' it as an absolute. Accepted hypothesis and theories are challenged all the time - even by the scientists who formulate these ideas in the first place.

a reply to: vasaga

Uh... So you're saying that even if the work is invalid it will be published as being peer-reviewed? Then what's the purpose of peer-reviewing in the first place? If it's true that a peer review makes no claims to the validity of the work, why are so many people in here always saying that there are no peer-reviewed papers regarding for example intelligent design, allthewhile emphasizing that peer review is something that the scientific community has accepted as worth publishing as something scientific? Oh but in this case, peer review doesn't mean anything, because the paper challenges pre-held beliefs by the evolutionist community. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

You can stamp your feet, but that's the truth, Ruth. I could list all the ways that pseudoscience shows up in journals, from outright fraud to just plain laziness . . . however, I think one specific case will best highlight the phenomena.
A spoof paper concocted by Science reveals little or no scrutiny at many open-access journals.

On 4 July, good news arrived in the inbox of Ocorrafoo Cobange, a biologist at the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara. It was the official letter of acceptance for a paper he had submitted 2 months earlier to the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, describing the anticancer properties of a chemical that Cobange had extracted from a lichen.

In fact, it should have been promptly rejected. Any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper's short-comings immediately. Its experiments are so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless.

I know because I wrote the paper. Ocorrafoo Cobange does not exist, nor does the Wassee Institute of Medicine. Over the past 10 months, I have submitted 304 versions of the wonder drug paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws. Beyond that headline result, the data from this sting operation reveal the contours of an emerging Wild West in academic publishing.

Oh . . . but it gets better . . .

By the time Science went to press, 157 of the journals had accepted the paper and 98 had rejected it. Of the remaining 49 journals, 29 seem to be derelict: websites abandoned by their creators. Editors from the other 20 had e-mailed the fictitious corresponding authors stating that the paper was still under review; those, too, are excluded from this analysis. Acceptance took 40 days on average, compared to 24 days to elicit a rejection.

Science is not a democracy. I hope you mean by testing and verifying. Scorn is not a falsification, which is generally what the response to these papers is. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Falsifying is testing. Abel presents no testable hypothesis, so there is nothing to verify. He simply makes assertions (a confident and forceful statement of fact or belief) without evidence for his claims. Scorn should be the reaction from biologists when pseudoscience raises its head. And, it's not pseudoscience because "it goes against evolutionists", it's pseudoscience because it's just a bunch of jargon babble, not testable, with no clear unbroken line of data.

Here's a critique of the peer reviewed reference list on the Discovery Institutes website, on which Abel's work appears multiple times:

My approach will be the same as last time – basically apply an initial filter to remove the junk, then take a look at what remains.

OK, on to my initial filter:
.
Anything by David Abel, all his papers consist entirely of non-evidentially supported, non-laboratory confirmed, pure fabrication (I let a couple through this filter so that you can see what I’m on about). About 17% of the list is by him and can happily be ignored.

Least you pause on the thought of a named individual being a filter, it is simply a short-cut to eliminate papers that are long-winded assertions that contain no data at all — no experiments, no measurements, and no observations … nada. Should he write a paper that contains some analysis of actual data, then this filter does not apply.

So who exactly is this guy? He is David Abel, Department of ProtoBioCybernetics/ProtoBioSemiotics, Director, The Gene Emergence Project, The Origin-of-Life. Science Foundation, Inc., 113 Hedgewood Dr. Greenbelt, MD 20770-1610 USA, at least that is the title on his papers. Wow, sounds impressive … but google that address and you discover it is an ordinary residential house. Yes, the entire foundation is in his garage, and he is the sole representative. Somebody checked him out, this impressive sounding title and organization is a sham and is not real. The claimed title is completely fraudulent.

But why does he get published? … well because Abel is making an argument, of sorts, and is backing it up with a reasonable amount of scholarship and some fancy sounding mathy stuff. On the surface it looks credible, so you need to read it all several times to work out that the assertions being made are not actually credible. Rarely do you find bull# so tortuously Byzantine as the stuff churned out by him, which I guess is by intention.

Well . . . if he is well known among Evolutionary Biologists already . . . why shouldn't they ignore his yearly BS conjectures?

Until you show that that is the case there is no reason to objectively discard the paper, other than bias. If you can show me how the Physics of Life Review is a so-called biased paper, we'll talk again. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Red Flag 1, the fact that the journal specializes in the same intrests of Abel's BS foundation run out of his garage.

Second, that it is an open access journal that requires pay. They almost show no peer review process at all.

Then there's this . . . back to the original story . . .

