Hand-Waving to God

A decade on, the Discovery Institute is still cranking out skepticism, diversion, and obfuscation.

A post a couple of weeks ago mentioned that the Discovery Institute offered a knowledgeable critique of the lineages of the Ediacaran fauna. They have raised their scientific game significantly, and so I wanted to review what they are doing these days, focusing on two of their most recent papers. The Discovery Institute has a lineage of its own, from creationism. It has adapted to the derision that entailed, by retreating to "intelligent design", which is creationism without naming the creators, nailing down the schedule of creation, or providing any detail of how and from where creation operates. Their review of the Ediacaran fauna raised some highly skeptical points about whether these organisms were animals or not. Particularly, they suggested that cholesterol is not really restricted to animals, so the chemical traces of cholesterol that were so clearly found in the Dickinsonia fossil layers might not really mean that these were animals- they might also be unusual protists of gigantic size, or odd plant forms, etc. While the critique is not unreasonable, it does not alter the balance of the evidence which does indeed point to an animal affinity. These fauna are so primitive and distant that it is fair to say that we can not be sure, and particularly we can not be sure that they had any direct ancestral relationship to any later organisms of the ensuing Cambrian period, when recognizable animals emerged.

Fair enough. But what of their larger point? The Discovery Institute is trying to make the point, I believe, about the sudden-ness of early Cambrian evolution of animals, and thus its implausibility under conventional evolutionary theory. But we are traversing tens of millions of years through these intervals, which is a long time, even in evolutionary terms. Secondly, the Ediacaran period, though now represented by several exquisite fossil beds, spanned a hundred million years and is still far from completely characterized paleontologically, even supposing that early true animals would have fossilized, rather than being infinitesimal and very soft-bodied. So the Cambrian biota could easily have predecessors in the Ediacaran that have or have not yet been observed- it is as yet not easy to say. But what we can not claim is the negative, that no predecessors existed before some time X- say the 540 MYA point at the base of the Cambrian. So the implication that the Discovery Institute is attempting to suggest has very little merit, particularly since everything that they themselves cite about the molecular and paleontological sequence is so clearly progressive and in proper time sequence, in complete accord with the overall theory of evolution.

For we should always keep in mind that an intelligent designer has a free hand, and can make all of life in a day (or in six, if absolutely needed). The fact that this designer works in the shadows of slightly altered mutation rates, or in a few million years rather than twenty million, and never puts fossils out of sequence in the sedimentary record, is an acknowledgement that this designer is a bit dull, and bears a strong resemblence to evolution by natural selection. To put it in psychological terms, the institute is in the "negotiation" stage of grief- over the death of god.

But let's look at a couple more papers from their "peer"- reviewed journal, called Bio-Complexity.

One is on the nature of embryogenesis. It is well known that early embryos have some resemblences to our forebears that disappear later in development. We develop folds that look like incipient gill slits, for instance. This is now called the "phylotypic" stage of embryonic development. What is less well known is that earlier stages of embryogenesis, specifically gastrulation, look much more different between major animal lineages. So author David W. Swift posits that this goes against evolutionary theory, citing a quote from one prominent evolutionary scientist "The process of early development from the egg to the phylotypic stage should be at least as conserved as the pattern of the phylotypic stage. One might reasonably expect mechanisms of early development to be especially resistant to modification because all subsequent development derives from early processes." Raff, 1999.

So there! The paper then goes through a laborious discussion of all the forms of gastrulation, which is where the early triploblastic (ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm) layers separate in a sequence of cell proliferation and migration. The field has come to view the developmental process through an "hourglass" model, where phylogenetic affinities are most apparent at the middle, or phylotypic, stage, and less so both before and after. As Swift says, this does not really explain the issue, but only describes it. Yet there is a plausible explanation, which is that the premise that Swift has hung his hat on is not correct. Maybe the phylotypic stage of development is far more complex and networked, as whole organs/systems are taking shape, compared to the relatively simple migrations of a few cells in the blastula-gastrula transition. The numbers of genes in play, which would influence the evolutionary conservatism of the stage, are likely much higher in the phylotypic stage than the gastrulation stage, likely explaining why the hourglass analogy describes the overall process.

