Arete

I think the main issue is that, at least in the scientific field of evolutionary biology, no one has shied away from studying or acknowledging mechanisms like plasticity, horizontal gene transfer, epigenetics, regulatory changes, transposition, methylation etc. They are all actively studied and accepted as playing a role in evolution. It's not as if there's a large degree of debate as to whether there's a role for such processes or that they need to be considered. Given this, does there need to be a "paradigm shift" or "new synthesis"? As a scientist in the field I don't see a need - especially as none of the additional processes negate previous ideas, they are simply additions to the processes that were considered before. If anything the synthesis of evolutionary theory has simply been ongoing. There's been groups like the Arlenberg 16 who have tried to re-brand evolutionary theory, but it's generally turned out to be hype and personal investment in tenure clocks etc that's motivated it. It's hard to decree a revolution in a scientific field which as been consistently "evolving" (no pun intended) for the last 50 years.

This is just argument from incredulity. False. There's tonnes of direct evidence, particularly in microbes of novel trait development for e.g. the evolution of citrate metabolism in E coli. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment#Evolution_of_aerobic_citrate_usage_in_one_population Obviously, it's harder to directly observe in vertebrates due to the time scale involved. However, there's an increasing understanding of the genetic underpinnings of novel trait emergence through the modification of regulatory pathways and tranposable elements. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982209019459 Again, this appears to be argument from incredulity, but I'm not even sure what "dissipates" means in this context. The evidence "goes away"? Because that's not true... of when you shift the goalposts/strawman (i.e. a moth didn't turn into an elephant or some such argument) the evidence doesn't "prove" something it was never posited to? The example is flawed for many reasons: a) bacteria don't fit into a species concept. b) antibiotic resistance arose in natural environments. c) antibiotic resistance has been around for millions of years. Antibiotic compounds, and associated resistance to them have existed in nature for an extremely long time. Humans didn't invent them, they discovered them. Antibiotic resistance is simply an exponential speed up of a long existent arms race that was occurring in nature long before humans ever used antibiotics. A "philosophical objection" without observational data is of limited worth. The crucial flaw in this argument is that EVERY combination is at an equally low probability. Flip a coin 5 times and the probability of getting a given outcome is 1/32 - regardless of what it is. So looking back, after you've gotten a particular combination and citing it's low probability as a reason it couldn't happen by chance is illogical. EVERY combination of events has a low probability, not just the one you happened to arrive at. Applies to all maths in the post. Why would you assume the number of nucleotides (I actually think the author is referring to codon, as 300bp would be a short gene) was common for proto-life? Seems like a baseless assumption. They do? Citation needed. Also, why would you assume the first self replicating molecule was a cell?

I hate to sound like a broken record, but... you aren't answering my question... rather than evading again, can you explain why this model is preferable to other models? A simple explanation would put us all back on the right track.

So you can't elaborate on the model then? This is the suspicion I kind of had all along, and a substantial problem with the denialist approach to research. If a study comes along which seems to match up with the preconceived result they want to see, they tend promote it, regardless of whether the methodology is appropriate. You then wind up with a three ringed circus by which a group arguing for a particular viewpoint is holding up flawed, contradictory and logically unlinked bits of "evidence" simply because the results match what they want to see. The easiest way to demonstrate that this is happening is to simply get the person to try and explain WHY the evidence supports their conclusion - chances are the won't/can't, as we've seen here. Combine that with the cry of "fallacy" directed at everything you disagree with while simultaneously engaging in several yourself, combined with insults and condescension, it really seems like you've proven your own point of view to be flawed.

Then address it. Please tell us why this model is preferable to others. To give an example of how this kind of result works in other sciences, in my field (population genetics) people generally use at least two models, and sometimes over 100 to assess the robustness of estimates. If estimates significantly vary between models, at the bare minimum some discussion of the varying model assumptions and fits, and how it relates to the data is expected. This allows for a reconciliation of the different results, and aids interpretation of the data. That's all I'm asking for. If you want the model, and it's substantially outlying estimates to be considered, just a quick breakdown of how the model differs from others and why it's more appropriate. Other people in the field have suggested that an overparamaterized two step model is likely to perform poorly, thus explaining the outlying result. If that is incorrect, explain why, instead of crying "fallacy" and dodging it. There is valid criticism of the paper. You're just choosing to ignore it, i.e. That's evasion - it makes it look like you can't explain.

