Possibly creationism's best ever attempt to explain feathered dinosaurs

Almost every creationist argument is based on the assumption that Genesis is an account of actual events, and that the bible is the word of God and therefore the only truth. This is one of the main reasons why all their attempts at science have failed, because they only look for 'evidence' which is remotely compatible with their own assumptions. Alternatively they look for 'evidence' (a term we should use very loosely in this case) that contradicts their own grotesque caricature of the theory of evolution, often based on misunderstanding, deliberate misinformation, and complete ignorance of reality.

The idea of dinosaurs with plumage has often ruffled the feathers of the creationist movement. They've never really tried to explain why dinosaurs have feathers at all. All previous attempts by creationists to explain can be summarised by at least one of these points :

• In Genesis- birds were made on the 5th day, but God filled the land with animals on the 6th so birds must have come before dinosaurs. Look, it's in the Bible - which is the word of God because it says so in the Bible- therefore it's true.
• When I don't inspect it closely, it looks more like a bird than a dinosaur. It's a bird.
• Evolution is only a theory.
• I don't know much about the natural world at all.

 However, after searching through answersingenesis.org I finally found an attempt at an explanation that tickled me.
Dinosaurs ate Birds. Birds have feathers. Dinosaurs therefore ate feathers. If you completely ignore every piece of scientific evidence which suggests that dinosaurs had feathers and completely ignore the context in which these these sort of observations should be made- it makes perfect sense.

If you want to know more about evolution, two books I'd highly recommend are Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters and Why Evolution Is True.

What is Homeopathy?

Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine, which involves  treating illnesses with severely  diluted remedies (and common sense), first proposed by Samuel Hahnemann in the late 18th Century. Hahenemann observed that ingesting cinchona bark produced side effects similar to the symptoms of malaria and therefore prescribed it as a treatment for malaria. He then found that there are many other natural substances which produced side effects similar to the symptoms of known illnesses, so he conjured up the "Law of Similars" and decided that like must cure like. He believed that diseases were merely disturbances in a hypothetical "Vital Force" or "Life Force", and that mimicking the symptoms would stimulate the Vital force into expelling the original disease. These assertions have no basis in reality and  would still have the same credibility if he had claimed that they were based on instructions written in unicorn blood on an invisible piece of parchment written by Jesus Christ reincarnated as a chameleonic Hypno-Toad. 

The lack of common sense did not end there. He then decided that a normal dose would produce artificial symptoms but that a heavily diluted would actually cure it. He then created the Centesimal scale (C) to describe how much a substance should be diluted by a factor of 100. For example:

A 2C dilution requires a substance to be diluted to one part in one hundred, and then some of that diluted solution diluted by a further factor of one hundred. This works out to one part of the original substance in 10,000 parts of the solution. A 6C dilution is 1 part of the original solution per 1,000,000,000 parts of water. By this point, the remedy is almost indistinguishable from water, yet it is apparently more potent than the remedy. A 30C dilution (prescribed for many illnesses) is only one part of the original substance per  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 parts water. The homeopathic remedies for flue like illnesses can be 200C dilutions!

There is no scientific evidence for the purported efficacy of homeopathy. The only thing supporting ridiculous claims made this deranged form of alternative medicine is a whole host of anecdotal 'evidence' (a term I prefer to use rather loosely in this case).

This absurdity of homeopathy is highlighted in this Mitchell and Webb sketch - Homeopathic A&E.

UK Government continues to ignore scientific advice on drugs

Downgrading the Importance of Scientific Advice

A new plan has been announced that will allow the UK government to make new policies on drugs without consulting expert doctors and scientists, effectively allowing them to change the law on controlled substances for reasons which are not supported by any evidence. The decision will come at the cost of a greatly reduced quality of scientific advice in government and a huge dent in the relationship between the government and scientists.
 
The changes are new amendments to the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, which requires the government to seek advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) when making decisions to ban drugs and potentially criminalise large numbers of people. The ACMD is required to have at least 20 members, among them representatives of the practices of medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and pharmacy, the pharmaceutical industry, and chemistry (other than pharmaceutical chemistry); and members who have a wide and relevant experience of social problems connected with the misuse of drugs. All are unpaid and have active careers in their area of expertise. The new plans are to remove the requirements for advisers from these professions.

