Quality Control the Gold Standard

Evopeach responds to me:

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Funny I jest took a look at two Biology books

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Titles, please? I'd like to look them up.Here's the title of my college bio textbook:Life: The Science of Biology, Second Edition, by Purves/Orians.Now, who are Purves and Orians? Well, Bull Purves was professor of Biology at Harvey Mudd College...and the prof from whom I took Biology. Gordon Orians is from the University of Seattle. The book was reviewed by 42 people, including Lynn Margulis, first wife of Carl Sagan and proponent of endosymbiotic theory.But, none of those reviewers wrote the book. In fact, Purves and Orians didn't really collaborate that much. The majority of the book was written by Purves and covers basic biology from cellular dynamics through evolutionary theory while Orians wrote the sections on population biology. Oh, they certainly listened to their comments and the feedback from the first edition, but the book is theirs, not the reviewers'.And let us not forget, just because someone's name is on the cover does not mean they had anything to do with the book. This was a fairly big scandal not so long ago as authors finally got a look at the books that bore their names and couldn't find anything that they had written inside.And then there's just the fact that the books are piss poor. The AAAS did a review of the common science textbooks used for junior high school and not one textbook series from any of the publishers managed to get a good score in the life sciences. And this wasn't an issue of whether they covered evolution. It was rating things such as the ability to state a definition clearly, identifying what the purpose of a section was, etc.The process by which a textbook is usually written, especially for primary and secondary education, is that the publisher decides to write a book. But, they don't have any authors so they hire a content provider. The content provider, however, doesn't have any authors, either, so they hire freelancers, assigning them topics and the state standards they are trying to meet. The freelancers, independently, write the various sections which is returned to the content provider. The content provider does some fact checking then edits and compiles the book and sends it to the publisher.Do you really think that a public school biology textbook is "written by evos and reviewed by evos"? Please.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Evopeach writes:

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And such puts my figure which I have said was an estimate in thr range of 4100 plus.

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Incorrect. 4013 to one significant figure is 4000, not 5000. Your error is more than 20%. And despite your claim that because there was no decimal point, that means the error term can be as much as 999, that isn't the way scientists actually calculate error terms. Instead, error terms are calculated statistically or to be within one measurable unit, depending upon the method of mensuration.For example, suppose you are using a ruler to measure a distance. You should be able to measure the distance to within +/- 1 of the smallest gradations. In fact, you really ought to be able to eyeball half of one of those gradations, possibly a third.I daresay counting students is something that you can get down to the individual student. And since students don't come in fractional amounts, claiming "5000" students indicates you may be off by as much as 999 students is to be disingenuous at best. If the count were 4013, any rounding would be to 4000, not 5000. Too, you wouldn't say that you started with 4013 and then went to 5000 in order to have one significant figure with an error term. Instead, you'd say 4013 +/- 1 student.

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And if you think there has been any lessening of evolutionary teaching in high schools in Texas and California or anywhere else you are just intellectually dishonest.

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You obviously don't live in California. Let me introduce you to the little town of Vista, CA, just north of San Diego and kitty-corner to the San Diego Wild Animal Park.Let us not forget the recent flap regarding the California high school that was going to teach "intelligent design" as a "philosophy" class...except that it was going to be the only subject involved with the only presentation being that it was absolutely true and taught by a minister's wife.

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He did of course turn down my offer to fly Duane Gish in from So Cal and sponsor all expenses for a debate at Rice on his turf.

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That's because Gish is a fraud and a hack. Why would anybody waste his time and insult the intelligence of the students?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

