'55 Science Paper Retracted to Thwart Creationists

i_like_spam writes "The New York Times has up a story about a paper published in 1955 by Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College. The paper, entitled 'Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life', speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in the Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, 'one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.' Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, but today it is winning Dr. Jacobson acclaim that he does not want — from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention. So after 52 years, he has retracted the paper. 'Dr. Jacobson's retraction is in "the noblest tradition of science," Rosalind Reid, editor of American Scientist, wrote in its November-December issue, which has Dr. Jacobson's letter. His letter shows, Ms. Reid wrote, "the distinction between a scientist who cannot let error stand, no matter the embarrassment of public correction," and people who "cling to dogma."'"

Celebration/Mourning

[BWJones (18351)]

This retraction is to be simultaneously celebrated and mourned. Celebrated in the sense that we have a true scientist who will hold up the scientific process and make every effort to prove himself and the community of scientists wrong in order to make the science stronger. When we have individuals that fail to attempt to prove their work as incorrect, we have to acknowledge that they are being driven by other motives and they are not to be trusted.

This noble effort is also to be mourned because of the manipulation and steering of science to fill political goals driven by lack of scientific understanding in the wider community.

Likely result

[TheMeuge (645043)]

The creationist zealots will likely take this bit of news, and embrace it as evidence that the scientific community is trying to be deceitful by withdrawing a "clearly correct" paper, for political reasons.

The amount of confirmation bias that people can exhibit when their passions are challenged is incredible.

Re:Likely result

[vought (160908)]

The amount of confirmation bias that people can exhibit when their passions are challenged is incredible.


I can think of about 25% of the U.S. population who prove your statement incontrovertibly true.

Re:Likely result

[bendodge (998616)]

Are you sure that isn't just your bias?

Re:Likely result

[ultranova (717540)]

Everyone is biased. The difference is between the ones who are aware of their own biases and those who are deluded into thinking that they aren't.

Nah. The difference is between the people who are aware of their biases - namely, me and everyone who agrees with me - and people who are sadly deluded and too caught up in the web of deceit or just plain too stupid to realize it or too stubborn to admit it, or who actually purposefully and maliciously lying and/or engaged in a huge conspiracy against the truth for whatever reason.

If you or the moderators disagree, that's just because your bias of thinking yourself as objective. Let go of your bias and support the objective point of view by modding me up ;).

The thing is, we humans don't actually perceive reality, we perceive an approximation of it, produced by our senses and mental faculties. It is impossible to know how closely your approximation actually resembles reality as a whole or at any particular point, because you have no way of comparing it to reality proper, because the latter is not perceptible to you. That's why people usually assume that their approximation is a good match and anyone who disagrees is wrong or biased. And this is assuming that a particular perception is actually based on some objective reality, which is not at all certain for things like moral values.

What this means is that no one is truly aware of their own biases, since that awareness could only be gained by comparing your approximation of reality to reality proper, which is impossible. You, gentle reader, are biased, and not aware of all of your biases, no matter how certain you are of your own objectivity. You can trust me on this, because I clearly am truly objective, being aware of all this :).

Re:Likely result

[east coast (590680)]

The amount of confirmation bias that people can exhibit when their passions are challenged is incredible.

Are you talking about the "humans caused global warming" crowd?

Ironic curiosity

[JeanPaulBob (585149)]

The creationist zealots will likely take this bit of news, and embrace it as evidence that the scientific community is trying to be deceitful by withdrawing a "clearly correct" paper, for political reasons.

The amount of confirmation bias that people can exhibit when their passions are challenged is incredible.

Hmm. Out of curiosity, on what basis are you determining that such a slant would be incorrect? Obviously, you're right that confirmation bias would lead to that slant, but that doesn't say anything about whether it's correct--nor would your own biases to view such a slant as zealotry.

Where is your own opinion here coming from? Do you have the knowledge & understanding of the facts of the situation to know that such a slant would be wrong? Or does it just fit your own nice package of preconceived notions?

Re:Ironic curiosity

[ArikTheRed (865776)]

We're talking about evidence here, which has nothing to do with joy or peace. Facts don't care if you feel good about them.

Re:Ironic curiosity

[IthnkImParanoid (410494)]

Terse, unsupported assertions are the enemy of cheese.

Re:Ironic curiosity

[gomiam (587421)]

You miss the point. Faith isn't scientific. If having faith brings you joy and peace, congratulations. But don't try to bring it into science, for faith requires belief without proof, and science requires proof before belief. Taking the concept from Carl Sagan, faith is usually prejudice and science is postjudice.

