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522 of 716 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Mostly dreadful, but some good points., June 12, 2007
In the Debacle in Dover, testifying about biochemistry, his main area of expertise, Behe frequently looked like a complete ID-iot. In EOE, Behe spends substantial time discussing areas outside his main ariea of expertise: zoology, astrophysics, developmental biology, etc. Question: If Behe couldn't survive cross-examination in his main area of expertise, then why should we trust him about other areas?
Besides that troubling, general question, there are several specific items that indicate that Behe simply cannot be trusted to get his facts straight. While some reviewers have identified some fairly esoteric errors, I would like to highlight more basic errors, errors so fundamental that a reasonably knowledgeable high school student would catch them.
Behe claims that his previous book, "Darwin's Black Box" (DBB), showed that irreducibly complex (IC) systems could not possibly have evolved in a step-by-step manner, but in reality DBB never said any such thing. DBB argued only that "direct" evolution was highly unlikely. Not only does that still leave the door open for "indirect" evolution, but "highly unlikely" is obviously not the same thing as "impossible." A reasonably sharp high school student would recognize both of those serious errors.
Behe also has a nasty habit of moving the goalposts on an ad hoc basis. In DBB, Behe claimed that IC systems met the standard set by Darwin himself: "could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications." Under that standard, which Behe freely accepted, merely plausible evolutionary pathways would be effective rebuttals of Behe's IC claims; but whenever biologists mention the numerous, plausible pathways that exist, Behe suddenly changes the standard to "rigorous, detailed explanations." Even a high school student would recognize that "rigorous, detailed explanations" is a radically different standard from "plausible." Such glaring inconsistency on such a key point seems to imply deliberate deception.
Some of Behe's statistical arguments assume that evolutionary success involves finding a needle in a haystack, i.e., a single, specific combination of mutations. In reality, as Behe himself implies in discussing the "Red Queen" effect, there is frequently a large, possibly enormous, number of potentially beneficial combinations available; so evolution is not searching for a needle, rather it is searching for a haystack; and therefore the odds of success are enormously greater than Behe's statistics imply. Any reasonably sharp high school student would recognize the glaring flaw in Behe's deceptive statistics.
Creationists with limited math abilities seem greatly impressed even by math arguments as obviously stupid as Behe's. I think it's worthwhile to point out that the most influential statistician of the 20th century was probably Sir Ronald Fisher, who, in addition to his spectacular achievements in statistics, also happens to have been one of the most influential evolutionists of the 20th century, having been one of the principal proponents of the "modern synthesis." So when ID-iots like Behe start bloviating about statistics, just remember that the real expert in statistics, Sir Ronald Fisher, was an evolutionist.
Finally, in another key argument, Behe simply assumes that "fitness landscapes" never change, but anyone with even a high school level knowledge of earth science knows that physical landscapes change all the time, due to floods, earthquakes, erosion, etc. Is Behe really so clueless that he doesn't realize that if physical landscapes change, then "fitness landscapes" must change too? Behe's idea of an organism "trapped on a fitness peak," forever barred from crossing even a shallow valley and thereby potentially gaining access to a even higher peak is so obviously stupid that any reasonably knowledgeable high school student would reject it.
I fully realize that not everyone can catch every error. Even major errors, like some of those pointed out by other critics, might slip by if they involve obscure or highly technical details. But it is really baffling that five-star reviewers blithely overlook numerous, major blunders that any knowledgeable high school student would catch. How in God's name could that happen?
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815 of 1,190 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Edge of Inanity: The Search for the Limits of Credulity, June 6, 2007
Behe's all dog no pony Irreducible Complexity (IC) tour is back in town - fresh from a Dover, PA appearance where he literally brought down the house of Intelligent Design (ID) cards with a slapstick vaudeville routine that confusingly conflated astrology with astronomy, dismissed reams (literally) of research into the evolution of the blood clotting cascade, and routinely produced 'oh dear' deer in the headlights stares while under cross examination.
Much of "The Edge of Evolution" centers on the purported inability of evolutionary mechanisms to account for parasites such as malaria. Behe's preferred instrument of faith-based flagellation - the flagellum - stages an encore performance as the malarial cilium; which to Behe's doe eyes looks even more IC than it did before.
