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Top Five Scientific "Myths" Popularly Accepted as Fact

Started by gambit32, December 09, 2010, 07:08:35 AM

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gambit32

LINK: http://www.geraldschroeder.com/ScientificMyths.aspx

My friend is in Israel and attending classes with this Gerald Shroeder physicist guy who is basically claiming a majority of the things I grew up believing as false. I wish I had more of a scientific background to defend myself properly. I am wondering how the board members here might respond to these claims.

Will

The site is unscientific and entirely incorrect. Dr. Schroeder is attempting, through lies and misrepresentations, to reconcile creationism and real science. It's embarrassing that someone like myself, with only a limited formal education in evolutionary biology and geology easily sees through the simple mistakes of a man who holds multiple Ph.D.s in science. This suggests to me that he's a fraud, intentionally misleading instead of innocently falling into creationist fallacies and mistakes.

If you'd like, I can cite specific mistakes, but arguing with creationists has always been a waste of time in my experience.
I want bad people to look forward to and celebrate the day I die, because if they don't, I'm not living up to my potential.

LegendarySandwich

Doesn't this belong in the creationist section of the forum? Regardless, the only ones I agreed with were three and four, and only because of technicalities (no, the Big Bang theory does not disprove God, though it gives us an explanation as to how the universe could have formed without the need of one; and I'm pretty sure that scientists don't know exactly how the life first began, so technically it hasn't been solved, but I could be wrong on this). The rest is just blatant bullshit.

gambit32

Quote from: "Will"The site is unscientific and entirely incorrect. Dr. Schroeder is attempting, through lies and misrepresentations, to reconcile creationism and real science. It's embarrassing that someone like myself, with only a limited formal education in evolutionary biology and geology easily sees through the simple mistakes of a man who holds multiple Ph.D.s in science. This suggests to me that he's a fraud, intentionally misleading instead of innocently falling into creationist fallacies and mistakes.

If you'd like, I can cite specific mistakes, but arguing with creationists has always been a waste of time in my experience.

Yes I would appreciate you responding to some of Dr. Schroeder's comments (specifically 1,2,5). I will be passing on the information not to a creationist, but to a smart kid stuck in between family-pushed ideologies and looking for answers.

McQ

Retitle the thread, "Reasons to never give tenure".

Or "How tenure can lead to manure"

I feel badly for your friend. He's in some deep shit. I seriously don't know where to start into the wrongness coming from this guy. With a couple of weeks of serious research and some help from other leaders in these fields, you could mount a rebuttal to Professor Whackadoo here, but it would do no good.

The thing is, he can't retract these things, even if he knows he's wrong (and my guess is he does) because his entire life and reputation are wrapped up in this. He simply can't say he's been wrong all this time.

Best thing for your friend to do is try to not take classes with him, if possible. Or suck it up, get through the classes, and move on, keeping his mouth shut. I'd drop this guy's class if it were me.
Elvis didn't do no drugs!
--Penn Jillette

Will

Quote from: "gambit32"Yes I would appreciate you responding to some of Dr. Schroeder's comments (specifically 1,2,5). I will be passing on the information not to a creationist, but to a smart kid stuck in between family-pushed ideologies and looking for answers.
Quote from: "first claim"[Myth:] Scientific discoveries and the fossil record have proven Darwin's Theory of the Gradual Evolution of Life.
The exact opposite is the case. As Niles Eldredge, curator at the American Museum of Natural History, NYC, wrote in the New York Times, "The fossil record that we were told to find for the past 150 years (since Charles Darwin ) does not exist." Darwin insisted that "natura non facit saltum," that nature does not make jumps. In fact, the flow of life as recorded in the fossil record has many jumps in complexity. The great trade secret of paleontology is that the fossil record does not confirm Darwin. Never did I expect to read in the esteemed, peer reviewed journal, Science, the following: "Did Darwin get it all right?" And the sub-title was no, species appear with a most un-Darwinian rapidity. The problems of evolution begin with the origin of life (Richard Dawkins attributes the origin of life to "luck.") and continue through the fossil record. Most precisely, the oldest rocks that can bear fossils already have fossils of microbes, some undergoing cell division. Nature "invented" DNA, RNA, cell structure, cell function with startling rapidity.
Niles Eldredge's theory of punctuated equilibrium fundamentally misunderstands the nature of fossils. Eldredge sees "gaps" in the fossil record, and assumes that because there are gaps that suggests that instead of gradual change there are rapid changes over short periods of time followed by long periods of little to no development. The reality, based on the absolute best testable theories available, is simply that because fossils only form relatively very rarely, of course there are going to be "gaps", as gaps represent other transitional periods for which fossils never formed or the rare fossils that did form have yet to be found. This should make perfect sense to even a freshman geologist or paleontologist. Niles Eldredge's 'theory' is actually just a hypothesis, however, having never been tested and really not investigated. Any responsible scientist would never suggest that such a hypothesis simply disproves long-established theory like Darwinian evolution.

