The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:

Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.

_Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/

If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.

I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t.o.

In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
hypotheses about OOL:

"For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]

Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
presentation that MarkE had linked,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.

Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.

The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
[Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]

Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.

Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.

If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
five challenges.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
https://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
>
> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
>
> _Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/
>
> If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
> crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.
>
> I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
> back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
> of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
> t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
> demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
> were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t.o.
>
> In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
> hypotheses about OOL:
>
> "For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]
>
> Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
> presentation that MarkE had linked,
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
> to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.
>
> Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.
>
> The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
> who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
> [Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
> to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]
>
> Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.
>
> Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
> pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
> none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.
>
> If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
> then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
> of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
> five challenges.

You may be aware of the common evaluation (I paraphrase, but you could
probably look it up), "Debates with creationists look good on their CVs;
mine, not so much."

On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

> > The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> > as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> > with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> > of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> >
> > Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> >
> > _Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
> > https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/
> >
> > If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
> > crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.
> >
> > I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
> > back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
> > of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
> > t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
> > demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
> > were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t.o.
> >
> > In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
> > hypotheses about OOL:
> >
> > "For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]
> >
> > Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
> > presentation that MarkE had linked,
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
> > to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.
> >
> > Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.
> >
> > The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
> > who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
> > [Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
> > to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]
> >
> > Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.
> >
> > Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
> > pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
> > none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.
> >
> > If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
> > then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
> > of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
> > five challenges.

> You may be aware of the common evaluation (I paraphrase, but you could
> probably look it up), "Debates with creationists look good on their CVs;
> mine, not so much."

I haven't been thinking in terms of showbiz, John. YouTube debates are the wrong venue
for dealing with such specialized issues as Tour's first three challenges.

I think a scholarly article in a lower-echelon, but still respectable scientific
journal, by someone with a good reputation but not a "star" of OOL like the
researchers Tour named, would do the non-creationist public a real service.

That is, IF it is possible to explain how relevant or irrelevant Tour's first three
challenges are to OOL, and why.

If NOBODY can explain these things in humanly intelligible terms at this
point in time, then OOL science is in a really bad way. It would be better
to call it a "proto-science" like the alchemy of the Middle Ages.

Back then, researchers did discover a number of important things, like sulfuric acid.
But no one had a scientific theory worthy of the term. Researchers were stumbling
blindly in the dark, trying this and that experiment. Maybe that's all that
can be said about the present state of OOL research.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
>>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
>>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
>>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
>>>
>>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
>>>
>>> _Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/
>>>
>>> If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
>>> crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.
>>>
>>> I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
>>> back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
>>> of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
>>> t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
>>> demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
>>> were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t.o.
>>>
>>> In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
>>> hypotheses about OOL:
>>>
>>> "For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]
>>>
>>> Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
>>> presentation that MarkE had linked,
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
>>> to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.
>>>
>>> Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.
>>>
>>> The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
>>> who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
>>> [Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
>>> to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]
>>>
>>> Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.
>>>
>>> Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
>>> pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
>>> none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.
>>>
>>> If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
>>> then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
>>> of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
>>> five challenges.
>
>> You may be aware of the common evaluation (I paraphrase, but you could
>> probably look it up), "Debates with creationists look good on their CVs;
>> mine, not so much."
>
> I haven't been thinking in terms of showbiz, John. YouTube debates are the wrong venue
> for dealing with such specialized issues as Tour's first three challenges.
>
> I think a scholarly article in a lower-echelon, but still respectable scientific
> journal, by someone with a good reputation but not a "star" of OOL like the
> researchers Tour named, would do the non-creationist public a real service.
>
> That is, IF it is possible to explain how relevant or irrelevant Tour's first three
> challenges are to OOL, and why.
>
> If NOBODY can explain these things in humanly intelligible terms at this
> point in time, then OOL science is in a really bad way. It would be better
> to call it a "proto-science" like the alchemy of the Middle Ages.
>
> Back then, researchers did discover a number of important things, like sulfuric acid.
> But no one had a scientific theory worthy of the term. Researchers were stumbling
> blindly in the dark, trying this and that experiment. Maybe that's all that
> can be said about the present state of OOL research.

Wouldn't know, as it's not my field. It's not Tour's either. But do you
think that paleontologists should publish journal articles responding to
Ken Ham's "Were you there?" challenge? I don't. Creationists, and Tour
most definitely is one, do not deserve serious attention.

You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist, so here
in advance is the horse's mouth:

https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20my%20faith%20in,and%20a%20woman%20named%20Eve.

A couple of quotes:

"Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs
over time, and the theory of universal common descent. But the
mechanisms are unknown and the theory of universal common descent is
confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene
research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating."

"Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and
belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God
created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including
a man named Adam and a woman named Eve."

I don't ordinarily look at *Evolution News*, but I got tipped off yesterday
to a "victory" of James Tour that took place then. But by the time I got it,
I was up to my eyeballs in preparing today's reviews for tests I give my two
classes on Friday.

Tour was at an invitation-only panel at Harvard, led by Lee Cronin, to discuss OOL.
The announcement in Evolution News has been there since November 15.
https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/

It is so short, I am copying the whole announcement below.

[BEGIN QUOTE]
Props to Professor Lee Cronin. In the wake of chemist James Tour’s 60-day challenge regarding ungrounded origin-of-life claims, the Cambridge Faculty Roundtable on Science and Religion will host a discussion on OOL. Dr. Cronin, a leading OOL researcher, has agreed to participate in the roundtable discussion with Dr. Tour in front of one hundred faculty members from Harvard and MIT.

“Almost everyone in that room is going to be favoring the side of Lee Cronin, and that’s fine,” says Tour. “I said I don’t need a panel — I’ll just talk to them myself.”

Just so you know, this is an invitation-only event to be held on November 28 at Harvard. Wish you could be a fly on the wall? Good news. The conversation will be recorded and posted sometime after the event.
[END OF QUOTE]

There may still be time, before the conversation is posted, for the biochemistry-savvy
folks here to redeem themselves by finding some *scientific* flaw in Tour's first
three challenges. Their disgraceful performances up to now were described in
the OP, which I've left in below. Besides Athel, "Lawyer Daggett" has made noises
from time to time about being a biochemistry hotshot, and Bill Rogers seems
to think of himself as one, too.

The first two at least would look bad if the panel had uncovered some flaw as
mentioned above, and it turned out to be so simple that they could easily have
picked up on it themselves.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[copy of OP follows:]

On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 7:51:52 PM UTC-5, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
>
> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
>
> _Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/
>
> If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
> crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.
>
> I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
> back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
> of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
> t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
> demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
> were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t.o.
>
> In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
> hypotheses about OOL:
>
> "For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]
>
> Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
> presentation that MarkE had linked,
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
> to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.
>
> Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.
>
> The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
> who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
> [Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
> to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]
>
> Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.
>
> Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
> pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
> none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.
>
> If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
> then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
> of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
> five challenges.
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of South Carolina
> https://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 8:46:54 AM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> I don't ordinarily look at *Evolution News*, but I got tipped off yesterday
> to a "victory" of James Tour that took place then. But by the time I got it,
> I was up to my eyeballs in preparing today's reviews for tests I give my two
> classes on Friday.
>
> Tour was at an invitation-only panel at Harvard, led by Lee Cronin, to discuss OOL.
> The announcement in Evolution News has been there since November 15.
> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
>
> It is so short, I am copying the whole announcement below.
>
> [BEGIN QUOTE]
> Props to Professor Lee Cronin. In the wake of chemist James Tour’s 60-day challenge regarding ungrounded origin-of-life claims, the Cambridge Faculty Roundtable on Science and Religion will host a discussion on OOL. Dr. Cronin, a leading OOL researcher, has agreed to participate in the roundtable discussion with Dr. Tour in front of one hundred faculty members from Harvard and MIT.
>
> “Almost everyone in that room is going to be favoring the side of Lee Cronin, and that’s fine,” says Tour. “I said I don’t need a panel — I’ll just talk to them myself..”
>
> Just so you know, this is an invitation-only event to be held on November 28 at Harvard. Wish you could be a fly on the wall? Good news. The conversation will be recorded and posted sometime after the event.
> [END OF QUOTE]
>
> There may still be time, before the conversation is posted, for the biochemistry-savvy
> folks here to redeem themselves by finding some *scientific* flaw in Tour's first
> three challenges. Their disgraceful performances up to now were described in
> the OP, which I've left in below. Besides Athel, "Lawyer Daggett" has made noises
> from time to time about being a biochemistry hotshot, and Bill Rogers seems
> to think of himself as one, too.
>
> The first two at least would look bad if the panel had uncovered some flaw as
> mentioned above, and it turned out to be so simple that they could easily have
> picked up on it themselves.
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
>
> [copy of OP follows:]
> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 7:51:52 PM UTC-5, peter2...@gmail..com wrote:
> > The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> > as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> > with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> > of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> >
> > Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> >
> > _Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
> > https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/
> >
> > If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
> > crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.
> >
> > I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
> > back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
> > of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
> > t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
> > demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
> > were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t.o.
> >
> > In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
> > hypotheses about OOL:
> >
> > "For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]
> >
> > Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
> > presentation that MarkE had linked,
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
> > to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.
> >
> > Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.
> >
> > The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
> > who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
> > [Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
> > to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]
> >
> > Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.
> >
> > Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
> > pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
> > none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.
> >
> > If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
> > then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
> > of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
> > five challenges.
> >
> >
> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolina
> > https://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
I don't believe you're a closet creationist, but this kind of message doesn't help.

On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 1:51:54 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 8:46:54 AM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I don't ordinarily look at *Evolution News*, but I got tipped off yesterday
> > to a "victory" of James Tour that took place then. But by the time I got it,
> > I was up to my eyeballs in preparing today's reviews for tests I give my two
> > classes on Friday.
> >
> > Tour was at an invitation-only panel at Harvard, led by Lee Cronin, to discuss OOL.
> > The announcement in Evolution News has been there since November 15.
> > https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
> >
> > It is so short, I am copying the whole announcement below.
> >
> > [BEGIN QUOTE]
> > Props to Professor Lee Cronin. In the wake of chemist James Tour’s 60-day challenge regarding ungrounded origin-of-life claims, the Cambridge Faculty Roundtable on Science and Religion will host a discussion on OOL. Dr. Cronin, a leading OOL researcher, has agreed to participate in the roundtable discussion with Dr. Tour in front of one hundred faculty members from Harvard and MIT.
> >
> > “Almost everyone in that room is going to be favoring the side of Lee Cronin, and that’s fine,” says Tour. “I said I don’t need a panel — I’ll just talk to them myself.”
> >
> > Just so you know, this is an invitation-only event to be held on November 28 at Harvard. Wish you could be a fly on the wall? Good news. The conversation will be recorded and posted sometime after the event.
> > [END OF QUOTE]
> >
> > There may still be time, before the conversation is posted, for the biochemistry-savvy
> > folks here to redeem themselves by finding some *scientific* flaw in Tour's first
> > three challenges. Their disgraceful performances up to now were described in
> > the OP, which I've left in below. Besides Athel, "Lawyer Daggett" has made noises
> > from time to time about being a biochemistry hotshot, and Bill Rogers seems
> > to think of himself as one, too.
> >
> > The first two at least would look bad if the panel had uncovered some flaw as
> > mentioned above, and it turned out to be so simple that they could easily have
> > picked up on it themselves.
> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
> > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> >
> > [copy of OP follows:]
> > On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 7:51:52 PM UTC-5, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> > > as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> > > with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> > > of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> > >
> > > Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> > >
> > > _Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
> > > https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/
> > >
> > > If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
> > > crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.
> > >
> > > I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
> > > back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
> > > of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
> > > t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
> > > demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
> > > were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t.o.
> > >
> > > In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
> > > hypotheses about OOL:
> > >
> > > "For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]
> > >
> > > Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
> > > presentation that MarkE had linked,
> > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
> > > to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.
> > >
> > > Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.
> > >
> > > The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
> > > who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
> > > [Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
> > > to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]
> > >
> > > Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.
> > >
> > > Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
> > > pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
> > > none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.
> > >
> > > If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
> > > then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
> > > of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
> > > five challenges.
> > >
> > >
> > > Peter Nyikos
> > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > University of South Carolina
> > > https://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

> I don't believe you're a closet creationist, but this kind of message doesn't help.