Research is cited to show that the production of cilium in eukaryotic cells depends upon the availability of another cellular system known as intraflagellar transport (IFT). Behe then asserts (as in provides no supporting evidence) that both the cilium and IFT are irreducibly complex - in fact he christens this section "Irreducible Complexity Squared" (note to the Discovery Institute: get that trademark application in soon, how about IC2). Behe writes on page 94:
"IFT exponentially increases the difficulty of explaining the irreducibly complex cilium. It is clear from careful experimental work with all ciliated cells that have been examined, from alga to mice, that a functioning cilium requires a working IFT. The problem of the origin of the cilium is now intimately connected to the problem of the origin of IFT. Before its discovery we could be forgiven for overlooking the problem of how a cilium was built. Biologists could vaguely wave off the problem, knowing that some proteins fold by themselves and associate in the cell without help. Just as a century ago Haeckel thought it would be easy for life to originate, a few decades ago one could have been excused for thinking it was probably easy to put a cilium together; the piece could probably just glom together on their own. But now that the elegant complexity of IFT has been uncovered, we can ignore the question no longer."
IC2 states that you can't have/build/produce cilia without a functioning IFT mechanism - evolutionary (natural) causations must explain the apparently choreographed origin of IFT and the origin of cilia - quod erat demonstrum. Unfortunately this claim is false. In the real world eukaryotes exist which have cilia but lack IFT.
One of these organisms belongs to a group called Apicomplexans. These protozoa are obligatory intracellular parasites that must spend part, if not all, of their life cycle in a host animal. The specific apicomplexan in question is Plasmodium falciparum. You probably know it better by its street name: malaria. The organism that Behe touts throughout as being an intelligently designed exemplar of irreducibly complex systems completely demolishes his entire claim that cilia and IFT constitute an irreducible system - squared or not.
Compounding the Plasmodium falciparum debacle is Behe's rubber-band reality utilization of fitness landscape arguments in a chapter that should have been titled "The Mathematical Limits of Beheism" since it only manages to showcase his profligate innumeracy. Here's how Behe turned a fitness landscape into a swamp (with thanks to Mark Chu-Carroll):
1. Restrict evolution to a static and unchanging fitness landscape - unfortunately in the real world fitness landscapes are never static. 2. Constrain the fitness landscape to a smooth surface made up of hills and valleys where a local minimum or maximum in any dimension is a local minimum or maximum in all dimensions - and ignore that a valley in one dimension can be a peak in another. 3. Assert that fitness function mapping from a genome to a point of the fitness landscape is monotonically increasing - in spite of the fact that things don't always go in a single direction - for example a virus may decrease in fitness over time but increase in transmissibility. 4. Define the fitness function as smoothly continuous, with infinitesimally small changes (single point base changes) mapping to equally small changes in position on the fitness landscape - in spite of experimental evidence that even a single base pair change (in a viral quasispecies for example) can eliminate one peak while creating another (and also ignore the consequences of gene duplication, recombination, insertional mutations, transposition, and translocation).
As Mark points out Behe doesn't even understand that he is making these assumptions - you can wade through his mathematics without getting your ankles wet. He then traipses into quicksand of his own design by basing all of his arguments on the flawed fitness landscape and straightjacketed search results they produce. William Dembski acted as an advisor to Behe - and it shows. The master of obscurantist pseudomathematics has found a willing apprentice.
Transmuting lush fitness landscapes into malarial swamps is quite a trick but Behe, ever the prankster, isn't finished yet. Behe accepts common descent and admits that overwhelming evidence links closely related species (e.g. humans and chimpanzees) to shared ancestors, but flatly asserts that evolution by natural means is incapable of facilitating genus or taxa level differentiation such as the emergence of tetrapods from Sarcopterygian fish. The horns of this dilemma should be obvious, even to Behe; how can all species be linked by common descent if evolution above the species level is impossible?
Behe never resolves this disconnect - no mechanism is ever offered. No hint of a hypothesis. No suggested experimental avenues. This logical lacuna can't be bridged by incessant appeals to 'design.' Behe further muddies the waters by surreptitiously substituting a concept much closer to creationist 'baramin' (created kinds) for biological species - created kinds and common descent are irreconcilable concepts.
Ultimately Behe's colleagues at Lehigh University are ideally positioned to comment on his work. The Department of Biological Sciences has posted the following statement on their website concerning Behe:
"The faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences is committed to the highest standards of scientific integrity and academic function. This commitment carries with it unwavering support for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. It also demands the utmost respect for the scientific method, integrity in the conduct of research, and recognition that the validity of any scientific model comes only as a result of rational hypothesis testing, sound experimentation, and findings that can be replicated by others."
"The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of 'intelligent design.' While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific."