Re:Ironic curiosity

[wizardforce (1005805)]

One question I don't have an answer for is, how can scientists reliably speculate the state of this earth millions or billions of years ago with the evidence we have now, in this day and age? I can't see how that is feasibly possible, without basing it around assumptions or belief.

We can reliably "speculate" on things that happened in Earth's geological history in part ebcause of the sheer volume of fossils, rocks, strata, genetic evidence, molecular modeling, nuclear dating, ice cores, etc... there are many many different ways to determine the age of rocks, the conditions at the time and the lineage of species. The vast majority of scientific studies use several seperate lines of evidence to confirm or rule out previous findings. The measurment of the age of the Earth for example is based on hundreds of samples, at least 3 or 4 nuclear dating methods for each sample and many many repititions for each. We've got more evidence for evolutionary lineages and geology than we do for gravity, that should tell you something.

Re:Ironic curiosity

[Alsee (515537)]

the Bible, which is God-Breathed according to 2 Timothy 3:16

I'm really not looking to debate theology, but I'd like to note:
(1) That is obviously circular. If the the Bible is not God-Breathed OR not flawlessly-scribed OR not flawlessly-translated, then it's circular reference to itself obviously doesn't change anything.
(2) The majority of Christians do not see a conflict between evolution and the Bible.

More proof is in nature, in the complexity and creativness of it

Evolution is a proven engine of complexity and creativity. In fact I have done experiments myself and directly witnessed and proven that fact.

I am astounded at the people who presume to tell God how He is and is not allowed to run His universe. We have an amazing universe with awe inspiring laws of physics, and I am baffled at how some people can accept God making perfect and complete mechanisms to run His universe - nuclear fusion to power the sun and provide us light - the spinning earth orbiting the sun to divide day from night and create th3 seasons - the laws of chemistry to provide us food and create DNA and run all of our biochemical processes - yet they insist on telling God that He is FORBIDDEN to have chosen to use evolution to create the diversity of life on earth.

God can use optics as his chosen mechanism to create rainbows, but God cannot use evolution as his chosen mechanism to create His diversity of life?

I don't understand that.

One question I don't have an answer for is, how can scientists reliably speculate the state of this earth millions or billions of years ago with the evidence we have now, in this day and age?

For a moment, imagine a deceiving God. A God planting false evidence to mislead us.

If that were true, you couldn't know or trust anything. You could be a brain in a jar. Everything you see and hear could be a complete fiction. In fact all of your memories could be planted deceptions. The entire universe could have been created three days ago, and everything you think you know and believe could be an elaborate deliberate deception.

*If* one accepts the premise of a deliberately deceiving God, one cannot know or believe anything. Communication itself becomes meaningless. All rational thought and communication is null and void.

The first assumption for rational thought and rational communication MUST be to reject the notion that we are being deliberately deceived by a malicious lying God. If God wants to deceive us with by planting misleading evidence, then We Shall Be Misled.

Some people try to assert that the earth is around 6,000 years old. They assert that the Grand Canyon was quickly carved by a torrent of water after Noah's Flood. You don't need to be any sort of expert to see that is wrong. A huge fast gush of water over a short timespan will carve earth in a straight line. A small slow flow of water over millions of years will carve earth in a meandering snaking path. Aerial photos of the Grand Canyon show not only a winding path, it shows several sharp U-turns. Sharp U-turns that a short fast gush of water would instantly cut straight through. Geologists are not stupid. There are a THOUSAND things that demonstrate the Grand Canyon is millions of years old, my example is simply an obvious point that anyone and everyong can see is obviously true without a geology PhD.

There are only two possibilities. Either the Grand Canyon (and the Earth) really is extremely old, or God went to quite a bit of effort to plant a lot of evidence designed to deceive us into believing it is old. I reject the notion of a lying deceiving God, but in any case if God wants to deceive us then We Shall Be Deceived.

Forensic scientists can establish Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt what happened at a crime scene, even if there was no witness. Scientists can determine a great many things about the past Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt, even if there was no one there to witness it.

There is a chuck of the fossil

Re:Ironic curiosity

[JeanPaulBob (585149)]

Actually, faith does not require belief without proof. That is not what your Bible says.

"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."
--John 20:29

I hope you'll take a couple minutes to read this. Your reply was very brief, and I'm guessing you're not that interested. But I hope you'll take a couple minutes and really consider what I'm saying. Compare the backhanded way you were looking at John 20:29 and assuming a meaning with the way I go about figuring out what was the viewpoint of the people who wrote the Bible--what they meant when they talked about faith & belief.