Quote from: "second claim"[Myth:] The Theory of Evolution is based on selection by nature (survival of the fittest) and therefore is not a random process.
Not true. The Theory of Evolution as understood today is a two stage process, the first of which is totally random: First stage: random mutations produce changes in the DNA (the genetic library that stores the information to form the specific organism) and so yield variations in the progeny of the organism; and, second stage: the environment challenges the altered organism. If the mutation was beneficial, the improved version survives and flourishes. If the mutation was detrimental, then relative to its better neighbors, it will decrease in abundance and possibly perish. This is what is referred to as survival of the fittest. If there ever was a phrase with circular reasoning, this is it. We define the fittest as those that survive. We could just as well have written survival of the survivors. Note that the second stage, the challenge by nature, is not random. But the first stage, the mutations in the DNA, must be random. If not random, then certain mutations are favored by nature, which would imply an inherent direction to the flow of life, which in turn would imply a Director. The late Stephen Jay Gould, then professor of paleobiology, Harvard University, referred to it as channeling.
Mutation is random, not survival of the fittest. This man clearly does not even understand at an elementary level Darwinian evolution. He should lose his credentials.
Quote from: "fifth claim"[Myth:] Very occasionally monkeys hammering away at typewriters will type out one of Shakespeare's sonnets.
Not true, not in this universe. But it is a popular assumption that the monkeys can do it, a wrong assumption that randomness can produce meaningful stable complexity. But let's look at the numbers to see why the monkeys will always fail. I'll take the only sonnet I know, sonnet number 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day …” All sonnets are 14 lines, all about the same length. This sonnet has approximately 488 letters (neglect spaces). With a typewriter or keyboard having 26 letters, the number of possible combinations is 26 to the exponential power of 488 or approximately ten to the power of 690. That is a one with 690 zeros after it. Convert the entire 10 to the 56 grams of the universe (forget working with the monkeys) into computer chips each weighing a billionth of a gram and have each chip type out a billion sonnet trials a second (or 488 billion operations per second) since the beginning of time, ten to the 18th seconds ago. The number of trials will be approximately ten to power of 92, a huge number but minuscule when compared with the 10 to power 690 possible combinations of the letters. We are off by a factor of ten to power of 600. The laws of probability confirm that the universe would have reached its heat death before getting one sonnet. We will never get a sonnet by random trials, and the most basic molecules of life are far more complex than the most intricate sonnet. As reported in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, when the world’s most influential atheist philosopher, Antony Flew, read this analysis of complexity and several analyses related to the complexity of life brought in my third book, The Hidden Face of God, and Roy Varghese’s excellent book, The Wonder of the World, he abandoned his errant belief in a Godless world and publically apologized for leading so many persons astray for the decades that his atheistic thoughts held sway.
This is the very height of intellectual dishonesty. The illustration of monkeys, through random chance, eventually accidentally typing out a sonnet isn't supposed to be taken literally. It's an illustration of randomness. Assuming a universe without heat death, the monkeys would in fact eventually type out a sonnet. It's just a matter of time.