You conveniently missed this: So far we have legitimate queries about the veracity of the journal, legitimate queries about the author's expertise, legitimate queries about the methodology in the paper, and are simply asking why we should accept its result. Instead of actually offering anything tangible to support it, you've evaded the question, multiple times. I can only conclude that you are unable to answer it.

Ok, I'm going to stop being polite at this point in time - Stop trying to shift the burden of proof. The evidence has been presented to you about the journal's providence, use the search function. It shouldn't be too difficult. YOU are claiming this is a legitimate source, then DEMONSTRATE it. YOU are demanding others take the time to sort through 50 pages of text, PROVE it's worth doing. Otherwise I have some 50 page, 10 point font blog posts that prove all sorts of things, and if you don't go through them all and tell me exactly what is flawed in them, bigfoot is real, 9/11 was a hoax, chemtrails control thoughts and crystals cure cancer. And no, that's not the link - So the whole "don't assume anything about me" line was rubbish. You never read the linked article, you don't really understand what a predatory publication is, and from subsequent posts (i.e. Nature won't publish a 50 page article) you don't have a solid grasp on scientific publication at all. In fact with the whole - "Nature's peer review is questionable" "The concept of predatory publications is hype". etc it seems like anything that either "questionable" or sacrosanct depending on how it supports or contradicts you ideology - in other words, you're beginning to sound like an ideologue rather than a rational thinker. YOU are claiming this is a better model than all the others out there. Now come on - explain it like I'm a five year old. Why is it better than the others? Don't appeal to the author's credentials, or the number of "sublayers" in the model, or any other irrelevant details, just tell us. And we will listen. At the moment, you've posted absolutely nothing apart from a questionable article followed by a series of dodges when asked to explain why the article is relevant at all.

I'm being careful with my language to honor the benefit of the doubt - however the publisher is listed on a predatory journal blacklist and the journal itself is not indexed. I would seem that the burden of proof would be on the claim that the journal is legitimate. The point is that you are still suggesting that the article is relevant. What I'm doing is using a legitimate concern about the peer review process the article may or may not have been properly peer reviewed to shift the burden of proof to its rightful place. To quote Carl Sagan "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". The result in this paper is different to thousands of other studies... given its a simple, well used model (just highly parameterized, which is not necessarily a good thing) what exactly makes it right, and the others incorrect?

Actually, I would call it a deduction. You've repeatedly ignored the fact that there are serious issues with the predatory publication model - which I actually gave you the benefit of the doubt as to not having looked it up, rather than understood and ignored the issue. Additionally, it is not poisoning the well to point out that the claim of peer review of an article may be dishonest. I cited a blog post in the other thread which you dismissed based on it being a blog post - vanity papers are even worse as they dishonestly claim peer review. Now here's the Tu quoque of assumption. I am very aware of the submission requirements for Nature. I've reviewed for them and only a few months ago was lucky enough to have one of my articles published as a cover in a Nature Publishing Group journal. Like any other short format journal, most of minutia of an Nature article (i.e. methods and results) gets pushed to the supplementary online material. Many articles published there are long and highly technical, with a brief write up in the journal itself, and the bulk of the content online. The fact that you don't know that indicates that you probably don't submit articles yourself, and yet you're assuming that you know more about publication models and process than many of the members here, who do actively publish...

