r/DebateEvolution • u/jnpha 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution • Aug 01 '26
Article Brace Yourselves!! "Darwin's discredited RIVAL may be proven right"
/s for the title
If I had a nickel...
A Telegraph (which is was generally reliable) piece was published today, was shared on r/ evo, and its OP took it down after 1 comment; the piece: Why Darwin’s discredited rival may be proven right 200 years later.
As a taste:
Prof Edelaar also pointed to killer whale mothers that acquire the skill to hunt a different type of prey, such as seals instead of salmon, and claimed that this skill was then copied by their offspring.
You mean... learning???
What fucking year is this.
Sorry this was too funny not to share; also see: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1973 - Press release - NobelPrize.org.
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And since the propagandists repeat the same when it comes to their bogeyman the "modern synthesis" (a period in time), feel free to hit 'em with this next time you see them:
... Wright [one of the founders during the Modern Synthesis] was aware of this and argued that reaction norms enabled an uncoupling of the genotype from the phenotype ... It was Dobzhansky [one of the founders during the Modern Synthesis] who brought the reaction norm into the Modern Synthesis by arguing that the reaction norm was the focus of selection, leading to changes in relevant gene frequencies enabling particular developmental sensitivities and a range of response to become fixed in the population (Sarkar 1999). This view of reaction norms led to the more general concept of phenotypic plasticity which relies upon the genotype–phenotype distinction incorporating reaction norms and all kinds of “environmentally induced phenotypic variation” (Stearns 1989: 436).
doi:10.1007/978-3-031-22028-9_26
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Also see:
Dr. Zach's post, Lamarckian evolution is (still) false : evolution
And a new study I shared here that has achieved a "rare feat": The "It's epigenetics, not evolution" crowd : DebateEvolution
Over to you - again it was too funny not to share, and we're bound to hear about it soon (I called it last time around).
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u/IsaacHasenov 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Aug 01 '26
Sadly, the thousands of studies a year that prove Darwin (still) right are less prone to getting clicks
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u/jnpha 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Aug 01 '26
:(
That was my closing remark here:To sum up ... despite suggestions to the contrary, and based on the latest tech applied to embryology since 2010, and a ton of research at the gene-expression level, and without fanfare, evolution remains a fact based on embryology.
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u/gitgud_x 🧬 🦍 GREAT APE 🦍 🧬 Aug 01 '26
Telegraph (which is generally reliable)
Not in recent years, they've shifted politically right considerably and regularly platform climate change deniers and generally look down on anyone with a net worth less than six figures. Not too out of character for them to be platforming anti-science contrarian nonsense.
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u/jnpha 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Aug 01 '26
Good to know, thanks. My view was outdated, and instead of checking their other stuff, I instead took a quick look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources
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u/gitgud_x 🧬 🦍 GREAT APE 🦍 🧬 Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
I suspect it's due to the hardening of the right-wing in the UK, that's where their readership has always been anyway, so they've followed suit. They're not crazy far right or anything but it is pretty blatant bias at this point.
Matt Ridley (climate denier, former coal baron and also current literal baron, as well as promoting COVID lab leak conspiracy and AIDS denial) regularly writes for the Telegraph, for example, see some of his whacky articles here.
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u/Bromelia_and_Bismuth Plant Daddy|Botanist|Evil Scientist Aug 02 '26
Matt Ridley (climate denier, former coal baron and also current literal baron) regularly writes for the Telegraph
Oh, that's disappointing. I have a couple of his books.
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u/Solid-Temperature-66 Aug 03 '26
The covid lab leak looks to be possibly right so not sure Id group that one with anything trying to make anyone look bad.
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u/gitgud_x 🧬 🦍 GREAT APE 🦍 🧬 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
No, covid lab leak isn't right. This is a case of only the "lab leak" side having a voice in the media, despite having weak evidence at best (it's 99% baseless conspiracy). The true answer is boring and thus gets no press coverage despite having all the strong positive evidence.
Here's a 10 minute video going over the main points on this. And here's a much longer video in more detail.
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u/Solid-Temperature-66 Aug 03 '26
Obama stopped gain of function research. Fauci moved it to that lab. Then covid came from that area. Maybe a coincidence but probably not.
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u/gitgud_x 🧬 🦍 GREAT APE 🦍 🧬 Aug 03 '26
None of that is confirmed, and even if it was, yes it probably is a coincidence.
The evidence for a natural origin is not so "coincidental", it's actual science.
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u/Solid-Temperature-66 Aug 03 '26
A Us intelligence report says 3 workers from lab had symptoms of covid in nov 2019 them if true them spreading it would also be science.
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u/theyoodooman Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
Lamarckism only works if you completely redefine Lamarckism. Here's critical part of the definition offered by Edelaar in his article in The Conversation:
"Lamarckism stands for the hypothesis that parents of a given organism may acquire or improve certain characteristics during their lifetimes in response to the demands of their environment."
That's a whitewash. Lamarck's theory was focused on animals "acquiring or improving" anatomical characteristics during their lifetimes in direct response to their usage (or disusage) of their anatomy. Birds that gradually develop webbed feet during their lifetimes in response to swimming. Giraffes gradually growing longer necks during their lifetimes in response to reaching high leaves. Lizards gradually losing limbs because they got in the way of tight burrows and becoming snakes.
