New Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory — Evolution Not Random

ScienceDaily is reporting a team of biologists has demonstrated that evolution is a deterministic process, rather than a random selection as some competing theories suggested. "When the researchers measured changes in 40 defined characteristics of the nematodes' sexual organs (including cell division patterns and the formation of specific cells), they found that most were uniform in direction, with the main mechanism for the development favoring a natural selection of successful traits, the researchers said."

In other news...

[Aranykai]

The Theory of Evolution is once again mistaken for Natural Selection of Advantageous Traits.

Re:Ah, but...

[KublaiKhan]

Is it 'deterministic' or 'random' that a positively charged object is attracted to a negatively charged object, or is it merely a consequence of the way things are?

Re:In other news...

[SoupGuru]

Is there even a "Theory of Evolution"?

I thought in science there are facts and then there are theories to explain those facts. In other words, there is the fact that thing evolve and the theory of natural selection explains how they evolve. So not only are we confusing the terms evolution and natural selection, we're misapplying the term "theory".

Re:Ah, but...

[KublaiKhan]

This says nothing about the way in which a trait arise--merely that the selection process that determines which traits are likely to be passed on is not random.

Also, there's no reason to have faith in this. Leave faith to the religious folks--these are facts, which are true whether or not you 'believe' them.

Re:Wait... what's different here?

[NeutronCowboy]

The way I understood the article, observed mutations tended to be favorable to begin with. In other words, instead of the mutations being random, they are more likely to be favorable than unfavorable. So there seems to be some sort of mechanism that selects beneficial mutations BEFORE procreation or death kicks in. I'm not sure though if that's simple misreporting on the part of the author of the article.... wouldn't be the first time.

Re:God Recycles

[tempest69]

Creationist Interpretation : "God came up with something he liked, so he repeated his design; I mean it must have taken awhile to design millions of organisms, He must have recycled ideas somewhere"

Whats really intresting then is that while a whole bunch of stuff is recycled, the pattern makes a tree where recycling never seems to occur among plants-mammals-birds, so no four cycle breathing for mammals, no bird milk, no bat fruit.. really strange that with all the shortcuts that were taken, so much separation would be faithfully preserved.

Storm

Re:Am I missing something?

[NeutronCowboy]

But that's the point of the article - most mutations seem to be beneficial, according to their sets of criteria. This is what I think is new in the article.... though I'm also suspicious that the journalist might have simply misunderstood the scientist. Wouldn't be the first time.

Re:Ah, but...

[KublaiKhan]

It is an unfortunate man who counts another as an enemy--the more you hate 'em, the more you risk becoming like 'em.

Referring to scientific facts in terms of 'faith' and 'belief' is rather an unfortunate choice of terminology. There's no need to believe in facts. There's no need to 'have faith' in random mutations--you can prove to yourself that such things happen, and thus have no need for 'faith'.

Re:Wait... what's different here?

[kebes]

I was confused, too. Here's the reference to the actual paper:
Karin Kiontke, Antoine Barrière, Irina Kolotuev, Benjamin Podbilewicz, Ralf Sommer, David H.A. Fitch, and Marie-Anne Félix Trends, Stasis, and Drift in the Evolution of Nematode Vulva Development [current-biology.com] Current Biology (November 2007), 17, p. 1925-1937.

TFA [sciencedaily.com] seems to be misrepresenting the research somewhat. They claim that there is a divide in evolutionary theory between "random inheritance" and "deterministic inheritance." However, the actual article is describing the difference between unbiased (stochastic) and biased (selected or constrained) evolution of variation. In both cases the usual random genetic variation with fitness selection would occur.

The scientists are not claiming that evolution is deterministic or guided, but rather that there are strong selections and constraints that bias some variations to be more likely to appear than others. In their words:

We propose that developmental evolution is primarily governed by selection and/or selection-independent constraints, not stochastic processes such as drift in unconstrained phenotypic space.

As an example of a constraint, they mention "generative constraints" (i.e. fitness is selecting for a certain feature, and there are multiple ways of achieving that feature, but one's genetic heritage will bias one implementation over another). Their evidence for the drift in variations being generally "biased" is based on the occurrence (over generations) of various traits: for instance they observe fewer "reversals" (reappearance of traits that were previously common) than would be expected if the variability were entirely stochastic/random.

