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 Probably the most important common denominator of evolutionary theory and neuroscience is degeneracy. The degeneracy found in gene networks and the degeneracy found in the organization of brains. See e.g. 2001 PNAS article by nobel laureate Gerald Edelman. In it he writes:
[Degeneracy] is both necessary for, and an inevitable outcome of, natural selection. In other words: if there were no evolution, there would be no degeneracy.
Therefore, creationists will have to explain why there is degeneracy if there is no evolution.
In the latest issue of ScienceExpress, there is an absolutely fantastic study by Tagkopoulos et al. from Princeton showing how evolution leads to gene-networks which are both anticipatory and degenerate. From the abstract:
We show that in silico biochemical networks, evolving randomly under precisely defined complex habitats, capture the dynamical, multi-dimensional structure of diverse environments by forming internal models that allow prediction of environmental change. We provide evidence for such anticipatory behavior by revealing striking correlations of Escherichia coli transcriptional responses to temperature and oxygen perturbations — precisely mirroring the co-variation of these parameters upon transitions between the outside world and the mammalian gastrointestinal-tract. It is interesting to note that in the article, the authors confuse degeneracy with "redundancy" which, of course, it a very different thing. Notwithstanding, their meticulously designed simulations and experiments have elucidated how amazingly intricate and complex comparatively simple organisms can become if you allow them to evolve and that degeneracy is both a prerequisite and an outcome of evolution.
This paper joins one in Nature I already reported about. It also shows how the complex, degenerate properties of gene networks underscoring the importance of the ubiquitous concept of degeneracy.
Together, these two papers have the potential to develop into two of the most important papers in all of biology. They are required reading for everyone with an interest in evolution.
To close the loop to neuroscience: the degeneracy which is displayed in evolved gene networks is reflected in the evolved organization of brains. Different network configurations can produce the same behavioral output (Prinz et al. Nature Neuroscience, 2004). This degeneracy in the brain also leads to something not explicitly shown in gene-networks (AFAIK): the same neuronal network can produce different behaviors even under identical external circumstances (our own study on spontaneous behavior and Briggman et al, Science, 2005). It has been known for quite some time now that spontaneous behavioral variability has enormous fitness benefits and is affected in a variety of psychiatric disorders. This is now not so surprising any more. It's all starting to make perfect sense now.
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The journal "Epidemiology" has a series of great articles on why we need to get rid of Thomson Scientific's Impact Factor. I've reported about this ridiculously influencial number before and how irrational, stupid and detrimental to science it is (1, 2, 3). Here the links to the great Epidemiology articles (via Coturnix):
I think there's more than enough evidence that the Thomson Scientific impact factor is a pernicious invention that needs to be eradicated and replaced by a multivariate measure consisting of post-publication reviews, ratings, access statistics, citations, media coverage, link-counts, etc.
To say it with the authors at Epidemiology:
in its present format, the impact factor should be killed off, and the sooner the better.
Having a collection of impact measures will only be sensibly feasible in a large, decentralized databank in which all peer-reviewed scientific primary literature is collected, cross-referenced and stored. Of course, the algorithms for any such metric need to be transparent. The data is all there, the technology is around. Now we only need to get the word out and bring the majority of scientists behind us. If scientists are as rational as they claim, they have no choice but to follow their rationality and get on with the program 
If this is so, why do we still have journals? One of the authors has the answer:
The irresistible fascination with (and picturesque uses of) a construct so scientifically weak as BIF are simple reminders that scientists are embedded in and embody culture. We are vain and contradictory human beings too [...].
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First, Ben Stein is mocking US school kids for their ignorance in history and puts all the blame on the US school system (he may have a point or two there, lol). Then he goes on to make a movie, recently started at theaters in the US, in which he claims that people got problems at universities if they believe in IDiocy. Without going into any details which have been covered at lentgth elsewhere (see also this notable comment), the main statement of the movie is similar to claiming that if your religion tells you that 2+2=3 and you insist on it in math class, you get expelled. I hate to correct a native English speaker, but I think the proper word for that is "flunked". This silliness notwithstanding, Ben Stein is hell-bent on even surpassing the movie's idiocy. To promote the movie, he makes an utter fool of himself by displaying even more ignorance in biology than the kids he mocked displayed about recent contemporary history. And now, he apparently completely removes himself from society by claiming that "science leads you to killing people" (April 21, 2008: "behind the scenes"). John Derbyshire finds it "shameful", PZ Myers agrees and adds "irrational and unwarranted". These comments were so over the top, that even right-wing pundits denounced them, such as Charles Johnson, Ed Morrissey and Glenn Reynolds. Finally, the Anti-Defamation Leagues rebuked Ben Stein's demented holocaust claims.
What I don't get, is how such an apparent dimwit, hammered literally left, right and center, can get any airtime at all?
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This may be just some sort of weid coincidence. Or maybe no real conincidence at all, just coinciding in the media. Or maybe this has been going on all the time, only this time the media are picking it up. But I sure haven't heard of three such catastrophes within a year before. Bees, salmon and bat populations show dramatic declines, all within this past year or two. Coincidence? Signs of what is yet to come? Who knows?
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In the latest issue of Nature Genetics, the Editorial is full of praise for the European funding of PostDocs and young faculty.
Recognizing this, two of the programs of the European Union's seventh framework for research funding (FP7) address the career needs of researchers rather well.