You missed a better one. The first verse of Hebrews 11 [gnpcb.org] would make a stronger case: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

I pointed you to an essay for a "positive" Biblical case for my view. That is, it points out that knowledge based on good evidence is a major theme in the Gospels and letters of the New Testament. I also said it wasn't exhaustive. I meant that it doesn't deal with criticisms. Specifically, I had in mind that it doesn't address Hebrews 11:1 and Jesus' words to Thomas. I don't think it's at all hard to see why they do not contradict my view, but that essay didn't go through those issues.

Here's the problem: Did you actually read John 20:29? What does it say? That Thomas saw, and believed. Thomas believed. Notice that. He believed. Look at it again. Did Jesus say that his faith wasn't real faith because he wanted justification? No! Did he criticize Thomas? Well...Maybe. Not directly. He praised others who had been willing to believe without seeing him directly. That's either indirect criticism of Thomas' skepticism (as people usually assume), or it's praise for people willing to believe without the level of proof Thomas had. But neither means that faith must be blind.

Jesus' point may have been that it will be harder for people to believe who don't get to see the resurrected body, so they deserve praise. But if he was criticizing Thomas, I'd say it was because his skepticism was not reasonable. It bordered on paranoia. John 20:29 doesn't happen in a vacuum, and it wasn't addressed to you. It was addressed to Thomas, after 20 chapters of Jesus demonstrating divine power, walking on water, raising a dead man, then predicting his own death and resurrection. (I don't care if you don't believe it happened. We're talking about the meaning of the events and the claims. We're defining the Biblical worldview, not talking about whether it's true. You're free to disbelieve, but you're not free to redefine what they said and meant.) After what Thomas had seen, his insistence to see and feel Jesus' hands and side was not reasoned caution, it was a bitter spirit of forgetfulness and disbelief.


As I said, Hebrews 11:1 is stronger--if you read it as a sentence in a vacuum. But keep reading the rest of the chapter. It's often called the "faith hall of fame"--it lists a bunch of Old Testament people who showed great faith. And in many (most?) of those examples, the faith for which they are being praised was exhibited after they had spoken directly with God or seen demonstrations of divine power. Their belief was warranted, and the fact that they had seen proof of God did not make "faith" an empty thing. If you read 11:13, it's more clear. "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar". They had faith that God would deliver on his promises, even though they died before seeing those promises fulfilled. That's the context. The context does not bear out the idea that 11:1 means faith is only faith if it's blind.


On the basis of these observations, I'm rather confident that the Bible does not ask for blind faith. You may not believe that the evidence is good, but that doesn't mean the Bible is asking for belief without warrant.

Re:Likely result

[TheMeuge (645043)]

<blockquote>Or we'll just say that nothing is written in stone, and the papers you publish today may be retracted tomorrow when you change your minds.</blockquote>
Papers are retracted when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary of their conclusions... most of the time that happens when new facts emerge as the science progresses.
<blockquote>This is more a blow (in the long term) to the idea that science yields objective truth, IMO.</blockquote>
I think the bigger concern is that you look for "objective truth"(tm)... There is no such thing - there is only "best approximation" based on the evidence thus far obtained. Science and the scientific method just happen to provide the best framework for making reasonable judgments about the real world, based on theories, the only measure of the success of which, is their PREDICTIVE CAPACITY.

If you come up with a better system, let me know. Until then, I'll be happy with an idea, rather than a belief-based "objective truth", thank you.

Re:Likely result

[rossifer (581396)]

Science and the scientific method just happen to provide the best framework for making reasonable judgments about the real world, based on theories, the only measure of the success of which, is their PREDICTIVE CAPACITY.

I do not believe many of your peers on the evolutionary side of the argument would, however.

I call B.S. I can't think of any scientist (evolutionary or otherwise) who wouldn't. Several evolutionary biologists and psychologists at MIT and Harvard are family friends.

If you're in science, it's basically your opinion that scientific theories are only useful if they're predictive. If you don't buy that, you're not in science.

Re:Likely result

[LurkerXXX (667952)]

And the discovered error changes your mind. I didn't want to get into a semantic snit.

Looks like you already did.

'Changing your mind' from your first post is usually alluding to things like 'I think I'll have the spaghetti instead of the salad'. It's something anyone can do on a whim.

He discovered a factual error in a work he had done, which leads to different conclusions. That's an entirely different thing.

The guy wrote something that he believed in '55 but doesn't believe today.

He knows there is now evidence showing what he thought in '55 was incorrect. He bases his understanding on the accumulated evidence of science, which has extended quite a bit since '55.

