Disingenuous or just dense?
Indeed, it looks like the anti-evolutionists at Uncommon Descent have jumped on the regulatory/coding DNA controversy. Well… no not really. Following the publication of an article in New Scientist that describes levels of divergence in non-coding and coding DNA between placental mammals and marsupial mammals (potentially indicating a predominance of cis-regulatory evolution since placentals and marsupials diverged), Uncommon Descent posted a entry that thoroughly misconstrues the whole situation.
A post at denialism blog tidily explains the whole mess. To sum up: the relative importance of mutations in cis-regulatory regions versus coding DNA is still unresolved. But protein-coding DNA is not the only functional DNA in our genome (or marsupials’ genomes, or anyone else’s), so calling non-coding DNA “junk” is just plain outdated. And grossly misreporting research findings while still making “scientific” arguments really doesn’t make it sound like you know what you’re talking about.
It’s just another mumbity jumbity effort from the ID camp to muddle things up. But the question is whether it’s on purpose or not. Hullabaloo suggests here that it’s an example of plain and simple stupidity. In the post itself, Uncommon Descent doesn’t capitalize on the misrepresentation of the data. But denialism blog points out that ID advocates have some sort of stake in the status of “junk DNA,” so maybe it’s a blundering attempt to twist the facts. The whole situation is rather unclear to me. I’m sure it doesn’t make sense.
May 14th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I think the ID folks jumped on the idea of “junk DNA” because, in their minds, God don’t make no junk! I don’t know the etymology of the phrase “junk DNA” but if it originates from scientists or science writers (rather than creationists, for example) it IS a bit of a ham-handed coinage. Of course, the fact that scientists are now showing that “junk DNA” is involved in the regulation in gene expression itself demonstrates one of the great strengths of the scientific method: it’s revisable.
May 14th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Sozumu Ohno (scientist) coined “junk DNA” and I think your point about the revisability of the scientific method is spot on. A 2003 Science article defends this point rather nicely.