Acceptance was the norm, not the exception. The paper was accepted by journals hosted by industry titans Sage and Elsevier.
The Elsevier journal that accepted the paper, Drug Invention Today, is not actually owned by Elsevier, says Tom Reller, vice president for Elsevier global corporate relations: "We publish it for someone else." In an e-mail to Science, the person listed on the journal's website as editor-in-chief, Raghavendra Kulkarni, a professor of pharmacy at the BLDEA College of Pharmacy in Bijapur, India, stated that he has "not had access to [the] editorial process by Elsevier" since April, when the journal's owner "started working on [the] editorial process." "We apply a set of criteria to all journals before they are hosted on the Elsevier platform," Reller says. As a result of the sting, he says, "we will conduct another review."

Who publishes PoLR . . . that's right Elsevier. The paper in question is from 2006, the sting was in 2012.
Who's Afraid of Peer Review
cont . . .

a reply to: vasaga

cont . . .

It's blatantly obvious that some arguments are only allowed when it favors the status quo. If some layman writes a random paper explaining how DNA could've possibly formed from random amino acids clumping together with just gibberish, you'd be having an orgasm all over the paper. No one said anything when the physicist was promoting abiogenesis. Just by talking about this he suddenly became a biochemist, but when someone who does not support the status quo talks about it, he doesn't become a biochemist. No no no, he's suddenly not qualified.

And about the whole 'three bedroom house' thing, I'll be leaving this here.. From an actual scientist, not a conforming scientist. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

It's blatantly obvious that you can't get over your conspiracist ideation where science is concerned. I'm sorry you are so fond of a "theory" (as in conjecture, not scientific) that has produced absolutely no evidence to support any of its claims.

Here is a nice checklist for you go through Abel's papers with and determine real or pseudo . . . if you actual have access to them and aren't just pulling abstracts from people that talk about your intrests . . . showing the same bias as the editoral staff at PoLR. The checklist has a medical slant, but the same rules apply. Happy critical thinking!
Science or Pseudoscience?

Those of us interesting in research integrity must recognize that peer review is subjective and questionable. We must consider the source of a paper and, we can’t trust that just because it’s in print, that it’s any good. NOTHING can be taken at face value. Trust in results should only come after review and commentary by the COMMUNITY of scientists who must now be ever more diligent in picking apart others’ work. Trust no one to be on the level or to use accepted procedures. Scientific publishing is a business and whenever money is involved, a certain amount of bias and corruption can be expected.

Slums of Peer Review

a reply to: vasaga

Oh you didn't notice that the other thread was regarding a different paper.

Goodness me, so it is.

All right, proceed. If you really don't mind walking about naked like that.

a reply to: vasaga


Speaking of hypocrisy, why is it that papers that have no real credible data get a pass as something viable and when it's pointed out to you that none of it's evidentially supported, you cry foul and ignore the evidence?

A simple cursory search of the interwebs will confirm that all the Peer-reviewed articles posted up by the Discovery Institute have been debunked by real scientist and they are nothing more than long-winded assertions that contain no data at all — no experiments, no measurements, and no observations. In short..Pure bullsh#t..


Here is what Dave Gamble has to say about your guy- David Abel-

So who exactly is this guy? He is David Abel, Department of ProtoBioCybernetics/ProtoBioSemiotics, Director, The Gene Emergence Project, The Origin-of-Life. Science Foundation, Inc., 113 Hedgewood Dr. Greenbelt, MD 20770-1610 USA, at least that is the title on his papers.
Wow, sounds impressive … but google that address and you discover it is an ordinary residential house. Yes, the entire foundation is in his garage, and he is the sole representative. Somebody checked him out, this impressive sounding title and organization is a sham and is not real. The claimed title is completely fraudulent.

And..

But why does he get published? … well because Abel is making an argument, of sorts, and is backing it up with a reasonable amount of scholarship and some fancy sounding mathy stuff. On the surface it looks credible, so you need to read it all several times to work out that the assertions being made are not actually credible.
Rarely do you find bullsh#t so tortuously Byzantine as the stuff churned out by him, which I guess is by intention.

There is more HERE, it covers all the rags that have been published by the Discovery Institute.

a reply to: flyingfish

Why is it that all the arguments are against the person and not against the content?

originally posted by: vasaga
a reply to: flyingfish

Why is it that all the arguments are against the person and not against the content?

What part of "no real credible data, long-winded assertions, no experiments, no measurements, and no observations" -do you not understand? How does that constitute all the arguments being against the person? And while you're at it, answer my question, why are you giving unsubstantiated claims validity?

You have some nerve crying red herring, and hypocrisy, I'm embarrassed for you.

This has to be the only possible explanation as to why so many people on here (and elsewhere) attempt so hard to 'dis-prove' evolution...

here's a good answer to trip everyone out.

Not all the life on this planet originated here, A lot of it was brought here by cosmic seeds, Asteroids containing animals and the seeds from plants.

Evolution does not occure via natural selection.
Codes need to be injected and updated to update the whole of the genetic code.

The only thing that can cause such a massive shift is Disease, And disease has the be pre-requisit. Anything reseached and studied today from the past dealing with ancient proteins which are builders of the strains and other things, all deal with *mutations* and a mutation is a change to the genetic code. Bacteria and expecially viruses Mutate the fastest therefore if there was ever a case for the whole evolution sham.

