lucaspa

It is totally relevant. You are saying that human morals are true irrespective of species. That is, it is wrong for one species (human) to kill another species in order to survive or improve the lives of that species. Now, if your ethics are not just special pleading, then the idea of "no species barrier" must apply to all species, not just humans. But wolves kill members of other species every day. Why is this not wrong? Are you going to exempt eating? Well then, the second website of the OP is exempt also, because those chickens are being killed for food. However, doesn't eating fall within the broader category of "benefit"? Eating allows the wolves to live longer and better lives. After all, starvation is not pleasant. So, if we kill animals in the process of research to provide longer and better lives for humans, what's the difference? But that rejection of "anthropocentrism" is not held to. As I pointed out earlier, you have no problems destroying habitat of animals for farmland to grow the food you need to survive! So, is starvation not a form of torture? It is defined so by the Geneva Conventions for humans. Yet by depriving animals of their habitat, you condemn them to starvation. But no outcry there. The postion of animal rights advocates is hypocrisy pure and simple. They simply have too much wealth and time on their hands.

Don't overestimate them, either. The government has ALREADY spent tens of millions to develop drug testing without animals. Where do you think the computer models and cultures of human cells came from? All of these methods have limitations. For clinical trials, there are the ethical questions of using humans where they could be harmed. Cells in culture don't address problems of absorption, distribution, modification, and excretion of the drugs. Computer models are only as good as the data that goes into them, and the whole animal/human system is very complex. That's a premise. I challenge it. There are several differences, one being that the animals are not of our species. Ethics and morals are what we decide applies to our species. It's not ironic. The goal is to save human lives. Mice and rats aren't of our species. This presumes a couple of things: 1. That animals are indeed "feeling beings" 2. That ethics based on the ability to experience are indeed valid. 3. That animals are just as valuable as mentally similar humans. I challenge all of those premises. I say none of them are valid. Without the premises, your conclusions collapse. No, you don't. Morals applies to your own species. ALL species on the planet survive by hurting other species. Even plants survive by crowding out plants of other species and taking nutrients which would feed those other species of plants. The naivete is that you can extend "morality" to just those species you want to while claiming what you do above. We hurt animals all the time. Every time we farm, we hurt the animals that used that land when it was not farmland. We mustdo so or we wouldn't be able to grow the plants we need to survive. Ever see the movie NIMH? It starts with all the rodents in a field scrambling because it is "moving day" -- when the farmer plows his field. Now, do you advocate that farmers go thru their fields each spring and gently move any nests of rodents that are there? No, you don't. Non-sequitor. Races are, by definition, members of our own species. In fact, the whole history of "rights" is in getting us to view other groups of humans (such as races) as human! Once we do that, then we automatically extend morality and ethics to them. You want to extend ethics beyond our species. That is very difficult at best, impossible when the species are not sentient. And they do so by downgrading the other group to a status less than human. "Slopes", "kikes", "ragheads", etc. are all terms designed to demote the group out of humanity. If that is so, then you have a problem. Because you cannot exist without harming members of other species. If you extend this, you can't even take antibiotics because you are killing millions of bacteria! Nor can you use soap for the same reason. Fine, then non-members of the species H. sapiens have no claim to moral value. We're done. You just said above that it was! After all, you said that non-members of a group have no claim to moral value. Yes, what species you belong to is completely relevant. Is a beaver being "immoral" when it builds a dam? Think of the number of other species it harms as it floods the valley behind its dam. That isn't immoral because the beaver is not harming other beavers. Think of a deciduous forest replacing a grassland. The species of the forest are harming any number of species of grasses, yet this isn't immoral. Because the trees are not harming their own species. Think of any carnivore. They must kill animals for food, but you don't consider them immoral. They are harming other species. Only when a carnivore is "cannibal" do we even entertain the idea of immorality. Remember above where you said there were clinical trials? That contradicts the sentence I bolded. After all, we DO conduct testing on humans for the benefit it brings to people. So it is not "categorically unjustified". We can and do justify it under certain circumstances. No, it doesn't. Many scientists -- like me -- who animal research care deeply about animals. We are pet owners. We take exquisite care to avoid unnecessary pain and suffering to animals. We design our experiments so that we use the minimum number of animals possible. However, we simply recognize that morality applies to our own species. That all species exploit other species for survival and that there is no immorality in doing so. The one exception would be a sentient species like us. However, even you aren't claiming that rats and mice are sentient. There's no schizophrenia involved. People killing people is wrong. But it isn't wrong for a shark or a polar bear to kill a person. Nor is it wrong for people to kill other species. The only naive ethic is the one that you are using. And the only moral contradictions are the ones that arise from your position: it's immoral to kill animals in research but just fine to kill them with plows. Done within IACUC guidelines, it's fine. You got a very biased set of propaganda. The second site has nothing to do with animal testing -- it is food processing of chickens. I notice that you put "cruelty/testing" together as tho they are the same thing. No bias there. Yes, I am involved in research on regenerative medicine and I use animals. We have a paper under review where we used adult stem cells to regenerate the meniscus in the knees of rabbits. This week I will be making gaps in the thigh bones of rats to test the ability of adult stem cells to regenerate bone to heal hip and recalcitrant fractures, especially in the elderly. How many are killed in the wild by predators? The animals I am working on get surgeries done basically as they are done in humans. The animals are anesthetized thruout the surgery and receive analgesics for 3 days post-op. They have an internal plate similar to what is affixed to human fractures, and the sutures are ones taken from the operating room. You have objections to this? Why? Many people have agreed to this. However, what happens when, years later, DNA evidence exonerates the "violent" criminal? How much testing on people who may be innocent do we as a society tolerate?

