Friday, September 4, 2009

Paul Kammerer: Evolution's Legacy of Shame

As an old proverb has it, first they'll reject the truth and then they'll appropriate it and say they knew it all along. Enter Paul Kammerer, the Austrian biologist who almost a century ago was assailed as a fraud for his anti Darwinian findings. His crime: he found evidence for Lamarckism--the idea that organisms can pass on traits they have acquired to their offspring. Kammerer ended up committing suicide and now, almost a century later, evolutionists are figuring out that he was right. Guess what they're calling him now? That's right, Kammerer has now been crowned an "evolutionist." Today's Orwellian headline reads:

Early 20th Century Evolutionist May Have Discovered Epigenetics

That's one "accolade" Kammerer's name can do without. Alexander Vargas of the University of Chile, who has studied Kammerer's work in detail, reports that Kammerer likely presaged the field of study known today as epigenetics (findings that contradict evolutionary theory). Here is more of Kammerer's story:

"Today Kammerer's scientific legacy is non-existent and he is often cited as an example of scientific fraud," said Vargas. "However, the specific similarities of Kammerer's experiments to epigenetic mechanisms are very unlikely to have been the result of his imagination. These new biological arguments provide a modern context suggesting that Kammerer could be the actual discoverer of epigenetic inheritance."

Vargas has studied Kammerer's evidence, as summarized in his 1920's research notes, and found that Kammerer reported hybrid crosses of treated and untreated toads in which 'parent-of-origin effects' can be observed, a recurrent phenomenon in epigenetics. Kammerer also reported that his toads developed larger bodies than untreated land toads and that their eggs were smaller and contained less egg-yolk than normal. These are traits that are known to be influenced by epigenetic mechanisms. ... Kammerer's consistency with current epigenetic mechanisms provides new and compelling biological arguments in favour of the authenticity of the midwife toad experiments.

Kammerer's story is but one example in evolution's legacy of shame. Evolutionists judge themselves every time they proclaim that theirs is the foundation of true science--that evolution is the foundation of the organic sciences. Evolutionists do not promote true science, they suppress it. Religion drives science, and it matters.

7 comments:

  1. I thought you may appreciate the following review of a Cell paper (1) two weeks ago. The paper did not make Darwinists happy (no bloggers from Darwin camp has picked up the Cell story). But oddly enough, no one from ID did either. Perhaps, the science maybe a little deep.

    The result of the Cell paper contradicts the modern evolution theory but is a precise prediction of the more complete evolution theory, the maximum genetic diversity hypothesis (MGD) (2, 3).

    As reported (1), one portion of a protein of S1A family protease, termed the blue sector (arbitrary color to be different from two other sectors of red and green), is much more conserved in vertebrates than in invertebrates (Figure 6B of the Cell paper) and is not related to enzyme activity. The existence of sectors in a protein, the blue sector in this case, that can differentiate complex vertebrates from simple invertebrates cannot be explained by the modern evolution theory. Thus the paper made no attempt to discuss the blue sector in connection with any evolution theory. Here is why. To explain the blue sector by natural selection, one must invoke that vertebrates as a whole encounter an entirely different natural environment from that of invertebrates, which is simply not the case. To explain the blue sector by random drift would require neutrality for most of the amino acid positions in this sector, which is also simply not the case.

    So what does the blue sector say about actual evolutionary mechanisms? First, it adds one more outstanding fact to the long list of facts that contradict the modern evolution theory. Second, every fact that contradicts the modern evolution theory has been automatically found to be evidence for the MGD and the new result of the Cell paper is no exception. The MGD treats the modern evolution theory as true only for microevolution and suggests that macroevolution is distinctly different and involves a change in epigenetic complexity.