Behe's book is one long train wreck. Unlike Darwin who eloquently elucidated one long argument, Behe tosses off sloppy seconds as research, recycles sophomoric (and rejected) fitness landscape arguments, confusingly conflates or redefines common terms and proffers puerile probability assessments - standard creationist (excuse me, I meant to say IDist) fare.
Thanks to Nick Matzke for uncovering Behe's monumentally grotesque Plasmodium falciparum gaffe.
Special thanks as well to Behe's dysfunctional advisory team: Lydia and Tim McGrew, Peter and Paul Nelson, George Hunter, David DeWitt, Doug Axe, Bill Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Tony Jelsma, Neil Manson, Jay Richards, Guillermo Gonzalez, Bruce Chapman, Steve Meyer, John West, and Rob Crowther - a veritable bestiary of methodological supernaturalists operating at the edge of inanity - and only one 's' away from insanity.
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638 of 936 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Abyss of Reason: The Limits of Michael Behe's Scientific Thinking, June 7, 2007
Theodosius Dobzhansky, the great Russian-American population geneticist (One of the prominent biologists responsible for the Modern Synthesis Theory of Evolution.), observed that "Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution". It was true when he stated that decades ago; it is truer still today given the abundant wealth of excellent data from a diverse host of biological sciences: molecular biology and biochemistry, developmental biology, ecology, population genetics, systematics and paleobiology. All of which points clearly to both the fact of biological evolution and the key role of Natural Selection in producing the rich biological diversity of our Planet Earth. Claims which biochemist Michael Behe has tried so valiantly to deny in his "The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism", proclaiming that Intelligent Design, not Evolution, is the best explanation for our planet's biodiversity. However, all that Michael Behe has demonstrated so well in his latest diatribe against "Darwinism" is the constricted, twisted limits of his own scientific thought via extensive illogical reasoning, an improper understanding of probability theory, and a profound ignorance of evolutionary biology. Indeed, in his latest book, Michael Behe has descended into the dark, deep abyss of reason; it's a senseless journey that any thoughtful potential reader of his book should refuse to undertake.
In the opening chapter "The Elements of Darwinism", Behe presents a stereotypical portrait of "Darwinism", or rather, the Modern Synthesis Theory of Evolution, hinting that he's found excellent examples that refute it in his cursory examinations of the origins and transmittal of the diseases Malaria and HIV/AIDS. He also briefly alludes to the notion of an adaptive landscape that's played such a crucial role in our understanding of population genetics and speciation, presented all too simplistically as if his intended audience was teenagers with limited attention spans, not presumably well-read, highly educated, adults. In the second chapter, "Arms Race or Trench Warfare?", Behe ridicules the very notion of a co-evolutionary arms race between predators and prey, quickly dismissing the Red Queen hypothesis as a "silly statement" from Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland", ignoring the existence of a substantial body of supporting scientific literature (Like so many great ideas in science, it was proposed independently, almost simultaneously, by two scientists; evolutionary biologist and paleobiologist Leigh Van Valen - who coined the term "Red Queen" - and evolutionary ecologist Michael Rosenzweig in the early 1970s. I should also note too that this was demonstrated clearly in the PBS "Evolution" television miniseries episode which illustrated the Red Queen through an intricate biochemical "arms race" between garter snakes and their highly toxic salamander prey.). In the chapter entitled "The Mathematical Limits of Darwinism", Michael Behe offers some bizarre probability values (How did you compute them, Professor Behe, using which probability distribution? A Normal Distribution? A Binomial Distribution? A Poisson Distribution - that would make ample sense if the events described by him are indeed as rare as he states.) that purportedly support his contention of rare, random variation as something highly unlikely to produce anything other than the microevolution he does allude to, but never mentions explicitly (I am indebted to another Amazon.com customer reviewer, S. Allen, for pointing out the egregious error which Behe made in computing the probability of a malarial parasite producing a double mutation - and also erring in assuming that these mutations had to occur together, when the original scientific paper he cited from strongly implied that they did not (I'll let the reader decide as to whether this was indeed wishful thinking on Behe's part, or a gross distortion of the available published scientific evidence; I am inclined to believe the latter, because of other similar examples I have spotted elsewhere in this book.).).