I think you still don't understand what a vanity publication is - another term of these journal is predatory publications. Since you've expressed the opinion you don't trust Nature, and the previous article I linked to educate you on the subject as I presume dismissed - here's a wiki artile explaining the pitfalls of this publishing model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open_access_publishing I would call it a highly parameterized, simple model. I personally work more in Bayesian models, but the basics I imagine hold true. The problem is, that generally, a model needs to become more complex in order to model a large number of parameters accurately. Simple models are great for small parameter spaces, but become much more likely to fail as they overparameterized. It sounds like a poor model fit for the parameter space being searched, and from what I've read from those working more closely with climate models, that seems to be the case - poor model selection, overparameterization, failed estimation. As an analogy, with engines, generally speaking, to increase power you would increase displacement. You can make a high power, low displacement engine, but they tend to be more prone to failure. Virtually every journal out there offers an open access licence as an option, so it's no excuse. Nature simply assesses the probability of a paper being high impact. If this publication was done well, I see absolutely no reason it wouldn't be very high impact - it's generating a lot of discussion as it is having been published obscurely. Assuming it was submitted to other journals, the only reason I can see them not wanting to pick it up is because the methodology was found wanting. This is why the location of the publication is reason for suspicion. Additionally, the author has a researchgate - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hermann_Harde a better assessment of the author's standing than a random Hindawi list which a third of is conference proceedings.

As it would appear.

If you have even the most rudimentary understanding of the climactic models you claim to have the expertise to be critiquing, you'd be thoroughly aware that a 2 degree average increase does not mean that every day of the year is 2 degrees warmer in every geographical location. Moreover, that the duration, geographical size, severity and frequency of hot weather events is predicted to increase. That's an extremely basic piece of critical understanding in the issue of climate change - you either know that and are being disingenuous in the above quoted post, or you don't and your previous commentary on climate models is unqualified. It's a rather obvious logical extension, that increased duration, size, severity and frequency of hot weather events will have an impact on pubic health. Without repeating an already lengthy discussion this article - http://jech.bmj.com/...13-202449.short models this impact on public health, taking into account decreased morality due to cold weather, and increased mortality due to hot weather, finding that, if the current IPCC predictions are right, the UK would see an increase of approximately 4,300 deaths due to hot weather events. Tim the Plumber is down to rebuking that simply through personal incredulity - after claiming a) people don't die in heat waves in the UK (despite this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave) b) People will just take their jumpers off (which could only influence the result of the paper if people did not already remove jumpers when it was hot) and c) That the fact that people tend to retire to warmer climates disproves it (no seriously, that argument was used). Do you really want to hitch yourself to that wagon? Also just a friendly tip. you may want to brush up a little on your understanding of logical fallacies. They refer to a specific set of arguments that rely on false premises. Everything you disagree with is not a logical fallacy, and arguments based on logical fallacies are not necessarily incorrect, just as those based on sound logic are not always true. Calling everything a fallacy regardless of whether your claim is legitimate or not may lead you to a "boy who cried wolf" position.

1) When it was pointed out that an average increase in temperature of 2 degrees doesn't mean that every day of the year is exactly 2 degrees warmer, you ignored it. 2) When it was pointed out to you that the prediction was actually that severe hot weather events would become more frequent and severe, you again, ignored it. 3) When it was pointed out that mortality increases during severe hot weather events in the UK, as ridiculous as it seems and how much obvious evidence to the contrary there is, you denied it. 4) When a study demonstrates the logical connection between predicted increased severe hot weather events and predicted increases in mortality, you baselessly dismiss it. Don't have an "emperor has no clothes" argument, you have a "world is 2000 years old, crystals heal cancer, chemtrails control our thoughts, Uri Geller is a wizard, there's a veliociraptor in my basement" pile of horse excrement, to put it politely.

You've continually appealed to the authority of Hermann Harde as proof of your sole paper's veracity. Well, to be technically correct all models ARE wrong, in that they are a simplification of reality and therefore differ from it. The point I am making is that Hermann Harde's model is in disagreement with other published models (I've cited one). What is the reason to use his over others? Try not appealing to the complexity of the paper or the supposed expertise of the author - neither have any bearing on why this model is correct and the others are in error. The same could be asked of you: Glass houses and stones....