Mutations are highly common and highly varied. Among the trillions of lifeforms on just the planet Earth, there are billions of new mutations a day. Now, consider that life has existed on Earth for billions of years. I was born without an aorta, something my lineage has had going back dozens of generations. Because of my malformation, my children have about a 5.6% chance of having a similar cardiovascular defect. I've evolved since my parents, and if I had mutated something which gives me a survival advantage, I would constitute a new type of person. My parents had me when they were in their mid 20s, and I'll likely have children in my late 20s (crosses fingers), so in just one generation of about 27 years, a significant functional mutation has entered the world to be tested in the crucible of natural selection.
I want bad people to look forward to and celebrate the day I die, because if they don't, I'm not living up to my potential.

Atrax Robustus

Oh, Dr Gerald (Trust me I have a PhD in Earth Sciences and Physics so I'm qualified to tell you that Biologists, Anthropologists, Archeologists, Geologists, Hydrologists etc are all wrong) Schroeder?

Some "friend" you've got there!  He/she is happy to challenge your long held understanding of Anthropology, Evolutionary Biology, Astrophysics, Abiogenesis and Statistics and Stochastic Probability based upon lectures he/she is getting from Dr Schroeder?  Personally I'd be telling this friend to pull his/her head in!

Schroeder is another of the stock standard ID/Creo mouthpieces.  His works are all developed under the premise of "I have a PhD/Degree, therefore you should believe whatever I tell you regardless of the subject on which I am making my assertions".  It's called argument from authority.  His books are all written for an audience that lacks scientific education levels beyond year 10/senior high school and he relies on an assumption that his audience has no desire or lacks the ability to test his assertions.

Schroeder is a prime example of the force-fitting of religion into scientific fact and evidence.  Trouble is, its very convincing to those who are unable to see the huge errors in his work, so he gets to sell lots of books that spread the BS thick and wide amongst the ignorant and the gullible.  

As has already been demonstrated here, his work is piffle and predominantly nothing more than unsupported assertion that is unable to survive basic tests of veracity.

P.S.  (I'm not using the words ignorant or gullible in the pejorative sense).
If you want to challenge reality you need to read more than one book.

hackenslash

Just bookmarking for now. I'll come back and give it a proper kicking later.
There is no more formidable or insuperable barrier to knowledge than the certainty you already possess it.

DJAkuma

Quote from: "Will"This is the very height of intellectual dishonesty. The illustration of monkeys, through random chance, eventually accidentally typing out a sonnet isn't supposed to be taken literally. It's an illustration of randomness. Assuming a universe without heat death, the monkeys would in fact eventually type out a sonnet. It's just a matter of time.

That sonnet could also happen in the first 5 minutes, or twice in an hour, gotta love probability.

terranus

Quote from: "DJAkuma"
Quote from: "Will"This is the very height of intellectual dishonesty. The illustration of monkeys, through random chance, eventually accidentally typing out a sonnet isn't supposed to be taken literally. It's an illustration of randomness. Assuming a universe without heat death, the monkeys would in fact eventually type out a sonnet. It's just a matter of time.

That sonnet could also happen in the first 5 minutes, or twice in an hour, gotta love probability.


Is that before or after the monkeys gum up the keyboard with their own feces?
Trovas Veron!
--terranus | http://terranus.org--

The Magic Pudding

I've met some monkeys who contend Shakespeare did not write the works that are attributed to him.
They were in fact the work of Frances The Barbary Ape.
The signs are there if you just look.

PapistItalian16

Quote3. The Big Bang Theory disproves God (and affirms atheism).
    Not at all. Blah blah blah blah blah

I agree with that, not sure about all the other things in that explanation though. And I'm not sure about all the other "myths" either.
River: (speaking about the Bible) "It's broken. It doesn't make sense."
Shepherd Book: "It's not about making sense. It's about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It's about faith. You don't fix faith, River. It fixes you."

-- Firefly.

