http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/20/feathered.raptor.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Heh.

Ask people in 1641 if the world was flat, and without a doubt "yeah it was". But the point is scientists will ALWAYS speculate, its what keeps the field going, asking, declaring and doing stuff that make people scratch their heads. As far as dinosaurs with feathers, I could buy it considering there's alot wierder stuff here on earth currently that has ridiculous purposes (anyone watch that special on Earth with the wierd monkey that had the super long finger? god thad freaked me out)

That people back then believed the earth was flat is myth that just refuses to die. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_mythology

The dinos with feathers is not something new in the scientific circles, like this comment on the Phyrangula blog says on this issue:

"Okay, so osteological traces exist for primary feather insertion. Great.

Can we get over the "oh man, another feathered dinosaur" thing? We've been finding feathered dinosaurs for what, a decade now? We already knew from basic phylogenetic inference that feathers were most likely present in all dromeosaurids. Hell, we know they're basal for all coelurosaurs.

I'm not trying to rain on the "OMGs we have the smoking gun for bird origins" people, but come on, we've heard it all before. Over and over and OVER."
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/09/steven_spielberg_call_the_spec.php

And I completely agree with you, I am just always amazed at how wierd stuff is. Damn you jurassic park for defining my view of dinosaurs especially the spitting ones that only eat fat people

it is not like the raptors in Jurassic Park who you probably compare the findings with were real. In reality they were much smaller. Anyway, I think it is beautiful when things like this show up. Possible prediction of something and then evidence. Not to mention it adds to our knowledge about the evolution of feathers as the scientists said, which is always cool. I do hope you are not seeing this is a weakness in the Theory of evolution because it is exactly the opposite.

Better link:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5845/1721

Heh, you're incredibly myopic. Its a point in time slice of the constant evolution of our body of knowledge. First we think we know, then we know, then we know we're wrong, then we figure something else out. On and on and on it goes.

Its an interesting process, but it should lend some humility to people when they declare they know things. You only know that which you can reproduce and even then, you know *something* but not necessarily the entirety. I'm not really going to debate that, its self explanatory, don't read much more into it than that. Its not an attack on evolution, its a chuckle at the prospect of certainty.

The actual problem is what you are going to say when Jesus people come up with an argument: "Since you can't don't know everything about it, God did it. No need to research it further.". If you people are forced to choose between declaring to know it all or admitting that God did it with Intellingent Design, some declare that "I know all" it because the other side is being deliberately obstinate and constructed a straw man with checkbox options "I know it all." and "Perhaps God did it". The I know it all answer comes those people who were lured to play this checkbox with bad options game with the Creationists.

So, the whole we know it all-argument is a straw man that was born from creationists trying to get their theory accepted on the sole basis that not everything is known. It doen't quite work that way, the theory must be plausible or have some scientific value to be accepted. There's a vast multitude of bogus theories with zero proof and we can't waste resources to teach every single one to the kids. This is why new theories are viewed critically by the scientific community, to find out if it maps the truth and with what accuracy.

The point is that Scientists know already that they don't know everything. The problem lies in Scientists and laymen understanding differently the term of uncertainty. It's not black and white like a layman would think.

It is safe to ignore the we know it all-comments, as those people are just bad at explaining it and it's just an oversimplification so that layman would get it that the theory of evolution stands on firm ground, which it indeed does.

Heh. In my opinion, were I to be funding research in this area, my goal would be to ascertain what happened and then find a way to make practical use of that knowledge. My objective would not be to argue with "the Jesus people" and force them to see things my way. That is fruitless and I question the ethics and practicality of science motivated by social debates.

I appreciate what you're saying but I don't think that validates the "know it all" stance. You're right, its not black and white, and I like that you think that way because its exactly how I think. Very few things are black and white and undisputed certainty is such a rare thing as to be considered "typically an error".

Great post though.

Well, I was thinking you thought these news somehow changed something when the feathered dinoasaurs in the group have been known for years and these findings were more of a prediction come true.

But yes, we don't know everything and our body of knowledge is evolving constantly and sometimes we will be wrong. Small things like the the exact look of dinosaurs that died millions of years ago are more likely to be untrue than something that is extremely well researched such as evolution or cell theory.

But to be honest I don't get what you want to say. Do you want us to say that we are not really sure that George Washington was the first president of the US in the textbooks? We define certainty and truth, that is why we have chosen to give them a meaning that is actually usable. Otherwise we could never use them.