But Swift concludes:

"In view of their morphological similarities, it is understandable that the phylotypic stages of different classes of vertebrates were interpreted as homologous and as evidence of common ancestry. However, this apparent homology is refuted by more detailed embryological evidence; despite their similarities, the phylotypic stages are formed embryonically in profoundly different ways. The straightforward conclusion to draw from this radical diversity of their early embryonic development is that it shows the vertebrates have not evolved from a common vertebrate ancestor."

Woah! That is a vast over-interpretation. Firstly, a great deal of other data says that vertebrates did evolve from a common ancestor, so one can't just cherry pick a nit-pick over this one issue to arrive at such a sweeping conclusion. Second, as explained above, there are better explanations for this particular situation. Swift then goes on to claim "We can no longer regard embryonic development as a “Black Box,” but must take account of the genetic and molecular mechanisms that shape morphology." He gestures toward doing so, discussing some of the genes involved in the gastrulation process, but then really doesn't extend that discussion to the phylotypic stage. The genes at work in each stage are not totaled up, in part because that kind of data is not really known yet in sufficient detail. But even a rough attempt at doing so would quickly undermine Swift's thesis, as they are far more numerous at the later stage. 

The theme of this argument is reminiscent of the abortion debate, where the mantra of the religiously motivated is "personhood at conception" The fertilized egg is enshrined as some kind of golden incubus, holding the adult in some magical / spiritual state of readiness. But maybe the egg is actually simple structure, and it is the process of development that forms the sentient being by increasingly complex operations- programmed by its code and environment, yes- but not actualized until the journey takes place.

Lastly, for a bit of comic relief, Biocomplexity published an article about the human ankle. It takes to task one claim by Nathan Lents in a book (Human Errors), that the ankle is not a great design, and is not evidence for "intelligent" design. Certainly our tendency to sprain our ankles does give one pause. But Stuart Burgess will have none of it. His article is an encomium to the "masterpiece" of design that is the human ankle. Every little bone has its use, and the flexibility of the complex structure is essential to our walking and running abilities. It is reminiscent of the "banana" argument, by Ray Comfort, not to mention Voltaire's Pangloss. 

Some hominin feet, showing the extensive variation (especially in the ankle bones) that occurred over a few million years as our ancestors, and their various offshoots, adopted bipedalism.

On a more serious note, Scientific American recently published an article about human foot evolution, with a beautiful illustration of the vagaries of our foot bones from fossils of the last seven million years. It shows pretty clearly that there was a great deal of variation and experimentation on the way to our current feet. Notably, while the upper/middle foot bones move around a lot and vary significantly in shape, they tend not to change in number or fuse with each other. This certainly agrees with Burgess's argument that fusion of the middle ankle bones (as suggested as a possible better design by Lents) is not likely a good idea. But it also shows precisely how the evolution went along, not as a "design", but as a process of variation and adaptation over time that explored a range of possible shapes. Our ankles are not perfect, and many people with flat feet or other inborn problems might have some tart comments about how great the design is. But it is exactly that variation that provides the fodder for exploration and change by which evolution (by natural selection) continues through today and into the future.

Who the "peers" are who review these articles is not spelled out (though apparently authors are asked to suggest their own reviewers). In one case, the reviewer Dr. Paul Nelson is thanked. This person is a professional creationist, not a scientist. The whole enterprise of Bio-complexity and the Discovery Institute is as risable as it is appalling. Doubtless it is also well-funded- not for its scientific (v)acuity, but as one more arm of the culture war, between theocrats and the rest of us, not to mention reality. Its biggest funders are, in order, DonorTrust, the National Christian Charitable Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation. While real scientists convert hard-won grant money from the NIH and other authentically peer-reviewed institutions into new authentically peer-reviewed findings, the Discovery Institute converts Dominionist money into a minor bit of "deny, doubt, and delay", as has been done in so many other losing and pernicious causes. The Institute's impact on the culture is now thankfully minor, far less grievous than what is being pumped out by FOX news and other gaslighting / propaganda media and is threatening our political system, the biosphere, and the very future of biological evolution. 

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