The beliefs of established science evolve. And they are beliefs.

Unlike religion, scientific believes can change when new evidence shows old ones were wrong. Religion doesn't change no matter how much evidence there is showing it's wrong.

Fact's don't change with time.

No, but new facts are constantly being discovered which extend and refine our knowledge of the universe. We cannot have final 'beliefs' on how everything in the universe works because we are still learning about it. But in each pass we get closer and closer to fundamental truths. Religion stays where it's always been.

Re:Likely result

[Tack (4642)]

Until religion makes claims about the physical universe that contradicts what we have learned through science. Then suddenly coexistence isn't quite as easy.

Re:Likely result

[Bellum Aeternus (891584)]

"Facts don't change with time"

Really? So the earth is still flat and the sun revolves around it? and matter is seamless?

Get a grip. What we humans call "facts" are our closest approximation of the truth we have now. Once you realize that, facts do indeed change with time. That's the beauty and the problem with science; it's not dogma but a collection of evidence over time accumulated so that current and future generations can make better and better attempts to understand nature. As we accumulate more evidence our understanding changes and things we may have believed to be fact in the past are known to be incorrect now (or things we believe to be fact now may not be considered fact in the future).

Religion's failure has always been a resistance to change and the truth because those in power only remain in power if they have all the keys.

Re:Likely result

[MightyMartian (840721)]

"Vance Ferrell, who said he put together the material posted on Evolution-facts.org, said if the paper had been retracted he would remove the reference to it. Mr. Ferrell said he had no way of knowing what motivated Dr. Jacobson, but said that if scientists "look like they are pro-creationist they can get into trouble.""

Ah yes, another favorite tactic of the pseudo-scientific con-artists. "I can't say why he's doing it, but here's why he's doing it..."

Re:Einstein and God

[MightyMartian (840721)]

It wasn't religion that stumbled Einstein (he wasn't religious in any meaningful sense of the word), but it was his sense of aesthetic. He was the last of the Classical Physicists, and in that tradition, he wanted a clockwork universe, and not one that did funky things like expand from some singularity where mathematics broke down, nor did he want one that was at some subatomic level was a chaotic bubbling brew where the arrow of time and causality lost their meaning.

Re:People retract stuff all the time... so what!

[npsimons (32752)]

I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a jesuit
priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies
about me. From the viewpoint of a jesuit priest I am, of course, and
have always been an atheist.
-- Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945, responding to a
rumor that a jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from
atheism. Article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5,
No. 2, 1997

. . . a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light
but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with
incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical
good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine
of a personal god, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which
in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests . . . The
further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through
the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through
striving after rational knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein, address at the Princeton Theological Seminary,
May 19, 1939, published in _Out of My Later Years_, New York:
Philosophical Library, 1950.

I do not believe in the god of theology who rewards good and punishes
evil.
-- Albert Einstein, Personal memoir of William Miller, editor, Life,
May 2, 1955

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal god is
a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the
crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due
to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious
indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility
corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of
nature and of our own being.
-- Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, from article
by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1997

It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which [I]
lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the 'merely
personal,' from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes, and
primitive feelings.
-- Albert Einstein, as quoted in Einstein, history, and Other
Passions, p. 172

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a
lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a
personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the
unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our
science can reveal it.
-- Albert Einstein

The idea of a personal god is an anthropological concept which I am
unable to take seriously.
-- Albert Einstein, letter to Hoffman and Dukas, 1946

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the
fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true
science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer
marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the
experience of mystery -- even

Re:Likely result

[NeutronCowboy (896098)]

You do realize that Occam's razor is not a predictive theory, but rather a heuristic employed when looking at competing ideas? QED is mind-boggling in its complexity, but no one would dream of applying occam's razor to it and replace it with the old approach of "light is instantaneous."

Re:Likely result

[Chris Burke (6130)]

If it was wrong, then withdraw the paper because it is wrong. Why mention creationism at all. Oh wait, he didn't realize it was wrong until it was quoted by creationists, and we know THEY can't be right, so it was withdrawn BECAUSE of them, not because it was wrong.

You should withdraw this post because it is wrong.

He re-read the paper because of the quotes by creationists. It was re-reading the paper that revealed the errors in the paper. It was the errors is the paper that caused him to withdraw it.

Do you get it? He withdrew the paper because it was wrong. Creationists drove him to discover that it was wrong, but their quotes are not WHY it was withdrawn.

I don't have a problem with the scientific method. However Evolution isn't PART of the scientific method, because it hasn't predicted ANYTHING.