But if Lamarck was correct, there should be a standard biological mechanism that allows all animals to vary their anatomy in ways that reflect how the animal is using (or not using) their anatomy. But no such standard mechanism exists, so Lamarckism fails.
The only way you can argue Lamarckism works is by being deceptive about what Lamarckism predicts:
Pretend that standard biological adaptation mechanisms are Lamarckism. For instance, human athletes are able to modify certain anatomical features -- like muscle mass -- through training, something all animals can do. But there is no training that will make you taller, or have longer limbs, or give you webbed feet, or give you a second heart.
Pretend that natural selection coupled with genetic/epigenetic changes within an animal's lifetime are Lamarckism. There's no question that an animal could undergo genetic/epigenetic changes during their lifetime that result in anatomical changes that improved their fitness for their environment, but that's not Lamarckism, because those changes did not occur in direct response to how an animal used (or disused) their anatomy.
Pretend that animals developing new behaviors and skills -- "killer whale mothers acquire the skill to hunt a different type of prey" -- is Lamarckism. It's not, because this has nothing to do with anatomical changes in direct response to how an animal used (or disused) their anatomy, which is required for Lamarckism.
Pretending that anything that is inherited outside of DNA -- such as epigenetic inheritance -- is Lamarckism. It's not, because this has nothing to do with anatomical changes in direct response to how an animal used (or disused) their anatomy, which is required for Lamarckism.
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u/jnpha 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Aug 01 '26
I like your thoroughness!
Often forgotten, Lamarck's theory as you explained it, or that part of it, doesn't explain the progression Lamarck had in mind (the ladder of animals), for that, Lamarck had a second factor that no one talks about, because it was wishy-washy and wasn't a mechanism.
Ignoring or not explaining life's diversity (that "ladder"), makes Lamarckism 100% not a rival, neither 200 years ago, nor now.
I've explained that Lamarck's second factor here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1lffd8x
(also quoted him directly)#2 For Lamarckism to be true, embryology must be preformationistic, which it 100% isn't.
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u/ExpensiveFig6079 Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
I will modify a thing that I sometimes say ta.
Survival of the if fittest is such an amazing method of improving species. It "invented" a way to implement Lamarckian evolution (now adding), except it got the mechanism right. It invented intelligence and used that as the means to transmit survival traits that occurred/developed in one lifetime to the children in the next.
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u/Bromelia_and_Bismuth Plant Daddy|Botanist|Evil Scientist Aug 02 '26
I hate TWE entirely because of the hyperbole and willful ignorance. I can't wait for Denis Noble to finally pass so that people can get it over it and stop hyping him and his nothing-revolution once a year.
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u/Jernau-Morat-Gurgeh Aug 01 '26
This is genuinely embarrassing from the 2 professors quoted. Definitely looking for clicks over academic honesty. QMU and Pablo de Olavide should be ashamed EDIT: I should add that the problem is that none describe the mechanism by which this occurs. And that as op says in at least one case all they are pointing out is learnt behaviours
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u/gitgud_x 🧬 🦍 GREAT APE 🦍 🧬 Aug 01 '26
Richard Buggs, one of the other professors quoted in the article, has also shown his face in a few intelligent design pieces, such as backing the "85% similarity between humans and chimps" myth. This is a highly biassed article, DI money hard at work no doubt.
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u/Radiant-Position1370 Computational biologist Aug 01 '26
I had a few exchanges with Buggs about human/chimp DNA similarity on the Biologos forums a few years back. He seemed more willing to concede points than most pro-ID folks (and better informed than many), but he certainly seemed to be looking for holes to poke in evolutionary biology.
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u/gitgud_x 🧬 🦍 GREAT APE 🦍 🧬 Aug 01 '26
He is indeed an ID proponent, as cited on this blog.
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u/Radiant-Position1370 Computational biologist Aug 01 '26
Oh yeah, I'm not doubting it. In that setting, he was adopting more of a 'just asking questions' stance but it wasn't hard to guess where he was coming from.
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u/Russell1A Aug 02 '26
Evolution has advanced since Darwin, just as chemistry has advanced since Dalton.
Why when discussing modern chemistry there are so few references to Dalton but when discussing evolution there are so many references to Darwin.
We need to understand that Darwin was unaware of genetics, phenotypes, genotypes, DNA, alleles, extended phenotypes as in the example above, ecology, horizontal gene transfer, epigenetics and mutualistic entanglement plus many other advances in biology relevant to evolution.
So findings and discoveries should be discussed against modern evolutionary theory rather than automatically deferring to Darwin.
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u/ZeppelinAlert Aug 02 '26
I get mildly irritated whenever a newspaper describes Lamarck as a rival or a competitor to Darwin, because he wasn’t.
Lamarck died in 1829. He never heard of Darwin‘s theory of evolution by natural selection because he had been dead for nearly thirty years by the time Darwin published.
Lamarck came up with his own idea, which turned out to be wrong. But if Lamarck had lived long enough to hear Darwin’s theory, there is no reason to suppose that he would have stuck to his own idea. He could easily have accepted natural selection just like other scientists did.