To be consistent, shouldn't you also say, "I don't believe Professor Lee Cronin is
a closet creationist, but giving James Tour a bully pulpit like that Harvard roundtable doesn't help." ?

Peter Nyikos

On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 11:36:53 AM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 1:51:54 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> > On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 8:46:54 AM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > I don't ordinarily look at *Evolution News*, but I got tipped off yesterday
> > > to a "victory" of James Tour that took place then. But by the time I got it,
> > > I was up to my eyeballs in preparing today's reviews for tests I give my two
> > > classes on Friday.
> > >
> > > Tour was at an invitation-only panel at Harvard, led by Lee Cronin, to discuss OOL.
> > > The announcement in Evolution News has been there since November 15.
> > > https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
> > >
> > > It is so short, I am copying the whole announcement below.
> > >
> > > [BEGIN QUOTE]
> > > Props to Professor Lee Cronin. In the wake of chemist James Tour’s 60-day challenge regarding ungrounded origin-of-life claims, the Cambridge Faculty Roundtable on Science and Religion will host a discussion on OOL. Dr. Cronin, a leading OOL researcher, has agreed to participate in the roundtable discussion with Dr. Tour in front of one hundred faculty members from Harvard and MIT.
> > >
> > > “Almost everyone in that room is going to be favoring the side of Lee Cronin, and that’s fine,” says Tour. “I said I don’t need a panel — I’ll just talk to them myself.”
> > >
> > > Just so you know, this is an invitation-only event to be held on November 28 at Harvard. Wish you could be a fly on the wall? Good news. The conversation will be recorded and posted sometime after the event.
> > > [END OF QUOTE]
> > >
> > > There may still be time, before the conversation is posted, for the biochemistry-savvy
> > > folks here to redeem themselves by finding some *scientific* flaw in Tour's first
> > > three challenges. Their disgraceful performances up to now were described in
> > > the OP, which I've left in below. Besides Athel, "Lawyer Daggett" has made noises
> > > from time to time about being a biochemistry hotshot, and Bill Rogers seems
> > > to think of himself as one, too.
> > >
> > > The first two at least would look bad if the panel had uncovered some flaw as
> > > mentioned above, and it turned out to be so simple that they could easily have
> > > picked up on it themselves.
> > > Peter Nyikos
> > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
> > > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> > >
> > > [copy of OP follows:]
> > > On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 7:51:52 PM UTC-5, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> > > > as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> > > > with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> > > > of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> > > >
> > > > Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> > > >
> > > > _Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
> > > > https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/
> > > >
> > > > If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
> > > > crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.
> > > >
> > > > I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
> > > > back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
> > > > of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
> > > > t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
> > > > demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
> > > > were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t.o..
> > > >
> > > > In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
> > > > hypotheses about OOL:
> > > >
> > > > "For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]
> > > >
> > > > Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
> > > > presentation that MarkE had linked,
> > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
> > > > to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.
> > > >
> > > > Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.
> > > >
> > > > The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
> > > > who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
> > > > [Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
> > > > to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]
> > > >
> > > > Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.
> > > >
> > > > Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
> > > > pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
> > > > none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.
> > > >
> > > > If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
> > > > then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
> > > > of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
> > > > five challenges.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Peter Nyikos
> > > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > > University of South Carolina
> > > > https://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
>
> > I don't believe you're a closet creationist, but this kind of message doesn't help.
> To be consistent, shouldn't you also say, "I don't believe Professor Lee Cronin is
> a closet creationist, but giving James Tour a bully pulpit like that Harvard roundtable doesn't help." ?
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
I don't see why anyone would need to respond to Tour.

On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 4:31:54 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 11:36:53 AM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 1:51:54 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 8:46:54 AM UTC-8, peter2....@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > I don't ordinarily look at *Evolution News*, but I got tipped off yesterday
> > > > to a "victory" of James Tour that took place then. But by the time I got it,
> > > > I was up to my eyeballs in preparing today's reviews for tests I give my two
> > > > classes on Friday.
> > > >
> > > > Tour was at an invitation-only panel at Harvard, led by Lee Cronin, to discuss OOL.
> > > > The announcement in Evolution News has been there since November 15..
> > > > https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
> > > >
> > > > It is so short, I am copying the whole announcement below.
> > > >
> > > > [BEGIN QUOTE]
> > > > Props to Professor Lee Cronin. In the wake of chemist James Tour’s 60-day challenge regarding ungrounded origin-of-life claims, the Cambridge Faculty Roundtable on Science and Religion will host a discussion on OOL. Dr. Cronin, a leading OOL researcher, has agreed to participate in the roundtable discussion with Dr. Tour in front of one hundred faculty members from Harvard and MIT.
> > > >
> > > > “Almost everyone in that room is going to be favoring the side of Lee Cronin, and that’s fine,” says Tour. “I said I don’t need a panel — I’ll just talk to them myself.”
> > > >
> > > > Just so you know, this is an invitation-only event to be held on November 28 at Harvard. Wish you could be a fly on the wall? Good news. The conversation will be recorded and posted sometime after the event.
> > > > [END OF QUOTE]
> > > >
> > > > There may still be time, before the conversation is posted, for the biochemistry-savvy
> > > > folks here to redeem themselves by finding some *scientific* flaw in Tour's first
> > > > three challenges. Their disgraceful performances up to now were described in
> > > > the OP, which I've left in below. Besides Athel, "Lawyer Daggett" has made noises
> > > > from time to time about being a biochemistry hotshot, and Bill Rogers seems
> > > > to think of himself as one, too.
> > > >
> > > > The first two at least would look bad if the panel had uncovered some flaw as
> > > > mentioned above, and it turned out to be so simple that they could easily have
> > > > picked up on it themselves.
> > > > Peter Nyikos
> > > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > > Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
> > > > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> > > >
> > > > [copy of OP follows:]
> > > > On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 7:51:52 PM UTC-5, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> > > > > as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> > > > > with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> > > > > of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> > > > >
> > > > > Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> > > > >
> > > > > _Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
> > > > > https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/
> > > > >
> > > > > If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
> > > > > crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
> > > > > back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
> > > > > of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
> > > > > t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
> > > > > demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
> > > > > were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t..o.
> > > > >
> > > > > In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
> > > > > hypotheses about OOL:
> > > > >
> > > > > "For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]
> > > > >
> > > > > Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
> > > > > presentation that MarkE had linked,
> > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
> > > > > to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.
> > > > >
> > > > > Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.
> > > > >
> > > > > The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
> > > > > who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
> > > > > [Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
> > > > > to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]
> > > > >
> > > > > Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.
> > > > >
> > > > > Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
> > > > > pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
> > > > > none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.
> > > > >
> > > > > If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
> > > > > then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
> > > > > of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
> > > > > five challenges.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Peter Nyikos
> > > > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > > > University of South Carolina
> > > > > https://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> >
> > > I don't believe you're a closet creationist, but this kind of message doesn't help.

You are indulging in insulting innuendo, without trying to identify what
you mean by "this kind of message." Contrast that with my specific, concrete reply:

> > To be consistent, shouldn't you also say, "I don't believe Professor Lee Cronin is
> > a closet creationist, but giving James Tour a bully pulpit like that Harvard roundtable doesn't help." ?
> >
> >
> > Peter Nyikos

> I don't see why anyone would need to respond to Tour.

Are you disappointed that Professor Lee Cronin does not share your anti-creationist bigotry?

Do NOT confuse "anti-creationist" with "anti-creationism." I'm at least as against
creationism as you are, but I follow the Christian way of "hate the sin but
love the sinner." And in the case of Tour, there is no sin at all in trying to gauge
just how far the proto-science [1] of OOL has developed. That is what the
clallenges are designed to do.

Tour isn't even asking for the big bottleneck of OOL in any of his challenges.
This bottleneck is the production of a ribozyme RNA replicase [2] .
For that, a 60 day deadline would have to be replaced by
at least a 6-year deadline. Even that would be well-nigh hopeless,
if the OOL researchers had to produce it under simulated early earth
conditions. To make it fair, they would have to have leave to use
any method they want to use.

[1] See my reply to Harshman for a rough idea of what this means.

[2] There are RNA replicases , but they are proteins, not strings of nucleotides.

On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 4:41:54 PM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 4:31:54 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> > On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 11:36:53 AM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 1:51:54 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> > > > On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 8:46:54 AM UTC-8, peter2....@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > I don't ordinarily look at *Evolution News*, but I got tipped off yesterday
> > > > > to a "victory" of James Tour that took place then. But by the time I got it,
> > > > > I was up to my eyeballs in preparing today's reviews for tests I give my two
> > > > > classes on Friday.
> > > > >
> > > > > Tour was at an invitation-only panel at Harvard, led by Lee Cronin, to discuss OOL.
> > > > > The announcement in Evolution News has been there since November 15.
> > > > > https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
> > > > >
> > > > > It is so short, I am copying the whole announcement below.
> > > > >
> > > > > [BEGIN QUOTE]
> > > > > Props to Professor Lee Cronin. In the wake of chemist James Tour’s 60-day challenge regarding ungrounded origin-of-life claims, the Cambridge Faculty Roundtable on Science and Religion will host a discussion on OOL. Dr. Cronin, a leading OOL researcher, has agreed to participate in the roundtable discussion with Dr. Tour in front of one hundred faculty members from Harvard and MIT.
> > > > >
> > > > > “Almost everyone in that room is going to be favoring the side of Lee Cronin, and that’s fine,” says Tour. “I said I don’t need a panel — I’ll just talk to them myself.”
> > > > >
> > > > > Just so you know, this is an invitation-only event to be held on November 28 at Harvard. Wish you could be a fly on the wall? Good news. The conversation will be recorded and posted sometime after the event.
> > > > > [END OF QUOTE]
> > > > >
> > > > > There may still be time, before the conversation is posted, for the biochemistry-savvy
> > > > > folks here to redeem themselves by finding some *scientific* flaw in Tour's first
> > > > > three challenges. Their disgraceful performances up to now were described in
> > > > > the OP, which I've left in below. Besides Athel, "Lawyer Daggett" has made noises
> > > > > from time to time about being a biochemistry hotshot, and Bill Rogers seems
> > > > > to think of himself as one, too.
> > > > >
> > > > > The first two at least would look bad if the panel had uncovered some flaw as
> > > > > mentioned above, and it turned out to be so simple that they could easily have
> > > > > picked up on it themselves.
> > > > > Peter Nyikos
> > > > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > > > Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
> > > > > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> > > > >
> > > > > [copy of OP follows:]
> > > > > On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 7:51:52 PM UTC-5, peter2....@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> > > > > > as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> > > > > > with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> > > > > > of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > _Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
> > > > > > https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/
> > > > > >
> > > > > > If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
> > > > > > crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
> > > > > > back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
> > > > > > of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
> > > > > > t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
> > > > > > demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
> > > > > > were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t.o.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
> > > > > > hypotheses about OOL:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
> > > > > > presentation that MarkE had linked,
> > > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
> > > > > > to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
> > > > > > who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
> > > > > > [Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
> > > > > > to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
> > > > > > pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
> > > > > > none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
> > > > > > then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
> > > > > > of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
> > > > > > five challenges.
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Peter Nyikos
> > > > > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > > > > University of South Carolina
> > > > > > https://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> > >
> > > > I don't believe you're a closet creationist, but this kind of message doesn't help.
> You are indulging in insulting innuendo, without trying to identify what
> you mean by "this kind of message." Contrast that with my specific, concrete reply:
> > > To be consistent, shouldn't you also say, "I don't believe Professor Lee Cronin is
> > > a closet creationist, but giving James Tour a bully pulpit like that Harvard roundtable doesn't help." ?
> > >
> > >
> > > Peter Nyikos
>
> > I don't see why anyone would need to respond to Tour.
> Are you disappointed that Professor Lee Cronin does not share your anti-creationist bigotry?
>
>
> Do NOT confuse "anti-creationist" with "anti-creationism." I'm at least as against
> creationism as you are, but I follow the Christian way of "hate the sin but
> love the sinner." And in the case of Tour, there is no sin at all in trying to gauge
> just how far the proto-science [1] of OOL has developed. That is what the
> clallenges are designed to do.
>
> Tour isn't even asking for the big bottleneck of OOL in any of his challenges.
> This bottleneck is the production of a ribozyme RNA replicase [2] .
> For that, a 60 day deadline would have to be replaced by
> at least a 6-year deadline. Even that would be well-nigh hopeless,
> if the OOL researchers had to produce it under simulated early earth
> conditions. To make it fair, they would have to have leave to use
> any method they want to use.
>
> [1] See my reply to Harshman for a rough idea of what this means.
>
> [2] There are RNA replicases , but they are proteins, not strings of nucleotides.
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
I did not insult you although you are a prolific generator of insults. Neither
am I bigoted with respect to people's religious beliefs, creationists or not. Many
of my family are of that category, as am I. I just don't discuss creationism with
them. Neither would I discuss creationism with people like Tour.

