USC Scientists Uncover Secrets Of Feather Formation

University Of Southern California / ScienceDaily.com ^ | 10/31/2002 | Cheng-Ming Chuong, et al

[forsnax5]

Los Angeles, Oct. 30, 2002 - Scientists from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California have, for the first time, shown experimentally the steps in the origin and development of feathers, using the techniques of molecular biology. Their findings will have implications for the study of the morphogenesis of various epithelial organs-from hairs to lung tissue to mammary glands-and is already shedding light on the controversy over the evolution of dinosaur scales into avian feathers.

[VadeRetro]

Yet evolution theory predicted that, because these then-unknown and unsuspected intermediate species had once existed, evidence of them might be found.

And yet we still get creos asking, "What about all the missing links?"

Why don't we find any of the intermediates that evolution does not predict? Bird-mammal mosaics? Amphibian-mammal or amphibian-bird mosaics? We find missing links, but not unexpected links. Evolution's record at prediction is far better than the creos admit.

[AndrewC]

And you accuse me of "white-hot emotionalism"? Around here, equating someone with the same mindset as a Clintonista loyalist is about the worst insult available.

Yes, and those who in someway challenge the Darwininian dogma are accused of building strawman arguments and knocking them down. The accusers are the grass artisans. They place unspoken words into the statements of the reluctant.

The simple question to be asked is how any findings in this experiment would have been accepted as evidence against Darwininianism? Had the experiment failed miserably to do anything it would not have made it out the door. If it had caused an arm to form, the experiment would have been marched out in fanfare as definitive "proof" of Darwininianism. In any case, using the Darwininians own definition, what was done was not science. It had no stated null hypothesis to accept or reject, thus being unfalsifiable it becomes non-science.(by the definition of Darwininians)

[f.Christian]

To: Marathon

Missionaries have said for years that American educational/media institutions are far more closed than in places like Russia. This underscores their point. What was it someone said, to find real communists these days you have to visit an American university?

2 Posted on 03/27/2000 10:56:24 PST by Marathon

[AndrewC]

What was it someone said, to find real communists these days you have to visit an American university?

Well, it does depend on the subject. My biology professor left in the middle of the school year to help Castro harvest sugar cane. My Soviet history professor was no communist.

Born in Germany, Professor Von Laue was sent by his father, Nobel physicist Max Von Laue, to study at Princeton University in 1937. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1944 and also served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps in World War II. Before coming to Clark University in 1970 he taught in the University of California, Riverside, and Washington University, St Louis. He was a specialist in Russian and Soviet history, but his wide-ranging interests included West African history, global history in the twentieth century, and the future. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Finland 1954-55, and a Guggenheim Fellow 1961-62 and 1974-75.

He wrote innumerable articles and six books. His aim as a teacher and historian was to understand the world into which he had been born.

A life-long pacifist, he was active in the peace movement with special concern for the arms race and US-Soviet relations. He was an active member of the Worcester Pleasant Street Friends Meeting.

Figure, the science professor was a communist supporter, and the history professor was a pacifist but was no communist lover.

[Ahban]

Your diagram is even more misleading than I had thought at first. It turns out J, K, and L are ALL Neanderthals. DNA analysis has ruled out Neanderthals as contributing to modern man's gene pool. That means you go from Egaster (I) to Cro Mag (M). Trouble is, egaster's descendents forgot to leave any fossils within the last 100K - Excluding perhaps the Neadertals who have already been ruled out as a source for mankind. There was no one around for modern man to evolve from.

Because human beings are wired to look for patterns, any graduated series has suggestive power. Your series has that power, even though it consists of dead ends and a critter placed out of order (chimp). It does not prove human evolution, it proves humans respond to the visual of a graduated series. They leap to conclusions. Most will reconsider those conclusions when presented with contradictory evidence.

Culturally, with tool making, social group size, religion and art, man shows up with a 'big bang' or creativity around 40K. Behaviorally modern humans show up suddenly.