In particular, it lauds the ERC starting grant:
The helping hand at the next career hurdle is the wonderful new European Research Council (ERC), mandated to encourage basic research and to fund individual investigators competitively, judged by peer review on the basis of excellence. [...] We commend the ERC for the transparency and efficiency of its decision making and on the obvious excellence of the researchers shortlisted.
To clarify, let me just mention 3 numbers: 9167 applications, 201 funded, makes a funding rate of 2.2% (source1, source2).
According to the NG editors, a 2.2% funding rate is "wonderful" and "a helping hand"? I'd call it "abysmal" and "a big middle finger" to 97.8% of all PostDocs in Europe. But the editors go on:
The journal particularly welcomes feedback from European researchers with suggestions on how to make the EU an even more encouraging place to do good science.
Maybe such praise is to be expected coming from a journal group that makes a living by creating an air of exclusivity akin to the shady night-club creating lines by preventing people from entering too quickly. The message of the editorial is clear: you have to be in the top 2.2% or you're out! This is obviously a huge incentive for the other 97.8% of also rans to produce data that will catapult them into the top 2.2%. And how do you get there? By flocking to "hip" research areas, dropping the boring but necessary controls and if all fails, fabricate data. Please provide feedback on how to improve this formidable process!
The only sane conclusion one can draw from a 2.2% funding rate is that young scientists in Europe are underfunded by about a factor of 40 - and that's not a good thing. Alternatively, Europe produces too many PostDocs by a factor of about 40 - which is not a good thing either.
So what is there to praise?
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In the beginning, there was only the concept of mutation and selection. About 150 years ago this was called "Darwinism" and quickly swept the scientific community. Around the 1920s/30s, mutation and selection was complemented in the "modern synthesis" by quantitative and population genetics such as the Hardy-Weinberg principle, the concept of heritability, etc. Some people called this new theory "Neo-Darwinism". Since the 1950s, with the discovery of the double helix and molecular genetics, the theory of evolution has had too many contributors and too much evidence from biological fields as far apart as anthropology, paleontology, ecology, genetics and so forth, to bear the name of the person who once started the whole field of evolutionary biology.
So today, evolutionary theory is referred to by its topic, just as quantum theory or the theory of relativity in physics. And just as relativity or quantum mechanics, evolutionary theory keeps getting expanded and we discover new facets and aspects of it every day. Also much like the physics theories, there are a few new theories people are working on which could significantly alter the view we have of evolution. In physics for example, there is string theory or loop quantum gravity and others. In evolutionary theory, one hot topic is currently the question of whether and how epigenetics can provide yet a new feature of evolution, joining mutation, selection and genetics. And just like any version of "Newtonianism" has dropped out of the race for physics 100 years ago, any version of "creationism" also dropped out of the race in Biology even more than 100 years ago.
Unlike Newtonianism, however (whose correlate today is intelligent falling), creationism never was a valid scientific theory. Instead, we keep discovering new biological phenomena which tell us yet more about how evolution actually works.
Two such discoveries were published recently. One more recent paper in Nature and one in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Both papers (require a subscription and) deal with what is called "robustness" (recent review of robustness). I'll focus on the more recent paper in Nature, which I think is a fantastic study on the robustness of gene networks and how even large-scale genetic disruptions lead to relatively small, quantitative effects with potential fitness consequences.
In the paper, Mark Islan and his colleagues describe how they randomly combined the promoter region and the coding region of about 600 genes from the common gut bacterium E. coli. They then inserted each of these randomly fused genes into one strain of E. coli and looked what happened. There are two ways to describe what the experiment did. Biologically, I would say they randomly combined the "when" and "how much" (promoter) with the "what" of 600 genes and watched what a completely arbitrary amount and timing of a random protein would do to the bacteria. Speaking on the more abstract network level, I would say that the different genes in E. coli interact much as electronic components interact in an electrical circuit. In this picture, what the researchers did was to randomly short-circuit arbitrary components of the network, and watch what happens. It doesn't take an Einstein to predict what would happen in an electrical circuit if you started to randomly short-circuit components. However, that did not happen in E. coli at all. Of the 600 strains, ~95% survived just fine. Even more surprisingly, only about 16% had any growth phenotype at all, meaning that the manipulation had only very limited effect on the bacteria. This was despite the new genes being switched on over 12 fold above normal levels in about 70% of all genes. Why does this have any bearing on evolution? It means that even large scale genetic rearrangements don't necessarily need to be fatal for the organism. Instead, genetic networks are so robust, that they can be infinitely tuned to the environment, whenever this is required. Small mutations, or large rearrangements can all lead to a better adaptation to the environment. This organization is also a consequence of evolution: if evolution were a designer, akin to a human designer, everything would break down, just like our electrical circuits do after a short circuit. So just as Bennett and Hasty write in their News and Views article on the paper, without such robustness, biological organisms would indeed behave as some creationists/IDers of today claim they would - these drastic manipulations on their genes would be fatal.
Of course, this is not the first demonstration of robustness. The more we look, the clearer the picture becomes; biological organisms are not engineered. They evolved and they work according to what you would expect from evolved systems: they are degenerate, flexible, robust and highly nonlinear. These are all properties you only would expect from organisms created by someone who would try to deceive us into developing a theory of evolution. 
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Wednesday 14 May 2008 - 11:29:26
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