Fact Free Science

The Fact-Free “Science” of Matheson, Hunt and Moran: Ridicule Instead of Reason, Authority Instead of Evidence [Excerpts]

I was not in Los Angeles on May 14, when Stephen Meyer debated Stephen Matheson and Arthur Hunt at Biola University. But I have followed some of the blog war that preceded and followed the debate--a blog war that now includes Richard Sternberg and Laurence Moran.

Since Matheson, Hunt and Moran are all tenured professors at institutions of higher learning, one might have expected a discussion based on reason and conducted in a collegial spirit. And since the discussion is about science, one might have expected lots of references to evidence published in the scientific literature. But Matheson, Hunt and Moran have abandoned reason and resorted to ridicule; and instead of citing evidence they expect us to bow to their authority.

Round One: Before the debate, in a February 14 blog post, Matheson accused Meyer of “some combination of ignorance, sloth, and duplicity” for stating that introns, though once thought to be “junk,” are “now known to play many important functional roles in the cell.” (Introns are non-protein-coding segments of DNA that interrupt the protein-coding parts of our genes.) According to Matheson, Meyer’s statement was “ludicrous” because biologists have identified functions for only a “handful” of the 190,000 or so introns in the human genome. “How many? Oh, probably a dozen,” wrote Matheson, “but let's be really generous. Let's say that a hundred introns in the human genome are known to have ‘important functional roles.’ Oh fine, let's make it a thousand.”

In his June 3 blog post, Sternberg cited a 2010 Nature article that begins, “Transcripts from approximately 95% of multi-exon human genes are spliced in more than one way.” (Exons are the protein-coding parts of genes.) Sternberg calculated that a reasonable estimate for the number of human introns that undergo alternative splicing was thus 0.9 x 190,000 = 171,000. The same Nature article reports that “in most cases the resulting transcripts are variably expressed between different cell and tissue types,” suggesting that many alternatively spliced introns serve important biological functions. Sternberg concluded that even if his estimate were off by a factor of two, the number of functional introns would still be far greater than Matheson’s 1,000.

Round Two: Insults and Ridicule
In a June 3 blog post, Moran ridiculed Sternberg’s estimate that 171,000 introns are involved in alternative splicing: “It's up to you, dear readers, to figure out all the things wrong with this explanation. You can start with the math. Arithmetic isn't one of their [i.e., Meyer’s and Sternberg’s] strong points. Or maybe it's an understanding of biology that's the real weak point?”

Of course, there was nothing wrong with Sternberg’s arithmetic, and the next day he repeated his calculation in more detail. Moran responded by calling him an “idiot."

Round Three: In his June 4 blog post calling Sternberg an idiot, Moran wrote: "I'm using arithmetic that's based on an understanding of basic molecular biology and the scientific literature. We could quibble about the number of introns--I think it's closer to 150,000. We could quibble about the number of protein encoding genes--the most accurate number is 20,500. We could quibble about how many genes exhibit alternative splicing--I think it's about 5%, not 95%. You can't be expected to know the facts and the controversies since this is way outside your area of expertise.”

Moran claimed that he was basing his remarks “on an understanding of basic molecular biology and the scientific literature,” but he didn’t cite any scientific literature. He simply declared that the number of human introns is closer to 150,000—even though the scientific literature supports Matheson’s figure of 190,000.

And Moran’s guess that only about 5% of human genes undergo alternative splicing is flatly contradicted by 2008 articles in Nature and Nature Genetics, as well as the 2010 Nature article cited by Sternberg.

Yet Moran provided no justification for his ex cathedra pronouncement that the 95% figure has been discredited. He simply brushed aside the 2008 and 2010 articles in Nature and Nature Genetics and their eighteen co-authors--nine of whom listed their affiliation as Moran’s own institution, the University of Toronto.

Apparently, Moran expects us to ignore the published scientific evidence and bow to his authority alone. As Chico Marx said in the 1933 movie Duck Soup: “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/06/the_factfree_science_of_mathes035521.html