Of course it has. Experiments done on flies and bacteria have borne out the predictions of evolution, and frequently we discover fossils belonging to an intermediary species predicted by evolution. Hell, DNA itself was predicted by evolutionary theory, in particular a biological method of passing traits from parent to offspring that does NOT include traits acquired during life.

When scientists can create life from inert matter, I'll agree that evolution conforms to the scientific method

Evolution does not attempt to explain the origins of life, it only explains the diversification of life. Stop acting like you respect the scientific method when you can't even apply it.

Re:Likely result

[Chris Burke (6130)]

Additional research. There's been quite a lot of that done in the 55 years since the paper was published.

Re:Celebration/Mourning

[SleptThroughClass (1127287)]

The New York Times is wrong again. He did not retract the entire paper. He retracted "two brief passages" [americanscientist.org]. Besides, there is recent evidence that water existed early in the Earth's formation so his assumptions about the Hadean environment might be obsolete.

Re:Celebration/Mourning

[BWJones (18351)]

You're right, it should be celebrated and mourned. To me, it is bothersome that the Scientific community would celebrate it as thwarting "those who cling to dogma".

I am unaware of any scientist who is celebrating this as a thwart to "those who cling to dogma". What we are celebrating is the willingness of a scientist to retract his own work when it failed to be held up to scientific investigation and contained errors. The willingness of the classically trained scientist to search for veracity and be enthusiastic enough to put their work up for criticism by ones colleagues while also be willing to retract work that cannot be held as scientific fact is what is to be celebrated.

Re:Celebration/Mourning

[Lord Ender (156273)]

Actually, every person who believes in a creation story really is basing this belief solely on dogma. There is absolutely no evidence supporting any of the supernatural claims in any of the genesis myths of any of the worlds' religions. None.

Scientists believe knowledge comes from evidence and the logical conclusions derivable from that evidence.
Religious people believe knowledge comes from "faith" (aka "it is written"), which is the polar opposite of evidence.

The so called "moderate" religious people exist in a state of mind called "cognitive dissonance" whereby all knowledge is derived from evidence and logic EXCEPT knowledge pertaining to topics they have been indoctrinated from birth to accept due to faith. This is your textbook dogma.

Don't take a textbook definition of dogma and call it anything else. That's really disingenuous of you.

Re:Celebration/Mourning

[pluther (647209)]

Is the assertion "Life arose from non-life around three billion years ago on the prehistoric earth" falsifiable without resorting to some form of the anthropic principle?

Absolutely it's falsifiable.

One way to falsify it would be to show evidence that there was life on the earth before then.

Another way would be to discover life elsewhere, on some other planet, and demonstrate that it has a common ancestor in the evolutionary chain as ourselves. This would not immediately disprove Earth as the origin, but it would indicate that it is not necessarily the origin of all life.

Another way to falsify the statement would be to demonstrate that despite extensive search there has been no evidence of life found in three billion year old strata (I have no idea if we actually have access to any, outside the moon). This would indicate life arose more recently.

There are all sorts of ideas about how abiogenesis may have come about, and a number of people are researching, coming up with theories and hypotheses, and, most importantly of all, ideas on how they can be investigated.

Of course, there is no generally accepted theory of abiogenesis yet, the way there is of gravity, electro-magnetism, and evolution by natural selection. But they're working on it.

Which is more than can be said of any Creationist. In all the years they've been around, they've yet to suggest a single experiment, or come forth with any single thing their "theory" would predict. All they can do is dig up gaps in our current understanding of evolutionary processes and claim they are "proof" of whatever they want to propose.

Re:Celebration/Mourning

[AK Marc (707885)]

Is the assertion "Life arose from non-life around three billion years ago on the prehistoric earth" falsifiable without resorting to some form of the anthropic principle?

Yes. Go three billion light years away with a really strong telescope. Tell me what you see.

Re:reversing the burden of proof

[misanthrope101 (253915)]

The assertion that disease is not caused by demonic possession is not falsifiable--does that cast doubt on the germ theory? My point, loosely, is that many attack evolution through what they consider to be its weak point--abiogenesis. Abiogenesis actually isn't part of evolutionary theory, and Darwin's Origin of Species doesn't even address where life came from, only where the variety came from. Anyway, the attack on abiogenesis is easy because you can turn skeptic and say "you can't falsify this, so it's not science," and my point here is that science deals only with the natural world, and all explanations are going to lie in the natural world, even if they have to remain speculative and even hazy. At no point is science going to throw up its hands and say "we can't prove where life started, so it must've been Shiva|Mithra|God|Zeus!" I've read a bit on abiogenesis, and all of the writers I've seen have cautioned repeatedly that the area is speculative at best. It has no bearing on evolutionary theory.