The crime prevention minister James Brokenshire, on behalf of the government, said today:

"Removing the requirement on the home secretary to appoint to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs at least one person with experience in six specific areas will allow us greater flexibility in the expertise we are able to draw on."

I wonder though,  in what scenario wouldn't you want a medical doctor or pharmacist to give scientific advice on the misuse of drugs?



The Government do have a right not to take on board the advice from the ACMD, which they have exercised almost to its full potential over the last few years. On the Advice of the ACMD, Home Secretary David Blunkett downgraded cannabis from Class B to Class C in 2004. However, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith returned it to Class B in 2009. In February of the same year, the ACMD advised the government  to downgrade ecstasy from a Class A to a Class B drug. The ACMD's report on ecstasy, based on a 12 month study of 4,000 academic papers, concluded that it was nowhere near as dangerous as other Class A drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine. Once again, Jaqui Smith didn't listen to the advice.


Background: The Sacking of David Nutt

Senior Advisor to the ACMD, David Nutt, publicly condemned the UK government for ignoring scientific advice when making it's decisions. He believed that drugs should be classified according the the evidence of how harmful they are to the individual and to society. Nutt pointed out that alcohol and tobacco caused more harm than LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.

He also published a paper which showed that whilst there is one instance of acute harm for every 350 exposures to horse riding, there is only one instance of acute harm for every 10'000 exposures to ecstasy. His point was that the classification of drugs is obviously not based on how harmful they are but on an attitude fuelled by "scare stories" over the years. He backed up his claim for this distorted media attitude with a study of drug related news paper reports over a period of 10 years:

"the likelihood of a newspaper reporting a death from paracetamol was in per 250 deaths, for diazepam it was 1 in 50, whereas for amphetamine it was 1 in 3 and for ecstasy every associated death was reported."

Jaqui Smith received an enormous amount of criticism from the scientific community for bullying Professor Nutt into apologising for implying that horse riding was more dangerous than taking ecstasy, despite the fact he was doing his job as a scientist to set out the facts and that the paper was published outside of his ACMD role. Her successor, Alan Johnson, sacked David  Nutt, adding:

"It is important that the government's messages on drugs are clear and as an advisor you do nothing to undermine public understanding of them. I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as Chair of the ACMD."

However, he was never clear on how David Nutt had broken any guidelines or codes of practice.


David Nutt claimed that it was almost as if the ACMD was expected to find evidence to support the government's stance on drugs and that, in the end, they didn't like what real scientists were saying. His sacking delivered quite a blow to the relationship between scientists and the government and was followed by the resignation of many more scientific advisers on the ACMD. Many have also criticised the 'War on Drugs' for causing more harm than the drugs themselves.

"Science Opposing 'War on Drugs' is Overwhelming"

These are the words from  Dr. Evan Wood, the director of the urban health research initiative at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. He is also the co-author of the Vienna Declaration, which calls on the world’s politicians to let scientific evidence guide their policies on illicit drugs.  Vienna was chosen as the site for the 2010 conference because it is home to the United Nations commission on narcotic drugs and a crossroads for Westerners to Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where HIV infections from dirty needles are skyrocketing.

He believes that the war on drugs, waged by many governments worldwide, continues to ignore the health and social harms cased by their antiquated policies and described it as a "global catastrophe. Up until now, the scientific community hasn’t really been outspoken about it,” he said.

“Scientists have been attacked by groups seeking to maintain the status quo. I have been in a leadership position involved with the evaluation of the supervised injecting facility in Vancouver and have experienced first-hand how scientists promoting the notion that addiction is a public-health problem and a medical problem can be attacked for those views.” 

"One in 100 adults in Russia is already HIV-infected because of heroin use,” said Wood, chair of the committee that wrote the declaration. His main concern is the negative role the War on Drugs has played in the fight against AIDS, “It’s an injection-drug-related epidemic. Needle exchange is illegal.” He pointed out that methadone, one of the best substitutes for heroin to combat addiction, is illegal there, even if prescribed.