On 11/29/23 1:26 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 11:36:53 AM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 1:51:54 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 8:46:54 AM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> I don't ordinarily look at *Evolution News*, but I got tipped off yesterday
>>>> to a "victory" of James Tour that took place then. But by the time I got it,
>>>> I was up to my eyeballs in preparing today's reviews for tests I give my two
>>>> classes on Friday.
>>>>
>>>> Tour was at an invitation-only panel at Harvard, led by Lee Cronin, to discuss OOL.
>>>> The announcement in Evolution News has been there since November 15.
>>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
>>>>
>>>> It is so short, I am copying the whole announcement below.
>>>>
>>>> [BEGIN QUOTE]
>>>> Props to Professor Lee Cronin. In the wake of chemist James Tour’s 60-day challenge regarding ungrounded origin-of-life claims, the Cambridge Faculty Roundtable on Science and Religion will host a discussion on OOL. Dr. Cronin, a leading OOL researcher, has agreed to participate in the roundtable discussion with Dr. Tour in front of one hundred faculty members from Harvard and MIT.
>>>>
>>>> “Almost everyone in that room is going to be favoring the side of Lee Cronin, and that’s fine,” says Tour. “I said I don’t need a panel — I’ll just talk to them myself.”
>>>>
>>>> Just so you know, this is an invitation-only event to be held on November 28 at Harvard. Wish you could be a fly on the wall? Good news. The conversation will be recorded and posted sometime after the event.
>>>> [END OF QUOTE]
>>>>
>>>> There may still be time, before the conversation is posted, for the biochemistry-savvy
>>>> folks here to redeem themselves by finding some *scientific* flaw in Tour's first
>>>> three challenges. Their disgraceful performances up to now were described in
>>>> the OP, which I've left in below. Besides Athel, "Lawyer Daggett" has made noises
>>>> from time to time about being a biochemistry hotshot, and Bill Rogers seems
>>>> to think of himself as one, too.
>>>>
>>>> The first two at least would look bad if the panel had uncovered some flaw as
>>>> mentioned above, and it turned out to be so simple that they could easily have
>>>> picked up on it themselves.
>>>> Peter Nyikos
>>>> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>>>> Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
>>>> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
>>>>
>>>> [copy of OP follows:]
>>>> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 7:51:52 PM UTC-5, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
>>>>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
>>>>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
>>>>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
>>>>>
>>>>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
>>>>>
>>>>> _Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
>>>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/
>>>>>
>>>>> If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
>>>>> crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
>>>>> back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
>>>>> of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
>>>>> t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
>>>>> demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
>>>>> were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t.o.
>>>>>
>>>>> In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
>>>>> hypotheses about OOL:
>>>>>
>>>>> "For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]
>>>>>
>>>>> Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
>>>>> presentation that MarkE had linked,
>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
>>>>> to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.
>>>>>
>>>>> Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.
>>>>>
>>>>> The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
>>>>> who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
>>>>> [Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
>>>>> to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]
>>>>>
>>>>> Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.
>>>>>
>>>>> Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
>>>>> pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
>>>>> none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.
>>>>>
>>>>> If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
>>>>> then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
>>>>> of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
>>>>> five challenges.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Peter Nyikos
>>>>> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>>>>> University of South Carolina
>>>>> https://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
>>
>>> I don't believe you're a closet creationist, but this kind of message doesn't help.

I think the label "creationism supporter" is appropriate.

>> To be consistent, shouldn't you also say, "I don't believe Professor Lee Cronin is
>> a closet creationist, but giving James Tour a bully pulpit like that Harvard roundtable doesn't help." ?
>>
> I don't see why anyone would need to respond to Tour.

I hope some of the scientists there will raise the question, What does
the origin of life have to do with religion? And then spend the rest of
the time discussing whether the answers given to that question have any
value.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> >>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> >>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> >>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> >>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> >>>
> >>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> >>>
> >>> _Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
> >>> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/
> >>>
> >>> If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
> >>> crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.
> >>>
> >>> I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
> >>> back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
> >>> of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
> >>> t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
> >>> demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
> >>> were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t.o.
> >>>
> >>> In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
> >>> hypotheses about OOL:
> >>>
> >>> "For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]
> >>>
> >>> Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
> >>> presentation that MarkE had linked,
> >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
> >>> to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.
> >>>
> >>> Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.
> >>>
> >>> The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
> >>> who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
> >>> [Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
> >>> to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]
> >>>
> >>> Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.
> >>>
> >>> Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
> >>> pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
> >>> none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.
> >>>
> >>> If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
> >>> then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
> >>> of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
> >>> five challenges.
> >
> >> You may be aware of the common evaluation (I paraphrase, but you could
> >> probably look it up), "Debates with creationists look good on their CVs;
> >> mine, not so much."
> >
> > I haven't been thinking in terms of showbiz, John. YouTube debates are the wrong venue
> > for dealing with such specialized issues as Tour's first three challenges.
> >
> > I think a scholarly article in a lower-echelon, but still respectable scientific
> > journal, by someone with a good reputation but not a "star" of OOL like the
> > researchers Tour named, would do the non-creationist public a real service.
> >
> > That is, IF it is possible to explain how relevant or irrelevant Tour's first three
> > challenges are to OOL, and why.
> >
> > If NOBODY can explain these things in humanly intelligible terms at this
> > point in time, then OOL science is in a really bad way. It would be better
> > to call it a "proto-science" like the alchemy of the Middle Ages.
> >
> > Back then, researchers did discover a number of important things, like sulfuric acid.
> > But no one had a scientific theory worthy of the term. Researchers were stumbling
> > blindly in the dark, trying this and that experiment. Maybe that's all that
> > can be said about the present state of OOL research.

Looks like nobody but you and me looked at the post to which you are replying, John.
Maybe this post will be more to the liking of the two others who have responded on this thread,
and the liking of other t.o. regulars.

> Wouldn't know, as it's not my field. It's not Tour's either.

After what I wrote in the post to which you are responding, I wonder whether
there is such a thing as an expert on OOL, or just researchers who are far more
aware of what is going on in research than the average amateur.

> But do you
> think that paleontologists should publish journal articles responding to
> Ken Ham's "Were you there?" challenge?

I first saw Ham's pseudo-challenge around half a decade ago. I immediately saw
what an asinine attack on evolution and the age of the earth it is.
IOW, it is not worthy of any paleontologist's attention (or geologist's, or astronomer's...).
And Ham is a jerk for the way he brags about it in that godforsaken essay.

> I don't.

I'd be worried if you did.

After a fine beginning, you go astray:

> Creationists, and Tour
> most definitely is one, do not deserve serious attention.
>
> You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist,

How could you be so clueless after seeing how I complained in the OP
of the *ad hominem* fallacies that went on -- and they are still going on --
in the long-running thread, "Origin of Life Challenge"? [I even left the text
of the OP up there, uncut.]

Your spiel in your last three lines is more of the same old same old.

The first three parts of Tour's challenge -- the parts I am really interested in --
have NOTHING to do with creationism, and everything to
do with sussing out the current level of progress in OOL.

Progress in any area of science would be badly stifled if the public thought
all the interesting questions had been settled. Mathematics suffers from
that misconception in the minds of untold numbers of people,
and I know from personal experience -- and my own voluminous research --
how utterly false that misconception is.

> so here
> in advance is the horse's mouth:

I wasn't the least bit interested, but as long as you've broached
the subject, we might as well talk about it.

However, I still have to put the finishing touches on one of the tests I am giving
tomorrow. So it will have to wait until tomorrow. But don't worry, it will be the
first post I do to t.o. tomorrow, barring some sensational news about how the roundtable
went two days ago.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

On 11/30/23 6:46 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
>>>>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
>>>>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
>>>>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
>>>>>
>>>>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
>>>>>
>>>>> _Evolution News_ has been playing up this "victory" since October 31:
>>>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/10/on-origin-of-life-chemist-james-tour-has-successfully-called-these-researchers-bluff/
>>>>>
>>>>> If the response of the people here in talk.origins is anything to go by, the
>>>>> crowing in the url is justified. And I'm not talking about the "deafening silence" since October 31.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm talking about the response on the original thread after MarkE did his OP
>>>>> back on August 25. Tour had made 5 specific challenges, the first three
>>>>> of which are specific enough and concrete enough that several knowledgeable
>>>>> t.o. regulars could have said that they were unrealistically
>>>>> demanding, or that they were strawmen that could be easily circumvented,
>>>>> were that the case. Nothing remotely like that happened here in t.o.
>>>>>
>>>>> In particular, the second challenge seems to be central to the current
>>>>> hypotheses about OOL:
>>>>>
>>>>> "For the second problem, proposed solutions needed to describe how nucleotides could have linked into chains with less than 2 percent of the wrong linkages." [quoted from the linked article]
>>>>>
>>>>> Clicking on the words "second problem" takes one directly to a YouTube
>>>>> presentation that MarkE had linked,
>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmykRoelTzU&t=679s
>>>>> to the 11:22 minute point where the precise statement of the second problem is shown on a slide.
>>>>>
>>>>> Similar clicks take the reader to precise statements of the other four problems.
>>>>>
>>>>> The descriptions of all except the fourth problem are readily intelligible to Athel Cornish-Bowden,
>>>>> who has written a whole book on the biochemistry of life.
>>>>> [Not to be confused with the biochemistry of OOL, of which Athel has admitted
>>>>> to be no more qualified to write than he claims Tour is.]
>>>>>
>>>>> Perhaps two or three other t.o. regulars could understand them with equal ease.
>>>>>
>>>>> Instead, Athel confined himself to blatant *ad hominem* credentialism,
>>>>> pointing out that of over 200 papers Tour had published in organic chemistry,
>>>>> none was on the origin of life. No other t.o. critic of Tour did any better.
>>>>>
>>>>> If this is the caliber of response by researchers like those I listed,
>>>>> then it would seem that Tour has successfully shown that the "Emperors
>>>>> of OOL research" have no "clothes" suitable for addressing any of Tour's
>>>>> five challenges.
>>>
>>>> You may be aware of the common evaluation (I paraphrase, but you could
>>>> probably look it up), "Debates with creationists look good on their CVs;
>>>> mine, not so much."
>>>
>>> I haven't been thinking in terms of showbiz, John. YouTube debates are the wrong venue
>>> for dealing with such specialized issues as Tour's first three challenges.
>>>
>>> I think a scholarly article in a lower-echelon, but still respectable scientific
>>> journal, by someone with a good reputation but not a "star" of OOL like the
>>> researchers Tour named, would do the non-creationist public a real service.
>>>
>>> That is, IF it is possible to explain how relevant or irrelevant Tour's first three
>>> challenges are to OOL, and why.
>>>
>>> If NOBODY can explain these things in humanly intelligible terms at this
>>> point in time, then OOL science is in a really bad way. It would be better
>>> to call it a "proto-science" like the alchemy of the Middle Ages.
>>>
>>> Back then, researchers did discover a number of important things, like sulfuric acid.
>>> But no one had a scientific theory worthy of the term. Researchers were stumbling
>>> blindly in the dark, trying this and that experiment. Maybe that's all that
>>> can be said about the present state of OOL research.
>
>
> Looks like nobody but you and me looked at the post to which you are replying, John.
> Maybe this post will be more to the liking of the two others who have responded on this thread,
> and the liking of other t.o. regulars.
>
>
>> Wouldn't know, as it's not my field. It's not Tour's either.
>
> After what I wrote in the post to which you are responding, I wonder whether
> there is such a thing as an expert on OOL, or just researchers who are far more
> aware of what is going on in research than the average amateur.

There may not be such a thing, but Tour is significantly less of one
than those who actually work in the field.