If the interchange between me and DurNominator doesn't sum it up well enough then I'm not explaining it any further. At this point you're either trolling or really have a hard time grasping simple concepts. We don't need another hundred threads on this topic.

You're aware that this article gives an example of physical evidence that was predicted by genetic linkages deduced from bone structure, etc., right?

CNN did its usual crappy job of carrying a scientific story, but it's why Mr. Turner said "This is something we'd long suspected..."

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Is this supposed to be a: "Look! See! Evolutionary theory is just a bunch of guesses that are constantly be proven wrong!" post?

If not, ignore this. If so, read the article more closely. :)

Just pointing out that humility in the declaration of certainty is a virtue. If you'd have suggested this a half century ago, you'd be "a kook". What we know in and of itself, is under constant evolution - especially when dealing with complex subject matters (view all the various stances about market efficiency theory versus the slew of other theories about price movements). Tomorrow we're smarter than today, which is still smarter than yesterday, etc.

At least that's what this Social Studies teacher in this school I'm a mentor at TAUGHT in her CLASS of 27 kids. 'There has never been any real evidence that dinosaurs weren't just big animals like elephants, Scientists just make them up and make bones to get our money, I can make you a bone out of plaster and call it a dinosaur. And the continents are here just as God made them, they never drifted apart. Have you ever poured water on something? Does it stay in one place or does it end up all over the place? Noah's flood just separated the bones they find all over the continents to prove that theory.' I wish I was making that up.

Yay bible belt.

I wish I was making that up.

Sadly, not a terribly uncommon story in certain regions of America. Nearly absent in any other industrialized nation, but the evolution-contrarians (*) have a non-negligible foothold here. What's dangerous is that a lot of influential people laughed them off for too long.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

(*): "Skeptic" is misused on this topic. Empirical skepticism is, by definition, moved by evidence. "Contrarians" merely take the unpopular opinion by default and remain there.

Please go to Google. Type in "define: skepticism". Press enter. Read the actual definitions. Considering the fact that you don't know what the term "skeptic" means, compared to contrarian, should illustrate why I hold your opinion on evolution quite low.

For extra points, read what a contrarian is and try to understand its meaning. Several notable contrarians have made millions off the stock market using "crowd psychology" to their benefit by picking over valued stocks and shorting them and vice versa.

Doubt is a normal and important aspect of our world. Doubt is what makes us double check things and helps us think outside the box. The fact that you find it "irritating" is what makes you similar to those of the far far religious right.

Please go to Google. Type in "define: skepticism". Press enter. Read the actual definitions. Considering the fact that you don't know what the term "skeptic" means, compared to contrarian, should illustrate why I hold your opinion on evolution quite low.

Sorry. Aced my scientific philosophy coursework years ago. I'm well aware of what empirical skepticism (the term I used) means, and why it's an encouraged position for researchers to take. You're (apparently) talking about philosophical skepticism, which is a priori worthless for evaluating scientific claims, as it involves assuming that you cannot make them to begin with. I assumed you knew the difference.

More broadly, part of your problem is precisely that you're educated by Google. It's why I'd never home-school my children-- it's the old saw stating 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'. There's a lot to be said for learning from experts in a more bidirectional flow of information. Google/etc. is a valuable supplement to that sort of education, but it isn't a replacement.

Doubt is a normal and important aspect of our world. Doubt is what makes us double check things and helps us think outside the box.

Doubt is also assuaged when you study a subject and learn that its predictions are validated by evidence. I have doubt about a lot of subjects (see below, seawater-as-fuel), but Darwinian evolution is quite possibly one of the best-studied theories in human history, and somewhere along the lines of getting my doctorate and reading a few dozen books by various authors (including Behe, etc.) on the subject, I feel I've sufficiently "double-checked" this subject.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Damn big words.

I'm just talking about the word skeptic. If you say it in a crowded room, the webster definition is probably what people are talking about. Its safe to assume when I use the word skeptical, I'm talking about concensus opinion in the form of a dictionary entry.

As far as self education goes, I think it works alright. There are some subjects which would be difficult, if not impossible, to self teach (chemistry springs to mind since most of the practical implementations require equipment and supplies that are often difficult to obtain). Things you need to take into account is access to materials, like research papers, equipment, supplies, etc. What I like about it is the pace difference, however.