It would be centered around Ilness. We drop the idea of just being molecules and atoms all together and begin to understand, How obvious is it that EVERYTHING biological and inanimate has function and is code. Pick an example any example and it will be undesputed. If you add Hydrogen with 2 oxygen. Will you get gold? No obviously not.
Random particles can't just connect into a bigger random object. It must be previous preqrequisits that create the outcome.

To come to the point where Advanced species such as us exists, From the theory of growing slime mould to human is pretty far out there to say the least, Even for people who believe in God or Aliens creating us. By that logic we should have a dozen Cuthulu type mold base species running around the whole planet terrorizing humans. I'm sure you could use that vivid imagination to think up any outcome from the slime mold to here.

But how did the slime mold exactly evolve? Was it attacked by viruses? And how did the viruses previous get there?
Are viruses created at random like the whole H2O turning into uranium? Or plutonium? Just because random things happen and somehow natural selection plays a part when we are dealing with microscopic organisms, Things replicate so fast and are prominent everywhere, its kinda lame and unlogical to think that out of that. Things were wiped out by hunger over and over and random accidents to get to where we are.

Sorry to burst the bubble, But the foundation of genetics is based off of viruses, And the proteins that are created out of the result of a viral infection. The lineing on the walls that holds developing babies in mammals comes from a virus.
Infact, a huge portion of your genetic material was injected by ancient viruses older than the grand canyon inside your genome.


Just to put this into perspective.

Evolution is only mutation, there is no such thing as evolution. Only Ultimate Mutations....

originally posted by: flyingfish

originally posted by: vasaga
a reply to: flyingfish

Why is it that all the arguments are against the person and not against the content?

What part of "no real credible data, long-winded assertions, no experiments, no measurements, and no observations" -do you not understand? How does that constitute all the arguments being against the person? And while you're at it, answer my question, why are you giving unsubstantiated claims validity?

You have some nerve crying red herring, and hypocrisy, I'm embarrassed for you.

Just because you say that there is "no real credible data, long-winded assertions, no experiments, no measurements, and no observations", does mean there aren't any, especially when you leave it as vague as possible without addressing specifically which part of the paper/abstract you're talking about.

originally posted by: vasaga
Just because you say that there is "no real credible data, long-winded assertions, no experiments, no measurements, and no observations", does mean there aren't any, especially when you leave it as vague as possible without addressing specifically which part of the paper/abstract you're talking about.

Ok then, from this paper, show us the:

a) data
b) experiment
c) measurements
d) observations

Dna just dosn't randomly appear. It is built from Symbiosis and virulant effects left over from previous germline transfers that occure *naturally*

The thing is, Viruses can be programmed and genes can be selected for a desired effect. Exactly like how when a virus shares our dna we have the chance of infecting the virus and rewritting its code to become non viralant and to become symbiotic which is benefecial to us.

(Hand gesture) *Evolution* Does not accure when one advanced species, such as humans wipes out another species. In the name of 'Natural selection' is pretty rediculous.

Pro-Darwinism completely ignores these facts. And Has left symbiosis out in the dark.
Well everyone runs around killing advanced forms of life screaming ' its Natural selection, Sall good'.

LOL

originally posted by: GetHyped

originally posted by: vasaga
Just because you say that there is "no real credible data, long-winded assertions, no experiments, no measurements, and no observations", does mean there aren't any, especially when you leave it as vague as possible without addressing specifically which part of the paper/abstract you're talking about.

Ok then, from this paper, show us the:

a) data
b) experiment
c) measurements
d) observations

I'm not going to pay 32 dollars to view the paper which you will then shove aside anyway. If someone has free access through their university or whatever, let them post it for you.

But, let us take another approach... If this paper was REALLY that garbage, why has it been cited in 39 other papers? Most of them, with titles indicating a problem with the current mainstream views...? Oh, didn't check that did you? Too busy bashing it.

originally posted by: vasaga

I'm not going to pay 32 dollars to view the paper which you will then shove aside anyway. .

Wait a minute... you haven't read the paper!? The very paper you're touting as some sort of hard scientific support for your belief system?

Let me say that again in big, bold letters:

You haven't read the paper!?

This just gets better and better!

a reply to: GetHyped

Are you saying that an abstract does not represent the paper?

a reply to: vasaga

The abstract is the poster for the movie. The very fact you can't answer any questions about data, experiment, measurements and observations proves this.

originally posted by: vasaga
a reply to: GetHyped

Are you saying that an abstract does not represent the paper?

As explained to you many times . . . the abstract is just that an abstract. It does not speak to the validity of the claim, just as getting accepted in a journal doesn't automatically speak to validity. That is found in recreating and confirming the results . . . to which your paper has none.

Hard test something that has no experimentation or data, and only rests on assertion.