Talk:Evolution/Archive 8

message: Does this article need the NPOV dispute flag or not? I can't tell, to many reversions back and forth >.<--Tznkai 18:13, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No.  NPOV 01:05 9 June 2005 by 65.13.0.185 without explanation on talk page , who then reverted 2 minutes later.  Dunc|☺ 19:03, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV 

message: I don't see why it should be linked here. It is not NPOV. They state:
:This site is not "viewpoint neutral", and we do not keep pro-creationism edits, or discuss the details of such edits and why we remove them. This may seem closed-minded or dogmatic to those unfamiliar with the details of the controversy, but such creationist edits are invariably issues refuted elsewhere on the site and scientifically incorrect. (from Evowiki - Aim)
Given that here we have a nice and well written NPOV article, that on Evowiki don't add anything new. --pippo2001 8 July 2005 03:44 (UTC)
:Linked articles need not be neutral - they are not Wikipedia, after all, and are simply presented for the reader's further consideration. Graft 8 July 2005 03:56 (UTC)
: Looks like the usual creationist nonsense in addition to being spam.  Dunc|☺ 10:43, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  EvoWiki 

message: Anyone want to fill in the details of vertebrate evolution in the indicated section? I can say a fair bit about mammalian radiation, but that's probably too fine a level of detail, and I really don't know that much about earlier evolutionary history. (I never got into dinosaurs as a kid, what can I say...) Graft 16:02, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  History of life 

message: Would people comment on this ?  I have heard philosophers of science address "evolution" and what they talk about and use as a point of reference in my experience is always Darwin, not the people or ideas in this article.  I am concerned that the title is misleading and at the very least there needs to be more explanation in the article that will help readers understand why the contents in the article in question is not part of this article. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 15:04, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  evolution and philosophy 

message: *Mischaracterization of the eugenics movement. I replaced with language from the actual eugenics article.
*More accurate representation of support eugenics received prior to the Holocaust, with a link to reference.
*Removed POV original research relating to genetic diversity vs. selective breeding, and its applicability to ethical movements.
Parker Whittle 07:10, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV in ethics 

message: I would like this page to deal more comprehensively with evolution itself, and not get sidetracked into the evolution-creationism issue, or the social implications, or the history of evolutionary thought. These are more than adequately covered elsewhere - let's focus on the theory itself here. Create an evolution infobox (vertical; major topics only) to put near the top, and you can gain extra space and focus by doing away with the summaries. Also section 1.1 (ancestry) looks like it's placed so near the top for creation-controversy reasons, as it's not actually helpful for explaining evolution itself. It should go further down. Rd232 21:21, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a page about Evolution writ generally. It is not a page about Darwinian evolution or the modern evolutionary synthesis or Lamarckian evolution specifically. The history of evolutionary thought section well exemplifies why you can't have a simple, single article on "evolution" be just about one version of the scientific theory. I think it is better that this article be a general overview of many things related to Evolution as a concept, pointing towards articles with more depth on all of them. But those are just my two cents. --Fastfission 22:12, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "This is a page about Evolution writ generally." - no it isn't: "This article is about evolution in the field of life science" (top of article). I think a general article including more things from evolution (disambiguation) would probably be a good and useful thing, but it currently isn't. It should make up it's mind - either focus on evolution as modern scientific theory, and don't clutter it with too-detailed summaries of related articles not necessary to understand that; or make it a general overview of all types of evolution (eg sociocultural evolution). Either way, in terms of usefulness for the readers, the summaries of related articles that are here need to be much shorter, allowing for greater coherence and much easier reading - and the daughter articles are there for the (much better organised) detail (especially with the infobox approach, where they're at the top as well as in the See also at the bottom). Currently you can't see the wood for the trees. (You didn't address my Ancestry section point.) Rd232 20:00, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evolution page 

message: This article does two things. First, it misreports as significant the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment and attempts to define abiogenesis as a theory instead of a hypothesis. I am not aware of any place other than this page where abiogenesis was taken as seriously as a theory as 13 of 21 ammino acids were and still are a far cry from DNA or one-celled organisms. Second, the article stated that "Since abiogenesis is rare or impossible and ..." in order to explain the vast time required for the theory. I removed that and just left it after the "and". To assume that abiogenesis is still possible when it is neither observable or falsifiable is to base this article on hope and/or faith. I would hope wiki would strive to avoid such a stance in an article on evolution especially a scientific article where these things have no place. I have thus removed the part about abiogenesis being rare or impossible with regards to time. It served no purpose anyway and seemed to indicate (in this article especially) that the law of biogenesis can be ignored because of a theory that stands in contradiction of it. Earlier I had removed the "rare or" portion and left "impossible". Someone did not like that, probably rightfully so due to their religious beliefs, so I have removed more of the statement.
[I see this has changed back to biogenesis being significant again. Never mind, I guess faith belongs on this page.]G-wiki
:Sorry, I reverted you because I thought you'd inserted that statement, when in fact you had deleted it.  I concur with its deletion.  It was unhelpful, and to confuse evolution with abiogenesis is a mistake, clearly.
: With regard to abiogenesis being a hypothesis rather than well-developed theory, yes and no.  There obviously was abiogenesis at some stage, so it can be stated as fact.  We can develop hypotheses about how this happened and test them.  And the RNA world hypothesis makes sense. Dunc|☺ 21:30, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Abiogenesis, and various conjectured mechanisms thereof, are beyond the scope of this article. Take it to abiogenesis. --FOo 15:33, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abiogenesis 

