PhDP

40 pages long ? I hope it's double-spaced. BTW, if you're using LaTeX to write your paper; lineno is a good package for line numbering.

It's probably why he said "natural selection comes in 3 forms". In truth, there's many different ways to classify the different forms of natural selection.

I think it's important to note that it's not true for all animals. For birds, it's the opposite (female = ZW, male = WW) and hymenopterans (ants, bees, waps) use the haplodiploid sex determination system. Honestly, I don't know how many animals use the XY system you're describing. Mammals do, but as less than 1% of all animals are mammals... Some species of insects also use this system, however.

Paralith, I think you should read the articles; it's not about historical constraints. I'm not a mutationist, but...; ...that's exactly the problem. That's not evolution; it's just an unrealistic view of evolution. The evolution of X can generally be explained by one of the three major type of evolutionary hypotheses; (1) Mutations (variation) + Stochastic processes + Selection (2) Mutations (variation) + Stochastic processes (3) Mutations (variation + direction) + other mechanisms (1) was discovered by Fisher et al. during the synthesis. The importance (and perhaps, prevalence) of (2) was discovered in the 60s. Mutationists argue that (3) is also a very strong force. The point made by several scientists working on these hypotheses (mostly theoretical population geneticist and molecular biologists) is that, even thought (1) is not as dominant as we once thought, very few scientists outside the field even consider the other hypotheses, either because it's much easier to consider only selection or because they just can't understand (2) (which requires good maths) or (3) (which requires a good understanding of genetics). The point made by Nei and Stoltzfus is simply that (3) is important, perhaps the most important force in evolution. You're wrong to reduce mutations to "variations". You can't explain the evolution of the GC content unless you accept that some mutational bias imposes a direction to evolution. I don't think life is explained by natural selection. Natural selection is the best explanation we have for adaptations, but the vast majorities of variations are nonadaptatives. I don’t personally understand why there is such a debate on the topic Well, probably because it's the most important debate going on in evolutionary biology right now. If we want to improve the predictive power of evolutionary biology, we need to know what mechanisms shape life, how they are affected by the environment, and how strong they are compared to the other mechanism.

...and this thread is also going to be closed if it becomes a thread about religion In truth, it's not really about religion; it's about the new perspective of modern society on parenting and education. We don't consider that parents "own" their children anymore.

I was reading the "news" from one of my favorite website, CreationWiki. I learned that 15 christian families established in Quebec will get out of the province so they won't have to teach they children about evolution and, even worst, the "acceptance of alternative lifestyles". http://www.wnd.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57199

...well it's not really back. Mutationist hypotheses have been present in the last 50 years. But as most evolutionary biologists were debating about the relevance of the neutral theory, nobody really cared about "mutationists". It's changing, in the last couple of years several strong articles were written about it, especially by Masatoshi Nei; Nei, M. (2007) The new mutation theory of phenotypic evolution. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 104:12235-12242. Nei, M. (2007) Historical perspectives of the above PNAS paper (informal comments). Nei, M. (2005) Selectionism and neutralism in molecular evolution. Mol. Biol. Evol. 22:2318-2342. Another great article was published by Arlin Stoltzfus, but it cannot be accessed by everyone; Stoltzfus, A. 2006. Mutationism and the Dual Causation of Evolutionary Change. Evolution and Development 8: 304-317. Many aspect of neomutationism are controversial and they will probably generate many studies. The Selectionist-Neutralist debate isn't over yet, I think it's fair to say the Mutationist-Selectionist-Neutralist debate will not be solved easily. However there's at least one important (and noncontroversial) point advanced by mutationists; both for historical and mathematical reasons, mutations were often treated as the source of variations, and nothing more. We should get rid of this bias, as we know mutations can impose a direction to evolution (the case of the GC content is a key example). The simple notion; "mutation (variation) + selection = evolution", is simply not accurate in most cases.

I'm more than willing to talk and answer questions about evolution, in my opinion, it's the most wonderful and beautiful theory science has to offer. I gave you 3 proofs of evolution, they all lead to predictions that have been confirmed. and you don't even have the basic knowledge of genetics necessary to understand them. Clearly, if you really want to understand evolution, you'll have to do some research. On the other hand, if you have faith in creationism, that's ok, but don't claim it's science. Science is done by publishing articles in serious journals, not by trying to convince high schoolers.

