Oh, good grief...

[Albion]

Just came across this little gem while having a look at some of the DI Fellows' biographies:

"Dr. Wells is currently working on a book criticizing the over-emphasis on genes in biology and medicine."

That's Dr. Wells as in "Icons of Evolution." Just when more and more medical researchers are finding genetic contributions just about everywhere, he's writing a book like this? I mean, what is he trying to do here?

[scigirl]

Poor Dr. Wells. Just because he has a poor poor understanding of genetics, he wants everyone else to be as ignorant as him.

scigirl

[pz]

There is an over-emphasis on genes in biology and medicine. Wells is such a lousy scholar with his own idiotic ascientific axe to grind, though, that I can predict that this book will not treat a serious issue as it deserves.

[KC]

Wells is apparently co-authoring the book with Richard Strohman, in whose lab Wells supposedly did his post-doc work. Any bets on who is doing most of the work?

KC

[pz]

Originally posted by KC
Wells is apparently co-authoring the book with Richard Strohman, in whose lab Wells supposedly did his post-doc work. Any bets on who is doing most of the work?

Strohman does say some interesting stuff. (note that the url probably requires that you have a subscription to Nature to read the whole thing.)
From "Organization becomes cause in the matter" (http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nbt/journal/v18/n6/full/nbt0600_575.html)
Similarly, in biology, molecular genetic reductionism has mostly distracted us from study of mesoscopic realms between genotype and phenotype where complex organizational states exist and where, as we now realize, there also exist networks of regulatory proteins capable of reorganizing patterns of gene expression, and much other "emergent" cellular behavior, in a context-dependent manner. It is the mesoscopic organization of matter (living or dead) that harbors as yet undiscovered principles lying behind emergent features. As such, this view is a more recent expression of the ideas of Anderson and Polanyi expressed 30 years ago that relate, respectively, with hierarchical organization of matter in physical science and the irreducibility of emergent behavior in biology.

There is some hope that if Strohman is writing the bulk of it, some interesting ideas could emerge. I have no idea what a limited ideologue like Wells could possibly contribute to such a work, other than poisoning it with garbage.

On the other hand, Strohman also wrote an odd letter (http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v408/n6814/full/408767c0_fs.html) praising an essay by Gupta called A victim of truth (http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v407/n6805/full/407677a0_fs.html), which seems to be saying that vitalism is a good thing, or a useful metaphor, or something. Strohman doesn't advocate any kind of 'design principle', but there's something fuzzy about the whole idea that Wells could easily bend in his favored directions.

[Quantum Ninja]

"Dr. Wells is currently working on a book criticizing the over-emphasis on genes in biology and medicine."

That's like writing a book criticizing the over-emphasis on numbers in mathematics. :rolleyes:

[Roland98]

Originally posted by Quantum Ninja
That's like writing a book criticizing the over-emphasis on numbers in mathematics. :rolleyes:

Well, like pz, I do agree that genes are over-emphasized; I don't think there's a gene (or set of genes) for every single disease, condition, neurosis, behavior, etc. But I wish someone more qualified than Wells would cover the subject. I don't know much about Strohman; it'll be interesting to see the finished product, I guess.

[theyeti]

Originally posted by pz
Strohman does say some interesting stuff.

Well, I found this interesting:

GENETIC DETERMINISM AS A FAILING PARADIGM IN BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE (http://www.cswe.org/publications/jswe/03-2strohman.htm)

These levels of control each have their own rules, and all levels are interactive with one another and, in the case of cells and organisms, with the world around them. The major new idea here is that these levels of control are not reducibly connected; it is not possible, for example, to reduce common cancer to rules that govern DNA, [2]

Scrolling down, you find this for citation #2:

2. Polanyi, M. 1968. Life's irreducible structure. Science 160, 1308-1312.

So this is the source for Strohman's "major new idea". Why on Earth someone would cite a source that old for what we know about cancer genetics is beyond me, unless that person was trying to avoid the actual issue. I haven't read the whole article (I lost interest upon seeing that citation), but from what I've skimmed, it looks like an excersise in knocking down a straw-man. While I certainly think that strict genetic determinism deserves to be criticized, it has little to do with the prevailing "paradigm" in biology, which is a synthesis between the complex interplay of genes and environment. And it certainly attacing genetic determinism does not by itself legitimate just any old "holistic" view, whatever it may be.