This is, in any case, my understanding of the paper... but I'm a chemist/physicist, not a biologist! (So hopefully a biologist in the crowd will further explain this paper.) Overall, however, I think the article doesn't summarize the work properly, since they are suggesting that evolution is highly directed and deterministic, whereas the paper is instead analyzing the "degree of bias" that is inherent to the selection effects of evolution. For instance, the scientific paper doesn't claim that evolution can't produce non-advantageous mutations.

Re:Wait... what's different here?

[snaz555]

My rather layperson understanding is that the findings prove there are N-order effects in evolution. Given what we know about the complex interaction of genes and how they switch one and other off in complex networks, there are many layers of order where changes can occur, and conversely any one change could impart both, say, a bigger eye as well as a tendency to evolve say the skin in some direction. So you can have one immediately beneficial change, like a slightly tweaked eye, that takes hold quickly act to set up the species for other future directional changes -- or even 2-, 3-, or N-th order changes (like changes to the switching graph itself). Evolution also isn't centered around individual procreation. Clearly few ants or bees procreate, yet they are extremely successful as species. Evolution is about the success of the species, and can't be reduced to a 'fittest of the lineages' even in species where all or most individuals are genetically enabled to do so. Anyway, I'm sure a real geneticist or other professional in the field could really clue us in much better.

Re:Ah, but...

[shimage]

Two points:

1. While it's good to verify things, you do realize that this proves nothing, right? It is merely in line with the one theory that we have for this sort of thing. It doesn't go anywhere near proving it. To prove that evolutionary selection is deterministic, you'd have to show that it was true for all cases, and that's a bit difficult. What this experiment shows is that for the species tested, traits considered, over the time analyzed, nothing abnormal was observed.
2. There is no "competing theory", just Darwin's. There are those of us that believed that it the selection of traits was deterministic, and then there are ... creationists. Those that are in between don't make up a significant population in the scientific community. Also note that this study is irrelevant for the evolution/ID debate, since this is supposed to determine how evolution goes about, not whether it goes about.

3. While I don't think that this experiment wasn't worth doing, I don't think it's news. It's like going out to measure the mass of a photon and discovering that it's less than you can measure (yes, I know this has been done; it wasn't very exciting). It doesn't break anything we thought was fine, and doesn't prove anything we didn't already know: it simply puts limits on how wrong our theory can possibly be.

Re:Thus eliminating the usual trite rhetoric

[ChromeAeonium]

I doubt this will change anyone's opinion of anything because this article doesn't appear to be saying much, just that mutations in a nematode's sex organs tend to be beneficial. Really, to claim that mutations in general have a trend to be helpful after only a single study of a single part of a single organism seems to be stretching it to me.

Re:Ah, but...

[Adambomb]

This is why I would like to have clarified why people seem to think that the concept of Creationism is even at odds with Evolution.

Personally, I would find it much less insulting as a deity if people realized I was an absolutely incredible systems programmer able to start a ball rolling with some precursor components and have all of earths current life unfold from them as planned. It would kind of belittle the effort to say He just snapped his fingers.

I hear the rebuttal constantly that the words of mankind are unable to contain the meanings God would be trying to impart on the writers, and this type of complexity would be EXACTLY the kind of thing mankind would be unable to even conceptualize millennia ago.

Creationism and Evolution are not mutually exclusive. The roots of creationism are simply unable to be tested or verified by humanity currently so it remains a leap of faith to believe that God designed the layout of dominos. We can't even say if there was a START to the universe, or whether it is some bizarre infinite system, or a finite-yet-recursive system or what.

For the die hard ultra-fundamentalist AS WELL AS the hardcore ultra-atheistic, keep in mind that NOTHING can be known to be 100% accurate, maybe a bunch of nines of significance based on what we know but never 100%. Even the probability we determine based on what we know would be in the same boat (IE: see Newtonian mechanics, almost correct, 'works' depending on frame of reference).

If we could, humanity would have no need for faith, as everything would simply be. Seeing as that would leave even less room in existence for free will, I'm definitely glad things are not that way (despite some things done in the name of faith or in the name of science).

DISCLAIMER: I'm still one who prefers the random swerving to being a gear in a deterministic system, but that doesnt mean what i'd like the model of existence to look like is correct.

Re:Ah, but...