>> But do you
>> think that paleontologists should publish journal articles responding to
>> Ken Ham's "Were you there?" challenge?
>
> I first saw Ham's pseudo-challenge around half a decade ago. I immediately saw
> what an asinine attack on evolution and the age of the earth it is.
> IOW, it is not worthy of any paleontologist's attention (or geologist's, or astronomer's...).
> And Ham is a jerk for the way he brags about it in that godforsaken essay.

>> I don't.
>
> I'd be worried if you did.
>
> After a fine beginning, you go astray:
>
>> Creationists, and Tour
>> most definitely is one, do not deserve serious attention.
>>
>> You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist,
>
> How could you be so clueless after seeing how I complained in the OP
> of the *ad hominem* fallacies that went on -- and they are still going on --
> in the long-running thread, "Origin of Life Challenge"? [I even left the text
> of the OP up there, uncut.]
>
> Your spiel in your last three lines is more of the same old same old.
>
> The first three parts of Tour's challenge -- the parts I am really interested in --
> have NOTHING to do with creationism, and everything to
> do with sussing out the current level of progress in OOL.
>
> Progress in any area of science would be badly stifled if the public thought
> all the interesting questions had been settled. Mathematics suffers from
> that misconception in the minds of untold numbers of people,
> and I know from personal experience -- and my own voluminous research --
> how utterly false that misconception is.

You have avoided the analogy and you have avoided any response to Tour's
creationism. I don't see what you say here as responsive in any way.

Of course Tour's challenge is related to his creationism. Nobody thinks
that origin of life research lacks interesting questions. Why bring up
this strawman at all?

>> so here
>> in advance is the horse's mouth:
>
> I wasn't the least bit interested, but as long as you've broached
> the subject, we might as well talk about it.

You're not interested in whether a person questioning origin of life
research is a creationist? Why not?

On 11/30/23 6:46 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>>
>> ... Tour is a creationist.
>
> The first three parts of Tour's challenge -- the parts I am really interested in --
> have NOTHING to do with creationism, and everything to
> do with sussing out the current level of progress in OOL.

When someone who believes that creation was responsible for the origin
of life starts talking about the origin of life, that person is talking
creationism.

You forget that creationism has nothing to do with supporting
creationism and everything to do with denying alternatives.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:

We'll see what you had written below, John, but first I have some VERY timely news.
I was even thinking of making a separate post of it, but it's mercifully short.

> On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

> >>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> >>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> >>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> >>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:

When I wrote the above, I had no inkling that *Evolution News* had reported,
back on November 15, about Lee Cronin's extraordinary act of hospitality towards Tour:

https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/

And when I did see it on Monday, I had totally forgotten that Cronin WAS
one of the OOL researchers whom Tour had directly challenged:

> >>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.

And today, no thanks to anyone else posting to this thread, I stumbled upon what looks like
the recording to which I have been eagerly looking forward:

"Dr. Lee Cronin & Dr. James Tour on Science and the Origin of Life, Cambridge Faculty Roundtable"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GDv4f2zUus

It's over 3 hours long, and even if I skip the preliminaries prior to the introduction, it's about two
and three quarter hours long. And I have a test, taken by some 25 students, to grade, so I may
only be able to report on the recording on Monday.

Enjoy the reprieve. :) :)

Now, on to where I left off in my first reply to John, preceded by a bit of context:

[Harshman:]
> You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist, so here
> in advance is the horse's mouth:

I will not repeat my criticism of the above from the first reply,
but proceed directly to the documentation:

> https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20my%20faith%20in,and%20a%20woman%20named%20Eve.

A sophisticated science-based exposition, for the most part; as different from Ken Ham's "Were You There?"
as a Boeing 747 is from a junkyard.

> A couple of quotes:

Even they show a sophisticated understanding:

> "Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs
> over time, and the theory of universal common descent.

This is a distinction even professional biologists occasionally slip up on.
The so-called "theory of evolution," the Modern Synthesis (a.k.a. neo-Darwinism)
is really a theory of microevolution that ends in speciation, and has nothing
whatsoever to say about common descent.

Before Amazon totally reinvented its review sections, I participated
in a single book "review" that ran for something like a thousand posts,
and the "paleontological guru" there was none other than
"Our Lady of the Ungulates," Christine Janis. Yet, at one point,
she carelessly referred to common descent as "the theory of evolution."
Needless to say, she quickly corrected herself as I pointed out this mistake.

>But the mechanisms are unknown

See about microevolution above. Back in early 1979, I began a thread
in talk.origins,

TOWARDS A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MACROEVOLUTION
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/MAgP4bAfV40/m/XDh3HKRhBgAJ
in which I emphasized that there was some raw material for a true theory,
but nobody had tried to organize it into a coherent whole.
The "Extended Evolutionary Theory" hasn't seemed to be successful at doing that,
thanks in part to it being attacked by devotees of neo-Darwinism who claim
that it can all be done within that theory.

Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the following bit to comment on it.
Suffice it to say that it is an example of quote-mining: Tour
devotes a lot of space elsewhere to criticisms of the very thing
of which he speaks below:

> and the theory of universal common descent is
> confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene
> research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating."

I don't know what connection any of this is supposed to have with creationism.
If you do, John, please try to articulate it.

The last paragraph you quoted is on a different theme altogether.
>
> "Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and
> belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God
> created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including
> a man named Adam and a woman named Eve."

It's a childlike faith, and if Tour devoted as little time in those almost
three hours as he did in the long essay from which you took these paragraphs,
he had plenty of time to express thoughts like the following,
coming in between your first and second quotes:

"In a secular classroom, one need not include an intelligent designer in order to provide the students with an appreciation for the science or an overview of the theories’ shortcomings. I think that, upon this approach, diverse camps could respectfully agree and lawsuits would be unnecessary.."

Alas, agreeing to disagree is something that seems to be far out of reach
on this thread, or indeed anywhere in talk.origins.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 6:01:56 PM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> We'll see what you had written below, John, but first I have some VERY timely news.
> I was even thinking of making a separate post of it, but it's mercifully short.
> > On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> > >> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > >>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> > >>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> > >>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> > >>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> When I wrote the above, I had no inkling that *Evolution News* had reported,
> back on November 15, about Lee Cronin's extraordinary act of hospitality towards Tour:
>
> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
>
> And when I did see it on Monday, I had totally forgotten that Cronin WAS
> one of the OOL researchers whom Tour had directly challenged:
> > >>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> And today, no thanks to anyone else posting to this thread, I stumbled upon what looks like
> the recording to which I have been eagerly looking forward:
>
> "Dr. Lee Cronin & Dr. James Tour on Science and the Origin of Life, Cambridge Faculty Roundtable"
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GDv4f2zUus
>
> It's over 3 hours long, and even if I skip the preliminaries prior to the introduction, it's about two
> and three quarter hours long. And I have a test, taken by some 25 students, to grade, so I may
> only be able to report on the recording on Monday.
>
> Enjoy the reprieve. :) :)
>
>
> Now, on to where I left off in my first reply to John, preceded by a bit of context:
>
> [Harshman:]
> > You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist, so here
> > in advance is the horse's mouth:
> I will not repeat my criticism of the above from the first reply,
> but proceed directly to the documentation:
>
> > https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20my%20faith%20in,and%20a%20woman%20named%20Eve.
>
> A sophisticated science-based exposition, for the most part; as different from Ken Ham's "Were You There?"
> as a Boeing 747 is from a junkyard.
>
> > A couple of quotes:
>
> Even they show a sophisticated understanding:
> > "Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs
> > over time, and the theory of universal common descent.
> This is a distinction even professional biologists occasionally slip up on.
> The so-called "theory of evolution," the Modern Synthesis (a.k.a. neo-Darwinism)
> is really a theory of microevolution that ends in speciation, and has nothing
> whatsoever to say about common descent.
>
> Before Amazon totally reinvented its review sections, I participated
> in a single book "review" that ran for something like a thousand posts,
> and the "paleontological guru" there was none other than
> "Our Lady of the Ungulates," Christine Janis. Yet, at one point,
> she carelessly referred to common descent as "the theory of evolution."
> Needless to say, she quickly corrected herself as I pointed out this mistake.
> >But the mechanisms are unknown
> See about microevolution above. Back in early 1979, I began a thread
> in talk.origins,
>
> TOWARDS A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MACROEVOLUTION
> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/MAgP4bAfV40/m/XDh3HKRhBgAJ
> in which I emphasized that there was some raw material for a true theory,
> but nobody had tried to organize it into a coherent whole.
> The "Extended Evolutionary Theory" hasn't seemed to be successful at doing that,
> thanks in part to it being attacked by devotees of neo-Darwinism who claim
> that it can all be done within that theory.
>
>
> Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the following bit to comment on it.
> Suffice it to say that it is an example of quote-mining: Tour
> devotes a lot of space elsewhere to criticisms of the very thing
> of which he speaks below:
> > and the theory of universal common descent is
> > confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene
> > research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating."
> I don't know what connection any of this is supposed to have with creationism.
> If you do, John, please try to articulate it.
>
>
> The last paragraph you quoted is on a different theme altogether.
> >
> > "Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and
> > belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God
> > created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including
> > a man named Adam and a woman named Eve."
> It's a childlike faith, and if Tour devoted as little time in those almost
> three hours as he did in the long essay from which you took these paragraphs,
> he had plenty of time to express thoughts like the following,
> coming in between your first and second quotes:
>
> "In a secular classroom, one need not include an intelligent designer in order to provide the students with an appreciation for the science or an overview of the theories’ shortcomings. I think that, upon this approach, diverse camps could respectfully agree and lawsuits would be unnecessary."
>
> Alas, agreeing to disagree is something that seems to be far out of reach
> on this thread, or indeed anywhere in talk.origins.
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of So. Carolina at Columbia
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
Your "Macroevolution" is not a term used by modern paleontologists. It meant something when used
in the past by those still using Linnaean taxonomy. Dobzhansky referred to it as the changes seen over
geologic time periods. Large changes are made up by a sequence of minor changes, excluding saltation.

On 12/1/23 5:57 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>
> We'll see what you had written below, John, but first I have some VERY timely news.
> I was even thinking of making a separate post of it, but it's mercifully short.
>
>> On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>>>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
>>>>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
>>>>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
>>>>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
>
> When I wrote the above, I had no inkling that *Evolution News* had reported,
> back on November 15, about Lee Cronin's extraordinary act of hospitality towards Tour:
>
> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
>
> And when I did see it on Monday, I had totally forgotten that Cronin WAS
> one of the OOL researchers whom Tour had directly challenged:
>
>>>>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
>
> And today, no thanks to anyone else posting to this thread, I stumbled upon what looks like
> the recording to which I have been eagerly looking forward:
>
> "Dr. Lee Cronin & Dr. James Tour on Science and the Origin of Life, Cambridge Faculty Roundtable"
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GDv4f2zUus
>
> It's over 3 hours long, and even if I skip the preliminaries prior to the introduction, it's about two
> and three quarter hours long. And I have a test, taken by some 25 students, to grade, so I may
> only be able to report on the recording on Monday.
>
> Enjoy the reprieve. :) :)

I hope to enjoy it indefinitely. Perhaps you could talk to comeone else
about it instead.

> Now, on to where I left off in my first reply to John, preceded by a bit of context:
>
> [Harshman:]
>> You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist, so here
>> in advance is the horse's mouth:
>
> I will not repeat my criticism of the above from the first reply,
> but proceed directly to the documentation:
>
>> https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20my%20faith%20in,and%20a%20woman%20named%20Eve.
>
> A sophisticated science-based exposition, for the most part; as different from Ken Ham's "Were You There?"
> as a Boeing 747 is from a junkyard.

I don't recognize your characterization. Not much science there.

>> A couple of quotes:
>
> Even they show a sophisticated understanding:

Sophistication, apparently, is in the eye of the beholder.

>> "Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs
>> over time, and the theory of universal common descent.
>
> This is a distinction even professional biologists occasionally slip up on.
> The so-called "theory of evolution," the Modern Synthesis (a.k.a. neo-Darwinism)
> is really a theory of microevolution that ends in speciation, and has nothing
> whatsoever to say about common descent.

