Science Journal's Top Breakthrough of 2005 is - Evolution., page 1
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Topic started on 23-12-2005 @ 06:49 AM by Mayet
www.abc.net.au...
The journal Science has proclaimed evolution the breakthrough of 2005.

The journal's editors say wide-ranging research published this year, including a study that shows a mere 4 per cent difference between human and chimpanzee DNA, builds on Charles Darwin's landmark 1859 work The Origin of Species and the idea of natural selection.

"Amid this outpouring of results, 2005 stands out as a banner year for uncovering the intricacies of how evolution actually proceeds," they wrote.

"Ironically, also this year, some segments of American society fought to dilute the teaching of even the basic facts of evolution."

Journal editor-in-chief Don Kennedy acknowledges this is a reference to the rise of the theory of intelligent design.

Intelligent design holds that some aspects of nature are so complex that they must be the work of an unnamed creator rather than the result of random natural selection, as Darwin argued.

Opponents, including many scientists, argue it is a thinly disguised version of creationism - a belief that the world was created by God as described in the Book of Genesis.



Its official, Evolution is Hot, Intelligent design is not. I do not fully agree with the article and Darwins theory as it reads in the media article. i believe in the natural selection process, but it is never Random, I believe its very mathematical and physics based. There are only a number of distinct possibilities depending on the Environment and genetic in put.



[edit on 23-12-2005 by Mayet]

[edit on 23-12-2005 by Mayet]


reply posted on 28-12-2005 @ 04:41 PM by junglejake
This is an interesting move, but one does have to question Science's motivations. They have, for a while, supported Evolution uniformly and haven't, so far as I've seen, ever published an article about ID. As the article from ABC states, this year "some segments of American society fought to dilute the teaching of even the basic facts of evolution."

This debate is a political and scientific cesspool that has been taking place for a while, but the heat has been turned up in the last year. It would make sense that, in an attempt to throw weight on a controversial theory, you award that theory as being the top breakthrough of the year. Also, if you look at the top ten breakthroughs they have listed in the article, you can see a distinct similarity between 8 of them, and a different similarity between two of them.

Eight of the breakthroughs of 2005 were revolutionary -- from the discovery of the first extra-solar terran-sized planet to the establishment of a whole new field of science, cosmochemistry. These ideas, while fairly irrelevant to the average American/Earthling, are huge in the scientific arena.

Then you have these two outliers, both politically contested as well as scientifically contested, that had discoveries and theories presented that support one side (and the opposition, as well, but those aren't mentioned) of the political debate...Er, the scientific debate, but they're considered two of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2005. Of course, I'm talking about the Evolutionary one and the global warming one.

If I may present a metaphor. You have the mathematics breakthrough awards of 2005. Some guy who wrote a program to calculate Pi has managed to discover what the xth through xth digits of Pi are, previously unknown. He won the top breakthrough of 2005. The runner up managed to mathematically normalize Chaos Theory and another who didn't even get mention developed a unifying mathematical theory tying the color force into the electro-weak force.

Wouldn't ya think there may have been another motivation in awarding the top breakthrough spot to the guy who just discovered more evidence that Pi doesn't repeat instead of one of the two mathematicians who just revolutionized quantum mechanics and chaos theory? I know I am.
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