1. Good Science Writers: Richard Dawkins

Comment #216690 by Larry Moran on July 23, 2008 at 12:12 pm

Richard Dawkins asks,

I am interested in the suggestion that Climbing Mount Improbable might not be an ideal title.

Richard, we've been over this ground before but for the benefit of the lurkers let me explain why I think the metaphor is inappropriate.

To begin with, you use the Mt. Improbable image as a metaphor for evolution. This is misleading since evolution encompasses more than just adaptation. It would be difficult to apply the "Climbing Mt. Improbable" metaphor to the organization of our genome, for example, since it's clearly not well-designed and could never be characterized as the peak of an adaptive landscape.

But even as a metaphor for adaptation the image is less than perfect. Most readers will see the peak of Mt. Improbable as a goal of adaptation, implying that evolution somehow recognizes that there is an ultimate perfection that all organisms seek to achieve by reaching the summit. As you well know (I hope) there are very few (any?) species that are perfectly adapted to their environment. If this were true, adaptation would cease because the species resides on the summit of Mt. Improbable.

Thus, in the real world, species tend to move about in the foothills rather than attempt to scale the highest peak. As long as they are good enough to survive and reproduce that's all that's required.

Yes, some individuals within the population might acquire a mutation that makes them a little more fit but in most cases the selective advantage will be too small to make much of a difference. I don't believe there's any great pressure to get to the top of Mt. Improbable. That's why we usually don't see perfection in nature. And it explains why most organisms do not look as though they have been designed by some intelligent being. If anything the "design" looks more like a Rube Goldberg creation, and I doubt that anyone would say that those creations represent the peak of perfection.

I prefer a different view of evolution, one that emphasizes chance and accident [Evolution by Accident]. For me, the metaphor of "Climbing Mt. Improbable" is quite wrong as a metaphor of evolution.

Now, I understand that you disagree about the role of chance and accident. You say, for example, on page 326 of Climbing Mt. Improbable, "It is all the product of an unconscious Darwinian fine-tuning, whose intricate perfection we should not believe if it were not before our eyes" (referring to the evolution of figs and fig wasps). For someone who believes that such a description is characteristic of most evolution (adaptation) the "Climbing" metaphor may seem quite appropriate.

BTW, I agree with you that your case for adaptationism is much stronger in Climbing Mt. Improbable than in The Blind Watchmaker. I especially like the chapter you mention, The Museum of All Shells, where you discuss - among other things - the contrast between your view of evolution and the mutationist view. Ironically, you begin that discussion by pointing out that this is a sophisticated controversy, "... and Mount Improbable, even in its multiple-peaked version, isn't a powerful enough metaphor to explore it." [see Climbing Mount Improbable as Metaphor for more discussion]

2. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #121884 by Larry Moran on February 4, 2008 at 9:46 am

Steve Zara said,

Not necessarily. Mutation alone is not evolution. There has to be selection pressure.

As others have already pointed out, this is dead wrong. There does not have to be selection for evolution to occur; although it's easy tosee how you might get the wrong impression on this website! :-)

Strong negative selection depresses the rate of evolution. When that selection is removed, formerly deleterious mutations become neutral and they are likely to increase in frequency in the population by random genetic drift.

Thus, the rate of evolution speeds up.

The Toronto Star article discusses a paper that was debated all over the blogosphere last December. The general consensus was not favourable. It seems pretty obvious that Lynda Hurst, the author of the newspaper article, didn't read the blogs. Instead she consulted a few anthropologists who weren't able to give her the help she needed.

I don't have links to everyone else's blogs on the paper but here are a few of my own. Note that the author of the study, John Hawks, participated actively in the debate over his paper. He deserves a lot of credit for doing so.

Is Evolution Linked to Environmental Change?

The False Icon of Progressive Evolution

Are Humans Evolving Faster?

Accelerated Human Evolution

3. How Evolution REALLY Works

Comment #112568 by Larry Moran on January 17, 2008 at 1:33 pm

The video says "Evolution is the product of Natural Selection AND Mutation. Either alone does nothing."

The emphasis here is in defining evolution in a way that excludes random genetic drift or any other mechanism of evolution. That's wrong, in my opinion, although Richard Dawkins would probably disagree and think that the video is just fine.

The irony is that the video begins with "The world is full of misinformation."

I discussed this unfortunate video a couple of months ago in "What Is Evolution?
[http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/11/what-is-evolution.html]

4. Microbiology: Building from the Inside Out

Comment #40341 by Larry Moran on May 14, 2007 at 6:37 am

Liu and Ochman have unraveled the history of the origins of bacterial flagella by using a phylogenetic profiling method applied across whole genome sequences to identify a set of 24 core genes in the common ancestor of bacteria. The members of this core set were probably derived from a single gene that had undergone a combination of successive duplication, loss, transfer, and diversification events.

This is almost certainly incorrect. The flagellar genes are not all descended from a common ancestor in spite of what Liu and Ochman say in their paper.

This PNAS paper has been widely criticized on many blogs. See the article "Update on PNAS flagellum paper" on The Panda's Thumb for the lastest summary of the flaws in the paper.

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/04/update_on_pnas.html

5. Canadian ID Scandal

Comment #9343 by Larry Moran on November 24, 2006 at 2:18 pm

Gary Bauslaugh says,

What is so worrisome about this is that it suggests that SSHRC is in thrall either to religious fundamentalists or, more liklely, to postmodern relativists, who are altogether scornful about the legimacy of science. Others such as Peter McKnight of the Vancouver Sun have said that this incident represents a coming together of the religious right with the postmodern left.

Are you serious? Take a pill.

6. Canadian ID Scandal

Comment #9312 by Larry Moran on November 24, 2006 at 11:51 am

Give it a rest, Gary. There are much more important things to get your knickers in a knot about. The idea that leading Canadian scholars would advocate intelligent design is ludicrous. SSHRC is ignoring you because you're trying to make a mountain of a molehill.

7. Canadian ID Scandal

Comment #9109 by Larry Moran on November 23, 2006 at 4:41 pm

The idea that a major Canadian granting agency would have doubts about the validity of intelligent design is absurd. SSRC has issued a statement [http://www.sshrc.ca/web/whatsnew/alters_e.asp] about the issue. It's clear that the letter sent out to Alters was poorly worded and SSHRC has apologized.

There's no reason to doubt what the members of the committee or the official spokesperson at SSHRC are saying about the incident. They are not likely to be liars. This is a tempest in a teapot.