Not true at all. Way back in the Origin, Darwin had two theories:
natural selection and branching descent. Both are theories of evolution.
"The theory of evolution" is perhaps a misnomer. And there are in fact
theories of evolution that go beyond speciation, though they are not
part of the "modern synthesis". I have mentioned species selection
frequently, though you haven't seemd interested in exploring that.

> Before Amazon totally reinvented its review sections, I participated
> in a single book "review" that ran for something like a thousand posts,
> and the "paleontological guru" there was none other than
> "Our Lady of the Ungulates," Christine Janis. Yet, at one point,
> she carelessly referred to common descent as "the theory of evolution."
> Needless to say, she quickly corrected herself as I pointed out this mistake.

One may suspect that Christine may remember this somewhat differently.

>> But the mechanisms are unknown
>
> See about microevolution above. Back in early 1979, I began a thread
> in talk.origins,
>
> TOWARDS A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MACROEVOLUTION
> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/MAgP4bAfV40/m/XDh3HKRhBgAJ
> in which I emphasized that there was some raw material for a true theory,
> but nobody had tried to organize it into a coherent whole.
> The "Extended Evolutionary Theory" hasn't seemed to be successful at doing that,
> thanks in part to it being attacked by devotees of neo-Darwinism who claim
> that it can all be done within that theory.
>
> Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the following bit to comment on it.
> Suffice it to say that it is an example of quote-mining: Tour
> devotes a lot of space elsewhere to criticisms of the very thing
> of which he speaks below:
>
>> and the theory of universal common descent is
>> confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene
>> research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating."

Where does he defend the theory of universal common descent, on which
this is an attack. If you think it's a quote-mine, you should be able to
find where he expresses a contrary opinion.

> I don't know what connection any of this is supposed to have with creationism.
> If you do, John, please try to articulate it.

Should be simple enough: this is skepticism (to put it mildly) of common
descent. The altnerative would be separate origins of taxa at some
level. Now, it's true that there are a couple of non-creationist notions
of separate origins (See, for example, Periannan Senapathy), but it
seems clear that's not what Tour is going for. To him, rejection of
common descent is support for creation of taxa.

> The last paragraph you quoted is on a different theme altogether.

Not altogether. True that he doesn't describe the nature of creation of
"all that dwell therein", but he does provide one explicit example, Adam
and Eve. You don't think that relates to creationism?

>> "Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and
>> belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God
>> created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including
>> a man named Adam and a woman named Eve."
>
> It's a childlike faith, and if Tour devoted as little time in those almost
> three hours as he did in the long essay from which you took these paragraphs,
> he had plenty of time to express thoughts like the following,
> coming in between your first and second quotes:
>
> "In a secular classroom, one need not include an intelligent designer
> in order to provide the students with an appreciation for the science
> or an overview of the theories’ shortcomings. I think that, upon this
> approach, diverse camps could respectfully agree and lawsuits would
> be unnecessary."
> Alas, agreeing to disagree is something that seems to be far out of reach
> on this thread, or indeed anywhere in talk.origins.

So you think that science classes should spend significant time
exploring the evidence against common descent? What should that evidence
consist of, would you say?

On 12/1/23 7:56 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 6:01:56 PM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>> We'll see what you had written below, John, but first I have some VERY timely news.
>> I was even thinking of making a separate post of it, but it's mercifully short.
>>> On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>>>>> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>>>>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
>>>>>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
>>>>>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
>>>>>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
>> When I wrote the above, I had no inkling that *Evolution News* had reported,
>> back on November 15, about Lee Cronin's extraordinary act of hospitality towards Tour:
>>
>> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
>>
>> And when I did see it on Monday, I had totally forgotten that Cronin WAS
>> one of the OOL researchers whom Tour had directly challenged:
>>>>>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
>> And today, no thanks to anyone else posting to this thread, I stumbled upon what looks like
>> the recording to which I have been eagerly looking forward:
>>
>> "Dr. Lee Cronin & Dr. James Tour on Science and the Origin of Life, Cambridge Faculty Roundtable"
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GDv4f2zUus
>>
>> It's over 3 hours long, and even if I skip the preliminaries prior to the introduction, it's about two
>> and three quarter hours long. And I have a test, taken by some 25 students, to grade, so I may
>> only be able to report on the recording on Monday.
>>
>> Enjoy the reprieve. :) :)
>>
>>
>> Now, on to where I left off in my first reply to John, preceded by a bit of context:
>>
>> [Harshman:]
>>> You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist, so here
>>> in advance is the horse's mouth:
>> I will not repeat my criticism of the above from the first reply,
>> but proceed directly to the documentation:
>>
>>> https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20my%20faith%20in,and%20a%20woman%20named%20Eve.
>>
>> A sophisticated science-based exposition, for the most part; as different from Ken Ham's "Were You There?"
>> as a Boeing 747 is from a junkyard.
>>
>>> A couple of quotes:
>>
>> Even they show a sophisticated understanding:
>>> "Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs
>>> over time, and the theory of universal common descent.
>> This is a distinction even professional biologists occasionally slip up on.
>> The so-called "theory of evolution," the Modern Synthesis (a.k.a. neo-Darwinism)
>> is really a theory of microevolution that ends in speciation, and has nothing
>> whatsoever to say about common descent.
>>
>> Before Amazon totally reinvented its review sections, I participated
>> in a single book "review" that ran for something like a thousand posts,
>> and the "paleontological guru" there was none other than
>> "Our Lady of the Ungulates," Christine Janis. Yet, at one point,
>> she carelessly referred to common descent as "the theory of evolution."
>> Needless to say, she quickly corrected herself as I pointed out this mistake.
>>> But the mechanisms are unknown
>> See about microevolution above. Back in early 1979, I began a thread
>> in talk.origins,
>>
>> TOWARDS A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MACROEVOLUTION
>> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/MAgP4bAfV40/m/XDh3HKRhBgAJ
>> in which I emphasized that there was some raw material for a true theory,
>> but nobody had tried to organize it into a coherent whole.
>> The "Extended Evolutionary Theory" hasn't seemed to be successful at doing that,
>> thanks in part to it being attacked by devotees of neo-Darwinism who claim
>> that it can all be done within that theory.
>>
>>
>> Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the following bit to comment on it.
>> Suffice it to say that it is an example of quote-mining: Tour
>> devotes a lot of space elsewhere to criticisms of the very thing
>> of which he speaks below:
>>> and the theory of universal common descent is
>>> confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene
>>> research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating."
>> I don't know what connection any of this is supposed to have with creationism.
>> If you do, John, please try to articulate it.
>>
>>
>> The last paragraph you quoted is on a different theme altogether.
>>>
>>> "Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and
>>> belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God
>>> created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including
>>> a man named Adam and a woman named Eve."
>> It's a childlike faith, and if Tour devoted as little time in those almost
>> three hours as he did in the long essay from which you took these paragraphs,
>> he had plenty of time to express thoughts like the following,
>> coming in between your first and second quotes:
>>
>> "In a secular classroom, one need not include an intelligent designer in order to provide the students with an appreciation for the science or an overview of the theories’ shortcomings. I think that, upon this approach, diverse camps could respectfully agree and lawsuits would be unnecessary."
>>
>> Alas, agreeing to disagree is something that seems to be far out of reach
>> on this thread, or indeed anywhere in talk.origins.
>> Peter Nyikos
>> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>> University of So. Carolina at Columbia
>> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

> Your "Macroevolution" is not a term used by modern paleontologists. It meant something when used
> in the past by those still using Linnaean taxonomy. Dobzhansky referred to it as the changes seen over
> geologic time periods. Large changes are made up by a sequence of minor changes, excluding saltation.

Are you quite sure? I haven't been keeping up with the literature as
much recently as I once did, but last I heard "macroevolution" was a
term in common use, and there was considerable argument about whether it
can be reduced to accumulated microevolution.

On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 8:16:56 PM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
> On 12/1/23 7:56 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> > On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 6:01:56 PM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >> We'll see what you had written below, John, but first I have some VERY timely news.
> >> I was even thinking of making a separate post of it, but it's mercifully short.
> >>> On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>
> >>>>>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> >>>>>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> >>>>>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> >>>>>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> >> When I wrote the above, I had no inkling that *Evolution News* had reported,
> >> back on November 15, about Lee Cronin's extraordinary act of hospitality towards Tour:
> >>
> >> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
> >>
> >> And when I did see it on Monday, I had totally forgotten that Cronin WAS
> >> one of the OOL researchers whom Tour had directly challenged:
> >>>>>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> >> And today, no thanks to anyone else posting to this thread, I stumbled upon what looks like
> >> the recording to which I have been eagerly looking forward:
> >>
> >> "Dr. Lee Cronin & Dr. James Tour on Science and the Origin of Life, Cambridge Faculty Roundtable"
> >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GDv4f2zUus
> >>
> >> It's over 3 hours long, and even if I skip the preliminaries prior to the introduction, it's about two
> >> and three quarter hours long. And I have a test, taken by some 25 students, to grade, so I may
> >> only be able to report on the recording on Monday.
> >>
> >> Enjoy the reprieve. :) :)
> >>
> >>
> >> Now, on to where I left off in my first reply to John, preceded by a bit of context:
> >>
> >> [Harshman:]
> >>> You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist, so here
> >>> in advance is the horse's mouth:
> >> I will not repeat my criticism of the above from the first reply,
> >> but proceed directly to the documentation:
> >>
> >>> https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20my%20faith%20in,and%20a%20woman%20named%20Eve.
> >>
> >> A sophisticated science-based exposition, for the most part; as different from Ken Ham's "Were You There?"
> >> as a Boeing 747 is from a junkyard.
> >>
> >>> A couple of quotes:
> >>
> >> Even they show a sophisticated understanding:
> >>> "Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs
> >>> over time, and the theory of universal common descent.
> >> This is a distinction even professional biologists occasionally slip up on.
> >> The so-called "theory of evolution," the Modern Synthesis (a.k.a. neo-Darwinism)
> >> is really a theory of microevolution that ends in speciation, and has nothing
> >> whatsoever to say about common descent.
> >>
> >> Before Amazon totally reinvented its review sections, I participated
> >> in a single book "review" that ran for something like a thousand posts,
> >> and the "paleontological guru" there was none other than
> >> "Our Lady of the Ungulates," Christine Janis. Yet, at one point,
> >> she carelessly referred to common descent as "the theory of evolution."
> >> Needless to say, she quickly corrected herself as I pointed out this mistake.
> >>> But the mechanisms are unknown
> >> See about microevolution above. Back in early 1979, I began a thread
> >> in talk.origins,
> >>
> >> TOWARDS A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MACROEVOLUTION
> >> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/MAgP4bAfV40/m/XDh3HKRhBgAJ
> >> in which I emphasized that there was some raw material for a true theory,
> >> but nobody had tried to organize it into a coherent whole.
> >> The "Extended Evolutionary Theory" hasn't seemed to be successful at doing that,
> >> thanks in part to it being attacked by devotees of neo-Darwinism who claim
> >> that it can all be done within that theory.
> >>
> >>
> >> Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the following bit to comment on it.
> >> Suffice it to say that it is an example of quote-mining: Tour
> >> devotes a lot of space elsewhere to criticisms of the very thing
> >> of which he speaks below:
> >>> and the theory of universal common descent is
> >>> confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene
> >>> research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating."
> >> I don't know what connection any of this is supposed to have with creationism.
> >> If you do, John, please try to articulate it.
> >>
> >>
> >> The last paragraph you quoted is on a different theme altogether.
> >>>
> >>> "Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and
> >>> belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God
> >>> created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including
> >>> a man named Adam and a woman named Eve."
> >> It's a childlike faith, and if Tour devoted as little time in those almost
> >> three hours as he did in the long essay from which you took these paragraphs,
> >> he had plenty of time to express thoughts like the following,
> >> coming in between your first and second quotes:
> >>
> >> "In a secular classroom, one need not include an intelligent designer in order to provide the students with an appreciation for the science or an overview of the theories’ shortcomings. I think that, upon this approach, diverse camps could respectfully agree and lawsuits would be unnecessary."
> >>
> >> Alas, agreeing to disagree is something that seems to be far out of reach
> >> on this thread, or indeed anywhere in talk.origins.
> >> Peter Nyikos
> >> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> >> University of So. Carolina at Columbia
> >> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
>
> > Your "Macroevolution" is not a term used by modern paleontologists. It meant something when used
> > in the past by those still using Linnaean taxonomy. Dobzhansky referred to it as the changes seen over
> > geologic time periods. Large changes are made up by a sequence of minor changes, excluding saltation.
> Are you quite sure? I haven't been keeping up with the literature as
> much recently as I once did, but last I heard "macroevolution" was a
> term in common use, and there was considerable argument about whether it
> can be reduced to accumulated microevolution.