[jgarra23]

Trying to argument by calling things "merely the way they are" is what I hate my Christian enemies for.


All science comes from the idea that one does not know and uses a sound method to determine things. Until you know the process involved it is "the way things are". Things fell to the ground for centuries that's the way it was until we learned the force of gravity.

I don't know of any religion that accepts "that's the way things are", they all try to say "no it's not! This is the result of our doing something!!"

Try telling a Pentacostal that our existence is "just the way things are, no more no less" and let me know what kind of answer you get back.

BTW, I couldn't agree with you more on what infuriates me about them :)

Re:Ah, but...

[Mantaar]

It is an unfortunate man who counts another as an enemy--the more you hate 'em, the more you risk becoming like 'em.

There's a German Proverb that goes:
Die größten Kritiker der Elche waren früher selber welche
translates to: the greatest critics of the moose have been moose themselves in the past... (rhymes in German and is thus funny, sounds ridiculous in my translation)

I hope you understand my point. Been there, done that - not a hard liner, but a naïve child, ready to believe in something sound - then I turned away in disgust as my mind started liberating itself from all that Christian... propaganda?

I don't think I have a chance of becoming religious once again - and I think that you misunderstood my usage of 'enemy'. I don't hate them, but I must oppose them.

Re:Wait... what's different here?

[Alsee]

From the artcle:
An opposing theory says evolution takes place through randomly inherited and not necessarily advantageous changes. Using the giraffe example, there would not be a common neck-lengthening trend; some would develop long necks, while others would develop short ones.

They were testing the alternate theory against standard theory.

From what I picked up in bio, it was known to work as such:
Assume Mutation
(1) If mutation not hindrance, animal likely to live and likely makes babies.
(2) If mutation is boon, animal more likely to live and more likely makes babies.
(3) If mutation is hindrance, animal less likely to live and less likely to make babies

Yeah. You described standard theory.

The alternate theory did not accept (1), (2), and (3). Instead it suggested:
(1) If mutation not hindrance, it's equally random what happens.
(2) If mutation is boon, it's equally random what happens.
(3) If mutation is hindrance, it's equally random what happens.

Basically some genius proposed an "alternate theory" that if you throw a ball in the air, it won't fall down. These valiant researchers threw some balls up in the air to test that alternate theory against the standard theory of gravity.

Major scientific results! The standard theory held up and the alternate was silly.

Major scientific results! Anti-evolutionists who think evolution is "merely random and undirected" and therefore impossible to explain life on earth.... those people can most charitably be described as "uninformed" or "misinformed". I will leave the less charitable descriptions to your imagination.

-

Re:God Recycles

[susano_otter]

You really haven't ever bothered to consider the implications of the "creationist" theory, have you?

If the universe is the creation of a being that transcends time and space, then there's no tedium involved in the design process because there's no time involved in the design process. Any "recycling" of ideas would have occurred for other reasons. As to what those reasons might be, a more likely "creationist" interpretation would be that in realm where time and space have no meaning, how can we possibly figure out the whys and wherefores of things (traditionally, "God works in mysterious ways").

So...

[zer0skill]

So... That confirms there is no god? Or proves that we should teach Darwin in schools? Instead of the God Creation stuff?

Re:Ah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... From a scientist who is also very religious...

If you think that science deals in facts, you're mistaken. Science is more a process of coming up with explanations for the observations that we have. For example, we see something, we come up with a theory and then set out to "prove" the theory correct. Unfortunately, we find historically, that the scientific proof of things is almost always flawed, as it was with newtonian physics, but is frequently good enough to get by. There are all sorts of stuff that we're able to build with the flawed scientific information that we gather.

Again, historically, we have shown that as humans, we aren't very good at understanding "fact" through science. We're much better at understanding approximations that are good enough for what we're trying to accomplish at that time. As we come up with different needs or as someone looks a bit further than their colleagues, we come up with better approximations. I see most of science as an exercise of faith quite as much as religion.

As was noted at a medical school. "Half of what we're going to teach you about medical science is false. We're just not sure which half yet."

I agree that facts are true regardless of what you believe. I just don't think that science is all about fact.

Re:Ah, but...

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

Ask me again tomorrow afternoon.

Re:Ah, but...

[bwalling]

these are facts, which are true whether or not you 'believe' them.