More than half of "The Edge of Evolution" is devoted to pointing out the foibles of evolution as if random mutation was the key mechanism responsible for natural selection and then trotting out Intelligent Design as the more reasonable explanation for biological diversity, by stating once more, arguments he presented in his earlier book "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution". Surprisingly Behe refers again to his "mousetrap model" in support of his concept of "Irreducible Complexity", without acknowledging Kenneth Miller's effectively brilliant, devastating refutation which is posted at his personal website, www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/.). Behe gets so mired in discussing the details of his biological "nanobots", that he forgets the real reason why he refers to them, as the mechanistic rationale for explaining Earth's past and present biodiversity as an artifact of Intelligent Design. Moreover, he does not offer any compelling alternative hypotheses that would support Intelligent Design as a more likely scientific theory accounting for this diversity. Instead, he refers again, and again, to how well-designed various cellular structures are, as if the citations by themselves, clearly demonstrate that these structures were indeed the products of Intelligent Design.
My most serious reservations about "The Edge of Evolution" are not just limited to Behe's failure to demonstrate convincingly, from a scientific perspective, that Intelligent Design is a better theory than the Modern Synthesis Theory of Evolution (which has the Darwin/Wallace Theory of Evolution via Natural Selection as its central core.). Repeatedly, Behe has resorted to simplistic logical reasoning in trying to persuade his audience of the merit of his ideas (For example, in the chapter, "Arms Race or Trench Warefare?" he describes the co-evolutionary arms race between the ancestors of the modern cheetah and the gazelle in a literary style that's more suited for Aesop's Fables than a book that purportedly tries to present a viable scientific alternative to evolutionary theory.). He also misinterprets "The Spandrels of San Marco", the classic scientific paper by paleobiologist Stephen Jay Gould and population geneticist Richard Lewontin, in the chapter entitled "The Cathedral And The Spandrels", as a sterling example of Darwinism's failure, when that was not the authors' rationale for its writing nor how it is perceived today by many evolutionary biologists. While claiming to accept the reality of evolution as evidence for common descent, he ignores the fossil record, in instances like his terse dismissal of the Red Queen, and thus neglects the importance of appreciating the history of life in attempting to understand the origins of Planet Earth's current biodiversity (For example, distinguished marine ecologist Geerat Vermeij has offered substantial evidence of a co-evolutionary arms race from his extensive studies of the marine fossil record; a most remarkable achievement since Vermeij has been blind almost from birth. Vermeij discusses this in admirable, eloquent prose in his book "Evolution and Escalation".). Behe doesn't appreciate the importance of the adaptive landscape - which he refers to as the "fitness landscape" - towards our understanding of the processes responsible for speciation, wrongly attributing it to British population geneticist Ronald Fisher, when it was actually derived by his American counterpart, Sewall Wright (Both of whom made key contributions to the Modern Synthesis theory - which Behe refers to as the "Neo-Darwinian Synthesis" - yet another incorrect usage of scientific terminology which appears too often in this book.). Last, but not least, Michael Behe lacks the literary eloquence of superb writers - and evolutionary biologists - Ernst Mayr, Stephen Jay Gould, Niles Eldredge, Edward O. Wilson, and Richard Dawkins, to name but a few, and he has offered to us, his unsuspecting readers, the literary equivalent of the RMS Titantic's ill-fated maiden voyage.
Simon and Schuster truly has had a glorious history of introducing many distinguished writers of fiction and non-fiction to the world, ranging from the likes of Ernest Hemingway to Frank McCourt. It published distinguished evolutionary biologist and paleobiologist Niles Eldrdege's first book for the general public, "Time Frames", an engrossing memoir on the origins of the evolutionary theory known as "Punctuated Equilibrium" (which Eldredge proposed with his friend Stephen Jay Gould back in 1972). Regrettably, its excellent publishing history was tarnished with the original publication of "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution"; now it is tarnished again with "The Edge of Evolution". Clearly Michael Behe doesn't deserve favorable recognition of the kind bestowed upon both Hemingway and McCourt, but rather, more intense scrutiny, and indeed, more condemnation, in the future, from his scientific peers and an interested public who recognizes that Intelligent Design is not just bad science, but a bad religious idea pretending to be science (The verdict which was issued by Republican Federal Judge John Jones at the conclusion of the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial in which Michael Behe appeared as a key witness for the defense; oddly enough he doesn't mention the trial nor its verdict in his book.). Those who believe he is due favorable recognition are condoning the ample lies, omissions, and distortions present in his latest book, and are all too willing to join him in his self-created abyss of reason.
(EDITORIAL NOTE 9/5/07: Since writing the original text of this review, I have arrived at the realization that Behe's "The Edge Of Evolution" is yet another example from him of mendacious...
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