Of course you don't have enough training. You need to read something serious about evolution. Bashing something you know nothing about is just absurd. Biological clock ? I was asking you a question about the molecular clock. Do you know what a pseudogene is ? It's functionless. Do you know why we can't produce vitamin C ? And what about the third codon ? I'm sorry, but I'm studying evolution, I'll start a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology soon. So when you claim evolution is a religious beliefs, when you claim evolutionary biology is not true, I expect you to know what your talking about.

I do dismiss their claim, but because of science, not by making ad hominem arguments. Even when a bias is evident, I think we really need to focus on evidences. Of course, when gross errors are made, or when the scientists are dishonest, then we can ask questions about their behaviour, but otherwise...

Evolutionary biology is a serious science, Creation, on the other hand, has nothing to do with science. Ok. Just for fun; #1 The molecular clock. It's a predictive tool based on evolutionary biology. How can we build, and test, a molecular clock if evolution is a "religion" ? #2 Another prediction of evolutionary biology; the third codon. Variations at the third codon are very different from variations at the two first codons, why ? This variation can easily be explained by evolutionary biology, how can you explain it ? #3 Gene duplication. We see this all over the genome; the results of gene duplications. How can it be explained ? How can you explain that we, humans, have pretty much everything to synthesize ascorbic acid (vitamin C), but because of a pseudogene, we can't. How can you explain the very existence of pseudogenes ?

Science has a very special class of experts, where the opinion of individuals doesn't matter much. Nobody would ever let an amateur perform neurosurgical procedures, but in science, an amateur could publish articles and destroy theories built by dozen of PhDs. So you're right, scientists don't deserve canonization or demonization, but the most important thing is that we should not care too much about the individuals. Unless you can prove scientists are biased, I think we should focus on articles and publications. I really don't think we can agree on this. I think you ought to give the authors the benefits of the doubt, and you should criticize content, not the authors, or if you have to criticise the authors you should wait for evidences. Actually, my point is not that science was unfairly admonished, my point is that scientists are often, very often, accused of having some sort of motivation, and that "argument" is used to undermine science. Of course, while all the attention is on the scientists themselves, nobody cares about facts. It's very trendy.

Still, credibility is everything for scientists; I don't think it's fair to suggest they might be publishing biased studies for ideological reasons. I feel a lot of empathy toward the experts (not just scientists) which are being strongly criticised, not because they are not doing their job correctly, but simply because some people don't like what they hear. We really have to give them the benefits of the doubt (of course it doesn't mean you have to accept their conclusions, it's because it's published by an "expert" that it's true). You have to prove they are wrong first, and then questions can be asked about their motives, and even then we should be careful. However, it has to be done after something wrong was found, not the other way around. For now, you just say "far left ideologues" want to prove a link between conservatism and intelligence, but the real question is; is it true. If it's not and some people are still trying to promote this idea, then I think you would be right, it might be similar to conservatives pseudoscientists trying to put God in every equations, but until then... And BTW, it's also not "politically correct" to study intelligence and political ideologies. What I find amusing about this is that, in the last 30 years, psychology has got much closer to biology, genetics, and evolution. There has been a lot of controversial discoveries and they always lead to accusations of bias; homosexuality is genetic (leftist propaganda!), women are more important in sexual selection than men (feminist propaganda!), hypersexualisation might reduce violence against women (anti-feminist propaganda!), rape is an adaptation (pro-rape propaganda!), and sociobiologists are often accused of being part of a vast right-wing conspiracy.

This hypothesis was disproved by phylogenetics; http://www.nature.com/nature/links/010426/010426-4.html

This is not about seeing both side of the debate, it's about speculating about other people's motivation while we should concentrate on the facts. How can you say you see "both sides of a debate", you talked about "faux scientific evidence". Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you have decided, with no hard evidence, that these studies were false. Undeniable truth? I said that? No, it's absurd. I'm very open to all rational discussion about the evidences. But I'm suffering from severe allergic reactions to any attempt to undermine an argument by transforming a scientific debate into a political debate.