According to my son (paleobotany), he hasn't heard the term used for years. I'm
sure there are exceptions, but I wouldn't know where to find them. Context of use
is probably important.

On Saturday, December 2, 2023 at 6:26:56 AM UTC, erik simpson wrote:
> On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 8:16:56 PM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
> > On 12/1/23 7:56 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> > > On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 6:01:56 PM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >> On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> > >> We'll see what you had written below, John, but first I have some VERY timely news.
> > >> I was even thinking of making a separate post of it, but it's mercifully short.
> > >>> On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >>>> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> > >>>>> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >>
> > >>>>>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> > >>>>>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> > >>>>>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> > >>>>>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> > >> When I wrote the above, I had no inkling that *Evolution News* had reported,
> > >> back on November 15, about Lee Cronin's extraordinary act of hospitality towards Tour:
> > >>
> > >> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
> > >>
> > >> And when I did see it on Monday, I had totally forgotten that Cronin WAS
> > >> one of the OOL researchers whom Tour had directly challenged:
> > >>>>>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> > >> And today, no thanks to anyone else posting to this thread, I stumbled upon what looks like
> > >> the recording to which I have been eagerly looking forward:
> > >>
> > >> "Dr. Lee Cronin & Dr. James Tour on Science and the Origin of Life, Cambridge Faculty Roundtable"
> > >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GDv4f2zUus
> > >>
> > >> It's over 3 hours long, and even if I skip the preliminaries prior to the introduction, it's about two
> > >> and three quarter hours long. And I have a test, taken by some 25 students, to grade, so I may
> > >> only be able to report on the recording on Monday.
> > >>
> > >> Enjoy the reprieve. :) :)
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Now, on to where I left off in my first reply to John, preceded by a bit of context:
> > >>
> > >> [Harshman:]
> > >>> You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist, so here
> > >>> in advance is the horse's mouth:
> > >> I will not repeat my criticism of the above from the first reply,
> > >> but proceed directly to the documentation:
> > >>
> > >>> https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20my%20faith%20in,and%20a%20woman%20named%20Eve.
> > >>
> > >> A sophisticated science-based exposition, for the most part; as different from Ken Ham's "Were You There?"
> > >> as a Boeing 747 is from a junkyard.
> > >>
> > >>> A couple of quotes:
> > >>
> > >> Even they show a sophisticated understanding:
> > >>> "Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs
> > >>> over time, and the theory of universal common descent.
> > >> This is a distinction even professional biologists occasionally slip up on.
> > >> The so-called "theory of evolution," the Modern Synthesis (a.k.a. neo-Darwinism)
> > >> is really a theory of microevolution that ends in speciation, and has nothing
> > >> whatsoever to say about common descent.
> > >>
> > >> Before Amazon totally reinvented its review sections, I participated
> > >> in a single book "review" that ran for something like a thousand posts,
> > >> and the "paleontological guru" there was none other than
> > >> "Our Lady of the Ungulates," Christine Janis. Yet, at one point,
> > >> she carelessly referred to common descent as "the theory of evolution."
> > >> Needless to say, she quickly corrected herself as I pointed out this mistake.
> > >>> But the mechanisms are unknown
> > >> See about microevolution above. Back in early 1979, I began a thread
> > >> in talk.origins,
> > >>
> > >> TOWARDS A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MACROEVOLUTION
> > >> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/MAgP4bAfV40/m/XDh3HKRhBgAJ
> > >> in which I emphasized that there was some raw material for a true theory,
> > >> but nobody had tried to organize it into a coherent whole.
> > >> The "Extended Evolutionary Theory" hasn't seemed to be successful at doing that,
> > >> thanks in part to it being attacked by devotees of neo-Darwinism who claim
> > >> that it can all be done within that theory.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the following bit to comment on it.
> > >> Suffice it to say that it is an example of quote-mining: Tour
> > >> devotes a lot of space elsewhere to criticisms of the very thing
> > >> of which he speaks below:
> > >>> and the theory of universal common descent is
> > >>> confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene
> > >>> research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating.."
> > >> I don't know what connection any of this is supposed to have with creationism.
> > >> If you do, John, please try to articulate it.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> The last paragraph you quoted is on a different theme altogether.
> > >>>
> > >>> "Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and
> > >>> belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God
> > >>> created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including
> > >>> a man named Adam and a woman named Eve."
> > >> It's a childlike faith, and if Tour devoted as little time in those almost
> > >> three hours as he did in the long essay from which you took these paragraphs,
> > >> he had plenty of time to express thoughts like the following,
> > >> coming in between your first and second quotes:
> > >>
> > >> "In a secular classroom, one need not include an intelligent designer in order to provide the students with an appreciation for the science or an overview of the theories’ shortcomings. I think that, upon this approach, diverse camps could respectfully agree and lawsuits would be unnecessary."
> > >>
> > >> Alas, agreeing to disagree is something that seems to be far out of reach
> > >> on this thread, or indeed anywhere in talk.origins.
> > >> Peter Nyikos
> > >> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > >> University of So. Carolina at Columbia
> > >> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> >
> > > Your "Macroevolution" is not a term used by modern paleontologists. It meant something when used
> > > in the past by those still using Linnaean taxonomy. Dobzhansky referred to it as the changes seen over
> > > geologic time periods. Large changes are made up by a sequence of minor changes, excluding saltation.
> > Are you quite sure? I haven't been keeping up with the literature as
> > much recently as I once did, but last I heard "macroevolution" was a
> > term in common use, and there was considerable argument about whether it
> > can be reduced to accumulated microevolution.
> According to my son (paleobotany), he hasn't heard the term used for years. I'm
> sure there are exceptions, but I wouldn't know where to find them. Context of use
> is probably important.

I came recently by chance to this paper (was looking for something entirely
different tbh, so no time yet to read it, if I ever will)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02116-7

On 12/1/23 10:24 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 8:16:56 PM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 12/1/23 7:56 PM, erik simpson wrote:
>>> On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 6:01:56 PM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> We'll see what you had written below, John, but first I have some VERY timely news.
>>>> I was even thinking of making a separate post of it, but it's mercifully short.
>>>>> On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>>>>>>> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>>>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
>>>>>>>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
>>>>>>>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
>>>>>>>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
>>>> When I wrote the above, I had no inkling that *Evolution News* had reported,
>>>> back on November 15, about Lee Cronin's extraordinary act of hospitality towards Tour:
>>>>
>>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
>>>>
>>>> And when I did see it on Monday, I had totally forgotten that Cronin WAS
>>>> one of the OOL researchers whom Tour had directly challenged:
>>>>>>>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
>>>> And today, no thanks to anyone else posting to this thread, I stumbled upon what looks like
>>>> the recording to which I have been eagerly looking forward:
>>>>
>>>> "Dr. Lee Cronin & Dr. James Tour on Science and the Origin of Life, Cambridge Faculty Roundtable"
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GDv4f2zUus
>>>>
>>>> It's over 3 hours long, and even if I skip the preliminaries prior to the introduction, it's about two
>>>> and three quarter hours long. And I have a test, taken by some 25 students, to grade, so I may
>>>> only be able to report on the recording on Monday.
>>>>
>>>> Enjoy the reprieve. :) :)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Now, on to where I left off in my first reply to John, preceded by a bit of context:
>>>>
>>>> [Harshman:]
>>>>> You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist, so here
>>>>> in advance is the horse's mouth:
>>>> I will not repeat my criticism of the above from the first reply,
>>>> but proceed directly to the documentation:
>>>>
>>>>> https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20my%20faith%20in,and%20a%20woman%20named%20Eve.
>>>>
>>>> A sophisticated science-based exposition, for the most part; as different from Ken Ham's "Were You There?"
>>>> as a Boeing 747 is from a junkyard.
>>>>
>>>>> A couple of quotes:
>>>>
>>>> Even they show a sophisticated understanding:
>>>>> "Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs
>>>>> over time, and the theory of universal common descent.
>>>> This is a distinction even professional biologists occasionally slip up on.
>>>> The so-called "theory of evolution," the Modern Synthesis (a.k.a. neo-Darwinism)
>>>> is really a theory of microevolution that ends in speciation, and has nothing
>>>> whatsoever to say about common descent.
>>>>
>>>> Before Amazon totally reinvented its review sections, I participated
>>>> in a single book "review" that ran for something like a thousand posts,
>>>> and the "paleontological guru" there was none other than
>>>> "Our Lady of the Ungulates," Christine Janis. Yet, at one point,
>>>> she carelessly referred to common descent as "the theory of evolution."
>>>> Needless to say, she quickly corrected herself as I pointed out this mistake.
>>>>> But the mechanisms are unknown
>>>> See about microevolution above. Back in early 1979, I began a thread
>>>> in talk.origins,
>>>>
>>>> TOWARDS A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MACROEVOLUTION
>>>> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/MAgP4bAfV40/m/XDh3HKRhBgAJ
>>>> in which I emphasized that there was some raw material for a true theory,
>>>> but nobody had tried to organize it into a coherent whole.
>>>> The "Extended Evolutionary Theory" hasn't seemed to be successful at doing that,
>>>> thanks in part to it being attacked by devotees of neo-Darwinism who claim
>>>> that it can all be done within that theory.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the following bit to comment on it.
>>>> Suffice it to say that it is an example of quote-mining: Tour
>>>> devotes a lot of space elsewhere to criticisms of the very thing
>>>> of which he speaks below:
>>>>> and the theory of universal common descent is
>>>>> confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene
>>>>> research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating."
>>>> I don't know what connection any of this is supposed to have with creationism.
>>>> If you do, John, please try to articulate it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The last paragraph you quoted is on a different theme altogether.
>>>>>
>>>>> "Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and
>>>>> belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God
>>>>> created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including
>>>>> a man named Adam and a woman named Eve."
>>>> It's a childlike faith, and if Tour devoted as little time in those almost
>>>> three hours as he did in the long essay from which you took these paragraphs,
>>>> he had plenty of time to express thoughts like the following,
>>>> coming in between your first and second quotes:
>>>>
>>>> "In a secular classroom, one need not include an intelligent designer in order to provide the students with an appreciation for the science or an overview of the theories’ shortcomings. I think that, upon this approach, diverse camps could respectfully agree and lawsuits would be unnecessary."
>>>>
>>>> Alas, agreeing to disagree is something that seems to be far out of reach
>>>> on this thread, or indeed anywhere in talk.origins.
>>>> Peter Nyikos
>>>> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>>>> University of So. Carolina at Columbia
>>>> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
>>
>>> Your "Macroevolution" is not a term used by modern paleontologists. It meant something when used
>>> in the past by those still using Linnaean taxonomy. Dobzhansky referred to it as the changes seen over
>>> geologic time periods. Large changes are made up by a sequence of minor changes, excluding saltation.
>> Are you quite sure? I haven't been keeping up with the literature as
>> much recently as I once did, but last I heard "macroevolution" was a
>> term in common use, and there was considerable argument about whether it
>> can be reduced to accumulated microevolution.
>
> According to my son (paleobotany), he hasn't heard the term used for years. I'm
> sure there are exceptions, but I wouldn't know where to find them. Context of use
> is probably important.
>
Once again I appeal to a couple of macroevolutionary processes, chiefly
species selection, but also "coordinated stasis", which is commonly
argued to be a thing. Try searching for those terms rather than
macroevolution and see what you find. Erwin & Valentine mention some
other stuff that might be considered macroevolutionary.

