(no subject)

[serene]

I was all excited about this yesterday, but someotherguy beat me to the posting punch.

Evolution! In action! For real!

Comments

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

God *wanted* those bacteria to eat citrate. It's in his divine plan. It's just to complicated for us mere mortals to see.

Yea, verily!

[oakdragon.livejournal.com]

...And the other eleven populations, being not in His Sight, could choke on citrate for all He cares.

It must be wonderful for the Twelfth Colony to be God's Chosen Bacteria and be able to thrive in the "Petri Dish of Glucose and Citrate" (or something like that.)

Re: Yea, verily!

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Those are the Cylon bacteria.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Tim and I saw Lenski and his e. coli lab on, I *think*, PBS's "Evolution" last week.

Very, very cool.

[lumpyone.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I hate being the party pooper, but the scientist in me just has to point out that this only supports evolution in bacteria, specifically E.coli. Granted, we can always extrapolate the same will work for all living systems over time, but we don't have specific evidence of this in other organisms yet.

I think its awesome research and definitely a great point for the side of evolution, which I mostly support, however I still see it as being way too easy for opponents to the Theory of Evolution (still a theory) to dismiss it as simply being an isolated event.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

What is your scientific background, if I may ask?

[lumpyone.livejournal.com]

I graduated with a BS in Biology and a BA in English from CSU Fresno. I have my secondary education credential in Biology for the State of California, but have not taught in a few years because I've come to despise the California Education system.

I keep up to date as much as I can on biology and science matters. I still feel that evolution, being a good and fairly sound idea of how we "came to be" on this planet, is still just that, a Theory and in science there is always room to change and improve. I also think evolution may not be the sole influence in our existence but that aspect is a belief and not testable by any scientific method. I still state that evidence of any kind has to be taken carefully, and this information with of the E.coli research is no exception.

What sickens me most, and the reason I posted what I did, is how those who support Evolution can be as narrow-minded, and biased as those who support Creationism. Those who claim they are scientist and those who support the science should be so much more OPEN to possibilities than anyone else. They should look at all possibilities and question information even more than others, especially when they get information which supports their view!! You should question the evidence that supports you more than anything else to ensure its correct and accurate. This scientists efforts are great, but I'm not gonna jump on the wagon of support until I find more information which tells me exactly how he grew the cultures over such a span of time, and know all the variables, especially making sure he accounted for all possible factors that might negatively affect his results. This is the first I had heard about this experiment and the article provided mention all the specifics, thus I'm on a hunt for a published paper.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I'm always baffled at people who claim to be scientists and then say things like "just a theory" about evolution.

Like gravity is just a theory, right?

Yeesh.

[lumpyone.livejournal.com]

No, the "Laws of Gravity" are indeed scientific laws because they have the testing and proof behind them. Evolution is still referred to as the Theory of Evolution not the Law of Evolution because it has not gained that status yet. Please get the nominclature right if we are going to debate a Theory and a Law.

Technically, evolution is still just a theory, albeit one with a great deal of evidence and support for it. By defintion, even a theory still needs scientific proof to support it, and such proof must be under scrutiny until such time there is absolute and definite proof to make it a scientific law.

Personally, I don't think evolution will ever gain the support to be moved to a Law status and will always remain a Theory because people believe the debate questions their religion and faith too much. There are many scientists who continue to question aspects of the Theory of Evolution because not everything is known and understood yet. THAT is what science is about.. questioning and questioning, even when you think you have proof, question it some more until you have such a massive amount of evidence to answer all, if not most, of the questions and there is no disputing it any longer. We have too far a road to travel until evolution will the amount of scientific data it needs to move from a theory to a law. Believe what you will about Evolution and how its the "right" answer, but realize that is the same viewpoint of Creationists and they believe they are right. The nice thing about science is given enough time, it will likely determine which theory is correct.

ADDITION: I wanted to add here that my statement that this experiment with E.coli originally referrenced ONLY supports evolution processes in E.coli as I'm not arguing that the processes of evolution (which are changes over time of things such as genome, traits, etc) don't occur/exists. I'm simply stating that this is a great step to track evolutionary change and gives us more evidence, but it does only show for E.coli bacteria. Sure, the same idea can be applied to other organisms, but let's not get over excited and "jump the gun" on how much this "proves" Evolution.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

w00t! That's very cool!

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

How fucking awesome is that.