message: This text has been moved to Talk:Evolution/Creationism where it can be found under the same heading.    I did this as it was clear to me that the discussion concerned creationism.  Please remember that this talk page has been split and that there are often better subpages for particular discussion.  Barnaby dawson 15:27, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV problem

message: You'd miss this important aspect of his theory if you blinked while reading the article. Where it is mentioned, it's in the section on Natural selection, which is defined as 'survival and reproduction as a result of the environment'; sexual selection does not fit into this definition. May I suggest that sexual selection requires a separate section? Tony 05:33, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's an important point to emphasize. According to our articles Natural selection and Sexual selection, ecological selection has to do with variable survival; sexual selection with variable reproductive success; and both are considered natural processes. --FOo 23:45, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Darwins' theory of sexual selection is downplayed and incorrectly catagorised here 

message: Near the end of the second portion of the article, there is a statement that clearly implies that there is no scientific support for theories aside from evolution. This is inaccurate. Though many mainstream journals and scientists advocate the theory of evolution, there is a strong community which advocates other positions as well.
While I agree that this is not the page to explain those other beliefs in any detail, a statement claiming they essentially do not exist within scientific circles is simply incorrect.
:There is no scientific support for theories other than evolution.  There are a few people who believe otherwise, but the difference between 0 and 0.001% is so trivial that in effect there is none.  There is one publication in a scientific journal in support of alternatives - one which was retracted by the journal's board.  Biological abstracts indexes 360,000 biology papers a year.  Over the 20+ years that a few people have been trying to craft a alternative, I'd guess that 4-5,000,000 papers have been published - even without the retraction, that's <0.000025% - the difference between that and "none" is so trivial that to mention it is misleading, because it gives it a weight that is a million-fold disproportionate.  Guettarda 20:22, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There is heaps of scientific support for Intelligent Design. Most Scientific Journals are too scared to publish any of this. Only a fraction of the biology papers that are published attempt to provide scientific support for evolution, so your percentage means nothing.RossNixon 01:18, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ross - that's the second time I've seen you make a comment on this page that is utterly, totally, and completely disconnected from reality. (the first time was, of course, this little gem about how Creationism is scientific and Evolution is not). Your completely fallacious comments aside, the reality of the situation is that it is exactly as Guettarda has described it - while they might disagree on the details, no reputable scientist disagrees with Evolution. [Hell, the very-well-publicized Kansas school board *could not* find a biologist willing to go on the record against evolution.] You'd be hard pressed to find a single biology curriculm in any reputable school that includes lamarckism, creationism, creation science, or intelligence design - except *possibly* for the pedagogical or historical merit of including it (as opposed to the scientific merit of it, of which it has none). →Raul654 01:30, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ross - we can only work with reality - the idea that there are "heaps of scientific support" is nonsense, as is the idea that scientific journals are "too scared".  All experimental biology uses an evolutionary framework - biologists who work outside of an evolutionary framework would have to come up with their own, and publish it.  Even Behe has not published anything in the biological literature which does not work within the evolutionary framework.  Anyone is free to work outside of the assumptions of evolutionary biology, but they would be forced to come up with that framework.  They haven't, which means that they either explicitly or implicitly accept the evolutionary framework.  And since we are not mind readers, we can only go by the reality of their publications... Guettarda 03:01, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd like to add my agreement too that evolution is completely accepted within the biological scientific community—there is no evidence for any other theory. It's not only within general biology; much of modern medicine, from cell-signaling pathways, to antibiotic development, is based on the framework of evolutionary theory. Of course, genetics and inherited diseases and such are intricately tied to the concept of evolution. — Knowledge Seeker দ 03:58, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accuracy of Blanket Statement 

message: I've reverted User:Jlefler's version to that of User:Duncharris - I don't think the word 'vandalism' was called for in the circumstances. Ian Cairns 20:12, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Reversion