Letter to the editor Mk.II

[SpacedTeddyBear]

Normally, I'd get a good laugh at some of the letters that my local newspaper receive. This one however, caught my immediate attention:

ABC's use of the increase of drug-resistant bacteria as evidence for evolution is poor reasoning and poor science. While this example is a valid case of “survival of the fittest,” it is not evidence for evolution. No new information was created in the genetic material of the surviving tuberculosis bacteria and none will pass to the next generation. This is nothing more than a new distribution of a small percentage of a population that was already present. No new species, genera, or family are present. It is a “leap of faith” to assume that survival of the fittest produces new or different species or kinds of organisms, animal, plant or protozoa. While I agree that everyone should learn about evolution as a point of view, it is not a proven fact. It is an assumption based upon a philosophical perspective.

This was written by a Superintendent of a Christian school in my general area.

I'm on my school break, and I have nothing else to do currently besides rewriting some of my physics notes. So here is my planned reply:

XYZ's statement regarding evolution clearly shows his own complete lack of scientific knowledge, it’s laughable. “Survival of the Fittest” is a mechanism for evolution. If you have a strain of bacteria that is resistant to an antibiotic, the surviving bacteria is able to pass this genetic resistance to a later generation. Even the FDA attributes the growing antibiotic resistance to evolution. If one separates complex organisms of the same species and subject them to different environmental stresses over many generations, the results are different groups of organisms who can no longer reproduce with each other but shares a common ancestry. This situation is an observed and proven fact.

I have a 125 word limit, which reduces the number of times where I can off hand, call him a complete dumbass. Comments and criticisms?

[Molyneux]

Why not mention that both mutation and sex serve as abundant sources of new information in the genome, especially with an organism with such a short time between new generations as a bacterium?

...er, there's probably a way you can say that more succinctly, though.

[Darth Wong]

Normally, I'd get a good laugh at some of the letters that my local newspaper receive. This one however, caught my immediate attention:

ABC's use of the increase of drug-resistant bacteria as evidence for evolution is poor reasoning and poor science. While this example is a valid case of “survival of the fittest,” it is not evidence for evolution. No new information was created in the genetic material of the surviving tuberculosis bacteria and none will pass to the next generation. This is nothing more than a new distribution of a small percentage of a population that was already present. No new species, genera, or family are present. It is a “leap of faith” to assume that survival of the fittest produces new or different species or kinds of organisms, animal, plant or protozoa. While I agree that everyone should learn about evolution as a point of view, it is not a proven fact. It is an assumption based upon a philosophical perspective.

This was written by a Superintendent of a Christian school in my general area.

I'm on my school break, and I have nothing else to do currently besides rewriting some of my physics notes. So here is my planned reply:

XYZ's statement regarding evolution clearly shows his own complete lack of scientific knowledge, it’s laughable. “Survival of the Fittest” is a mechanism for evolution. If you have a strain of bacteria that is resistant to an antibiotic, the surviving bacteria is able to pass this genetic resistance to a later generation. Even the FDA attributes the growing antibiotic resistance to evolution. If one separates complex organisms of the same species and subject them to different environmental stresses over many generations, the results are different groups of organisms who can no longer reproduce with each other but shares a common ancestry. This situation is an observed and proven fact.

I have a 125 word limit, which reduces the number of times where I can off hand, call him a complete dumbass. Comments and criticisms?

I would suggest that you say something more like this:

Moron attempts to refute bacterial evolution by saying that it is "nothing more than a new distribution of a small percentage of a population that was already present", as if this proves it is not evolution. In fact, if Moron had ever looked at a copy of Darwin's "Origin of Species", he would know that this is precisely how Darwin described evolution to work! It is unfortunate that so many people speak out publicly on evolution while clearly never having bothered to study the subject at all.

[SpacedTeddyBear]

I would suggest that you say something more like this:

Moron attempts to refute bacterial evolution by saying that it is "nothing more than a new distribution of a small percentage of a population that was already present", as if this proves it is not evolution. In fact, if Moron had ever looked at a copy of Darwin's "Origin of Species", he would know that this is precisely how Darwin described evolution to work! It is unfortunate that so many people speak out publicly on evolution while clearly never having bothered to study the subject at all.

Done. Thanks! Here is the re-write:

Ken Van Meter’s statement regarding evolution clearly shows his own lack of knowledge about evolution and science, it’s laughable. His attempt to refute bacterial evolution by saying, “This is nothing more than a new distribution of a small percentage of a population that was already present”, clearly shows his own ignorance, as it is how Darwin described evolution to work in his “Origin of Species”! The distribution of genetic material that betters the survivability of organisms during environmental stresses is precisely how evolution works. This situation is observed, has been proven as a fact by pharmaceutical companies and the FDA who attribute the growing antibiotic resistance to evolution. It’s unfortunate that so many people speak publically about evolution while never even studied the subject.