On Saturday, December 2, 2023 at 4:56:57 AM UTC-8, Burkhard wrote:
> On Saturday, December 2, 2023 at 6:26:56 AM UTC, erik simpson wrote:
> > On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 8:16:56 PM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
> > > On 12/1/23 7:56 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> > > > On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 6:01:56 PM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > >> On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> > > >> We'll see what you had written below, John, but first I have some VERY timely news.
> > > >> I was even thinking of making a separate post of it, but it's mercifully short.
> > > >>> On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > >>>> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> > > >>>>> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>>>>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> > > >>>>>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> > > >>>>>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> > > >>>>>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> > > >> When I wrote the above, I had no inkling that *Evolution News* had reported,
> > > >> back on November 15, about Lee Cronin's extraordinary act of hospitality towards Tour:
> > > >>
> > > >> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
> > > >>
> > > >> And when I did see it on Monday, I had totally forgotten that Cronin WAS
> > > >> one of the OOL researchers whom Tour had directly challenged:
> > > >>>>>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> > > >> And today, no thanks to anyone else posting to this thread, I stumbled upon what looks like
> > > >> the recording to which I have been eagerly looking forward:
> > > >>
> > > >> "Dr. Lee Cronin & Dr. James Tour on Science and the Origin of Life, Cambridge Faculty Roundtable"
> > > >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GDv4f2zUus
> > > >>
> > > >> It's over 3 hours long, and even if I skip the preliminaries prior to the introduction, it's about two
> > > >> and three quarter hours long. And I have a test, taken by some 25 students, to grade, so I may
> > > >> only be able to report on the recording on Monday.
> > > >>
> > > >> Enjoy the reprieve. :) :)
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> Now, on to where I left off in my first reply to John, preceded by a bit of context:
> > > >>
> > > >> [Harshman:]
> > > >>> You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist, so here
> > > >>> in advance is the horse's mouth:
> > > >> I will not repeat my criticism of the above from the first reply,
> > > >> but proceed directly to the documentation:
> > > >>
> > > >>> https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20my%20faith%20in,and%20a%20woman%20named%20Eve.
> > > >>
> > > >> A sophisticated science-based exposition, for the most part; as different from Ken Ham's "Were You There?"
> > > >> as a Boeing 747 is from a junkyard.
> > > >>
> > > >>> A couple of quotes:
> > > >>
> > > >> Even they show a sophisticated understanding:
> > > >>> "Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs
> > > >>> over time, and the theory of universal common descent.
> > > >> This is a distinction even professional biologists occasionally slip up on.
> > > >> The so-called "theory of evolution," the Modern Synthesis (a.k.a. neo-Darwinism)
> > > >> is really a theory of microevolution that ends in speciation, and has nothing
> > > >> whatsoever to say about common descent.
> > > >>
> > > >> Before Amazon totally reinvented its review sections, I participated
> > > >> in a single book "review" that ran for something like a thousand posts,
> > > >> and the "paleontological guru" there was none other than
> > > >> "Our Lady of the Ungulates," Christine Janis. Yet, at one point,
> > > >> she carelessly referred to common descent as "the theory of evolution."
> > > >> Needless to say, she quickly corrected herself as I pointed out this mistake.
> > > >>> But the mechanisms are unknown
> > > >> See about microevolution above. Back in early 1979, I began a thread
> > > >> in talk.origins,
> > > >>
> > > >> TOWARDS A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MACROEVOLUTION
> > > >> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/MAgP4bAfV40/m/XDh3HKRhBgAJ
> > > >> in which I emphasized that there was some raw material for a true theory,
> > > >> but nobody had tried to organize it into a coherent whole.
> > > >> The "Extended Evolutionary Theory" hasn't seemed to be successful at doing that,
> > > >> thanks in part to it being attacked by devotees of neo-Darwinism who claim
> > > >> that it can all be done within that theory.
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the following bit to comment on it.
> > > >> Suffice it to say that it is an example of quote-mining: Tour
> > > >> devotes a lot of space elsewhere to criticisms of the very thing
> > > >> of which he speaks below:
> > > >>> and the theory of universal common descent is
> > > >>> confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene
> > > >>> research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating."
> > > >> I don't know what connection any of this is supposed to have with creationism.
> > > >> If you do, John, please try to articulate it.
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> The last paragraph you quoted is on a different theme altogether.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> "Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and
> > > >>> belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God
> > > >>> created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including
> > > >>> a man named Adam and a woman named Eve."
> > > >> It's a childlike faith, and if Tour devoted as little time in those almost
> > > >> three hours as he did in the long essay from which you took these paragraphs,
> > > >> he had plenty of time to express thoughts like the following,
> > > >> coming in between your first and second quotes:
> > > >>
> > > >> "In a secular classroom, one need not include an intelligent designer in order to provide the students with an appreciation for the science or an overview of the theories’ shortcomings. I think that, upon this approach, diverse camps could respectfully agree and lawsuits would be unnecessary."
> > > >>
> > > >> Alas, agreeing to disagree is something that seems to be far out of reach
> > > >> on this thread, or indeed anywhere in talk.origins.
> > > >> Peter Nyikos
> > > >> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > >> University of So. Carolina at Columbia
> > > >> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> > >
> > > > Your "Macroevolution" is not a term used by modern paleontologists. It meant something when used
> > > > in the past by those still using Linnaean taxonomy. Dobzhansky referred to it as the changes seen over
> > > > geologic time periods. Large changes are made up by a sequence of minor changes, excluding saltation.
> > > Are you quite sure? I haven't been keeping up with the literature as
> > > much recently as I once did, but last I heard "macroevolution" was a
> > > term in common use, and there was considerable argument about whether it
> > > can be reduced to accumulated microevolution.
> > According to my son (paleobotany), he hasn't heard the term used for years. I'm
> > sure there are exceptions, but I wouldn't know where to find them. Context of use
> > is probably important.
> I came recently by chance to this paper (was looking for something entirely
> different tbh, so no time yet to read it, if I ever will)
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02116-7
Thanks for the contribution. Still, there's a lot of waffling in this paper. (I gave up after reading
a few pages.) I still like Dobzhansky's suggestion that time scales are the main driver. Sure,
evolution proceeds in fits and starts in response to environmental fluctuations , but a million years
is still plenty of time to produce noticeable changes.

On Saturday, December 2, 2023 at 8:31:57 AM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
> On 12/1/23 10:24 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> > On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 8:16:56 PM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 12/1/23 7:56 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> >>> On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 6:01:56 PM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>> On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> We'll see what you had written below, John, but first I have some VERY timely news.
> >>>> I was even thinking of making a separate post of it, but it's mercifully short.
> >>>>> On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>>>> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>>>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> >>>>>>>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> >>>>>>>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> >>>>>>>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> >>>> When I wrote the above, I had no inkling that *Evolution News* had reported,
> >>>> back on November 15, about Lee Cronin's extraordinary act of hospitality towards Tour:
> >>>>
> >>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
> >>>>
> >>>> And when I did see it on Monday, I had totally forgotten that Cronin WAS
> >>>> one of the OOL researchers whom Tour had directly challenged:
> >>>>>>>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> >>>> And today, no thanks to anyone else posting to this thread, I stumbled upon what looks like
> >>>> the recording to which I have been eagerly looking forward:
> >>>>
> >>>> "Dr. Lee Cronin & Dr. James Tour on Science and the Origin of Life, Cambridge Faculty Roundtable"
> >>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GDv4f2zUus
> >>>>
> >>>> It's over 3 hours long, and even if I skip the preliminaries prior to the introduction, it's about two
> >>>> and three quarter hours long. And I have a test, taken by some 25 students, to grade, so I may
> >>>> only be able to report on the recording on Monday.
> >>>>
> >>>> Enjoy the reprieve. :) :)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Now, on to where I left off in my first reply to John, preceded by a bit of context:
> >>>>
> >>>> [Harshman:]
> >>>>> You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist, so here
> >>>>> in advance is the horse's mouth:
> >>>> I will not repeat my criticism of the above from the first reply,
> >>>> but proceed directly to the documentation:
> >>>>
> >>>>> https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20my%20faith%20in,and%20a%20woman%20named%20Eve.
> >>>>
> >>>> A sophisticated science-based exposition, for the most part; as different from Ken Ham's "Were You There?"
> >>>> as a Boeing 747 is from a junkyard.
> >>>>
> >>>>> A couple of quotes:
> >>>>
> >>>> Even they show a sophisticated understanding:
> >>>>> "Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs
> >>>>> over time, and the theory of universal common descent.
> >>>> This is a distinction even professional biologists occasionally slip up on.
> >>>> The so-called "theory of evolution," the Modern Synthesis (a.k.a. neo-Darwinism)
> >>>> is really a theory of microevolution that ends in speciation, and has nothing
> >>>> whatsoever to say about common descent.
> >>>>
> >>>> Before Amazon totally reinvented its review sections, I participated
> >>>> in a single book "review" that ran for something like a thousand posts,
> >>>> and the "paleontological guru" there was none other than
> >>>> "Our Lady of the Ungulates," Christine Janis. Yet, at one point,
> >>>> she carelessly referred to common descent as "the theory of evolution."
> >>>> Needless to say, she quickly corrected herself as I pointed out this mistake.
> >>>>> But the mechanisms are unknown
> >>>> See about microevolution above. Back in early 1979, I began a thread
> >>>> in talk.origins,
> >>>>
> >>>> TOWARDS A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MACROEVOLUTION
> >>>> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/MAgP4bAfV40/m/XDh3HKRhBgAJ
> >>>> in which I emphasized that there was some raw material for a true theory,
> >>>> but nobody had tried to organize it into a coherent whole.
> >>>> The "Extended Evolutionary Theory" hasn't seemed to be successful at doing that,
> >>>> thanks in part to it being attacked by devotees of neo-Darwinism who claim
> >>>> that it can all be done within that theory.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the following bit to comment on it.
> >>>> Suffice it to say that it is an example of quote-mining: Tour
> >>>> devotes a lot of space elsewhere to criticisms of the very thing
> >>>> of which he speaks below:
> >>>>> and the theory of universal common descent is
> >>>>> confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene
> >>>>> research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating.."
> >>>> I don't know what connection any of this is supposed to have with creationism.
> >>>> If you do, John, please try to articulate it.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> The last paragraph you quoted is on a different theme altogether.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> "Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and
> >>>>> belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God
> >>>>> created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including
> >>>>> a man named Adam and a woman named Eve."
> >>>> It's a childlike faith, and if Tour devoted as little time in those almost
> >>>> three hours as he did in the long essay from which you took these paragraphs,
> >>>> he had plenty of time to express thoughts like the following,
> >>>> coming in between your first and second quotes:
> >>>>
> >>>> "In a secular classroom, one need not include an intelligent designer in order to provide the students with an appreciation for the science or an overview of the theories’ shortcomings. I think that, upon this approach, diverse camps could respectfully agree and lawsuits would be unnecessary."
> >>>>
> >>>> Alas, agreeing to disagree is something that seems to be far out of reach
> >>>> on this thread, or indeed anywhere in talk.origins.
> >>>> Peter Nyikos
> >>>> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> >>>> University of So. Carolina at Columbia
> >>>> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> >>
> >>> Your "Macroevolution" is not a term used by modern paleontologists. It meant something when used
> >>> in the past by those still using Linnaean taxonomy. Dobzhansky referred to it as the changes seen over
> >>> geologic time periods. Large changes are made up by a sequence of minor changes, excluding saltation.
> >> Are you quite sure? I haven't been keeping up with the literature as
> >> much recently as I once did, but last I heard "macroevolution" was a
> >> term in common use, and there was considerable argument about whether it
> >> can be reduced to accumulated microevolution.
> >
> > According to my son (paleobotany), he hasn't heard the term used for years. I'm
> > sure there are exceptions, but I wouldn't know where to find them. Context of use
> > is probably important.
> >
> Once again I appeal to a couple of macroevolutionary processes, chiefly
> species selection, but also "coordinated stasis", which is commonly
> argued to be a thing. Try searching for those terms rather than
> macroevolution and see what you find. Erwin & Valentine mention some
> other stuff that might be considered macroevolutionary.
Thanks, I'll check them out.

