Let me rephrase then, since context is not something taken into account I see: Would you willingly lie to yourself if you wanted to teach yourself something? That's what schools and universities do, they teach. Lets say there's an exact copy of you, your clone, only he knows nothing. He can do basic stuff to survive and speak, but knows nothing. Would you lie to him saying 1+1=3? (For atheists) Would you teach him about God and that he's real? And that anything others say is a lie? (for theists) Would you teach your clone about your deity and that he's fake? And that all people who say your deity exists are dumb idiots who can't think?
I'm sure schools are better in Europe, but in the Sates, we have a problem with textbooks, as written about by James W. Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me, we have the intelligent design textbook, and we have home schoolers in Jesusland being taught that Noah saved the dinosaurs in his Ark, so yeah, schools are lying to us.
Ummm.... I don't think you understand significance in scientific studies. When pre-clinical labs do dosage-range studies at a lab they use about 5 "subjects" per dosage group. (usually around 25 subjects) Then for the definitive study they use only around 20 to 25 per dosage group. (usually for a total of 100 to 125 subjects) Not to mention beginning clinical trails only are tested on around 10 or so people. This number is expanded as you go through the process eventually going into the thousands. However you can get a lot of information out of a small sample size as long as you control for many conditions or you make sure it is random and blind depending on the study. Not to mention there are statistical methods that help you test something statistically without a extremely large sample group.
I am not a scientist or even a university graduate. I do, however, know about statistics, and I work in a research hospital. Yes, sample groups are initially small when you test new medication. However, you don't want to test something new on a large group of people right away, because, well, there's a chance you might kill them. My short statement on the study cited in the article may have implied that I want to say something like that holds no meaning at all, but I really wanted to say that a study including 270 people does in no way help in measuring the speed of evolution. Also, anything that has to do with DNA is far more complex than people think. People on different continents are different, we knew that before. But the conclusion cannot be "oh mans, human evolution is speeding up!!" Just because in parts of Asia, myopia is a lot more common than in Europe, it doesn't say a thing about evolution.
Moving on, the "generally accepted by science"-issue. Like I stated before, science does not work like making a map of some region, and all you have to do is discover how the white parts of the map look like. Natural sciences use models to approximate reality and bring it into a shape on which you can use mathematics in order to make predictions. You learned in physics that kinetic energy is calculated with the formula Ekin=1/2*m*v2, didn't you? Well, guess what, it's wrong if you take the factor of relativity into account. And the theory of relativity is also wrong, although more accurate than the classical Newton-thing. Or, to quote Scott, since the theory of relativity was accepted widely, we have it "right-er". Same thing with biology. The laws that Mendel discovered and everything you learned in high school biology are neither right nor wrong, but they are only usable in a certain range. And knowing which model can be used where requires a lot of knowledge and understanding of scientific processes.
All statements about the origin of man that you read about are half-baked and inaccurate. First of all, what do you define as human? How exactly do you define the homo sapiens, and which genes 'belong' to which species? Evolution does not work like *bam* new species, it is a continuous process, therefore the dating of for example a skull can be very crucial. You find, say, two, and they can both be homo neanderthalensis, but one might be an earlier form and the other one a later form. The earlier form might have mixed with the humans of the time, thus being one of our ancestors, whereas the later form may not have. People tend to put this into simple terms and the result might be "the homo neanderthalensis is not one of our ancestors", even though he might be, just not the last skull we found.
To summarize this: All I ask for is people being a lot more careful with scientific statements. "Human evolution speeding up" is a statement whose sources I don't even need to check, because it's simplified to the point of being completely useless. It is not a scientific result.
Also, anything that has to do with DNA is far more complex than people think. People on different continents are different, we knew that before. But the conclusion cannot be "oh mans, human evolution is speeding up!!" Just because in parts of Asia, myopia is a lot more common than in Europe, it doesn't say a thing about evolution.
Well, they mention in the article how they are going about finding SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) and how they can tell whether they are new SNPs or old SNPs. The database they are getting the information from is a joint effort of "Canada, China, Japan, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States" so one can assume that they were testing distinct populations.
Obviously we are only looking at the mainstream media coverage and not the actual published article. (I wish more of the media covering it would post the actual published article as a reference). It's hard to criticize a study on it's methodology when you have not read how they actually performed the study. I'm only arguing that jumping to a conclusion about the results of a study based on your opinion of the sample size is not a strong way to criticizes the study. Though I have to say after looking through the other coverage of this report in other news agencies, none of them other then National Geographic even mentioned they came to this conclusion by studying the amount of SNPs and their condition within the chromosomes. Sigh.