Xerxes, go to my post where I post Darwin's summary of natural selection. All you need to know is that traits are inherited. You don't need to know why inheritance happens. And Darwin didn't know why. He didn't have modern genetics when he discovered natural selection. And like genetics doesn't require the molecular mechanisms underlying it, so understanding natural selection doesn't require knowledge of the source of variation and inheritance. Variation and inheritance are the premises of Darwin's syllogism of natural selection. He demonstrates that these premises are true, but not the underlying mechanisms for them. That is why we have Neo-Darwinism (also called the Modern Synthesis). That was the integration of classical genetics with evolution.

Chaucer isn't really "modern" English; it's "Middle" English. Most students read a translation of the original (with updated spelling, too). Reading the original requires quite a bit of study of the idioms and some of the words have different definitions than they have now. Notice the extensive glossary included in this online edition of Canterbury Tales: http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm So I doubt that the OPer would be able to easily have a conversation with Chaucer or people of his time.

Does she have medical insurance? If she does, then the cost is partially covered. She does need to go get checked out. But not necessarily in a hospital. She can start as an outpatient. First go to a physician. Probably an internist. She has neural symptoms but they could be due to a more systemic problem. He may recommend tests, but they should be as an outpatient. She does not have to let herself be admitted to a hospital. It sounds like she would rather refuse until somebody has a diagnosis. And she has the right to do that. Of course, the internist might give her a diagnosis that means she will accept being hospitalized. Let us know how this goes.

That's not true. It turns out that 2 individuals contain 75% of the genetic variability of the entire population. Founder events -- where there is just one breeding pair to start a population -- are relatively rare but not unknown. Drosophila in Hawaii, for instance, are the result of a founder event. "A colony founded by a small number of colonists will suffer some loss of genetic variation: uncommon alleles, in particular are unlikely to be represented. Teh average level of heterozygosity, however, is not greatly reduced in the first generation: it is (1-1/2N)H0, where N is the number of founders and H0 is the heterozygosity in the source population. Thus in a colony founded by one mating pair (N=2), the heterozygosity is, on average, reduced by only 25% in the first generation. Recalling that the genetic variance of a character is proportional to the population's heterozygosity at loci that affect that character, we see that most of the heterozygosity and genetic variance of a large population are, on average, carried over into a colony founded by a few individuals."Evolutionary Biology, D Futuyma, pg 304

It's mononuclear. Probably a monocyte or a leukocyte. You say it was in the pus? Then possibly a dying monocyte or leukocyte. That would account for the odd shape (both cells should be spherical). Or perhaps your processing squished it.

I think Coyne overlooked one obvious and devastating rebuttal to Coulter: most evolutionary biologists in history have been Christians! Also, Coyne falls for the "Christians are IDers, evolutionists are atheists" argument and never challenges it. "Coulter finally gives away the game on page 277: "God exists whether or not archaeopteryx ever evolved into something better. If evolution is true, then God created evolution." " What Coulter does is very common in the creationist community: turing the creationism vs evolution debate about two scientific theories into an atheism vs theism debate. What I dislike is that Coyne goes along with it! Why? I suspect because Coyne is an atheist and would like to "prove" his faith by science just as much as Coulter wants to "prove" her faith by science. But Coyne's acceptance of Coulter's basic logical error does is also harmful to science. Having science "prove" there is no deity is just as erroneous as Coulter trying to have science "prove" there is one.