DNA evidence shows that all humans are amazingly closely related. We disagree on the amount and implications of this evidence, but to me this far outweighs your small pile of disparate bones.

Bones are too easy to dispute, even among evos (ever read a book called "Bones of Contention"?) I could get a series of horse, dear, pig, dog and ape skulls that could show them 'evolving' from horses to apes. I could get a bunch of monkey and ape skulls, all extant species, and show modern monkies 'evolving' into apes.

[Ahban]

Let me refresh your memory then. I conceded that the fish-amphib bones you showed did look like what an intermediate between the two should look like.

That is not the same as conceding that amphibians evolved from fish, since most of the differences between the two are in the soft tissue. In addition I vaguely recall that someone after me came along and pointed out some differences that I had missed.

The more I look at the macroevo case, the less there is to it.

If you want to say the article produced a new hypothesis of how feathers could have evolved, I will agree with you. OK? What it did NOT produce was evidence that feathers evolved in the first place. They can now say "IF feathers evolved, they must have evolved differently than most of us previously thought". That is not the same as saying, "This is evidence that they evolved". Its not. Its just finding the genes that control certain aspects of feathers.

Yeah, IF they evolved then it has to come through those genes, but the evolved part is pure assumption. These findings do nothing to make that assumption more likely to be the truth. All sides in this debate knew that certain genes must control feather development.

[VadeRetro]

Your statements about Neanderthals are just wrong and don't help you. It's another case where you emotionally take the evidence you do like farther than it goes. Neanderthals may have contributed to the human gene pool. Even if they didn't, that they intergrade at one end of their development with Homo erectus from which they sprang and at the other end with modern humans is a clue, another dot to connect. They don't seem to have contributed to modern mitochondrial DNA but that's another question from nuclear DNA.

That means you go from Egaster (I) to Cro Mag (M). Trouble is, egaster's descendents forgot to leave any fossils within the last 100K ...

Here you bludgeon with bad reasoning. The size of your gap is maybe 55K, not 100K. There are non-neanderthal hominids in the Near East variously dated at 90-100K years ago. Cro-Magnon shows up 40-45K ago. In a five or so million-year history, a gap of this size in just the presumably mainline sequence is nothing given the granularity of the fossil record, yet you hide in it and trumpet your imagined success.

Bones are too easy to dispute, even among evos (ever read a book called "Bones of Contention"?)

There's more than one, but both/all are by creationists. The best known is by Lubenow and it can safely be termed crackpot. Tell me you're not getting your material from there.

I could get a series of horse, dear, pig, dog and ape skulls that could show them 'evolving' from horses to apes. I could get a bunch of monkey and ape skulls, all extant species, and show modern monkies 'evolving' into apes.

Repeatedly, you grasp at straws. Your counterexample series have more problems than you admit, especially the first one. You have fossil records for horses, ungulates, dogs, and apes. Both of your strawman series are contradicted by those records. The apes-to-human series is un-contradicted by other data. It is evidence for the best and only real hypothesis out there.

What you're really saying is "Anything but humans-from-apes!"

[Ahban]

What's the difference between conceding that amphibians evolved and humans evolved? There are serious philosophical consequences from believing "an boy is a fish is a rat is a pig is a dog". It is a big deal whether or not you beleive human life is created in the image of the Almighty or is a Cosmic Accident. It has implications that boil over, conscoiusly and subconsciouly, into how we treat the people in our life. It has implications on the just limits of government power too.

When the stakes are that high, we have to be sure. We need more assurance than the contrived diagram presented here.

Genesis Chapter One uses the strongest creative word possible in only three places. The creation of the universe, the filling of the sea (and later in the period of the verse the sky) with life, and the creation of man. In all three places, at a minimum, a fiat miracle is presented as having occured. Its not limited to those verses, but the Hebrew term used is less strong and does not demand creation of a new thing from nothing.

You asked me, so I told you. No doubt you will say my committment to the Word is blinding me. What is blinding you to the possiblity of its Truth?

[Robert A Cook PE]

Did you ever each the tip of that mammary gland study in college?