Wood points out the declaration stresses gang violence in cities such as Vancouver is directly related to drug prohibition.“When these drugs are made illegal, organized crime groups are enriched by that,” he said. "They fight one another to maintain those profits.”

He also stated that the money spent on combating drug related crime could be better spent elsewhere. “In California, they spend more on incarceration than they do on post-secondary education. It’s estimated that one in nine African-American males between the ages of 25 and 35 are in prison on any given day in the U.S.”

The World Health Organisation and Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS have also strongly endorsed the call for drug-policy reforms.

Public Opinion

The reception to the evidence from the experts has been met with mixed feelings. This is largely due to the fact that many haven't heard about the evidence  and don't seem to understand that people like David Nutt and Dr. Wood aren't just spouting out their innermost thoughts based on biases concerning drugs, the media and government. They're doing their job, which is to represent the facts in the best way possible and tell us what those facts are. It seems that people don't like what they're now being told. Many people seem to be against drugs, not because the facts tell them to be but because of some moral obligation to oppose them.

The main problem is, it's hard to shake off what we've been told for so long about drugs. And that is probably the main reasons that the government is not willing to change the laws on drugs because they think it will send people the wrong message: that on the subject of drugs, they didn't know what they were talking about.

Atavisms: A blast from the past

The evidence for evolution comes in a variety of forms, many of which can only be understood with a good grasp of  modern concepts in  biology, genetics, ecology, molecular biology, developmental biology or geology. However, there are examples which can be seen with the naked eye and can be understood by anyone. For me, this is one of the best examples around...

In the natural world, traits which have been lost through evolution can reappear naturally. These are known as atavisms, and they are one of the most visually compelling evidences for evolution.

Here are a few examples:

 Human Tails

Most primates have long tails which can be used for balance or even serve as a fifth limb, which suits their arboreal lifestyle. However, all apes have lost their long tails through evolution, yet we still have the genes for a tail- they just aren't expressed anymore. This is because other genes override the expression of a tail during development. However, every so often a mutation may occur which permits the development of a tail.

Over the years, there been over 100 reports of human tail atavisms. These are not just stumps or extra bits of tissue; instead they have vertebrae, and some people can even move them!

Hind limbs in dolphins and whales

Dolphins and whales are both mammals. Since mammals evolved on land, the ancestors of dolphins and whales must have also lived on the land. During their transition to a marine lifestyle, they have lost their hair and their hind legs and develop a more streamlined shape. Occasionally these features reappear in the wild. In October 2006, this four finned dolphin was donated to the Taiji Whaling Museum after being captured off the west coast of Japan by fishermen.

Horses with extra toes

 Horses are actually standing on their hooves with the same bones as a human would if they were standing on tip toes. This is because although they evolved from a multi-toed creature,  these extra toes have shrank in size over millions of years. Now all that remains of them are a few vestigial bones. There are a  few recorded examples of extra toes in horses, such as "Clique, the horse with six feet", which was donated to Yale after it's death in 1891. Complete ulnas and fibulas have also been found in Welsh and Shetland ponies as well as miniature horses.

Chickens with teeth

This atavism has been induced by scientists by using viruses that mimic a known mutation which has the potential to cause chicken embryos to grow teeth. Birds evolved from dinosaurs, and we know that dinosaurs had teeth. In fact, even early birds such as Archeopteryx had teeth. Scientists can induce  this atavism because the chickens still retain the ability to grow teeth, but it is overridden by a complex set of developmental pathways. Unfortunately, the pathways are so complex that tinkering with them can often be lethal for the embryo. This tells us that (a) changes in natural populations are far more subtle than those in the lab, and (b) we are only skimming the surface of a science that has great deal of practical potential.

Why blog?

I am a zoology graduate from Bangor university, currently taking an MRes in Ecology. During my studies I have learned a great deal and my interest for Science and the natural world has continued to grow. However I have also encountered great ignorance of science and reason among many people, sometimes I even feel embarassed to belong to the 21st century.

Using my blog I hope to contribute to the cause of freethinking by sharing my passion for science and reason; and dismissing some of the nonsense that has somehow become mainstream in modern society despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.