Except the link that my statement, which you quoted referred to was this published paper: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024 not a NASA website, so as I suggested, you're rather blatantly strawmanning. Tu quoque.

Can you actually tell us why all the other models are wrong or do you only have argument from authority in your arsenal?

It's published in a suspect vanity journal. Have a read here: http://www.nature.com/news/investigating-journals-the-dark-side-of-publishing-1.12666

I don't think many biologists would agree. Instead it's long been known that ontogeny itself evolves - an embryo's early development is strongly shaped by phylogeny, rather than selection. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIC6aOntogeny.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory#Modern_status

So, just so we're straight, you're not contradicting the veracity of those studies, but taking issue with the fact that you personally consider humans having "a significant impact" on the climate being distinct from humans "causing" climate change? Cause that would seem like a bit of a strawman argument to nitpick, if you ask me.

Yes there is - it's a gussied up two step model. Essentially a pig in lipstick, published in a vanity journal. You're simply using an argument from authority fallacy to say it's better than all the other papers out there (hint - your author is an emeritus professor at the University of Hamburg. He has a researchgate profile. It's easy to assess your claims about him being a "world renowned expert" and find them somewhat wanting.) It also contradicts Lewis and Curry 2014. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-014-2342-y (which is actually pretty well done, unlike the example you've cited). So, which of the two papers is wrong? Your caps lock key appears broken. This is a science forum. Calling a study "drivel" based on nothing more than personal incredulity makes your position not only laughably dismissible, it's against the rules.

The paper is not only published in a vanity journal, but has also been shown to contain fatal flaws: "The problem is that there are only two levels. The greenhouse effect is driven by the increase in the height of the atmosphere from which radiation that can be absorbed or emitted by CO2 can reach space. This cannot be captured in a two level model, which, of necessity has to crudely average over a lot of parameters. Of course some of the devil is in the details, such as how much water vapor, clouds, etc is in the second level." http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/10/anthony-watts-has-found-another.html More broadly, it shows the double edged sword that is open access publishing - it has opened the door for unscrupulous publishers to dress literally anything up as looking like peer reviewed science, so long as you pay the publication fee.

We are in agreement. To recap: Crunching the numbers shows an annual increase in extreme weather related fatalities in the UK of approx. 4,800 by 2050. Tim's main objections appear to be: 1) The UK's weather is mild and people don't die due to heat, only cold (which was trivially falsified) , and 2) The authors include the caveat that the numbers are based on current mortality rates, and that if unforeseen mitigation occurs in the future, the projections will be off. He claims that people will mitigate (i.e. take their jumpers off) and therefore the numbers are inaccurate. The problem being that current mortality rates inherently account for all current mitigating practice - to infer that future mitigation will change the numbers means that you'd have to demonstrate that people don't currently take their jumpers off when it's hot and that they will do so in the future. (Also trivially refuted). Despite the fact that his objections have been shown to be fatally flawed, Tim appears to remain incredulous to its findings - now seemingly using the study as evidence to reject peer review.

He's referring to this study. "A significantly raised risk of heat-related and cold-related mortality was observed in all regions. The elderly were most at risk. In the absence of any adaptation of the population, heat-related deaths would be expected to rise by around 257% by the 2050s from a current annual baseline of around 2000 deaths, and cold-related mortality would decline by 2% from a baseline of around 41 000 deaths. " http://jech.bmj.com/...13-202449.short He is personally incredulous to the results of the study, as to quote : "people will take their jumpers off".

So basically, you're invoking the logical fallacy of argumentum ad ignoratum for the umpteenth time.

I think you're misunderstanding - hemorrhaging is a symptom of ebola which can result in death. Transfusions do not "cure" a person of ebola, they relieve this symptom of the virus by replenishing lost blood. Ebola can infect cells of the body other than blood cells, and these cells shed viruses, which subsequently infect other cells, including blood. Therefore, even if you could somehow remove ALL of the blood from a patient, remove the virus from it and put it back in the patient, you wouldn't cure them of ebola.