As a side note, the "M. Polanyi" in the citation above is Michael Polanyi, who is an IDist hero for some reason, though I don't know why. Dembski's ill-fated center at Baylor was named for Polanyi (much to the chigrin of his family, if I recall), but it got axed thanks to Dembski's inability to control his mouth.

Given Strohman's apparent love of Polanyi combined with his decision to co-author a book with Wells, I think that there's a lot more to this than meets the eye. I'd be curious if anyone can dig up some info to figure out exactly where Strohman is coming from, and just what it is that he's up to.

theyeti

P.S. At the bottom of the article linked to above, Strohman shows us that he's an HIV---> AIDS skeptic. I believe that he's on that list of "dissenters" who claim that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, which includes Wells and Philip Johnson. Curiouser and curiouser...

[KC]

Originally posted by theyeti
Given Strohman's apparent love of Polanyi combined with his decision to co-author a book with Wells, I think that there's a lot more to this than meets the eye. I'd be curious if anyone can dig up some info to figure out exactly where Strohman is coming from, and just what it is that he's up to.

theyeti

P.S. At the bottom of the article linked to above, Strohman shows us that he's an HIV---> AIDS skeptic. I believe that he's on that list of "dissenters" who claim that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, which includes Wells and Philip Johnson. Curiouser and curiouser...

Hmm...that last item is intriguing. I've always wondered why the papers Wells has published could be considered as fruits of his postdoc work, when none of them involved Strohman's lab. All were submitted by his PhD advisor, IIRC, so wouldn't that be work he did before he was a postdoc??.

One has to wonder what the hell Wells was doing for those 5 years. My guess is the lost years were spent writing Icons. Which makes me wonder what my poor alma mater was thinking by granting him a postdoc position for so long.

KC

[theyeti]

Originally posted by KC

One has to wonder what the hell Wells was doing for those 5 years. My guess is the lost years were spent writing Icons. Which makes me wonder what my poor alma mater was thinking by granting him a postdoc position for so long.

Well, I think Strohman is your answer. Postdocs are hired by a lab's PI (Strohman), but Strohman was apparently semi-retired by that point, and was no longer doing active research. The "position" that Wells had was unpaid, so Strohman could have arranged it without his department's permission. They also say that it was arranged with the help of Philip Johnson, who had probably become buddies with Strohman during their mutual crusade against HIV research. (Strohman and Johnson were co-founding Directors of the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis (http://www.rethinkingaids.com/Archive/1998/RA9808BoardMeetingReport.htm).)

As for the fact that Wells' publications came from his dissertation lab and not his postdoc lab, that is indeed strange. It means that he had no publications during his grad school carreer! Now I've never heard of someone getting a PhD in a biology related field without having at least one or more publications to his name. If you want to fault your alma mater for something, that would probably be it. It seems that he went back to his dissertation lab during his "postdoctoral" tenure to eek out at least a couple of publications from his grad work in order give himself an air of legitimacy.

theyeti

[pz]

Originally posted by theyeti
Well, I found this interesting:

GENETIC DETERMINISM AS A FAILING PARADIGM IN BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE (http://www.cswe.org/publications/jswe/03-2strohman.htm)



Scrolling down, you find this for citation #2:

2. Polanyi, M. 1968. Life's irreducible structure. Science 160, 1308-1312.

So this is the source for Strohman's "major new idea". Why on Earth someone would cite a source that old for what we know about cancer genetics is beyond me, unless that person was trying to avoid the actual issue. I haven't read the whole article (I lost interest upon seeing that citation), but from what I've skimmed, it looks like an excersise in knocking down a straw-man. While I certainly think that strict genetic determinism deserves to be criticized, it has little to do with the prevailing "paradigm" in biology, which is a synthesis between the complex interplay of genes and environment. And it certainly attacing genetic determinism does not by itself legitimate just any old "holistic" view, whatever it may be.
I disagree with some of this. The age of the citation does not invalidate the point, and I think it is fair to characterize the primary paradigm of much of well-funded biology to be excessive reductionism. I also find that most of the discussion of the interaction between genes and environment to be superficial, typically completely missing the point about the words "interaction" and "environment" before moving on to focus entirely on the genes. Case in point: Ridley's awful book, Nature via Nurture.

As a side note, the "M. Polanyi" in the citation above is Michael Polanyi, who is an IDist hero for some reason, though I don't know why. Dembski's ill-fated center at Baylor was named for Polanyi (much to the chigrin of his family, if I recall), but it got axed thanks to Dembski's inability to control his mouth.

Given Strohman's apparent love of Polanyi combined with his decision to co-author a book with Wells, I think that there's a lot more to this than meets the eye. I'd be curious if anyone can dig up some info to figure out exactly where Strohman is coming from, and just what it is that he's up to.

theyeti

P.S. At the bottom of the article linked to above, Strohman shows us that he's an HIV---> AIDS skeptic. I believe that he's on that list of "dissenters" who claim that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, which includes Wells and Philip Johnson. Curiouser and curiouser...
I do entirely agree with this. There are suspicious undercurrents here that make me wonder what kind of crap we're going to see spew out of this ungodly union between Strohman and Wells. I get the impression that Strohman may be a bit of a crank who has kept the impulses in check for years, and is about to erupt into full-blown crackpottery under the tutelage of the vermin of the Discovery Institute.

[KC]

Originally posted by theyeti
As for the fact that Wells' publications came from his dissertation lab and not his postdoc lab, that is indeed strange. It means that he had no publications during his grad school carreer! Now I've never heard of someone getting a PhD in a biology related field without having at least one or more publications to his name. If you want to fault your alma mater for something, that would probably be it. It seems that he went back to his dissertation lab during his "postdoctoral" tenure to eek out at least a couple of publications from his grad work in order give himself an air of legitimacy.

theyeti

I'm not sure if all of the publications (he only has 3 to his name, fer crissakes, and none of them as primary author) were done when he was a postdoc, but I remember him bleating somewhere that at least one was. If so, one paper in 5 years sounds a might thin. So, it sounds to me like his postdoc position was a sham set up by Strohman and Johnson. One wonders if the DI was paying him during that time.

KC

[pangloss]

My suspicion is that the book, if Wells has his way, will lean more toward this:

Jonathan Wells is a developmental biologist who studies embryos primarily by perturbing their development. He says he has touched the DNA
According to him:

1. Placing foreign DNA into an egg does not change the species of the egg or embryo. (implications are clear)

2. DNA mutations can interfere with development, but they never alter its endpoint. (implication is clear here also)

3. Different cell types arise in the same animal even though all of them contain the same DNA. (implication being DNA is NOT the only factor)

4. Similar developmental genes are found in animals as different as worms, flies & mammals. (implication being it is not in the genes)

5. Eggs contain several structures (such as microtubule arrays and membrane patterns) that are known to excercise control of development independently of the DNA.

Evidence against neo-Darwinism

1. Embryotic development is not controlled by a genetic program.

2. Mutations do not produce the sorts of changes needed for evolution. (as in the ToE)

3. Except at the level of antibiotic and insecticide resitance, there are no good examples of evolution due to changes in gene frequencies produced by natural selection.


That was provided to me on another board.

Doubtless, this is a push to minimize the impact of phylogenetic studies and such. Chippiong away wherever they can....

Another Wells sleight-of-hand is in the works, me thinks.