To summarize this: All I ask for is people being a lot more careful with scientific statements. "Human evolution speeding up" is a statement whose sources I don't even need to check, because it's simplified to the point of being completely useless. It is not a scientific result.
I believe the title is probably dumbed down for public consumption. It's more likely something like this "Within Human DNA single nucleotide polymorphisms are on the rise leading to many of the modern traits we find in humans today."
I would indeed like to see the actual scientific paper, because with the amount of information the article gives, it all seems very shady. To get back at the study issue: If they're testing distinct populations on, let's say, three continents (so we consider three groups, among which we want to see differences), you get 90 subjects per group. That may be enough to see if you want to dig deeper into the issue (which is probably what the people doing it intended to do). But considering how vast the human gene-pool is, it really doesn't tell you much. The problem I have is that the article throws all those imprecise pieces of information at you, and implies that some kind of final scientific result exist. Boiling down science to a point where the general public can understand it is very difficult. Actually, that's how the whole national socialist ideology worked. They took pieces of science that were familiar to people and pieced it all together to a very contradictory, but to many people nevertheless very convincing construct.
I found the site of the scientific journal mentioned in the article, but I don't have time to look around there right now, because I actually should be working.
Comments
Lie #1 : I'm married, that means I'm getting laid tonight!
Lie #2 : Yeah, she must have a headache.
People on different continents are different, we knew that before. But the conclusion cannot be "oh mans, human evolution is speeding up!!" Just because in parts of Asia, myopia is a lot more common than in Europe, it doesn't say a thing about evolution.
Moving on, the "generally accepted by science"-issue. Like I stated before, science does not work like making a map of some region, and all you have to do is discover how the white parts of the map look like. Natural sciences use models to approximate reality and bring it into a shape on which you can use mathematics in order to make predictions. You learned in physics that kinetic energy is calculated with the formula Ekin=1/2*m*v2, didn't you? Well, guess what, it's wrong if you take the factor of relativity into account. And the theory of relativity is also wrong, although more accurate than the classical Newton-thing. Or, to quote Scott, since the theory of relativity was accepted widely, we have it "right-er".
Same thing with biology. The laws that Mendel discovered and everything you learned in high school biology are neither right nor wrong, but they are only usable in a certain range. And knowing which model can be used where requires a lot of knowledge and understanding of scientific processes.
All statements about the origin of man that you read about are half-baked and inaccurate. First of all, what do you define as human? How exactly do you define the homo sapiens, and which genes 'belong' to which species? Evolution does not work like *bam* new species, it is a continuous process, therefore the dating of for example a skull can be very crucial. You find, say, two, and they can both be homo neanderthalensis, but one might be an earlier form and the other one a later form. The earlier form might have mixed with the humans of the time, thus being one of our ancestors, whereas the later form may not have. People tend to put this into simple terms and the result might be "the homo neanderthalensis is not one of our ancestors", even though he might be, just not the last skull we found.
To summarize this: All I ask for is people being a lot more careful with scientific statements. "Human evolution speeding up" is a statement whose sources I don't even need to check, because it's simplified to the point of being completely useless. It is not a scientific result.
Obviously we are only looking at the mainstream media coverage and not the actual published article. (I wish more of the media covering it would post the actual published article as a reference). It's hard to criticize a study on it's methodology when you have not read how they actually performed the study. I'm only arguing that jumping to a conclusion about the results of a study based on your opinion of the sample size is not a strong way to criticizes the study. Though I have to say after looking through the other coverage of this report in other news agencies, none of them other then National Geographic even mentioned they came to this conclusion by studying the amount of SNPs and their condition within the chromosomes. Sigh.
To get back at the study issue: If they're testing distinct populations on, let's say, three continents (so we consider three groups, among which we want to see differences), you get 90 subjects per group. That may be enough to see if you want to dig deeper into the issue (which is probably what the people doing it intended to do). But considering how vast the human gene-pool is, it really doesn't tell you much. The problem I have is that the article throws all those imprecise pieces of information at you, and implies that some kind of final scientific result exist.
Boiling down science to a point where the general public can understand it is very difficult. Actually, that's how the whole national socialist ideology worked. They took pieces of science that were familiar to people and pieced it all together to a very contradictory, but to many people nevertheless very convincing construct.
I found the site of the scientific journal mentioned in the article, but I don't have time to look around there right now, because I actually should be working.