[Rye]

I would reword it a bit, since it sounds a bit like you're admitting that the genes were always there. Something like this could be better:

"While it's true that existing traits allowed an organism to survive (and rise to genetic popularity precisely as Darwin himself predicted), how does Mr Tard account for these genes coming about within living memory to begin with? We can literally see strains of MRSA becoming more resistant to drugs made in the last 70 years. We can look at older specimens and see that these genes did not exist yet. Where are these specialised, new, anti-drug genes coming from? The sky? A malicious, tinkering genie? No, evolution."

[Darth Wong]

It's tricky to be comprehensive in space-limited venues. But I think it's important to get that jab in about how creationists have clearly never bothered studying Darwin, never mind more recent theorists on the subject. It's amazing how horrendously distorted the average creationist's notion of evolution is. Even if the rebuttal doesn't necessarily address everything, I would hope that it might pique the reader's interest to know that what Darwin said and what the reader thinks Darwin said are two different things. It might put enough confusion into his mind to make him doubt the other points the creationist makes.

[haard]

Can you answer with an image? =p

(if you don't read xkcd, you should)

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

XYZ's statement regarding evolution clearly shows his own complete lack of scientific knowledge, it’s laughable. “Survival of the Fittest” is a mechanism for evolution.

For this part, I would have shortened it to:

XYZ's argument demonstrates ignorance of evolution's fundamentals via unintentional affirmation of its principle mechanism, natural selection.

If you have a strain of bacteria that is resistant to an antibiotic, the surviving bacteria is able to pass this genetic resistance to a later generation. Even the FDA attributes the growing antibiotic resistance to evolution. If one separates complex organisms of the same species and subject them to different environmental stresses over many generations, the results are different groups of organisms who can no longer reproduce with each other but shares a common ancestry. This situation is an observed and proven fact.

Evolution entails alterations in the frequency of a gene in a population over time due to differential reproduction. Environmental stresses select traits improving reproductive success (e.g. drug resistance). XYZ affirmed this process, thus evolution.

[Surlethe]

It's ridiculous how quickly these people seize on the "information" red herring. The information content of a DNA molecule is utterly irrelevant to whether or not evolution occurs; as long as mutations inject new alleles into the population, those alleles are inherited, and nature selects among the phenotypes, evolution will occur.

That said, some of the wording in the proposed letter is clunky. Here's a potential rewrite:

Ken Van Meter’s statement regarding evolution clearly shows his own lack of knowledge about evolution and science. His attempt to refute bacterial evolution by saying, “This is nothing more than a new distribution of a small percentage of a population that was already present” is precisely how Darwin described evolution in his “Origin of Species”! The change of the frequency of alleles in a population under environmental stresses is precisely how evolution works; it’s unfortunate that so many people who speak publicly about evolution have never even studied the subject. Given an actual understanding of evolution, it's no surprise that bacteria have become resistant to our drugs.

[SpacedTeddyBear]

I sent it in a few days ago. I would've gone into greater detail, or refined it a bit more, but I have only 125 words to work with so I didn't want to get too technical. Thank you all for the advice and help. Although mine didn't make it to the paper, someone else's reply did:
( I'm not gonna "XYZ" out their names or affiliates anymore)

As an evolutionary biologist, I couldn't help noticing that Ken Van Meter (Letters, Jan. 12) was wrong about every one of his factual claims. Drug resistance in bacteria is generally the result of new mutations, and it's evolution regardless. Mutations do create new information, by all scientific definitions of the term. While it's hard to study the causes of evolutionary changes in the distant past, it's easy to study the changes themselves, and this tells us that evolution - meaning the descent of all life on Earth, including us, from common ancestors - is as close to "proven fact" as it's possible to get in science. I would be glad to provide Mr. Van Meter with some of the evidence for this. If that letter was a guide to the caliber of science education at Milpitas Christian School, then thank God for the public school system.
John Harshman
Menlo Park

[wautd]

It's ridiculous how quickly these people seize on the "information" red herring.

It seems to be the latest hype

[Darth Wong]

It's ridiculous how quickly these people seize on the "information" red herring.

It seems to be the latest hype

The "information" argument is based upon the same mindset as their horrendous misinterpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. At heart, they insist on visualizing the development of species as an analogy for the human design of a machine. So they seize upon buzzwords they either misunderstand or can't bother to define in any meaningful fashion, like "entropy" or "information", and construct arguments which presume that these quantities cannot be produced without sentient intervention.

In effect, their method looks like this:

1. We know it is designed.
2. Since it designed, it must possess some special characteristic that natural objects do not have.
3. I just read about something on the Internet called (insert name of concept here). That must be it! There's a lot of mumbo jumbo math in the scientist webpages about it. They're obviously trying to confuse me with fancy equations. But I found a page that describes the concept in really easy-to-understand terms, and I have a pretty good handle on it now.
4. OK evolution boy, explain how evolution could cause (insert name of concept).

The sad thing is that it works on a lot of people.