It’s almost amusing that you think you’ve defeated my arguments, if it wasn’t so . so sad.
All you’ve done is show, quite vehemently, that your understanding of DNA replication and repair is, at best, surface orientated. More accurately, it is in the context of the inherent DNA copying mechanism for point mutations.STR mutations ARE due to the inherent DNA copying mechanism. Look it up . Could you explain this statement . it just sounds like an excuse to me. All cellular processes have variables including DNA replication and repair. Nothing occurs in isolation. All my ref’s were based on observations of human DNA, so I have been comparing ”apples to apples’ . unless you don’t really know what that means .
Where did irradiated fruit flies come up in my words? Talk about apples with apples . You do raise an interesting point here though; many organisms have a naturally occurring mutation rate that is substantially higher than in humans. How do you account for those? Or do you believe that people have been arguing over human evolution only, these past 150 years.You know, I really wouldn’t have that much of a problem with the figure you’ve supplied had DNA replication and repair occurred solely in isolation . They Do Not.
Cells are not closed systems; substances enter and leave all the time, some of which are responsible for mutagenesis. Even substances produced by cells themselves can cause mutations. As such any practical mutation rate is a function of both the causation of mutation (whether extrinsic or intrinsic) and the adequacy of repair mechanisms (which themselves often result in the fixation of a mutation). Organisms live in the real world, not in test tubes.It is now known that mutation rate differs depending not only on location in the genome, but also on the gene itself. The mutation rates of certain genes, for point mutations, can reach levels of 10E-5, rivaling even STR mutation rate.You see, EP, there’s a lot more to mutation than a single number. If you actually knew anything about genetics . no, make that biology . you would realize this.When one comes down to it, if mutations really were that rare, genetic disease would also be a rarity. Yet, do you know that there are more people living, and dying, of genetic disorders, than there are people living and dying of AIDS. Still, barring those, living and dying, of cancer.Maybe one day, when you’re not blinded by your own ego, you might actually acknowledge that you live in the real world.

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"The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell." - St. Augustine

PLease define fraud and hack regarding Dr. Gish. Does that mean he really has no Phd in science from Berkly. Does it mean he did not participate on the team at Berkley whose principal won a Nobel Prize for their work on the Tobacco Mosaic Virus. Does it mean the books he has written he really didn't write but were all plagerized.Your infantile and erroneous posts are pitiful to read and display a maturity just below my very intelligent eight year old grandson. I have entertained Dr. Gish, met him many times and he is a fine gentleman unlike you.As to error budgets and estimation theory the results are always stated as + or - a range for unbiased estimators. The range clearly depends on the accuracy of the sample in this case one innocuous number drawn from my memory and appropriately rounded, ie, to the nearest thousand because that is the level of detail that gave rise to my gross estimate. It was not a measuremnt , a quote or an analytical result.. a gross estimate sensibly treated.

My figure was simply a statement that the dna copying mechanism in the human cell in toto resulted in making no more than copying errors than 1 in 10**-09.That is taken directly from the book Exons Entrons and Talking Genes.You introduced the concept of the total spectrum of the things that might result in an altered or mutated genome.My statement was that the human genome project and several other papers some of which I provided agreed with the quoted figure and that sucha system was operating at a Six Sigma level of 7.0+I understand fully that considering radiation, mutagens, chemicals, carcinogens etc. the genome suffers mutations unrelated to the intrinsic copying errors.. but the intrinsic rate is unaltered.If you disagree take it up with the author of the book, the reviewers and the publisher.

Dear egomaniac and immature bloviator, Kenneth R. Miller - Home PageYou might review the strong evolutionary content and stance and agressive anti ID credentials of the authors.Please feel free to email Dr. Miller Phd. in Biology 1974 and presently a tenured proferssor ar Brown University in Biological Sciences to inform him of his pi-- poor scholarship, intellect, writing and presentation. Pay particular attention to his anti-creationist positions, papers, talks and of course his teaching credentials at Brown.And for Percy as well.. if you need help reading this direct and irrefutable source cutting off your last line of retreat maybe I can help further.These authors series have been well accepted and used considerably.Fried crow is on your menu for the next month.

You continue to demonstrate that you cannot understand what someone posts or respond to the content of their messages. We have made many allowances for you, yet you continue to show that you are unable to follow the rules or guidelines. Understand that your privileges to post have been continued simply because your posts serve to exemplify the capabilities of those who believe like you. They can and will be restricted if you continue to ignore the rules and guidelines.

This message has been edited by AdminJar, 02-15-2006 05:31 PM

I began a regular workout after January at the local YMCA.The first day I could swim only four laps, the next time five and now I am up to twelve.Your logic says Evopeach has demonstrated that a person can achieve a performance improvement of several hundred percent in only twenty iterations of his exercise experiment. SO far there is no limit to the number of laps he will eventually be able to swim non-stop.You may have heard of the 100 year old science of selective breeding and the unalterable fact that every genetic progression yet observed hits the wall at some point and is never ever able to be advanced further.Can you supply the experimental data to show that sugar beet sugar content is now routinely advanced by these means beyond say 20%?Remember we are not talking intrusive genetic engineering.. just mutation and natural selection, gene shuffling and other evolutionary mechanisms.LOL

As i understand it, the book you are refering to is a popularization; something for public consumption. As such, you gotta expect a fair bit of dumbing down, in order to keep things simple and interesting.The point i was trying to make is that such a number is almost meaningless in the real world.To say that the rate of mutation in actual organisms is unaltered by intrinsic and extrinsic factors is simply unrealistic.