On 12/2/23 8:37 AM, erik simpson wrote:
> On Saturday, December 2, 2023 at 8:31:57 AM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 12/1/23 10:24 PM, erik simpson wrote:
>>> On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 8:16:56 PM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 12/1/23 7:56 PM, erik simpson wrote:
>>>>> On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 6:01:56 PM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>> On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>>>>>> We'll see what you had written below, John, but first I have some VERY timely news.
>>>>>> I was even thinking of making a separate post of it, but it's mercifully short.
>>>>>>> On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
>>>>>>>>>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
>>>>>>>>>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
>>>>>>>>>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
>>>>>> When I wrote the above, I had no inkling that *Evolution News* had reported,
>>>>>> back on November 15, about Lee Cronin's extraordinary act of hospitality towards Tour:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> And when I did see it on Monday, I had totally forgotten that Cronin WAS
>>>>>> one of the OOL researchers whom Tour had directly challenged:
>>>>>>>>>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
>>>>>> And today, no thanks to anyone else posting to this thread, I stumbled upon what looks like
>>>>>> the recording to which I have been eagerly looking forward:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "Dr. Lee Cronin & Dr. James Tour on Science and the Origin of Life, Cambridge Faculty Roundtable"
>>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GDv4f2zUus
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It's over 3 hours long, and even if I skip the preliminaries prior to the introduction, it's about two
>>>>>> and three quarter hours long. And I have a test, taken by some 25 students, to grade, so I may
>>>>>> only be able to report on the recording on Monday.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Enjoy the reprieve. :) :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Now, on to where I left off in my first reply to John, preceded by a bit of context:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [Harshman:]
>>>>>>> You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist, so here
>>>>>>> in advance is the horse's mouth:
>>>>>> I will not repeat my criticism of the above from the first reply,
>>>>>> but proceed directly to the documentation:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20my%20faith%20in,and%20a%20woman%20named%20Eve.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> A sophisticated science-based exposition, for the most part; as different from Ken Ham's "Were You There?"
>>>>>> as a Boeing 747 is from a junkyard.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> A couple of quotes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Even they show a sophisticated understanding:
>>>>>>> "Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs
>>>>>>> over time, and the theory of universal common descent.
>>>>>> This is a distinction even professional biologists occasionally slip up on.
>>>>>> The so-called "theory of evolution," the Modern Synthesis (a.k.a. neo-Darwinism)
>>>>>> is really a theory of microevolution that ends in speciation, and has nothing
>>>>>> whatsoever to say about common descent.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Before Amazon totally reinvented its review sections, I participated
>>>>>> in a single book "review" that ran for something like a thousand posts,
>>>>>> and the "paleontological guru" there was none other than
>>>>>> "Our Lady of the Ungulates," Christine Janis. Yet, at one point,
>>>>>> she carelessly referred to common descent as "the theory of evolution."
>>>>>> Needless to say, she quickly corrected herself as I pointed out this mistake.
>>>>>>> But the mechanisms are unknown
>>>>>> See about microevolution above. Back in early 1979, I began a thread
>>>>>> in talk.origins,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> TOWARDS A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MACROEVOLUTION
>>>>>> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/MAgP4bAfV40/m/XDh3HKRhBgAJ
>>>>>> in which I emphasized that there was some raw material for a true theory,
>>>>>> but nobody had tried to organize it into a coherent whole.
>>>>>> The "Extended Evolutionary Theory" hasn't seemed to be successful at doing that,
>>>>>> thanks in part to it being attacked by devotees of neo-Darwinism who claim
>>>>>> that it can all be done within that theory.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the following bit to comment on it.
>>>>>> Suffice it to say that it is an example of quote-mining: Tour
>>>>>> devotes a lot of space elsewhere to criticisms of the very thing
>>>>>> of which he speaks below:
>>>>>>> and the theory of universal common descent is
>>>>>>> confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene
>>>>>>> research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating."
>>>>>> I don't know what connection any of this is supposed to have with creationism.
>>>>>> If you do, John, please try to articulate it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The last paragraph you quoted is on a different theme altogether.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and
>>>>>>> belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God
>>>>>>> created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including
>>>>>>> a man named Adam and a woman named Eve."
>>>>>> It's a childlike faith, and if Tour devoted as little time in those almost
>>>>>> three hours as he did in the long essay from which you took these paragraphs,
>>>>>> he had plenty of time to express thoughts like the following,
>>>>>> coming in between your first and second quotes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "In a secular classroom, one need not include an intelligent designer in order to provide the students with an appreciation for the science or an overview of the theories’ shortcomings. I think that, upon this approach, diverse camps could respectfully agree and lawsuits would be unnecessary."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Alas, agreeing to disagree is something that seems to be far out of reach
>>>>>> on this thread, or indeed anywhere in talk.origins.
>>>>>> Peter Nyikos
>>>>>> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>>>>>> University of So. Carolina at Columbia
>>>>>> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
>>>>
>>>>> Your "Macroevolution" is not a term used by modern paleontologists. It meant something when used
>>>>> in the past by those still using Linnaean taxonomy. Dobzhansky referred to it as the changes seen over
>>>>> geologic time periods. Large changes are made up by a sequence of minor changes, excluding saltation.
>>>> Are you quite sure? I haven't been keeping up with the literature as
>>>> much recently as I once did, but last I heard "macroevolution" was a
>>>> term in common use, and there was considerable argument about whether it
>>>> can be reduced to accumulated microevolution.
>>>
>>> According to my son (paleobotany), he hasn't heard the term used for years. I'm
>>> sure there are exceptions, but I wouldn't know where to find them. Context of use
>>> is probably important.
>>>
>> Once again I appeal to a couple of macroevolutionary processes, chiefly
>> species selection, but also "coordinated stasis", which is commonly
>> argued to be a thing. Try searching for those terms rather than
>> macroevolution and see what you find. Erwin & Valentine mention some
>> other stuff that might be considered macroevolutionary.
> Thanks, I'll check them out.
>
It might also be argued that allopolyploidy is a distinctively
macroevolutionary event.

On Saturday, December 2, 2023 at 8:51:57 AM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
> On 12/2/23 8:37 AM, erik simpson wrote:
> > On Saturday, December 2, 2023 at 8:31:57 AM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 12/1/23 10:24 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> >>> On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 8:16:56 PM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 12/1/23 7:56 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> >>>>> On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 6:01:56 PM UTC-8, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>> On Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 9:16:53 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>>> We'll see what you had written below, John, but first I have some VERY timely news.
> >>>>>> I was even thinking of making a separate post of it, but it's mercifully short.
> >>>>>>> On 11/28/23 4:22 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>>>> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:46:52 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> On 11/27/23 4:50 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> The thread which MarkE began with the title, "Origin of Life Challenge," had
> >>>>>>>>>> as its original focus a 60-day challenge by James Tour which has now expired,
> >>>>>>>>>> with no takers. I have not heard tell of a single response from any
> >>>>>>>>>> of the OOL researchers to whom Tour directly addressed his challenge:
> >>>>>> When I wrote the above, I had no inkling that *Evolution News* had reported,
> >>>>>> back on November 15, about Lee Cronin's extraordinary act of hospitality towards Tour:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/james-tour-and-lee-cronin-to-discuss-origin-of-life-at-harvard-roundtable/
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> And when I did see it on Monday, I had totally forgotten that Cronin WAS
> >>>>>> one of the OOL researchers whom Tour had directly challenged:
> >>>>>>>>>> Steve Benner, Jack Szostak, Clemens Reichert, Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipschitz, John Sutherland, Nicholas Hud, Ramana Naran Krishnamurthy, Neil Devaraj, and Matthew Pounder.
> >>>>>> And today, no thanks to anyone else posting to this thread, I stumbled upon what looks like
> >>>>>> the recording to which I have been eagerly looking forward:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> "Dr. Lee Cronin & Dr. James Tour on Science and the Origin of Life, Cambridge Faculty Roundtable"
> >>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GDv4f2zUus
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> It's over 3 hours long, and even if I skip the preliminaries prior to the introduction, it's about two
> >>>>>> and three quarter hours long. And I have a test, taken by some 25 students, to grade, so I may
> >>>>>> only be able to report on the recording on Monday.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Enjoy the reprieve. :) :)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Now, on to where I left off in my first reply to John, preceded by a bit of context:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> [Harshman:]
> >>>>>>> You will probably challenge the idea that Tour is a creationist, so here
> >>>>>>> in advance is the horse's mouth:
> >>>>>> I will not repeat my criticism of the above from the first reply,
> >>>>>> but proceed directly to the documentation:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/#:~:text=Based%20upon%20my%20faith%20in,and%20a%20woman%20named%20Eve.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> A sophisticated science-based exposition, for the most part; as different from Ken Ham's "Were You There?"
> >>>>>> as a Boeing 747 is from a junkyard.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> A couple of quotes:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Even they show a sophisticated understanding:
> >>>>>>> "Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs
> >>>>>>> over time, and the theory of universal common descent.
> >>>>>> This is a distinction even professional biologists occasionally slip up on.
> >>>>>> The so-called "theory of evolution," the Modern Synthesis (a.k.a. neo-Darwinism)
> >>>>>> is really a theory of microevolution that ends in speciation, and has nothing
> >>>>>> whatsoever to say about common descent.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Before Amazon totally reinvented its review sections, I participated
> >>>>>> in a single book "review" that ran for something like a thousand posts,
> >>>>>> and the "paleontological guru" there was none other than
> >>>>>> "Our Lady of the Ungulates," Christine Janis. Yet, at one point,
> >>>>>> she carelessly referred to common descent as "the theory of evolution."
> >>>>>> Needless to say, she quickly corrected herself as I pointed out this mistake.
> >>>>>>> But the mechanisms are unknown
> >>>>>> See about microevolution above. Back in early 1979, I began a thread
> >>>>>> in talk.origins,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> TOWARDS A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MACROEVOLUTION
> >>>>>> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/MAgP4bAfV40/m/XDh3HKRhBgAJ
> >>>>>> in which I emphasized that there was some raw material for a true theory,
> >>>>>> but nobody had tried to organize it into a coherent whole.
> >>>>>> The "Extended Evolutionary Theory" hasn't seemed to be successful at doing that,
> >>>>>> thanks in part to it being attacked by devotees of neo-Darwinism who claim
> >>>>>> that it can all be done within that theory.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the following bit to comment on it.
> >>>>>> Suffice it to say that it is an example of quote-mining: Tour
> >>>>>> devotes a lot of space elsewhere to criticisms of the very thing
> >>>>>> of which he speaks below:
> >>>>>>> and the theory of universal common descent is
> >>>>>>> confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene
> >>>>>>> research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating."
> >>>>>> I don't know what connection any of this is supposed to have with creationism.
> >>>>>> If you do, John, please try to articulate it.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> The last paragraph you quoted is on a different theme altogether.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> "Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and
> >>>>>>> belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God
> >>>>>>> created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including
> >>>>>>> a man named Adam and a woman named Eve."
> >>>>>> It's a childlike faith, and if Tour devoted as little time in those almost
> >>>>>> three hours as he did in the long essay from which you took these paragraphs,
> >>>>>> he had plenty of time to express thoughts like the following,
> >>>>>> coming in between your first and second quotes:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> "In a secular classroom, one need not include an intelligent designer in order to provide the students with an appreciation for the science or an overview of the theories’ shortcomings. I think that, upon this approach, diverse camps could respectfully agree and lawsuits would be unnecessary."
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Alas, agreeing to disagree is something that seems to be far out of reach
> >>>>>> on this thread, or indeed anywhere in talk.origins.
> >>>>>> Peter Nyikos
> >>>>>> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> >>>>>> University of So. Carolina at Columbia
> >>>>>> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> >>>>
> >>>>> Your "Macroevolution" is not a term used by modern paleontologists. It meant something when used
> >>>>> in the past by those still using Linnaean taxonomy. Dobzhansky referred to it as the changes seen over
> >>>>> geologic time periods. Large changes are made up by a sequence of minor changes, excluding saltation.
> >>>> Are you quite sure? I haven't been keeping up with the literature as
> >>>> much recently as I once did, but last I heard "macroevolution" was a
> >>>> term in common use, and there was considerable argument about whether it
> >>>> can be reduced to accumulated microevolution.
> >>>
> >>> According to my son (paleobotany), he hasn't heard the term used for years. I'm
> >>> sure there are exceptions, but I wouldn't know where to find them. Context of use
> >>> is probably important.
> >>>
> >> Once again I appeal to a couple of macroevolutionary processes, chiefly
> >> species selection, but also "coordinated stasis", which is commonly
> >> argued to be a thing. Try searching for those terms rather than
> >> macroevolution and see what you find. Erwin & Valentine mention some
> >> other stuff that might be considered macroevolutionary.
> > Thanks, I'll check them out.
> >
> It might also be argued that allopolyploidy is a distinctively
> macroevolutionary event.