Or that a baseless allegation - and you are a more well-rounded student nowdays?

Did you ever have to flip-flop your class schedule?

Do you have a better grasp of the subjects at hand now?

(By the way, I took that class - it sucked.)

[Robert A Cook PE]

"Here, we use a developmental approach to analyse molecular mechanisms in feather-branching morphogenesis. We have used the replication-competent avian sarcoma retrovirus to deliver exogenous genes to regenerating flight feather follicles of chickens.

Can you explain this to us?

And then summarize what the new discovery is?

Elementry, my esteemed colleage.

As it's plane to see, this bird was killed because dinosaurs failed to grow armor-plated feathers.

http://www.strangecosmos.com/view.asp?PicID=6795

[ALS]

[Nebullis]

The argument will then be put forth that not everyone thought this way, but that will demonstrate my contention that Darwininianism is unfalsifiable.

Whether barbs or rachides formed first is not put forth as evidence of evolution. That's already settled. The question is what the specific pathway of feather evolution is, not whether feather evolution took place to begin with. Do you understand the difference? You're categorically mistaken. The claims of Darwininianism (sic) as unfalsifiable are irrelevant to this study or the claims made by the authors.

[VadeRetro]

There are serious philosophical consequences from believing "an boy is a fish is a rat is a pig is a dog" ...

This is almost like admitting that there's something going on within you when the evidence goes in certain ways. You could have stopped here.

You asked me, so I told you. No doubt you will say my committment to the Word is blinding me. What is blinding you to the possiblity of its Truth?

Science and science education have to follow the evidence. I mainly argue on these threads for simply letting that happen. I've been an agnostic since before I knew the proper word for it, but I've actually been open to little tugs of religious inclination at various points of my life. Lately however, arguing with creationists on FR has shown me that not all the effects of "faith in things unseen" are to be desired.

[Stultis]

The point I am making is that this will be used, as you indirectly infer, as evidence that supports your viewpoint. If the opposite had occurred, i.e. the rachis forming first, you would have said the same thing.

But you started out saying, "this article gives more evidence that the Darwininian viewpoint is unfalsifiable." In fact the article relates that an evolutionary theory has been falsified. Admittedly this doesn't directly address one way or the other the larger question of whether crucial tests of the "Darwininian viewpoint" exist, but it does show that, at the very least, it generates some falsifiable hypotheses or subsidiary theories.

[Stultis]

Ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny is one of those mistaken ideas like that went out like Lamarkism.

Strange comment.

Agreed. I don't know the proper terminology, but I suppose the (more correct) relevant principle would be that the order of events in developmental pathways tends to be conserved.

[AndrewC]

Whether barbs or rachides formed first is not put forth as evidence of evolution

I did not say evolution. I said Darwininianism. You have given even more evidence of what I contend.

[AndrewC]

You're categorically mistaken. The claims of Darwininianism (sic) as unfalsifiable are irrelevant to this study or the claims made by the authors.

Precisely, but Darwininianists will use this as more evidence of Darwininianism. What was the null hypothesis of this study?

[AndrewC]

In fact the article relates that an evolutionary theory has been falsified.

Yes, according to the Darwininians, or the more fanatic Darwininianists, it falsifies the other theory not Darwininian evolution. You know, the other theory that does not exist because without Darwininian evolution there is nothing to Biology.

[AndrewC]

Hi Robert! What Hanky-Panky will we discover this election cycle? Anyway nice to "see" you again. Here is the picture for those who are a little too busy to cut and paste.

Problem for today. Name that fowl!

My guess --- feral chicken.(can't fly tried to hitch a ride)

[gore3000]

Well, okay, so long as you realize that the conclusion is not objectively invalidated by a flawed premise,

The experiment does not support the conclusion, period, paragraph, end of story. Your little word games do not change that fact. If you want to prove 'ontogeny recapitulates philogeny' you will have to go elsewhere for the proof, there is none here. If you want to prove that feathers descended from scales, you will also have to go elsewhere, there is no proof of it here either.