Don't misrepresent what science is. Science is always changing its mind based on new findings. That's what it is supposed to do. This is our current understanding. It may be the true behavior of nature; it may only be the best explanation for what we currently know and we'll later discover something that provides a much better explanation. You shouldn't call something like this 'true' - you should simply say that it is the current explanation. There will always be more information to uncover - do you really think science will reach some kind of end?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Ah, but...

[jawtheshark]

I know I'm playing the devils advocate here.... (being not very religious, I've been baptised Catholic, and I did marry before Church. Mainly because of my wife though and she really didn't have religious things in mind... anyway... offtopic)

I don't know of any religion that accepts "that's the way things are", they all try to say "no it's not! This is the result of our doing something!!"

Actually, they all accept the mantra "that's the way things are". They just accept the view from thousands years ago, where there wasn't a real explanation and someone made up a fairy tale. For them that "is the way things are". Knowledge, doesn't change, nor evolve for them. It just "is". Science on the other hand, evolves, corrects itself, gets better. They are unable to, because of the mantra "that's the way things are". Science works following the mantra "Now, that's odd... Why in the world would it behave like this? I need to look deeper into that".

Re:Ah, but...

[Gandalf_Greyhame]

Is the following a fact or faith? The Sun will rise tomorrow (whether over clouds or otherwise). What say ye?

Neither, as the sun is stationary and therefore unable to rise. Perhaps the correct question to ask would be "As the Earth continues in it's daily rotation, will there be a sun in the sky tomorrow"

Now, if we think about this logically, if the sun was not in existence, the Earth would stop moving around the sun, and therefore there would be no tomorrow.
Therefore I have decided, using logic, that without a tomorrow, there is no sun. Therefore it is a fact that the sun will rise tomorrow.

Re:Ah, but...

[Dun Malg]

Really? I always thought that to be considered Creationist one simply had to believe that God engineered all that is, regardless of how.

When people talk about "creationists", they generally mean the ones that believe the world is a few thousand years old, that man and monkey are not related (why, the very idea!), and/or any of the many scientifically laughable fairy tales found in old religious fairy tale texts. Those kinds are bad not because they believe in some Skydaddy, but because they actively refuse to acknowledge scientific fact. It's an issue of willful ignorance. I consider myself fairly rational. If I personally witness Jesus his bad ol' self coming down right in front of me, walking on water, and then hanging out with me all day to explain why Born-Again Christianity is the TRUTH, I'd very much be forced to consider the possibility that such might be the case. Conversely, the Creationist Nutter faction refuses to see what's before their very eyes, instead clinging to some internal definition of TRUTH that increasingly conflicts with observable reality.

For the "creationists" who believe God coded up the source for the universe in one marathon 6-day hacking spree and then typed "root#make universe" which set off the Big Bang, well, where's the point of argument? The lesser "why" of the mechanics is pure science, and the greater "Why" of the motivation for making it that way is pure abstract philosophy. The two never conflict, or even really overlap.

Re:Ah, but...

[Spazmania]

It's possible to think a particular church hierarchy is despicable without finding Christianity itself objectionable. It's unfortunate that you don't see the distinction, particularly given the overwhelming evidence of the existence of groups which have splintered from the church over the years as a result of similar frustrations.

You offered a German proverb, I'll swap you an English one: you threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Re:Ah, but...

[omris]

see, we're scientists. we don't like to use that word.

we call it a 'prediction'. it's less scary.

faith is what we have that our predictions will be correct. but only in secret.

This is not what you all think

[Gastrolith]

The title of the post is misleading. This is not intended to be a confirmation of the modern evolutionary theory. This paper is about HOW actually evolution of certain aspects of the nematodes happen, not about whether evolution happens or not at all. The modern theory of evolution considers three different mechanisms in which evolution occur: * Natural selection (the only one described by Darwin), which consists in the differential reproduction of organisms (let's just say organisms, to keep it simple) determined by inheritable traits (adaptive traits. * Genetic drift, which consists in the "random" change in the frequency of a gene in a population. * Genetic flow, which consists in the transference of genes among populations. From the summary of the paper: "We propose that developmental evolution is primarily governed by selection and/or selection-independent constraints, not stochastic processes such as drift in unconstrained phenotypic space." Put simply, this paper says that natural selection is the prevailing mechanism in developmental evolution. Sorry about my bad English. Not a native speaker.