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"The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell." - St. Augustine

Evopeach In all likelihood yes. Observe. The Nobel prize in Chemistry concerning the Tobacco Mosaic Virus was awarded in 1946.John Howard Northrop, Wendell Meredith Stanley USA, USA "for their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in a pure form" Wikipedia Perhaps you could connect the dots and provide info on how much he contributed if at all. Perhaps he ran for coffee and donuts.Perhaps you can conduct yourself with some grace or you could continue to verify to others that you are free from the ravages of intelligence eh?

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But I realize now that these people were not in science; they didn’t understand it. They didn’t understand technology; they didn’t understand their time. R.P. Feynman

No one is saying that Gish participated in the work that won the Nobel prize, all they are saying is that he worked with one of those that did. The 'their' in your quote from Evopeach is in reference to the principal's work not the team's.Gish worked with Stanley during his time at Berkley there is at least one paper that they published together (Gish, et al., 1958).TTFN,WKThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 16-Feb-2006 11:45 AM

I think the "Going back off topic" subtitle is past its prime.If not then you all need to get back on topic and appropriate subtitles would be appreciated.An accurate subtitle is like a book title. It catches the browser attention and leads them inside.Thanks, carry on.

Just as you have the Olympic athelete as an example of the possible, so do we have the replicators in the machinery of the modern cell as an example of the possible. Just as you shouldn't be postulating to cut the time for the world record for the 100 meter butterfly in half, no one in science is postulating eight or nine sigma replicators. We're only postulating that what we've observed taking place in the natural world arose through natural processes.There are other factors you're ignoring. Someone in this thread, I think it's Crash, is trying to get you to understand that there are more types of mutations than just single substitutions. Another factor that you may be ignoring is that the measurements of the reliability of replication in human DNA could be post-facto, i.e., after a viable embryo forms. The number of failures before this stage is not well understood, and measurements of mutation rates during sperm/egg union are probably lacking. The point is that you're probably overestimating the reliability of replication, but I can't say by how much.--Percy

Wounded King Certainly this is the case. My point, however, was that the implication that he participated with a member of the team at berkley
who had,previous to their connection. won a Nobel prize makes his participation on the team one of association with people on the cutting edge of biochemistry.This is no indication of how much he did contribute and this is what I was trying to arrive at.As for the paper which he worked with Stanley on. Now what did each contribute since there were three in all on this team? How important a paper was this and how much of the work and insight was attributable to Stanley himself?You will also note here in the Bio of Stanley from wikipedia And that of Northrop also from wikipedia Now as for Gish we have this No reference to any work that he did. Hence my poke in fun as to his contribution.This message has been edited by sidelined, Fri, 2006-02-17 06:51 AM

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But I realize now that these people were not in science; they didn’t understand it. They didn’t understand technology; they didn’t understand their time. R.P. Feynman

The general convention is that the first author will have done the majority, or at least an equal share, of the work. The last author is generally the supervisor of the group, which means a supervisor can get a lot of papers with little input other than general guidance. Any authors in between can range between substantial to small contributions, usually in descending order of contribution.From this the chances are that Gish did the majority of the work for that paper. I'm not sure how you could even start to assess the level of input of insight without having been in the lab at the time.TTFN,WKP.S. I don't think the Nobel they won was for Peace.

Gish was an Assistant Research Associate at Berkeley, and an Assistant Professor at Cornell University Medical College, before joining the Upjohn Company as a Research Associate in 1960. According to Sidney W. Fox:Duane Gish has scientific credentials. As a biochemist, he has synthesized peptides, compounds intermediate between amino acids and proteins. He has been co-author of a number of publications in peptide chemistry.1Wikipedia is an objective source and you may have heard of Dr. Fox.Is Dr. Fox in the habit of corroborating the credentials of hacks and frauds, especially people with whom he disagrees on the topic og origins.. his primary field of research?Here are a few of the many peer reviewed research papers published by the FRAUD.Just a moment...Just a moment...Just a moment...Just a moment...Just a moment...Just a moment...Just a moment...Just a moment...Just a moment...If you had any class you would issue a public apology to Dr. Gish for your ignorant and uninformed ad hominem attack.