You should read about compatibilism. In my opinion it's a flawed attempt to salvage free will, but I think it's still quite popular among philosophers.

I'm curious to see how many people here think we will never achieve the Theory of Everything (TOE). I think it's quite plausible. In fact I can think of may reason why we couldn't find it; our intelligence is too limited, our maths are too limited, we're unable to collect enough information, we're unable to test some important theories or even worst, the TOE of everything might not even exist.

Wait a minute.... They present evidences, they publish it in a science journal with a strict peer review policy, you make unfounded speculations about their motives, you associate this kind of study to the belief in God, and somehow, THEY are the ideologues, not you? In reality, the article from Nature is not very significant to the debate. It might contain mistakes and errors, I'll have to look at the details, but I doubt it's as bad as the article on stale. The truth is, there are many articles, from many journals, showing about the same thing from different perspectives. If some scientists are biased and can't do their job properly, we should publish articles to prove they are wrong. But making personal attacks and speculating about other people's motives, that's the tactic of an ideologue.

Apportionment is fair to you? What legal trick? The 16th amendment doesn't give congress the right to levy income taxes; it only gives them the power to do so without apportionment. If you want to reduce or eliminate income taxes, you "just" need to win a majority in congress, its call democracy and because of it; the income tax is here to stay (or something similar).

I just thought some people might be interested to know the New York Times "will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site"... They explain why here

Where are you getting stuck ? It shouldn't be too hard to solve if you remember the basic rules; [math] \frac{d}{dx} f(x)^a = af(x)^{a-1}\times \frac{df(x)}{dx} [/math] [math] \frac{d}{dx} e^{f(x)} = e^{f(x)} \times \frac{df(x)}{dx} [/math] [math] \frac{d}{dx} f(y) = 0 [/math]

Why? The constitution grants the congress the power to levy both indirect and indirect taxes, but for some historical reason, direct taxes had to be levied proportionally to the population in each state. So if state A has a pop. of 10 M, and state B a pop. of 5 M, then state A must pay be exactly twice as much. Let's say sate A is poorer and has a younger population, it still would have to give exactly twice as much in income taxes. There's a historical reason for this, but right now, it's crazy and it makes income taxes much more complicated and unfair. Ron Paul said in a speech for this "Liberty Amendment" (sounds good with liberty fries); But the fact is, the 16th amendment gave no new power to congress, and repelling it would not make incomes taxes illegal, it would make them very complicated, and unfair, but not illegal; If Paul wants to reduce or eliminate income taxes, he should have the guts to make a strong argument for it, and I would respect that even though I disagree, but playing the constitution card is not very brave and in this case, it's not even intellectually defensible. So for you it's normal that all American citizens have the same responsibilities, but only those born in the U.S. have the right to be president? You think it's o.k. for American citizen born outside the U.S. to become senator, representative, governors? But that's exactly my point. The constitution is an important document, it's the framework of a society, but as a society change and evolve the constitution must be allowed to evolve as well. It's absurd to limit political actions to what the founding fathers thought was good 300 years ago, it has to evolve.

I perfectly agree with you that she has been demonized in different ways. But it's also true that she's trying quite hard to look tough, and many Democrats don't like it, despite the fact that we have few reasons to believe she would be Hawkish. Mark Penn (her strategist) doesn't want to get to the election in 2008 with a candidate that is seen as weak on security.

I think it’s just a prejudice and has no basis. And I don’t really care about common sense, I care about facts and facts are often destroying arguments based on so-called “common sense”. I don't know what you read about inequalities in America, but the income of most people is determined by their education level and by the sector they are working in; it has little or nothing to do with how good they are at managing money. Of course, it could explain some variations within a sector, but as most inequalities are between sectors (it's in part why the expansion of the service sector in America has increased inequalities), I fail to see how "managing money" could be so important... for most people, at least. Anyway, even if it was true, even if rich people were better at managing money, it wouldn't mean giving them would be rational. Your argument would only be true if inequalities had no impact for the economy, and it's not the case.

I'm interested in stochastic processes because of their application to both ecology and evolutionary genetics, you ?