Futile Effort

[eldavojohn (898314)]

The retraction came about when, on a whim, Dr. Jacobson ran a search for his name on Google. At age 84 and after 20 years of retirement, "I wanted to see, what have I done in all these many years?" he said. "It was vanity. What can I tell you?"

That's vanity? No, the only thing he's missing is a bottle of Jack Daniels & that's how I spend my Friday nights!

But in all serious, this is going to be a pretty futile effort. It's greatly appreciated but it's probably going to backfire. This could be spun as 'lawyers' forcing a scientist's views out of sight, a scientist that's just trying to tell the truth. The same lawyers that have orchestrated the dinosaur bones found across the world.

And the character assassination from the Creationists will most likely consist of 'waffler' and 'flip-flopper', two terms I have no idea why they even exist.

This is the sign of a man of the highest quality in my eyes. I only wish that everyone--especially the politicians--look to him for guidance in how to 1) take ownership of something when you're wrong and 2) fix it.

i'm confused on the timeline

[User 956 (568564)]

he paper, entitled 'Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life', speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in the Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, 'one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive ... creationists cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention.

Wait, so is the earth billions of years old, or 6000 years old, as told in the bible?

Re:i'm confused on the timeline

[RedACE7500 (904963)]

It's somewhere near the back.

Re:i'm confused on the timeline

[Daniel Dvorkin (106857)]

Where in the bible does it state that the earth is 6000 years old? Can you please quote this?

This site [answersingenesis.org] should provide you with the answer to your question. In particular, this document [answersingenesis.org] lays out the argument quite nicely.

Re:i'm confused on the timeline

[bckrispi (725257)]

read Genesis and you'll see that the creation story pretty much mirrors evolution anyway. First there was nothing, then stars formed, light, planets formed, fish, then animals, then man. It's the same damn thing morons.

So where in the evolutionary ladder do the talking snakes and rib-clone women fit?

Re:i'm confused on the timeline

[feed_me_cereal (452042)]

The same faith held by Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Last time I checked, the "scientists" were outnumbered.

Last time I checked, popular belief didn't make things true. A majority of the population of the world used to think the sun revolved around the earth. It was this "scientific minority" you speak of that happened to be right. This was not an isolated incident, either; it has happened fairly regularly throughout history.

Our documentation is far older than anything they have.

...Which only means it was written by less informed people. How does this help you? Guess what, there are religious texts/artifacts that are older than the Bible. Perhaps you should switch to paganism.

Listen, pal, if you don't trust scientists, then give up all your modern conveniences and move into a cave. You should be respectful of the work they've done to provide you with what you have.

Why did he do it?

[Cro Magnon (467622)]

If he discovered clear errors and retracted it for that reason, that's fine, if somewhat tardy.

If he retracted it just because creationists quoted it, that's an example of the same dogma religious zealots are critisized for.

Re:Why did he do it?

[Merk (25521)]

If you RTFA, it says that he was reminded of the paper because the creationists quoted it. Because it was brought to his attention again he re-read it. He discovered it contained embarrassing factual errors, so he retracted it. It's too bad that he only caught the errors after they had been misused, but it's great that he caught the errors eventually and responded appropriately.

The really pathetic part of this...

[Lurker2288 (995635)]

The really pathetic thing is that, if I read the article correctly, the creationists aren't even interpreting his findings correctly. He basically says that as the earth started to cool, chemical compounds could arise that would remain stable in the environment, and that it would take some source of energy to assemble them into something more complex. In contrast, one creationist web site mentioned by the article describes the paper as meaning that "within a few minutes, all the various parts of the living organism had to make themselves out of sloshing water." Nothing like a little creative misinterpretation to give your dogmatic nonsense the air of scientific legitimacy.

i would like to make a retraction

[circletimessquare (444983)]

in 1998 i made an inflammatory post on slashdot in a discussion thread about the merits or lack thereof of windows 98. people have used that post to claim that i am a troll. i am not a troll, i am in fact a lurker. by retracting that post i am able to assert that

thank you for your attention

Original retraction letter

[crumley (12964)]

The original retraction letter [americanscientist.org] is inspiring. I am glad that Dr. Jacobson set the record straight, even though it would have been easier for him to ignore his earlier mistakes.

