July 15, 2008

Casey Luskin has one off the wrist

Creationists generally are an embarrassment but Casey Luskin is notably embarrassing because he's also a lawyer. Luskin works for the Discovery Institute, a "think tank" in Seattle devoted to propagating a species of creationism called "intelligent design." In fact the DI represents the best and brightest of "intelligent design theorists."

Several years ago, scientists discovered Tiktaalik roseae, a fossil fish whose physical characteristics are especially important to evolutionary biology because many of them are the same as tetrapods, or four-legged animals.

Tiktaalik is just the sort of so-called transitional creature that creationists are constantly demanding. Neil Shubin, one of the University of Chicago researchers who discovered the fossil in Canada, calls it a "fish with a wrist."

Behold Counselor Luskin, attempting to critique Prof. Shubin's description of some features of Tiktaalik's skeleton:
Shubin et al.: “The intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik have homologues to eponymous wrist bones of tetrapods with which they share similar positions and articular relations.” (Note: I have labeled the intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik in the diagram below.)

Translation: OK, then exactly which “wrist bones of tetrapods” are Tiktaalik’s bones homologous to? Shubin doesn’t say. This is a technical scientific paper, so a few corresponding “wrist bone”-names from tetrapods would seem appropriate. But Shubin never gives any.
Yes indeed, those wrist bone names would seem appropriate, wouldn't they, Counselor? To be technical and scientific.

Wild guess here but that's probably why Prof. Shubin used the word "eponymous," which means "having the same name as." So Shubin already told Casey Luskin the names of the tetrapod bones before Luskin even asked: the intermedium and the ulnare. And the eponymous Tiktaalik bones are ... the intermedium and the ulnare.

Welcome to the world of "intelligent design theory" scholarship.

No wonder they call them IDiots.

h/t Carl Zimmer.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was hoping that you could answer the following question with your superior knowledge of our origin.

Could you please tell me how carbon 14 was found in diamonds if the earth is as old as you think it is?

Rick Esenberg said...

A bit of bad form here. Luskin understands the argument that Shubin is making. He goes on to critique it. He argues - and cites another paper in support - that there is a huge difference between the bones in tikktalik and tetrapods and the connection between them would require some substantial unexplained morphology.
He argues that the tisstalik fin is, in no sense, a wrist.

Now, he may be wrong. Zimmer does offer some real rebuttal. But there is nevertheless something disquieting about the determination of evolutionary scientists to call their critics "idiots" and to take what seems to be an unwarranted cheap shot.

illusory tenant said...

please tell me how carbon 14 was found ...

I've never claimed superior knowledge of anything. Anyway, here's your answer, complete with references.

If those papers are not available online, then you'll find them in your local university library, which is where you should spend your time as opposed to at creationist websites like AnswersInGenesis.org.

Rick Esenberg said...

That's tiktaalik. Of course.

Anonymous said...

"which is where you should spend your time as opposed to at creationist websites"

Actually, you need to research the information of the scientist that have discovered "accelerated decay" before trying to dismiss it so lightly. I do not have time to look it up for you right now but maybe later.

illusory tenant said...

Rick, yes, I read Luskin's entire article and I agree that "bad form" is a necessary hallmark of creationist "scholarship."

Notice how Luskin's "argument" requires that he cherry pick the least representative correlative example from an array of tetrapods.

And, typically, every time creationists are presented with a transitional species, the next things they demand are two more on either side of the proffered creature.

Nothing new or surprising in that and it's clear they will never be satisfied until they are presented with a specimen of every creature that has ever waddled, swam, or flew over the Earth.

Not all scientists refer to this latest incarnation of creationist as "IDiots," but even the ones who don't have good reason to.

Maybe someday I will show you the reaction of the fifty or so scientists to the Utah Law Review article -- authored by DI luminaries -- they were cited in that I mentioned at your blog one time.

Anonymous said...

He argues that the tisstalik fin is, in no sense, a wrist.

He is, in a sense, talking out of his coccyx.

Anonymous said...

Rick Esenberg: "Luskin understands the argument that Shubin is making."

But do you understand the point that Luskin was making; and, by extension, IT's point?

Whatever else Luskin says, he says the following:

Shubin et al.: “The intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik have homologues to eponymous wrist bones ...

Translation: OK, then exactly which “wrist bones of tetrapods” are Tiktaalik’s bones homologous to? Shubin doesn’t say. This is a technical scientific paper, so a few corresponding “wrist bone”-names from tetrapods would seem appropriate. But Shubin never gives any.


So, yeah, that's idiotic at best. And the point, as it struck me rather obviously, is that Luskin will throw anything at the wall in hopes that it'll stick.

Like, f'r instance, quoting Shubin's garden-variety observation that "[w]rists, ankles and digits distinguish tetrapod limbs from fins, but direct evidence on the origin of these features has been unavailable," but breathlessly describing this as "a confession of retroactive ignorance". Darned evolutionists! When they're not pretending they know everything by, like, pointing out one's errors and stuff, they're forthrightly pointing out the limits of their own knowledge!

It's hard to fathom reading Luskin, reading IT, and deciding that the "cheap shot" is pointing out Luskin's lack of literacy, or principle, or both.

illusory tenant said...

"accelerated decay"

You ain't seen nothin' of "accelerated decay," Anon. Indeed, the universe was actually created last Thursday, complete with your memory of all events pre-last Thursday.

scripto said...

I don't get it. Not a wrist because it can't dribble a basketball? Maybe if they found gloves with tiktaalik. Or knitting needles.

So Your Inner Fish is too simple and the paper in Nature is jargon filled. I hope somewhere Shubin wrote something that was just right. Just for Casey.

illusory tenant said...

Welcome, scripto. Your report that Dembski's latest bears an accolade from Ann Coulter just made my day.

scripto said...

Thanks. I'm kinda sweet on her. But she scares me.

Anonymous said...

"Indeed, the universe was actually created last Thursday, complete with your memory of all events pre-last Thursday."


It - you are quite predictable in how you show ignorance with sarcasm regarding something that turns your world upside down. I know that it must be hard to admit that evolution has made a monkey out of you.

illusory tenant said...

It's not sarcasm, it's simply an employment of your own claim suggesting "accelerated decay" to justify your apparent "young Earth" beliefs.

Evolution has made a monkey out of you.

Other way 'round.

If you have an argument or any evidence of anything or care to report on the presence of carbon isotopes in rocks and so forth and so on, please feel free to deposit it here.