    An increase in epigenetic complexity will lead to a decrease in genetic diversity as measured by point mutations due to a self-evident inverse relationship between genetic diversity and epigenetic complexity (2, 3). A gene in complex organisms encounters more epigenetic constraint than in simple organisms and is thus less tolerant of point mutations. Macroevolution towards higher epigenetic complexity involves a suppression of point mutations, and in this sense is the exact opposite of microevolution (2, 3). Thus the MGD predicts that protein or DNA sequence sectors that are non-constrained in simple organisms would become constrained in complex organisms even though such sectors may play no role in enzyme function. The blue sector of S1A protease is the first example of such Complexity-Associated-Protein-Sector (CAPS). Epigenetic complexity puts maximum CAPS on sequence divergence.

    1. Halabi, N., Rivoire, O., Leibler, S., and Ranganathan, R. (2009). Protein sectors: evolutionary units of three-dimensional structure. Cell 138, 774-786.

    2. Huang, S. (2008) Histone methylation and the initiation of cancer. Cancer Epigenetics, Ed. Tollefsbol, T., CRC Books.

    3. Huang, S. (2009) Inverse relationship between genetic diversity and epigenetic complexity, Submitted. Preprint available, http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1751/version/2

    for more, visit my blog: http://thegoldengnomon.blogspot.com/

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  2. Your link to science daily doesn't work try..


    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090902195234.htm

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  3. Thanks Shi Huang. I have seen the paper and considered blogging on it. But haven't had time. It would be a full time job to keep up with all the problems with evolution.

    I'll look at your post ...

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  4. Thanks William. Should be fixed now, thanks to your help.

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  5. Cornelius,
    Based on my observation, you are one of the better informed IDers with regard to molecular evolution, which involves some statistical mathematics and thus scared away a lot of people, lay and most biologists alike. I am working hard to use my theory, the MGD, to replace the modern evolution theory (MET), consisting of natural selection of Darwinism and the neutral theory of molecular evolution. I have claimed that every fact that contradicts the MET, which are all about macroevolution, is automatic evidence for the MGD. There is not a single contradiction that I or anyone who has read the paper, including numerous anonymous reviewers during the past 2.5 years of submitting the paper for publication, could find. Given that you have assembled a good list of facts that contradict the MET, it would be fun for you to take a look at the MGD and try to come up with a single fact to contradict it. I would be most grateful.

    We share a common interest to bring down the MET as a lie for macroevolution. Thus I want to give you the most lethal weapon to do this. Try google ‘overlap feature of the genetic equidistance result’ and read my blog posts about it. You will learn that the molecular clock/neutral theory is wrong/doomed from the beginning and should never have been invented for macroevo in the first place. This careless mistake by Pauling et al will no doubt rank among the most embarrassing mistake in science history. If you can bring down the clock/neutral theory by the overlap feature, there is no doubt that it will, you automatically defeat Darwinism because Darwinism is irrelevant to and contradicted by facts of molecular evolution, which is why a negation of natural selection, the neutral theory, can be forced upon the classical Darwinists. I have openly shared the information on the overlap feature with a few dozen mainstream evolution biologists. Most of them were dead silent and none could offer any defense against my charges. It should be fun to watch how this biggest embarrassment in science become more popular known, and I wish that you could play a part in making that happen as soon as possible. This year is definitely going to be remembered as the beginning of the downfall of the MET. The 150th celebration of the ‘Origin’ will be the last.

    best,
    shi huang

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  6. So glad to see Kammerer being given his due here. Of course it was Arthur Koestler, one of the twentieth century's most important maverick science writers who wrote the definitive defense of Kammerer in his book, "The case of the midwife toad". There are inevitably errors and shortcomings in Koestler's book, yet Koestler made a strong case for Kammerer's innocence, based on his own original research.

    Kammerer also published an original study on synchronicity, what Kammerer called serial time, 'Das Gesetz der Serie' which even earned the cautious support of Einstein. It has never been published in English. In fact his paper is arguably more scientifically rigorous than Jung's work on the subject and in fact predates the famous joint publication of Jung and Pauli's on what they would call synchronicity.

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