Uh, the point was that the predictions were wrong was MY point. "Again, I have seen articles in the physics literature that complain that predictions made by ST have not been found. " You just said that the predictions were wrong. They didn't go away. So ST is still making predictions now. Your complaint seems to be that advocates of ST are simply ignoring that the predictions are wrong. Just relax. If that is the case, then the accumulation of those anomalies and falsified predictions will refute the theory. Not basically different, is it? We still have vibrating strings/'branes, right? So the theory has been modified. Can't complain about that, can we? That's what is supposed to happen to scientific theories in the face of data. An issue might be: have string theorists deliberately modified the theory so that it is now unfalsifiable by any conceivable data? That is, have they added ad hoc hypotheses such that they have covered all the falsifications? IF that is the case, then they have violated some of the rules of being good scientists.

String theory has not been pursued in any "odder" fashion than other theories in physics. Dirac used to write pretty equations and even went so far as to say that the accuracy of the theory should be judged by the beauty of the equations. Einstein's Relativity started out as a lot of pretty equations that told him what the universe would look like. Hawking's No Boundary fits exactly your description of String Theory. Your objection seems to be the sociology of the situation, not the science. That is, your opinion is that too much effort has gone into String Theory and not enough resources have been allocated to alternative theories. That may indeed be a valid criticism. Allocation of resources within science is not organized. However, I notice that Smolin himself has always had a job! So the resource allocation can't be THAT bad. And String Theory may indeed be incorrect. But the point here is that Smolin is not going to decide THAT issue in a book directed to the lay public. The issue of the accuracy of String Theory is going to be decided by those best able to evaluate the math and the data: the physics community. And it is going to be decided on the data. As far as I can see, all Smolin is doing is confusing everyone and not letting science get on with doing science.

Martin' date=' let's clarify. The questions are: a. Is Motl's review an accurate representation of the book and the state of physics? b. Is Motl's personality sufficient reason to dismiss the review? I never said that X was insightful or objective. I agreed that he used ad hominem arguments, synedoche, and other forms of weak argumentation. My point was that his obvious personal failings were not sufficient, in and of themselves, to dismiss the review. In the process of doing that, I tried to show several deficiencies of fact and evidence in the review that led me to question its accuracy. You said in your post: "I noticed him making what I perceived as technically inaccurate statements about non-string QG as early as 2003 on Usenet sci.physics.research. I was glad that his list of objections to LQG were eventually deleted from Wiki because I think they probably misled a number of people. I personally don't take seriously anything he says about non-string QG because I don't think he knows what he is talking about---or cares if it is accurate. " Notice your "I perceived as technically inaccurate statements"! Guess what? That's testing the accuracy of the review! You've also tested his objections to LQG and found them to be inaccurate. Therefore if we have the hypothesis: X always writes accurate statements concerning physics, then you have refuted that hypothesis. Now comes the question: are any of X's statements about physics accurate and, if so, which ones? This gives you a position of skepticism. It is the same position I reached by reading the one review. In my case, it was because Motl did not adequately document -- by direct quotation -- that Smolin held the positions Motl attributed to him. 2. And yes, there are other reviews that one can read. But it should not! We should be above and beyond that. So the question is: why would anyone focus on the personality when the issue is the accuracy of the review? OK, why are you happy about that? Does Smolin present an accurate picture of physics?

As you noted, it is impossible to provide an exact definition of species. That's because evolution is true. Since popuations transform gradually from one species to another, there is ALWAYS a gray area where it is unclear whether there is still one species or two. Also, as you noted, the idea of species is different with different types of organisms. Mostly biologists use the biological species concept, which deals with the ability to interbreed. But, for fossils, they use the morphological species concept which is based on differences in appearances. For unicellular organisms, the genetic species concept is used. This looks at the genetic differences between populations. You would get an argument here from most evolutionary biologists -- particularly Ernst Mayr (What Evolution Is). If you look, selection is STILL at the level of the individual. You still don't select for the group. It's just that one group has many more individuals that do well in the competition for scarce resources. Think of the situation that the environment has changed -- now the envirionment includes competition for the same resources by individuals from the other species. What this shows is that speciation is not a simple all-or-nothing event. There is a continuum of reproductive isolation during speciation, and in some cases fully separated species have not yet been formed. This has also been studied in the lab. However, I would be interested in citations for your statement "fully fertile hybrids between obviously distinct species" Thank you. Not quite. Most traits are combinations of several genes. So a combination of alleles ABCD is a different trait than alleles abcd and AbCD or abCD, etc. Recombination shuffles alleles and can lead to the fixation of some alleles and elimination of others. Thus, recombination could keep the combination of ABCD and AbCD. In that case, alleles a,c, and d are eliminated from the populationa and alleles A, C, and D are fixed. So recombination can change the population by itself. In fact, recombination accounts for over 90% of variability within a population.