Science vs. Faith

[$lingBlade (249591)]

Hasn't this argument been beaten to death already? Maybe I'm wrong, and yes I'm over simplifying but basically it comes down to this: Science tries to explain *how* things happened, Faith tries to explain *why* things happened. At least in terms of planetary history. Personally, I'm interested in both how and why things happen the way they do. Most times, in my experience, science does a better job at explaining how things are happening and sometimes why they happen. I lost my faith in faith around the time I started asking questions and got back a lot of crappy answers. However, I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility of *some* kind of creative force simply because we may not have the tools to demonstrate or understand it fully.

Re:Overeactions 'R Us

[hansraj (458504)]

If you RTFA, you would see that he reread his paper and found many errors that no one else had found yet. He retracted the paper because of the errors. Of course he might have other motives but that is anybody's guess

Re:Overeactions 'R Us

[Daniel_Staal (609844)]

The nature of the citations made him re-read it, and realize he'd made factual errors. Those errors were being used to support the arguments of the people citing the paper. So he retracted it to remove those errors from circulation.

Re:Fantastic!

[whoever57 (658626)]

So now as a creationist all I need to do is take my least favorite scientific postings, twist their words to say what I want them to and viola they get retracted and denounced! Wow, why didn't I think of this before?

What you are missing is that the original author of the paper acknowledged significant errors in it. Also, where did the music ("viola") come from? I didn't see any reference to music in the original story.

Re:When will creationist realize?

[MightyMartian (840721)]

You are aware, I trust, that other than a remotely small number of scientists out there, there is no debate. Creationism and Biblical Literalism were tossed in the trash heap of bad ideas beginning in the 18th century (actually a helluva lot earlier, if you count St. Augustine, and even earlier if you count the fact that the Jews hadn't believed in the Hebrew rip-off of Sumerian cosmography for a few centuries prior to Christ).

There is no debate in the scientific community about whether evolution produced all life or not. There's a cultural and political debate, which scientists have been dragged into. Whatever you make of your opinions and claims, don't pretend for one moment that science is on your side.

Re:How Times have Changed

[edraven (45764)]

You may want to study the history of the controversy between creationism and evolution before saying something like "there weren't creationists around" in 1955. When Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species" in 1859, it was controversial. There was controversy in 1925 when John Scopes went on trial for teaching the principles of evolutionary theory in a public school. He lost, by the way, and the Act under which he was charged was not repealed until 1967.

Re:Creationism vs Science

[MightyMartian (840721)]

What you are describing is "compartmentalization", or, as it is called in memory of Lewis Caroll, the White Queen Hypothesis, as in:

Alice: "One CAN'T believe impossible things."
White Queen: "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for a half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

So, on the one hand, a Creationist will happily accept radioactive decay and the notion that radioactive isotopes have half-lives, and even understand what that basically means, but then turn around and reject that as evidence for an old Earth. There objections to radioactive decay in particular fall into three basic camps:

1. Radioactive decay happened faster in the past - This, of course, is ludicrous, and it should be pointed out to them that tinkering with decay rights to make isotopes decay faster would release so much energy that they would basically melt the planet.
2. Radioactive isotopes were created at various states of decay - This is the omphalism argument (related to the famous Light Was Created In Transit argument). There's no way to falsify that, which pretty much defeats at as a empirically meaningful statement (translation: even if it's true, science would have to ignore it as a possibility).
3. You Weren't There So How Would You Know - This is actually a pretty common claim by Young Earth Creationists, though, as it relates to the White Queen Hypothesis, it's difficult to say how invoking epistemological nihilism helps there own claims any better than a scientific one. Generally, they aren't sufficiently aware of the logical trap involved in invoking it.

Re:The article stereotypes faith

[808140 (808140)]

The idea that all scientific knowledge is provisional, able to be challenged and overturned, is one thing that separates matters of science from matters of faith.

Not necessarily. Blanket statements like this are stupid. Sure, some people refuse to allow their faiths to be challenged, but most of my experience with people of faith has been the opposite.

While I agree that blanket statements are often stupid, sometimes they are correct. In this case, your experiences seem to fly in the face of everyone else's.

All science is based on axioms as well, which aren't supported either, that's why they're called axioms.

No, science is not based on axioms — you're thinking of mathematics, which is not the same thing. Science is not based on deductive logic like math is — quite the opposite, in fact. Science is based on inductive logic, which works in the opposite direction: the scientist observes the world around him and tries to elucidate its underlying structure from those observations. So in a sense, the scientist does not know what the axioms are; he is trying to discover them.

Both scientists and people of faith have a hard time when someone questions their axioms.