Squid

I know that I'm late coming to this thread but I hate when people who have academic credentials pull crap like this.  They utilize the letters behind their name to their advantage by throwing this kinda of junk at people.  I could care less if he's a professor or some homeless guy on a street corner, he's full of crap.  Let's take a look at his first "myth".  I chose that one because it involves something many people misunderstand - punctuated equilibrium (PE) and how it relates to phyletic gradualism.  I think I've written about this before so if I repeat some info here, don't shoot me ;).

QuoteScientific discoveries and the fossil record have proven Darwin's Theory of the Gradual Evolution of Life.

The exact opposite is the case. As Niles Eldredge, curator at the American Museum of Natural History, NYC, wrote in the New York Times, "The fossil record that we were told to find for the past 150 years (since Charles Darwin ) does not exist." Darwin insisted that "natura non facit saltum," that nature does not make jumps. In fact, the flow of life as recorded in the fossil record has many jumps in complexity. The great trade secret of paleontology is that the fossil record does not confirm Darwin. Never did I expect to read in the esteemed, peer reviewed journal, Science, the following: "Did Darwin get it all right?" And the sub-title was no, species appear with a most un-Darwinian rapidity. The problems of evolution begin with the origin of life (Richard Dawkins attributes the origin of life to "luck.") and continue through the fossil record. Most precisely, the oldest rocks that can bear fossils already have fossils of microbes, some undergoing cell division. Nature "invented" DNA, RNA, cell structure, cell function with startling rapidity.

The last two sentences have nothing to do with evolution as a specific scientific theory in the first place.  However, Dr. Whatever may also be attempting to make an sad attempt to show that complexity can arise quickly (we must also understand that quickly is in the geological sense of the word) which isn't a greatly contested idea in the first place.  Now, on to PE and gradualism.

A common mistake is to see PE (Gould and Eldredge, 1972) as a complete replacement to phyletic gradualism proposed by Darwin (1896).  Indeed, even their original paper carried the title, "Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism" yet the title can be misleading.  The idea PE proposed did not seek to replace phyletic gradualism completely but only attack the assumption that is was the only model of change at work even though their enthusiasm in the original paper may be misinterpreted as replacing the old with the new.  The idea Gould and Eldredge put forth was based heavily on Ernst Mayr's "geographic speciation" – more commonly known today as allopatric speciation in which geographic isolation served to separate portions of a population from the whole and subsequently rapid change in the smaller population over time would occur – what Mayr (1954) called the "conspicuous divergence of peripherally isolated populations" (pp. 158). Seizing upon this idea as a springboard, Gould and Eldredge saw these peripherally isolated populations as hotbeds of rapid evolutionary activity where cladogenesis would occur (divergence of a parent species into daughter species).  They proposed that this would account for inconsistencies seen in the fossil record when viewed through the filter of gradualism.  Over the years since the Gould and Eldredge paper, it has been found that both gradualism and PE are portions of the same process of evolutionary change and empirical evidence supports this view (Pagel, Venditti & Meade, 2006).

Did Darwin have it all right? No, he didn't but he was also working this up in the 19th century.  However, none of the evidence in regard to evolutionary theory has served to invalidate it, on the contrary it has supported it time and time again.  Has it gone through some changes as more evidence comes to light? Yes but has the evidence shown a great deviation from Darwin's core idea of change in populations over time due to natural selection? Negative.

If I find the time, I may address his other "myths"...if I find the motivation  8)

References:

Darwin, C. (1896). The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection. (Vol. 1). New York: D.
Appleton and Company.

Gould, S. & Eldredge, N. (1972). Punctuated equilibria: An alternative to phyletic gradualism. In
T. Schopf (Ed.). Models in Paleobiology. San Francisco: Freeman Cooper.

Mayr, E. (1954). Change of genetic environment and evolution.  In J. Huxley, A. Hardy & E.
Ford (Eds.). Evolution as a process.  London: Allen and Unwin.

Pagel, M., Venditti, C. & Meade, A. (2006). Large punctuational contribution of speciation to
evolutionary divergence at the molecular level.  Science, 314, 119-121.