Not at all accurate. THe part in red reflects a theory within evolution called the "neutral theory" of evolution. It was advanced by Kimura and colleagues and involved speciation. There were two theories: 1. The original one proposed by Darwin -- where natural selection gradually transforms a population over generations such that the new population is so different from the original as to constitute a new species and be unable to interbreed with the original species. In this theory, reproductive isolation is a product of natural selection. 2. The neutral theory where reproductive isolation happens first to create a new species, then natural selection acts on it to change the new species. The data is now very clear. #1 is correct can #2 is wrong. The PNAS paper is simply another nail in the coffin of #2. However, there had already been several studies in the lab and in the wild showing that it is natural selection that works on an isolated population of a species -- changing that population to meet the new environment. The result of those changes by natural selection is that the new population can no longer interbreed with the original population. Sometimes natural selection works directly on genes that influence reproductive isolation. In fact, there is a study finding the genes that control hybrid sterility. When these genes are changed, the hybrids are no longer fertile among themselves or with the parent populations. And these are changed by natural selection. References available upon request.

Yes, they can. The "data" here being 1. What the book actually states -- and you can document this by direct quotes within the review or comparison to other statements by the book author that you have already read. 2. Whether the review correctly states the position of the field. And here the data is the primary literature of the field. But deciding the statements are wrong because the reviewer is abusive, insulting, obnoxious, etc, is not valid. Those are personality traits of the reviewer. They can be used to decide some things: whether you want to have dinner with him or have him date your sister. But, those traits don't tell you that the statements in the review about science (or the book) are not accurate.

Because he is supposedly addressing the deficiencies of String Theory. Since ST is mathematics, then criticism should show some of the flaws in the math! Otherwise, what you have is the equivalent of creationist literature that purport to show the flaws of evolution but never show the particular data or math involved there, either. You are saying that physics students don't know math and can't follow math? If that is the case, then the physics community has much larger problems than Smolin is talking about. 1. Department heads don't decide funding. That is done at the level of NSF. And NSF uses peer-review where the reviewers do know the math. 2. You are saying that departmental chairmen in Physics don't know math? Again, if that is true then physics has a lot bigger, but different, problem than Smolin addresses! Incompetence among the students and Chairmen! Why? How many physicists would be unable to follow the math? If there are many, then the physics community has much bigger problems than Smolin's argument with String Theory! 1. But he is criticizing String Theory itself. 2. It is untrue that String Theory has not made a single prediction. Why have there been several modifications to String Theory? Because String Theory MUST predict the universe we see already. And several versionso of ST have failed that prediction -- thus the modifications. This ignorance of how science is conducted, and how ST has been conducted, bothers me. If this is what Smolin, and you, are criticizing String Theory about, then all that has happened is that you have not only made a strawman, but a completely erroneous strawman. Again, I have seen articles in the physics literature that complain that predictions made by ST have not been found. If there were no predictiions, then how can they say the experiments haven't found them?

Yes, but the nukes are going to have to be near the cities involved. That is, you can't have a remote nuclear plant in Wyoming that is shipping electricity to LA. You need the plants in LA. So we have the safety issues. I wouldn't hold my breath over this one. Even plants, with 3.8 billion years of evolution trying to find efficient designs, are not that efficient. It's possible. The looming catastrophe of global warming could be such that the risk of a nuclear accident is now viewed as less than the risk of global warming. Risk vs risk.

For everyone, let's try Darwin's summary of natural selection: "If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each beings welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occured useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection." [Origin, p 127 6th ed.] Notice how this is a syllogism. Premises: 1. Individuals vary between themselves. Darwin documents the truth of this premise exhaustively in Origin. 2. Struggle for life based on geometric increase in the number of individuals. That is basically: more individuals are born than the environment can sustain. Darwin also exhaustively documents the truth of this premise. Conclusions: 1. Individuals with variations useful in the struggle will survive the struggle. 2. If the variation is inheritable, then the offspring will also have the variation. Notice that, like all valid syllogisms, if the premises are true, then the conclusions must also be true. Well, the premises are documented to be true. Therefore, the conclusions are true. Gutz, you don't need genetics. All you really need to know is that: 1. Individuals vary. 2. The variations are inheritable. The mechanism of that inheritance, as someone pointed out, is irrelevant. It can be saving program lines in a computer or it can be DNA. There is a simulation of natural selection and evolution somewhere on the web. You can watch the evolution of virtual organisms.