Ignoring for a moment your misuse of the term "axiom": I will concede that a scientist who has developed his own theories and who accepts them may find it difficult or painful to accept that they are wrong. However, science as a discipline is founded on the notion that models and theories must be tested, and one scientist (or a group of scientists) stubbornly refusing to accept that their models are incorrect does not materially effect science as a whole, especially in the long term. Religion is not at all the same in this regard; many people continue to reject observable phenomena because they contradict their faith.

But I see no evidence to show that people of faith are less likely to accept a challenge of their axioms: in fact, they are more likely to accept that challenge, and if truly presented with something that can prove it's falsity, I would say a person of faith is much more likely to overturn that belief than a mathematician would be to overturn one of Euler's axioms.

I should warn you; I am a mathematician. What are Euler's axioms?

Leaving that aside for now, it seems from your comment that you are profoundly confused about the differences between science and mathematics, the latter being properly thought of as a branch of philosophy, and not science at all. Math does not concern itself with what is true in a physical sense; from a mathematical perspective, whether the world is flat or round is of no importance whatsoever. Math is a logical excursion, and at a core level axioms are totally arbitrary. It's a game of logic, and we deduce what we can from a few axioms that we essentially make up. Now, it is true that it is not possible to prove that a sufficiently complex set of axioms is self-consistent; you might say that we take this as a matter of faith. But it isn't faith that is anything like religious faith: it's more like having faith that the Sudoku puzzle you're wrestling with has a solution even if you lack the mathematical ability to prove that it really does.

Math cannot, by its nature, be in conflict with religion. It does not attempt, by itself, to predict or characterize anything in the natural world. That scientists find it a useful tool is a happy coincidence (or unhappy, depending on your belief system).

Re:The article stereotypes faith

[808140 (808140)]

What are Euler's axioms?

Ha ha. Oops, I meant Euclid not Euler!

I suspected as much. Interesting, though, that you should pick Euclid as an example: one of his axioms, the parallel postulate, was "overturned" as nearly as one can do such a thing in mathematics: it was found to be independent of the others he advanced. This did not make Euclidean geometry invalid, however, which is very important: Euclidean geometry continues to be studied and is not "wrong" because in a mathematical context, the only way something can be wrong is for it to be logically inconsistent. The discovery that an axiomatic system consisting of Euclid's other axioms plus the logical negation of the parallel postulate itself constitutes a consistent geometry — hyperbolic geometry — resulted in an immense amount of mathematical development, however.

But understand: Euclidean geometry remains just as valid today as it did when Euclid wrote the Elements. It has been refined and placed on more rigorous footing, but none of it was wrong. In fact, it has been shown that hyperbolic geometry is consistent if and only if Euclidean geometry is consistent — one cannot be right and the other wrong. They are either both right, or both wrong.

At the time that mathematicians began studying hyperbolic geometry, there were a lot of hysterical raisins that made a lot of fuss about which was "real". Note, however, that these people were talking about which system better models the real world, and were at their core making physical arguments, not mathematical ones. The same sorts of criticisms were leveled at negative numbers, complex numbers, spaces with dimensions greater than 3, etc. They are always non-mathematical criticisms based on the idea that things that do not have an obvious counterpart in the real world should not be studied. Thankfully, mathematicians have always told these people to sod off.

Science depends on the assumption that observations of the world actually correlate to a real world that exists. Also there is the belief that one has the ability to interact with the world, hence experiments are possible.

This is true. At some level, we must take it on faith that we exist and that we can interact with the natural world. But really, if we don't, who cares? Unlike the religion vs. science argument, there aren't really two sides to this.

Doesn't inductive reasoning itself require an unsupported axiomatic trust in the idea that "the future will be like the past"?

Yes, it does — sort of. The scientific method is founded on the idea that experiments are repeatable and that observable phenomena have naturalistic causes. This may turn out to be untrue, but to date, we have never had this principle violated. It's important to understand that it's non-trivial to engineer a violation of this principle. If gravity stopped working tomorrow, a scientist would want to know why — he takes it on faith, I suppose, that there is a reason. In order for the scientific method to be unworkable, gravity would not only have to stop working tomorrow, it would also have to do so for no reason whatsoever. It's not just that the future will be like the past, that doesn't adequately capture it. It's that there are reasons for things that happen, and that we are able to understand these reasons.

This might not be true, of course — in fact, it's very likely that there are some things we simply aren't capable of understanding, much as there are many things an ant is not capable of understanding. However, saying that because there are likely to be things we aren't capable of understanding that we should give up on trying to understand what we are capable of understanding is defeatism.

Then there is the fact that science depends heavily on math. Can y