To that extent I'm largely self educated and its been a successful mechanism for me. I'm at the age where I would just be graduating college and currently I'm a lead technical manager for a small company. This is the 4th promotion I've received in one and a half years, which has me contracted to give strategic advise to multi-billion dollar software companies on how they should implement their software. I'd say they have a significant degree of faith in my analytic capabilities in my field. So I wouldn't knock self education. The reason I've done well in my career is that my field is primarily a meritocracy. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." Ironically when I talk about self education I'm not referring to Google. Primarily I've been an avid reader of books. Usually I'll start with some "favorites" for a particular field, then move on to books primarily motivated by exams (passing the bar, certification, etc).

In a similar vein, I'm working on educating myself to some extent in two other fields of interest - law and financial analysis. In my opinion those two fields have implicit and explicit benefits as "secondary" skills to someone like me. Financial analysis, ironically, can directly be applied to many other fields. I have been successful in applying it in order to evaluate software architecture and project bids. And for the most part these are all things which involve practical implementation, not theoretical. Its hard to debate how good I am at security analysis if I were to consistently beat the market, for instance, or how good I am at software design if I'm within 5% of budget and timeline requirements and am able to sufficiently forecast maintenance costs. Those things meet my hurdle rate for in depth investigation because they have practical and measurable benefits well worth the time investment. One of my beefs with college education is the amount of time you waste on "fluff", or learning things that have little to no practical value. I wouldn't pay $100k a year to learn about asian culture. Not because I don't think its not an interesting topic, but because I can't justify the cost and time expense knowing I'm not going to recooperate those costs.

I would agree that to some extent I'm a contrarian, but also a skeptic. And being a contrarian isn't about trying to instigate other people. It lies in the following principle of investment: You cannot get superior returns by mirroring the market. That tenet applies to many things, for instance in computer science one can assume that if a problem is a common problem and if common solutions solved that problem, then the problem would be deterministic and short lived. That's because the engineers working on it would've figured it out. So by the time I get pulled in to push a fix on it, it stands to a fair degree of reason, that some of the commonly accepted information about the problem must be invalid. Operating under that presumption will lead to the fastest fix. Most of the time I've found that you have a long term error that defies timelines its because an arrogant presumption (our hardware SDK is flawlessly written, etc) is wrong. The holdup for the fix is that they continue to maintain a degree of certainty about quality of a component that is misguided. Once that assumption is dispelled, the fix is forthcoming. To that extent I'm paid to be a contrarian and every strategic decision I advise to a client must be backed by some form of quantitative analysis.

As far as evolution goes, I'm mostly just busting your chops, but I question how certain anyone can be of something that happened long ago in the past. I've heard the argument that if there's some unknown X factor that isn't currently present or measurable today its pointless discussing, but I can't simply argue away that distinct caveat of talking about things that happened a long time ago. You cannot reproduce the creation of man today therefore the practicality of that area of research doesn't meet my hurdle rate. But even if it did, that's a pretty hard thing to argue away. I'm content to say we should agree to disagree, because we both have very different viewpoints on knowledge. Personally, even if I've conducted a full analysis on a choice path, I still view the result of that path as a "spread". Meaning, based on which risks realize themselves, any limited number of potential outcomes are possible. Therefore you can say I'm never certain of pretty much anything. I might have a very good idea, but certainty just isn't in my vocabulary.

me dum

it hurt hed

How do some of these Bible thumpers explain how Noah and his supertanker sized houseboat managed to acquire a pair of kangaroos or koalas?

That's how. Dunno how the non-marsupials got there, though. I guess Noah bought them from the internet and they were shipped to him before the flood occurred.

From another guy who doesn't like those mean scientists and their dogma: (Link) (I bolded my favorite part.)

"Prior to the flood, the earth may have been one large landmass. Australia did not exist in its present location. Our present continents are shaped as a result of re-disposition of flood sediments, and receding flood waters.

After the flood there were land bridges (because of a lower sea level) that connected many of the continents.

Years later, the glaciers started to melt and the water level rose. This caused many land bridges to disappear.

The animals that were on these continents would be stuck there. Keep in mind too, that many animals were brought to the United States by explorers. They did not travel there themselves. The same may be true for animals in Australia.

For the animals that did migrate on foot, keep in mind one kangaroo would not have to hop all the way to Australia. A group could travel, dying and reproducing for many years along the way. There was probably a lot of trial and error looking for a climate that suited them, in combination with a amble source of food. It's not as if they had Australia as a goal.

(As an aside, I'm looking forward to this section from the main page: "If man lived with dinosaurs, wouldn't the dinosaurs eat them? (page coming soon)")

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

No wonder these guys could gut such a firm foothold. Whoever tries to argue with them must be fed up in no time.